Shadows of Falling Night (45 page)

“Will…will it hurt?” the woman said, and Monica pulled a chair up and sat across from her and her husband.

The guest stateroom was compact but comfortable…though the porthole was far too small for anyone to squeeze through and the door could be securely locked from the outside. Adrienne Brézé hadn’t done anything as pedestrian as hire a local craft for her impromptu sea voyage. Months ago she’d had her yacht—the
Morey
—sail from San Diego through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic and wait for her in Istanbul on the off chance that she would need it; of course, her hunches were of a different order from those of ordinary mortals. It was a modified Grand Banks schooner originally built to order in Oregon, three hundred tons and two tall masts, with ample room to pick up a couple of lucy candidates and all the special features she desired.

Hunting and killing is all very well, but one-night stands tire after a while,
she’d said.
You want something more emotionally complex. And I don’t want to leave a trail of floating empties across the Black Sea. That would be…uncouth.

“Ummm…” Monica said, wondering how to put things tactfully.

You poor dears. It’ll take a while to adjust.

“Well, not the feeding so much,” she went on, trying to be reassuring without an offensive chipperness. “At first there’s only a little sting and you feel…detached, accepting…And later, after a couple of times, it gets really, ummm,
nice
. A major rush, better than anything including…well, better than anything. You start craving it quite a lot after a couple of days without.”

Worse than cigarettes or even heroin, in fact, but there was no need to go into that just now. The couple sitting on the guest room bunk were quite young…though no younger than Monica had been when her car broke down passing through Rancho Sangre that evening so long ago.

They’d gone into the wrong…or right…café in Istanbul on their honeymoon and caught Adrienne Brézé’s eye as she prepared to depart, and ended out stumbling after her in a daze of Wreakings. It was touching to see how the young man kept his arm protectively around her shoulders, despite his own terror.

Right café,
Monica told herself firmly.
Pretty soon, being a lucy is going to be the luckiest thing in the world. It’s all for the best in the long run. I’m sure we’ll be good friends eventually…it will be nice to have some company again, people who understand.

“Th…that doesn’t sound so bad,” Jessica said hopefully.

Monica sighed and went on gently: “But other parts of it are probably going to hurt a bit, yes. And be…stressful. You should just keep thinking
I can do this
all the way through and it won’t go too badly, though. It takes a while to get used to.”

Jessica Bertsch whimpered slightly and gripped her husband Todd’s hand;
his
eyes flicked to her and then to Dave Cheung leaning in the doorway with a Glock in his hand. They were both extremely frightened, of course; your first glimpse of a nightwalker transforming evoked primal terrors. A hundred and fifty thousand years as the prey species of
Homo nocturnis
ensured that the genes remembered, besides the way it knocked the world out from beneath your feet.

Then there was the kidnapping, the armed guards and the prospective violation.

“The
Doña
is going to be, ummm, very hungry when she wakes up. She’s doing a lot with the Power tonight, you don’t need to know the details yet, but it makes a Shadowspawn ravenous. Our blood is the fuel for the Power. Though they eat normal food as well, of course.”

“She turned into…a tiger,” Todd said; his voice held the peculiar tone of someone who had no doubt that they’d seen something but still
didn’t really believe it. “A tiger. And she walked through the wall. And her body was still there.”

“They can do that, yes. It’s called the aetheric body, and when they come out it’s called nightwalking. And…umm, they can read your mind, too, so…no fibbing! It has to be a completely honest relationship. And they can do a lot of other things. Right now, though, you need to focus on getting through your first feeding.”

“And you…” he said.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been a lucy for ten years now. So you see, it isn’t that bad. What I’d advise is that you, Jessica, be right next to her when she comes back from nightwalking and re-enters her body. She’ll just go for your throat then, and after she’s drunk a pint or two of your blood you’ll be…sort of glassy and spaced-out for a while. That will be the drug in the bite getting a hold on you.”

Todd Bertsch was a graceful-looking man, with wavy dark-red hair and freckles and a body that looked like a gymnast’s, shown to advantage in the briefs that were all either of them wore. He also looked mutinous. Monica smiled at him and spoke reassuringly.

“No, really, Todd, I understand your concern and it’s very sweet, but that’s safest for her. Then Jessica will be quiet while the
Doña
, ummm, well, she’s going to be feeling playful by then. Excited. When the
Doña
has been at you for a while and fed again on you she’ll be more relaxed and less…well, a bit less dangerous for Jessica when it comes to playing. So you’ll be protecting her this way, really.”

That would appeal to his feelings, and had the advantage of being true. Monica patted the sobbing woman on the shoulder.

“It’s all right to cry and be scared, honey. I was too and I cried
all the time
at first. But this whole thing is natural. Just remember you’re serving this
need
. It can be quite satisfying if you think of it that way, feeling
your blood draining into the hunger. It’s what we humans are for, like flowers for hummingbirds. It can be beautiful as well as terrible. The
Doña
is really the nicest Shadowspawn there is, too.”

“There’s more of them?” Todd said.

“Oh,
thousands
. All over the place, little bunches everywhere. They run the world, pretty much. I mean, who could stop them from doing anything they want? They just don’t let people know, though I understand that’s going to change soon.”

She looked at her phone; it wasn’t long before dawn. “Come on, let’s get things ready.”

Dave Cheung motioned with the gun. Todd glared at him, but they both rose and walked down the corridor, through the sitting room and into the stateroom of the
Morey.
Which was named after the giant eel, a voracious ambush predator.

It was part of the stern of the ship and ran its full width, darkly lit by light reflected off the surface of the water and coming through the outward-slanting windows that made a semicircle at the rear. The panels and floor were African rosewood, and there was an oval king-sized bed and a few other items of understated furniture and some Tabriz carpets. Adrienne looked almost childlike as she lay with the cream silk coverlet drawn up under her chin and her arms crossed on her shoulders.

Jessica checked at the sight of the delicately carved ebony X-shaped frame with the restraints and the clamps bolted to one wall, and the various toys. Her eyes seemed focused on the whip, then took in some of the other things.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right,” Monica said. “That’s for play, later; I mean,
I
spend a fair bit of time tied up like that and it’s really quite stimulating when you’re used to it, and it makes your blood sort of…tasty.
Todd, get her to lie down here on the bed, that’s right. Then you sit here, in this chair next to the bed.”

He jerked as the renfield gunman secured him to the chair with a padded restraint built into the arm.

“There, you sit beside her, Todd,” Monica said. “This is just so you don’t get in the way when the
Doña
goes for her. Things could get…out of hand if you did that, it’s a natural impulse, but…I mean, really bad. Never, never try to interrupt a feeding, it, um, sets them off. You can fight and resist afterwards, she quite likes that sort of game.”

Jessica’s brown eyes were wide, and her dark skin had roughed as if with a chill, though the chamber was at a perfect mild seventy degrees, with a subtle scent of flowers. Dave gave her a wink as he left, and Monica scowled at him.

It’s their first time,
she thought, annoyed.
Don’t spoil things, Dave. It should be dark and awful and terrible, but…pure and wonderful too. Really, sometimes I think you have no class at all.

Of course, he wasn’t really a lucy, though the
Doña
fed on him now and then; basically he was a renfield, a helper-worker. Monica looked at the time again, moving towards the door, and wondering if she should have warned the Bertsches about the
special thing
Adrienne could do to you with her mind. Technically it involved stimulating certain centers in the brain with jolts of the Power, though it certainly didn’t
feel
like it happened in the head. They’d certainly be experiencing that in the next couple of hours, but…

No, it’ll be such a nice surprise and help them come to terms with things. It feels so much better than you’d expect from hearing someone talk about it. Though it does sort of change your self-image.

Not long to dawn…could Adrienne have been delayed, so that she’d have to spend the day in deep water?

No. She’s here, she’s close.

There was an unmistakable flavor when nightwalkers approached, if they weren’t hiding and you’d experienced it before. A chill, a feeling of being
lost
somehow, even in the most familiar place, as if the world had changed around you to another place with completely different rules. The couple looked about wildly; they didn’t know what it meant. Adrienne Brézé entered her lair through the wall, flowing, twenty-two feet of reticulated python marked in blue and green and black. Jessica gave a series of hiccupping moans and shook in terror too paralytic for anything louder as the head reared over the foot of the bed and then slid under the sheet, winding itself around her body coil upon coil. Monica shivered herself and licked her lips; she knew exactly how that coiling embrace felt, so cool and resilient and irresistibly strong.

The snake sparkled and disappeared as Adrienne returned to her own flesh-body. Jessica tried to scramble up as the yellow-flecked dark eyes opened and turned to look at her with a smile, but Adrienne pounced in a blur of speed, arms and legs trapping her and mouth lunging for the neck with the lips rolled all the way back from the teeth. Monica slipped the door closed as the victim screamed once, high and desperate, and her husband shouted in helpless anguish.

The door was nearly soundproof, but Dave was looking at a screen set in the desk of the sitting room outside. Monica marched over and tapped three times on the screen, locking it out of internal surveillance mode. The sensors were keyed to her fingerprints, of course.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he protested.

“Whatever I please, because she
listens to me
, Dave.”

The man snarled at her; she wasn’t impressed, having been snarled at by people who did it much better.

“Where do you get off being so high and mighty?” he said. “She—”

“
She’s
a Shadowspawn adept,
I’m
a favorite lucy…and you are just a
creep
, Dave. You are a…a
toad
. Show a little respect for people’s feelings!”

He met her eyes for a second, then glanced aside. She went on briskly:

“Go and tell the captain she’s back. He knows what to do then. And tell the cooks…”

She thought. “A late lunch for two here. And something for the Bertsches in their cabin, something rich and special with plenty of liquids. They’re going to be shaky and they’ll need to talk things over and have some privacy.”

He nodded and stalked out. Monica nodded to herself as she sat and brought the screen live, setting it to turn on the camera and record, and began to compose her daily message to Sophia and Josh, composing her face into a smile.

Somebody
had to keep up standards around here.

“We had a wonderful time in Istanbul. I’m sending a file of pictures and
yes
, there will be
presents.
I saw Leon and Leila with their dad in Vienna and they say
hi!
—”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Caucasus

“T
here it is,” Ellen said grimly, as the Tulip came to a stop half a mile offshore.

The wreck of the gulet they’d been chasing lay on the low muddy shore, both masts broken off and lying forward in a tangle of rigging and sails. A huge ragged hole in the shoreward side gaped empty; past this spot the coast rose to low jagged cliffs. The wind was off the land, cool and smelling of green and damp earth. Up above the waterline was a section of planking and beams, its edges matching the hole in the ship’s flank.

They were well north of Batumi, the main port of Georgia; somewhere close to one side or the other of the border with the secessionist Republic of Abkhazia, an irritated triangular piece of land thrust like a
sore thumb into the westernmost Caucasus Mountains. She’d vaguely recalled reading headlines about troubles here all her life. If she recalled correctly, they’d started
before
she was born, back when the old Soviet Union broke up.