Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (36 page)

When Garbarino and Mulkerrin arrived, just as the train was preparing to depart, both were smiling.

Brother Paulo had served the pope faithfully for several years, and the pope before him for the duration of his life as pontiff. Paulo considered himself a simple man, like his father before him, a man who asked very little of life and of God. A roof over his head, food to eat, warm clothes, and to serve God. He was well pleased and suffered himself the merest glimmer of pride with his work. His job, after all, was to care for him who was closest to God Himself, a man who had far more on his mind than what to wear and what to eat. Paulo considered himself far more important to the daily life of the pontiff than the pope’s handlers, the men who made his travel arrangements and planned his public appearances. This man was responsible for the well-being of millions of faithful churchgoers, and the religious health of the rest of the world as well. Paulo had been made, through appointment as well as by default, the caretaker of this man’s well-being.

Nothing else mattered. It did not matter that the pope could be an old curmudgeon like so many men of his age. It did not matter that there were certain things about which Paulo had become disillusioned since taking his post. It did not matter that the pope spent more time than Paulo felt was appropriate in baby-sitting the internal and external political factions attempting to exert their influence upon Catholicism. It was not Paulo’s place to disapprove. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and always had.

It was with these things in mind that Paulo entered the office/library that had always been the pontiff’s favorite room. It was common for the pope to fall asleep in his leather chair, reading a book or simply thinking, especially after tea. And he hadn’t been feeling well, which made him much more likely to need a nap. After all, when all was said and done, he was still a mortal man, and, well . . .

“
Non è che lui sifaceva più giovane
,” he said under his breath.

He wasn’t getting any younger.

Paulo knocked lightly, to be certain His Holiness was still asleep. Sure enough, there was no answer. He turned the knob and pushed, a blanket over his arm. He always covered up the old man when he was sleeping. One good draft could make his cold that much worse, and he refused to wear his slippers at night. It was frustrating.

Paulo was surprised by the darkness in the room. The shades were drawn and the lights were off. It seemed that His Holiness had made no pretense about falling asleep this time. He would rather sleep in his office than his bed.

Paulo smiled to himself and shook out the blanket. Quietly, he stepped across the room and pulled the curtains apart only an inch or so, enough to see by. He turned toward the desk where the pope had his head down, and at first saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he stopped. He tilted his head in an attempt to figure out just what was out of place about the sleeping form. Then he realized what it was. Rather than resting his head on his folded arms, as he usually did, the pontiff had let his arms dangle at his sides, his head at an awkward angle on the desk.

And there was blood.

“
Madre di Dio!”
he shouted.

He rushed to the chair, nearly slipping in the blood of the Pope of Rome, and could clearly see the terrible gash that had been sliced into the man’s throat. A mortal man, indeed. The blood was everywhere, and Paulo couldn’t stop the tears that came, harbinger of a scream that was building in him, that would escape in moments. He turned to run from the room, to call for police, but tripped and fell on the carpet. He reached in the semidark for what had tripped him, and his hand came back wrapped around a terrible instrument of death, a dagger in the form of a crucifix, the form of Christ, the life-giver, forged into a life-taking weapon.

He stood, dagger in hand, too confused and distraught to notice that others had come into the room. Too horrified to hear the words that they said, to realize what it was that
they
were seeing. The lights came on.

Only then did he see the note, pinned to the pope’s robes, one word, an indictment of all that Paulo’s simple life had led him to believe, scrawled in blood.

THE BASEMENT ROOM WHERE ALEX AND Sheng slept had become a bit more crowded. Before morning, they’d been joined by Jasmine Decard, Rolf Sechs, and Ellen Quatermain. As the dirty Venetian canal water lapped against the stone by their heads, the couple made a valiant attempt to sleep while Jazz and Ellie made quiet love to the mute German. It had been quite some time since they’d seen one another, and they’d found it hard to sleep the day away. Grief over their bloodfather’s death had soon led to physical comforts. Still, they were quiet. Though Karl Von Reinman had owned this building, and surely one of them now owned it, the shopkeeper who rented the upstairs might actually overcome his fear, break his oath, and come down into the basement if he were to hear the sounds of passion coming from beneath his feet.

It was still daylight, just after noon the last time Sheng had lifted his head to check the clock. No, it wouldn’t do to be disturbed.

“Where are you going?” The voice of the shopkeeper drifted down to Sheng. Alex was still asleep and the three lovers were distracted, but he heard the man’s alarm quite clearly. “You can’t go down there!”

“I’ll tell you what,” whispered a woman’s voice Sheng was not familiar with. “Why don’t you close up and get some lunch? Come back in a couple of hours.”

“I’ll call the police!” the shopkeeper yelled at them; obviously there were no customers.

“No, I don’t reckon you will,” a man’s voice said, and this time Sheng recognized it immediately.

“Up!” he hissed as he heard three sets of steps coming down the stairs. “Alex, wake up! You three, put your pants on! We’ve got company.”

“What is it,
cher
?” Jasmine said dreamily in her sweet Cajun tones, though Alex was already up and alert. “It’s still daylight, what harm can come to us?”

“It’s Cody,” he said, and they all looked at him.

“I don’t know how, but it’s Cody.”

As Jasmine pulled on a pair of sweats and Ellie dismounted from the mute German’s penis, a knock came at the cellar door.

“Knock, knock,” the voice came again.

“Who’s there?” Ellen asked with her clipped British accent. She was annoyed at having to be dressing so fast, and wasn’t even sure whose clothes she was putting on. She didn’t know Cody that well and wasn’t sure how Sheng could be certain it was him. It was light out, after all.

“Oh, I think you know who it is.”

“Damn right we do,” Sheng said as he stalked to the door, threw back the bolt, and whipped it open.

“Sheng, wait!” Alex said, but too late, as weak sunlight came through the open door and singed his hair. He jumped back in a flash and Alex went to make certain he was all right. He’d forgotten there was a window on the landing halfway down the steps.

Though the light was weak, it was sunlight, and none of them had even seen it by choice in quite some time. It took several moments for their eyes to adjust.

It was Cody, after all, standing there in the sunlight, and he wasn’t alone. Behind him stood Peter Octavian! The two creatures they hated most in the world had turned up on their doorstep, a strange enough event, but their presence defied more than logic. It defied all laws of supernature.

It was Alex who said it first. “How?”

“He learned by example,” Peter said, speaking finally, “as you will all have to, my old friends.”

“Traitor!” Sheng yelled at him. “You’re worse than this foolish rebel,” he said, pointing to Cody.

“No wonder you stay back, protected by the sun and whatever magic allows you to survive it,” Ellen said, words dripping from her like venom. “I would take precautions as well if I had left my father to die!”

Peter moved, too fast for any of them to stop him, his right arm reaching almost inhumanly far in front of him to lift Ellen from the ground and slamming her into the stone wall so hard that plaster showered to the floor and stones moved backward to make room for her head. His eyes were locked with hers, his fury evident in his stance, in the savage change his face had undergone. For a moment he was far from handsome.

“Once,” he growled, “nearly a century ago, I told all of you never to question my relationship with our father. Clearly, you’ve forgotten much!”

“And you’ve become as careless as the cowboy,” Sheng said just as he, Rolf, and Alex pulled Peter away and threw him to the ground. “What’s to stop us from killing you now?”

“How ’bout the cowboy?” Cody said, and waded into the darkened room.

“Five to two,” Ellen said. “I like those odds.”

The fight began in earnest. Peter and Alexandra were the strongest, yet she and Jasmine appeared to be holding back. Rolf worshiped Sheng and loved Ellie; the three of them fought hard. Claws lashed out and furrows appeared in dead flesh, then healed. Rolf was still naked and Cody launched a boot at his huge dangling penis and testicles. Peter threw Sheng the length of the room and the wall shook, plaster showering them again. Several of them began to change, to undergo a dark metamorphosis into other things, other creatures.

“STOP!”

They stopped, frozen for a moment in the midst of battle. Sheng suddenly remembered the woman’s voice he had heard upstairs before Cody had spoken. They all turned to stare at Meaghan Gallagher, silhouetted in the dusty sunlight in the old stairwell.

“My blood,” Jasmine breathed, “they’ve brought a human.”

“Kill her!” Ellen said, rushing for the door.

“Wait,” Sheng said, and Ellie was smart enough to stop.

“You’re protected by the sun,” Ellen said to her, “but the sun goes down eventually.”

“No,” Meaghan said, brows knitting, “I’m protected by your own ignorance.”

“Cody,” Sheng yelled, “this is your doing!”

“Afraid not,” Will answered. “Just met her last night myself. Though I think I’m starting to understand what Peter sees in her.”

Now Alexandra was shocked. She’d held back in the fighting because she and Sheng had once loved Peter, though Sheng’s ego made him all the more hateful. She’d been hurt by Peter and had thought she wanted to hurt him back; now she was unsure. But this, this was . . .

“Unbelievable.”

“What, Alex?” Peter asked, not unkindly.

“You’re in love with a human?”

Peter looked up and Meaghan smiled at him, sharing the joke.

“That’s not so unusual for us, is it?” he asked Alexandra.

“Yes, but it’s never real for us. You wouldn’t do it unless it were real!”

“True enough,” Peter said. “But I think you’re all going to have to rethink a lot of things. For starters, I don’t think we’re all as terrible as you seem to think we are . . . or at least, we don’t have to be.”

They all started talking at once, which made Cody nuts.

“Shut up! All of you just be quiet for half a minute. What the hell do you think we’re doing here? Do you think we came for the company?”

“A good question,” Jasmine said, truly interested. “What exactly are you doing here?”

“First things first,” Peter said, a little hot under the stares of Ellen and Sheng. “Rolf, put some pants on.”

At that, Rolf grinned. He had always liked Peter and only held a grudge because the others hated him so. Peter had always had the best sense of humor in the group. He put his pants on.