S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

Ellen shivered again. The night felt empty. There was the palest pale to the east, over the leagues of silvery desert. She'd never thought how good emptiness could feel.

There was a trickle of alarm along her nerves. Then Adrian's body reared up and fell back. A keening sound came from between his clenched teeth. She leaned the rifle against the boulder-guns could go off if you dropped them; that caution was automatic now-and threw herself down beside him.

His sweat smelled rank, despite the chill of the desert night. The yellow-flecked eyes were open and rolled up in his head, and teeth showed white and bare; they chattered, and he shook as if in the grip of a chill. Strings of disconnected words sounded, in half a dozen languages, then French, then English:

"I…she was hurt, I had to…Too much, too much! The fighting and the healing, too much!"

He had to help someone. He's overdrawn on the Power, Ellen knew. Which is entirely like him. He talks cynic and acts like Galahad.

And she knew what she must do; the thought made her mouth go dry with him in this condition, but her voice was steady. His eyes were fixed on her and the pupils had grown to swallow the iris, a thin band of gold around pits of black; his teeth showed, and a line of spittle hung from one lip.

"Come on, darling. I've got what you need."

"No…control…get away…"

" Do it," she said, and bent forward, bending her chin back. "Come on, you goddamned Boy Scout!"

He snarled and lunged. Ellen gave a scream that was half moan as cable-strong arms closed around her and teeth scored her throat.

Dawn broke; the air was still comfortably cool, but it had a hint of the day's white furnace, and a scent of dry dust. Harvey Ledbetter walked into the motel's office and held up one hand. The manager was obviously frightened-despite the overcranked air-conditioning there was a sheen of sweat on him-and obviously desperate to know what had happened to his unit in the night.

"There's been a bit of damage," Harvey said aloud.

Meanin your little fleabag is trashed, he thought.

And saw the same knowledge on the man's face; he'd been out to take a look. A grenade did do regrettable things to cheap construction, not to mention tons of homicidal gorilla and sabertooth rolling around making bad and throwing off Wreakings while they did. Fortunately there hadn't been any flames they couldn't put out, and the bloodstains were nothing out of the ordinary.

Harvey smiled and flicked his right hand. A fan of hundred-dollar notes appeared there; even these days, a C-note wasn't toilet paper. He put them down on the desk, and then rested his index finger on them, friendly blue eyes peering over the tops of his mirrored shades.

"I think that will keep things nice and tidy," he said, and let something else show; he could feel the man's mind jump. "And quiet."

The way the Texan was leaning gave just a hint of the shape of his shoulder holster and the Colt within. The manager paled a little at that and the eyes, then crumpled-not physically, but you could sense the inward collapse. Also his calculations: three people in civilian versions of field gear, their truck, the disturbances, the Humvee that had arrived a few minutes ago. All that said either police or cartels , possibly both in this part of the country. Or perhaps spook, but he'd be less likely to think that.

" Si. Just some friends getting a little rough, eh?" the manager said, and made the money disappear. "A little party. Insurance, I have it."

"Friends? Well, one of'em was a real gorilla, and I didn't like him at all," Harvey said, and smiled at the other man's uneasy laugh. "And the other was a real cool cat. Just so we understand each other."

Harvey nodded, smiled again-there was no point in pushing the man when he'd gotten what he wanted. Frightening people had its uses, but it was all too easy to make them terrified, and terror was the original two-edged knife. Desperate human beings switched off their minds and got really unpredictable. Besides that, there was no point in taking out his frustrations on bystanders.

He walked back into the bright sunlight, and onto the scuffed cracked asphalt and concrete and bare dirt of the motel's courtyard. Despite the stiffness and the bruises, and the general message his body was sending him about slowing down in his early sixties, he grinned. There was even a tumbleweed, and a couple of skittering lizards.

He'd been born in the Hill Country, not far southeast of Austin, which was pretty enough in a spare, rocky way; there were even olive groves and vineyards there these days. And would-be Tuscanista rural gentrifiers making organic goat cheese, most of which, in his opinion, was about as much fun to eat as the other caprine by-products.

But there was a certain ugly charm to desolation like this, a sort that could appeal to any country-bred Texan. A Larry McMurtry fitness , as if Captain McCrae were about to ride in with a scruffy patrol of Rangers, a Winchester in a scabbard at his knee.

A little unconscious nostalgia there too, he thought. Back then, all humans had to worry about was other humans, like the Comanche or Mexican bandits. The Order of the Black Dawn was just getting started .

As he came out Farmer was helping Guha into the van. It was a big, nondescript vehicle, with oversize tires and certain facilities that didn't show; the back could be rigged for casualties, for instance. She'd be some time healing, but it was a big improvement over dying after a subjective month or so of agony and fear. Farmer was moving carefully too, and he was thirty years younger than Harvey; that gave the older man a good deal of satisfaction.

Peter Boase was being cautious, but holding up remarkably well for a civilian who'd just gone through a withdrawal process that made kicking heroin loose nothing by comparison.

And there were Adrian and Ellen, both looking… ridden hard and put away wet, he thought ironically. Pale and interesting. The girl…woman…moved stiffly and looked washed out, but she and Adrian were still exchanging smiles and glances and touches, almost unconsciously.

Well, that's the real thing, he thought. And Adrian's actually found a girlie who doesn't mind being on the receiving end of a Homo sapiens nocturnus feeding frenzy. Good for him, since he can apparently control even that. And I can't even find a woman who'll put up with all-too-human me.

There was a hint of irony in his smile. Harvey Ledbetter considered himself an excellent judge of character, including the female variety. As long as he wasn't personally interested in the woman in question. When he was…

Three marriages, three divorces, he thought. Fuckin' perfect record. Of course, not being able to tell the truth about what you do really doesn't help.

He could talk to Brotherhood women, of course. Weird term, when you thought about it; they'd never gotten around to modernizing the name for these gender-inclusive times. They were another story.

The problem with that was that nearly everyone in the Brotherhood was insane in one way or another.

" He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. "Note that the feller who said that ended up wearing a straitjacket and baying out the window of the asylum at the Bavarian Alps. Now, I'm completely sane, I surely am. I'm planning on blowing up a city with a nuclear weapon for perfectly rational and highly moral reasons.

He laughed as he walked over to the vehicles, and Adrian smiled at him. It had always been a charming expression, and it looked better now with some years on him and a bit less of that androgynous beauty Shadowspawn teenagers tended to show. Adrian looked like he was in his late twenties-maybe a bit older this morning, after a hard night-but his body language was somehow a little different.