Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  “Well,” Peter said, stepping into the living room and settling on a comfortable hunter-green sofa. “We’ll just have to wait until he wakes up, now, won’t we?”

  23

  TRACEY SACCO HAD NEVER RUN BEFORE. Even searching the memories of her childhood, she could not remember ever having run away from anything. But then, she had never been driven by the singular overwhelming motivation that now propelled her: terror.

  She had put up enough of a front to convince even herself that she was brave, that she was tough. And yet, faced with demons out of ancient and Hollywood mythology, whatever strength there was inside her reacted with a less than human instinct. Every molecule in her body ordered her to flee.

  Certainly her brain knew that the creatures responsible for her freedom, though out in the day, were the same as the creatures who had terrified her the night before, who had pursued and captured her, who had murdered Linda and certainly many others. She knew that the short Oriental man and the black woman had almost commanded her and Linda to turn away from the party the night before.

  But it meant nothing. There was nothing but whim and dumb luck involved in her freedom, and perhaps some sort of internecine feud between these creatures. And she was not counting on getting such a break again.

  Down the steps she ran, nearly tripping, the butler’s coat around her little protection from the cold. She ran down Calle Bernardo and past Ca Rezzonico, her eyes wide with Tear and shock. It was cold but bright and sunny, and the daylight itself served not to calm, but to solidify her terror until it had become something real, something tangible. She still wondered if she would be pursued. She didn’t think Hannibal could come after her, but then she hadn’t thought that any of these things could bear the sunlight.

  At the canal she slopped short, looking out over the shimmering water, where she’d nearly frozen to death the night before. The traghetto man, Giuseppe, was nowhere in sight. Then she glanced to her right and breathed a huge sigh of relief. He was there, at the dock, letting out a young tourist couple, each of whom wore a baby in a sack on their chest. Her fear, which had seemed overwhelming, now presented itself as an obstacle to be overcome. She must get away.

  She began to cry as she reached the dock, and Giuseppe Schiavoni recognized her right away.

  “Signorina,” he said, crossing himself, “thank the Lord you are safe.”

  That stopped her. He had warned them, clearly, but she had not recognized how sincere his warning had been. He knew. Maybe not a lot, but enough to be frightened and enough to be frightened for her. Enough to know that he would more than likely be safe, and that many of these tourists had come to Venice this year rather than another specifically because it was so terribly dangerous.

  All of this went through her mind in the moment that Giuseppe saw her, and she wanted to talk to him, to find out what he knew and how he knew it. But she couldn’t. All she could do in that moment was run to him, a kind old Italian man who looked more than a little stunned at her tears and her lack of proper winter clothing and the fact that she had thrown her arms around him to be hugged, to be protected.

  The young couple bearing twins looked on in bewildered amusement, then walked off as Giuseppe hugged her tight for a moment, then held her away from him to look at her face.

  “Girl,” he said in his scratchy, accented English, “get in the gondola and we will leave the trouble behind. Your tears and those things you fear. Let’s go.”

  She got in and huddled down low, as the wind off the canal was frightfully cold. Seeing this, Giuseppe took off his own coat and she pulled it up to her neck like a blanket.

  “Thank you,” she said, the first words she’d spoken since her facade of courage had broken down. There was courage there, no doubt. But it would take a while for it to return after her instincts had so completely overpowered it.

  They made the trip across the Grand Canal in silence after that. Giuseppe looked at her from time to time with sad and nervous eyes, and as they reached the other side, and the Church of Saint Samuel, he bowed his head.

  “Where is your friend?” he asked, hoping that the answer he received would not be the one he suspected.

  “Dead.”

  “I should have stopped you,” he said sadly.

  She gave him a hard look, and then it softened as she thought of his kindness. “You tried,” she answered. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “But—” he began, but she interrupted.

  “There was nothing you could have done then, but there is now.”

  “What. Only tell me and it will be done.”

  “Help me.”

  He looked at her strangely, as if he had not understood. “What can I do?” he asked.

  “Well, for starters, you can tell me why you warned us in the first place. What do you know?”

  “I will tell you what I can,” he said, and was surprised at his words. He had always felt safe in this city, safe as long as there were enough people who wanted to be there, to be involved in the devilish events that took place every few years. And he had rarely felt guilt when he heard news of disappearances at carnival. These people had chosen to attend. The pattern had been established before he was born, and he had always assumed it would continue long after he was gone. As a ferryman, he had brought many people, some more dangerous than others, to carnival parties on Calle Bernardo. He had rarely carried them back. And yet, even the night before, he had sensed that unlike most of those special passengers, this young woman didn’t really want to go. He could sense she did not belong. Regardless of her reassurances, he should have done more to stop her.

  “The winter days are short,” he said. “It will be dark in two hours or so. Where are you staying?”

  “Hotel Atlantico,” she answered.

  She understood his concern and appreciated his unspoken offer. Tracey’s terror had become an angry fear, a quiet determination. The reporter was back with a vengeance. She had the world’s most useful tool, most powerful weapon, at her disposal. The media. She wouldn’t rest until she had used it to blow this whole thing apart.

  Along the Grand Canal to the Rio del Santissimo, Giuseppe took her. Then past the Venice Theater and into the tangle of canals that make up the true streets of Venice, and finally to the Rio Canonica Palazzo, where Giuseppe bumped the gondola up to the doorstep of the Hotel Atlantico, in sight of the Bridge of Sighs. Any other time Tracey would have found the Journey incredibly romantic, though she was accompanied only by a scruffy old gondolier. Instead, it was painfully time-consuming as darkness approached. But she used the time well.

  She discovered that Giuseppe knew very little after all, only myth and rumor and hints he had gotten from previous passengers. He certainly was not aware of the true nature of the Defiant Ones, and probably wouldn’t have believed her if she tried to tell him.

  Instead she quietly thanked him, assuring him that there was nothing more to be done, that she would leave immediately for home and never return to Venice for carnival. He apologized profusely for his impotence, and ironically, when he slipped away from the hotel, she felt bad for him rather than for herself, or even for Linda. Linda had gotten what she asked for, though certainly not what she deserved—nobody deserved that.

  Once inside the hotel, as she showered and put on warmer clothes, Traccy began to plan. The first thing on her agenda was a call to her friend and boss, Jim Thomas, at CNN.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Now, Hannibal,” Peter said with a gracious smile, “is that any way for a host to treat his guests?”

  They’d been wailing for the sun to go down, but it was barely dusk when the host of the Defiant Ones’ Venetian carnival awoke. Hannibal entered his living room to find it occupied by what was left of the rabble that Karl Von Reinman had once called a coven. It surprised him to no end to see Peter Octavian with the others, two of whom had professed only the night before to hate the man. And yet here they were, in his ho
me.

  “Get out, all of you,” he said calmly, then turned to walk away, perturbed by their intrusion. “Robert,” he said to his butler, “escort them out.”

  “He can try,” Sheng said gravely, standing from his perch on the couch.

  Hannibal stopped with his back to them, shook his head, and turned to them. “Von Reinman’s pups were ever the riffraff of our kind. With him gone, the remains of his litter are no exception.”

  He left, and though Robert made a motion to usher them toward the foyer, none of them moved. Their wail was brief.

  “Robert, where the hell is the girl?”

  Though Peter had been all too happy to allow Robert and the few other daytime servants to put in order what little his friends had disturbed in their search for Hannibal, he had known that it would not be long before the elder Defiant One discovered that his “date” for carnival had gone missing.

  “Master,” Robert began, gibbering, “I . . . I tried to stop them, I told them you would be displeased.”

  “Displeased!” Hannibal yelled as he stormed back into the room. “Displeased is hardly the word I would use. Are you telling me that these . . . insects, marched in here and freed the girl?”

  “And gave her my jacket to wear as well,” Robert said quietly.

  “Oh, did they?” Hannibal said, and stomped furiously to where Peter now stood, his smile replaced with a more serious look. “How dare you—” he began.

  “Shut up,” Peter said, and couldn’t help a Hash of self-satisfaction at the look on the elder’s face.

  “You would—” and again Peter interrupted him.

  “Are we all, we Defiant Ones, as stupid as I’m beginning to think we are? Do we all have incredible trouble noticing the most obvious things? Do we all need humans to point out what is right . . . in . . . our . . . faces?”

  As Peter spoke, his voice became louder and he moved closer to Hannibal until he was almost yelling in the old one’s face.

  “Octavian,” Hannibal said quietly, his calm forcing Peter back several steps, “do you really think I am foolish enough not to realize that you all came here during the day, in sunlight? What you take me for I’ll never know. Let me tell you that your presence here, though distasteful, is no surprise. I have been aware of your movements for quite some time. I am also not surprised at the presence of Miss Gallagher, though she is somewhat more attractive than I had been told.”

  Then it was Hannibal’s turn to smile, and take a dramatic pause. Though Sheng and Alex knew he had a network of operatives out there who had been keeping track of them all, the apparent depth of his knowledge troubled even them. To Peter, it came as quite a shock. But it was a shock that didn’t last.

  “So you’ve been watching,” Peter said. “But what do you really know? Do you know how it is that we’re able to walk in the sunlight? Do you really know why I’m here?”

  “As to the sun, not really. But I’m quite sure you’ll tell me. As to why you’re here, well, it has something to do with that book, does it not? The book which Von Reinman so badly desired from our friends at the church?”

  That did it. At Peter’s request, Meaghan had held her tongue, curbing her normally uncontrollable temper in such circumstances, and in the face of such arrogance as she found in Hannibal. But no longer.

  “I was told to keep quiet,” she began.

  “With good reason,” Hannibal commented, never taking his eyes from Peter.

  “Obviously not. Seems to me this group has a hard time coming to the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is, you pompous ass, that Peter is here to save your hide. That sometime within the next twenty-four hours the Roman Catholic Church is going to descend on Venice for a good old-fashioned vampire hunt, and you’re invited.”

  Hannibal finally registered some surprise, raising his eyebrows. “They wouldn’t,” he said.

  “We’ve been through this,” Peter cut in. “They would and you know it. You may have thought this had something to do with our coven, but you’re wrong. It’s all coincidence. They killed Von Reinman for the book. And you were wrong about Monte Carlo, too. They were after you and not Cody. But they’re done fucking around. They’re coming here, now, for the final battle. We’ve got to warn everybody and try to make them understand why we can survive the sun. I came here because I thought you might want to help us. After all, it wouldn’t be terribly good for your reputation if this happened at a party you were hosting.”

  “Indeed,” Hannibal agreed, then sat on the sofa between Jasmine and Ellen, who were quite surprised. He leaned back, crossed his arms, and raised a hand to stroke his chin. “I don’t suppose,” he began with a smile as he turned his face up to Peter’s, “you would consider replacing the young lady you stole from me with this one?”

  The room was quiet, but Rolf, who was always silent, moved ever so slightly between Hannibal and Meaghan.

  “Ahhh,” Hannibal continued, “I thought not.” He ran a hand through his white hair and leaned back, sliding deeper into the couch.

  “All right, Octavian. Let’s talk.”

  Tracey had left messages for Jim at every number she could think of, but she couldn’t find him. Finally, she had reached his sister, who informed her that Jim had been on vacation and was flying home as they spoke.

  Vacation! Tracey couldn’t imagine.

  She left her message again—it was Terry Shaughnessy calling and it was an emergency. She left her number, though she was certain Jim would get her messages at home before he talked to his sister. He’d know what was up.

  But she couldn’t wait around. It was already past dark and she knew they’d be out after dark. She didn’t know if they’d come after her or even if Hannibal would know where to find her, but she was not looking forward to having to go out. If only she’d had a choice. She had to find out if CNN had a team there for carnival. Or if not them, anybody. And she knew where they’d stay if they had come.

  Though dark, it was still early, there were people around, and her destination was only a few blocks away. On the corner of Calle dc Canonica and Merceria de Orologio, overlooking St. Mark’s Square, was a stone building that housed the Hotel Venezia. Though in the densest traffic area of the city, and one of the most expensive, the hotel had not been kept up as well as it might have. Eight years earlier, Tracey had been to Venice to cover the city’s film festival, a small story to be certain, and she’d stayed at the Venezia. Back then it had been where all the media stayed when they came to town. She had purposely not stayed there in order to avoid the possibility of being recognized.

  Now she hoped that it was still the hotel of choice for the media. She was counting on it. She needed a cameraman. It didn’t really matter if that person worked for CNN or not; she had to find one. Words meant nothing in the modern world unless they were accompanied by pictures.

  And she would need pictures. Legend had it that these creatures couldn’t be photographed, but they seemed solid enough to her. Once the world saw them for what they were, in glorious color on a live television feed . . . well, they would be hunted down like the rabid animals they obviously were.

  But they let you go, she thought, and then brushed it away. These were the creatures that had haunted the nightmares of humanity for centuries, their legend enduring when so many others had fallen by the wayside—and no wonder! No matter how powerful the fear of them, or how powerful the manipulators who protected them, or professed to protect the human race, by keeping their existence secret, it wouldn’t matter, once the cameras were on.

  A picture is worth a thousand words.

  It would be several hours before Venice personnel arrived at the assigned meeting place, a large warehouse next to the Scalzi Church in the Cannaregio section of the city. In that time the Roman group would be organized, prepped, and armed. When the Venetians arrived, they would only need to be armed and assigned to one of the five squads before setting out.

  Isaac and Thomas Montesi
were responsible for the preparations, and all of their attention was given to these tasks. Robert, on the other hand, who did not mix well with the troops they had gathered, stayed back in the shadows of the warehouse, simply observing. He and Mulkerrin had barely shared a glance since their discussion on the train, but Robert was alert to every breath, every movement of his target, the Cardinal Giancarlo Garbarino.

  And when that target slipped out the backdoor of the warehouse, Robert followed, certain not to be spotted. Garbarino was not without his talents, but Robert knew the man felt safe, secure in his position as the official leader of this expedition, and had not erected any magical or psychic defenses. A foolish man, Robert thought, and their mission had no room for fools—God had no time for them. He didn’t even need his magic to keep from being detected. When Garbarino entered the Scalzi Church, Robert dropped all efforts to hide himself and entered after him.

  The church called itself Sant Maria di Nazareth and Robert admired its Baroque construction and extraordinary artwork. Garbarino walked straight up the center of the church toward the altar, genuflected, then slid into the first pew on the right. Robert sat directly behind him, and only then did Garbarino notice him.

  “Ah, Montesi,” he said, “I see you also have come to pray for the victorious outcome of our holy mission. I had thought you would be preocccupied with the battle ahead.”

  “Too busy for the Lord? I think not.”

  Garbarino looked at him, searching his face for some sign of his intentions. Finding nothing but an obvious annoyance, he attempted to be affable. After all, the young Montesi had a reputation as something of a lunatic.

  “Brother Robert, let me assure you I meant no affront. You do God’s work, and he certainly understands if such glorious endeavors do not allow one time to worship in a formal fashion.”

  He turned back then, pleased with himself. Certainly the man could take no offense at his words, but must rather be pleased with such confident praise. He was a cardinal, after all.

  A smile of self-satisfaction crossed his lips just as his peripheral vision registered a whisper of movement. Then the garrote was slicing cleanly through flesh and blood vessels and struggling through bone. In the two seconds before blackness took him forever, he looked up and saw, or imagined he saw, Montesi’s madly grinning face looming over his own torso, spouting blood from its severed neck.