The Council of Shadows (38 page)

“Or anyone else, Jack.”

He sighed. “At least with him picking up the tab we don't have to fly coach.”

 

 

“Magnificent, Great-grandfather,” Adrienne said sincerely. “Merely an amusement, simply duck with figs and olives, but magnificent. Even better than the lemon-cured baby scallops.”

“You eat with all the enjoyment of one back from the dead,” Étienne said. “And I should know, since I
am
dead.”

“Only the least important part of you,” Adrienne replied graciously.

They were dining on one of the outdoor terraces of the Villa Leopolda, looking down over the acres of cypress and olive trees that studded the gardens and the moonlit waters of the Côte d'Azur far below. The villa was a Belle Epoque fantasy of tile and terra cotta and marble, originally built on a whim financed by colonial plunder over a century ago, like some Edwardian dream of ancient Rome. The mild warmth of the air was full of the scents of roses and lady-of-the-night jasmine; bougainvillea frothed down from the balconies overlooking them; below was a tumble of jeweled lights and gardens and the running lights of the yachts in the basins below.

“Such a pity that King Leopold did not transition to postcorporeal successfully,” Seraphine said.

She was wearing the body she'd been born with, or the etheric equivalent: tall for a nineteenth-century Frenchwoman, and chestnut haired.

“Have I ever told you of the wonderful tour of his Congo Free State that we took in 'aught-three? The Force Publique officers were such good company, charming rogues. And their Batanga mercenaries were like frisky puppies, with their filed teeth and simple, earthy, substantial cuisine. A true example of the civilizing mission, a veritable utopia in the jungle.”

Servants whose minds were a careful wash of no-thought whisked away the dishes, and brought out the entrée: a tiny suckling pig, its crisp skin delicately scented with lavender. Along with it came the first mountain mushrooms of the season, sautéed with onion and a little garlic, a dash of white wine, fresh tomatoes and tarragon, with just a touch of lemon juice and sea salt.

You have told me of your Congolese tour only seventeen thousand, three hundred and forty-two times,
ma chere bisaïeul
,
Adrienne thought.
Beginning when I was about six. Though it sounds like a great deal of fun, if one enjoys the tropics; severed hands as currency, what a droll idea.

“Yes,” Étienne said. “Of course, a golden haze of nostalgia is only to be expected; in Europe in those days a certain discretion was required, whereas we could be quite free in the Free State, if you will pardon the pun. Poor Leopold. One would have thought him a natural, and his father was of a Black Dawn lodge, though of course that was before the breeding program really got under way on scientific principles. He could night-walk, a little, though his manifestation was weak.. . . It
did
take several minutes for his matrix to disintegrate after his body died, and it was rather interesting to witness.”

“How we all laughed!” Seraphine said reminiscently, with a tinkling chuckle. “Seldom have I felt such utter despair. Subjectively his death must have lasted a thousand years.”

“To hope for immortality and then have it snatched away . . . that would be exquisite,” Adrienne admitted. “My, but this suckling pig is exquisite as well!”

“Of the season,” Seraphine said. “But in spring, ah, the
Carré d'agneau a la Provençale
is superb here! We get ours from this shepherd in the mountains.”

“Only here in the south does one experience lamb as it truly should be prepared,” Étienne agreed. “Not only the herbs with which it is cooked, but the herbs on which its mother feeds in life up in the mountains and passes on to the lamb as it nurses.”

Adrienne nodded and took a sip of her wine: a local vintage of no great fame, but more than adequate. The pork was indeed meltingly tender but firm enough for texture, and the kiss of the scallions and garlic in the oil that had been brushed on its surface complemented it completely. Not a complex dish, but one requiring real skill.

I must remember that satiety is a trap lurking before the feet of eternity,
she thought.
Keep the capacity to enjoy the simple things, or life might well become a burden.

The warm apricot tart with a dash of brandy went with the meal beautifully beneath the pale stars.

“Nice has grown too large,” she said, sipping at the after-dinner pastis. “Does this not illustrate my point? At this stage of a dinner al fresco, one wishes to see the stars.”

“True, true,” her great-grandfather said indulgently. “You have convinced me, my descendant.” A glimpse of something feral: “It would be well not to become tiresome, like your brother and his ludicrous earnestness.”

“Oh, but it is in a much better cause, Étienne,” Seraphine said soothingly. “And the dear girl has a point. I remember what this place was like when dear Leopold first built it. The night sky was truly lovely.”

“True,” Étienne said, mollified. “And at least the lad still shows good taste. That ‘wife' of his . . . worthy of draining to the last drop, slowly, over years.”

“
Oh
, yes,” Adrienne said, lost in thought for an instant; when she blinked all three of the Shadowspawn were wearing identical smiles.

“Despite his convincing repentance, I still think he might have some sort of childish disruption planned for the Council meeting,” Étienne grumbled. “That would make me truly displeased.”

“Oh, I think we can manage to keep him from playing any reprehensible pranks,” Adrienne said warmly.

They chatted idly for a while; the upcoming meeting in Tbilisi was the main topic, usually with an undertone of malicious gossip.

“And now for the true dessert,” Seraphine said happily, and waved her hand.

The four chained to the fretted bronze poles began to scream as their vocal cords obeyed them once more. The Shadowspawn listened appreciatively.

“The children of the night, what music they make,” Adrienne said, and all three laughed.

Then the victims stopped, panting and sobbing and transfixed as the lambent yellow eyes rested on them, speaking to instincts older than the age of polished stone. Adrienne had to admit it was a piquant group: a handsome French couple in athletic and well-kept middle age, and their teenage son and daughter, the beginning and end of the prime feeding years. The relationships offered so many interesting variations on emotional pain and degradation, as well as straightforward physical torment.

Their minds were a roil of terrified speculation already; being kidnapped and then left naked and unable to utter a sound during the meal was an excellent preliminary. So were the toys and cushions and implements scattered ready across the marble terrace between the terra-cotta jars with their trailing flowers, the little glowing brazier, and the expressionless servants standing by with hot, scented damp towels and fluffy dry ones.

Seraphine rose and let her clothes fall away as she did, falling through the momentarily impalpable substance of her body; then she transformed to a statuesque blonde.

“I've always favored this form for energetic amusements,” she said. “A real strapping Danish Valkyrie.”

She went to the mother of the family and gently touched her face, picking up a tear on one fingertip and then tasting it.

“Who . . . who are you?” the woman said. “Oh, God, you
changed
.”

“We are the purpose of your being,
ma petite
,” Seraphine said. “All your lives you have been walking towards this moment, this service of a purpose beyond your comprehension. Now it has come, for you and these whom you love so much. This night is all that you have left; be wholly present in what you are about to experience! It will be so
intense.
”

She began to scream again as the sense of the words sank home and Étienne transformed, stalking forward stiff legged, with the wolf's great head held low. Seraphine flicked the chains open with her mind and threw the woman to the cushions.

Adrienne rose and sauntered over to the husband.

“And soon we will do this to the whole world,” she murmured, stroking him as Seraphine fed and then lifted her face to the stars, blood running from the corners of her mouth, and her sulfur yellow eyes slitted in joy. “To literalize the metaphor.”

A
drian Brézé stuck his hands in their thin leather gloves into the pockets of his jacket and closed his eyes, blanking the flow of his interior monologue until his mind was still and quiet and wary. Awareness of his surroundings swelled, until he was one with the cool fall day. Somewhere a dog grew aware of him, whined and went quiet; a cat on the other side of the street blinked from a windowsill, radiating an idle curiosity. The little house off Airport Road still had the yellow police tape across its doors, but he didn't think anyone was watching.

Nothing. A few people in the other houses in the subdivision, young children and their mothers mostly; one adult peeking through the windows at his Ferrari for a moment, then shrugging aside a vague wonder. The suburb was solidly lower-middle-class and composed of flat-roofed frame houses making a feeble imitation of the haute-fake imitation adobe downtown, just the sort of place you'd expect a policeman to live in Santa Fe's high-cost, low-wage economy. He opened his eyes again and gave Ellen a quick slight nod where she sat behind the wheel of the low-slung sports car, felt her mind acknowledge it. She was wearing a scarf around her hair, and sunglasses, both absolutely unexceptional on a bright Wednesday afternoon. He was in jeans and ankle boots and a T-shirt, equally normal; the jacket was credible with the temperature in the mid-sixties, though he was actually wearing it to conceal the Glock and long curved knife the harness held on either flank.

There was a goat-stick fence beside the garage, five-foot unpeeled piñon sticks. He took three quick strides and vaulted over it, a hand lightly touching one of the poles, and came down silently on the balls of his feet. The backyard was similarly fenced all the way 'round; he wasn't hidden, exactly, but it was better than a wire barrier would have been. There was a weedy-looking Russian olive tree, a half-dead lilac, and plenty of genuine weeds, including the ferocious local goat's head, which dropped a little three-pointed seed that could cripple the barefoot or puncture tires. He thought of those as nature's caltrops. The rest was bare dirt, though his nose detected the recent presence of a dog. A bachelor's yard, one owned by a man without the time or interest to spend on appearances, right down to the battered barbecue grill that had gone a long time between cleanings.

He wrinkled his nose; there were drawbacks to the acute Shadowspawn senses. And beneath the old scorched meat and dog feces, a strong trace of rotting blood that made his lips start to draw up in a hunter's snarl. Adrian went to the glass sliding doors that gave onto a stretch of cracked concrete patio and produced a thin, slightly curved piece of steel. A moment's fiddling, a quick strong jerk, and something went
click
inside. He could have done the same with the Power, but he'd long ago decided to save that for purposes where nothing else would do.

Once he was inside the scent of old blood was much stronger; even a normal human would have found it unpleasant. Even decayed, it bore the traces of unbearable pain and raw terror; when fresh it would have been maddeningly appetizing. He followed it towards the single bedroom. Something else tickled at the senses there, the esoteric ones that came with his degree of the Power. Another Shadowspawn had been here, a powerful adept, either postcorporeal or night-walking. The traces were faint, too faint to identify an individual, but unmistakable. Gluttonous satisfaction as well, the killing frenzy and repletion. There was no need to go nearer to the outlines still painted on the floor or marked in tape on the tumbled, black-stained sheets. Instead he went to one knee and looked at the floor, bracing himself with a forearm on his thigh.

Black and rusty-brown, flaking away in the dry high-desert air, but the outlines of shoes were still visible, if you knew how to look. Someone had come in the front door and stood looking into the room with his feet in the pooling blood. Then he'd kicked off the shoes, stepped back out of the blood and turned.. . .

He followed the tracks. The place they led had been a bedroom on the original plans, redone as a study-den–entertainment center. One wall held a fairly big flat-screen, a Chinese-made early 3D model half a decade out-of-date. There were a couple of—rather bad—pictures of local landscapes, bookshelves that held a mixture of popular fiction and well-read volumes on police methods and forensics, law books and a desktop computer. The unknown had come in, sat in the office chair and used it.

Adrian extended a hand over the machine and concentrated.

Interesting,
he thought.
The hard drive hasn't been pulled or wiped. Whoever was in charge here didn't do a real investigation; they just went through enough of the motions to fool outsiders. As I suspected, the Tōkairin had someone sit on it. And someone—Michiko at a guess, the traces feel a little female—came out to tie up the loose ends. But whoever sat here at the computer took something from it.. . .

He switched it on, pulled a data stick from his pocket and snapped it into the serial port. Electronic pseudothoughts tickled at him as he waited for it to suck the larger machine dry.

Yes, a file copied just before the machine was shut down. I think Shadowspawn technophobia is about to give me a lead,
he thought.
So much for the
Progressive
faction.