Shadows of Falling Night

by S. M. Stirling

  His Seeings had shown that the consequences, from nuclear power plants melting down to firestorms in refinery complexes, were much worse than anyone had thought. Shadowspawn tended to be conservationists, because they all intended to live in the world for a very, very long time. And they dreaded radiation, since the aetheric body was so vulnerable to it.

  Adrienne’s Progressive faction favored Trimback Two, a tailored plague they had used renfield scientists to develop. Dalager’s parasmallpox was more contagious than the flu throughout its month-long sub-clinical period, and then swiftly more deadly than Ebola in its final stage. The Council could emerge at just the right point with the vaccine, when everyone was utterly desperate but before things broke down completely, and take over open rule of the world by default. A world with just enough population and industry to furnish the Shadowspawn with luxuries, and a unified planetary government to keep the masses in order and suppress inconvenient research.

  Virtually all of the Council’s Shadowspawn favored one or the other, reluctant as they usually were to disturb the status quo; that was why a full meeting had been called after decades of squabbling. More and more humans had been stumbling on aspects of the great secret, and none of the clandestine rulers of the world were willing to chance the masses becoming aware of who had been pulling the strings this past century. If all the swarming billions of true humanity turned on the few Shadowspawn and their collaborators at once regardless of casualties…the Power was strong and subtle, but more subtle than strong. Brute force could turn the nocturnis back into a harried remnant hiding from the witchfinders.

  “It was not my intention to aid you,” Adrian said crisply. “Both options are psychopathic revenge fantasies. The main difference is that Trimback One is a stupid revenge fantasy.”

  “While Two is Brézé, hence brilliant…and psychopathic and cruel. And of course it wasn’t your intention to help me, beloved brother. That is the delicious aspect, no? Your Seeings are trusted because you are known to be sentimental about the apes and favor neither option; yet your Power and skill and purity of blood are incontestable…like mine. In the meantime, as far as the children are concerned, perhaps we should launch a custody battle in the California courts?”

  She laughed musically. “As opposed to the battle with assault rifles and Wreakings you staged to seize them from my wicked clutches, slaughtering my renfields and mercenaries left and right? Showing such noble determination to put the children’s moral welfare ahead of the mere bagatelle of risk to their lives.”

  The woman beside her winced. Monica, Ellen thought. But blond. Even the eyebrows…must be a Wreaking…oh, icky-poo, it makes her look even more like me. Adrienne probably role-plays that she is me…oh, très icky-poo.

  The two Shadowspawn had locked eyes, something halfway between wrestling and communication taking place on a level she couldn’t follow, with a feeling like trains rushing past in total darkness close enough to feel the hot metal brush you. Adrian made a very small gesture with his left hand, and Ellen fell back six paces; it put her back against a pillar and gave her room to act if it came to a fight. It probably wouldn’t…that would be a social solecism by Shadowspawn standards…but you never knew.

  Then the tension broke slightly; Ellen could feel it recede, more conspicuous by its absence.

  “Phew! Now that was nerve-wracking! It’s so good to see you again, Ellen!” Monica said, in her perky SoCal accent with the rising inflection on every sentence. “I’d give you a hug, but—”

  She looked down at her dress. It was a sleeveless jade-green silk affair with a plunging décolletage; a wide diamond-encrusted belt cinched in her waist, matching the diamonds edging the asymetrical neckline. “—I’m not really dressed for it! I mean, we’re not that sort of friends!”

  “Yeah, that outfit’s stunning, really, but it must be held up by a Wreaking,” Ellen said, which was true enough.

  Monica chuckled. “You should have seen what I was wearing last night for the walk home. It wowed ’em, let me tell you, but there were goose bumps.”

  “Ummm…I see you’re blond these days? I’m surprised.”

  Monica gave a little crow of laughter. “Not as surprised as I was! I staggered into the bathroom that morning, and I was platinum. Platinum everywhere.”

  “That must have been…alarming.”

  “It’s a good thing my kids were staying with Mom, because I screamed the house down. But it was sort of funny once I calmed down. It usually is after a shrieking fit. You know how the Doña is, she loves a joke. The blond stays that way, too, no need for follow-ups and it doesn’t even dry the hair or give you split ends. Beats Madame Clairol all to hell!”

  Monica beamed at the younger woman, and Ellen responded with a smile of her own, a little unwillingly.

  Miss Stockholm Syndrome of Simi Valley, Class of 2012, she thought mordantly. Which is very true, but not the whole story. Poor Monica!

  “I’ve missed you. The Tennis Club in Rancho Sangre have all missed you,” Monica went on. “And Josh and Sophia have missed you.”

  Those were her children, and charming. Ellen blinked in surprise as she realized she actually had missed Monica’s kids a bit, when there was time to think. They’d been next-door neighbors for months, after all. Granted they’d been months of sadism and torture and abuse both mental and physical, subtle and overt, seasoned with mind-crushing fear and horror. And that all of it still gave her nightmares and cold sweats. None of it had been Monica’s fault, and she’d done everything she could to make Ellen welcome, right down to dropping by the first day with home-made lasagna and brownies.

  The Welcome Wagon of Nosferatu Manor, Ellen thought. I thought she was insane then, and she is. Functional, but insane…and there are times when insanity is what keeps you from going crazy, here in the unreal Real World™.

  “Lucy Lane is sort of lonely these days, since Jabar left—”

  He’d run away, and been hunted down, by Adrienne and her post-corporeal parents. She didn’t want to imagine what they’d done in the course of his polluted death, but couldn’t help getting ideas.

  “—and with you gone, and Peter, and Cheba, and Jose retired—he’s married, did you know? His wife’s expecting, she’s a really nice girl, Vietnamese parents, they invite me over fairly often. I suppose the Doña will bring more people in eventually, when things settle down, but it won’t be the same. The good old days, eh? Remember those Saturday potluck barbecues we all used to have, and the afternoon tennis at the club?”

  “Ah—” Ellen said. “You know, I really like you, Monica, and you were always good to me. But the Rancho was a nightmare, and did you ever notice that Jose aside people on Lucy Lane mostly just die eventually unless they escape? As in, she kills them?”

  “Well, it’s my home, you know, Ellen, and it’s really not very cool to be judgmental about other people’s relationships…oh, let’s not quarrel,” she said, and cocked an eye at Adrian. “Mmmm, nice. I never saw him in his own human form before. He was in disguise that time he came to the Ranch and took you away. Is that the body, or aetheric?”

  “The real him.”

  “He looks just as sexy in person as when the Doña puts on his seeming. She’s done that with me a couple of times when she was nightwalking in his form, and my, my, my, no complaints, floor to ceiling and lively. It makes a nice change from, you know. Not that that’s not fun too.”

  Ellen opened her mouth and then closed it. The Shadowspawn could assume the form of anyone or anything when they went Nightwalking, as long as they had a DNA sample to model on; that was one source of the succubus-incubus legends, as well as the myth about vampirism being catching. Adrienne had done that switcheroo into Adrian’s form with her once. It still wasn’t an image she wanted to have in her head, and thinking about Monica in that context…

  Oh, twice over I do not want that image in my head.

  “So how is he at the tying up and whipping thing?” Monica said cheerfully; she’d
always been a chatterbox with a poor sense of boundaries. “The Doña is still using that lovely little nine-tailed silk switch she found in your stuff on me, and those restraints. You really broadened her horizons, you know, made her try more subtle methods and I’m having such a good time! Well, I always did, after I, umm, got used to things, but it’s even better. Thanks!”

  “Ah…glad to be of service, Monica.” I think.

  “Well, I’ll see you around,” she said warmly, as Adrienne turned and sauntered away, raising one hand, snapping her fingers without looking around and crooking a finger. “Duty calls.”

  Ellen put a hand over her eyes for a second. Adrian touched her gently on one shoulder. “My darling?” he said softly.

  “You know, your sister just loves to put thumbtacks in people’s heads. Not just in person, either.”

  “We have been married less than a year, yet already our thoughts move in tandem. It would have been even more unpleasant without you. Though the metaphor I used to myself was fishhooks.”

  Ellen thought for a moment, then nodded. “Better choice of words. Fishhooks come with lines attached, so you can pull on them. How is it that she’s planning to destroy the world and she still finds time for this?”

  “It’s all part of her plan. Also…I did tell you how she would punish her dolls when we were children?”

  Ellen shivered and nodded; she knew exactly how the toys would have felt, if they’d been sentient beings.

  Being Shadowspawn means you never have to grow up.

  She liked children, but children were like housecats, safe to be around because they were small and relatively powerless. Jillyboo the Kitten was lovable and amusing. Jillyboo the five-hundred-pound tiger wasn’t. And a tantrum or cruel impulse with the Power behind it…

  “You know, I don’t think Adrienne would make a very good ruler of the world,” Ellen said. “Though she’d enjoy the hell out of it. I can see her issuing National Misery Quotient targets at meetings, and starting a Disaster Production Agency.”

  “My great-grandfather has no intention of retiring from his position as Emperor of the Earth at any time in the next few millennia. He does not approve of…”

  “Klingon promotion,” Ellen said. “At least, not for other people doing it to him.”

  They looked at each other and smiled grimly. Ellen felt a knot relax slightly in her middle, and she was conscious of her hunger in a way that nerves had suppressed. A servant passed by with a tray of canapés. She reached for one, then had a sudden horrid thought and glanced at Adrian. He shook his head.

  “With the al-Lanarkis, you would have to be careful about the kebabs and shwarma. They always thought of themselves as ghūl, ghouls, and their favorite transformation is to cave hyenas.”

  Ellen shuddered and rolled her eyes. “And cave hyenas, I suppose, are big.”

  “Two hundred and fifty, three hundred pounds. The size of a smallish lion.”

  “What is it with Shadowspawn and the huge? Freudian, much?”

  Adrian smiled at her. “Size is not altogether to be despised. I have transformed into a giraffe on occasion.”

  “A giraffe?” she said, and he nodded solemnly. “What’s it like?”

  “Peaceful. Extremely peaceful. And the view, my darling, is superb. Not just the height, but the two-hundred-and-seventy degree arc of the eyes…”

  She laughed, relaxed despite herself. He went on:

  “And with some of the other families, one must be cautious as well; the von Trupps, for example, who are deeply committed to the werwolf legend.”

  She nodded understanding as he used the Germanic v pronunciation. Before the eugenic program of the Victorian period, the part-breed witch-clans had mostly believed the legends that were based on their own remote ancestors. They still formed part of the family traditions.

  He went on: “But the Brézés traditionally took only the blood. When they were in human form, at least. Cooking humans would be…intolerably crude. This is, you understand, an aesthetic and culinary judgment, not a moral one.”

  The liveried servant had halted with blank-faced politesse, the big wrought-silver tray held at a perfect angle. Ellen wondered how he’d ended up here, if some household renfields hadn’t simply kidnapped him because they needed a footman. He was so polished that even thought seemed to glance off—which was probably a survival skill in his position, working for people who might suddenly decide you looked better with your hair on fire or transfer you from the staff to the menu. She took one of the beignets D’Huitres au vin and followed it with a concoction of fig jam and foie gras with a very slight touch of cinnamon on a piece of baguette.

  Adrian offered her a glass of wine and his arm, and they strolled off down a corridor. He gently steered her from chamber to chamber, which was normally something she didn’t like outside the bedroom. After something glimpsed out of the corner of her eye through a set of great doors she was grateful. She wasn’t sure what it had been and forced her mind not to speculate.

  At least I don’t have to sense what’s going on in the private rooms the way he does. Christ, I’m partying in the middle of a mass murder. Getting case-hardened or what?

  “Like Grand Guignol,” she murmured. “But for real.”

  “My darling, who do you think founded the Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol? And formed a good many of the audience? And it was real, often enough.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t—” She winced at the sadness with which he shook his head. “Oh, man…”

  They gravely examined painting and sculpture, and in a few minutes her interest was genuine. The Hôtel de Brézé wasn’t exactly a museum, but it had been in the family’s hands a long time, and they collected. In recent generations, by just walking off with anything they fancied, starting with the Louvre, too. The management of the museums and galleries simply substituted fakes.

  A servant coughed discreetly, and her heart thudded. The disadvantage of living in a place like this was that things could be very far apart indeed; it took ten minutes to bring them to the library the master had chosen. An odd-looking group—dark men and women wearing striped ponchos and derby-style hats—was leaving as they arrived.

  When they entered, the Duc de Beauloup was sitting in a leather chair before a fire, cradling a brandy snifter while Seraphine leaned against the mantel with hers; she was wearing a new form, a slender freckled redhead with great brilliant green eyes, in a 50’s-style Chanel classic, the Little Black Dress.

  “Peruvians,” Étienne-Maurice said, with a weight of disgust, and his wife laughed.

  Adrian raised an eyebrow. His great-grandfather went on:

  “Your Californian branch of the family is responsible. They brought the message of our discoveries to the Andes for the Council. The Spanish-speakers are well enough, for Spaniards, if a trifle provincial and given to hidalgo airs. But the cult up in the Andes called themselves lik’ichiri, fat-stealers, and dealing with them is…ah, but enough of that. Even the Power cannot turn a dirty dog of a savage with a bone through his nose and a tom-tom fixation into something worthy of civilized company.”

  Ellen blinked. Remember, born in the 1870s, she told herself. Hasn’t seen sunlight since Hitler was a two-bit agitator in Munich.

  It was surprising how dealing with an inhuman monster became so much more difficult when he also had the all-too-human casual prejudices of someone born shortly after the Franco-Prussian War.

  The decor of the library was Victorian rather than Louis XV, dark woods and books and carved oak, globes and mounted maps and a few stuffed animal heads. Which was natural enough, he was old but not Louis XV old like the Hôtel; this study would have been very mildly out of date when he was a young man. There was a faint smell of fine tobacco beneath the leather and old books, and Isfahan rugs that looked as if they were from the same generation as their owner.

  She’d gotten used to that scent because Adrian smoked occasionally—a purebred couldn’t get cancer. Even with environmenta
l insults like tobacco smoke, that required bad luck on the cellular level.

  I don’t think the Pompidou Center has much future if the Empire of Shadow ever comes back full-bore. I suspect Great-granddaddy there would have everything built after he went post-corporeal torn down.

  Adrienne entered a moment later, alone: she wouldn’t bring a lucy to a conference. In a way, it was an affirmation of Ellen’s status—the Shadowspawn operated in families like the Mafia, only with a bit less old-time sexism since the Power had never been a respecter of gender. In another, it was a one-up for Adrienne, that she dared leave Monica unattended. She was probably terrified, and not in a good way…

  The servant picked up a crystal decanter that gleamed with a silvery sheen like polished hematite, marked with platinum fleur-de-lis designs. He poured three more glasses, offered them about, then retired to the doorway, standing with his hands crossed before him. Ellen suddenly noticed that he had a tiny radio-bud in one ear, nearly hidden by the antique wig. She sat silently, sniffed aromas of vanilla and spiced flowers, then let the Black Pearl run over her tongue like the essence of passion fruit and sandalwood.

  “Very nice,” she said.

  Actually true. I never liked brandy until Adrian introduced me to the real thing. And I have to keep the Demon King there sweet, if we’re to have any chance of blocking Adrienne’s coup and then springing our own surprise on her. Which means I have to help save Great-grandpa…for now. Politics makes strange…oh, God, get that image out of my head!

  “Thank you, sire,” she went on.

  Étienne-Maurice inclined his head with a gracious-host smile. “Quite good, is it not? A blend of over a thousand eaux-de-vie, I understand, some of them laid down before I was born and none less than forty years old. There are things this modern age does better, even if the aesthetics are deplorable. When I still dwelt in the flesh I sampled cognac put in the oak during the reign of the first Napoleon, and it was not quite so fine. Less subtle, though of course my perceptions have improved.”