Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (11 page)

“Where the fuck are you?” he growled as he peered into the darkness with his flashlight.

Oh, I’m still here Daniel
, the voice came, sounding slightly muffled but close by.
Don’t you worry. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

“Miss what, you bastard. I’ll fucking kill you, you lunatic.”

I think not.

As Dan watched, the beam of the flashlight grew shorter, and shorter still, and more narrow, until it barely illuminated a foot in front of his face. It did not dim, however. If anything, the light grew stronger. It simply could not penetrate the blackness around.

He blinked, and as he did so the claustrophobic, unnatural dark receded, and moonlight returned to the room. But that overwhelming blackness had not disappeared. In one corner, the maniac leaned against a wall. All about the room the darkness had solidified, coagulated really, into shapes which were only beginning to take on a distinct form. The intruder was forgotten.

Dan’s eyes darted from shape to shadow as gelatinous, lifeless white eyes appeared and began to stare back at him. Gaping, toothless, useless mouths grinned widely. Easily a dozen of the creatures filled the room. The shadows undulated, their shapes constantly rearranging themselves. The head of the largest one brushed the ceiling. The darkness seemed to seethe within the creatures and tendrils of shadow snaked from one to the other, like an electrical current traversing a circuit.

For a fraction of a moment they were simply, silently, and ominously there—and then they dissolved.

The darkness flowed about him in a circle, creating a vacuum of which he was the center, a circuit he dared not attempt to disrupt. The whirlwind of blackness drew tighter and tighter around him with each passing moment. With the coiling shadow two feet from him on either side, it occurred to Dan through his blossoming madness that he had forgotten to scream. As he opened his mouth wide to do so, the darkness rushed in.

Suffocating, he fell to the ground. He attempted to close his mouth but found the task impossible as the darkness continued to violate him, beginning to stream in through his nostrils as well. His mind threatened to collapse in upon itself as he wondered where they were all going, how those huge creatures could fit inside of him. His brain screamed for oxygen and he began to lose consciousness.

And then it slopped.

He could breathe again, and did so in huge, heaving gulps. He sat up, turning away from the torn and broken remains of his dog, garishly illuminated in the moonlight. Dan sat completely still for a moment, still recovering his breath, and then, shakily, he stood. It was only a moment before he felt it. It began as a sort of nausea, the feeling of bile rising in his throat and the painful constriction of stomach muscles.

Then the shadows began their work in earnest, and the pain rocketed to every part of his body. He could feel it inside him, growing, expanding; the pressure in his head was intense, and he covered his eyes to hold back the agony that was building there. His scream was short, cut off by pain such as he had never dreamed possible, a pain that did not allow for screaming. His stomach ruptured as the darkness continued to expand.

Blood and shadows shot from his ears and nostrils, from his anus and the head of his penis. Flesh began to bulge and bubble all over his body, bones cracked, and he cried out to whatever gods would listen to end his pain.

He barely heard Liam Mulkerrin’s laughter. The priest approached him, barely visible to Dan on a conscious level.

“The Lord may not hear you, Daniel,” Mulkerrin said, “but his servant will be your salvation.”

He lifted his hand and the silver pin glinted in the moonlight as he barely touched it to the lawyer’s taut, bulging belly.

The darkness exploded from within him.

As Daniel Benedict’s corpse fell to the ground his eyes burst, sending plumes of black smoke shooting from their empty sockets. As the shadows finally expanded to their full size, the lawyer’s body was scattered about the room, mixing with the ravaged remains of his dog.

In the kitchen doorway, Father Liam Mulkerrin watched this spectacle with amusement in his bright eyes. A simple spell had shielded him for the most part from flying gore, though he needed to wash his right hand, which held the pin. The mist-wraiths he had called upon to assist him were gone in moments.

Liam knew that he ought to have stayed with simple, inconspicuous forms of murder, gunshot wounds and the like. But as each day went by he became more and more frustrated with this mission, and his only relief came from spectacular cruelty, unending pain, and extraordinary murder.

Some men played the piano, some painted. Liam Mulkerrin’s art was death. His was a masterful talent, whose calling would not be denied. Simply shooting someone with a gun was like asking Chopin to play “Chopsticks.”

A LETTER FROM FATHER LIAM MULKERRlN, Representative of the Vatican Historical Council, to His Eminence Cardinal Giancarlo Garbarino, Special Attendant to His Holiness and Chairman of the Vatican Historical Council.

WINGS FLUTTERED, THE BAT SLOWED, hovering five feet from the ground. Across the street, Phil lay slumped in a doorway as a chill ran through him. He had passed out hours ago, and usually slept the night through.

But not tonight.

Tonight a shiver raced from his toes on up, and when it reached his eyes, they opened. He shuddered as he pulled himself into a sitting position, hugging his knees. Felt like the devil dancing on his grave, he thought, and began to dry-heave on the street. Phil, who hadn’t been able to remember his last name since—well, since he could remember—shook his head to clear his mind and eyesight. He dry-heaved again and a surprised look crossed his face. He’d long since become immune to the bottle, so what the hell was this?

He turned over, trying to go back to sleep. And that was when he saw the bird. Big fucking bird, Phil thought. No, a bat.

Big fucking hat.

And then it changed. The bat’s flesh started to pulsate as it flapped its wings—wings that began to stretch. But really the whole thing was stretching, wasn’t it? Phil watched in terror and fascination as the transformation took place. The creature’s eyes were scanning the area, and though he hadn’t quite decided whether this whole thing was a hallucination or not, he knew for goddamn sure he didn’t want the thing spotting him.

A moment after it had begun, it was over, and the bat was now a man. A hard-looking man, who moved strangely, fluidly, as if he were flowing along rather than walking. And the man looked right at him.

“Oh, my Lord Jesus,” Phil hissed, for he’d once been a religious man. “It’s a . . . it’s a vam—”

The old drunk stopped midsentence, unsure of what to do, of what to expect. He half expected to die, almost wished it would happen, though he’d never admit it to himself.

And then the thin, dark creature lifted its right hand—or talon or whatever—put a linger to its lips, and said . . .

“Shhhhh.”

And then it walked away, around the front of the building in front of him. Phil lay there, staring after the thing for a moment, and then reached for his bottle, muttering something half curse and half prayer under his breath. He would tell no one. Not just because he knew that nobody would believe him, but also because he was disappointed. He had witnessed something that he had always been told was only in stories, something that had terrified him as a child. And now that he’d seen it, knew it was real, in a way he felt let down because he was still alive.

To his credit, it never occurred to Phil to follow the thing.

Peter sighed aloud as he approached the entrance to the secretary of state’s building. Allowing the old homeless man to see him had been careless. If Peter could slip once, he could do so again.

Must have Meaghan Gallagher on the brain, he thought.

Long ago, he would simply have killed the old man. Sucked him dry and laughed about it the next night. But times had changed, humanity had changed, and Peter Octavian had changed as well. Conflict was foolishness, he knew, and it disturbed him deeply that more of his kind did not realize this, and certainly did not share his fondness for humans.

The Defiant Ones.

His people.

The barbarism and inhumanity that had made them truly human had seemingly become immortal along with their flesh. They had learned nothing in their centuries of unlife, as if their ability to reason had died along with their humanity. It shamed him to know that not long ago, he, too, had been a barbarian. But already his warrior’s soul was giving way to enlightenment, and finally to peace. He no longer took life if it could be avoided, unless, of course, revenge were involved. Vengeance was one primitive emotion he could not overcome, nor did he want to.

No. The old man had not deserved to die.

Peter shook the clouds of philosophy from his head and set his mind to the problem at hand. He examined the glass doors to the building, with their alarm system hooked into the main lobby, and his course of action was plain: he could not open the doors without setting off the alarm, so he must go under them. At his mental command, his molecules drifted apart and a hot, wet cloud of mist slipped under the door. He had often wondered why this transformation was so painless and the others so excruciating. Not that he minded.

Frustrated, Peter leaned back in the late Roger Martin’s chair, drumming his fingers on the dead man’s desk, and began to wonder whether someone had beaten him to it. He’d been through every inch of Martin’s desk, every file in the man’s filing cabinet, and come up empty—not a single reference to the case that Janet had been working on. In the Rolodex he found Janet’s and the lawyer Benedict’s telephone numbers, but that was nothing he hadn’t expected to find.

He was tired, suddenly, and cold. Hungry! He snickered quietly to himself, amused by his own stupidity. He had meant to go see Marcopoulos. His supply of “groceries” was low, and he hadn’t banked on having to go out in the sun. He’d have to be at peak strength, and that was going to take more blood than he had on ice.

He picked up the phone from Martin’s desk and dialed the number for City Hospital. The phone rang once.

“Dr. Marcopoulos’ office,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Is he in?”

“No, I’m sorry, the doctor went home early tonight.” That unfamiliar voice had an attitude problem, Peter thought.

“Could I leave him a message?”

“I
suppose”
she said with a huff.

“Please tell him that Peter called. That I’m having a barbecue tomorrow and I want him to bring the drinks.”

“The drinks.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll leave it on his desk.” Her sign-off was barely a grunt.

And that’s when it hit him.

Where do you put something when you’re done working on it? On the boss’s desk of course! Ted had said that Martin stayed late to finish something up. He could only hope that the government’s slack working habits would hold up and that no one had worked on it yet.