S. Stirling - Shadows of Falling Night

This was obviously no time for shyness, or bottled blood. She tore open the neck of her jacket with her left hand and put her right hand behind Adrian’s head. He was making small whimpering sounds and his eyes had rolled up until only the pink-tinged whites were visible, and his hands twitched in a random way that made her heart clench. She took a deep breath and brought his mouth up to touch the skin at the base of her neck.

For a moment she thought he was too far gone even for that. Then his arms closed around her with bruising force and she felt the sting of the bite, sharper than usual with the desperate need.

“Ah. Ah. ”

She closed her eyes and shuddered; not even fear of death could make the sensation any less overwhelming. After a time she couldn’t have judged he gently laid her down and stood, his face a mask of blood-hers and his own, running from nose and eyes and dripping off his chin beneath the red grin of his mouth, the coppery smell of it rank. Her whole body felt warm and almost liquid, but she craned her neck to follow him as he walked forward.

The turrets turned towards him. His hands came up to either side, fingers crooked and then moving in patterns that hurt the eye to watch while he shrieked falsetto abominations in the language of demons, the war-magic of a Lord of Shadow. She felt a sharp pain, as if something had reached into her head, clenched and tugged towards the place behind her eyes; beneath that was pride, and also an impulse to pound her head on something hard until she didn’t have to listen any more. At times like this you realized that the Power was simply wrong , chaos and Old Night let loose on earth.

One of the low-slung vehicles slewed sharply and then halted; there was a muffled bang from its engine compartment, followed by black smoke and low red flames. The turret on its top pivoted and fired six times into its companion, shredding all the wheels on one side, then blew up with a rending crang. Pieces flew, some of them trailing smoke. Soldiers poured out of the machines. Some of them fled wailing, stumbling, falling and rising to run again or just crawl with foam dribbling from their lips. The rest began firing…at each other. Bullets sparked off the armor of the war-machines in little pale flecks of light, and then the survivors threw aside their assault rifles and fell on each other with knives and teeth, bestial howls and cackling laughter. After a moment nothing moved but the wisps of smoke drifting on the breeze and carrying the acrid stink of scorched metal and heavy oil.

The first Empire of Shadow had lasted for a hundred thousand years of cannibalistic sadism. You could see why.

Then another man crawled out of a hatch, hobbled and lurched over to the other machine-one of his feet wasn’t working-and crawled inside the rear hatch. He screamed with pain as he reappeared hauling a slight limp figure, but he dragged it twenty yards before he collapsed.

“Wait,” Eric said as Adrian began to walk forward towards them. “ Jefe , those things are burning, they’re stuffed with explosives and fuel, they’re going to blow .”

Ellen flogged herself into motion, ran up beside Adrian and held up a bag of the blood. He took it, ripped off the top with his teeth and poured it down his throat, then spat redly.

“Safe enough for a minute,” he rasped.

They all followed, into the stink of burning and the raw smell of death, blood and urine, feces and ripped meat. It was Jack Farmer and Anjali Guha, both wearing some sort of camouflage-patterned uniform. The American’s right foot was canted at an angle inside its boot, and tears ran down through the grimy sweat on his pug face as he cradled his unconscious companion’s head and shoulders.

“She’s dying,” he said dully as Adrian and the others came up. “She’s bleeding inside.”

“Twenty men just died because of you,” Adrian said, his voice unhuman. “A million more may die tomorrow.”

Farmer didn’t answer. Adrian didn’t speak either; instead he knelt and touched the sleeping woman. After a moment she jerked slightly and her breathing slowed from a rapid shallow panting to something deeper and slower. Adrian’s face ran with sweat, diluting the trails of thickening blood.

“Heart,” he said hoarsely, and clutched at his own chest. “There-”

Farmer looked up. Adrian shook his head and spoke: “She’ll live now; I did just enough. Open your mind, I need the details.”

There was a moment of silent communion; Farmer ground his teeth and grunted hoarsely, as if he’d been punched in the gut.

Adrian nodded before he went on: “And don’t either of you ever cross my path again,” he said, in a low rasping growl she couldn’t even imagine disobeying.

“We won’t,” Farmer said, and turned his face away.

“Boss, we’ve got to move ,” Eric said.

Adrian nodded, wiping at his face with one sleeve, and his expression human once more, as if great dark wings had faced away from about him.

“I need some water. And…yes, there will be a van in a few minutes.”

Tbilisi

I am getting sick of hotels, Ellen thought, glancing out the window as they all sat down around the suite’s table.

Tbilisi was a city of moderate size, about a million and a half people, on the same order as Philadelphia if you subtracted the suburbs. Over millennia it had grown along the steep banks of the winding Kura River, which had been navigable all the way to the Caspian until the Soviet engineers and dam-builders got to work on it. There were hills to the north and lower, more distant ones to the south, and the area along the river was mostly trees and walkways, with a jumble of older buildings and narrow streets around it, lined with pleasant older buildings including some very odd-looking churches with octagonal towers in their middles.

Even good hotels.

They were staying at what had been the Hotel Majestic just before the First World War; it had been refurbished (including filling in bullet-holes) in the early years of the century and was now the Tbilisi Marriott. The exterior was a very nice provincial Beau Arts, pale stone cladding and engaged pillars with arched windows; the interior was slightly bland upper-level business traveler international standard.

The main merit was that it was right downtown on Rustaveli Avenue. Under other circumstances, she’d have enjoyed staying there, taking walking tours of the city with Adrian and visiting vineyards and historic buildings and enjoying the way Georgians burst spontaneously into choral song in places like elevators, rather like inhabiting an operetta. As it was-

I like to travel, but not to conventions for monsters. Not in the wake of a nuclear weapon. Not to conventions for monsters and in the wake of a nuclear weapon. I want a holiday. And it’s comforting to have Peter and Cheba and Eric along, but I’d like to have it with just me and my sweetie sometimes. Though we seem to have acquired some kids, of course. Okay, back to business.

“Farmer thought the yield would be about twenty-five kilotons,” Adrian said.

The table between the five adults was scattered with their tablets and tourist maps of Tbilisi and the surrounding area. There was also the remains of a Georgian dinner, sent in from a local eatery: round khachapuri cheese-stuffed breads something like a yeasty pizza, spinach with walnut and pomegranate-juice sauce, spiced kupati sausages made of pork, garlic, cilantro and more pomegranate and touches of cinnamon and cloves, and other dishes as well-the local cuisine favored lots of small plats and had never met a pomegranate it didn’t like. They’d split a bottle of local red wine, which had been excellent in a hearty sort of way, and were now gnawing on elongated things made of thickened grape juice and nuts and looking at the map with frustration.