"Jesus, this place feels weird," Salvador muttered to himself. "Completely Rando."
He sipped at his latte and watched the people go by the curb-side restaurant, enjoying the mild Californian coastal warmth. He was feeling pretty good physically, too, and he looked down at his gut with considerable approval, and the definition of his arms where the biceps swelled at the T-shirt. Not as ripped as he'd been when he was humping an MG-240 through mouj country, but he wasn't in his twenties anymore, and a lot of that had been sheer nervous energy burning stuff off anyway, or just having nothing to do with his spare time but pump iron, under the no-booze, no-cooze rules of engagement in theater.
The mellow afternoon sun was like silk, and there was a scent of eucalyptus and earth and good cooking and flowers in the air. Apart from the risk of imminent death, life was good, and he was working towards revenge for Cesar and a whole lot of others.
This place feels as weird as a lot of my days as a Helmand Province tourist, and I don't like fancy coffee. Got to fit in, though. I'm not the guy with sensors on my helmet and an Apache gunship and GPS-guided artillery shells and all the good shit on call here. If the other side can find me they can squash me like a cockroach…if I'm lucky. Scuttle through the cracks, don't attract attention until you have to. And they can walk through walls. And read minds.
Adrian had warned him that the wards and blocks in his brain wouldn't stand up under close examination, and that a strong adept could break them, and him, by main force. The process of implanting them had been unpleasant, but he welcomed any protection he could get, and they were supposed to make people more likely to open up to him somehow, at least for a day or so.
Like the man said, I'm the guerrilla now, and I need every trick I can get. It sucks…so embrace the suck, Eric, embrace the suck. But it's creepy here, not just dangerous.
Rancho Sangre Sagrado was far too pretty, just for starters. Virtually all of it was built in one style, a Californian try at looking high-toned Mexican-Spanish that had been very popular back towards the beginning of the last century, and influential since. All arches and whitewashed walls or colored stucco, red barrel-tiled roofs, colored mosaic tile accents on corners or walls, glimpses through wrought-iron gates into spectacular courtyard gardens, the occasional square or round tower on a store or public building with those odd outswelling things called machicolations.
It wasn't that he didn't like the style; in fact, he thought it was rather handsome, and it certainly suited the landscape and climate; plus it was less obviously made-up than Santa Fe's flat roofs. The only reason his early Spanish ancestors had built Santa Fe the way they did and lived in flat-roofed Pueblo-style buildings was that they couldn't afford what they really wanted, which would have looked a lot more like this. New Mexico had been the ass-end Siberia of Spain's empire, isolated by poverty and deserts and Apaches, the place you sent Cousin Diego after the embarrassing thing with the nun.
But there were was nothing else here, not even on the outskirts, not a single fifties-sixties public washroom-style heap of stained concrete and buckled aluminum, nothing more recent, like a funhouse mirror twisty-fancy with mirrored glass, not even any of the usual standard suburban frame.
There wasn't even a church; and while he wasn't religious except when talking to his heavily Catholic grandmother to keep her happy, it added a note of oddness. There was a building that looked like it had been a church, white and fancifully carved like some he'd seen in Mexico, but it was apparently some sort of community theater now.
And I have my suspicions about the sort of shows they put on there, too.
The whole place felt vaguely un-American, in the strict sense; it felt like someone had settled on a way it should look and then just enforced it for better than a hundred years, with new construction strictly because there were more people, and that in the same style. It reminded him of Santa Barbara, which he'd visited on leave from Camp Pendleton years ago, but more so; or of the heavily conserved parts of Santa Fe, for another, but with more consistent application of a thick layer of folding green to tidy up the edges. As far as he could see there was no equivalent of his hometown's Cerrillos Road, a strip of ticky-tack and motels and RV parks with the best view of the Sangres in town. Everything looked like it was washed and scrubbed and repainted and the flowers given a quick swipe with a cloth every morning.
Idly, he punched New Urbanist into his tablet; he was simply waiting for evening now, and picking up a little intel by listening in on people. Ellen had used the term about the place in his briefing. A quick flick through the articles confirmed that she'd been right.
A lot like Celebration, Florida, only not built all at the same time.
Even the three-tiered fountain in the brick circle at the middle of the intersection in front of him was like the one in the picture, three terra-cotta basins of diminishing size. It made him wonder whom the architects had been getting their directions from…but then, in the month since meeting Mr. and Ms. Breze, so had a lot of things. Even the loopiest conspiracy theories looked tame compared to the truth, and now whenever he looked around it was like he could see things bulging and squirming beneath the surface-even people's faces. Who knew, who knew…
"Your pastries, sir," the waitress said.
She set down a plate with fragrant-smelling muffins in a cute little basket.
"Thanks."
He glanced over automatically at her cleavage, which was a pleasant sight, and chatted for a moment; she was in her late teens or early twenties, red haired and freckled and fresh faced…and dangling between those creamy jiggling-firm cheerleader titties was a tiny pendant. A jagged trident across a black-rayed sun on a chain. The Breze house badge, and the symbol of the Council of Shadows and the Order of the Black Dawn. The oldest and most senior of all the Shadowspawn houses, the ones who'd spread their genetic knowledge of the Power to the secret clans worldwide, and the lords of Rancho Sangre. Nearly everyone he'd seen here wore one, around the neck or on a bangle or a key chain or whatever.
It meant she was a renfield. That she knew who and what ran this place, and had been initiated. A collaborator.
He astonished himself with the wave of violent hatred that swept through him: a blast like stomach acid at the back of his throat, a vision of a bomb scything through the crowd around him in fragments of nails and bolts and furniture and leaving wreckage and flames.
Whoa, he thought. Watch it! The kid can't help where she was born. She might be an okay person.
"Another latte, please," he said, and read her name badge. "Tiffany."
Instead of letting the images cycle through his head he ate another apricot-walnut muffin: very good indeed, and even the butter had real taste. The menu said, All local, all organic, right under the classic Art Deco Sunkist label cover from the nineteen twenties, and had a little small-print, Breze Enterprises, down in the lower left corner.
Ellen had also said the place was like a rich man's show-ranch, only with people instead of palomino horses. Everyone in it was a renfield, except for stoop labor trucked in for the day from elsewhere. And occasional travelers, not all of whom made it out alive.
When the waitress returned to fill his cup he let his wrist bangle show; it had the mon symbol of the Tokairin clan on it.
"Oh!" the waitress said. "Hi! You're one of the faithful too! We don't get all that many outsiders here, not faithful. Meat sacks don't count, of course."
"Of course."
He decided that making allowances for Tiffany's upbringing was futile. These people were, for all practical purposes, devil worshipers from long lines of devil worshipers.
Faithful and meat sacks. Well, that's one way of looking at it, he thought. One thing about being a detective, you get used to talking to skanks like this little puta without letting your feelings show. And yeah, the briefing said its hard even to find this place if you're not in the know. Brigadoon from Hell, not on the maps, the computers don't reference it, Google Earth can't find it.
"Yeah," he said easily. "Down here from the bay to do some purchase orders at the fruit co-op. I'm part of the acquisition team for the clan's town houses. They insist on the best, and now that the Tokairin and the Brezes are buddies again, you're it here."
Rancho Sangre was surrounded by farms, mostly in orchards and vineyards; they rolled away to the varied green of the Coast Range just west of town.
"You don't look like a produce buyer," she said, smiling. "You look more like you work on the muscle side, a house soldier or something. Kind of rough, not a cubicle dweeb."
A thrill of alarm shot through him; the problem was that he did look like that. Not just his build, but the scars on his arms and face, and the way he held himself. He hadn't expected a waitress to pick up on it, though.
Goddammit, I'm not a spook! I wasn't an undercover cop, either. Everyone in Santa Fe knows who all the cops are!
"I used to be on that side of things," he said. "But I'm retired from ops now. We get old, eh? Even if people your age can't believe it."
"Oh, you don't look old, just scary. The Gurkhas here are too, I suppose, but they really keep to themselves and they're too different. And there usually isn't anything for them to do but run through the woods and train. You look like you really did stuff; I suppose up in the big city they need a lot of guys like you."
Well, that's flattering.
"You're born here, obviously."
"Third generation. My dad works for the co-op," she went on pleasantly, nodding. "Supervisor in the packing plant, that's really hard when you don't use any preservatives, it has to be just right. Mom's a guidance counselor at the high school."
"I'm glad to be here. It's quiet in San Francisco with all the daimyo out of town, and this makes a change of pace. Not that I'm sorry to have missed that big ruckus last year."
"Oh, God, yeah, that party and the fight and everything!" she said. "And it was so much fun up until then before it all got spoiled, all the new people and the celebrations. I was working up at the casa grande for the party, Theresa the manager tapped me, and it was a complete blast. Lucky I was in the infirmary and tranked out of my mind when the bad stuff came down, so I only heard about it later. Couple of people nearly got killed, and there was that horrible thing with Dona Adrienne."
"You were sick?" he asked. "How'd that happen?"
She sat down to talk; business was slow, and this was a small town, only a few thousand people and no tourist trade.
And, of course, we're both faithful.
"Oh, not sick, just banged up and low on blood. They had a lot of extra staff in to help with the guests, you know, Theresa had the sheriff go around and pick us out at school. Mainly I was sort of a temporary lucy, you know, 'cause I'm pretty, which sure beat cleaning the rooms or the kitchen. Even if it was more twenty-four/seven."
"You certainly are pretty enough for anyone, even the Masters," he said gallantly.
"Thanks." Another giggle. "There were two of the Tokairin Shadowspawn tag-teaming me, some sort of security guys from things they said…God, I was sore all over for a week, I didn't know there were that many ways to get screwed! They had those funny tattoos all over, too, and I mean all over."
"Ah…not too scary, I hope."
"No. Well, yes, but usually hot-scary, not just plain scary. I knew they probably wouldn't really kill or cripple me, you know how it is with us, and they had the refreshments the Brezes brought in for that. I saw them go at a couple of those meat sacks and it reeeeeally got gross, I nearly barfed. But they're just meat sacks, after all."
"Nothing too bad, eh?"
"Not once I got into it. It just got sort of blurry for me when they were turning into animals and stuff and fucking with my head with the Power, so I can't be sure what they actually did to me after that, except I'm not pregnant, of course, and all the bite marks and bruises and stuff healed up. I mean, I thought they'd bitten parts of me off and eaten them while I watched, but obviously they didn't. Wild!"
"They wouldn't want to insult the Brezes by killing a renfield without permission," Salvador observed.
"Right. And I got bled enough to get a bit of the addiction, which made coming down a complete bummer, like a mixed-drink hangover for days, even with the transfusions. But fun while it lasted, I was really starting to enjoy them feeding on me, it's better than grass any day after the first couple of times. My sister Jill was too young, and boy, did she get sniffy and whine about missing the party. You know how sixteen-year-olds are about acting like adults."
"I've got a couple of younger brothers and sisters too," Salvador said sympathetically.
And she's what, nineteen? Christ.
"Yeah." A malicious smile came over the perky face, a moment's leer. "Then her initiation came up a couple of months later, and with Dona Adrienne gone and Don Jules and Dona Julia back here they handled it, really old-school."
"Old-school?"
"Yeah, at mine Dona Adrienne just bit me on the neck and gave me a kiss; the bite didn't even sting much, and that was it, 'Here's a Band-Aid for the hickey, here's your funky black robe, here's your pendant, worship the Shadowspawn faithfully and you'll be one of the masters over the cattle, the meat sacks, yada, yada; now go back to studying for the SATs like a good girl.' But Jilly, they went at her the way my mom says they did with her and my dad back forever ago. It was sort of fun to watch her wiggling and hear her yell. First Don Jules stuck his-"
Salvador didn't consider himself a particularly squeamish man; he hadn't been as a marine, and years as a cop gave you a plumbers-helper view from society's toilet bowl. He still blinked a little at the blow-by-blow description of what had happened to this Jilly on an altar in front of a crowd of family and neighbors chanting the equivalent of amen while swaying back and forth, holding candles and clad in black robes.
"So she howled herself hoarse and got all weepy about it afterwards for a couple of weeks, even when we told her to shut up about it, which tells you how well she'd have done up at the casa grande, and Dr. Duggan had to trank her for a while, which was a relief, 'cause my room's right next to hers and she kept waking me up with the nightmares. But she's been a lot less of an annoying little snot since she stopped that, which means she's growing up, I suppose."
"Glad to hear it," Eric said. " Don Jules and Dona Julia are here now? I should send a message up to the casa grande if they are. The word is that Tokairin renfields should show complete respect now, not just be polite."
"Oh, no, they cleared out a couple of days ago, with all their baggage and lucies and servants, for a long trip. Even Monica's gone-my mom plays tennis with her, and she was complaining about how it was going to disrupt the tournament schedule. Some sort of big Shadowspawn do, somewhere way far away. Isn't it exciting?"
"It's important, I hear."
Tiffany leaned closer, her eyes glittering. "Totally! I hear"-she dropped her voice-"that they're going to come out in the open somehow, the Shadowspawn are, that is. Real soon! On TV and everything, you know, the president kneeling and them chopping off his head and raping his daughter or whatever. But that last part may just be someone blowing smoke. Though it would be funny."
"Right, I'd heard the rumors. Big changes, sure enough."
She nodded enthusiastically, her silky hair bobbing around her shoulders.
"They'll be gods again then, with temples and sacrifices. And we from the faithful families will all be lords over the meat sacks, like it was always promised. No more of these crap waiting-table jobs for summer money 'cause they need to keep everything hidden!"
"Yeah, I understand there will be leadership positions going begging."
"High priests and secret police and CEOs! We'll all have like big houses and sports cars and…and stuff…and absolutely hordes of slaves and we can do anything we want with the meat sacks."
"Sounds like fun."
"Totally toga party! I'd like to kill a couple, just to see if it's as big a spiff in the quiff as everyone says it is, and have them grovel and beg and cry and everything. I mean, I could see the Shadowspawn really got off on that when I was doing it. And we won't have to stay in town all the time or watch what we say in front of meat sacks, and I can go to concerts and raves and all that like the people on TV and the Web. Or maybe spring break in Puerto Vallarta."
"It's certainly got the Masters completely focused," Salvador said. "Hardly any of them left in the bay area. Usually there are a couple of dozen, at least."
Tiffany nodded. "There aren't any Masters left in town here at all, well, there are Dona Adrienne's kids, I suppose. I've seen them a couple of times. Just kids, if you don't know better. Sometimes the servants bring them down into town, or they have playdates and things."
Bingo, third confirmation and that's the charm, he thought, disguising a hunter's satisfaction with a bite of muffin. Definitely out of town, kids still definitely here. Plenty of nannies and such, I should think, and the security detail, but the living…well, active…monsters gone.
"Didn't your Dona Adrienne have another lucy? I think I heard someone mention that."
"Oh, Jose. No, he's retired…well, you know, retired from being a lucy. Out of town now, his aunt's got this business he helps with. The Villegas are sort of stuck up cause they've been here forever, but he's nice."
A sigh from the girl, as she propped her chin on a fist. "I'd like to travel. What's San Francisco like? There's this great place for clothes my mom got to go to once and she's still talking about it."
It struck Eric suddenly that quite possibly this Tiffany Meachum had never been more than a few miles from the town where she'd been born.
Man, I'm never going to read 'Salems Lot' again, he thought as he did riffs on the backstory of his supposed identity; the Brotherhood had a good system for producing them and he'd studied hard. Isolated small towns with horrible secrets just aren't going to be any fun even to imagine. I wonder what's in the cellars and attics here?
"So," she said a little later. "I get off at six. My place or yours?"
Salvador choked slightly. "Ah…"
"Well, you do want to fuck me, don't you?"
He answered with a wordless grunt, and she gave him a winning smile.
"I can probably get Jilly in on it too if you'd like that. Bet you've never had sisters at the same time! Rough stuffs fine, either way, I like pitching and catching. Your hotel might be better, 'cause my folks are, like, ancient and yell and pound on the door if I get too loud, and I really like to do that. Or you could gag me."
"Ah, sorry. Can't."
For a moment he felt a horrible temptation; it had been a long time since his dates had included anyone but Ms. Rosy Palm. Then he mentally recoiled at his mind's prompting vision of what he'd feel like afterwards.
You are too old to be thinking with the little head, Salvador. Also you have to look at yourself every day in the mirror.
"Oh, don't be all unfun!" she said, sensing his recoil. "I could get Don, my boyfriend, too," she added, with a considering glance. "If that's your thing."
"No offense, but I'm really busy. Another time."
"Oh, well, it was fun talking, Miguel. Have a nice day. Hail to the, ah, the Black Eternal Dawn…Eternal Black Dawn, and, uh, and whatever!"
"Jesus," he whispered softly to himself.
Lucy Lane was extremely quiet, a curving row of neo-Spanish houses deeply embowered in big trees, with lovely gardens out front and even better behind, from the glimpses he got. The narrow street made it almost drenched in sweet, heavy flower scent; the roundabout at the end gave onto the hills behind the town, and to the left was the high stucco-and-tile wall around the casa grande. Its roofs showed over the top, and the tips of trees. The brooding presence was never really gone anywhere in town, but here it was overwhelming.
Right, peones down here, hacendados up there. Ms. Cortines must feel right at home, not. I was right about this place being un-American, unless you count maybe Alabama.
From what he'd heard-the briefings had been brief, limited to the essentials-the Brezes had been aristos back in the old country, as well as satanists and magicians using powers they didn't understand until the nineteenth century. The sort who, back when, had hunted peasants for sport with horses and dogs, before what Adrian had called Madame la Guillotine taught them a few limits. Only, the Brezes hadn't wanted any limits. They'd apparently brought their conception of how things should be organized along when they came here, as well. This wasn't exactly a castle on a crag somewhere in the Auvergne with a village huddled at its feet, but it wasn't exactly not like that either.
Right, Salvador said to himself. According to Ellen, the one called Jabar got killed before she left, Peter Boase escaped, Monica's not here, and it doesn't look like there's anyone home anywhere but Cheba. Good news about this Jose guy being off the lane, that'll simplify things.
He felt hideously conspicuous, even though it was getting dark; California weather could make you forget what season it was, but the sun went down at the right time, anyway. The streetlights were picturesque, frosted globes on wrought-iron stands, but not the most efficient outdoor lighting he'd ever seen. Of course, the people who controlled the process could see in the dark anyway.
He didn't like to think what would happen if the local cops caught him loitering with intent on the street that was, essentially, the local Breze drive-by buffet. He'd also been warned that his cover story wouldn't hold up if someone actually contacted the Tokairin for a background check. Not even normal Shadowspawn sloppiness got that bad, and even a large clan didn't have so many close servants that they had to rely entirely on computerized lists.
Plus I don't think the local police are much into the Miranda rights thing, somehow.
The outside light came on at number five, and four people came out.
Right, Monica's kids. Boy eleven, girl ten. Older woman – probably their grandmother. And Eusebia Conines, formerly of Coetzala and Tlacotalpan.
His professional instincts stuttered a little when she hit his eye. She was about seventeen, and not your typical girl from a little ejido village. For one thing she looked to have a strong dash of African in there with the predominant india and some Spaniard, to judge from the cinnamon-coffee color of her skin and the way her blue-black hair was loosely curled, as well as her full lips. Slim, straight figure, but a high, full bust-also not typical, peasant girls tended to stocky builds and breasts at best of the perky persuasion.
Okay, stop snorting and pawing the ground, let's hope she's not as mentally fucked-up as the last pretty girl you saw.
She hadn't been, from what the others said, but she'd also been here a year as a lucy. A pretty traumatic situation to begin with, and Shadowspawn could do things to your head. He'd experienced a little of that with Adrian putting in the blocks and wards; his cover identity would account for that, if he'd been a Tokairin soldato once. They used their renfield mercenaries against one another in their squabbles and didn't want them to be too utterly vulnerable. But that had been clinical, not whatever the local monsters had been doing with her on a whim in this theme park for demons.
These village girls are tough, though. He'd had enough experience with wetbacks to know that. And Adrian said she looked mentally resilient to him. Now for the risky part.
If she yelled for the cops he was dead, or much much worse. Shadowspawn had ways of torturing you that didn't have to end with death. Just plain didn't have to end.
He waited until the older woman and the kids had driven off, then walked through the gate and up the brick pathway. The risers of the steps leading to the arched front door were mosaic tile, and there was a colorful surround in the arch above. It was a nice house, carefully maintained but Lived-in; number one was the only other that did, and it had a couple of bicycles out front in racks, kids' models.
It wasn't the first time he'd knocked on a door that might have someone unhappy to see him behind it. Policemen saw a lot of that. He drew a breath and rapped; it was more personal than ringing the bell.
"Yes?" she said, when the door opened; Salvador had been pretty sure that she spent an instant looking at him through the peephole.
"My name is Eric Salvador, Senorita Cortines. I come from a certain man you met, who was not as he seemed."
"Oh, fuck," said Salvador; he'd never met Adrienne Breze, and from the impact she'd had on other people he had no desire to do so. "She's alive?"
"Yes. Everyone else is not to know, you understand? So I can't say so, the witch makes sure of that. Only to you I can, I don't know why, my head doesn't start buzzing."
That must be the Wreakings that Adrian had implanted.
No wonder they're sloppy about security! They can just reach into peoples minds directly!
Salvador stared at her. The Mexican girl seemed extremely self-possessed, if a little pale and moving carefully. She was leaning back on a pale, elegant sofa, her hands busy with some sort of lacework, dressed in a silk blouse, braided belt, elegant slacks and tooled leather sandals, an orange cat curled up beside her. There were a few paintings on the wall; those would have been Ellen's while she was here.
But the bookcase held a slew of school primers and language guides and some illustrated books on crafts; and he suspected the color scheme, heavy reds and navy blues with highlights of orange and crimson and green, was the current tenant's idea. A plate of sugar cookies had been put out, and a pot of strong black coffee.
"You're…sure?" he said. "Sure she's not dead?"
She rolled her eyes; he had to acknowledge that it was a stupid question.
"?Ai! The things the evil bitch does to me every couple of days, I'm very sure, me."
Well, here's some crucial information. Christ! Well, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
"But she's gone?"
"Yes. She, her parents, Monica. Only the children left. They've all gone to get ready for this big meeting."
She grimaced and took a small case out of a pocket and tossed a little white pill into her mouth and swallowed.
"She drank a lot of my blood just before she left, but already it hurts; and she made me help with Jose, so I'd know what was coming to me. This medicine from the doctor helps a little. She laughed about how I would beg her to beat me and take me in the worst ways when she came back. Damn her to hell!"
They were speaking in Spanish; it wasn't Salvador's first language, hadn't been in his family since his grandmother's time, but he was fully fluent and had been as long as he could remember. Though the dialect he'd learned from his grandmother's generation was quite a bit different from hers; there had already been more English words mixed in, for starters. Her English was reasonably good, but still heavily accented, and sometimes a little too much like a literal word-for-word translation for fine detail to come through to anyone who wasn't bilingual already.
He suspected she'd spoken a lot of Nahuatl before moving to the big-city ambience of Tlacotalpan. Coetzala must really be in the boonies.
"She nearly died, she was very sick," Cheba added. Clinically: "That would have been bad. I would have been killed myself, sacrificed. They do that, I hear, like the days of the old gods, sending the servants along with the master. Also-"
There was a disturbing glint in her big dark eyes, a flicker like a kiss of flame.
"-also I want to kill her myself. See her die. See her die! If that blond gringa can nearly kill her I can finish the job."
Okay, no Stockholm syndrome here.
"Then you will help us?"
Cheba put her lacework down. "Maybe."
"Maybe," she said again. "?El brujo quiere mi ayuda??Le costard! If the sorcerer wants my help, it will cost him!"
"Well…he's offering a way to escape."
"Like he did last time? And so I escape, what am I going to do? I have no papers, no money, I don't speak the language really well yet."
"This is a bad place."
She shrugged, her eyes hard. "I grew up selling baskets on the streets in Tlacotalpan. What do you think that's like for an India with no money? It's a bad place! I'm getting ready here, me, learning things. What happens to me-" Another shrug. "That bastard son of a whore Paco, the coyote who smuggled us across the border and sold us to the witch as snacks, he and his friends did things to me too. I saw him die, I'll see her die. Meanwhile I have a nice house and enough to eat, and I learn and I prepare. Revenge is like mole, you have to cook it slow for the best taste."
Salvador hid an admiring grin, but he thought she caught a bit of it. She was smarter than most, but otherwise she reminded him of others he'd met, the ones not simply beaten down and numbed by misery. She had a lynx-eyed grasp of the main chance, and wasn't going to let anything get in the way. It was annoying, but she had never had enough to indulge in luxuries like sentimentality.
"Okay, what do you want?" he said.
"What do you want, you and your boss?"
"He wants the witch's children."
"He's the father, right? She boasted to me about that, once. That she tricked him or something." A sniff. "As if men needed to be tricked into that.
Ah…yes.
"I have helped look after them a little. They are not bad children, but very strange. Now, here is what I want. I will help this man you work for to fight the brujos. I want a chance to kill Adrienne. Also I want papers, not a green card but citizen's papers, and I want enough money to open my own shop."
She touched the lacework beside her on the sofa, gently nudging the cat's interest away.
"I have learned enough of what they like here. Some I can make, some buy from the south, I know where to go and I can bargain. What city for the shop, I am not sure. A safe place. Give me that and I will help."
Eric Salvador grinned openly this time. "You are a lady who knows her own mind," he said.
"I am one who has no time for foolishness," she said.
"This is no time for foolishness!" Cheba said.
Adrian shook his head. The Brotherhood commandos were gathered in the safe house, a disused warehouse in Paso Robles they'd used before, a dim expanse smelling of old motor oil and olives. Adrian, Farmer and Guha, Ellen, and Eric Salvador; their backup and exit groups were elsewhere, waiting. The only ones without a look of shocked astonishment on their faces were Cheba and Salvador, who'd delivered the news. Adrian himself felt as if he'd been punched in the gut; Ellen had gone gray and staggered backwards to sit on an old fruit crate. Farmer and Guha had their heads together and were whispering frantically.
"I killed her," Ellen whispered. "I swear to God I got her right in the foot with the hypo and pressed the plunger."
"You did," Cheba said. "But one of the other guests, the woman Michiko, cut off her foot almost instantly, before much of the poison got into her. Then she was very sick for months. The foot grew back. Like a bud on a plant."
She shuddered. Adrian nodded; he didn't know if the original Shadowspawn had had that ability, but the Council's eugenics program had established it among the purebreds a few generations earlier. Probably in normal humans switching off that particular suppressive gene would have meant death by cancer, but his breed didn't have that sort of bad luck. Or perhaps the cells that went wrong had extremely bad luck themselves.
"We are very hard to kill," he said, feeling himself gathering strength. "Very hard indeed. Things…fall out well for us."
"I killed Michiko, though," Ellen said, taking deep breaths.
"How do you know?" Cheba asked.
Ellen glared at her. "I shot her in the head with a silver bullet from a rifle!"
"Oh. Good for you, gringa!" Then briskly to Adrian: "So. This man here agreed to my terms. You will keep this promise."
Adrian bowed gracefully, amused and impressed. "I authorized him to bargain for me," he said. "The citizenship and the money are"-he waved his hand-"easy enough."
"Easy enough for you!"
"Precisely. Easy enough for me," he said, with a hard smile.
This was not a woman who would respect anyone who could be pushed, Power or no.
"You could have asked for more."
"I asked for what I wanted. More I can make for myself. What I asked for, you owe me. It is justice, not charity."
"Very well. As to Adrienne…I will kill her the moment I can. So will any of us here."
Ellen nodded vigorously, and so did Guha and Salvador.
" Shit, yeah," Farmer added. "Get a number and stand in line, senorita."
Adrian amplified: "I certainly don't object to your killing her if you get a chance. Be my guest; you have ample cause. But nobody will let her live an instant longer than they must. She is too dangerous, too tricky, too likely to seize any opportunity to wiggle out of a trap."
Cheba scowled ferociously for a moment-Adrian thought there was even the hint of a pout-then reluctantly nodded.
" Bueno. I see that this is necessary."
"Living well while your enemy does not is the best revenge," Adrian said.
"A head cut off and put on a stick is the best revenge," Cheba said with enormous sincerity. "Still, you are right, she must be killed."
"As to protection, no place will be safe while the Shadowspawn rule. The world is not safe; they plan soon to kill on a scale that the worst conquerors of the past could see only in nightmares. I will do my best; but I guarantee nothing and I wash my hands of you if you do not follow my orders in matters of your safety from them. Agreed?"
She looked at him for a long moment. "Agreed. You are a man who does not promise more than he can do, I think."
"You're right," Ellen said unexpectedly. "Adrian…are we still going through with this plan?"
"Yes," he said decisively. "That Adrienne is alive makes everything that has happened in the past year…acquire a different meaning."
"No shit," Farmer snarled.
He put his hands to his head. "Nothing on precog…Anni?"
"Nothing," she said. "But with Adrienne, it would be like trying to see a match against a bonfire."
Adrian nodded. "We must look at each event through a different lens."
Guha and Farmer looked at each other; the man shook his head, and she shrugged slightly.
"But this plan is still good. Dead or gone, she is not there, and neither are my parents, so there is no adept at Rancho Sangre. Even better, if we have the children, we have a lever over her."
Ellen looked at him, surprised and a little shocked.
"You wouldn't hurt them?"
"No." A hard smile. "You know that. Adrienne will suspect it…but she will not be sure, and she will be restrained by that uncertainty. Also it will injure her prestige with other Shadowspawn, which can only be good. Whatever she plans, whatever her cunning, she cannot simply sweep them aside. If we can prevent Trimback One, the Brotherhood is in a position to thwart her plans for the parasmallpox plague."
He looked around; the others remained silent. "Then let us do as we planned. With one modification."
Except for Cheba, the others were already in tough dark clothing and boots, gear that would be practical in a fight without screaming military or terrorist to a casual observer. Light flexible body armor of the latest nanotube variety didn't bulk them out unduly, and for once the Power wouldn't be with the other side. The weapons were Tavors, Israeli machine carbines with a full suite of sensor sights, and grenade launchers; the silver-inlaid and warded knives were a backup this time. Ellen had her sniper rifle, and they all wore comm headsets.
Salvador grinned as he slapped a magazine into his stubby assault rifle. "Like old times," he said.
Adrian shook his head. "We are still at a disadvantage in a straight-up fight. In and out without violence is best."
"How?" Cheba said skeptically. "The brujos are gone, but there are many guards with guns. The lesser servants are like machines that walk, but some of the others are cunning and watchful. And…what do you call them…Wreakings in the ground, the walls, the air. I can feel them sometimes, like great hungry beasts, like giant rats scuttling between the walls of the world."
"So," Adrian said, and walked up the ramp into the truck. The vehicle looked unexceptional. Inside the ordinary commercial shell was ceramic armor. The padded container within was just big enough for him and his gear. He lay down in it and swung the lid closed, dogging it firmly from the inside. Velvet blackness pressed down on his eyes, impenetrable even to Shadowspawn sight, though not to the Power. He crossed his hands on his chest, hand to opposite shoulder, and cleared his mind of all but the glyphs he sought.
"Amss-aui-ock!"
All of the humans bristled a little as he sat up through the lid and carefully came erect and walked down the ramp. A night-walker spoke to fears far below knowledge. Salvador was sweating a little; he was newer to this than the others…except Cheba, who jumped back a little.
"So?" she said. "How will this help?"
"I was going to go into the casa grande like this," he said.
And changed. Then she was looking at herself, naked. She spat something in a language that was not Spanish, and forced herself not to back away as he/she approached.
"You have changed a little," he said, studying her with vision and the Power. "You are in better condition…several teeth capped, no need to imitate that…no calluses on your hands…"
He closed his eyes and sought inward. The DNA template simply gave you the adult form of the organism at maturity, with optimum development; modifying it to mimic somatic changes caused by an individual's life history was considerably more difficult. Even a little clumsiness could kill the pseudobody, which meant you had to start over…and subjectively experience death, as well, even if only for an instant, and a chance of the Final Death if you were really careless. The others stared as the hair grew shorter and the face a little thinner.
"There," he said, and opened his eyes. "I could pass for you. But now I have a better option, with your news, senorita."
He smiled grimly and changed once more. This was the easiest of all; the body was a Shadowspawn one, and related to him as closely as possible except for a clone or identical twin. Cheba did give a little jump backwards, as Adrienne Breze grinned at her. Then she closed her eyes for an instant, lips moving.
"Is this correct, Cheba? Our lives may depend on it!"
She moistened her lips and forced herself to concentrate. "The…the hair is shorter. It fell out when she was sick and had to grow back. And…just a little thinner."
Another careful look as he changed. "Yes, yes, that is right."
"Good." He looked at Guha. "I'll need some of your street clothes; they'll be the right size. Jeans and a T-shirt and a jacket, yes. A Glock and a wrought knife, too. And my Ferrari is something she might have picked up."
Ellen brought him the clothes, and he dressed quickly. The way the body moved was odd, in a way less natural than a beast's, but it wasn't the first time he'd transformed so.
"How do I look?" he said.
Ellen studied him critically. "Tuck the shirt in. And you need some lipstick, just a touch…Here, I'll do it."
"Now?" he said, when her light, deft hands were done.
His voice sounded a little odd to him as a soprano as well.
"Gorgeous, lover!" she said, and gave him a long kiss.
He grinned again as it finished. "I fear you are shocking our recruits," he said.
Ellen cocked a brow at Salvador. "Hey, don't knock it. All the advantages of polyamory and monogamy rolled into one!" Fiercely, to Adrian: "We're going to pull this off."
Adrian nodded. To Cheba: "It is credible that she would bring you in the front door?"
"Yes. Sometimes she takes me places, dates, she calls it. To humiliate me, I think. I don't let it, I just learn how to act in fancy places or wear the clothes. Someday I will have these things of my own."
"She is not a nice person. Let that return to bite her."
"Yes!"
The brooding presence of the casa grande grew as the sports car rumbled through the streets of Rancho Sangre. The scent of time, of Power, of generations of blood and terror and unclean death.
"You drive like her," Cheba said, startling him a little. "Very fast, stupidly fast. But very well."
Adrian shrugged. "We are related." A wry smile. "We are mirror images, in a way. Similar, but…reversed. Each seeks to destroy the other, because each of us sees what we might have been."
The great wrought-iron gates with their gilded designs of tridents and blackened bronze suns opened automatically. The Gurkha mercenaries snapped to attention, presenting their assault rifles. Adrian nodded at their noncom and followed the winding brick-paved road, with stars showing in flickers through the live oaks arching overhead. Scents of cypress and cut grass and oleander came to them, and wind fluttered their long hair beneath the head scarves.
A servant in a braided white jacket and black trousers hurried out to open the car door.
"Leave it here," Adrian said, with a lordly nod. "Come, my sweet little nibblesome bizcocho," he went on, and walked in with an arm around Cheba's waist, feeling the stiff disdain in her body language.
She was supposed to be acting as she would with Adrienne, which he suspected wasn't easy.
Tall doors and the great entry hall went by. He fought down his excitement and his dread, struggling for focus; that was always just a touch harder when he wore a female form, but he was considerably more aware of detail, more able to track multiple lines of thought and action at the same time.
"Assistant household manager," Cheba whispered in his ear as they reached the top of the stairs and the beginning of the corridor that led to the private wing. "Thomas Kenworth. He is the one who really runs the house, while Theresa does the bigger things."
A middle-aged man, cadaverous, with very cold blue eyes. Adrian could sense his blank surprise, and beneath it a very thin thread of suspicion. Not yet conscious, manifesting only as a feeling of unease, and anyone who wasn't uneasy around Adrienne wouldn't last long. And this one had some sensitivity; not trained, but he felt as if he were a little over twenty on the Alberman, nearly as strong as Harvey. Adrian's night-walking manifestation was very strong; there were times when he forgot he was not embodied in this state himself. But there were ways to detect it, if you knew how.
" Dona," the man said, bowing. "This is unexpected!"
"Predictability is so boring," Adrian said. "Of course, it wouldn't do for you to go off on tangents, Thomas, but that's another matter, eh?"
A flash of fear. "How may I serve you?"
"I decided that my nights would be too lonely without athletic little Cheba here, so I ducked back to fetch her. And the children; they should be present at the historic moment. Send someone to pack their things, immediately."
"But, Dona -"
A touch of ice, and a painful tug at the man's mind. "Is there a problem with immediately, Thomas? I'll go through to the nursery, and I would appreciate it if I didn't have to wait. You know how waiting upsets me."
The man hastened off, pulling his phone from his belt as he did.
Adrian suppressed an impulse to blow out a sigh of relief and wipe his brow. He didn't hurry either, instead strolling along and remembering to sway slightly.
"That was as she would do it," Cheba murmured. "But she did not threaten so very often. Sometimes she would just kill instead. Mostly she would smile, and order, and they all obeyed very quickly."
Adrian nodded jerkily. I must remember that my Adrienne is my vision. Not untrue, but not all the truth of another being.
They turned down the long corridor…and Adrian flung himself backwards, his arms outstretched. Cheba turned to him, her face puzzled as his gaze went to the tile surround that outlined the arch, and down to the floor. The way was closed by two doors of gilded bronze fretwork, but that was not the problem; they were light and not locked.
"What is the problem?" she said. "The children's quarters are beyond here."
Adrian hissed as the hint of pain ran along his nerves. One step farther…His stomach lurched a little as he read the twisting paths grouped around the portal. He had felt something like this at Ellen's apartment, over a year ago, when his sister had left a trap for him. A probability cascade, an avalanche of might-bes, each more disastrous and deadly than the last. He relaxed the focus of his eyes, his hands moving in small, precise gestures, murmuring Mhabrogast beneath his breath, Seeing.
But that had been an improvisation. This was something that had taken days or weeks, great skill, and several lives. It was so complex that it was almost sentient, alive in its own way, a thing like an eternal scream, ready to lock you in its arms and spiral down the slope of entropy on a journey that would never end.
"What?" Cheba said again, sharply.
"You said that you could feel the Wreakings sometimes?" She nodded quickly, her dark eyes going wide. "Well, they are here. Very strong, and some of them new. Like rats in the walls of the world, indeed, and aimed at me-or at my kind, at least. If I had walked beneath that arch with the Power active and hostile intent, neither of us would have left here alive."
"What do we do?"
"You fetch the children; it is not keyed to normal humans, and I think it is keyed to pass you specifically. I will wait here. Quickly now!"
Cheba walked through the familiar rooms with their cheery, horrible murals. Past one where the Little Mermaid dragged the Prince beneath the waves with strong cold arms and a contented little smile, and into the big play chamber. Shrill voices sounded, and one of the nannies was there reading a magazine.
"Hi, Cheba!" she said. "The little devils are hard at it." She yawned. "I do wish they slept at the same times as the rest of us. They'll be going strong after midnight."
Cheba nodded and made herself smile, not daring to speak. The danger was like a snake coiled in her stomach, making her skin flush hot and cold. Hate drove her, the memory of laughter and unendurable pain and loathsome pleasure that was even worse eating at her soul.
The playroom was big, nearly as big as her whole house, and that was huge compared to anywhere she'd ever lived before. There was a great complex dollhouse, and a jungle gym and trampoline and who knew what else. A small form caromed into her and threw her arms around her waist.
"Caught you!" Leila said. "Hi, Cheba! Now I eat your brains!"
"We're playing Zombie Apocalypse, Cheba!" Leon called happily, lumbering with his arms outstretched. " Braaaiiins!"
A deep breath and she smiled. "You cannot eat my brains tonight, mi reinita" she said to Leila, rubbing her head. "Your mother is here to fetch you and Leon. She has decided that you should go on her trip with her after all, and me too."
"Why are you so scared, Cheba?" Leila asked innocently. "You feel all fizzy and scared."
"Your mama scared me," she replied; which was entirely plausible; they knew about that, if not the details.
"Oh. I hope you taste good when she bites you; you need to be bitten, I can feel it. C'mon, Leon. It's Maman!"
"Oh, good!" Leon said. Then, curiously: "Is it about our dad?"
Cheba froze, then cleared her throat. "Why do you think that, patroncito?"
"Because I asked Maman, and she said that we might see our father sometime soon. I'd like that."
"Perhaps you will," she said, and he nodded solemnly; she was unpleasantly conscious that he could probably read the truth in her statement.
But he cannot read my thoughts. That does not come to them while they are children. Feelings yes, thoughts no.
"Come! Your mother is impatient."
"The children's luggage is ready and has been loaded into your car, Dona," the man Thomas said; he looked as if he were slightly out of breath.
Then he blurted out: "Why are you here, Dona?"
His eyes lifted to the archway. Then they went wide; Adrian could feel the logic chains shifting in his mind. His mouth had just begun to open when the Shadowspawn drew and fired.
Crack!
A small blue hole appeared in the man's forehead; bone fragments and pinkish gray brain, blood and hair spattered on the pale surface of the wall behind him. The ricochet peened away from the stone, flicking a divot of plaster and revealing the limestone block beneath as it keened down the passageway.
Killing him with the Power would have been quieter, but it might have activated the guardian Wreakings…and he would need all his reserves before they got away, probably. Cheba stumbled to a halt with a boy and girl on either side of her, her hands resting on their shoulders. Adrian's heart lurched for an instant at the sight of their faces; then control clamped down steely cold.
"You're not my maman -" the girl began, as the boy gazed gape-mouthed at the dead man.
" Tzi-ci-satza,"Adrian snarled, and made a gesture with his left hand. Push with the mind…
The children's eyes rolled up in their heads, and their minds plummeted down into something almost like natural sleep. He'd expected that, hoped for it; Shadowspawn children were often prekeyed for that, with Wreakings laid on in earliest toddlerhood. He had been, and Adrienne as well; removing it had been part of their training when they neared puberty. Cheba gave a cry of dismay and clutched at the small forms, cushioning their fall to the carpet.
"They're all right," Adrian snapped. "Asleep, merely. You carry the girl. Hurry, an alarm has gone off!"
"But-"
"They will not shoot and endanger Adrienne's children, they know she would flay them by inches for the rest of eternity. Go!"
A seven-year-old was more of a burden than he'd anticipated; Adrienne's body was very strong for her size, but that size was a fifth less than his. The utter limpness helped; his heart started to turn again, as the boy's face drooped into the curve of his neck.
No time, no time…
They took the distance at a quick walk. Adrian could feel the electronic nerves of the security system shrilling; he split off part of his mind to push -
Wires melted, arcs sprang between conduits. Redundant systems came online as the lights flickered, but some of those failed too. Cheba gasped but toiled along behind him. Servants fled his shout of, "Get out of my way!"
The guards at the front door hesitated just a moment too long, caught between the impossibility of firing and the knowledge of what would also happen if they let their mistress' children be abducted.
Crack! Crack!
Both flipped backwards and slumped to the ground; at ten yards he could manage head shots. He dropped the Glock and scooped up the Steyr assault rifle in one hand as they stumble-ran down the long steps.
"Alert! Alert! Intruder is not Dona Adrienne! The Donas children have been captured! Alert! Aleeeiaeoughtg-"
The loudspeakers exploded in cascades of flame. Adrian staggered; he was using the Power with reckless abandon. They dropped the children into the Ferrari's narrow backseat.
"I will hold them!" Cheba snapped, and scrambled in to kneel facing backwards, her arms bracing the small forms.
Adrian vaulted into the driver's bucket seat of the sports car, his foot stamping on the accelerator. The turbocharged engine screamed like a horse in agony, and the rear wheels spun black smoke into the night. Lights were snapping on all across the estate grounds as the acceleration punched him back into the padding; he could hear Cheba grunt as she threw herself forward to pin the children safely in place against inertia.
He took the curving approach with insane daring, mind like a needle point of diamond as he pushed at the probabilities even as his body switched wrists on the wheel and worked the shift-stick. The last stretch was level…right to the firmly closed and locked gates. The covers on the stone gate pillars had flipped up, and the tele-operated robot guns were tracking him. He grinned like a shark and stood on the brake, turning in a skidding pinwheel that came within a hair of flipping the car as it scrubbed off velocity. The air stank of burning rubber and burning fuel oil and the sweat of terror, a scent that made the hairs stand up along his neck in a predator's bristle. Cheba was screaming now, but he could feel how she still braced herself with everything that was in her.
She is almost as brave as Ellen, some remote part of him thought.
The operators of the guns at last dared to fire one economical burst directly into the long hood of the Ferrari. The engine seized just as the nose came around to point at the gate once more. The two guards had thrown away their rifles, and they were running at him with their heavy kukris raised, the in-curved chopping blades glinting where their silver inlays caught the floodlights. Their minds were like eyes that had looked into the sun, but their training and the warrior souls within kept them moving; their reflex was to run towards danger.
Even as the car slowed Adrian was moving. Forward, letting his clothes fall away as he reverted to his own default form, impalpable as he passed through the windshield. Then another change in midleap, and the sabertooth gave a screaming roar; and for an instant Adrian understood in his bones how his ancestors had ruled the world for a hundred thousand years.
He landed as delicately as a house cat pouncing for a butterfly, and one plate-broad paw slammed hooked claws across a mercenary's face and throat, the dewclaw ripping half the scalp free. The man gave a bubbling shriek and spun away to die with his face swiped away like a putty mask, leaving only red bone and grinning teeth and staring eyes above a spouting tear in the throat.
" Ayo Ghorkali!" the second man shouted, and struck.
A half ton of carnivore slammed into his chest as the blade came down, and a razor edge of silver sliced into the skin over Adrian's spine. In the same instant his bear-thick forearms closed around the man, ripping at the body armor that covered his back, shredding it. The six-inch fangs stabbed down as the grip positioned the prey. Crisp popping sensations as the serrated ivory steak knives drove deep.
Blood foamed across his mouth, irresistible, wine of terror and effort. He allowed himself six long swallows, and felt new strength course through him. When he rose it was as a naked man whose face dripped a red that was almost black in the flickering light.
Two lances of fire from outside the estate wall rammed into the robot turrets and they exploded in flame and smoke-trailing fragments. Half a second later the reinforced bumper and grille of the van rammed the gates. Tortured steel snapped, and the great portals buckled enough to let a man through. It wasn't a man, though; Guha came instead, running towards the wrecked car whose hood was wreathed in fire. Adrian turned; a platoon of Gurkhas was double-timing down the roadway towards him, spread out in a rough skirmish line with their kukris raised. As he saw them they broke into a charge.
His hands went up. " Aki, tzeeen, alalaaal!" he screamed, the Mhabrogast tearing at his throat, turning his mind into a set of lethal razors.
Four of the Gurkhas simply dropped in their tracks; hearts locked in spasm or brains flooding from burst veins. Another two began hacking at each other madly; and two rifles exploded as the propellant in the cartridges spontaneously ignited. The others wavered for an instant, then came on still faster. Adrian staggered with the effort, wheezing suddenly as the stolen strength of the dead soldier's blood flowed out of him again. For a moment his night-walker's form flickered, and he was a pillar of mist with yellow eyes, until it steadied again.
A heavy machine gun cut loose behind him, tracers snapping by overhead; Jack Farmer was shooting from the hatch on the vehicle's roof, screaming:
"Die, you cocksucking traitors, die, motherfuckers, die, die!"
His shooting was much less frenzied than his shout, or the emotions pouring off him. Men died; the. 50 caliber made nothing of infantry armor, especially at this range, blasting through and turning bodies into tumbling bags of smashed bone and flesh or ripping off limbs. Ellen was out of the van too, her sniper rifle snapping off rounds as she braced it through a gap in the gate. The. 338 Lapua rounds were silver-cored, which didn't matter, and heavy and moving fast, which did. She worked the bolt methodically, swayed back a little with the recoil, set herself, picked another target through the night-vision scope, breathed out, fired.
Cheba ran past with Leila in her arms. Salvador met her at the gap in the buckled gate, snatched the child and practically hurled her through, and then into the vehicle. Guha was close behind her when one of the Gurkhas at last lost control and began shooting, a long burst that walked tracer towards her.
Adrian groped for the Power, but he was spent. Guha saw the burst coming and dropped, curling her body around Leon's small form and wrapping herself in a protective shield. Three of the light high-velocity bullets smacked into her back with sounds like fists striking meat. Little spots flecked up on her clothing, and the armor beneath was the light law-enforcement type. She sprawled, blood draining from mouth and nose.
Adrian took three paces and heaved her over his shoulder. Ellen was beside him, rifle discarded; she grabbed for his son and dragged the boy backwards out of the pool of blood, throwing him into a fireman's carry. Together they struggled through the wreckage of the gate. Adrian tossed Guha's limp form into the van, and dove after her.
Blackness.
"Had the devil of a time getting you out of that steel coffin before you smothered," Farmer grumbled, looking down at the plastic cast on his arm. "That's where I got this from a stray round, and the ricochet hit Cheba in the thigh. We weren't even sure your etheric form had made it back to the meat body. Then the black helicopter spiraled in and we piled in…God, what a movie it would make."
Adrian smiled thinly. He still felt as if every inch of him had been beaten with clubs until his skin came off and then he was dipped in acid; that was what you got for overusing the Power. Even a private feeding with Ellen had made him feel only a little better, enough to keep down some of the Brotherhood's shanghaied Red Cross blood. The institutional beige-and-brown atmosphere of the safe-house hospital wasn't helping either.
"You need help, honey?" Ellen said. "You could stay in the wheelchair for this, you know."
Slowly Adrian stood. The rail of the bed rattled a bit as he put out a hand when everything swayed, and then steadied. He opened his mouth to say he could stand on his own, then smiled and let her put an arm around his waist; his went over her shoulders.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much."
"You're welcome. This way. The doctor says she can't say much, but she insisted."
"She saved my son," Adrian said. "She can insist as she pleases."
The hospital was set up in orthodox fashion, until you noticed there were no exterior windows; the rooms opened off a central corridor, with two or three beds in each. Most were vacant; the next held a sullen Cheba, and Eric Salvador sitting in a chair beside her bed being politely implacable about keeping her in it. Beyond that was Guha's.
No convalescence here; it was simple flat-out borderline-fatal injury. Adrian's nose flared slightly at the smell of pain. The doctors thought the agent would live, but three pulverized ribs and a perforated lung were not something you could shrug off. Jack Farmer was speaking as they walked in:
"And you are going to take some time off. We never did get to go on that holiday in Mauritius you always talked about…Okay, here he is."
The nurse watching the monitors gave him a warning glance as he nodded.
"Second…time…save," Guha said breathily as he bent over her.
The painkilling drugs were making her muzzy, but he could feel the effort of will she put forth into mastering it. The tubes rattled a little as she moved one arm slightly.
"Got to tell you. Harvey…said not. Owe you. Harvey…has the bomb. I…can feel…you should know. Black-path if you don't. Harvey…has the bomb."
"Bomb?" Adrian said softly.
There was an image in her mind. A flash of light…
"Used…plutonium from the…Never mind. Twenty-five kilo-ton. In Istanbul. To Tbilisi."
Adrian blinked. "What? You could never conceal something like that-"
"Boase. Figured it out. Got it. Harvey's taking it to Tbilisi."
Her eyes fluttered closed. The nurse pointed warningly out the door, and Adrian walked-stumbled-in that direction, holding himself up against the jamb. Images strobed through his mind, a wild tangle of possibilities with a dead center where the Power simply wasn't.
"Bomb?" Ellen said. "That redneck maniac has a nuclear bomb?"
"He's going to try to destroy the Council," Adrian said with soft wonder. "All the most powerful Shadowspawn adepts in one place. That hasn't happened since before Hiroshima. And with Boase's shield to keep it from being detected."
"And it's going to work!" Farmer said with quiet vehemence. "We're going to win!"
"There are over a million human beings in Tblisi, you…you fanatic!" Ellen began.
Adrian held up his hand. Both of them fell silent, and he stared at the wall. Ellen's hand stole into his and he squeezed it, drawing strength.
"You don't understand," he said. "Either of you. Adrienne is alive. She's been moving behind the scenes all year, and we didn't know she was alive. She must know about the bomb. She's been playing us like a violin!"
"God," Farmer said, half a grunt, as if he'd been struck.
Ellen made a wordless sound.
" Harvey doesn't know she's alive. He has to be told."
Farmer backed up three steps. "He can't be."
"What do you mean?"
"He went into Istanbul and picked it up, and he was going to deliver it under deep cover. I think he was afraid the Brotherhood would change its mind. I don't know how to contact him-and with that thing of Boase's we can't even use the Power to trace him."
The three looked at one another. A moment later, Adrian spoke:
"What have we done?"