“There are a number; however, by publicly acquiescing to such a dubious practice, they would be aiming a gun to their own precious skulls. To put it in blunt terms that you’ll understand, they won’t talk to you. I’m not so rude as to call myself an expert, but I have more than a passing knowledge of the resurrected. Is there something specific you wish to know?”
“Unless you know someone in town who runs with them, no.”
Cabal drops the last few inches of the burning worm on the floor and crushes it out with his bare foot.
“I’m curious about the depth of your knowledge concerning our hungry friends. If I had a sense of your understanding, perhaps I could speed you along in your investigations.”
“Out of the kindness of your heart?”
He smiles.
“To get you off my fucking back.”
I look at his eyes. It doesn’t look like he’s lying. And he’s genuinely interested in hearing what I’ll say.
“Brigitte is the expert, but she’ll talk longer and I’m in a rush, so here’s what I know. There are Drifters and Lacunas. One is dumb as dirt and one is maybe as smart as a house-trained poodle. They bite and they won’t stop until you rip out their spines.”
Cabal looks at Brigitte. She clears her throat.
“I could recite a thousand years of lore and list the anatomical and biological differences of the species, but for the purposes of our mission, James is right.”
Cabal kills off the wine and drops the bottle on the floor.
“I see that I can aid you children with your quest, after all. When I place this bauble of knowledge into your greedy hands, I’d be immoderately grateful if you would quietly exit the way you came and leave me to my guests.”
“Deal.”
“Most Sub Rosa don’t have any greater understanding of revenants than you. They memorize a few salient facts and drop them into conversations at cocktail parties to make themselves sound more interesting than they really are. I know this because most people believe that the resurrected are a binary species, but the truth is they are tripartate. You mentioned golems or Drifters, as you call them, and Lacunas. They are a formidable pair but there is also a tertiary species known to those with a deeper knowledge as Saperes and to the man in the street as Savants. The peril with this particular resurrected is that you will often not perceive its true nature until it’s eating your guts au gratin. Savants appear to be fully functional members of the brotherhood of man. They can chitchat, hold a job, dress themselves, and they possess, or seem to possess, the power of thought as clearly and intoxicatingly as you or I.”
“So, a Savant is a Lacuna that can call for pizza delivery. I don’t get it. Why are they so special that no one knows about them?”
“The first, most obvious reason, is panic. Admitting the existence of a strain of resurrected invisible to even adept Sub Rosa would have dire consequences. Human history is strewn with the corpses of those entangled in the panicked slaughter of mobs. This is especially true if the person or people perceived by the general population is different. Wouldn’t you agree, little Gypsy?”
“Definitely.”
“That was the obvious reason. What’s the other?”
“Saperes are special because nature or God or some other entity has chosen to make them so. You see, at any one time there are exactly twenty-seven of them in the world. No more. No less. If one is destroyed, a new one appears somewhere else. It then becomes the burden of those of us, as you say, in the know, to find it. It’s not unlike Buddhist monks searching for each new incarnation of a Lama subsequent to the death of the old one.”
“Is that all?”
“You’re one of those dark souls impossible to satisfy, aren’t you?”
He wants to start an argument. I just smile and shrug.
“The number of Saperes appears deliberate. If you add two and seven, you get nine. Nine is a holy number. Three times three. The Trinity times the Trinity. I could go on, but you see the pattern.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea. No one does. And that’s another reason Saperes are such a closely held secret. We haven’t a clue as to how they befit the everyday workings of the world.”
“How does knowing any of this help us find last night’s Drifters or who’s controlling them?”
“We care for Saperes by seeding them strategically around the globe. If one is destroyed in Sumatra, the others remain safe while we scour the globe for its replacement. The three most proximate Saperes are in New York and Mexico City. Can you guess the location of the third one?”
“In Los Angeles,” says Brigitte.
“Bellissima. I assure you, the twenty-seven cities were not chosen willy-nilly. Each is a magical crossroads. Each is a power spot, Los Angeles being a distinctly active one.”