Shadows of Falling Night (37 page)

“And they and Harvey fought together, didn’t they?”

“That too. We are capable of some bonds.”

She turned and touched the backs of her fingers to his cheek for an instant. “Yeah,
you
are. The Brotherhood isn’t giving you much support.”

“The Brotherhood, what is left of it after generations of defeat, is busy preparing for Trimback Two. Thanks to you, they have the pattern for the vaccine. If they can preempt Adrienne with it…her plan can be turned on her…the whole nature of things revealed in the process. The inner circle of the Brotherhood are understandably…focused.”

“Don’t they
care
about a
nuclear bomb
?”

“Not as much as you would think,” Adrian said grimly. “They are…they think of it as being commanders and generals in a long war against great evil.”

Ellen remembered the Hôtel de Brézé, and the way the post-corporeals made their un-lives an endless psychopathic revenge against the living without even realizing their own motivations. Or for that matter, the way Shadowspawn like Adrienne reduced themselves to cartoons, willing stereotypes of wickedness.

“Well, yeah,” she agreed…more or less. “I’ll go with the
against great evil
part, yupper, no dispute.”

“And commanders, they would say, must be prepared to make great sacrifices.”

“The problem there is I come from a long line of people, like for example Polish peasants and Pennsylvania coal miners, who ended up on the receiving end of
necessary sacrifices.
Other people decided it was necessary, and we got sacrificed. Making a sacrifice is really pretty easy, when you’re the one holding the knife.”

“They think in terms of campaigns. Good men…or at least men on the side of good…burned Dresden to the ground and annihilated Nagasaki. Even if Adrienne somehow uses the bomb to destroy her Shadowspawn enemies, that makes so many the less of the powerful Council adepts—and makes it more likely that Brotherhood can turn the Trimback Two option on her. The lives of
billions
are at stake. And you have met my great-grandfather, and Adrienne. What do you think the world would be like when they are as they wish, demon-gods openly worshipped and feared?”

“Euuww. Complete and total euuuwness,” she said…lightly, but with an underlying creeping feeling she knew he could sense.

“What is one small city to that?”

“That’s…cold.”

He smiled crookedly. “
I
am trying to prevent it. I have persuaded them to help. Though I have my doubts whether that was the right thing to do; and they doubt even more.”

She clutched his hand fiercely. “You have doubts? Welcome to the club, you
are
human.”

“Remember what I just said? Many of the uppermost in the Brotherhood
can
feed, do feed. Mostly on cold donated blood, which believe me is unspeakably unpleasant, and they
can
nightwalk. They are…lucky, and cunning and strong, and tend to survive where others die. Inevitable in a group where death is more common than life. And the life the survivors have is hard and dangerous and full of constant fear.”

Ellen suddenly looked at him. “Adrian,” she said. “If…let’s say all this turns out well…wouldn’t Shadowspawn tend to rise to the top, anyway? People with a lot of the genes, at least? I mean, we can’t undo the knowledge that the capacities exist.”

Adrian laughed. “What do you think has been happening throughout
history, my darling? Why
did
the heritage persist, given all the disadvantages it also carries? A tenth of Asia is descended from Genghis Khan, the geneticists have found. The great sin of the Council…of the Brézés…was to separate out the bloodlines. Let them be mingled.”

“Eh?” he went on, and kissed her fingertips.

His phone played a snatch of Debussy. He brought it to his ear, listened, and his face became a motionless mask of cast iron.

“They have found it,” he said. A crooked smile. “You will not stay behind,
hein
?”

“What, and wait for the fireball to come find
me?
If it happens, I want it to be quick, and with you.”

“And with you,” he said, dropping a note on the table.

“That too.”

“My, but I spend a lot of my time in disused warehouses,” Ellen said, controlling her breathing.

That really did help…though just ignoring the fear as much as you could was even better, treating it as something that happened outside you and not worth much attention. A big part of learning to handle things like this was realizing that fear just wasn’t as important as you’d thought before you experienced a lot of it. Though she suspected doing that was something she’d have to pay for in the long run.

“Inside your head and in reality too,” she went on lightly.

“An old warehouse or disused factory is the ideal if you need abundant space that is inconspicuous,” Adrian replied. “This group would attract attention in a hotel.”

“Unless you stuck a camera crew in a corner and pretended that this band of hardcases was making Bond film twenty-nine.”

The dozen Brotherhood operatives sitting and talking quietly or working on their kit were a mixed lot. There were eight men and four women: Europeans, Turks, two who looked as if they came from below the Sahara—the one with the ritual scars in particular—an a couple of East Asians and uncharacterizables. Half of them were smoking, too. If you had the Power, you could do that without worrying about the consequences. Getting cancer was a matter of bad
luck
…

They all wore clothes that were dark, rugged and practical without shouting
deadly supercommando secret society SWAT squad;
besides that, to anyone who saw them the only thing they all shared was ages ranging from early twenties to early middle age.

No, not quite the only thing.

They shared a hard-faced toughness, more a mental than a physical quality, though they had the tensile readiness that showed they were at home with violence too. They had a weird collection of weapons, tailored for the sort of thing they usually did. Nothing automatic, nothing complex except for one futuristic-looking and very massive sniper rifle; the firearms were simple cut-down break-open shotguns with twin barrels or those even more cut down coach gun things or revolvers, along with plenty of blades of various types and a couple of crossbows and martial-arts-style thingies. The silver plating on the blades and silver-jacketed ammunition wouldn’t be necessary for Harvey Ledbetter, or Farmer and Anjali if they’d gone over to their old boss, but they’d work just as well as naked steel and lead, and it was what they were used to.

She checked her own gear; revolver and a couple of knives, and there was a Kevlar lining to her bush jacket, light silver mesh here and there, and various harmless looking objects that were actually amulets with embedded Wreakings. She wouldn’t need the silver, none of the people
they were going after could nightwalk, but the amulets might well come in useful. All three of them could Wreak on a level that made them nightmares to a human normal like her.

Couple of tabs of valium would be welcome too, but we’ll have a stiff brandy and a quiet cuddle afterwards instead, and Adrian can have a sip of blood, which is
really
soothing…for both of us. Christ, Harvey, why did you have to do this? I
like
you and you saved my life. Also you’re too smart and tough for comfort if you’re not on my side.

Then she went over the plans again; the target was yet another old building, one dating from the 1930s and an early example of Bauhaus Industrial with a flat roof.

“Ah, it looks as if things are about to move,” Adrian said with satisfaction.

Two newcomers walked in, and they
were
past middle age, though slim and vibrantly fit. One was a man who had the tell-tale yellow flecks in dark eyes that often showed up with a heavy dose of Shadowspawn blood; very much like Adrian’s, in fact. The woman’s eyes were pale blue and her white hair cut to a cap of curls, but she gave off the same subliminal crackling sensation Ellen had come to associate with adepts. The genes for appearance weren’t very closely linked to the ones that controlled the Power.

“We’ve located the device…or at least, we’ve located the place Harvey Ledbetter has been using and we cannot locate the device with the Power,” she said, in a crisp British accent with an overtone of something else. “Which is itself a valuable clue.”

Nobody’s using
their
names,
Ellen noticed; though the team had introduced themselves.
Paranoid, what?

“Is there going to be interference from the Council?” one of the grunts said.

Adrian cleared his throat. “Probably not, this time,” he said. “That is the most I can say. The factions there are like a knot of adders.”

“What a surprise,” someone muttered.

The looks Adrian got were almost as sidelong as they’d been at the Hôtel de Brézé or the church in Vienna. Her husband had always been an independent operator…or loose cannon…even by the standards of the Brotherhood’s decentralized operations. Plus he had close family links with the enemy’s upper echelons. And she suspected there was an element of sheer envy at his command of the Power.

“Ledbetter is an outlaw,” the Brotherhood woman went on.

Brotherhood woman,
Ellen thought mordantly.
They haven’t bothered to make their terminology more
inclusive,
have they? Why am I not surprised? It’s a different world in here. And once you’re inside, nothing outside seems really real.

The adept went on: “If Guha and Farmer are with him, they are too. Lethal sanction regardless of collateral damage is authorized. Don’t hesitate; it doesn’t take long to throw a switch.”

Even his hard-bitten crew winced a little at that; she did herself. One little switch, or with this crowd just a flash of thought, and you became an ionized gas. She
hoped
Harvey wouldn’t do that with so many civilians around…but then, she hadn’t expected him to go rogue like this in the first place. Even Adrian hadn’t, and he’d grown up around the Texan. It might be some subtle mental influence from Adrienne or one of her minions; yet another hellish thing about the Shadowspawn world was that you could never quite tell for certain whether
anyone’s
mind was entirely their own. Mental compulsion could be extremely subtle, extraordinarily so, a matter of imperceptible nudges at the probabilities of individual decisions.

“What’s our insertion?” another asked.

“Vertical.”

“Helicopter?” the man said dubiously. “Noisy…and very complex.”

Complex meant vulnerable.

“No, we’ve arranged something rather less noticeable,” the man with the yellow-flecked eyes said. “Bless the tourist trade.”

Adrienne frowned at Dale Shadowblade. “Why are you speaking French so often?” she said.

“Practice.” He shrugged, keeping his face to where the sun had set before he arrived.

Adrienne returned the gesture at the man’s back. Her ally had always been taciturn; playing up to the Apache Devil stereotype, perhaps.

“Do you want your toy back?” she said, nodded to where Kai huddled in a corner, hugging herself.

“I suppose so,” he said. A smile: “You seem to have been educating her.”

“There are times when roadside diners are just what suits the mood,” she said with another shrug.

Kai scuttled over behind him with a lunge…but did not, Adrienne noted, touch.

“Thank you,” Adrienne said absently as Monica handed everyone coffee and retired to the corner—she hated being around other Shadowspawn.

As well she might,
Adrienne thought.
She has the most
appetizing
mind, like the aroma of fresh blueberry muffins.

“It went well at the warehouse?” she said, sipping the coffee. “I was glad to have you ask for a written précis of the plan.”

Which you usually don’t,
she added: Dale was a loner and arrogant even by the standards of her species.
But worth the trouble to cultivate. Arnaud…Arnaud could have been a problem. And when a person causes you problems, remember: no person, no problem.