by Farris, John
They returned to their room at Bahia at a quarter past one, Charmaine wearing a Mexican silver necklace with her birthstone, an amethyst, as the centerpiece. They had taken in a late lounge act at Rio Suites before finally calling it a night.
A white clasp envelope, sealed, had been pushed under their door. Charmaine opened it while Gruvver, substantially lit and with a full bladder, occupied the bathroom.
When he came out in his boxer shorts Charmaine was sitting on the king-size bed reading the note that had come with two invitations to the reopening of the Lincoln Grayle Theatre on the upcoming Saturday night.
"It's from Lucy Meyers," Charmaine said. "The PR director for Grayle I sort of conned? This is so sweet of her, Lewis! But actually says here Mr. Grayle himself is invitin' us."
"You need to be back for classes on Friday."
"But, Lewis! We can afford to stay over one more day; you still have more than half the money you won at Caesars! What difference if I miss a couple classes, I'll still graduate summa."
Gruvver opened the opaque curtains over the windows and looked west through the dust-laden penumbra of Las Vegas to where the Lincoln Grayle Theatre glowed like a supernova on its dark mountain.
"You are dyin' to meet him, and you know it."
"In a professional capacity. Maybe I didn't exactly get across to you at dinner that the Magic Man is not good people. Ask yourself, why is he takin' a personal interest in us?"
"Well, because I can charm killer bees out of their hive, you always say." He looked around at her. She shrugged prettily, pleased with herself. "And I guess Lucy Meyers took a likin'."
"Uh-huh," Gruvver said doubtfully, facing the windows again. The night had chilled down; his breath ghosted the glass in front of him. He was divided between a desire to clear out of Vegas on schedule and his natural impulses as a detective to pursue the mystery that obsessed him to its source, although he knew that source probably was out of his depth as an investigator. He felt a little apprehensive, regretful now because he had involved the faithful and eager-to-please Charmaine in his quest.
As if aware that she was uppermost in his thoughts just then, Charmaine sprang off the bed, long arms going around his bare hunky torso, squeezing blood and adrenaline to his throbbing temples.
"Please, Lewis." Charmaine began to play teasingly with his nipples. So deft. She sent a good supply of blood surging the other way, to his groin. "Everybody I've talked to says it's just an amazing show he puts on, as good as Siegfried and Roy. Lincoln Grayle uses animals too. The world's largest tiger."
One hand slid down to just below his navel. Still deft, she opened his shorts and polished his uppity apple with the ball of her thumb, while feeling his heartbeat through the muscle web of his hard back. Gruvver melting inside like Hershey's Kisses on a hot sidewalk.
"It's how he may be using some of his pets that bothers me" Gruvver said forebodingly.
Charmaine purred for him. "I saw this draped silk chiffon dress at one of the Grand Canal Shoppes. It is so fly. Wouldn't be like I don't have anything to wear."
Chapter 30
CITTÀ DEL VATICANO
OCTOBER 24
4:30 P.M.
They were escorted up the back stairs to the third-floor I papal apartment. The Pope was waiting for them in his study. He asked Eden and Bertie to sit in the high-backed chairs on either side of his large desk. Tom took the remaining seat, a small sofa where the Shade of Pledger Lee Skeldon had appeared to His Holiness early on the morning of October 10. It was a sunny cool day in Rome, nearly dark inside the study with the heavy drapes over the window facing St. Peter's Square drawn tightly closed.
The only light in the study came from the student's lamp on one side of the Pontiff's desk. Coffee and tea were available on a Medici-era sideboard. The door was closed. Two Vatican security men had posted themselves in the antechamber.
"Again, my profound gratitude," Leoncaro said, nodding to Sherard and the women.
"How is Monsignor Colbert?" Eden asked him.
"After seven hours of surgery on Tuesday, as well as could be expected. He may eventually regain the power of speech. But no matter how many operations are required, how gifted the surgeons are, I have been told that he will never again recognize himself in a mirror." He looked at Tom. "During my visits to several African nations, I saw numerous examples of the hyena's predilection for seizing victims by the head. But one never becomes accustomed to the sight of those who survive such powerful jaws."
"I know. And I've spent most of my life in Kenya."
Leoncaro folded his hands on his desk blotter, leaning into the pool of light on his desk, green eyes and satin zucchetto glistening. "I may tell you, without satisfaction, that the remains of the creature that killed one of our Swiss Guards and maimed poor Laurent have been interred. It lies in the crypt of a fourteenth-century monastery on Monte Capanne overlooking the sea at Isola D'Elba. A very secret, consecrated site. It will stay there along with a few other interesting—specimens—that have appeared down through the centuries to terrorize and destroy the faithful."
"All of them shape-shifters?" Bertie asked.
"I'm not at all certain. It might take a modern forensic pathologist to determine the origins of the mummies interred there. This won't happen, of course. And the knowledge of their existence in any form must stay with us."
The Pope kept his study warm, and the near-absence of light and sky made the warmth almost stifling. Their purpose in being there added to a general feeling of discomfort and oppression.
"What happened to the California man who was in on the plot to kill you?" Tom said. "Obviously that one wasn't a shape-shifter."
"Sent home yesterday for burial. His wife, Roberta, I believe, although she rather plaintively insisted upon being called 'Pinky,' was in no condition to accompany her husband's body. She is being treated for emotional and mental collapse and probably will be for the rest of her days. The same is more or less true of all of my other guests at the audience." He clasped his hands tightly. "What a mess," he said, still dismayed and very angry.
"Until a week ago," Bertie said, "I didn't know shape-shifters existed outside of a few places like Moby Bay—" She was about to explain her reference, but Leonaro indicated with a slight smile that he knew about that refuge for the Fallen who were dedicated to restoring themselves to a state of Grace. "So," she continued, "there must have been a breakthrough recently, I mean for the Bad Souls."
Leoncaro nodded. "When terror on earth is raised to a certain pitch, spirituality suffers. Rage is the outlet for unthinking men, and the ethical standards of erstwhile good men become corrupted. They find themselves at each other's throats because of conflicting ideologies, territorial disputes, or other irrational preoccupations. This is the final enigma of history, as Niebuhr proposed. 'Not how the righteous will gain victory over the unrighteous, but how the evil in every good and the unrighteousness of the righteous is to be overcome.' I believe I've quoted him accurately?" Leoncaro paused to take a drink from the glass of water on his desk. Sherard asked if he would like tea. "Please." He opened a drawer of his desk and took out the digital tape Tom had left with the unfortunate Laurent Colbert on their previous visit with Leoncaro, at the Gemelli clinic. "I've had the opportunity to review this, which you told me was shot among the elephants at the Amboseli game reserve. Now, if you wouldn't mind describing to me in detail what you saw the next night at your home."
Tom supplied most of the description of the were-beast, with color commentary by Bertie, as he served cups of tea and poured coffee for himself. Eden listened with a hand on her forehead, eyes half closed.
"We forgot about that mopey spectre riding on the back of the tiger," Bertie concluded. "Very symbolic, but of what I don't know."
"How could I forget about her?" Tom said with an uneasy smile in the Pope's direction. "She was eyeless, and manacled. Silver chains, which by moonlight looked every bit as substantial as the beast itself."
"
And they were in my bungalow," Eden said, raising her head from her supporting hand. "Bertie believes—" She didn't want to go on with it. Leoncaro regarded her patiently, with an expression of such sympathy and concern that she couldn't help feeling he knew what she was reluctant to say. Blood was rising in her cheeks. "It was there, in my bedroom too, sniffing around. Attracted. Because I was having my period, maybe."
"I think it came around, that it probably exists, just to mate with Eden," Bertie concluded for her, Eden grimacing and avoiding everyone's eyes, as if she felt shame, or guilt. "Awful as that sounds," Bertie then added, with an apologetic glance at Eden.
"Why should it have a crush on me?" Eden said with a fretful smile. "You're better-looking." The nails of her right hand dug into the upholstered arm of the chair.
"The evil entity embodied in the were-beast," Leon-Caro said to Eden, "is missing half of its soul, also its soul mate. Thus half of its normal strength. This entity is known to me, and to a few others, by the name of Mordaunt, and it has been on this earth since men first walked upright and chose sides against each other. Making it easy for the entity to become the chief tormentor of all men. It has chosen you, Eden, and your doppelganger as well, because of your demonstrated and latent powers as the Avatar. Better to have you on its side now than as a foe later."
"This Mordaunt has Gw—I mean, my doppelganger?"
"You've been unable to recall her to your side?"
"Can't even communicate with her," Eden admitted.
"That's a first. Something's blocking me."
"Something as simple, and effective, as bathing the captive dpg in ultraviolet light; this prevents thought transference while greatly weakening the organism."
Bertie grinned incredulously. "Your Holiness—Sebastiano—how do you know so much about—"
"The less attractive aspects of the supernatural? It is my duty to know as much about the unholy as it is to promote the health and spirituality of each precious, developing soul. There is quite an extensive library downstairs, as you may have had time to explore on Tuesday, and another library elsewhere, under lock and key. That library is filled with lore of the occult, the dark fantastic. It is available to each successor to the throne of St. Peter according to his need to know, and prepare for days like these. The church is a beacon of light, the source of which is knowledge—no matter how twisted and forbidding some of this knowledge may be."
"You've lived before," Eden said. "Have I?"
"Oh, yes. You're a very old soul. But your past lives are not relevant to present circumstances, so if we may put inquiry into those lives aside for the time being—"
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Eden said bitterly. "The thing that's stalking me is probably still in Rome—Holiness, we both saw its shadow on the outside of the dome above that chamber."
"No, the entity has left Rome. I no longer feel its presence here. The power of light and love concentrated in this hallowed square mile discourage it from hanging around. Puts it off its feed, you might say. A little down in the mouth." He smiled. "It has withdrawn into its human persona once more, to contemplate its inadequacies."
"Now we have to destroy it," Bertie said with another glance at Eden. "Destroy him, while he's vulnerable and unsuspecting."
Eden sat up straight in protest. "But I still don't believe you're talking about Lincoln Grayle!"
"Think about it carefully," Sherard advised. "He shows up in Naivasha, supposedly en route to Victoria Falls, but we're more than a little out of his way. He recognizes you immediately on the terrace of the club, or so he claimed. Is that a coincidence? Try another. Two days ago he turns up in Rome, right on our heels, and a few hours after that Gwen is missing, forcibly abducted. Grayle was one of the last persons to see her."
Bertie said, "The shadow of the were-beast seemed to come from right out of the combi where he was sitting. And he was back in Nairobi the night you left for San Francisco. Plane trouble. No problem for him to get up to Shungwaya, and I'll bet if we could x-ray Linc's shoulder right now, there'd be a piece of a bullet buried in it."
"Okay, okay. But if he's as bad—evil—as as you're trying to make him out to be, why didn't I pick up on it? I'm no dummy when it comes to reading people. Neither are you."
"The supreme Trickster," Leoncaro observed, "has had millennia to perfect his tricks, and his subterfuge. You and Bertie have extraordinary talent, but only by working closely together can you hope to penetrate his defenses, reveal his true nature."
"If he kidnapped Gw—I can't say the name she gave herself; just like that she wouldn't be a dpg anymore—kidnapped my shadow, what good is that to him? She doesn't have powers—oh, naked she's invisible, big deal, and she can scoot around faster than I blink my eye. Quantum physics, she says. Whatever. She may be able to duplicate my physical moves but I have to bail her out of scrapes, and like you said, Holiness, black light or any kind of dog can reduce her to a quivering—"
Leoncaro held up a hand to slow Eden down.
"Let me tell you a little more about Mordaunt, in order for you to understand his motives. In spite of his ability to shape-shift into paradoxical creatures and his considerable talent for creating chaos in likely locations when human affairs go sour, he is a wounded soul. His powers, mighty as they appear to us, were diminished by half when—how to put this? He was separated from his soul mate and feminine half through a group effort by some associates of mine. That soul mate was then dispatched to a place where it remains forever in bondage, with no memory of who it truly is, or what it was on this plane of existence. Mordaunt's other half now goes by the name of 'Smith.'"
"Smith?"
"But it has a masculine form where it now labors in chains with numerous other poor wretches on a day in July in the year 1926. In the state of Georgia, USA, to be more precise. A day which Smith is doomed to repeat endlessly, for all of Eternity." His mouth firmed and he seemed to regret a gloating tone in his last words.
"Chains?" Bertie looked at Tom. "The spectre we saw at Shungwaya was female, but it was also wearing chains."
Leoncaro nodded. "I have suspected that one of Mordaunt's surrogates, during their current murder spree, squeezed from the subconscious mind of one of us—like seeds from a peeled grape—the approximate whereabouts of Mordaunt's other half. He would have programmed them to extract that information. Not that he can ever hope to get to 'Smith' and free him. Mordaunt doesn't have the power to bend time to his uses."
"A Georgia chain gang. Seventy-six years ago," Tom said with an expression of cynical wonder. "My late wife Gillian explained to me when we 'Visited' a few months ago"—he smiled nostalgically at Bertie; the Visit had been all too brief after months of longing—"explained that time isn't linear. Then, Now, and There all exist simultaneously." He settled himself by taking a long breath. His mood became pensive. "Needless to say it's been a troubling concept for me to deal with."
"I'm beginning to get this," Bertie said, looking around at all of their faces, lastly Eden's, where her eyes stayed. "Lincoln Grayle met you in Kenya. Then you had a lunch date, he got to know you pretty well—"
"Let's not go too far with that," Eden warned.
"Won't. But it's Linc's business to be hyper observant, so of course he saw that you're left-handed."
"I'm sure he noticed. What of it?"
"Then he ran into your doppelganger in the lobby of the Excelsior, took her to dinner—"
"Where he would have found Gwen to be right-handed," Sherard said. "And that little weakness when your left eye turns in when you're stressed? Gwen's eye was turning in before she left on her date. The right eye, naturally. Eden and Gwen, mirror images."
"Thanks for reminding me. So he had her pegged for a dpg, then arranged to have her kidnapped off the streets of Rome? Suppose I buy that. What can he do with her? Incorporate her into his act?"
"Or," Leoncaro said, "he may have in mind sending her to Georgia in July of '26 in order to spirit his soul mate away from the chain ga
ng in spite of the guards and the dogs."
"Doppelgangers can travel anywhere," Bertie said to Eden, "in parallel universes. You told me that yourself."
"Only if that's what I want her to do. But I don't. And it's me, not Grayle, who is in control of Gw—damn, I almost said it. Excuse me, Your Holiness."
"I prefer that my friends address me as Sebastiano. If you wouldn't mind, Eden."
"Thank you."
Sherard said after a short silence, "I don't want to see the two of you at risk again." He was looking at Leoncaro.
"Yes, it is a very great risk to approach Mordaunt," the Pontiff admitted. "Or Lincoln Grayle, as he now represents himself." He took time to think about this, drinking some of the tea Tom had brought him. "But wouldn't it be more of a risk to wait for him to seek you out again? He will, you know."
More silence. Eden shifted restlessly in her chair, then abruptly got up and walked away from Leoncaro's desk, from all of them, seeking isolation in the confined study.
"I know I don't want to be hunted anymore," she said. "But I can't destroy another human being, no matter what. From everything Bertie's said, the two of us together can't handle Grayle's were-beast. His stand-in for stud purposes." In spite of the heat in the study she was shuddering. "Ugh." She turned to face Leoncaro, longing for words to release her from her dilemma and her misery.
All he could say was, "It is a very grave predicament, I know."
The teacup and saucer on his desk moved inches away from his hand. Leoncaro studied it, amused, looked up into Eden's resentful, rebellious smile.
"That's about how powerful I am, Sebastiano. Avatar? Please. I've learned to move a teacup with my mind. Is that any better than an armless man who can shuffle a deck of cards with his toes? Okay, Bertie can brain-lock just about anything that has a brain, I guess."
