Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (29 page)

And then they had arrived.

“Ca Rezzonico!” Giuseppe boomed, naming their destination as they pulled alongside a small dock. Then he leaned over to Tracey as Linda was scrambling out of the gondola and whispered to her.

“Be careful,” was all he said.

Tracey followed Linda up onto the dock and to the stone street that ran in front of Ca Rezzonico.

“Ca Rezzonico,” Linda began, loudly operating as tour guide for her roommate, “designed by the baroque master Baldassare Longhena. Construction was begun in 1667. Eighty-five years later it was finished, complete with ceilings painted by Tiepolo.”

“Who the hell is Tiepolo?” Tracey asked, feigning interest but paying real attention to Giuseppe as he made his way back across the canal.

You be careful, too, she thought, and closed her eyes for a moment to push the wish across the water to the man. She said a mental prayer for all of them.

“Some artist, obviously,” Linda answered. “I don’t know, I cheeked this place out in the tour book before we left the room. I don’t want to seem uneducated. This is a high-society thing, y’know?”

“You’re a quick study,” Tracey said, then looked up at the building for the first time.

The structure sat facing the Grand Canal, a monolith, its walls echoing back the lapping sound of the water from the canal and from the Rio di San Barnaba that ran along its southern face. Huge and beautiful, lights displaying its glories for all to see, the building stirred an appreciation in Tracey, as truly great art and architecture often did.

“Ca Rezzonico is home to the Museum of the Eighteenth Century,” Linda continued as they walked down Calle Bernardo, and now Tracey tuned her out completely, for they were passing Ca Rezzonico and their true destination was coming into view.

For all that it was significantly smaller than Ca Rezzonico and not lit up like a Christmas tree, the home of their host was even more impressive. Though its stone face was impassive, it was brought to some semblance of life by the plants that grew and hung all around it, the vines that crawled over it. It was a singular sight in Venice, for while they had seen numerous potted plants and flowers, no building had appeared so completely overgrown as this.

It was clear that the party had long since begun. Where light normally streamed from the windows of a home, here music and revelry spewed forth in its place; and where the sounds of life were usually a dim undertone, an echo from within, so here the lights were but a shadowy flickering. It seemed almost . . . normal, the comfortably familiar scene of celebration.

But Tracey knew that whatever waited inside, it was far from normal.

“I don’t know. . . .” she started to say, and then the door opened.

The two women both took an involuntary step backward as the music coming from the house climbed a decibel. Neither said a word, only watched as a strange couple came down the steps. A tall, exotically beautiful black woman and a shorter, dangerous-looking Asian man walked arm in arm toward the two women, leaning close together. The woman looked over her shoulder at the door, as if to satisfy herself that it was indeed closed.

“Do you believe any of this?” Alexandra Nueva said to her companion, just loud enough for Tracey and Linda to hear.

“Unfortunately, I do,” Shi-er Zhi Sheng answered. “Indeed I do. And all it does is confuse me more. For the first time in a long time, I’m scared to—”

Tracey and Linda froze where they stood, face-to-face with the strange couple. As Tracey looked at the Asian man’s face she felt her muscles contract and realized she was fighting to keep from wetting herself. For in that moment, staring into the man’s face drawn tight in an animal growl, she thought he would kill her.

Even as his face softened, she did not relax. Her mind still held a terrifying picture of him.

“Where are you women going?” the man asked brusquely, and now Tracey looked away from him, at Linda, who still wore her strange smile, at the woman, whose face was even more stern than her man’s.

“To a party,” Linda told them happily.

“Go back to your rooms,” the tall woman said, and now the smile finally dropped from Linda Metcalf’s face.

“Will not!” she whimpered, like a petulant child.

“Why do people keep telling us to go home?” Tracey asked, looking at the man. She had been feeling more and more that this story wasn’t worth it, and the deeper into it she got, the more frightened she became. She didn’t think she wanted to know what the Defiant Ones truly were after all. “Why?” she asked the man again.

He approached her now, uncoiling his thick arm from that of his partner’s and stepping up close. He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and captured her eyes with his gaze. She stared into those eyes and was lost for a minute, drifting there in the moment before he spoke.

What the hell is going on?

There was something in those eyes that was far from normal.

And then he spoke.

“The only thing waiting for you inside that house is death,” the man said, never taking his eyes from Tracey’s.

“Then we’ve come to the right place!” Linda said, and now Tracey wanted to hit her, to hurt her.

But she could barely move, and when she spoke, it was a whisper. “But why do you care?” she asked, and incredibly, it was the woman, surely out of earshot, who answered.

“We don’t. Be certain of that. But the owner of that house . . .” She gestured in disgust.

“And the host of your party,” the man added.

“He’s no more a friend of ours than he is of yours.”

Now the man let her go and stood back. The tall woman came up to join him and Tracey again noticed how beautiful she was, statuesque. They walked away together as if the meeting had never taken place, as if she and Linda had just disappeared. It was damned unnerving.

“Let’s go-ooh,” Linda whined.

And something happened in Tracey’s head as she watched the couple walk away, calmly strolling into the night yet with complete knowledge of whatever was going on in Venice. Something was born or something died, she wasn’t quite sure, but suddenly she knew she was going into that house, to that party. She knew she would do whatever she had to in order to find the answers to all the questions in her mind. Not for the story, or a career, or anything so obvious. It was more simple than that. She just
had
to know. And she couldn’t let fear stop her.

“Quit whining, you little twit!” she snapped at Linda, who looked at her as if slapped. “Just shut up and follow me and try not to look so excited. It’s embarrassing.”

Tracey went up the steps and Linda followed her, still staring but subdued.

THEY’D BEEN INSIDE THE HOUSE FOR LESS than ten minutes when Tracey realized exactly what the Defiant Ones were. She almost said it out loud, but caught herself.

Inside the front door, their coats had been taken by a huge and silent Italian man. Tracey didn’t know whether the man was silent because he would not speak or because he could not, but what good to ask him? As they made their way into the house few people paid them any mind. There were many rooms and practically a new spectacle in each. In one, people danced normally in the center while onlookers sipped drinks from a bar. In another, lit only by a flickering fireplace on one wall, an orgy raged on while Linda and Tracey paused in a failed attempt to connect legs to bodies to arms in their minds.

In the hallways, couples of all description held each other tight, opposite and same sex, different colors, different sizes, and in all stages of undress. Tracey gawked momentarily at the inhumanly large breasts of one woman before looking between her legs and spotting a huge penis dangling there. Cries came from a room upstairs where the crack of a whip kept Tracey from looking through the door. Linda, it appeared, had no such compunctions and mentioned to Tracey that she might like to go back to that room later.

They’d been handed drinks on the first floor, and they now made their way up the steps to the third. Their entire journey through the house had been accompanied by gropes and feels in the dark, spanks on the rump, tweaks of the nipples, hands sliding up their skirts. After a few moments it had seemed foolish to worry about, but now, on these steps, it was worst of all. They could not help but rub themselves on people as they squeezed to get through, to gel up the steps, to get past the hands.

And why were they going up?

We’re looking for something, Traccy knew.

Tracey was squeezing by a blond woman now, chest to chest, and she looked toward the top of the stairs to avoid making eye contact with any of these people. Before her brain even registered what was happening, the blond woman had a hand up her skirt, pushing her panties aside to get at her.

“God,” the woman breathed at her, “you’re shaved. I love it when they’re shaved.”

Tracey batted her hand away and used her elbows to shove the woman back. With people sitting on the steps, though, she lost her own balance, her drink hit the carpeted steps, and she came down hard on her knees. She took a moment to get a breath, reached for her glass before it could be shattered, and began to stand.

She looked up to see the face of a man, eyes closed in ecstasy as his lips massaged somebody’s penis. Tracey couldn’t see the face of the man receiving the blow job for the forest of people above her blocked her view, but it was clear from the way his knees almost buckled that the cocksucker was doing a good job. The man’s lips curled back slightly from the huge penis in his hand, and a bloody red tear of saliva fell to the steps. Then another. And then Tracey could see a drop of blood, real blood, escape his lips and slowly drip down the side of the standing man’s cock.

But the man wouldn’t let it go. And he didn’t even need to open his eyes. His tongue snaked out, longer than Tracey thought possible, and caught the blood before it could drop. Then he pulled the cock from his mouth and Tracey could see that it was covered with the bloody saliva. Once more the man opened his mouth wide to accept the width of that penis.

Tracey saw his teeth. That’s when she knew what the Defiant Ones were, and more importantly, that they were real and she stood here among them.

She stood up quickly, almost knocking down the blond woman who looked as if she was ready for another try, but scowled now as she saw the look of terror on Tracey’s face.

“Shouldn’t have come,” the blond woman said, misinterpreting her horror.

Now Tracey shoved Linda ahead of her, rudely knocking people out of the way as they cleared the last few steps to the top.

“Tracey, what the hell?” Linda yelled at her, but Tracey came barreling up behind her, almost knocking them both down when the stairs ended. There was more room up here, but still too many people.

“Sorry,” she mumbled to Linda, then spoke up. “I need some air, Lin, I need some breathing space or I may fall down.”

Really she felt like she might throw up. “I’ve got to—”

“Perhaps I might be of some assistance?” the voice said, silky smooth and sexy in a chivalrous sort of way.

Tracey looked at the speaker and knew immediately that this white-haired man was one of Them. Somehow, now that she knew what they were, that they indeed
were
at all, she could identify them on sight. He offered his hand, and for a moment she shrank back, then realized where she was and what she was doing here and thought better of it. She took his cold hand and allowed him to lead her through the crowd. Linda followed with what Tracey now fully realized was awe on her face. Awe that was mixed with excitement, both sexual and frightful.

In moments the three were alone in a large bedroom, lit only by candles. There was a washbowl on the bureau, and Tracey used it, splashing her face and then drying it with the towel she was handed by this elegant . . . thing. Finally, she could not avoid looking at him. At it.

“You’re feeling all right now?” he asked, solicitous and kindly, but something glittered behind his eyes and now Tracey remembered the eyes of the Asian man they’d met on the way in. She realized that couple must also be . . . inhuman.

“I’m fine,” she answered, and heard Linda giggle behind her.

She turned to her roommate with a look meant to wither, but Linda only stared at the tall, handsome creature. Tracey turned back to him and realized that there was something mesmerizing about those green eyes.