The Council of Shadows s-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Got to get out, got to get out. GottoGETOUT!

  Pushing on an open door. She drew herself back and he turned on his side, drawing into a fetal position, his arms wrapped around his chest.

  Chuckling, she let thoughts trickle through their linked minds, tumbled images of her mother baring her teeth-it would be easy enough to mistake one for another, and he'd been appropriately frightened when introduced to her postcorporeal but very much alive and hungry parents. Thoughts of pain, fear, the terrible unwanted ecstasy of feeding. Then the car in the garage, the money in the drawer. Decision firming.

  Backwards inch by inch, letting his mind flutter down deeper into sleep, breaking physical and mental contact. His eyes were flickering here and there in rapid eye movement, real dreams, but she'd seen how they would be shaped. Humans had such odd dreams, so…so uncontrolled.

  It could be enormous fun to ride their nightmares, in a subtler way than taking their personalities into your own memory palace, but Peter had had enough. This was business.

  Soon she was standing at the foot of his bed. "Poor Peter, I'm going to miss you," she murmured. "But perhaps we'll meet again, eh? Bon chance, little physicist."

  She turned and walked out into the dark courtyard, stretching with her arms over her head, blinking and yawning and favoring her tender new foot a little. The night was fairly young: around three o'clock, which was halfway through her waking cycle in normal times. There was more than enough light to see by, the glow from the town's streetlights and a few on the casa's grounds; even a human could have made his way, and it was enough for a Shadowspawn pureblood to read by, if the print wasn't too small. She took a long breath of the air.

  Now I'll pay Monica a visit…no, I'll have her up to the casa and play a little while I'm night-walking. Then a nice light meal, an omelette perhaps, maybe look in on the children, then some sweet, restorative sleep. And first a shower. Ah, the bourgeois pleasures!

  She let herself through the gate and walked upwards on a sweeping stone staircase between rows of cypresses.

  More night-walking, now that I can safely leave my body to take care of itself. The scents are lovely this time of year, with a nose that really works.

  And there was always the details of her plots. Plots and plans and intrigues, and so many crossed threads that even she had trouble keeping track of them. Nudging them through the web and warp of probabilities, towards…

  "The part where I get to be God," she mused. "Not just a God as I am now, but the God, with my face carved upon the moon."

  In the meantime, it was extremely convenient that everyone thought she was dead-including Peter, now, ready to walk out like a ticking bomb that her enemies would hug to their hearts.

  And Peter gets to be very, very brave and suffer a great deal. What a tragedy!

  "Fix us a drink, cherie?" Adrienne said.

  Muffled sounds; she concentrated, and things that might have happened did, even if they wouldn't have by themselves before the sun expanded and then collapsed into a red dwarf.

  The effort moved her hunger into the sharp, demanding phase; she'd drawn on her inner reserves for that. Adrienne suspected that metabolizing some sort of trace element was involved, but nobody had ever done much research on the biochemical pathways.

  Buckles unfastened and snaps clicked free. Monica lay for a moment panting around the gag before she pulled it free, wiped her face on a towel and rose from the great bed and walked stiffly towards the sideboard. This was Adrienne's own chambers in the casa grande, pale arched Fragonardesque elegance and space, which she'd missed so badly while she was sick and crowded by machines and people.

  Monica's step swayed more as she stretched, and she glanced aside at herself in one of the eighteenth-century mirrors in its ormolu frame.

  "And to think I once thought 'spank me rosy' was a figure of speech," she said playfully.

  Adrienne laughed. "It's your fault for having such a delectably elegant posterior."

  Michiko was right, she thought. She does look remarkably like Ellen apart from the hair color, and they both do look like Monroe, and I'd never thought of that before she mentioned it; Michiko can be disturbingly acute sometimes, when she bothers to make the effort.

  "Anything in particular?" Monica said. "Your word is my command."

  "Use your imagination, cherie. You're good at that."

  Monica laughed and struck a thoughtful pose, like Rodin's Thinker but standing up and female.

  Or Monica looks like Norma Jean before she became Monroe and went blond, whereas Ellen was a natural platinum. But the figure is very similar, allowing for Monica being a few years older than Ellen. Odd. But then, its logical that Adrian and I should have similar tastes, no? I don't think I have any particular type when it comes to males, except of course that they be pretty in one way or another. And their minds are almost as important.

  Adrienne put her hands behind her head and looked down at her toes; the left set was only a little paler than the right now, and no longer sore. She wiggled them with some satisfaction; it wasn't worth the trouble to override somatic memory when the waking form was so nearly back to normal.

  "Cocktail?" Monica asked. "One of those antique styles your parents like?"

  "Splendid idea. Retro can be amusing."

  She went to work with bottles and shakers, making a little dance of it, which was entertaining.

  Next to the bed was a painting; French Symbolist, showing the death angel bending over an old grave digger in a snowy cemetery, a soul-light in one cupped hand and her black wings making a counterpoint to the leafless branches; he'd dug his last grave, and it would be his own.

  Schwabe's La Mort et le Fossoyeur had always been a favorite of Adrienne's. For the obvious reasons, and for another: the model the artist used for Azrael's face had been her great-aunt Zoe. Who had long since died the Final Death, a matter of a little family disagreement, but Adrienne remembered her fondly from her own childhood.

  "Champagne Apricato," Monica said proudly, handing her a cocktail glass and drinking from her own.

  Adrienne took hers and sipped the chilly tart-sweet mixture. Champagne, apricot liqueur made on the estate, gin and the juice of fresh-squeezed lemons from just down the hill.

  "A bit too sweet for constant consumption, but superb of its kind," she said. "Much like you, Monica."

  The human blushed and smiled as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

  "In fact, when I was tucking Leila in earlier, she said you smelled like cake."

  Monica laughed. "They're wonderful children," she said. "So cute and smart…Do I really smell like cake?"

  "To a child. To me…a little. Definitely tasty. Perhaps a little more like kebab with a honey-mustard glaze. Also like sex on two legs, right now."

  "You are feeling better," Monica said as she sipped at her drink. Softly, glancing over her shoulder: "Will you kill me when my looks go, Dona?"

  They locked eyes. "Possibly. Or maybe not. But I'm going to swallow your soul in any case, so you'll never really die."

  Adrienne tickled her delicately with a toe-the pinkish, new oneand the human shivered.

  "That'll be…interesting, dying and knowing I'm not really going to die."

  "I can assure you that at the time you'll be very focused on the physical side of things."

  Another shiver. "But we get to go on with things together."

  "True. Of course, who knows what I'll be like in a few thousand years? Or what you will be? But we're both going to find out."

  The human's mind roiled, longing, lust, fear, adoration, and far down a faint screaming from the deeply buried core personality. She put her drink down by her feet; Adrienne knelt behind her and grabbed a handful of her hair, bending her head back. A shiver as the last of the cocktail was poured along her neck…

  Sometime later Monica sighed drowsily and wiped at a drop of blood on her forehead with the back of her hand. The delicious coppery smell of it mingled with the earthier body mus
k and sweat.

  "It's lovely to have you so active again, Dona," she said. "It's been a little lonely on Lucy Lane."

  "It has?"

  "With Jabar…gone…even if he wasn't very friendly."

  Well, he shouldn't have tried to run, Adrienne thought, and grinned. Though it was a nice bonding experience to hunt him down with Maman and Papa when they arrived from La Jolla. How he cursed and then squealed, there at the end when we ran him to ground in those woods. Papa was so inventive I wouldn't have thought a reptile could do that .

  "And Ellen too; it was nice to have another girl as a neighbor."

  "Cheba might be described as a girl," Adrienne said.

  "Cheba…Cheba isn't adjusting very well."

  "I thought you had her enrolled at all those ESL and adult-education classes at the high school? She's a veritable Horatio Alger story of immigrant success, in a way."

  "Yes, that's working out, but…There's Jose, of course, and Peter, they're both dears. I was going to ask Peter if he wanted to go up to San Francisco and take in the opera, if that's all right?"

  "Alas, I'm afraid Peter will be going too. You won't be seeing him tomorrow, in fact."

  Monica went very still; Adrienne tickled the back of her neck, savoring the chill of despair.

  "No, I'm not going to kill him," Adrienne said. "Not anytime in the immediate future, that is. He'll just be going away for a while."

  "I didn't think…" Monica said, over a rush of relief.

  "That I ever let anyone go? I don't."

  Like a cat with a mouse, Monica thought.

  "Exactly. And you should be prepared for some travel in the immediate future."

  "Paris?" Monica said hopefully.

  "Among other places. I've got a new plane, you'll enjoy it. An Airbus A380."

  "Oh, that sounds like a dream."

  "One of the better ones," Adrienne replied. "Though nightmares have their charm."

  Me llamo Eusebia Graciela Conines Angeles. Nanotoca Eusebia.

  "I name Eusebia."

  Cheba sat at her kitchen table, in her kitchen, in her house…in a country and state and town very, very far away from where she had been given her names.

  "I am practice my English. I…I am practicing my English…?Que lengua mas estupida!"

  Before her, scattered over the table, were books, a computer pad, notebooks and paper, all dappled with sunlight from the garden outside.

  The building wasn't totally unlike what she was accustomed to seeing, nor ones that her mother had occasionally scrubbed floors in: rooms grouped around a courtyard, pale stucco walls, red-tile roof. Nothing like anything she'd ever lived in, of course. This kitchen was bigger than any house she'd ever lived in before; at least, it smelled more the way she was familiar with now, cinnamon, cardamom, of fresh peppers and the strings of dried ones over the stove, poblanos, pasilla, chipotle, serranos, negros. A pot of corn was boiling with a hint of cal, chicken bubbling in a stew.

  Every detail was wrong, though. Better than the barrio, she had to admit. No wood smoke, no kerosene. The town wasn't big, but it made her feel alien and exposed.

  As for what lived here Her hands began to shake, and she stared at them stubbornly until they stopped. She had not slept very well. You didn't, when you were waiting for…No.

  Then she took up the pencil again. Her teacher had told her that handwriting was one of the best ways to make her new words sink into her brain.

  "I'm not feeling very smart today."

  Early in the morning, well before dawn, Monica and her mother had had a screaming fight out in the street. Cheba hadn't understood much, but she hadn't been able to get back to sleep. It was best not to think about that. She frowned at the last sentence instead. It wasn't right. She tugged on the gleaming black curl she'd wound around her left forefinger. ?Ingles! she thought in exasperation.

  It had auxiliary verbs. And they don't make sense! Oh! My, it is "my" name, mio! And my fathers and my mothers.

  The words hit her in the chest, squeezing, as memories opened and bled, and a single coughing sob burst out before she choked her lips shut. Images Father, happy drunk and mean drunk.

  They'd lived with her mother's parents in a brightly painted little cinder-block hut, on the edge of a small village. The dusty unpaved steet outside ran from the tiny town center to the hot, humid green jungle. Her mother, Alma Marta, had been an only child, and her husband had expected to inherit the lands from his father-in-law. But it hadn't happened. The elders hadn't liked his drunkenness, or the slovenly way he worked the lands for his father-in-law, and a cousin of hers had been granted the lands by the ejido when her grandfather had died.

  Unitario Cortines Cruz had left the village to find other work. She and her mother had stayed with the cousins.

  The only thing Papa found was his way into the grille of a very large truck. And I cannot even pretend it wasn't his own fault. He was probably looking at it and laughing when it hit him.

  That had been near Papantla, Veracruz. The news arrived at the village a few months later.

  Alma Marta Angeles Zapatero had found only cold charity with her cousins. She and her surviving child had walked and hitchhiked to Tlacotalpan.

  I do not remember the village all that well. We were hungry there, sometimes, yes. But it was not like the homeless camps and the shantytown. And selling those ugly baskets to the tourists for centavos on the peso didn't pay any better, and we had to buy everything. Everything stank of sewage. Even the sun and the rain were worse, all crowded together, and never any quiet, never a place to be alone even for a moment. Waking up and the bugs crawling on me and eating the calluses off my feet. I had to come to el Norte. The thieves, they were as bad as the bugs, and as many as the rats and pigeons and seagulls. The rats stole our food and the thieves stole our money.

  "Mama, you saved everything, for years. Sometimes you would tell me you had eaten when you hadn't, so we could put a little more in the box."

  She squeezed her eyes shut again. The final day had been hot and muggy even to her, raised in the coastal lowlands; just like all the others before it, but worse. She had danced across the great highway first, carrying most of the baskets, the fresh straw smell strong as she peered around them.

  I could see it on the men watching. They were looking at me, at my legs, and then their eyes went up and they saw behind me and they shouted.

  Brakes squealing and engine roar and tires skidding across the hot asphalt screaming like a trapped rabbit. Her own voice shouting, No, no, as she dropped the baskets and turned. The heavy, meaty thump came through the air like a blow, like a fist in the belly. A crackling with it, like sticks being twisted off a bush. All that before she could even turn and see, see what she knew and would not believe even when she saw it.

  There were baskets scattered all over the busy fairway, and she stood, teetering on the edge of the curb, watching the broken rag doll tossed into the air and rolling, bouncing and banging, under two more cars before traffic split about the shattered body. The screams of the sirens had echoed through her head, the flashing lights had played on her eyes as she stood frozen, watching the emergency crew bag the body up and bundle it into the back of the ambulance. The police had held people away, but they hadn't asked questions and the great truck was long gone.

  Who cares for the death of one more useless old India? And now, I have my truck. Her name is Adrienne, she told herself mordantly.

  The doorbell chimes startled her out of the fruitless reverie. Like everything in this maldito country; they were wrong! Who would have tooting, galloping horns for a knocker! She stumped through the living room and opened the door, scowling. Jose was there.

  They try, she thought. They try to be so nice. And I try, try to be polite to them. She silently stood aside to let him in and waved towards the kitchen.

  She frowned as he sat down; there was a blanched look to his skin, and the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were tight and tense.


  "?Una chela?" she asked.

  He nodded and wagged a finger at her. She stuck out her tongue, feeling as awkward as usual. He was Hispano like her, she should feel at home with him, but it didn't happen. He didn't feel like a bad man; she had experience enough and to spare with those, and you could tell. But he was different.

  "?Una cerveza?" she asked instead.

  He opened his mouth and then wagged his finger again. She sighed.

  " Bien, bien. Do…you…like…the…beer?"

  "Would you like a beer?" he corrected her. "Don't sigh, Cheba. It's really important you work at fitting in. Yes, there are many who can speak Spanish in this town, more than in most places around here-"

  "Why?" she asked.

  "This was a rancho…hacienda…long ago, before the Americans came. Under Spain, under Mexico. After that it was out of the way, not close to any of the cities. Anglos settled here only slowly; then the Brezes came, long ago-more than a hundred and fifty years-and since then, not many people leave, not many come in, we are a bit apart from the world. But it is still California, and if you cannot speak English well you are like someone with only one eye or one leg. Also my tia Joan has spoken to me about you."

  Cheba went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of the beer with the pretty label for Jose and a Jarritos soda pop for herself.

  "Your tia?. Is she a sister of your father or mother? And why does she care?"

  He took a long gulp from the bottle. "My father's older sister. As to why…Because…it's part of being human?"

  Cheba snorted. "Not like your tia Theresa?"

  She had met the Breze household manager that terrible day the people-smuggler Paco had delivered them to Rancho Sangre. They called them coyotes, but he'd met real shape-shifters. He had deserved to die; the others hadn't.

  He laughed. "Theresa? There's a story here that a snake bit her once, a rattlesnake."

  "What happened?"

  "The snake died."