Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (16 page)

“Meaghan?” came the voice from the other side of the door, soft and feminine, almost a whisper.

Peter shot her a questioning glance.

“Meaghan, let me in,” the voice came again, pleading in that low whisper. “It’s cold out here.”

“Holy shit, it’s Janet.”

She and Peter exchanged shocked looks as Meaghan slid back the dead bolt, though she couldn’t help but note that Peter’s hands were still wrapped around the pistol he held in the air.

She pulled open the door, wide-eyed as she took in the figure standing in the deep darkness of the hall.

“Janet?”

In the moment between regaining what passed for full consciousness for him these days and the opening of his hospital-room door, Manny had felt an overwhelming sense of dread seize him. He felt cold, colder than any drugs could make him, colder than his Anita’s feet would get on a winter night.

And then the door opened and in walked Carmela, backlit by the harsh lights in the hall, and that cold started to turn back to a dull throbbing heat. Though he barely noticed it, the chill did not disappear entirely.

“Manny,” came her beautiful voice, silken, with an accent that was, in itself, enough to warm any man.

She carried a metal tray upon which sat a plastic bedpan and water pitcher, as well as what appeared to be the medication for several patients. “I’m sorry about that noise. Had a little accident. Then I figured it prob’ly woke you up, so I thought I’d come in and say hi.”

She bent over to fluff his pillow and gave him a long view down the front of her uniform.

“Hi,” he said weakly.

“You like that peek?” she asked, and smiled a naughty smile. “I can see that you do.” She laughed aloud as she motioned to the erection under his sheets. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you get a better look.”

He was stunned into silence for a moment. “As soon as I’m a little better healed, I might take you up on that offer,” he said, though he was finding the possibility pretty tough to believe.

Carmela picked up the TV remote control from the bedside table, clicking off Cary Grant. Now the dreadful darkness was broken only by the wan moonlight spilling through the windows, just enough to see Carmela by, which in itself was enough to keep the nasty thoughts at bay.

“Why wait?” she asked him, and a few buttons later, with his jaw dropped onto his chest, he found out that she didn’t wear underwear.

“Janet!” Meaghan yelled.

And the young Miss Harris came into Meaghan’s outspread arms with all the vigor of someone who’d been lost and was now found. Amazing grace, Peter thought as he clicked the safety back on his pistol and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He closed the door and slid the bolt back into place.

“Oh God, I thought you were dead!” Meaghan sobbed, sniffling into Janet’s coal. “Jesus, you slink. Where the hell have you been?”

“Your dad’s been half out of his mind,” Octavian said, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at her.

“Oh, Peter,” Janet said without even turning around, “you’re such a silly goose.”

She giggled, and it came out an awful gurgling noise. Meaghan laughed right along with her, looking up at Peter with smiling eyes, so happy to have Janet home. He knew then how deeply Meaghan felt for the other woman, and that disturbed him even further. Try as he might, he couldn’t force the pieces of the puzzle where they didn’t fit. And there were a whole bunch right in this room that didn’t fit.

“Where have you been?” Peter asked her, and this time she did turn around.

Even in the dim light that streamed from the hallway and Meaghan’s room, Peter could see the hollow look in Janet’s eyes. Her experience must have been traumatic to create such a haunted gaze. But even that observation didn’t ring true. She looked around her like a blind person looks, turning her head to direct conversation to a person or to signal her attention, but not following anything with her eyes. And she did smell, that was for sure.

“I was lost.”

“Lost?”

“Just lost. That’s all I can really say.”

In the back of a garbage truck, Peter was beginning to think, and the stains he could see on her dark jacket didn’t do anything to kill that theory either. Of course, all of these things added up to about nothing. Here was the woman herself. In the flesh. Of course she’d have a story to tell, and might be hesitant to tell it with him standing right there . . . but that was the kicker, wasn’t it?

That was why he knew something was way off with this whole situation. Several hundred years of watching people gives one a unique observational ability, but that didn’t mean squat compared with the blatantly obvious.

Janet hadn’t looked at him as she came in.

She hadn’t turned around the first time he’d spoken to her.

She had known who he was immediately, recognized him right away out of what could only be the corner of her eye. She had felt comfortable enough with his presence to act like he wasn’t even there, comfortable enough to call him by his first name. She didn’t seem at all surprised that he was in her apartment at five in the morning.

Recognized him right away. Her father’s buddy, the detective. No problem. Understandable, right?

Wrong.

Peter rarely let his picture be taken, and he was certain that that Frank Harris had never had any photo of him.

And they’d never met.

Manny Soares was still struck dumb with awe as Carmela walked, naked as a jaybird, to his door and turned the lock. When she faced him again, her grin was almost too wide for her face. Her hands ran over her body as she strolled to the edge of the bed.

“Baby, look at that,” she whispered with obvious pleasure at the sight of his erection, which had become even harder (if that were possible) under the sheet. She pulled down the hospital whites and looked longingly at his groin.

“I don’t think I’m up to this,” he said, shocking himself with how truly he meant that statement. He was in no condition to handle a real fucking. A gentle blowjob, maybe, but not much more.

“I’ll be nice to you, Manny. Very nice.”

One hand started to jerk him off, real slow and deliberate, like she was truly enjoying the feel of him in her hand. Her other hand went between her own legs, and he could hear the damp, sucking noises her lingers made as they pumped in and out.

God, he thought, she was so wet already.

Carmela climbed up on the bed and straddled him, being as nice and gentle as she’d promised. Though the movements of the bed caused him pain, the drugs helped, and she moved awful slow. When Carmela eased down onto his cock, Manny was in ecstasy.

There was a little more pain as she held on to his arms to steady herself over him, but he fought it back easily now. Being inside her was overwhelming, and his only regret was that even if she hadn’t been holding them down, his arms didn’t have the strength to reach up and caress those amazing breasts. She raised and lowered herself on him very delicately, and that in itself was bringing him to the edge.

Carmela reached down and pulled up his johnny, which was simple, as the hospital gown was open in the back. She drew it up to reveal the wound, nicely closed by the doctors and covered with bandages. He worried for a moment that their activity might open the wound . . . but only for a moment.

Then Carmela stuffed the bottom of his gown into his mouth, returning her binding hold on his weak left arm as he tried to reach for it.
What the fuck?
This wasn’t a part of the plan. His muffled yelling was weak to begin with; with the cloth in his mouth, it was nearly inaudible. Carmela kept riding him with that slow, hot rhythm, but now he’d had enough. He was afraid, and with his fear, the pain returned.

Only then did he see, stepping from the shadows by the window where he was sure there’d been nothing only moments before, the priest.

And his smile was the widest of all.

Normally Peter would have looked and looked for some kind of logical explanation for Janet’s reappearance, bizarre behavior, and instant recognition of a man she’d never met. But this was different. Not only could he smell it, he could feel that something was wrong. It became more tangible by the moment as he became more awake, and now he looked even more closely at the stains on her jacket, especially a huge stain in the middle of the back, which appeared somehow to be growing.

He moved toward the overhead light as Janet whispered something softly to Meaghan, and the two of them laughed a lovers’ laugh. Meaghan was obviously happy to see her friend, though the smell had moved her a few inches farther away than when they’d first sat down on the couch. His hand was on the switch.

“Janet?” he asked.

“Peter, what is it?” she said with a huff as she turned toward him, her hand firmly holding Meaghan’s arm.

He turned on the light, Meaghan yelled, and he drew his gun as they realized, simultaneously, the source of the stains and smell.

“Bad move,” said the thing that had been Janet Harris while it was alive, and Meaghan screamed as the thing stood up, pulling her, struggling, with it.

Peter aimed his gun at the thing’s head. Though he’d never killed one before, he’d heard from some of his kin that the movies were right. There was but one problem.

“Not that that gun could hurt me, but if you don’t put it down, I’ll rip her head off,” the thing said, and Peter’s new knowledge of its nature allowed him to truly hear for the first time the hollowness of its dead voice. The stench of it was far worse than before, and now it occurred to him that all of its actions, its words, were not its own—that no undead creature could so resemble life without direction through some other agent. That’s why it had seemed like a blind person. Somehow the thing was being controlled by a second party, and now Peter had a pretty good idea who, though he did not have a name for the priest.

His actions were not a matter of choice, but necessity. He dropped the gun.

The moment it hit the floor the creature’s jaw was dipping toward Meaghan’s neck. She screamed and struggled.

“This isn’t real!” she screamed, though at that moment she realized those three words wouldn’t make much of an epitaph.

And then she screamed again. No words this time, only agonizing wails. She looked down to see the furrows torn in her arm, bleeding freely on her carpet, and then shook the mist from her head as she realized that she was no longer captive. She turned, holding her wounded arm, to see Peter struggling with her insane roommate on the floor, her conscious mind attempting to deny what was obviously, impossibly true.

Peter’s fist buried itself in the dead thing’s stomach, coming up with something rotten, torn from the inside. The creature’s hands ripped easily through Octavian’s shirt, and Meaghan nearly fainted as she saw chunks of flesh ripped from Peter’s bare back. She turned away.

“No, No, No, NONONONONO!”

She could not watch this thing.

And then the growling began, and at first she thought it was the thing, the creature, the dead woman on the floor.

But it wasn’t.

The sounds of struggling slowly ceased as the growling increased and now Meaghan
had
to look.

No, she wanted to look. The hysterics were over. She had been waiting her whole life for something to happen to her. If she was going to die, she wanted to see whatever this thing was.

If she was going to live—well, she still wanted to see it.

She turned.

The wolf was enormous, the largest Meaghan had ever seen, though she’d never seen one outside of the zoo. It used that bulk to hold down the still slowly struggling corpse it stood astride. Its muzzle was buried in the dead thing’s neck and its teeth were obviously worrying bone.

There came the snapping sound of something both wet and dry breaking, and the thing under the wolf stopped moving. The huge, gray animal turned its head from its kill and vomited up whatever of the dead thing it had swallowed, whether it had done so intentionally or not.

Meaghan could only stare; her thought processes had stalled entirely.

Finally the wolf moved away from the body of Janet Harris, her friend, her lover, her would-be murderer. The wolf looked up at her, and in that moment she knew exactly what was going on, and exactly who was looking at her.

Meaghan did the only thing she could. She turned and went quietly to her room, shutting the door behind her. She wrapped her freely bleeding arm in a wet towel that had been hanging on the standing mirror in the corner. She pulled out her metal wastebasket. It had a pretty yellow-and-red floral print on the side, but she didn’t think about that at all as she puked into the can.

How? That was all she could think about.

And, of course, opening her bedroom door at some point.

Now Manny was well and truly screaming behind the gown stuffed in his mouth. And struggling as well as his body could. Fuck the wound! A valiant thought, but his struggles ceased after only a moment. He was spent. The priest was there, smiling. Carmela was there, smiling, riding him still with that steady rhythm.

“What others call cruelty,” the priest said softly, “I define as the highest and purest form of art.”