S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

He raised the Glock in the regulation grip, left hand under right.

Crack. Crack.

The ten-millimeter bullets punched into her belly and she folded backwards.

Crack.

Two in the center of mass, one in the head; the last snapped her head around in a whirling of long black hair and a spray of blood and the bullet starred through the glass behind her. He felt his teeth begin to show as he walked towards her. The gold-flecked eyes were already beginning to glaze.

Then her head came up. "Oooooh, that hurt," she said. "That can be sort of hot, you know? For starters. Then I get to hurt you. You like that, lover?"

Salvador leapt backwards, almost fell as he half sprawled against a malachite-surfaced table of rough-cast glass, then wrenched himself into a crouched firing position.

Crack. Crack. Crack -

Ten shots. Five hit. Five more punched the great window behind, starring it, then collapsing it out in a shatter of milky fragments. Even then the part of his mind that was mostly training thought that was odd if it was the laminate he thought it was.

"Oooooh, oooooh, you're so rough," the thing crooned as it advanced on him, laughing.

A hand reached out towards his neck. Then jerked back as she hissed:

"We really have to do something about those silver chains. Maybe we could make people think they cause cancer?"

She dabbed at the blood on the side of her head and stuck the fingers in her mouth for a moment, tongue curling around them.

"Mmmmm, tasty!"But you want to take that stupid chain off, don't you…that's right…"

The eyes grew, the yellow flecks drawing together like drops of molten gold, running into two lakes of fire. Depth, depth, drawing him into a whirling She screamed, pain and rage. The great ten-foot wings beat behind her as the talons slammed home and the hooked beak drove into her neck. The snow leopard rolled over and over – leopard? – its paws striking in a blur of speed and claws amid a saw-edged screeching. The eagle dropped out of the air into a huge tawny something and the big cats rolled over and over, shrieking and striking and lunging for each other's throats and racking their hind feet to rip bellies as furniture smashed and broken glass crunched under their weight.

Then the man was standing with his back to Salvador, every muscle in his lean body standing out like static waves as his thumbs dug into her throat. She was making the same bestial snarling sound as she reared back with a knee braced against his chest and her hands driving up between his forearms, and the world seemed to twist between them, things flickering in and out of existence, nightmare glimpses of possibilities that ought not to exist. Salvador doggedly began to drag himself to his feet, looking around for something to throw. Something to hit with.

Crack!

Much louder this time. The double splash of impact and her skull started to deform under the huge kinetic energy, and then a sparkle, and she was gone. Blood fell to the floor, a sharp, sour, iron-salt smell, and stomach contents; he recognized the acidic not-quite-vomit fecal stink. The man went to one knee for a second, panting, then rose and turned.

"You're Adrian Breze," Salvador said, trying to make his mind function again.

The gun came up, almost of its own volition. The slim dark man pointed a finger at him.

"Don't. Just don't. It's been a long day. And you need silver bullets for it to work."

"Silver bullets?" Salvador snarled. "Silver fucking bullets -"

Adrian Breze cast a glance over his shoulder; the first paling of the night sky showed that dawn was coming, and he winced a little.

"It becomes late for night-walking; I'd better go corporeal. Right back, Detective Salvador, when I've fetched my real body."

Silver bullets. I don't think I want to be in a world where silver bullets work and people just…stop being there.

Salvador looked down at the pistol. Why the hell not? he thought, and began to bring it up towards his mouth. That's safer. Only amateurs try to shoot themselves in the head…

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why don't you kill me? Why don't you kill me?" he screamed. " Why don't you just fucking kill me?"

"That's 'why don't they fucking kill you,'" the man said. "I can tell you, if you want to know."

"You're one of them."

Breze was slight but built like a lynx or a gymnast, a bit below medium height, pale olive skin and dark hair and gold-flecked brown eyes…

"You're Adrian Breze? Yes."

Salvador drew breath in, held it, let it out. "Okay, I get it: I'm supposed to believe you're a good monster."

"Oh, he's not just good, he's a great monster, believe me. But all mine, mine, mine."

Salvador jerked at the other voice, looked down at the pistol, then ejected the magazine, worked the slide to take the last round out of the chamber, and dropped it to the table he was sitting on. A worked-copper-and-turquoise box had spilled open, full of slim cigarettes. He took one out and lit it; some distant part of himself was proud of the fact that his hand didn't shake. The second voice belonged to a woman.

Tall, blond, legs up to there, hourglass figure, dressed in dark outdoor clothes and boots, with a knit cap over her head and a rifle cradled in her arms-he recognized it, a big Brit sniper job he'd seen SAS types use, long scope, aircraft-alloy body. This one looked as if it had been tweaked a bit in ways he didn't recognize. Her face was a little thinner and a lot harder than the pictures, not so much of the wounded-fawn look; he recognized part of what waited in the blue eyes, from his mirror.

"You're…Ellen Tarnowski."

"Technically, Ellen Breze, now. No, I'm not one of them. You can't catch it from getting bitten, it's hereditary." A sudden charming smile. "And believe me, I know the biting part! Not contagious at all, even if you're married to one and use the same toothbrush occasionally."

"I get the feeling you've changed."

"I had to…ah…take a couple of levels in badass, let's say."

"You killed her."

His eyes went back to the puddle of blood; there wasn't a body. A pretty disgusting mess, but no body.

" Oh, yes." Her eyes were large and turquoise blue; for a moment they held a hot satisfaction. "There's a body, probably a long way away, but it's empty now, and in a little while it'll just stop breathing. Nobody home anymore. I put a bullet through that part of the bitch."

"That…that wasn't his sister, was it?"

"No. That was Michiko. She's a friend of his sister's, Adrienne. Sort of a wannabe Mistress of Ultimate Darkness. Incidentally I jammed a hypo full of very bad stuff into Adrienne's foot, and I had a lot of very good reasons to do that. And she came down with a case of dead from it."

Salvador laughed; it was a bit shaky, but genuine. "I think you have changed, lady."

Breze was back. Now he was dressed, in the same sort of clothes; a light jacket covered a shoulder rig with a knife worn hilt-down on one flank and a Glock on the other.

His real body. Oooooo-kay.

"All right," Salvador said, taking a pull on the cigarette. "Fill me in. I know I'm really somewhere locked up, under heavy meds, howling at the moon, right? Or totally catatonic. I lost it in Kandahar and I'm in a padded cell at some VA warehouse and the whole last ten years are a whack-job dream."

For some reason that made Adrian Breze smile. "I'm a Shadowspawn…That's what we call ourselves, mostly. But…well, I try not to be a monster. It's complicated."

"Like the past year has been so simple? I want answers."

"Think carefully about that, Detective. You can choose to learn, or you can choose to forget…I can do that, with your cooperation. If you forget, you can make yourself a new life. If you learn, it'll probably kill you-but at least you'll know why you're fighting, mon ami!"