The sun shone through the wide windows of their bedroom, one of many in the antique house they now shared. They rolled around playfully for a few moments, hugging and enjoying the moment, the little time they had to be silly in their lives.
“Get in the shower,” Alexandra said to her. “You’re going to be late.”
“Come with me,” Meaghan answered.
“Oh, good. Then you’ll really be late.”
Meaghan made a sour face, gave her lover’s breast a final, friendly squeeze, then was up and on her way to the shower. “You know what today is?” she called as she made her way to the bathroom.
“How could I forget?” Alex answered. “Wait till you see the Globe’s headlines.”
“What’s going on?”
“‘Hearings on UN Membership, Land Grants for Vampires Begin Today . . . First Anniversary of Venice Jihad Leaves Many Questions,’” Alex quoted, reading from the Boston Globe they had delivered to their doorstep. The paper girl still stood several yards away when tossing the paper on their porch.
“Shit,” Meaghan said. “Tell us something we don’t know. When are they going to do something about the Vatican?”
“I wish I knew, sweetheart.”
The phone rang, and Alex went to pick it up. “Will? Where are you?”
“Where do you think I am, darlin’? I’m all over the damn place. There are more of us than we ever realized, and they’re coming out of the woodwork.”
“You were supposed to be here today.”
“I’ll meet Meaghan in New York tomorrow,” Cody answered. “I thought I was close to finding Lazarus, but my lead dried up.”
“You better be there, Colonel Cody. Meaghan needs your backup, and then I’ve got another lead for you.”
“You haven’t seen the news, have you?” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Put on CNN.”
Alex grabbed the remote and tapped the power on, jabbing in the channel command for CNN. On the screen was Allison Vigeant, better known to them as Tracey Sacco, who’d become a major force both on the air and behind the scenes at CNN in just twelve months. She was considered the world media’s number-one authority on the Defiant Ones.
Alex turned up the volume.
“ . . . has announced that the president has pledged to use any means necessary to backup United Nations resolutions regarding the Venice Jihad. The announcement comes after months of church interference in the ongoing UN investigation into possible Vatican involvement in the Venice Jihad and what has been called ‘attempted genocide’ regarding the so-called Defiant Ones. The press secretary implied that the White House refused to rule out the use of military force at this time.”
“YES!” Alex shouted, dropping the phone as she ran to the bathroom door, banging for Meaghan to hurry so they could share the news. When she came back into the room, she reached for the phone but was drawn again to Allison’s words on the television.
“ . . . sad note, one of the people indirectly responsible for the ‘new order’ we find ourselves in today, as well as one of the spearheads of the UN’s Vatican investigation, is dead. Former Cardinal Henri Guiscard died last night, apparently of natural causes. While thousands of people have pursued the possibility of undergoing what is being called the Revenant Transformation, and many others have volunteered to be blood donors, Guiscard was reportedly offered the transformation dozens of times, and obviously refused.
“By all accounts a man of great wisdom and courage, Henri Guiscard will be missed.”
Alex was quiet for a minute, the phone held loosely against her face. She shook her head sadly, and then heard Cody’s voice on the phone.
“Alex,” it said, sounding far away.
“Damn,” she whispered, then put the phone to her ear again. “I can’t believe nobody’s called us before now. I mean, the news knew before we did. That sucks.”
natural causes
“Listen,” Alex said, “you don’t think . . .”
“You have to wonder, though, don’t you?” Cody said, and he was as serious as he ever got.
“See you tomorrow,” Alexandra said.
“You’re coming, too?”
“I am now.”
Alex hung up the phone, mind racing with terrible possibilities. Didn’t they have enough to worry about without this? The whole UN thing, the Vatican investigation, volunteerism, combating both human and inhuman predators, and the obvious and understandable fears and prejudices (hat faced them; weren’t all these things enough?
Find out what we are!
They had vowed to themselves that Peter’s last request would be fulfilled. They had all loved him, and respected him. Alex and Meaghan had been his lovers. The question he died asking was still the number-one question on their minds, and on the minds of governments, scientists, and just plain people all over the world.
What were they, really?
She and Cody and Meaghan had dedicated their lives to answering that question. Finding Lazarus would be the first big break, if they could find him, but there seemed to be so many things that took precedence.
Not the least of which was analyzing The Gospel of Shadows, learning as much as possible about the magic in that book. There had to be some control over the shadows, and nobody but the Pentagon thought that the American military should have that power. Alex knew it had only been left in their hands because nobody had gotten brave enough to try to take it from them yet. Still, who better?
So many questions. So many responsibilities. And now another dead friend and more questions.
Meaghan stepped out of the shower, still rubbing vigorously at her wet hair. Alexandra couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she looked naked, drops of water still beading on her breasts and belly. She loved Meaghan more than she had ever loved anyone or anything, a difficult thing after so many of their friends had died. But they had power and, with it, tremendous responsibility, a lesson even Hannibal and his followers were beginning to learn. Alexandra didn’t know if they’d ever have time just for each other.
But they had forever to find out.
Dr. George Marcopoulos sat in his rocking chair smoking his pipe. He’d never thought of it as smoking, really, more like relaxation. Few people knew he smoked. His wife, Valerie, knew, of course, and some of his family. Nobody at the hospital, though. These days you got a hard time about smoking wherever you went, and that was for regular folks. If you were a doctor, someone who ought to know better, well, then you were truly the lowest form of life.
He rocked just a bit, back and forth, slow and methodical, the way he knew an old rocker like that was meant to be rocked. The rocker had once belonged to his uncle George, after whom he was named and who also smoked. It was the wonderful smell of his uncle’s pipe that started him smoking, and perhaps rocking, and convinced him that a pipe wasn’t like real smoking no matter what the surgeon general said.
He alternated looking out the window and looking into the fire as he puffed on his pipe. Sometimes he tried to read himself to sleep, but too often the insomnia took on a life of its own and he found himself rocking and smoking and thinking. He thought a lot in that chair in front of the fire.
Peter Octavian had also known that he smoked. They had shared all their secrets like little boys in a tree house or in the blind darkness of a sleepover night. Of course they’d been far from little boys, he an old Greek and his friend far, far older and for all intents and purposes the last ruler of George Marcopoulos’ ancestors.
Most of the time, when he couldn’t sleep and he rocked and smoked and thought, and gazed alternately out at the windy dark or in at the flickering blaze, it was Peter he thought about.
He puffed the pipe just to smell that wonderful pipe-smoking smell and set to rocking again and thought about friends that had left him. First Peter and now Henri Guiscard. Both men of great personal strength and intelligence, with whom he was proud to have been associated. He had not had much time to know He
nri, and he felt some guilt at his death. In a way he had blamed Henri for Peter’s death, but he’d known that was foolish.
What happened was destined to happen, and he was sure that Peter had been destined to be a part of it. Even if Octavian had lived, their friendship would never have been the same. The new world order controlled every moment of the lives of his new friends, the lives of Meaghan Gallagher, Will Cody, and Alexandra Nueva. Peter’s life would have been affected as well. Nothing would ever have been the same.
It had to do with sharing secrets. Knowing another’s secrets was a power few could wield, a difficult burden to bear. A great power, which carried with it a great responsibility. Friendships were built on such power, and the closeness that resulted from it. Nations were destroyed by it. The intimacy of secrets was the basis of love, and friendship, far more than simple fondness had ever been . . . and all the secrets that Peter had shared with George had now been revealed. Everything Peter Octavian was had been violated, and yet he had freely chosen this revelation for a greater purpose.
Sharing secrets is never easy, George Marcopoulos thought as he rocked slowly and puffed long and lovingly and watched sparks fly on brick.
He was broken out of his reverie by the sound of his wife’s voice calling his name. His gaze turned from the fire and (here she was, shuffling into his study in the wee hours of the morning, his beautiful Valerie come to find her bed-furnace of a husband who ought not go off in the middle of the night leaving her to freeze.
He doesn’t have to tell her he can’t sleep, she knows already. She has seen him this way many times, smoking and rocking and gazing out at the night or into the fire. He doesn’t have to tell her he’ll be right up. At their age and after forty years of marriage, there’s little need for talk. She bends painfully, the cold does that to Valerie, and kisses George on the head, then shuffles back toward the stairs, which she’ll take quite slowly.
The fire is dying anyway, he sees, and the night is beginning to brighten a little.
The rocker stops, and he laps out his pipe in the ashtray.
Though he is saddened by Henri’s death, it is Peter he thinks of. Always Peter. He misses their conversations and the excitement of living vicariously through Peter’s adventures. He misses his visits and his humor, which few people had truly been able to appreciate.
He’s been told what Peter went through, his passage into somewhere else, and he wonders what he might have found on the other side. He’s also been told of the questions that haunted him at the end. Questions of nature and origin.
Find out what we are, he had instructed his people.
George could have told them, for all the definition anyone might ever need was to be found in the grief of a loving heart.
Peter Octavian had been a man.
His friend.
And he was truly missed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the bestselling author of such novels as The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town, and Strangewood. He co-wrote the lavishly illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola, and the comic book series spin-off. With Tim Lebbon, he has co-written the Hidden Cities series, the latest of which, The Shadow Men, hits in 2011. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the co-author of the book series OutCast and the comic book miniseries Talent. With Amber Benson, Golden co-created the online animated series Ghosts of Albion and co-wrote the book series of the same name. He is also known for his many media tie-in works, including novels, comics, and video games, in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy, Angel, and X-Men, among others.
Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com
The Shadow Saga
Of Saints and Shadows
(July 2010)
Angel Souls and Devil Hearts
(October 2010)
Of Masques and Martyrs
(December 2010)
The Gathering Dark
(February 2011)
Waking Nightmares
(May 2011)
Of Saints and Shadows (1994) Page 37
