The Council of Shadows s-2

by S. M. Stirling

  "That…that thing…"

  Abruptly he turned and vomited, the sharp stink cutting through the smell of blood. Adrian waited, and then offered his flask.

  "This will help, monsieur," he said.

  The man accepted it with both hands after he'd wiped his mouth on a handkerchief. "My God, what happened?" he mumbled.

  "Alas, you have become a danger," Adrian said.

  Indignation drove out some of the bewilderment. "A danger? To whom? How?"

  "To…the people we were discussing. It is not necessary that they know why or how you will be a danger. The fact itself casts its shadow in their minds."

  "Then why didn't they kill me when I was a baby?" Duquesne asked skeptically.

  Adrian clapped him on the shoulder; it was a good question, and a good sign that the man was thinking again.

  "Because the possibility was faint, one among an almost infinite number. When you took the first steps towards investigating that data… then the fan of might-be narrowed down enough to be noticed."

  "They…That man, that thing, was going to kill me just on a suspicion? They can do such things? The police, the authorities-"

  "Monsieur Duquesne, I cannot give you all the details of the last century and a half in this alleyway. Think of this: men who can walk through walls, read thoughts, transform themselves into the likeness of carnivorous beasts, bring ruin and death with a thought or a touch…are they likely to be constrained by the authorities?"

  "No," he whispered.

  "It's a shock," Ellen said sympathetically. "But you've got to get going and accept it, Monsieur Duquesne."

  "And they have noticed me," he said.

  Fortunately, you are not blaming me for that, Adrian thought. Yet .

  "And if they take notice they act," he confirmed. "Your life is less to them than a cockroach. Arnaud would have sensed it because he was close to you, like a scent drifting through time. And that closeness, it may have been the Power influencing his choices. Though he always did spend much of his time in Paris."

  Ellen crouched to put her face on the same level and took the man's hand in hers.

  "I know it's awful to find the world isn't what you thought it was, Professor Duquesne. It was for me, too, when the curtain got raised and I saw, saw the things underneath. But you've got to think now, no matter how hard it is. Or you'll end up like…"

  She swallowed, then visibly recovered by an effort of will.

  "…like him" she concluded, and pointed to the corpse of the man she'd shot.

  It lay with limp finality in a spreading pool of blood.

  "Not that he didn't deserve…Well, more about that later."

  She pulled him up. "Come with us if you want to live."

  "I…My colleagues…"

  "Your family?" Adrian asked sharply.

  "I am a widower, my parents are dead, and so is my only sister. No children…"

  "Then you are relatively immune to pressure through your loved ones, Professor. Now come."

  They turned and began to walk rapidly, almost hustling the stunned academic between them, down the opposite way from the way they'd entered the narrow alley. Behind there was a rising chorus of voices; a bleeding man had staggered out into the crowds and collapsed.

  That was not common in this part of Paris; they were far away from the banileus. By the time they were among people again he was walking almost normally, but Adrian could feel the stuttering tension in his mind, a sensation as of thoughts breaking off into fragments, almost like free association.

  Adrian looked over his shoulder. Was that too easy? he thought.

  "Well, now we've got a physicist, lover," Ellen said.

  Her color was better now, but her mouth looked drawn. Pauvre petite, he thought, not for the first time. Caught in the contentions of demons. Poor humanity, nursing its own nemisis in its bloodstream, unawares.

  "Yes," he said. "And perhaps he can actually do something. The very fact that Arnaud was moved to kill him indicates that he might."

  She frowned, a single line occurring between her brows; he'd long since concluded that she was even more intelligent than she was beautiful. The Power didn't make you any smarter, and it often made its possessors intellectually lazy. Why bother to shed skull sweat when you could just sense the best course of action, like guessing?

  "Funny that nobody else has ever thought to study the Power scientifically."

  Adrian grinned. He was beginning to feel exhilarated; Great-uncle Arnaud had tried to nip off a negative pathway…and he'd ended up expediting Adrian's purposes instead, swinging the course of events to favor his enemy more than if he had not acted at all. It was often so when adepts clashed; physical defeat was less than half of it.

  Not so odd," he said. "There are so few Shadowspawn, and modern physics has existed for only a few years. Probably your Peter was the only scientist who has ever been so closely exposed to someone with the Power who was willing to tolerate curiosity."

  They turned out of the far end of the alley. Behind him he could hear the distinctive oooo-an, oooo-an of French police sirens. "Nothing else has worked," he said. "Perhaps this will."

  "I wish we had Peter, though," Ellen said wistfully.

  CHAPTER NINE

  " Maman' s a woof!" Leila shrieked.

  The little girl flung herself at the great beast's neck; a hundred and twenty pounds wasn't much for a human, but it was very large indeed for a wolf.

  Adrienne ducked into a crouch as the small body landed on her back and clung with hands and feet. Then she jumped and bucked and swung back and forth mock-growling; carefully, just short of throwing her off, leaving her squealing with delicious terror. Leon laughed and darted in, grabbing at her tail.

  Ouch, she thought. Well, they are my children!

  That would have been obvious even to someone Power-blind; they had her olive complexion, regular high-cheeked faces, straight noses, Cupid's-bow lips and hair the color of a crow's wing. They resembled their father too, of course.

  A twist within, and she was an Arabian mare. Leila drummed heels on her ribs, and Leon pulled over a footstool and used it to scramble up behind her. They whooped as she trotted out the open French doors and into the garden courtyard of the nursery section. Then she broke into a slow, even gallop-running was fun when you were a horse-on the turf around the pool. The night was even dimmer to horse eyes, but she knew the terrain, and the juicy-sweet scent of the grass and the cool air were exhilarating.

  At last she halted by the doors. Transforming back to your own etheric form was always easiest, and the children tumbled onto the soft carpet with more laughter. A surge of effort overrode somatic memory and made the body she wore like her normal one, not the still-healing physical frame.

  "More, Maman!" Leon said. "Be a tiger!"

  "No more, my little weasels," she said firmly. "It's one o'clock. Go get ready for bed, and I'll tell you a story."

  Leila pouted a little, then sighed. "You don't go to sleep yet," she pointed out hopefully. "We missed you a lot."

  "My body is still a little sick, so I sleep nearly all day, little weasel one. And I need to feed after you go to sleep; turning into animals takes a lot of Power."

  "Who will you bite?" Leon asked with interest.

  "Peter," she said. "And then perhaps Monica, for dessert."

  "Monica's nice," Leila said. "She smells like cake. I don't think Peter likes us, though. I can feel it in his head. He feels real scared, too, even if he doesn't look that way. That makes my head…all prickly."

  Adrienne smiled, full of pride. Six was young to be that sensitive. She suspected Leon would have a little more raw strength when he was grown, though they'd both be very formidable. But the Power was a saber, not a club. Without subtlety, it could be dangerous to the wielder.

  "What're you going to do to them to make them taste good?" Leon asked, slightly ghoulishly.

  "Things that will make them have very strong feelings," Adrienne said. "Startin
g with chasing them. That's how you prepare humans for feeding."

  "Like putting ketchup on frites?"

  "Yes. It spices their blood with things we need and that taste very good, and you can…mmmm…get inside their minds and sense their feelings. That's a lot of fun too."

  "Not for the human," Leon said, with a smirk.

  "Sometimes it is, sometimes not," Adrienne said. "But it's what they're for, after all. They're our food."

  "If we drank more blood, could we do more things with the Power?" Lelia asked hopefully. "I like the way using the Power feels. I can keep the feather up for a whole minute now. Maybe-"

  "No," Adrienne said again, firmly. "You have to wait for that. You have to grow up and become strong first."

  This time she used a little of the Power herself, cloaking herself for a moment in shadow and awe and a tinge of fear; the two children blinked their yellow-flecked black eyes and looked away. She could feel their minds roiling, slightly startled, instinctive childhood deference and an equally inbred defiance. More pressure, until their eyes dropped.

  You had to be careful with purebred Shadowspawn children, and there had been none so pure as these for twelve thousand years or more. Not since the Empire of Shadow. More than one Council member had argued that they should be destroyed before they reached adulthood as too dangerous. It probably was going to be trying when they hit puberty, but if the world didn't like it, the world could do the other thing.

  Inwardly she bared teeth at the universe; let any try to harm her get! And at the thought her spine bristled, the little hairs trying to come erect. She blinked at the thought, grasping with the Power for the thread of possibilities, but it spun away into infinity. Children were made of potentials, and these more than most.

  "You're too young for more than a sip of blood now and then," she said, bending and putting a hand behind each head, locking their gaze with hers. "It'll be years yet before you can really feed, or night-walk. You have all the time in the world to wait. Now off with you!"

  The two slight raven-haired forms scampered away to don pajamas and brush their teeth. She picked up a robe and threw it over herself as she walked into the bedroom; it opened on a balcony with a chest-high balustrade of carved marble fretwork, and over that in the distance she could see the moon setting over the Coast Range hills.

  The room was big, and there was a spray of toys, shelves of picture books and murals of children's stories from the manor's last rebuilding in the 1920s: Bre'r Rabbit squealing in bulging-eyed despair and agony in the jaws of Bre'r Fox, Cinderella trimming the feet of her stepsisters as they screamed and writhed, Jack stamped beneath the giant's foot, Hansel and Gretel burning in the witch's oven…

  All the classics, she thought. Tradition does have its place.

  The children returned, smelling of soap and toothpaste and virtue. She gave each a hug, and then they climbed into their beds. Leila cuddled her doll, and they both rolled over to face her with the covers drawn up as she sat on the chair between them.

  "Story!" Leila said, her voice carrying a hint of her mother's firm tone of command. "You promised."

  "Yeah!"

  "But certainly," Adrienne said. A moment's thought, then:

  " 'Once there was a little girl with a red hood. She was a pretty girl, with pale skin and veins that showed, and she smelled like flowers and hamburgers and chocolate-chip cookies, just scrumptious. But everyone knew she'd come to a very bad end, and she did!'"

  The children grinned, their eyes alight. Their mother went on:

  " 'Well, one day she was walking to her grandmother's cottage in the woods. Her grandmother was old and useless, but a beautiful strong wolf broke down her door and chased her around and ate her right up, yum! yum! Then-'"

  Eyes drooped as an active day took its toll. She put the book down and began to rise. Leila was snoring, but Leon blinked at her.

  " Maman?" he said, his voice slurred.

  "Yes, my darling?"

  "What's Papa like?"

  Ah, she thought.

  "Well, he looks a lot like you," she said. "And a lot like me. And he's very, very powerful. His name is Adrian."

  "Will Papa ever come and live with us?"

  "I don't know, sweetie. I hope so, someday."

  "I would like that," Leon said. "I dream about him, sometimes."

  Leila murmured drowsy assent, and Adrienne felt the Power prickle at her nerves again, a message too faint to read, like a sound not quite heard in a nighted forest.

  When she felt the minds of both children spiral down into deep sleep she walked to her own chambers-through the walls for practice's sake, pausing a moment before each to will them open. It was really more a matter of making yourself impalpable, but that was the way she'd always visualized it and you didn't alter what worked. A glitter, the solid plaster and stone fading, and the slightest tug as she walked through- the probability matrix that made up an etheric body interpenetrating with the gross material atoms of the structure.

  When her corporeal form opened its eyes she stretched.

  "Now I'm hungry," she said.

  "How do I look?" Adrienne Breze said a few hours later, glancing over her shoulder at her nude image in the mirror. "Sort of a butch thing, perhaps, with the hair still short?"

  Hmmm. I'm still too thin; it's the Case of the Amazing Disappearing Tits. And I do not like my hair only an inch long. If I want to look like a man, I'll night-walk and turn into a man.

  That was easy enough; all you needed was an individual's DNA to copy him or her in etheric form, and it was slightly easier with a human than a wolf or a tiger. It could also be a lot of fun, though if she had had to choose one or the other she'd have picked female without hesitation.

  We're more flexible, literally and metaphorically, she thought. Fortunately, I can take my pick.

  She had a remarkably wide selection of templates. Biting someone did nicely, and semen was even easier than blood as a source sample. Any body fluid would do in a pinch.

  And my new foot is still a little smaller than the other and disgustingly pink and gets sore easily. Still, I look much better than I did a few weeks ago. And my appetites are coming back, I feel almost normal as long as I don't overexert.

  Peter Boase mumbled from the bed, three-quarters unconscious. The room smelled of sweat and blood and musky sex, and strong, sweet lady-of-the-night jasmine in great terra-cotta jars outside the glass doors. This was his own house on Lucy Lane, not her chambers in the casa grande above; logically enough, it was where her lucys lived. The houses were comfortable, middle-class buildings in the same Spanish Revival style as the whole of the town, about twenty-five hundred square feet, with rooms grouped around an interior courtyard patio; those backed on the outer wall of the estate gardens.

  She walked back to the bed and climbed onto it, onto the man there, and straddled him, resting her chin on her palms and looking down at him. He was short, only a few inches taller than she, perhaps five-six, blond and fine-featured and slim. His skin felt warm, almost flushed, compared to the cool linen on her knees and shins.

  "Peter," she whispered. And, within: Peter.

  He was deeply asleep, wandering through evil dreams. She touched the surface of his interior dialogue delicately, her eyelids drooping as she let the rhythms of consciousness synchronize. You couldn't talk to someone's mind like this-not if they weren't Shadowspawn of fairly pure blood-but you could suggest things. The thoughts were one. You could persuade…

  Adrienne is dead.

  A startling leap of joy, life, freedom-the sort of pleasure that came when a long-existing agony was relieved. Then crashing despair.

  No. She's alive. Sick, but alive.

  Adrienne is dead.

  Make it his own thought; not a wish, the ring of conviction.

  I saw her die. Overtones, joy…not too much, not the savage exultation she'd feel herself watching an enemy perish, add a little revulsion.

  Now guide, gently, gently. The mind
wanted to believe, and they were deep-linked, by pleasure, by pain, by the bond of blood.

  The heavy bullet ripped Hajime's head open, and the Shadowspawn lord disappeared, a fucking sabertooth leaping at him as he died.

  All that was real, that had happened.

  Gone, gone, Hajime just gone, Monica down and Jose protecting her with his body, get between her and the danger too, another bullet going by with an astonishing crack sound, not a bang at all, not like anything he'd ever heard in a movie, and a peeeenngggg sound as it hammered off stone. Shadowspawn running riot, the night-walking or postcorporeal guests transforming into a nightmare collection of beasts and birds.

  The thoughts/memories/images/sensations ran faster and faster, with the iron taste of truth.

  Ellens face contorted with rage and smashing the foil-sheathed hypo down on Adriennes foot, the great silverback gorilla standing roaring with the bench in its hands, Ellen riding the sabertooth as it leapt for the roof of the pavilion -

  Adrienne jerking, screaming, slumping in death No.

  Yes. That happened -

  An image of Michiko leaping forward with the wakizashi raised To fight the sabertooth, holding it out two-handed, looking around in terror. Adrienne just lay there, and she breathed a few more times, then her chest jerked and there was a sound in her throat and it stopped. Her eyes, the pupils didn't dilate anymore. Dead, dead…

  Yes.

  Yes. Saw that. Saw that. Fear since, fear of her parents, they're dead but somehow they're alive…

  His mind trailed off into a matrix of equations, trying to understand how a neural net could float free of the flesh that had given rise to it, wrap a synthetic body around itself to go forth and feed. Curiosity burned almost as strong as the need to live, somehow tied into reproduction and the life-death cycle down in the base of his hindbrain.

  His mind was almost as unusual as Ellen's, in its way.

  Withdraw, withdraw, let the pattern repeat, repeat. Memories uncoiled as they were recalled, reknit as they were stored, again and again. Memory wasn't a recording, it was a song, a story the mind told itself, very slightly different every time. Croon it into the shape of desire…