Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (9 page)

It burned. Burned so that he could smell it over the smoke from the pyre his home had become, the pyre they’d been dragging him toward. He could smell his own flesh cm fire from the cross, and he stumbled and fell, dragging the priests down with him, on top of him. A dagger was plunged into his back at the precise moment that he gathered all his immortal strength and. tossed them away. He leaped to his feet, disoriented, and looked up at the sun. He howled as his face blistered and smoked. His clothes began to burn and his eyes withered and blackened in their sockets. His hair and face were aflame as well.

In a blast of heat and ash, Karl Von Reinman exploded, leaving nothing but burning shards of cloth and a fine black powder.

The three monks crossed themselves, muttering a silent prayer. One of them produced a small plastic vial in which he collected some of the ash that had been the German vampire, to keep the remains unwhole. The three dragged their dead over to the house and threw them into the flames. Another prayer was said, and then they turned and. began to walk hack the way they hud come.

“
I never thought he would he that difficult
,”
Thomas Montesi said.

“
Nor did I,” his brother Isaac continued. “He was one of the old ones. I was sure he would still believe.”

“
Ah,” said the third and youngest, Robert Montesi, “but he believed in the end. That’s what counts.”

“
Still,” argued Thomas, “His Holiness will surely want us to investigate further.”

“
Yes,” agreed. Isaac. “He’ll want to know how this old one discovered the truth. It means a lot of work for us.”

“
Perhaps,” Robert said, and smiled. “But only if we tell him. Besides, when he returns from his quest, we will all have more than enough to do.”

And then they were all smiling, and soon they began to whistle, the three of them, a song they had heard in a Bavarian inn the night before.

Peter Octavian woke with the smell of burned flesh in his nostrils. It was not suddenly, as if from a nightmare, or slowly and leisurely, as if from a long and profound slumber. He simply woke. One moment he was paralyzed and the next he could move and think and his eyes began to focus in the darkness of his room. Disoriented, he attempted to pull together the reality of what had happened. Even when he had made such psychic connections with Karl of his own accord, they had never been so vivid, so clear. He had been unable to analyze what he was seeing, only to react. And now that he could think it over, one thing remained clear. Whoever had done this to his old friend must pay with their lives.

The problem was that already the details were beginning to fade from memory. He knew the assailants in his vision were from the Vatican, but their faces were losing shape in his mind, as were, thankfully, the more gruesome details of the battle. Only the bare facts remained. Karl was dead, presumably murdered by the church. The Vatican rarely went after his kind unless a particular creature had directly challenged their authority.

He hungered for revenge and could not help but be angry with himself. He knew he could have done nothing, but a terrible guilt still hounded him. Perhaps if he hadn’t abandoned Karl and Alexandra and the others that New Year’s Eve almost a hundred years before, perhaps Karl would still be alive. Ah, but such fancy was idiocy. The question now was what to do about it.

As he got up and paced around the room, coming back to sit on the bed before getting up again and repeating the circuit, he realized that for now the answer was, do nothing. Though he mourned his longtime friend, he knew that there were others, still members of the coven, who were far closer geographically to Karl, and they would have to begin the investigation without him. He had business to take care of here in Boston. He only hoped they would not begin the revenge without him, even though he knew they would not welcome his presence. One way or the other, though, he would make sure Karl’s death did not go without retaliation.

The phone rang, and he realized he was still panting with his fury. He took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm down and answered it on the third ring.

“Octavian.”

“Yeah, Peter. Ted Gardiner.”

“Uh-huh. What’s up, Ted?”

“Um, listen, have I caught you at a bad time? I could call back.”

His voice had betrayed the anger he felt, but it was not time to share it. “No, I’m fine. Go ’head.”

“I’ve got the file on Janet’s disappearance for you whenever you want to pick it up. There isn’t much in here, but I’m sure you can do more with it than we can. Also, you asked me to call about that garage killing last night. Roger Martin, remember? Anyway, it seems he’d been working late on a rush job for his manager, not uncommon according to her.”

“What was the job? What corporation?” Peter asked, more out of habit than interest.

“Some church thing is all I know. Anyway, he went to the Publik House for a drink after work, which his wife says is unusual. He was coming back for his car when he got hit. We’ll know more about it when the janitor comes around. The docs are pretty sure now that he will.”

“Thanks, Ted. Keep me posted.”

“Peter? You okay?”

“
Fine
, Ted. Maybe a little tired. Sorry.”

When he hung up the phone, Peter was much more relaxed and genuinely sorry to have been so short with Ted. He was in a bitter frame of mind as the alarm clock buzzed, startling him. He swore and knocked it from the bedside table. Its plastic window cracked as it landed, and he cursed again.

Stop it, he told himself, and forced his lungs to draw a deep breath, hold it, and let it out slowly. He fought to contain the emotion that was overwhelming him. Rage and fear and grief gnawed at his heart. Steeling himself against these emotions, he walked to the window and opened it, swinging the shutters wide and breathing in the cold night air.

The night air? The alarm had gone off. He knew his vision or whatever had come to him in the early hours of the morning, not long after he’d gone to sleep. It seemed so immediate. And even though he didn’t really need to sleep, or at least very little, he still felt tired somehow.

He smiled grimly.
No rest for the wicked.

He turned back into the room and surveyed his art collection, his eyes perfectly capable of clear sight in the dark room. The paintings were incredibly dissimilar, not a repetition of theme or style in the room. Some were calm and sensual, others angry and violent, and the sculptures showed the same variety. Away from it all, standing on a marble base in the corner, was a traditional bust. His father, he had once explained to a young woman amazed at the remarkable resemblance he bore to the subject of the sculpture. Now, today, he thought, he would have to claim it was his great-great-great-grandfather.

The Publik House. That was the last place that Roger Martin had been seen alive as well as the last place Janet Harris had been seen. A coincidence, almost certainly, but something to store in his mind.

He stood there staring about the room for quite some time. Then, feeling calm but with a heavy heart, he went about preparing for the night. He had to meet Meaghan at eight o’clock and he was running late. He hoped that she had done as he’d asked.

Peter stood by the window watching the snow fall. He was dressed and ready to go, but the snow, though beautiful, had him worried about traffic—it must be bumper-to-bumper in the storm. He looked at the cracked clock face and saw that it was a quarter to eight. It would take him at least twenty-five minutes to reach Meaghan’s place if he had to fight the storm and Boston’s own brand of intimate traffic relationships. Even in a raging blizzard, many a Bostonian would be happy to roll down his window to let you know that you “fuck ya muthaa.”

Only because he counted on Bostonians to be less well armed than residents of Los Angeles or New York, Peter felt comfortable flipping these pleasant folks the bird, or when he was in a particularly cynical mood, rolling down his window to shout back, “You’re an excellent judge of character.”

No. No traffic tonight; he couldn’t deal with it right now. With all that had happened already that day, he might just lose control. He zipped up his jacket and went out, but rather than take the elevator down, he walked the three flights to the roof, stepped out onto the windswept surface, and closed his eyes as the snow flew in his face. He could feel the cold, but it didn’t bother him.

As the storm screamed around him he walked to the edge of the roof and surveyed the city he called home. It was the kind of night in the kind of city where you’d really have to go out of your way to attract attention. Peter didn’t want attention, he just wanted to be on time for his date . . . appointment with Meaghan. And he wanted to fly.

Of course it was quite painful—excruciating in fact—but hey, what’s five hundred years of living do if it doesn’t heighten your tolerance for pain?

The metamorphosis began as painfully as ever, and Peter tried to keep his concentration on the city lights and heavy snow. It was an effort not to voice his pain, and he set tight his lips against the urge. Neither he nor Karl nor anyone he had ever met truly understood the nature of the thing that was happening to him now. He only knew that it must be magic pure and simple, for now his clothes were changing with him and the pistol in its holster, and when he returned to his human form—a much less painful process—he would be dressed just as he’d been when he left his apartment.

Ah, the pain again. Over the years he had waited for it to go away, for his body to grow accustomed to the change. It never happened. Though it was often worse, it was never better.

And then the metamorphosis was complete, the pain was ended. Until next time.

It was nearly eight, now, and he flew quickly, manipulating the high winds, using them to bolster his speed. Though he knew it was nothing but a myth he could not completely thrust from his mind, the initial transformation always made him feel somehow unclean. Riding the winds was a relief—soaring, cleansing.

Meaghan did not mention his lateness, nor did he apologize. Her mind was on Janet and, more and more, on Peter. There was something about him that was at once incredibly strong and amazingly gentle, something . . . unnaturally natural, if that could be. The only word she found to describe him was human. He seemed a prime example of what people want to be, of humanity. And yet he scared her as well, as if somehow, being around him might lead her to some self-examination she wasn’t entirely prepared for.

What the hell, she’d been in lust before. He’d probably turn out to be an asshole after all.

“So what did you find out?”

“Well, I went to Claremont,” she began with a toss of her head and a cascade of auburn that she could see had pleasantly distracted him.

“That’s Janet’s firm?”

“Right. Claremont, Miller and Moore. I was able to get most of the stuff she was working on, but the lawyer I needed to talk to, Dan Benedict, with whom Janet worked quite a bit, was in a meeting or some such thing. So I left him a note. I figure Dan would be able to give us an idea whether any of these cases might have put Jan in danger. And that about covers it.”

“Have you started going through the papers at all?”

“No, I figured I would wait for you. I didn’t want you to miss the fun.”

Peter made no reply other than to nod his assent, and Meaghan suddenly felt like an intruder in her own home. The night before she had felt slightly uneasy in his presence, but it had been a nervous kind of feeling, her stomach telling her she was about to begin something whose outcome was far from certain. She still felt that, but this was different, more personal. He meant no insult, she was sure, but he was all business.

“I had the best lunch today, at this little place on Beacon Street,” she began, trying to lighten the mood as they dove into Janet Harris’s private files.

Peter nodded on occasion or mumbled a resigned uh-huh to show that he was listening, though she could see he was not. Finally, she tired of blabbing about herself and backed Peler into a corner about his own life.

“I don’t like talking about myself much,” he answered coolly.

That irked her.

“Peter, I know it’s really none of my business . . .” she started, and perhaps because of the sound of her voice, he finally looked up.

“ . . . but I’ve already bared my soul and all my secrets to you, so if there’s something you’d like to talk about?” She left it at that.

Peter saw the concern, the slight annoyance, and the discomfort in her face. “A friend of mine, an old and dear friend, died today,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Meaghan said slowly, feeling very selfish. “Do you want to . . .”

“
No
,” he said a little too firmly, and quickly added, “I’m fine, really. Sorry I’m so quiet.”

He gave her a reassuring though weak smile and a pat on the knee and she felt slightly better, though still uneasy.

“Let’s get back to work,” he said, and they bent again to the piles.

“Do you think we’ll find her?” Meaghan asked after a while. “You don’t have much hope at all, do you?”

“Of finding the answers, yes, I do. Of finding Janet. No. To be honest with you I don’t have much hope at all.”