S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

"Okay, it was a trap and I was stupid. I should have asked them, 'Who dat, never heard of no Breze, me,' or just hit the spam blocker. But we weren't getting anywhere, creeping into Adrian Breze's house like we planned would be desperation stuff, so I downloaded. Here's what I got, repeated a whole lot of times."

Letters appeared, a paragraph of boldface:

– youaresofuckedyouaresofuckedyouaresofuckedyouareso I " Cesar!" A scream in a woman's voice from another room, high and desperate. Then: "Don't-don't- please, don't -"

Then just screaming. Cesar snatched up the pistol and ran. Salvador heard himself screaming too, as the shots began. Then more sounds, for a long time. Then another face in the screen.

It was the woman he'd seen in the dream; he could tell, even though her face was one liquid sheet of dull red. Only the golden flecks in her eyes showed bright, and then her teeth were very white when she licked them clean.

"You are so fucked," she crooned, and the screen went black.

Eric Salvador choked as the tears ran down his face. His hand twitched towards his pistol and he forced it to lie still.

There were far too many people who had to die before he did. People he had to talk to. Adrian Breze, for starters.

Adrienne Breze lay back in the big hot tub, watching the high cold stars slip by in the skylights overhead and enjoying the gentle eddies of the hot lavender-scented water. Her toes floated slightly above the surface with wisps of mist half veiling them, but the regenerated foot was now just as large as the other and only slightly pink; for that matter, her hair was shoulder-length again. No trace of the famine-gauntness remained on the rest of her.

"I'm back to my full, magnificent form," she said.

There were three other people in the room with her, besides Monica. Theresa Villegas was a thin, dark woman in her forties and the household manager, which to a Shadowspawn meant considerably more than overseeing the maids, or even scaring up the human refreshments for parties. The household was the instinctive unit of organization for her breed, the way clans were for Homo sapiens. Harold Bates was recorded somewhere as head of security for Breze Enterprises; that meant he ran her human mercenaries, mostly Gurkhas. David Cheung was young, extraordinarily fit, with the sort of build you saw on gymnasts or martial artists, and sleekly handsome. She used him as a guard and enforcer, among other things; it was a rather unusual arrangement.

But the whole point of being a Progressive is not to be overly bound by tradition, hein?

By her elbow there was a dish of smoked salmon and little spiced shrimp on toothpicks and a glass of slightly chilled New Zealand gewurztraminer-quite extraordinarily good; she made a note to acquire the vineyard as she nibbled and sipped.

"The arrangements?" she said.

"Your great-grandfather agreed to the meeting," Theresa said efficiently, her eyes flicking down to her tablet for an instant. "His personal reply…I quote: ' Quelle surprise, we Brezes are infernally hard to kill.'"

"I think he used infernal with malice aforethought," she said, chuckling. "Alas, he retains a sentimental attachment to the satanist part of the family heritage. Emotionally if not literally. Captain Bates?"

The mercenary nodded. "The security plan is ready for implementation, Ms. Breze," he said in upper-class British tones.

"Good, it would be tiresome if there were interference. I need to consult closely with Great-grandfather and Great-grandmother, without distractions."

"I understand your brother consulted with them first," the Englishman said. "Is that likely to create difficulties?"

"No, no. I wanted him to make his appearance first. It will confirm certain assumptions he has made about my plans. Because, at the time he saw them, Etienne and Seraphine shared those assumptions, you see? I did not want to illuminate them for fear he would sense something. He is astonishingly sensitive at times, my dear sibling."

She looked at David. "And we'll need you active when we arrive, so go wait for me. You can sleep afterwards."

The young man grinned, bowed, and left through the door that led into her private chambers. She caught a flicker of verbalization from Bates; they'd been in close enough proximity for long enough that her mind had begun to decode the symbol structure of his.

"I don't think you think much of David, Captain Bates." She laughed.

His mind jerked in alarm; then he tried to focus on a mathematical formula. As a shield, it was pathetic.

"He's very useful as an instructor in hand-to-hand combat," he said neutrally. "Surprisingly so, for someone so…academic."

"I've given him the opportunity to fight for real quite a few times," she said. "That means he's not just a dojo ballerina anymore. And, Captain Bates?"

"Ma'am?"

"You're really not in a position to indulge a feeling of moral superiority, you know."

"I, ah, have no such opinion of Mr. Cheung, ma'am."

"Oh, yes, you do. Really, you should have realized by now that you can't lie to me. Gigolo was among your unkind thoughts. You're a very able man, Captain Bates; you're also quite satisfyingly venal and sadistically murderous, which is why despite the drawbacks you find my employ so satisfying."

She held up a hand. "Not a criticism! Just an observation! And you work for a monster; you can't trust me, but you can't keep secrets from me, either."

"Your service has been…educational, ma'am."

"What was that? 'Peeled back the lid'? Yes, I suppose so. And you're helping upend that can and spread a nice thick layer of what's inside all over the world. Do keep that in mind, my little toenail of Satan."

"Yes, ma'am. I'd better get to work on the details if we're traveling overland from Paris."

"By train," Adrienne amplified. "Call it the Orient Express. Then by ship from Istanbul."

Theresa smiled thinly and followed him, her tablet tucked under her arm. The Villegases had been renfields for a long time; one knew where one stood with them.

"But how much more authentic it would be if I were sailing across the Atlantic," she said sourly. "Mthunzi would just love that. Or if I had a log and a couple of humans to paddle it for me. Or I could try being a werealbatross and fry like an egg when the sunlight caught me. And then we could travel by coach to Tbilisi, through oceans of mud and streets running with shit."

" Dona?" Monica asked. "Mthunzi?"

"Oh, did I ever tell you about him? He's head of the Council eugenics program. He has been for most of the last century."

Monica shivered a little; she preferred not to think about other Shadowspawn. As far as possible she preferred not to remember that they existed.

"He's…not a friend of yours?"

"He's a reactionary fossil," Adrienne said. "Compared to him, my great-grandfather is a Progressive."

"What sort of name is that, Mthunzi?"

"Zulu. He wears this absurd costume at gatherings, with cow horns and beads and bells, a veritable witch doctor's outfit. Well, Great-grandfather dresses up in that Robe of the Dark Magus, like some Parisian version of Aleister Crowley…or Saruman…actually it was the other way 'round; Crowley was imitating him, with much poorer taste…but at least it looks striking and not just silly, and he doesn't wear a pointed hat."

"He'll be coming to Tbilisi too?"

"Yes. He wants us back in the caves. Caves are boring. I think he's just as aware of how Trimback One would probably be much worse than the projections as I am. He simply wants that."

The phone function sounded a quiet chime. "Here," Adrienne said; not many people had her private number, and she'd gone to a great deal of trouble to encrypt the link.

Or rather, others went to a great deal of trouble. They work, I enjoy the results; it's the natural order.