Of Saints and Shadows (1994) Read Online Free PDF Page B

passed dangerously close to his spinal cord, and the guy was pulling up with both hands.
    With a howl, Peter had transformed.
    The rest hadn’t taken long, but when Peter took human form again, he was in rough shape, terribly weak. George might have killed him then, had he really tried. But he didn’t. The old Greek knew without asking what Peter was, though he’d never believed in his life that such creatures might exist. In moments he was back in the morgue with blood to replace the bottles Peter had dropped.
    “Okay, what do I do?” he asked as he approached cautiously.
    “Feed me,” was all Peter could say at first, and George did. Afterward, to speed the recovery process, Octavian poured a pint of blood directly on his wound. George stared as it closed of its own accord.
    Once Peter was feeling better, the two had cleaned up the morgue. They talked while they did so, George almost in awe. Peter was quite impressed as well. The thief was in a condition that would have been hard to explain to police, and Peter was surprised how easy it was to hide a corpse when one was the coroner at a major city hospital. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it was four in the morning.
    On that night nearly a decade ago, he’d told George of the bloodsong.
    “Ah,” said George, smiling, “the children of the night, what music they make.”
    They had no choice but to be friends.
    And now he stood in the open refrigerator door, feeling the cold but not really feeling it, making a mental note to call his friend, who would come to the rescue as he always had, making certain Peter would not be driven back an immortal evolutionary step. Making certain that the bloodsong could be sung without death, without destruction, without the hunt. Sometimes he missed the hunt, but sometimes he missed life, and he certainly didn’t want to go back to that.
    No, tonight the first pint went down fast and smooth. As it rushed into him he bit his lip and arched his back; a shiver ran through him as the music within him grew into a symphony, its rhythm speeding up.
    He took his time with the second pint, savoring each drop, and the song built into a crescendo. When the second bottle joined the first in the trash, he was slowly coming down. His brain and his stomach nestled in a warm, too familiar place.
    The song had subsided, but it was always there, a sexual throbbing rhythm that demanded one thing only: satisfaction.
    The bloodsong’s ecstasy had screamed within him, loudly proclaiming his power to any creature brave enough to approach.
    “This is the King of the Jungle here,” he whispered to himself, his eyes shut tight.
    My God, he thought, as he did every time, the real thing gives ten times the pleasure, ten times the power. Then the bloodsong carries you on its melody to the next night, and the next.
    Yes, he reminded himself. If you keep feeding it.
    He pushed the thoughts away, the feelings away, at the same time struggling with the knowledge that Karl would be disgusted with him.
    Or, more likely, that Karl is disgusted. Surely, he thought, his old teacher knew what Peter had been up to since they last parted company. And just as surely, he was repulsed by the philosophy that had lowered his warrior prince to a shadow thief and a servant of humans. Karl was most certainly ashamed to know that his old pupil and friend stole by deceit what he no longer felt comfortable about taking by force.
    But that was Karl, Peter thought. He misunderstood completely. Peter could not follow the old German’s belief that power allowed them the privilege to do what they wished. Rather, he felt certain that true power lent itself only to real responsibility: responsibility to seek knowledge, to experiment and experience, and to share . . . especially that.
    His hunger satiated, he lay down on his bed and drifted into sleep as lazily as a feather falling to the ground. The growing certainty that student would soon have to become teacher weighed heavily on