Shadows of Falling Night (44 page)

She looked at him narrow-eyed; Harvey could feel her questioning, besides seeing the reflection of her face in the glass of the cockpit. As he’d said, it was impossible even in theory to be sure whether he was his own agent or hers right now. Nobody in the Brotherhood could ever be fully confident of their comrades, and the consequences of betrayal were one reason Brotherhood agents tended to have relatively short lives and long, tortured deaths.

“You’re right,” he said. “And then guess what?”

“Well, they’d know about the shield—the first real advantage we’ve ever had. And then Trimback One,” Farmer said, and began to laugh as well. “Trimback One would be back on the table.”

“Good and proper,” Harvey agreed. “Which would mean
hundreds
of nukes getting tossed around. Upper-level air-bursts for the EMP effect,
granted, but still massive casualties, and then everything would just purely go to shit. Oh, a hell of a lot more than one groundburst in Tbilisi. Plus the Brotherhood can
beat
Trimback Two, maybe even win the war for good, but not with Trimback One.”

The two younger agents began to snicker themselves. “So he can’t destroy the shield,” Farmer said. “He can’t even sink the ship.”

Anjali clapped her hands together. “He must
capture
the bomb and keep the shield going until he dismantles it! Whereas if we set the bloody thing
off
the Council lords will have only seconds of warning, if that!”

“Like Sauron and the One Ring at the Crack of Doom,” Harvey said with immense satisfaction.

Farmer scowled. “Why didn’t you explain this in more detail?” he asked.

“Keeping y’all on your toes,” Harvey said blandly. “Worked, didn’t it? He can’t sink us, but turning this thing into a drifting hulk would work.”

“It works both ways,” Anjali said. “Adrienne is limited in how she can attack
him
if he has her children along…and he probably does.”

“Probably, and on a boat not much different from this, I’d guess,” Harvey said. “If Adrian’s nightwalking in a marine form, pro’bly a dolphin or an orca, that limits his range. He’d come right after us after that little hoedown in Istanbul…or at least I would have, in his position, and I trained him.”

He released the spokes long enough to rub his hands for an instant. “We got Mutual Assured Destruction, folks! And if we don’t lose, we win.”

Harvey turned utterly serious. “Now we’ve got to plan how to hold him up once we get ashore. Hold him
just
long enough.”

Anjali and Farmer looked at each other. “You don’t want us to go to Tbilisi with you?” Farmer said carefully.

“You particularly want to come?” Harvey asked. “’Cause when I set the timer…if I get a chance to do it that way…”

Chances of getting out alive will range from slim to absolutely none,
went unspoken.

“We are willing to take the risk if it is crucial to the mission,” Anjali said flatly, if not enthusiastically; Farmer grunted and nodded.

Harvey shook his head. “I can’t fight my way into Tbilisi. With every adept in the
world
there? I wish! And I can sneak as well alone…maybe better. What I need you to do is hold up pursuit as long as you can, pick up some local assets and use a few tricks I can give you. Which considering you’re going up against Adrian…and maybe the Brotherhood…is plenty risky, believe me.”

Also unspoken was that Adrian and the Brotherhood would kill them cleanly if it came to that, or in Adrian’s case even let them surrender. Both were extremely unlikely in the convocation of demons gathering in Tbilisi.

“We should be ashore in a spot I know around about noon, with some services laid on. No nightwalkers to worry about, at least.”

“Small mercies,” Farmer said, and they all laughed again.

The dolphin came barreling out of the depths, its body flexing in an up-and-down rippling motion, aiming at the location of the periodic explosions. The colossal squid skulking at a safe distance barely had time to register the motion before the beak hit like a fifteen-hundred-pound battering ram moving at over twenty miles an hour, all concentrated behind a hard punching surface a couple of inches square. The whole gelatinous mass of the monster’s form flexed and rippled in shock as the force propagated through it.

Adrian heard himself grunt—at least, that was how his
Tursiops truncates
body and brain interpreted the shower of bubbles and pulsed sounds it emitted at the stunning impact. He twisted away by reflex through the forest of tentacles as the squid thrashed helplessly and drifted downward. A swift gliding curve like a fighter jet brought him in for another attack run.

The squid
sparkled
and reformed. Without silver it was very difficult to do lasting damage to an aetheric body, if the guiding intelligence preserved enough presence of mind to go impalpable and switch back again despite the shock and pain of a wound; that reset the form to default in a fraction of a second. Then its tentacles darted out for him, malign intelligence sparkling in its giant eyes, ready to rip and rend with arms intended to do battle with eighty-ton sperm whales ten thousand feet beneath the surface.

Tearing a body in half often
did
kill, persuading the hindbrain it was dead before the intelligence could recover.

Amss-aui-ock!

The tentacles closed on the sperm whale where the dolphin had been, but the black giant threw itself forward, its scores of tons carrying the squid effortlessly along, its thick skin and protective blubber shrugging off the terrible barbed grip. A third of the whale’s eighty-foot length was jaw, lined on the lower side with massive teeth. They began to close—

—and the great white shark flashed by, twisting to take a huge bite as it did, its rows of bone saw ripping out a semicircular chunk—

—and the orca flexed to pursue—

—and the other orca maneuvered, and Adrienne’s sardonic:

And…this…is…ridiculous…we’ve…done…it…before…and…it…just…wastes…the…night! i…am…taking…my…bat…and…ball…and…going…home!

He responded with a wordless snarl of rage after the echolocation of the disappearing black-and-white shape, and fainter came:
nyah…nyah…can’t…catch…me!

The urge to pursue was overwhelming, but he fought it down; it
was
getting towards dawn and their speed and strength
were
too closely matched. He suppressed the impulse to cast a malediction after her as well. A battle of Wreakings would drain them even more, and already the blood-hunger was gnawing at him.

This is a distraction. Time to go home.

Home was where Ellen was. He turned and surfaced briefly, disappointed but not surprised to see that the
Tulip
was under sail—the high chance that the engine would be destroyed was why he’d picked a vessel with sail backup, after all. Then he drove towards it with powerful strokes of his flukes, leapt…

…and transformed.

A naked man went to one knee on the deck, looking down a grand total of six shotgun barrels full of silver shot; he could feel the cold menace in the cartridges, enough to wound even his aetheric form to the very edge of probable recovery, particularly as depleted as he was. Adrian grinned wearily.

“Commendable vigilance, my friends.”

It would be simplicity itself for Adrienne to take his form, and only a little harder to mimic his mannerisms.

“Griffyndor,” he said.

Their faces relaxed as the prearranged password activated the confirmation Wreakings in their minds. “Ellen?” he said sharply, noticing that she was gone.

“Hurt but not too bad,” Eric said crisply. “I patched her up and gave her a shot of joyjuice.”

“Good. I must—”

He staggered a little as he came to his feet. Peter started towards him with a look of concern on his face, then stopped when Adrian held up a hand.

“No!” Then more gently: “Not now. Don’t come closer until I have…refreshed. I’ve been using the Power rather extravagantly.”

Eric followed him below to his stateroom; the ex-policeman didn’t completely relax until he saw the eyes of Adrian’s blood-body open and heard his sigh. From his aura he still found the sight of two apparently identical bodies merging mind-boggling and unpleasant in equal measure, but he nodded and holstered his coach gun.

“Yeah, it’s absolutely you,” he said.

“You weren’t sure?” Adrian said, sitting up; he was dressed except for his boots.

Ellen rested beside him, her eyelids opening slightly; he could feel how deep her sleep was, urged by the narcotic, but that was wearing off.

“There’s
sure
and then there’s
absolutely completely sure
. How’d the mission go, boss?”

“I slowed Harvey down, and I have a better idea of where he’s headed than he thinks—he is not the only one who took precautions against something like this long ago.”

Eric nodded. “Yeah, that extra bit never hurts. Cheba’s cooking up something…don’t know what to call it, clock-wise, but it’ll be ready in about an hour.”

“That will do nicely. We can plan then. And now, if you will excuse me for a little…”

He felt better, although the wounds to the aetheric body usually transferred to the physical one as stigmata for a little while; that meant the equivalent of bruises and scuffs. And he was ravenous, of course.
Ellen was resting, and in any case in no fit state to accommodate him; he reached into the cooler and took out the plastic pint container of blood. Warming it made it slightly less nauseating…at the cost of increasing the subsequent headache.

“Best to rip the bandage off quickly,” he muttered to himself and drank it down, trying to avoid holding it in his mouth.

He’d heard Englishmen describe pouring beer down their throats without touching the sides, and did his best to do that literally. He didn’t succeed, and spent a long moment in silent misery, fighting the impulse to retch—if he vomited, he’d have to do this
again
. And he tried not to breathe through his nose, either. The closest he’d ever been able to come to describing the scent of old dead blood was dog vomit on a hot day, combined with stale diapers and sulfuric acid. The taste was similar, with an overtone of rotten bananas.

He supposed his remote ancestors had evolved the aversion because the Power was so sensitively dependent on complex amino-acids and whole-chain proteins in the blood; the Shadowspawn system didn’t so much digest it as incorporate it directly. Refrigeration and the preservatives and anti-clotting agents in blood-bank supplies actually kept it quite usable, but they didn’t trip the receptors for
fresh blood
. Nor did it have the intoxicating tang that strong emotion gave blood, the subtleties that made a fine Bordeaux like Concord grape juice by comparison.

If it wasn’t vile, it would be as boring as baby formula,
he thought.
Still, I’m not drinking it for pleasure. Consider it a penance, Adrian. Stop hesitating and get it over with.

There was a reason adepts who didn’t take blood by force didn’t Wreak more than they absolutely must, either, and why those in the Brotherhood had such a powerful taboo against drinking living blood at
all. A drug that actually made you as powerful as it made you
feel
was addictive on a whole series of levels. This stuff wasn’t going to tempt anyone to vice.

When it had settled he swallowed a second pint. That was as much as he could possibly hold down, and enough for what he needed to do, though no more than that. A stiff shot of brandy helped too, though it was a sin to use
L’Essence de Courvoisier
as mouthwash. The hints of plum and apricot did sooth his abused mouth, not to mention the alcohol. He took a second, sipping at a more civilized pace, and sat down beside Ellen; she was under a coverlet, and he ran his hand through the air over her injured ankle.

Yes, painful but not too serious,
he thought.

Normally he would have let it heal conventionally, with perhaps a little Wreaking to ensure that there was no scarring or internal adhesions. Now…

He finished the brandy, set the glass down on the sideboard, twitched up the blanket and gently laid his hands on the bandage. She stirred in protest.

“No, lover, you’ve just worked hard,” she said.

He smiled at her sleepy face and tousled hair. “And we may both have hard work ahead tomorrow. We can’t have you limping or leaving a blood trail when you need to be Ellen the Scourge of the Shadowspawn.”

He took a deep breath and calmed his mind. Healing required a process that basically convinced your own body that it had suffered the injury itself, then duplicating the process of Power-assisted cell division.

This was going to hurt.