The Council of Shadows

by S. M. Stirling

  He left unspoken the knowledge that there were worse things than death, and that his technically dead ancestor might simply be toying with them.

  “Ah . . . honey . . .”

  He turned and looked at her, concern in his dark gold-flecked eyes.

  She took a deep breath. He wasn’t in the least a bully, not even unintentionally, but his strength of personality could make you feel uncertain about arguing with him just by existing.

  “Honey, I don’t think you realize just how much I don’t want to meet any other Shadowspawn but you. You’re the only one I’ve met who doesn’t make me want to kill them, or run screaming, or. . . And I’m afraid of flashbacks. This great-grandfather of yours, he’s the Big Bad, right?”

  He nodded. “Grand master of the Order of the Black Dawn and the Council of Shadows,” he said. “He has been for over a century.”

  She closed her eyes. “Okay, this is the guy behind World War One and Two, the Holocaust, the killing fields, the Congolese wars, the Seoul thing, the . . . the just about everything. And we’re supposed to go have dinner with him?” Almost pleadingly: “Look, couldn’t I stay here and watch over Professor Duquesne or something? Rather than having dinner with werewolf Hitler and his vampire bride?”

  He took her hands. “My dove, for one thing I want you to be safe. Or as safe as possible.”

  “Safe?” she said.

  “This place. . . the Pavillon Ledoyen . . . opened in 1791,” he replied. “Great-grandfather has been coming here all his. . . well, life. And postlife. He brought me there on a visit when I was ten, during our annual summer trip to Europe.”

  Which was forty years ago, Ellen thought. That keeps tripping me up.

  Adrian went on: “It’s one of the favored spots for Shadowspawn in Paris because of the continuity; there’s a truce for the restaurant and grounds. That’s one of the main reasons I agreed to this, instead of running immediately. I do not want you anywhere else without me.

  “More, I feel stronger with you beside me, also,” he said. “We are comrades-in-arms now, as well as lovers. And. . . you are my link to normalcy, to sanity, to all that is good. Merely being around my great-grandparents is to fall into an alien dimension, ethically.”

  She hugged him. “Okay, when you put it like that. Sorry for the collywobbles.”

  “It is nothing.”

  “Odd to get a dinner invitation from the emperor of the Earth,” she mused.

  “First among rivals, rather,” Adrian said. “And by aspiration, more of a living god. Or unliving god.”

  “You’re frightened, aren’t you?” Ellen asked.

  He glanced at her quickly. “Anyone who is not afraid of Étienne-Maurice Brézé is an idiot,” he said quietly. “And Seraphine is only marginally less dangerous, if at all.”

  Then he smiled a crooked smile. “Yet at least you look lovely.”

  Even with the tension, that could make her feel a flush of pleasure, and she turned slowly; she was wearing a turquoise sheath, shoulderless, tight above and with a slightly flared skirt three fashionable inches below the knee that showed off her hourglass figure. Her antique shawl shimmered with silver paillettes, and the choker silver necklace held aquamarines laid out in Mhabrogast glyphs, bringing out the deep blue of her eyes.

  It was all rather fetching, and the choice of precious metal was not an accident, either. It wasn’t precisely that silver was toxic to Shadowspawn; they certainly didn’t sizzle at its touch. But the Power couldn’t affect it, or could only by massive and painful effort, and silver weapons affected them as ordinary ones did her type of human. That went doubly for night-walkers and postcorporeals, who could make themselves impalpable to ordinary matter with a little warning.

  Her fair brows drew together a little, and she paused to adjust Adrian’s bow tie—he was in formal evening dress, and looking very fetching in an archaic, rakish James Bond sort of way, especially with the deep red cummerbund.

  “Honey, there’s something that sort of puzzles me. You can walk through walls, right?”

  “Yes, when out of the body, with a little effort.”

  “Then how come you don’t drop right into the ground when you do?”

  To her surprise he looked a little alarmed; rather the way a claustrophobic would if confronted with the thought of being buried alive in a small coffin.

  “You can, if you’re careless, though there’s an . . . instinctual reluctance to let the soles of your feet go impalpable while they’re in contact with the earth. And you can go palpable very quickly if you fall over. It’s usually a fatal mistake if you don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you’re in solid matter you have to stay impalpable. You’re sliding through matter and can’t affect it, there’s nothing to push with. Total darkness, no air . . . the night-walking body needs to breathe eventually too, remember, even if not as often as the corporeal one.”

  He took a long breath. “It’s an instinctual fear, with us. Those who didn’t have it didn’t live long enough to breed.”

  She thought about it for a moment, then shuddered herself. “What happens?”

  “Nobody knows. Presumably you slide down until you lose consciousness and your energy matrix disperses in death; it has mass, and gravity affects it. Or until you reach the center of the earth, though the heat would randomize you first.”

  “Ow. Well, at least there’re some disadvantages to the package!”

  She took a deep breath and looked around the apartment. They’d been there only a few days, but already it seemed like a home, a welcome refuge against a world larger and colder, stranger and crueler than it was easy to comprehend.

  “Will the professor be okay?”

  “Probably. I’ve warded this place as much as I can. He’s certainly safer than he would be anywhere else. Safer than he would be if we brought him to my great-grandfather’s attention! You, they know about. Him, they do not, as yet.”

  They rode the elevator down in silence, holding hands. The hired limo’s driver held an umbrella over them as they walked out to the curb; a light pattering of cold rain fell on it, and a few drops that evaded it raised gooseflesh on the bare skin of her shoulders. The silk shawl was draped elegantly but uselessly over her elbows; she pulled it up with a gentle chime from the paillettes.

  Mentally, she ran through the etiquette of meeting the grand master of the Order of the Black Dawn and the Council of Shadows.

  Honey, here’s my great-granddad, the emperor of evil, she thought. Oh, well, you know what they say—you fall in love with your fiancé but you’re stuck with his family!

  She shivered slightly, and had no impulse at all to repeat the thought aloud. As attempted jokes went, that cut far too close to the bone.

  Pavillon Ledoyen was just off the Champs-Élysées, fronted by a strip of lawn and gardens, surrounded by huge old chestnuts, and then by flowers in pots. It was not far from the Petit Palais; her training immediately classified it as late-eighteenth-century neoclassical in origin with a lot of Victorian work. The side facing the street had a high pediment supported by caryatids in the form of white-robed women, a sculpted architrave above and LEDOYEN in white on blue. The arched glass awning over the main entrance looked a little more like art nouveau work, the ribs cast as elongated silver maidens. Their limousine swung into the circular driveway, past a fountain with a central statue.

  “It’s been here awhile, eh?” she said to Adrian, clutching at her purse. “Seventeen ninety-one?”

  “With a major renovation in eighteen forty-two,” he said.

  The blade within the purse was a slight comfort. Her fringed shawl was welcome in the cool autumnal evening air, though the rain had stopped. Streetlights glistened on the pavements, and there was a musty smell of damp fallen leaves from the gardens.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing calm as the doorman bowed them through, and an attendant in a dress almost as elegant as hers escorted them up a grand cur
ved staircase. The main dining room walls were about half floor-to-ceiling windows draped in carnelian curtains with beige blinds; there were oxblood marble pillars against the walls between, and some fairly good period paintings, including what she thought from a brief glance was an actual Watteau.

  Napoléon III, basically, but a restrained example of Second Empire style.

  There was a very low murmur of conversation from the widely spaced tables; arrangements of striking hibiscus flowers rested between the place settings, and the cloths were white damask over burgundy. She caught more than a few discreetly admiring glances. And a few yellow-flecked eyes lingered on her as well, with a different hunger added.

  Oh, great. The chic Shadowspawn hangout. What wine goes with human blood? Or does the blood count as wine and go with food ?

  Two figures sat at a table set for four, watching her and Adrian approach : a man and a woman with their faces underlit by the candlelight. That wasn’t all that made them appear rather sinister, but it didn’t hurt the effect, either. Nor did the fact that their eyes weren’t flecked with gold. They were the burning hot-sulfur yellow she’d noticed with Adrian’s parents at Rancho Sangre, like windows into a pit full of lava; evidently that was a mark of the postcorporeal, unless they deliberately controlled it.

  Wait a minute, she’s—

  “Great-grandfather,” Adrian said.

  Étienne-Maurice Brézé, also born heir to the Duc de Beauloup, looked. . .

  A lot like Adrian, Ellen thought, dazed. That family has to be seriously inbred.

  He rose for a moment, and inclined his head slightly, with a lordly insouciance.

  Oooof! Talk about presence. It’s like getting punched in the gut, psychically speaking. You can’t look away, and it’s not just those fires-of-Hell eyes.

  The little hairs tried to stand up on her arms and down her back. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly through barely parted lips, struggling for control.

  A little older, I’d say he was thirty if I didn’t know better, a bit. . . coarser, perhaps. More rugged. An inch or two taller, enough to be just average instead of a bit short like Adrian. Though I suppose when he turned twenty in 1898 he was tall by the standards of the day.

  He was certainly dressed differently from his descendant, in a full ankle-length wide-sleeved robe of some rich black velvet, a color that swallowed light, embroidered with black YLI silk thread in sinuous vine patterns around the hems, neck, cuffs and down the front panel. It caught subdued flickers as he moved, looking at Adrian with his head tilted slightly to one side. His long raven hair was pulled back at either side and pinned by a gold-and-ruby clasp at the rear of his skull, with the rest flowing loose beneath it down his back.

  The robe was slit halfway down, and fastened with black-and-gray catches of Brazilian onyx. Beneath the black velvet was a high-collared shirt of white silk showing at cuffs and neck. The only other touch of color was a golden ring, set with the jagged trident and black sun.

  As the mouse put it: Say what you like about cats, but they’ve got style.

  “Great-grandmother.”

  This time Ellen blinked a little in surprise, the interrupted thought registering.

  Seraphine Brézé was black. Specifically she was that dark chocolate color combined with a tall, slim build and sculpted aquiline thin-nosed face that was common in the Horn of Africa, Somalia and Ethiopia and Eritrea. Against it the yellow eyes were like windows into a world of chaotic fire.

  She was dressed in a halter-top gown of an old-gold color that showed off the long slim neck and body, slit from ankle to thigh to give a glimpse of a leg like a gazelle’s. A broad belt of platinum and blazing blue tanzanite cinched her narrow waist, and more of the blue jewels shone in her mane of sculpted, curled hair.

  I could have sworn Adrian said she was French, or at least as much as Shadowspawn can be any human nationality. And . . . Wait a minute. . . they’ve both got swords with them, hanging on the back of their chairs, and nobody’s noticing!

  Adrian bowed with a hand on his heart; Ellen sank into a carefully practiced curtsy, spreading her own long dress of robin’s-egg blue a little as she did. It couldn’t hurt . . . and this was approximately the ruler of the Earth and his consort, or something much closer to that than she’d thought there could be.

  A little informal family tête-à-tête with the masters of the universe. Or the chief ranchers of humans.

  The Shadowspawn touched fingertips, evidently their equivalent of shaking hands; she’d seen it before, and then exchanged the air kiss on the cheek.

  And I don’t feel in the least slighted by not being included. I’d rather tongue-kiss a tarantula.

  Adrian made the introductions, calmly naming her as “Ellen Brézé,” and “my wife.” Both the Shadowspawn looked at her.. . .

  Uh-oh. There’s that chocolate-coconut-macaroon look again. Why do these people . . . things . . . whatever . . . find me so attractive, or appetizing, or both? They all want to eat me, metaphorically and then literally. I don’t mind it with Adrian, except when I get the flashbacks about his lovely sister and her winning ways, but he doesn’t want to kill me as as part of the peak experience.

  But they nodded acknowledgment and murmured polite words. Adrian held her chair, and put her purse on the handbag stool; it was all very Old World. Étienne sighed.

  “You always were the most willful boy,” he said, in a smooth, rich voice that vibrated with undertones of power. “Willfully eccentric, as well.”

  “It is a Brézé characteristic, Great-grandfather,” Adrian said lightly. “After all, belonging to the Order of the Black Dawn was an eccentricity in its day, is it not so?”

  “And your parents?”

  “Well, the last time I saw them. Though that was rather under false pretenses, as I was infiltrating their house with a view to a kill.”

  Both the older Brézés laughed indulgently; rather as if listening to a child describing a prank.

  Which, to them, is pretty much the truth.

  “Ah, yes, your father has written an amusing letter about how you deceived him and killed Hajime,” Étienne said.

  The sommelier came and popped the cork from a bottle of champagne, holding it expertly tilted to keep the noise and foam to a minimum. Then he filled their flutes; it was a Réserve Blanc de Blancs d’Aÿ Brut Millésimé 2000 Grand Cru, tickling her palate with citrus and honey.

  Étienne sipped, nodded approval, and continued: “It was about time that someone put the little yellow monkey in his place. We did not reveal the secrets of Power to the swine so that they could raise their hands against their betters.”

  Ellen choked, then coughed to cover it as the pair looked at her.

  Okay, gotta remember this guy was born when Ulysses S. Grant was president and the Eiffel Tower was daring modern architecture. He was my age when Wilbur and Orville were making plans for a flying machine. Plus he’s just plain evil, of course.

  Gold and beige tableware was set out, and the amuse-bouche bites arrived: langoustine arranged in a little pyramid, an almost liquid mozzarella cheese, miniature samosas, beetroot as well as cheese and olive chips, with a choice of four types of bread: cereal, baguette, shrimp and bacon bits.

  “Still, it’s good to see family now and then,” Étienne said. “Particularly your children, one imagines.”

  Adrian’s hands didn’t even pause as he broke a piece of bread, but his nostrils flared slightly.

  “I did not have that pleasure. I was under an assumed identity, after all.”

  Seraphine made a tsk sound. “Ah, well, your parents . . . our grandchildren, after all . . . will take excellent care of them. Perhaps better than Adrienne would have, not being either as busy or as ambitious. They much valued their time with you two when you were young, despite having to maintain the pretense that they were your aunt and uncle.”

  “No more fosterage?” Adrian said.

  Ouch, Ellen thought. Adrian really loved his foster par
ents, even though they were renfields. He still blames himself for their deaths. I don’t think he killed them, and Harvey doesn’t think so either and he was there, but Adrian still feels responsible.

  “No,” Étienne said. “That has fallen out of fashion in the past generation. The gap between the powers of child and parent is no longer what it was in our generation, so there is less need for precautions.”

  Seraphine nodded. “We killed our own parents, of course, as soon as we were adults, the tiresome creatures, but that would be much more difficult now.”

  Ellen knew a moment’s vicious satisfaction. The parents of the. . . things . . . she was talking to had been human beings. Very bad human beings, with a lot of Shadowspawn in them, but still not really the ancient predators reborn. They’d used what Power they had to make those genes meet and match . . . and they’d paid an exquisitely appropriate price for it at the hands of those offspring. The hands, not to mention the teeth.

  What did they expect? she thought.

  “I am sure they will ensure . . . forgive me, my descendant . . . that your little ones have a more conventional attitude to things than you did,” Étienne said.

  Like, conventional for a sadistic monster. Of course, he is a sadistic monster. Normalcy’s all in the point of view, I suppose.

  Whatever their moral state or age or background, the Brézés certainly ate in the grand old French manner, in fact almost in the antique French manner—religiously, and with only light conversation so as not to distract. That left her thankful for the chance to observe without offering more than the occasional commonplace.

  She’d had a little trouble following the talk at first. Adrian’s French was slightly but noticeably old-fashioned. His great-grandparents’ version was extremely so, and not only in the way they used contractions. There was a hint of a rolled harshness to the vowels, occasionally words like moé instead of moi, as if they were a considerable way back towards the Middle Ages. Or at least towards the world between the Revolution and the fall of the Second Empire, before the accent of the Parisian bourgeoisie completely triumphed as the standard form.