S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

"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 cruder 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 fiance 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-Elysees, 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 curved 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.

Napoleon 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.

Etienne-Maurice Breze, 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 Breze 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.