He looked down, and waited. Milliseconds ticked by, and then Peter dissipated from his man-wolf form into ethereal mist. It frightened him somewhat to metamorphose in the daylight, but there had been no alternative, and having done it, he felt more confident than ever about his abilities. Now, as mist, he watched Mulkerrin hurtle toward the pavement, satisfied that he could grab the book and make good his escape before the cops caught on, hoping that nobody really got a good look at the “man who disappeared.”
Something was wrong.
Mulkerrin wasn’t screaming. His face was not a rictus of fear, of a new knowledge of his own mortality.
Rather, though his face held more than a trace of annoyance, he was smiling.
In mist, Peter saw two streaks, barely visible, emerge from the window of the Book Store accompanied by a horrible noise. The banshees moved to their master’s aid at a speed no human eye could have observed. In only slightly more time, Mulkerrin had been swept away amid a shrieking that shattered windows for a block, hailing broken glass that sliced into tourists and students observing the scene.
The next day, most everyone would have a different version of what they had seen, and some would even deny having been there in order to avoid discussing what was clearly a mass hallucination. Falling people do not simply disappear.
Ah, but they do, Peter thought as he drifted back through the window in time to lie down among the rubble before the cops arrived. Meaghan was bent over Ted’s corpse, her eyes hard but not crying, trying to dig him out of the books. At first glance Peter thought that Guiscard, also, was tending a dead man, but then the pile of books shifted, and Peter could see that the younger man was indeed alive. Even so, when the cardinal looked up, Peter could see only fear in his eyes.
“A cairn of books,” he said softly, almost to himself. “That’s what this almost was. I don’t know what I’d have told his mother.”
“I didn’t get the book back,” Peter informed him.
“I ought to have a cairn myself. The book is gone? Well, for me the damage is done. For you, though—whatever it is you creatures are calling yourselves—for you, with that book back with its owner . . . well, your troubles are just beginning.”
15
“MY, YOU ARE GOOD, AREN’T YOU?”
Cody looked up at the red-haired woman with the British accent and was pleased. Pleased not simply because he’d managed to avoid anything resembling hard alcohol, not because he was handily defeating the casino dealer at blackjack, and not just because the woman happened to be very pretty and extraordinarily well made. No, his pleasure came from the look in her eye, an unconscious look that Cody had come to recognize well over his century and a half.
She’d made up her mind.
It was a male trail, mostly. The moment a man looked at a woman, he’d decided whether or not he’d like to put it to her, given the chance. Anyone who knew what to look for, and had half a mind to look, could see it plain as day. A male trait. Mostly. Some women, like the British redhead, also got that look.
And it wasn’t just the look, it was the voice, too. Not the way she said “you are good” or the rest. But the emphasis on that “my,” almost as if he had just dropped his pants for her viewing pleasure.
One look made up his mind. He was getting tired of winning at cards.
“Actually, it’s not much of a challenge,” he said, smiling at her and moving down one chair so she could sit at his right, then looking at the dealer. “Hit me.”
The dealer dropped a six of diamonds down on his eight of spades.
“Not much of a challenge?” She laughed with false yet instructive amusement. “This is Monte Carlo, sir.”
“Yes, ma’am. But blackjack is a boy’s game. Poker’s the game for a man. Unfortunately, in your Monte Carlo, it’s nearly impossible to beat the house in poker.” He turned to the dealer again.
“Hit me.”
“It’s not my Monte Carlo.”
The dealer dropped a three of hearts, and his total was seventeen.
“I’m sorry, you seemed so fond of it. No, of course you’re English, aren’t you Miss . . .”
“Thomas. Vanessa Thomas. You’re not going to play off that seventeen, I hope.”
“Hit me,” he told the dealer, and got a three of clubs for his trouble. The dealer went over twenty-one, and Cody cleaned up again.
“Nicely done. Now, I’ve told my name. You are?”
“Tired of playing blackjack. Could I buy you a drink and lose my winnings on your favorite number in roulette?”
“Well,” she said, and there was the face again, the voice, “the drink for certain, but I tend toward other types of gambling than roulette.”
And so they avoided roulette. As they talked Vanessa sipped white wine and Cody nothing but seltzer. They wandered from table to table, observing mostly losers who could have won if they’d quit while ahead. Vanessa was charmed by the man’s unaffected-looking, long brown hair and the beard he wore, both in complete contrast to his white tuxedo dinner jacket and the rose in his lapel, as if a cowboy had been hired to play James Bond. He had . . .
“ . . . the nicest eyes.”
“Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you very much. That’s quite a compliment coming from a woman of your caliber.”
She blushed, now, at the compliment so deftly turned in her direction. “You know, you haven’t told me your name,” she said, and the fingers of her left hand slowly stroked the stem of her wineglass.
“Cody. Cody October, but please just call me Cody.”
“Ooh. That’s a wonderful name. So American. It’s like something from a John—”
“A John Wayne movie, I know. So I’ve been told.”
“Actually, Mr. October, I was going to say a John Ford movie.”
“Well, thank the Lord, a woman who knows her Westerns! Things have surely changed since I was a boy.”
“Come now, Cody, your boyhood can’t have been that long ago. You don’t look more than, oh, thirty-five or so.”
“You’re being generous, Vanessa. I think you’d be surprised at my age even if you weren’t erring on the side of courtesy with your guessing.”
And she certainly would be surprised. Actually, even Cody was surprised. Not simply because he hadn’t aged since he died in 1917, but because of another, more radical fact. He had gotten younger. Even Von Reinman had never been able to explain that one. His death had come a month before his seventy-first birthday, and here he looked like he was just approaching his forty-first. Which reminded him—he did have a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks.
But hell, he wasn’t going to complain.
“You’re exaggerating,” she told him.
“You’ll find I have a tendency to do that.”
She looked at him queerly for a moment. “And how will I find that out?” she asked, serious now, with an eyebrow arched and a bit of an Irish brogue slipping out from what had been a good hiding place.
“Well, darlin’,” he said, and now Cody let his accent slip out, to make her feel a little better, and waved his arms like a bad actor. “There’s a coupla ways you might find out more about me. First off, I reckon I’m sick to death of this casino and these clothes and drinking seltzer and the people, present company excluded, who frequent these establishments of ill repute, dens of iniquity, etcetera, etcetera. So what that means is, I’ve got to go, and soon, before I decide to start an old-fashioned bar fight just to spark some excitement for the folks here.
“The question, if I may put it so bluntly, all my cards on the table, so to speak, is whether or not I’m leaving here alone. Now, please don’t think I assume too much, or anything, for that matter. However, I know one thing for sure and that’s that I’d enjoy a walk by the water under the moon right about now and it would be far more enjoyable if I wasn’t walking alone. Whether we’re walking back to my ship or back to your rooms or just walking isn’t the important thing. What’s important is the company and the quiet.”
/> All the while Cody was speaking, Vanessa’s smile had been getting bigger and wider, and now she was shaking her head and kind of chuckling, down deep. She looked up at him when he finally took a breath.
“Well, Mr. Cody October, like most Americans you sure do talk a lot. A lot of words when a few would do. If I’m to understand you correctly, you’d like to take a walk with me. In reply to that, I can only say that I am a bit nackered myself and should be making my way back to my hotel. If you would like to safeguard my passage there, I’m sure I can’t think of a more pleasant way to end an evening.”
“Oh,” Cody muttered as he held out his arm for her to take, “and Americans talk a lot.”
“Well, you do!” She laughed as they walked toward the exit. “Where are you from originally, Cody?”
“Originally? I was born in Iowa, but I’ve lived all over. You might say my soul was born in the American West. The Old West.”
“Oh. A cowboy, huh?”
“Well, no. A million other things but never exactly a cowboy. Really, I suppose I’m an entertainer, a storyteller.”
“Oh, well. That’s more like it. I love stories. Would you tell me a story, Cody?” Vanessa asked just as they left the casino for the moonlit Riviera night and turned toward the water. “If you’re especially good, perhaps we’ll make it a bedtime story.”
“Careful, Vanessa. This kind of story could keep you up all night.”
“I’d bet on it,” she purred, and snuggled close to him.
Well, this was one for the books, Vanessa thought. Winning a bundle, he is, and she walks over, smiles at him, and quicker than you can say “Bob’s your uncle,” she’s walking him back to his yacht. Sure, of course the first thing she thought was he was probably some pervert. But no, the look in his eyes was a healthy lust, not one that told you he was a right bastard and a lying one at that.
Not a chance. She could read men and Cody was an honest one. The only lies he told were huge ones, transparent tall tales for his own amusement and hers as well, which did her no end of good in the laughs department. She hadn’t had a good one in a while. No, this Cody wouldn’t lie to you, just change the subject. And it wasn’t in a rude way; no, it was rather skillful actually. The conversation would just seem to float away from topics he didn’t want to cover, and if you weren’t paying close attention, which she was, you’d never realize he had masterfully controlled its course.
No. This guy was one for the books. Even if it were just for one night.
First thing was, he was funny. Second, he was obviously smart and well enough off. Of course, there was the fact that they had a few things in common; they didn’t want to talk about where they’d come from or where they were going, they were both hiding something besides an easily identifiable accent, and they shared strong desires and were not afraid to announce them.
And finally, the most important thing about Mr. Cody October (which name, she was certain, was as fake as her own teeth) was that his presence left Vanessa quite aroused. And it wasn’t the money and it wasn’t the smarts and it wasn’t the fact that he was nearly bloody psychic as a cardplayer. It wasn’t even the fact that he was so damned handsome, which he was in a most unconventional and old-fashioned sense—she’d never been one to go in for long hair on men, but it seemed right on Cody. She liked the beard, too. The eyes—not quite gray but with no better word to describe them—they surely had something to do with it. He was tall and that helped; thin, too, with a strong build, but not bulky all over, and she did so dislike those mutant musclemen on the television. He was handsome on the whole, but no movie star, that was for certain.
No, what had drawn her over to the blackjack table to watch in the first place was not just his looks, but something more, something that enhanced them. Though obviously just forty, his eyes crinkled at the edges and a light grew in them and lit his face with a fatherly amusement and grandfatherly wisdom that was concerned and dismissive all at the same time, as if he didn’t need to care about his actions, but did so for his own purposes.
So all of that, put together, that’s what got her over to the table. But what was it, to return to the important question, that aroused Vanessa so? What was it that inspired her to leave with him, to practically invite him to make love?
It was the same with all the men she fell for. It was the easy charm and the warmth of his smile and the nonchalant spontaneity of the man. The part of him that whispered to her, “You mean everybody isn’t like this?” that assumed that contrary to popular opinion, life was a game but a fun one, and it truly wasn’t winning but how you played that was important.
And then it hit her. He’d spelled it out for her. He was an entertainer. A performer and a storyteller in a way that few British men ever could be, or understand. No, this gift Cody had was something purely American, and for the first time in her short life Vanessa envied the people of that nation. To produce such men, to whom constant good humor and easy laughter were not extraordinary, but rather the order of the day. To Cody, sharing the mood and the laugh and the tale was not serious business, but as natural and necessary to his being as breathing.
Vanessa thought all these things about Cody as they walked along the cement path rising above the rocky shore and leading to the pier. He’d been telling her stories from the moment they left the casino, with a short break when she asked if he really had a ship and could she see it. A man with class, he hadn’t tried to hide his randy grin, but rather shared it with her in an intimate fashion it takes men in general years with one woman to master.
She didn’t think she’d ever wanted a man more in her life, and here he was blabbing about having fucked the Princess of Wales.
“You slept with Princess Diana?” she asked incredulously, eyes wide.
He looked at her in mock surprise, his face the picture of innocence. “Well, hell. Hasn’t everyone?”
They were approaching the pier now, the cement soon to turn to wood, and she balled up a little fist and socked him in the shoulder.
“Well, I haven’t,” Vanessa said.
“That’s a shame,” Cody replied. “I would have liked to’ve seen that.”
She hit him again.
“Now then,” he went on, “tell me a little bit about yourself. My tall tales are getting taller and I want to save the best, and the dirtiest, for later.”
“Well, you know most everything I’d like to tell you, though I’ll tell you what most women won’t. I’m thirty-one, I weigh one twenty. My teeth are fake, but my breasts are my own. I know things in the States regarding breasts have gotten a bit dicey. I’m not from London, but I say I am because you’d never have heard of the town.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Well, perhaps I would. You are a man full of surprises, but even so, let’s say I’m from London. I have no parents, no family, I’ve been married twice, but I’ve never been faithful and don’t intend to start. I have all kinds of hobbies, the most important of which you’ll soon discover, and the rest of which you’ll probably never know. That about covers it.”
“Why were you at the casino? Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing most people would do on a whim, jet off to Monte Carlo for a couple of days by themselves.”
“Why, I should have thought that would be obvious Cody, love. I’m hunting.”
Now his eyes perked up and his face took on dark qualities that were new to her. The entertainer was still there, but now there was danger in him, too. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. He said one word. It wasn’t a statement. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t truly aimed at her.
“Hunting.”
“Come on now. I see it in your face and I knew it when I saw you. You’re hunting, too, a predator. We’re all out there looking for something, but only the aggressive ones, only the predators, are truly going to get what they’re after.”
Now he smiled at her again, and Vanessa returned the smile. She knew what he was thinking, that they were both going to get what
they were after.
Cody was still sizing up the girl. Certainly she wanted him to give her a poke, but he’d wait until later to decide if she could handle his preferred method of penetration as well. He’d known plenty of women who couldn’t, but an extraordinary number who could. He’d killed some in the early days, but eventually had regained his self-control. His whole life, even before Major North had pointed him out to Ned Buntline, the hack writer who’d given him his awful nickname, even before that, he’d been able to talk almost anybody into almost anything. And he’d much rather be offered what he needed than take it. Still, he wasn’t above a little midnight theft when necessary, though still without killing. Of course, if he were defending himself, that was another story entirely.
No, he didn’t like to kill for sustenance. He’d learned a lot since he’d scalped Yellow Hand in memory of that maniac Custer, and the most important thing was that killing folks is not only bad for the soul, but it’s also bad politics and ends up causing no end of trouble.
Cody liked to think he was simpler than all that. Just a storyteller, he told himself. Even fifty years earlier his curse was that if he told his stories, the true and the not so true, he ran the risk of people believing him, and nobody was supposed to know he was still alive. These days, though, he talked incessantly and was never believed.
As he talked to Vanessa he began to sense even more strongly that she might be willing to do all sorts of “kinky stuff” with him. It had gotten easier since American “doctors” had started to publish books about people who drank blood for various reasons, from health to insanity. And hell, even if he decided not to go for the throat, so to speak—well, he’d have more than enough fun with this fiery redhead. And he liked her a lot, smart and pretty as she was. He’d always had a little soft spot for redheads, especially ones he could talk into bed.
Of Saints and Shadows (1994) Page 17
