Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (21 page)

“No way, man. I want the old stuff. The ones they made the Connery movies from. All the other Bonds are lame. D’you got
Goldfinger
?”

Now Joe was smiling. He chided himself for ever having thought about quitting.

Eleven o’clock and all is well!
At least that’s what Meaghan wanted to bellow as she rolled out of bed. She had lived through the longest night of her life. Out her window she could see that it was another chill, overcast winter day. She wondered if that would make it a little easier on Peter.

Poor Peter.

She knew how crazy her thoughts were, but she couldn’t help them. She’d been through it enough times since she’d woken up and lain there thinking. He was not human. Some kind of creature of legend but he was here, real . . . sleeping on her couch.

And she loved it.

She still hurt, no question about that. It would be a long while before she got over Janet’s death, and not just her death but the manner of it. Something truly unnatural was happening around her, really happening. And yet, with reality as seemingly fragile as it was, Meaghan felt freer than she ever had to let the truth break loose from its moorings.

The truth. The truth was she had loved Janet more than she had ever loved anyone, and she no longer cared who knew that. They’d been lovers, but so much more, and it was Peter who helped her to see that. The truth was that she’d been waiting all her life for something to happen to her, something violent, something to which she could react with the passion and energy she had been saving like a virgin for the wedding bed, ever since she could remember. Since she’d been a little girl. Now that chance was here, that excitement was real.

And Peter was responsible for that, too.

The truth was that she and Peter and other new friends like that cop Ted and Dr. Marcopoulos were all in danger of losing their lives. They were the target of a lunatic unleashed by the Roman Catholic Church, the faith in which she’d been raised. Obviously, some of their secrets were about to be released from
their
moorings. Some truths about to be told. Only they weren’t going to enjoy it as much as Meaghan was enjoying her own release.

The truth was that in one form or another, every horror story she’d ever read had a grain of truth, and everything she’d ever known about the church was a lie. Oh, ever since high school she’d thought of it as a hotbed of hypocrisy, ever since she’d walked in on her ultra-uptight religious mother ramming a vibrator between her legs only a year before both her parents were killed. But this was different. Peter didn’t say there was no God.

“As a matter of fact,” he’d said before she’d gone to her bedroom last night, “I can almost guarantee his existence.”

She wondered about that. Wherever He was, He wasn’t in church. Sure, Peter had said it was only a small sect of the church, but he’d also said it had been there since the foundation of Christianity. So maybe the pope and all the rest of the clergy who weren’t involved were somewhat faithful—that didn’t mean that these other guys didn’t have influence when it came to matters of dogma. That would certainly explain a lot. Like why the church was still in the Dark Ages.

But of course, all of the little hypocrisies, labeling music and rerating films, all of it added up to nothing when you factored in evil. True evil. Capital
E.
And for all the centuries they’d been warning you against it, teaching how to avoid it in a tone that said they were all too familiar with it, with true Evil. And, well, they were.

Eleven o’clock and all was not well. There was a lot happening that she didn’t have a handle on. Though she knew it would be unrealistic to think she ought to. A lot of people were dead.

She shivered. It still had not really sunk in what had happened with Janet. She’d seen it, pretty close up, too. But her mind was still trying to convince her it was a nightmare. It wasn’t working. She couldn’t help but wonder how George was going to “take care” of Janet’s corpse, while also guaranteeing that she get a proper burial. Then again, he was the medical examiner.

Now as Meaghan pulled out clothes to wear—Levi’s, a man’s shirt, and a cotton sweater—she looked at the clock and realized she’d been wrong about both things.

It was also not eleven o’clock.

She carried her clothes with her as she tiptoed past a sleeping Peter to the shower. When she was done in the bathroom, she pulled on the shirt and pants and walked softly back into the living room. Peter was still sleeping, but she figured it was time to wake him up.

She stood over him for a moment, looking at his face.

Peaceful. So peaceful it was hard to imagine the savage power that lay within his sleeping form. And yet she believed every word he’d said, and still felt a powerful attraction between them. It was ridiculous. She kept telling herself she ought to be scared or disgusted, but she wasn’t. Just fascinated.

Meaghan looked at the clock and saw that it was indeed time, then bent over to shake Peter awake. Before she could touch him, he was sitting up on the couch so fast they almost bumped heads.

“Eleven o’clock,” he said flatly, wide-awake.

“You startled me!”

“Sorry, good inner time sense.”

“Good? I wish my Bulova was that accurate.”

“Time to get to work.”

Meaghan went to open the blinds.

“Whoa. Not yet. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

And she saw it all in that request, everything he had explained to her became clear with those few words. The pain and the struggle to learn a new existence, and then the triumph over generations of blind faith. The pain of that triumph and the courage it must have taken to make that first step, to test his theories for the first time. There were no guinea pigs for that kind of experiment.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Meaghan finally said, and she hoped that Peter read in that sentence all the things she had intended. She hadn’t wanted to look in the refrigerator, knowing what Marcopoulos had put there for Peter, just for today’s excursion. But she knew then, looking at him, that she would go to the fridge and feed it to him if that was necessary.

And suddenly she realized that it wasn’t just the danger that drew her attention. It wasn’t his charisma or all the stories she knew he must have lived and never told. She admired this creature . . . no, this man. Meaghan admired Peter Octavian. He had already triumphed over insurmountable odds. She only hoped that his luck, that his perseverance would hold out.

And then the phone rang, and she couldn’t look at him anymore, so she had to answer it. It was Ted. The news was very good.

Father Liam Mulkerrin didn’t get much pleasure from the daytime. Sunshine did not bring a smile to his face, and the mere thought of summer made him cringe—with its forever days and whiplash nights and a heat to blister even the coldest soul, summer was anathema to him.

Even now, in the winter in New England, with the sky overcast, promising snow, and a wonderfully chill wind slashing violently along the nearly empty, prelunch streets, it was still day. When he returned to Rome tomorrow, it would be much warmer, and though it could never be, he wished for a moment that he could stay in Boston.
(Finish the job.)
He’d been born here after all, though a lot more time had passed than was visible on his face, and he knew he’d been born at night. A cold winter night, New Year’s Eve.

Liam Mulkerrin had never gotten much pleasure from the daytime. Never.

He appeared to be in his twenties as he walked into the Park Plaza Hotel. Oh sure, he still looked like Liam, but he looked like Liam had at twenty-three, the map of Ireland on his face and Irish eyes a-smilin’. When he approached the registration desk, the young woman behind the counter took notice. Her eyes lit and her chin tilted up in greeting before she noticed the collar and deflated just a bit. He read it all. It was so easy looking this age.

“Pardon me, miss,” he said, complete with Irish brogue, “but would you be havin’ the room number of me good friend, his Holiness the Cardinal Henri Guiscard?”

“Yes, Father.” She smiled and emphasized the word “Father,” a bit coquettish even though he was a priest. Liam knew all of these tramps had seen
The Thorn Birds
on TV.

“It’s Room 624,” she said after consulting her computer.

“Thank you kindly. What’s yer name, lass?”

“Candy.”

“Aye.” Mulkerrin nodded and turned away. “’Twould be.”

And enough with that accent, he thought, though he did not dispose of his youthful guise.

At the door to Room 624, he paused only a moment to mutter a spell as he turned the door handle hard clockwise. On the final word of the spell, the knob turned and he pushed, a grin glowing on his face as he considered the joys of forcing the book’s location out of his traitorous brother clergyman. It would take a while. As long a while as he wanted.

He shut the door behind him and turned expectantly, but the questions, the disturbance, the fear he expected did not materialize. And neither did Guiscard.

He’d gone out.

“No,” Mulkerrin said flatly, and smashed the lamp from the bureau. Its shade bounced off the wall, but its ceramic base shattered, sending shards all across the carpet. This was not a part of the plan. There were to be no complications. But Mulkerrin was not a fool. He knew that his anticipation of this moment had clouded his judgment enough that he hadn’t followed up before coming to the hotel. He had checked not half an hour earlier to be sure Guiscard was there.

Now he was gone.

But, perhaps, it still wasn’t too late.

Mulkerrin picked up the phone and dialed the desk. “Hello?” he said. “Candy?”

“No, I’m sorry. Who’s this?”

“Ah, hello, this is Father Flanagan, I’m visiting with Cardinal Guiscard today. Candy was very helpful earlier and I thought you might be her but—”

“I’m sorry, Father, Candy’s with room service. She was just filling in for me while I was on break. This is Lisa, how can I help you?”

Liam was annoyed. He knew he could have gotten what he needed from Candy. This girl was an unknown. No matter, sorcery would prevail where the simple force of his personality could not. He told Lisa that his esteemed friend was lying down for a nap, but that he had been asked to pick up the cardinal’s messages for him.

“I’m sorry, Father, but I really can’t—”

Mulkerrin spoke softly, several words that weren’t in English, but Lisa couldn’t help but understand them.

“I have the cardinal’s messages right here,” she said, and began to relate them.

But then Liam remembered Lisa’s comment of just a moment before.

Room service.

“Thank you, lass. I knew you’d unnerstan’. But the cardinal asked me to fetch him a bottle of wine for when he awoke. Please send the messages up with the wine. ’Twill save me havin’ to write them down and I’d be much obliged. And make sure it’s Candy that brings them, won’t you, now?”

“Certainly, Father,” Lisa replied, and after she’d given her instructions to room service, she forgot she had ever spoken to a Father Flanagan.

When Candy knocked, Mulkerrin had already searched the room several times, just to be certain he would miss nothing, pages ripped from the book and held as security for instance. There was nothing. He pulled closed the door to the bedroom, to suggest the presence of the supposedly sleeping cardinal, picked up the pieces of the shattered lamp, and grabbed the two glasses from the bathroom. He placed them on top of the television.

“Ah, Candy, is it?”

“Yes, Father.”

So demure. So acquiescent. She handed him the messages and he thanked her.

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling. “Usually we don’t deliver messages, but the manager wants to keep the cardinal happy, that’s for sure.”

She fidgeted, enjoying his presence in a manner most inappropriate, though she probably didn’t even realize it. All of these Catholic-school girls soaked their panties around a handsome priest. Ever since grade school, girls like Candy had secretly hoped the wooden paddle would land on their behinds. Unfortunately, the paddle had been retired.

Candy showed Father Mulkerrin the label of the wine.

“Thank you,” he said again, “would you mind pouring?” He motioned to the glasses, and though she seemed at first a bit uncomfortable, knowing she had to get back to work, she also smiled. She wanted to do this for him. Candy began to work the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle.

And now the messages. From Claremont, the firm the lawyer Benedict had worked for before his untimely demise. From New Age Press—ah, Guiscard had been working quickly. From someone named Joe Boudreau, with a number.

Mulkerrin went to the phone and dialed as Candy poured. He glanced at her as the phone rang and caught her looking at him. She blushed and looked away. Her attraction was obvious.

“The Book Store,” a voice answered.

“The what?” Mulkerrin inquired, almost forgetting his accent.

“The Book Store, not a tough concept. Can I help you?”

And then it was obvious.

“Where are you located?”

“Right in the middle of Harvard Square, man. Next to Strawberries and diagonally across the street from Grendel’s.”