A single gesture from Adrian had made sure everyone understood that for all his Wreakings they couldn’t talk frankly here. Eric and Cheba had made slightly stilted but perfectly genuine expressions of thanks for the laying on of hands that accelerated their recoveries. The new set of dressings Hans had put on Cheba’s claw-wounds had been spotted with new blood when she took them off.
Cheba even took a moment to thank Ellen, since she knew where the blood had come from to juice Adrian up before they arrived. Ellen still had a bit of that mellow, drifting sense of utter peace you got after the ecstasy of a feeding, the way it made absolutely anything feel so good and everyone seem lovable. Cheba would know a little of what that was like, but she couldn’t know how much more intense the high you got from the bite was when it was of your own will and with love, without that nasty undertone of fear, guilt, self-loathing and dread afterwards.
Ellen felt more than a little sorry for her.
“Your man, he is a good jefe,” Cheba said seriously in a quiet aside as they walked towards the elevator.
Even if he is a blood-sucking brujo, went unspoken. She continued aloud, in the same undertone:
“And you, you also do not forget those who help you.”
All in all it made dinner rather fraught, though Ellen found she had an excellent appetite.
After all, she thought as they were bowed to their table, in a way I’m eating for two. And Eric and Cheba are making up for lost time—the Power can force their bodies to heal faster, but cell division has to have something to work with. Peter’s the only one who might be worrying his stomach closed. And the kids just shovel it down, unless it’s pretty loathsome; though their table manners are absolutely superb for their age.
Which was fortunate; the maître d’hôtel had looked a little dubious at seating children that young. This place was on the high end of stuffy-formal.
Interesting how Cheba absorbed that sort of formal thing like a sponge, since she started out basically as a peasant with lizards in the thatch. She’s actually a bit better at it than me, by now, and I was the first in my family ever to go to university. Look at the elegant way she handled her napkin there, or the little serious frown over the wine list.
The hotel restaurant was about the degree of high-end stodgy-conservative you’d expect, but nonetheless impressive; red and gold, snowy linen, glittering silver and crystal and an atmosphere of subdued old-money sybaritism designed to make you feel like a pre-1914 grand duke. Ellen worked her way through briny grilled octopus with wasabi and ginger-orange sauce that put her in mind of a makeout session with some sort of sea nymph, a small bowl of richly sweet lobster bisque with a bite of Armagnac and a tiny little floating lobster pancake, and finished by splitting the double entrecôte of dry aged Austrian beef with peppercorn sauce, sauce ravigote, and onion potatoes with Adrian. It was tender, but not so tender that it didn’t have an interesting texture, and it tasted like the earthy Platonic essence of grilled steer, one that had lived on a low-stress regimen at a bovine spa in the Alps with plenty of organic grass and gentle aerobic exercise and moo-yodeling classes. She’d never heard of the Austrian red wine that went with it, but the grapes had died happily too and Adrian gave it a glance of surprised respect.
“My goodness,” she said, patting her lips with the napkin and hiding a small belch. “There was more aged Austrian beef in that than there was in the last Conan movie. Wonderful for the red cell count.”
Her eyes met Adrian’s, and even with the tension there was an exchange of flirtatious subtext that stopped just short of him doing that Shadowspawn snap-of-the-teeth thing, a gesture expressing a combination of predatory sexual interest with a rather different type of appetite. That wouldn’t have been tactful with Peter and Cheba at the table; Adrienne used it too, and when she clicked her ivories at you it was usually a prelude to a starring role in some spectacular and quite involuntary piece of sadomasochistic kink. Which had been bad enough for Ellen, and worse for them.
In a way it was a pity they had to be so discreet, because it was a good idea for the kids to be exposed to a more positive role model for…
Well, predator-prey relationship relationships, I suppose you’d call it. They’re purebloods and they’ll have the, um, needs, she thought, around a mouthful of iced Milchrahmstrudel. It’s not as if they’re going to have all that much difficulty finding human-type people who want what they have to offer. I hope they get something as good as Adrian and I have, but just learning to avoid that whole vicious lethal exploitation thing would be a nice passable good-enough. And of course if Adrian and I have kids too…deal with that when we come to it.
“Do you two think you could stand a Ferris wheel ride without losing that dinner?” Adrian said to his son and daughter.
“Oh yes, Papa,” Leila said, her brother nodding agreement as he chewed.
“Should we be—” Cheba began, then stopped before she could say:—wasting our time that way.
Ellen was morally certain that someone had nudged the other woman under the table, though she wasn’t certain who.
Peter, Eric or Adrian? she thought. Hmm, Peter or Eric, I think. Probably Peter. He’s got a sort of brotherly vibe going there. Wonder if Eric has figured out that he has the serious-type hots for her yet? And under that tough marine/cop/divorced thing, I think he’s a lot more sentimental than she is.
“Yes, that sounds like a good idea,” Cheba said, her voice neutral.
She really isn’t a very good liar, Ellen thought. Not bad, but not very good either. Too ferociously straightforward.
The concierge was a little surprised that they intended to walk to the Wiener Prater; like most Europeans he assumed that Americans didn’t have functional feet. He did supply umbrellas, which were useful, a list of the attractions of the park which were still open this time of year, and some completely unnecessary directions.
“If we are to stop Harvey, we must get this matter of my uncle’s killing out of the way,” Adrian said abruptly. “And I received a message, a telepathic message, suggesting a meeting to discuss just that. No names, but it is supposedly one of Adrienne’s principal supporters who wishes to turn on her.”
I notice he didn’t say murder, Ellen thought mordantly. Where there is no law, there is no murder—just killing. And among Shadowspawn…
The crowds out enjoying the splendors of the Ringstrasse were considerably thinned by the light drizzle. The cast-iron streetlights made a watery glimmer as they reflected on wet stone, like an Impressionist cityscape done by someone with undiagnosed myopia. The children ran on a little ahead, doing an occasional two-footed jump into a puddle. Ellen, Adrian and Eric Salvador all did occasional expert checks for tails and other forms of surveillance; Peter and Cheba were a little more obvious about it.
My name is Ellen…Ellen Bond…I mean, Brézé, she thought, conscious of the comforting outline of her derringer and the weight of the knife under her coat.
And it’s even more comforting that Adrian’s here.
He walked easily, not quickly but with a springy grace, his hands in the pockets of his dark coat and a hat—hats were fashionable once more—slightly tilted over his brow.
“Why do you trust whoever sent you this message?” Eric said bluntly.
“I don’t, of course,” Adrian said. “But there are ways of…authenticating…telepathic messages. We do not use them very often, because it requires some lowering of barriers, of defenses, on the side of the one wishing to show truth.”
A mirthless grin: “Of course, one of the ways around that is simply to change your mind after you sent the message. But I can say with some confidence that the sender meant what they said at the time they said it.”
Eric’s snarl had the same savagery: “Hey, just to make our heads hurt a little more, couldn’t one of you guys get another one to put the mojo on him so he believed something during a conversation and switch it back afterwards?”
Adrian nodded crisply. “Yes, that act
ually can be done. It almost never is, because it requires letting down all your defenses and allowing another to control your mind. The only person I would allow to do that would be Ellen, and she does not have the capacity. And I am unusually non-paranoid, for a Shadowspawn purebred.”
Peter snorted, and spoke without turning his head. “Not long on trust, you guys, are you? And I thought John le Carre novels were bad!”
Adrian gave him a small sly smile. “Well, le Carre was—”
Peter pummeled his own temples. “God, how I always hated all-explanatory, non-falsifiable conspiracy theories! And now I’m living in one! You have no idea how offensive this is to a scientist.”
Ellen held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me le Carre was one of you, lover. Even if he was.”
“No, my darling, I shall cruelly torture you by leaving you in suspense. And here we are.”
The Prater had been an amusement park for more than a quarter of a millennium, or rather longer than the United States had existed; large chunks of it were still open even in the depths of winter. It was the sort of place that only really closed down for the apocalypse or a Russian invasion, and which featured a main avenue much like the Ringstrasse except that it was straighter. Ellen felt a slight pang as they walked through the cheerful crowds, many of them youngsters even at this hour, but many also good solid burghers just enjoying themselves among the restaurants and food stalls, the mimes and jugglers and haunted houses.
She would have loved it herself as a kid, but her family had never even made it to Orlando; some of the rides looked truly spectacular, the two-hundred-foot-high Ferris wheel in particular. It was well over a century old, too, though the gondolas were a fortunately much younger product of an early 21st-century restoration.
“Thank you,” Adrian said at the Ferris wheel’s ticket booth.
This time it wasn’t all old-world charm, or even the thousand euros. She could see something flicker in the attendant’s eyes as he changed his mind about telling them the ride was just now closing down. There were fifteen gondolas on the great wheel; they saw Peter and Cheba and the children into one. The great machine clanked and rumbled as it advanced to the next position.
Eric took a step back into the shadow. He had a gift for being inconspicuous, possibly just his training as a detective, or possibly his trace of the Power magnifying it. Two sets of footsteps approached. For a moment Ellen didn’t recognize the dark hook-nosed man in the lead—his hair was cropped close now, and he wore a casual-elegant dark suit with a camel’s hair overcoat draped across his shoulders cloak-fashion. He took a last puff of the cigarette he held between thumb and forefinger and flicked it away. His lucy/renfield, Kai, walked behind, silent and blank faced in her blue skirt-suit, one hand casually inside her open purse. Adrian nodded and extended a hand.
It wasn’t invitation to shake; they touched fingers in a gesture Ellen had seen among Shadowspawn before. Without looking back at her Adrian said:
“It is him, and in the flesh.”
It was easy enough for Shadowspawn to imitate each other in aetheric form, as long as they had some DNA for a template. A nightwalker who was really expert at imitating auras could fool even another adept unless there was direct contact; that was one point of the gesture. Dale Shadowblade flicked his eyes to her and Eric, then inclined his head and motioned to the gondola. They all climbed in and the machinery swept them up, up and up until even through the wet winter’s night the Prater and the greater Vienna beyond were a sweep of multicolored beauty. Faintly, she could hear the delighted laughter of the children from above. It seemed—and did—to come from another dimension, one where normal things existed and monsters did not stalk the waking world.
“I will speak to you through her,” Kai said, and in French.
No, not Kai, Ellen thought.
The voice was hers, and even the slightly slurred nasal urban working-class East Coast American accent, but the whole tone and cadence were different. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but she thought the girl’s pupils had expanded until they swallowed the iris and left only pools of black. Beside her she could feel Eric tense very slightly, like a hunting dog pointing. Adrian shrugged, indifferent to eccentricity and used to it.
“What do you have to say?”
“That Adrienne did indeed commission me to kill your Great-uncle Arnaud, for a beginning.”
Adrian shrugged again. “I had assumed that. You will of course be unwilling to state that before the others.”
Kai chuckled, and Ellen shivered a little at the grating sound. I’ve hated Kai ever since I met the vicious little bitch, she thought.
Among other things she’d acted as a Judas goat luring victims for her master and participated in the kills.
But right now, I can actually feel a little pity for her.
“Unwilling to die? Most certainly!” Dale said. “At least the Final Death. But possibly the body’s death, if I can get out from under her.”
“Then what use are you to me? You confirm something I already know, and give me no proof to use.”
“It is simple; demand that she produce me to prove my innocence. Furthermore, you may now swear—and demonstrate—that Dale Shadowblade agreed that Adrienne ordered him to kill her great-uncle, while he was under his brother’s protection on the train. That ought to be reasonably safe for you, if done in public and with care.”
The assassin lit another cigarette and looked out over Vienna. There was an interval of silence that felt like a steel string bending.
“Why?” Adrian said softly. “Any of us would have killed Arnaud, under the right circumstances. But why would she compel another to do so, and at such a crucial time?”
“He was the weak link. He was her original conduit to her great-grandfather, some time ago. It was a long considered plan, you understand. But he was developing…very strong reservations about her plans.”
“What sort of reservations? About Trimback Two?”
Dale shrugged. It was oddly disconcerting to have the body language in a conversation coming from one person, while the actual voice came from another. It produced an odd mental stutter, and made it that much harder to analyze the meaning of either. Doubtless that was part of the purpose of a tactic weird even by Shadowspawn standards.
“Not so much that as the little subplot you discovered considering the Brotherhood rogue and his bomb. Indeed, his last words to me were about that. He did not save his life, but it did make me think. Adrienne is very clever, but perhaps not as clever as she thinks, and she has a tendency to think of others as mere chess pieces for her cunning hand to move. Using this Harvey as a chess piece takes arrogance to the borders of folly, given his record—Shadowspawn who underestimated him before tended to die as did Tōkairin Michiko and her grandfather. And using her great-grandfather so, that lies beyond those boundaries into outright madness.”
“Ah,” Adrian said. “That has puzzled me. How does she plan to remove herself and her principal supporters from Tbilisi at the crucial moment without alerting the Council?”
“She does not. Somehow, she plans to preserve herself—and her favored ones—through the explosion. Too clever by half, eh? And it makes everyone in her party far too dependent on her for survival at the crucial moment. I do not find “trust me” a very convincing argument. Perhaps her definition of rival extends further than she says.”
Adrian spread his hands palm down, a gesture that said: you have a point.
“And you wish from me? Protection, perhaps?”
Dale Shadowblade laughed, a dry chuckle; horribly, Kai echoed it in a shrill giggle with exactly the same rhythm, like the very same sound moved up several octaves.
“The only protection for me is for Adrienne to die the Final Death, and to stay very much out of your way, my…friend. With the plague unleashed, you will have enough to occupy you for a good long time, I think. I wish to avoid the Final Death as long as I may.”
The wheel turned as they talked, which
Ellen hoped wasn’t too symbolic, or too much of an omen, and came to a stop at the entrance. Dale and Kai stepped out and walked away without another word, past the knot of park officials standing and arguing with each other, waving pieces of paper and tablets.
“I’m sorry if there’s a problem, meine Damen und Herren,” Adrian said smoothly, in faultless Viennese German. “I am truly sorry if we have violated any park regulations, but my children would have been so disappointed to miss this historic ride. We’ve come all the way from California, and our time is so limited. We have nothing like this at home, after all!”
“Oh, you are a smoothie!” Ellen murmured as they walked past, putting her arm through his. “You didn’t even have to spread any more cash around. Unless you were just telling them we aren’t the droids they are looking for?”
“No, no Wreaking. And while you can bribe some Austrians, it would be very risky to try it on a petty scale, openly and in a mixed group. Too much ordnungsliebe, even this far south and east.”
He turned his head to Eric; unless someone was using a directional microphone on them they had plenty of privacy. And, of course, Adrian could fry any such electronics. The crowd had thinned out, even before they left the Prater itself.
“What did you make of that conversation we had?”
Eric’s scarred and battered features knotted in a scowl. “My initial expert response? Fucked if I know. For starters, I don’t know French. This Apache guy does?”
“Shadowspawn are very old-fashioned—it is the formal language of diplomacy and high politics among us. Partly because so many of the post-corporeals are old enough that they grew up thinking that way, and partly because of the role the Brézés played in the original discoveries. And languages are easy for us. A week or two to acquire full native fluency, and the process doesn’t require much conscious effort. You can force it down to an hour or two with a Wreaking.”
Eric made brushing gesture. “Okay, so maybe it was better that I was focusing on his body language—and hers. Christ, that’s creepy, that ventriloquist dummy thing they were doing. Now, granted, I only met this guy once and he was naked and trying to kill me, but he didn’t give me the same…vibe then. If this was the first time I’d seen the guy I’d say he was a badass, right, but a lot less rough-hewn about it than my first impression back in Santa Fe if you know what I mean.”
Shadows of Falling Night Page 23