The Council of Shadows s-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Like a famine victim, only not so funny, she thought.

  She ached. Her digestive system felt as if it were packed with mud from the back of her throat to her lower intestine. She itched. Not just the amputated foot where the regeneration was starting far too slowly, but all over. Having several dozen milligrams of silver solution and radioactive waste pumped into you would be bad enough for a human, but the Shadowspawn metabolism was more vulnerable to both. If she'd gotten the full dose…

  "You do look pretty awful," Michiko said. "It's a good thing I cut your foot off in one swell foop."

  Then she giggled. "I only beat Dale to it by a second or two because I had a wakizashi on me. Dale was going to use his bowie, and Dmitri just went around roaring and waving a chair in the air."

  "He was a silverback gorilla at the time. It's easy to get lost in the beast when it's that close to your own form."

  " Especially with Dmitri and gorillas. But one advantage of all that old Japan stuff grandfather liked is that I had the short sword on me."

  "That was quick work," Adrienne acknowledged. "I'd have died if you had not cut the foot off before much of that Hell-brew got into my circulatory system-and I might have been too distracted to go postcorporeal in time, too. Even the best plans and probability fluxes are…irritatingly uncontrollable at times."

  "Well, your darling brother was involved, which screws the Power. Why don't you just spend more time inside while you're healing?"

  "Because it's boring playing games in my head after a while, Michi," Adrienne replied. "So I ration myself, that way it's a relief when I do it. Besides, I have to keep track of what's going on and make decisions."

  "You could night-walk and then sleep away the days," she pointed out. "Your night-walking manifestation is so good even I can't tell you're out-of-body unless I really concentrate."

  "Night-walking…my body's still too weak to have the personality gone for long, it needs me in here concentrating on healing. Unless I want to go postcorporeal for good, and I don't, not yet. It would be inconvenient. I'm going to stay corporeal until I get old."

  Michiko wasn't being very considerate-but then, they were both Shadowspawn, and empathy simply wasn't their breed's strong point; Michiko was nearly as purebred as the Brezes.

  There's always Monica or Jose if I feel like sympathy.

  The other Shadowspawn was also looking disgustingly sleek and contented, dressed in a pale silk summer dress and strapped sandals; she'd turned her hair blond again-a minor Wreaking-and it fell in silky waves past her high-cheeked Asian face.

  "Now, to business," Adrienne said. "My father and mother say things are going smoothly."

  Michiko nodded. "The Tokairin clan's accepted me…and Ichiro…without much trouble. Only had to kill a few, and no Final Deaths," she said. "I can't be too friendly to the Breze interests yet, of course. I'm supposed to be here talking to your parents, warning them not to try anything while we settle down under the new management. Nobody suspects you're not gone, as far as we can tell."

  "Good cover. And after all, you didn't kill my parents, your grandfather did, so it would be easier for you to negotiate with them now that he's dead all the way."

  Under Michiko's grandfather the Tokairin had ousted the Californian Brezes as the primary Shadowspawn group on the West Coast in a neat little coup over a generation ago. Most of the Tokairin liked it just fine that way. Fortunately Michiko accepted that Adrienne had her mind on larger things, and besides that, they were on the same side of the great Shadowspawn generational divide. As her now thoroughly deceased grandfather had learned, far too late and very briefly.

  Michiko went on: "We're gearing up for the Council meeting, and we won a lot of support for the way we acted when the Brotherhood terrorists killed Grandfather."

  A mental communication passed between them: not words, more like a snigger.

  "That's good…I'm a little tired now, Michi."

  "Get better soon. I'm not up to heading the Progressives on my own! Besides, we could go clubbing."

  "Better I remain dead-dead for a while, to the rest of the world."

  The sickroom was part of the casa grande of Rancho Sangre Sagrado, the mansion in the little California town that had been the first Breze property on the West Coast, back in the eighteen sixties, when they brought the message of the Order of the Black Dawn to this part of the New World.

  "Oh," Michiko said. "And the police in Santa Fe are sniffing around about that lucy of yours…the blond one whose blood smelled so edible…those marvelous tits and the way her brain fired when you hurt her…"

  "Ellen. Who did this to me, don't forget. Take care of it for me, would you?"

  " De nada. I'll set our renfields in the government on it. Do them good. I can look in if it's more than they can handle quietly, we do want to keep people-"

  By which she meant their kind of people, of course.

  "-from thinking too much about Adrian. Since I'm the head of the ruling clan in the area, nobody can object."

  Adrienne shut her eyes and sighed as her friend-ally-rival left. One of the advantages of being sick was that nobody expected her to take care of business. Whatever was happening in Santa Fe, for example, where Ellen and Adrian and Adrienne between them had been fairly…

  Blatant, she thought.

  It was still important not to be too conspicuous. Not for much longer, though. Not after the Empire of Shadow returned in force.

  Then it'll be just one long party. Except for the ones on the buffet.

  The various monitors and the tubes and catheters gave a tang of ozone to the medicine scents, overriding the greenery from outside. A doctor came in, middle-aged and ginger-haired, with a stethoscope looped around her neck and the head tucked into a pocket of her green scrubs.

  "It's time for your feeding, Dona," she said briskly, a slight Scots burr still roughening her voice.

  The hunger was there, but curiously muffled. I never thought I'd get bored with blood, she thought. I want to hunt now and then. Or maybe it's just that I crave some solid food as well for variety.

  A postcorporeal could survive on human blood alone, but even they didn't want to, usually, except for a few superstitious antique types. Corporeals needed ordinary nourishment at least every now and then.

  "I wish I could eat something more tangible as well, Dr. Duggan," she said, a little fretfully. "I'm starting to have dreams about steak, or some crab claws, or sweet-and-sour pork. Or even vegetables ?

  "Intravenous will have to do. You're not ready, though you should be able to take broth soon," the renfield doctor said. "I'm still amazed you survived, even with the whole-body transfusions we did. Entire organs kept…nearly…shutting down. But once the corner was turned the recovery has been very rapid, and it seems to be accelerating. Astonishingly rapid, in fact, as if your body is chelating the poisons somehow."

  "The Power was helping, but on an unconscious level," Adrienne said. "I can direct it now, and that'll speed things up, and the more I get rid of the toxins the more my command of the Power will return. It's a positive feedback cycle."

  Duggan nodded, obviously taking mental notes. She had been the primary physician at Rancho Sangre for two decades now, and she'd always been intrigued by the Shadowspawn.

  "I am feeling a little blood-hungry," Adrienne went on. "Now that you mention it."

  Plus, of course, you needed blood to do more than the most basic Wreaking with the Power. Otherwise you risked draining your own reserves dangerously.

  I wonder why that is, she thought.

  One of her lucies, Peter, had been-still was-a physicist. He had some interesting ideas about how the Power functioned. What had he said…

  The Shadowspawn mind is like a transistor. It modulates the forces it draws from the quantum foam, it doesn't create it. But the modulation itself draws from the energy matrix of the personality.

  He wasn't a biologist, of course, so he hadn't been any help with the physical mechanisms, or
why human blood was essential. And she was using the Power to heal. She should take as much blood as her stomach could handle.

  "Who's on the schedule?" she asked. "I've sort of lost track."

  "We were using pickups at first. You weren't really conscious and there was some incidental damage while you fed."

  "Are any of my lucies ready? I'm in the mood for comfort food."

  "Yes." Duggan consulted a clipboard. "You fed on Peter the day before yesterday, the spare before that, Jose the day before that…so Cheba and Monica are both past due, actually. That's stressful."

  "Cheba, then," Adrienne said. "Don't let me overfeed if I go into fugue; my control is still shaky."

  And she's the one I'd miss least if I do go all mindless-voracity .

  Cheba was Mexican and from Coetzala in Veracruz, mestizo with a touch of African somewhere, dark and slim and very pretty, a girl Adrienne had bought from a coyote people-smuggler with a job lot of refreshments for the party where the previous head of the Tokairin had died four months ago. She came through the door with Duggan holding one arm, but there wasn't much struggle; after repeated feedings the addiction had her strongly, and she was quivering a little with the need. And averting her eyes in horror from what lay on the bed, but Adrienne couldn't really blame her for that.

  I'm not exactly aesthetic at the moment. Very ungrateful of Ellen to treat me this way, after all I did for her! I will have to punish her quite severely when I get her back, which will be a lot of fun. Still, it's a stroke of luck in the long run. Everyone thinking I'm dead makes it all so much easier.

  "Sit here, lassie," Duggan said; there was a padded rest beside the bed. "Then lean forward and present your throat for the Dona!"

  She did. The scent was enough to make Adrienne feel a little more alive: fear in complex layers, shuddering disgust, and something musky that was probably self-loathing. The emotions she could feel directly were a lovely roil too, though Adrienne knew her telepathic sensitivity was still deplorably weak, and she could barely pick up the conscious part of the thought stream at all.

  The cinnamon-colored throat came closer and closer…a tear dropped into her mouth, and then the contact of skin against her lips brought the taste of sweat, a sting in the cracks. Her mouth moved in the precise grace of the feeding bite, and the microserrations on the inside of her incisors sliced the taut surface.

  The girl's whimper turned into a hoarse moan mixed with sobs. Adrienne growled deep in her throat as the blood flooded into her mouth, salty and meaty and sweet and as intoxicatingly complex as a glass of Bollinger VVF 1999, the taste of life. The burst of ecstasy flared in the victim's mind and resonated in hers, mingled with terror and despair, swirling down to a warm contentment as the blood flowed, a delicious yielding. Her mouth worked against the skin…

  "That's enough, Dona".

  Adrienne growled again in protest as the doctor's hand pressed her head back to the pillow. Cheba slumped down on the padded stool and leaned against the edge of the bed, breathing deeply, smiling with a soft, dreamy look on her face. The small cut on her neck clotted with unnatural speed; Duggan ignored it for a moment as she wiped Adrienne's chin and lips with a cloth; the antiseptic stung a little in the cracks.

  " Merde, am I dribbling?"

  "Just a little." The Scotswoman looked down at Cheba. "She'll be fine. You took about a pint, I think-aye, as much as you can handle now."

  "Good, I do not want the nausea back. Though I'd like a kill as well, when I'm fit enough. There's nothing quite like it for setting you up."

  She yawned; she was feeling better, but from experience she knew the torpor and discomfort would return soon. Duggan was feeling pure scientific curiosity under her impassive exterior; it was a curious emotion, tasting like mineral water or mountain ice, eerily detached. Peter had a similar mind-set when he was working on a problem.

  "Will you want Cheba for the kill? If I could dissect afterwards, there might be something interesting in the neurological changes…"

  "Oh, no, that would be wasteful, for several reasons. Cheba is progressing nicely. But I'll see if there's anything left for you to poke and prod at of whomever I kill."

  "Thank you, Dona." A sigh. "Less likely to be anything noticeable…Shall I call the orderlies to remove her?"

  "No, not yet. In about an hour, and she'll probably need a sedative then. I'm going into trance now and taking her with me."

  She sank back and crossed her arms on her chest, moving slowly and cautiously. The first sensation of withdrawal was like falling into dark softness, like sleep.

  Then she was standing in the entrance to her memory palace, and for a long moment she just focused on feeling good. The fact of her illness faded to the faintest of memories at the back of her brain with a practiced effort of will. The somatic memories tried to manifest here, but she could overcome them.

  The mental construct was a pool edged in white Carrara marble, with man-tall alabaster jars standing at intervals; at one horseshoe-shaped end a colonnade of Corinthian pillars supported a roof of bronze fretwork woven with flowering wisteria to make a walkway, with a plinth in the center pouring more water through the mouth of a copper lion. Tall umbrella pines stood around it, and then oaks amid asphodel-starred meadows, fading away to rocky hills purple under a clear blue sky; the warm air was scented with sap and hot rock and arbutus, birds warbled and insects clicked and buzzed.

  Cheba staggered and stared around. Her eyes cleared quickly; now that her mind was running on Adrienne's wetware it wasn't saturated with MDMA analogues and serotonin boosters. When she was fully alert she looked surprised for a moment, then sullen. In here Adrienne's senses felt as if they were functioning normally, and the waves of murderous hate tingled along her nerves.

  "I'm much prettier here," the Shadowspawn said, looking down at herself. "This is how I'm supposed to look. Really, being sick is such a bore, tout court!'

  I wish she'd killed you! Cheba thought. Or that man did, that brujo.

  "I don't doubt you do," Adrienne said happily. "Though really, with dozens of Shadowspawn running around uncontrolled and upset you'd probably have died."

  It would be worth it!

  Adrienne laughed, and the girl went on: Where… where is this?

  "My-" Adrienne thought for a moment; Cheba was intelligent but not very well educated. "Inside my mind. In my head. Or you could think of it as Hell. It's where your kind got the idea for Hell, most likely."

  It doesn't look so bad, Cheba thought, and looked around again.

  While she did the first tentacle slid out of the water, black and glistening and as thick as her leg below the narrow questing tip. With a movement as quick as a lunging cobra it threw a loop around her ankle and jerked.

  Cheba screamed as she fell to the marble, but she wound her arms around the nearest vase and held on with frenzied strength, kicking at the tentacle. More exploded out of the water in a tower of spray and lashing flesh and spoiled-seafood stink, dozens, falling on her like whips and tearing at her clothing, squeezing, thrusting "Aiiie. A Thesaurus is come. Maim, strangle, violate," Adrienne said as she walked over and smiled down at her. "George gets so lonely here," she explained. "He's quite dead outside, you see, so he's here until my own Final Death. Which will be a very long time, I think. That's why your kind thought Hell could go on forever."

  Then, louder: "George, what did I tell you? Not unless I say you can!"

  The mauling continued, and beneath it the choked, muffled shrieks. Adrienne sighed and looked at the water, frowning. It turned from crystal blue to a rosy pink, and steam began to rise from it. After a moment it boiled, and the tentacles withdrew with a sudden rush, as quickly as the first attack. The water smoked and roiled, and from beneath it came a bubbling shriek of agony as the creature cooked and cooked but could not die.

  Cheba was pushing herself backwards, naked, her body streaked with blood and welts, her mouth working, and white showing all around the dark irises of her eyes. Then sh
e stopped and froze. A moment later she felt behind her.

  "It's quite fetching," Adrienne said, as Cheba's fingers made contact with the fluffy white doe's tail at the base of her spine. "And symbolically appropriate for your role in this little drama we're about to have."

  Cheba bolted upright, pawing frantically at the sides of her head. The ears she felt there were tall and pointed and furred, and twitched.

  "?Dios mio, Jesucristo!"

  "I'm the only deity here," Adrienne said, feeling the other's control crack. "Ooooh, yes, that's right. Panic, despair, horror, very stimulating, you saucy, sexy minx. Now you run away, sweetie. And when I catch you, I do some really awful, wonderful things to and with you."

  Cheba turned and bolted through the trees and into the scrub. As she did a line of wasps rose from the underbrush and followed her, malignant shapes as long as a human hand, whining as they flew.

  Adrienne watched her go, then clapped her hands together thoughtfully under her chin.

  "Darkness," she said.

  The sunlight faded, and sunset cast long shadows through air the color of burnt umber. She'd always liked that time of day; it was so full of little magics and possibilities.

  "Not quite perfect," she mused. "Something…it needs just a little something…"

  A delighted laugh. "I know! She's phobic about spiders. Spiders it shall be! About the size of Chihuahuas, I think. Anything bigger would be kitsch."

  A sobbing scream of loathing came echoing towards the pool. Adrienne laughed again, and willed. The change was easier and smoother than when she was night-walking in the real world, and here the sun was her imagination and not a deadly enemy to the aetheric form.

  The great timber wolf raised its head and sniffed the air, snarled happily, and loped through the trees with its tail wagging.

  One of the joys of a policeman's life, Eric Salvador thought the day after the Tarnowski case opened, wishing he'd taken more Tylenol with his breakfast. You meet all kinds of people. Most of them hate you. Asi es la vida. At least she's not likely to try to blow me up with a fertilizer bomb.