Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (41 page)

“This is it,” she said.

“This is what?” Sandro asked, and she could tell by his tone that he was tired and wanted to get home.

“You want to know? Roll tape,” she said, and then the camera was running.

“My name is Tracey Sacco,” she began, “or at least it has been for several years now. But it’s not my only name. Terry Shaughnessy. That’s another name I’ve used recently. My real name is Allison Vigeant, and some of you may remember me from before I went undercover. That’s where I’ve been for four years. And now I’m breaking that cover to bring you this story. I’ll start by telling you about my involvement in it, and before we’re over, my cameraman, CNN’s Sandro Ricci and I will show you how it affects all of you.”

She went on, quickly describing what led her to investigate the Defiant Ones, her arrangement with Jim Thomas, and then giving a detailed account of the previous twenty-four hours. Through it all, Sandro’s eyes grew wider and wider, until the end.

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, myth and legend become real. Hollywood horror leaves the screen and creeps into your living room. Tonight you will call into doubt everything you’ve ever known, or thought you knew. There are
vampires
among us, and this home behind me is owned by one of them. A savage monster named Hannibal,” she concluded.

“Oh shit,” Sandro said, shutting off his camera. “I’m dead. I’m going to get fired for certain. Look, lady, what is this, ‘Hard Copy’? I don’t need this!”

He pulled his bag onto one shoulder and started away from her, away from the house.

“Wait a minute,” she called, needing his camerawork but also not wanting to be so close to the house alone.

Against his better judgment, he did wait.

“Everything that I said happened to me really did, and in that house,” she said, pointing. “I know you don’t believe me, but look at it this way. You’re already out here, you’ve already got all that on tape, and I did help you out with your job tonight. Just bear with me a little while longer. Even if I’m completely out of my mind, I can prove I was held captive in that house, and probably a lot more besides. It’s still a hell of a story. If I turn out to be a nut, the story’s all yours.”

He looked at her, weighing his options. He
was
already in it, but . . . “No,” he said.

“Gutless,” Tracey said, and that got him.

Nobody answered the door, though she rang the bell several times. She started to knock then, but gave it up after just a few moments.

“Must have given the staff the night off,” Sandro said, and Tracey nodded agreement. She’d been certain there would be a whole group of them there, celebrating carnival. Now she realized they must have another location in the city, and that gave her pause.

Why stop at two? She’d known that the Defiant Ones rotated their annual . . . reunion, from one carnival to another. But who was to say exactly how many of these creatures were in Venice, and how many buildings they might inhabit?

Nevertheless, it seemed nobody was home at this address. She knocked one last time and then tried the knob. The door opened!

“Don’t even think it,” Sandro said, but she was already over the threshold. This was what she had wanted all along, but she’d never thought it would actually happen.

“It was open!” she rasped in a half whisper. “It’s not breaking and entering, only trespassing. And besides, no one’s home.”

“Only tres . . . oh, boy.”

“Roll that tape and get in here,” she whispered, and though he knew he might go to jail, Sandro’s gut told him there was a story in that house. He went after it.

They moved slowly and as quietly as possible. Sandro did not believe in undead monsters or any of that bullshit, but he was beginning to believe that something had happened to Tracey in there. Just what he didn’t know, but the way she crept through that house, glancing back at him to reassure herself that she was not alone, well, it surely wasn’t an act.

Plus she knew her way around the house.

It wasn’t long before Tracey found the room where she’d been held, on the basement level, and it was just as she’d described it, right down to the hole that had supposedly been ripped in the wall when she was freed. Sandro now felt certain that there was a story here—the story of a woman held captive by people so cruel, so completely inhuman, that they somehow drove her mad enough to believe they were vampires.

He felt sorry for her.

Tracey screamed.

“What?” he yelled back. “What is it?”

“Jesus,” she yelled, ahead of him, and then began to retch.

They’d gone on through the basement, checking inside a number of apparently secret rooms whose doors had not been properly shut. Sandro ran up to her now, as she had moved to the next room while he’d been filming an enormous walk-in closet filled with costumes. She was on her knees trying not to be sick when he reached her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s in there?” Sandro asked, though he had a bad feeling he wouldn’t like the answer. It took her a moment to reply.

“Remember I told you about Linda, the woman I came here with?” she began, and Sandro nodded. “Well, she’s in there, and she’s not alone.”

Sandro grabbed the edge of the door. “It’s cold,” he said.

“It’s a freezer,” Tracey answered.

After he had turned away to compose himself, Sandro began to breathe through his mouth and started rolling the tape.

“Tracey . . . Allison, whatever your name is. Talk,” he ordered.

She got up and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She went into the freezer with him and began to narrate, pointing out Linda Metcalf among the two dozen or so ravaged cadavers they found inside. Many had tears at the throat, but a good number had double puncture marks, not only on their necks, but on their breasts, buttocks, penises. Some were savagely mutilated, others relatively unharmed. Tracey recounted the party she had attended the night before and pointed out a couple of people that she recognized from it.

“As I said earlier,” she concluded, “the majority of these people came here of their own free will, as volunteers, aware of what awaited them. But from what we can see here, that in no way lessens the horror of what’s happened to them.”

The search of the house continued, though Sandro badly wanted to leave. He could understand now how Tracey had come to believe in these creatures, but he had been fascinated by crime all his life and knew how clever killers could be. He wanted to be out of there, to call the police and the network, but she pressed on.

He was surprised at how calm she was, considering what she’d told him had happened on these stairs. But they went up just the same. Halfway up the first flight, she stopped.

“Hear it?” she asked, and then he did.

The shower was running up on the third floor.

“I’m not going up there,” Sandro declared with no uncertainty.

“I don’t blame you,” Tracey said. “Let’s check this floor while the shower’s still running.”

He didn’t want to, but they did anyway.

“I didn’t think anyone was home,” he whispered, aware now that someone else was in the house.

“Maybe they don’t need the lights?” she suggested. “There’s enough light coming in the windows to see by anyway, but if you didn’t have that light on your camera, you could never catch anything on film. Maybe they see like it’s light out?”

“Enough of that,” he scolded. She was really starting to get to him.

In the second room, they found another body. A very pretty young woman was lying there under the covers of the bed, her bare shoulders and face as pale as marble in the weak light from the window and three deep scratches, like claw marks, across one arm. She wasn’t breathing. Only when Sandro started to film did they see the twin punctures on her neck.

There were two armchairs by the window, and a set of clothes lay over each—one obviously the woman’s, the other, including a pair of worn cowboy boots, likely belonging to whomever was in the shower upstairs.

The most surprising thing of all, considering what they had already found in the basement, was the open crate that sat up against one wall. In that crate, buried in layers of bubble wrap and packing plastic popcorn, were automatic weapons. At first glance it looked like there were several dozen. They noticed then that another gun, shorter than the others, lay in its holster under a balled-up pair of blue jeans with the cowboy boots.

“You wouldn’t think the undead would carry guns,” Sandro said quietly.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she whispered angrily, “but I know what I know, and your sarcasm won’t change that.”

She picked up the gun from the chair. She didn’t know if it was loaded, but she would have been willing to bet that it was.

“Put that down and let’s get out of here,” Sandro said, long beyond his fear threshold.

Tracey ignored him, though, and took three steps to the bed and sat down on its edge. She held the gun in her lap like a cup of coffee, and Sandro cringed at her carelessness. Then she touched the dead woman’s temple—he assumed she did so to be certain she was truly dead, though he himself had no doubt.

“I wonder who she was,” Tracey said quietly as she looked at the dead woman.

He was about to comment again on their need to be going when a voice came from behind him.

“Meaghan Gallagher,” the voice said, and both of them whirled around to see a handsome, dripping-wet man with a towel held about his waist.

“That’s her name,” the man said. “Mine’s Will. Will Cody.”

Tracey lifted the gun.

“AND THE ANGEL LUCIFER WAS DRIVEN from heaven because he tried to duplicate the works of his own creator, the Lord God. And Lucifer was placed in hell, where he lords over his twisted and darkly evil creations, and where he shepherds the souls of those who themselves
chose
to reject heaven, and attempts even unto this day to give life to worlds and beings which he hopes might one day rival the Lord’s.

“Ft is for this purpose that Jesus Christ was born. To save the earth from such creatures and the human race from their temptations, to open the gates of heaven to us at the end of our lives, and to give us, while we live, a most important gift—the knowledge that allows us to enslave and control those dark forces, and nightmarish creations of Lucifer. Christ taught his apostles to ride herd over these creatures and, through their control, to protect the human race from their depredations.

“And we have succeeded. Upon a rock named Peter He built his church, and this church has controlled the forces of darkness, the minions of Lucifer for two thousand years. The human race now remembers such things only as myth, as legend, if at all. Even within the last twenty years, the rare instances of misbehavior among these dark hordes, their attacks on humanity, have been completely exorcised. Many of you are well on the way to completing your education in these disciplines, others are just beginning, but we shall continue to perform the functions with which we were entrusted by God Himself!

“Which brings us to our common mission this day. Of all the unnatural creatures born of the rift between heaven and hell, only one race has escaped our control. For this very same reason we call them Defiant Ones! Their origins are mystery even to us, for references to them in Christ’s teachings have been lost since the time of the Apostles. Repeated attempts at purifying the world of these creatures have failed, but they
must not be allowed to roam free
! If they cannot be controlled, they must be destroyed. The fascination of our times with such creatures must be stopped before technology makes it impossible for them to remain in secret.

“Only the fact that they wish to remain unknown to the world as much as we desire it has kept them from being discovered before now. But as was the case before the Great Purge, their numbers have become far too many. They are unable to control their own kind. Reckless creatures are spawned who care nothing for their own society’s rules.

“But the most disturbing reason which compels us to act now is that we have come to believe that the safeguards which were once firmly in place may now be slipping. Once this process begins, it will be similar to an avalanche. The Defiant Ones’ knowledge of the church, especially that of the younger ones, is minimal. We are a small enough order now that if they were to concentrate their efforts on us, we could not long withstand them. Without the safeguards, so much the worse.