Table of Contents
Praise for Of Saints and Shadows...
Goldens book is the template for a score of books that have been published in the years since its publication. Many of those books have been bestsellers. Reading Of Saints and Shadows again, I was amazed how many elements now familiar in the vampire and thriller genres appeared in Saints first. Goldens imagination and expert plotting wove these elements into a startlingly original book, as exciting to read now as it was when it first appeared on the rack.
Charlaine Harris
... and for the Peter Octavian novels
Christopher Golden has reinvented the vampire myth into nonstop action, suspense, and fascinating dark fantasy. [Hes] an imaginative and prodigious talent who never lets genre boundaries hold him back.
Douglas Clegg, author of the Vampyricon series
Harrowing, humorous, overflowing with plot contortions... abundantly entertaining. A portent of great things to come... a writer who cares passionately about the stuff of horror.
Douglas E. Winter, Cemetery Dance
You can damn near chase me a mile these days with a vampire novel. Talk about your boring genre... Then along comes Christopher Golden... and [he] reminds me there is no such thing as a boring genre, just boring writers. A crew to which Mr. Golden does not belong. His work is fast and furious, funny and original.
Joe R. Lansdale, author of Vanilla Ride
Golden combines quiet, dark, subtle mood with Super-Giant monster action. Sort of M. R. James meets Godzilla!
Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
Just when you thought nothing new could be done with the vampire mythos, [Christopher Golden] comes along and shows us otherwise.
Ray Garton, author of Bestial
Christopher Golden is an imaginative storyteller whose writing is both chilling and suspenseful.
Philip Nutman, author of Cities of Night
Golden has painted an intriguing canvas... filled with action, sweep, and dark mythology.
Rex Miller, author of Butcher
One of the best horror novels of the year. Filled with tension, breathtaking action, dire plots, and a convincing depiction of worlds existing unseen within our own. One of the most promising debuts in some time.
Science Fiction Chronicle
Passionate... excellent... Golden has written one of the best... a deep probe into the inner workings of the church and a surprise explanation for vampires. [A] brilliant vampire novel in a blizzard of bloody tooth bites this year.
LitNews Online
A breathtaking story that succeeds in marrying gore and romance, sex, and sentiment. A brilliant epic.
Dark News (Paris)
Look for all the Peter Octavian novels from Ace Books
OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS
ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS
OF MASQUES AND MARTYRS
THE GATHERING DARK
(February 2011)
WAKING NIGHTMARES
(April 2011)
With love and respect, this one is for Jose R. Nieto, whose talent is matched only by his nobility
Acknowledgment TK
Prologue
But the tigers come at night,
with their voices soft as thunder.
HERBERT KRETZMER, Les Misrables
AS THE FIRST HINTS OF DUSK BEGAN TO TAINT the wispy blue spring sky above Washington Square Park, the music abruptly stopped.
A handsome young black man with a shaved head and stubbly goatee glanced nervously at the pink-edged clouds and packed his saxophone away in its case. He looked almost ashamed and didnt meet the eyes of the muttering tourists and strolling locals who commented on the speed of his departure. He just went.
Too bad, said a dark-haired teenaged girl, whose ragged clothes and sickly pale face might have given the impression that she was a homeless person, if not for the three-hundred-dollar sunglasses she wore.
I was hoping hed play that blues riff again, she added.
The large, blond, well-muscled man on the bench beside her offered no response but a slight nod. He too wore sunglasses, but of the cheap plastic variety. Blue jeans and white sneakers and a sweatshirt with Sorbonne embroidered across the front completed his ensemble.
An oddly matched pair, even to a casual observer. Not family, surely. And unlikely as lovers for a number of reasons, not the least of which was their apparent age difference. Otherwise, the two were determinedly unremarkable.
They sat and watched as the exodus continued. Dusk was coming on full speed. It had been unseasonably chilly that last week of April, and the night seemed heartened by the memory of winter, creeping quickly over the city as though full-blown spring werent a week away. Though growing longer, the days were still too short by far, all things considered. And the long nights were very sparsely populated. Only the foolhardy, the romantic, and the desperate tended to stay on the streets after sunset.
It simply wasnt safe.
Parents left first, strapping infants into strollers and lofting toddlers to shoulders and whisking their families away home. Which was never very far. Even those brave or foolish enough to stay out after dark didnt stray too far from home.
Then the sky began to grow dark. The first star appeared. And the parks crowd thinned more rapidly. Soon, only half a dozen skateboard kids still roamed the tree-lined parkkids whose parents worked nights, or were on crack, or just didnt give a fuckfeeding each other false courage, baying to the moon, laughing at the night. Maybe they didnt care what happened to them. Maybe they just didnt believe it could happen. Human nature, that was. It isnt real unless you can see it with your own eyes, touch it with your own hands, smell it, taste it, hear it.
Theyd been out there night after night after night, for months on end, those forgotten, daredevil children. Nothing bad had ever happened to them. Around them, most certainly. To people they knew, of course. There wasnt anyone left in Manhattan who didnt know someone whod been taken by the night.
By the shadows.
With the coming of the night, the city began to quiet down. People were still out, but traveling in packs; in cars or on the subway. Bass beats still thumped the air outside the front doors of dance clubs, but the one-night stand had gone the way of the drive-in theater and the record player. Rarer than rare. Lunch dates were the thing now. House parties were big too. Adult sleepovers.
Still, the city was far quieter after dark than it had been a year, even a few months, earlier. On the bench where they still satbearing witness to the terror that had transformed daily life in New York, and so many other places across the worldthe silent man and the attractive brunette girl sat and waited and listened to the way the city had changed.
The trees whispered with a warm breeze, a tease that tomorrow spring might finally triumph over the stubborn winter. In the distance, a police siren began to scream in horror. Just the first of many, like every other night. The clack-clack of skateboard wheels, of jumping and spinning and falling; the laughter of American youthsmart enough to know better but too jaded to care.
Tonight, you think? the young woman asked. Its been nearly two weeks watching these punks. Id hate to move on. If we find some other bait, Im sure thatll be the night they come for our skate-boys.
