Shadows of Falling Night

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Black Sea

Adrian stood on the prow of the Tulip. It was rising and falling with a long, very shallow sweep; the wind was out of the north, and the gulet motored along at a conservative nine knots, foam breaking from the prow in a broad V. The wind was cold on his naked form, and the stars that shone so many and bright above were somehow even colder. The burble of the diesel was oddly reduced by the intense silence of the night, the distances drinking it down; they were well off the usual shipping lanes, and there were not even the lights of an aircraft to disturb a scene that might have seen Argo making home from Colchis. Moonlight glittered on the waves, making a sky-road that seemed to dare the ship to take the upward path to worlds beyond the world.

“I don’t like this idea,” Ellen said. “I particularly don’t like us splitting up. What is this movie, Teens Die Because They Shower And Fornicate In Scary Old House/Cabin in the Woods, Part XVII? Is this the seagoing version where we split up and dive into the water instead of doing it in the basement with candles and monsters?”

Eric and Peter were jarred into laughter; Cheba looked at them with a mixture of incomprehension and disgust.

“Only Adrian is diving into the water,” she said. “And what is this about a movie? And we have plenty of monsters.”

Adrian shrugged, as Eric leaned close and whispered into Cheba’s ear.

“I don’t like it either,” Adrian said to Ellen. Then he smiled slightly. “In a sense, we’re not-I am still in the stateroom.”

She prodded him with a finger. “Don’t you try to soothe me, buster,” she said. “That’s you, and I don’t want to be married to a comatose body.”

He was nightwalking, of course, but with his aetheric body this palpable the finger felt just as it would to his physical one.

“We need the data. Harvey is concealing himself far too well, Peter’s device is working very well indeed…and I think some other force is seeking to thwart me as well.”

“Her.”

“Probably. But I cannot be sure.”

She sighed and stepped back. He stroked a strand of bright hair from her forehead.

Peter had an aluminum case in his hands, attached to an improvised harness of webbing. “This is ready to go,” he said, as Ellen took it from his hands. “It’s fully waterproof to two hundred feet and it’s powered for twelve hours.”

Adrian looked up at the sky. “Just put her nose into the wind if the weather turns dirty; and that can happen very quickly this time of year. There’s that sea-anchor ready if necessary.”

The slight blond man nodded. “We’re taking turns monitoring the weather channels.”

Adrian kissed his wife lightly on the lips, smiled at them all, turned, and ran out the bowsprit. A leap, the whisper of Mhabrogast through his mind, and he twisted…

And a dolphin clove the water. Down into the mild warmth…up again, soaring, his eyes flexing automatically to see through air as well as water, down again, threading air and water like a needle, a delirium of fluid speed, the water tasting of fuel (foul) and not-quite-salty enough and fish (fish! fish!). Vision was sharp, but hearing was the world. He hung in infinite space, and around him was a galaxy of sound-stars, the dull red booming of ship’s motors, the creaking hiss of the wooden sailing ship, the distant rumble of waves on shores, the creaking whistling surging tide of life down to the voices of far-distant swimmers and the song of a distant pod of his own kind.

Sound not through ears, but heard with his whole body as its instrument. Sound like the touch of feather-light fingers on every object, even the surface of the abyssal depth below.

“Adrian!”

He heard that too. Ellen’s voice was a thing of richness, a sculptured solidity of rolling form, a tower of location that was precisely there. There was no gap between the sound of a thing and the thing itself; they were one, as scent was to a wolf. He soared out of the water again in a twisting leap that was a dance of love and longing.

“Here, Adrian!”

He remembered being a man; that was easier in this form than in many, simply because there was so much more brain to work with. The problem was that he didn’t remember it in the same way, while the Shadowspawn consciousness curled at the base of the brainstem struggled to assert itself. After a moment it did, and he rose out of the water, dancing on his tail with more than half the sleek torpedo-shaped body in the air, rolling an eye at her and grinning. She leant down on the ladder that had been thrust over the side, and extended the harness.

He hated the thought of it interfering with the flow of the water over his skin, but it was necessary. She slipped it over his head and cinched it around his trunk behind the forefins with a single movement, and he nuzzled at her. She had no scent-disconcerting to his memories, for most forms had better noses than men or even Shadowspawn-but the very sound of her heart outlined her form. He felt an overwhelming impulse to passionately bite the saucy flauntingness of her beautiful dorsal fin, which caused a momentary mental stutter, starting with the fact that he still knew at some level that she didn’t have one. The dolphin part of his consciousness then decided it didn’t care…

A hand smoothed his head; he whistled and dove.

Ellen stared out over the ocean and took another bite of the burrito without bothering to taste it. She supposed it was a burrito; there were various things including meat inside something like either a tortilla or a pita. She needed fuel if she was going to worry effectively.

“Thanks, Cheba,” she said. “I should take a turn at that. So should Peter-he’s not busy with the engines.”

“I cook better than you do,” Cheba pointed out, and handed her a cup of strong coffee to go with it. “None of the men can cook, except the jefe, and he does not have time even when he is not turning into something strange or fighting or doing the things he does.”

“Peter can cook.”

“He can cook things I do not like, they’re all…what’s the word, food with no real taste, too smooth…”

“Bland.”

“Sí, bland. I need to have something to do, anyway.”

Ellen’s mouth turned up wryly. She hadn’t had time to get really worried yet; Adrian had only been gone for an hour or so…

“But I don’t like the look of that at all,” she said suddenly.

A fin had just broken the surface for an instant, creamy off-white in the moonlight, with a little curl of foam to either side. Then it turned and bored towards the Tulip, the fin vanishing and nothing but a huge pale streak showing through the water, fading as it went deeper. She went to the rail and looked over. Then the whole ship lurched and shook, as if it had brushed over a rock…though she knew that there was nothing below but very deep water and the seabed. She dropped the half-eaten wrap and the coffee cup overboard with a yell as she pitched forward and the rail struck her across the waist and she started to topple. Cheba grabbed her by the back of her jacket’s belt and heaved backward, enough for her to stagger back to equilibrium.

“Thanks!” she said fervently. “Whatever that is I sure don’t want to go swimming with it!”

Eric came boiling out of the hatchway. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Peter came out of the deckhouse as she pointed to the other side of the vessel; the little ship had an effective autopilot. The fin showed again, and he leveled his binoculars.

“That is a big shark,” Cheba said. “A very big shark. There are sharks like that off Veracruz-one of my mother’s cousins saw them there and there was a picture in the newspaper of one that ate some touristas.”

“Uh, guys, are those things supposed to live around here?” Ellen asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Eric said. “That’s a big-ass shark, right? As in Jaws?”

“It’s a Great White,” Peter said. He let the binoculars hang on their strap, and his fingers danced across his tablet doing some impromptu research. “Ah…no, they don’t have them in the Black Sea. Not more than a few miles away from the Bosporus, at least.”

They all looked at each other. The children came out, sleepy in their pajamas, and the three adults made simultaneous preventative grabs as they headed for the rail.

“Hello, Maman!” Leon called, and he and his sister waved.

“Mierda,” Eric said.

“That’s Mom,” Leila said cheerfully. Her small, still slightly chubby face went abstracted for a moment. “She’s feeling…well, she’s a fish, she’s really funny when she’s a fish. It’s Maman, but not, you know? She said you have to be always careful with her when she’s a big fish.”

“Big fish just bite without thinking about it,” Leon amplified, reciting his safety lesson. Then he snapped his teeth together: “Chomp! Chomp!”

Peter began whistling a tune; after a moment Ellen recognized it as “Farewell, Ye Ladies of Spain.”

“Stop that!” she said.

“Okay,” he said equably and shifted to the theme from Jaws.

“Dammit, I know I started it, Peter, but my husband is in the water with that thing!”

“Except for this boat, we’re in the water with it,” he said soberly.

Eric smiled, or at least showed his teeth. “Or vice versa,” he said, and disappeared as the fin circled, easily keeping pace with the ship.

The half burrito lay heavily on Ellen’s stomach. A few minutes later Eric emerged again, taking something wrapped in a length of plastic out of a sack of the same improvised-looking devices.

“Cousin of mine used to go midnight fishing for rainbow trout this way in Lake Bonito, over by Alamogordo,” he said. “That is one honking big fish, but the principle’s the same. I made up these on general principles ’cause we were on the water.”

He did something to the package, a jerking motion, shouted: “¡Oye, tu! ¡Puta! ¿Qué es tu pinche problema?” and threw it with a hard snapping motion that showed he’d played baseball once.

“Uh, Eric-” Peter began, as Cheba stifled a startled giggle. “Maybe that’s not-”

The fin darted away abruptly; then there was a muffled booming and the dark water behind the Tulip abruptly rose in a shattered bulge of white a dozen feet across. A huge pale shape tossed ahead of it, writhing.

The children winced and Leila put her hands to her head. “Ooooh, that hurt,” she said. “That really hurt, vraiment.”

“Maman is mad now,” Leon said. “Really, really…”

A grating sound came up the hatch from the engine room. Eric’s grin-shark-like itself-turned to alarm, and he dashed for the hatchway, swinging below. The three adults peered through the moonlit night, and something heaved below the water astern. Not a shark this time…but it was an even paler dead-white.

“Oh, that’s not right,” Peter said. “That’s just not right.”

“What is it?” Ellen asked; he had his binoculars to his eyes again.

They were a type with wide lenses, designed to trap the maximum amount of light, and as he put it unbuggerable, since there were no electronics.

“That’s a sperm whale,” he said. “Physeter macrocephalus.”

“You mean-”

“Moby Dick-style whale. The giant-squid-eater. An albino Physeter macrocephalus. Melville got the idea from the one that sank the whaler Essex in 1822 by ramming it with its head, that’s the way the bulls fight each other. That one was supposed to be eighty feet long and would have weighed about seventy tons, which is a bit less than half what this ship displaces-”

“Jesus, will you stop lecturing!” Ellen shouted, as a tall spout of water and air plumed into the air at a forty-five-degree angle from the huge pale bulk.

Immense flukes lifted and struck, and the sea fountained away from them. The noise of the diesels turned to a tooth-grating howl for an instant and then died away into grinding and clashing sounds, then silence. Eric reappeared.

“Cylinder blew. Freak accident,” he said bitterly, wiping at a grease-mark on his cheek. “What the-”

The stern of the ship heaved upward. Cheba grabbed a child, and Ellen did too. All of them were thrown to the deck with bruising force; Leila squealed, then called:

“Wooooopsie!” in a voice filled with innocent glee.

The Tulip heaved again as the great bulk rose close enough to the bow to throw a chaos of white water along its flanks and over the rail.

“Don’t worry, she won’t do anything that would hurt the children,” Ellen gasped as cold foam drenched her.

If she’s thinking straight. If not, she may be very sorry when she shifts back to human…humanoid…form after she’s smashed the boat and swallowed us all whole.

From what Adrian had told her and what she’d experienced while he was soul-carrying her, a nightwalker wasn’t just wearing an animal suit. The Power manufactured an aetheric body based on a DNA sample, from blood or a bite of flesh or any body fluid that had cells in it; adepts called it taking on the beast. You got the animal’s senses and strengths, but you also got a lot of its basic nature, and you had to think with its nervous system. The adept’s personality and memories remained, but they had to work through what the form provided and maintaining a sapient’s purposes could be hard in some of them.

That’s why she switched to the whale. Sharks have tiny little brains. They swim, and they eat, they make little sharks, as Peter would remind me. Cetaceans have big brains, they think better, especially the types with teeth. She probably memorized a note to herself: if anything strange happens and your tiny shark brain feels things are getting away from you, turn into a whale.

“Can you get the engine running again?” Ellen asked.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “I’ll take about an hour, with someone to give me a hand.”

“Look on the bright side,” Peter said. “That thing could smash the boat, but she doesn’t want to. And she’ll have to go away before dawn, or at least turn into something that breathes water and go deep. Whales don’t have hands.”

The white whale had dived; everything was silent for a minute, and Eric turned to go below again and begin his repairs. Then Tulip lurched again, more softly this time. The stern dipped and stayed down, as if a heavy weight had been attached to the keel at the rear.

“What the hell…Much as I hate to say it, maybe you should get another of those little explosive fishing devices,” Peter said.

“I’ve got plenty of them-” Eric began.

Something came over the side of the ship, rearing into the air like a giant questing snake. Ellen froze for a moment before she realized what she was seeing. It was a tentacle, three times the length of her body and thicker than her ankle. She stared at it wide-eyed and open mouthed until it fell like a living rope. Then she screamed, as it fell across her leg and the barbed hooks that lined it bit. The suckers gripped with agonizing force, and the living cable began to pull her towards the rail.

She tried to draw her revolver, but her eyes were streaming with the pain and the salt water that had surged across her face moments before, and she knew she was just as likely to shoot her own foot. Something flashed through that haze; it was Cheba and her silvered machete, hacking at the tentacle and screaming:

“¡Muérete, tú! ¡Pinche cabrona! ¡Muérete!”

That wasn’t just the needs of the moment. Cheba didn’t remember her time at Rancho Sangre very fondly. Something went click behind Ellen’s eyes; she had a weird sensation of feeling pain twice, in her leg and in her outstretched tentacle, of feeling her rage doubled and going both ways…

My tentacle? Do I have tentacles? Lots of them, and I’m seeing the ship from below, and the water’s too warm and the light hurts and…Oh, God, I so did not want ever to be touched by her again! And this is one of the reasons, the way it fucked with my head!

Cheba and Peter were hauling her back as the tentacle let go and whipped away. Eric took one look at her leg and started bandaging with skilled speed.

“Don’t knock me out!” she said, though the hypodermic he pulled out of the medical kit looked very tempting. “I am not going to be unconscious with that around!”

“It won’t, just takes the sting out at this dosage,” he said, a little indistinctly.

That was because he was pressing the bandage down with one hand and pulling the cap off the hypo with his teeth. He spat it to one side and administered the painkiller with brutal dispatch, simply jabbing the needle into the thigh of her injured leg through the pants. It was rough, but at this point she scarcely noticed the sting. She did notice the wave of relief; the pain didn’t go away, but it became a lot less important. With both hands free Eric finished dressing the wound quickly.

“Not as bad as I thought-” he began, then snatched up his coach gun and shot again, deafeningly right over her head.

She looked up and felt her mouth drop open. A mass of tentacles gripped the rail and slid forward like writhing black pythons to seize anchor-points, securing themselves with the adhesive suckers and the barbs and hooks that lined them. Something huge was pulling itself over and onto the deck, something like Cthulhu on steroids. Its glaring eyes were the size of bowling-balls a foot across, pupils like S-slits of blackness. The curved beak like a giant parrot’s gnashed in the midst of the whirling chaos, and the central mass was bigger than a bear, with weight enough to make the drifting Tulip heel and loose things slide and bump as they tumbled across the deck. Cheba was shrieking Spanish maledictions again and hacking as the tentacles came probing, and Peter was struggling with a shotgun and shouting as well. It took an instant before she realized he’d been shouting something in Latin:

“Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni! Colossal squid! Fifty feet long, weighs tons, fights sperm whales! Damn! Darn! Shit!”

Both barrels of the shotgun blasted silver buck towards the monster. Ellen realized the anesthetic was affecting her when she heard herself ask:

“You’re a physicist, Peter…why do you know the Linnaean names of giant squid?”

“It’s a hobby, it’s a hobby, die, you bitch, die!”

That was directed at Adrienne-the-monster-squid, not her: he fired again. There was another soundless blast of noise inside her head, and the tentacles abruptly withdrew like a video being played backwards. The colossal squid-something deep in her mind noticed how appropriate the name was-slid away, and the ship rocked upright again. A sudden silence fell, and they could hear the waves lapping against the hull beneath the brilliant stars.

“Wow!” Leon said softly; the children were clinging to each other near the door to the deckhouse. “Maman is really angry with you, Ellen! Not just playing!”

“I should get the engine going again-” Eric began.

Then the Tulip lurched once more. It felt different, more of a monstrous tugging. Noises came through the hull, as much felt through her body as heard, sharp metallic rending and crackling sounds and then something like a big taut wire breaking. Then a tentacle broke the surface again; it was hard to see by moonlight, but it seemed to be brandishing something. It flexed like a whip, and the object turned through the air and thudded into the forward mast with a heavy metallic clatter and fell to the deck. It was round and disk-like, a couple of feet across, lobed…

“Son of a bitch!” Eric shouted, then a long sentence in Spanish, then: “She twisted the fucking propeller off the shaft! So much for no hands, professor.”

“The whale didn’t have hands,” Peter pointed out reasonably. “The squid has tentacles.”

Silence fell again. “Guess she found a way to attack the ship that didn’t endanger the kids,” Ellen said thoughtfully. “Ah…Peter…Adrian went over how to raise the sails, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “But I suspect we’re going to have a sea anchor hanging off our keel.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Eric said.

He lofted another of the improvised grenades over the side. This time the explosion took a little longer, went off deeper and hit the underside of the Tulip like a huge padded hand whacking it on the belly.

“Not going to let her get at the rudder,” he said. “That would be…bad.”

“I hope Adrian gets back soon,” Ellen added, then: “I think I could use a nap. Someone give me a hand? And not”-she specified with slightly drugged precision-“a tentacle. Definitely no suckers. Suckers suck.”

“I think he’s not in the area anymore,” Harvey Ledbetter said, taking a deep breath. “I’m not sure, can’t be sure if he’s using one of those new personal shields. I wasn’t getting any direct sensing, just…a feeling we were being looked over by the Power. Now we’re not. Took off in a hurry, which is a comfort.”

“Something destroyed our electronics,” Anjali said.

That wasn’t as serious as it might be; not getting lost was a very minor Wreaking, requiring merely sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field.

“And wrecked the fucking engine,” Jack Farmer said.

“Those were probably him. Nice deft subtle touch, no more damage than essential.”

“Which leaves the question of why he didn’t screw with the shield device. Even if he can’t locate it precisely, he knows it’s here. Fry the electronics and it’s all over.”

Harvey leaned on the wheel of the ship, looking out over the bow and the white curve of the sail, brilliant in the moonlight. He laughed heartily, breathing in the clear cold sea air; they’d opened a window, because the deckhouse got a little fusty with the three of them living in it.

“We got a fail-safe there,” he said. “Which is that Adrian, thanks to my careful upbringing, is sort of a soft-hearted and humanitarian little bastard, a real nice guy. Which incidentally proves it’s possible for a Shadowspawn to be that way, which some disputed. I was right and they were wrong and I get to sing the ‘I was right’ song.”

Farmer looked at him, baffled. “Yeah, that’s why he’s trying to stop you…us…from getting the bomb to Tbilisi. Which incidentally proves having mostly human genes doesn’t necessarily make you a nice guy. So if he blew the shield mechanism…”

“Every adept in the Council would see that fireball rushing out of the future,” Harvey went on. “And then…”

“They would go as the saying is, ripshit,” Anjali said thoughtfully. “Every screw and bolt in this ship would break. The wood would rot and splinter. Our eyeballs would boil and our hair catch on fire while we suffered strokes, heart-attacks and scrofula. And…and they would turn on Adrienne, to begin with.”

She looked at him narrow-eyed; Harvey could feel her questioning, besides seeing the reflection of her face in the glass of the cockpit. As he’d said, it was impossible even in theory to be sure whether he was his own agent or hers right now. Nobody in the Brotherhood could ever be fully confident of their comrades, and the consequences of betrayal were one reason Brotherhood agents tended to have relatively short lives and long, tortured deaths.

“You’re right,” he said. “And then guess what?”

“Well, they’d know about the shield-the first real advantage we’ve ever had. And then Trimback One,” Farmer said, and began to laugh as well. “Trimback One would be back on the table.”

“Good and proper,” Harvey agreed. “Which would mean hundreds of nukes getting tossed around. Upper-level air-bursts for the EMP effect, granted, but still massive casualties, and then everything would just purely go to shit. Oh, a hell of a lot more than one groundburst in Tbilisi. Plus the Brotherhood can beat Trimback Two, maybe even win the war for good, but not with Trimback One.”

The two younger agents began to snicker themselves. “So he can’t destroy the shield,” Farmer said. “He can’t even sink the ship.”

Anjali clapped her hands together. “He must capture the bomb and keep the shield going until he dismantles it! Whereas if we set the bloody thing off the Council lords will have only seconds of warning, if that!”

“Like Sauron and the One Ring at the Crack of Doom,” Harvey said with immense satisfaction.

Farmer scowled. “Why didn’t you explain this in more detail?” he asked.

“Keeping y’all on your toes,” Harvey said blandly. “Worked, didn’t it? He can’t sink us, but turning this thing into a drifting hulk would work.”

“It works both ways,” Anjali said. “Adrienne is limited in how she can attack him if he has her children along…and he probably does.”

“Probably, and on a boat not much different from this, I’d guess,” Harvey said. “If Adrian’s nightwalking in a marine form, pro’bly a dolphin or an orca, that limits his range. He’d come right after us after that little hoedown in Istanbul…or at least I would have, in his position, and I trained him.”

He released the spokes long enough to rub his hands for an instant. “We got Mutual Assured Destruction, folks! And if we don’t lose, we win.”

Harvey turned utterly serious. “Now we’ve got to plan how to hold him up once we get ashore. Hold him just long enough.”

Anjali and Farmer looked at each other. “You don’t want us to go to Tbilisi with you?” Farmer said carefully.

“You particularly want to come?” Harvey asked. “’Cause when I set the timer…if I get a chance to do it that way…”

Chances of getting out alive will range from slim to absolutely none, went unspoken.

“We are willing to take the risk if it is crucial to the mission,” Anjali said flatly, if not enthusiastically; Farmer grunted and nodded.

Harvey shook his head. “I can’t fight my way into Tbilisi. With every adept in the world there? I wish! And I can sneak as well alone…maybe better. What I need you to do is hold up pursuit as long as you can, pick up some local assets and use a few tricks I can give you. Which considering you’re going up against Adrian…and maybe the Brotherhood…is plenty risky, believe me.”

Also unspoken was that Adrian and the Brotherhood would kill them cleanly if it came to that, or in Adrian’s case even let them surrender. Both were extremely unlikely in the convocation of demons gathering in Tbilisi.

“We should be ashore in a spot I know around about noon, with some services laid on. No nightwalkers to worry about, at least.”

“Small mercies,” Farmer said, and they all laughed again.

The dolphin came barreling out of the depths, its body flexing in an up-and-down rippling motion, aiming at the location of the periodic explosions. The colossal squid skulking at a safe distance barely had time to register the motion before the beak hit like a fifteen-hundred-pound battering ram moving at over twenty miles an hour, all concentrated behind a hard punching surface a couple of inches square. The whole gelatinous mass of the monster’s form flexed and rippled in shock as the force propagated through it.

Adrian heard himself grunt-at least, that was how his Tursiops truncates body and brain interpreted the shower of bubbles and pulsed sounds it emitted at the stunning impact. He twisted away by reflex through the forest of tentacles as the squid thrashed helplessly and drifted downward. A swift gliding curve like a fighter jet brought him in for another attack run.

The squid sparkled and reformed. Without silver it was very difficult to do lasting damage to an aetheric body, if the guiding intelligence preserved enough presence of mind to go impalpable and switch back again despite the shock and pain of a wound; that reset the form to default in a fraction of a second. Then its tentacles darted out for him, malign intelligence sparkling in its giant eyes, ready to rip and rend with arms intended to do battle with eighty-ton sperm whales ten thousand feet beneath the surface.

Tearing a body in half often did kill, persuading the hindbrain it was dead before the intelligence could recover.

Amss-aui-ock!

The tentacles closed on the sperm whale where the dolphin had been, but the black giant threw itself forward, its scores of tons carrying the squid effortlessly along, its thick skin and protective blubber shrugging off the terrible barbed grip. A third of the whale’s eighty-foot length was jaw, lined on the lower side with massive teeth. They began to close-

— and the great white shark flashed by, twisting to take a huge bite as it did, its rows of bone saw ripping out a semicircular chunk-

— and the orca flexed to pursue-

— and the other orca maneuvered, and Adrienne’s sardonic:

And…this…is…ridiculous…we’ve…done…it…before…and…it…just…wastes…the…night! i…am…taking…my…bat…and…ball…and…going…home!

He responded with a wordless snarl of rage after the echolocation of the disappearing black-and-white shape, and fainter came: nyah…nyah…can’t…catch…me!

The urge to pursue was overwhelming, but he fought it down; it was getting towards dawn and their speed and strength were too closely matched. He suppressed the impulse to cast a malediction after her as well. A battle of Wreakings would drain them even more, and already the blood-hunger was gnawing at him.

This is a distraction. Time to go home.

Home was where Ellen was. He turned and surfaced briefly, disappointed but not surprised to see that the Tulip was under sail-the high chance that the engine would be destroyed was why he’d picked a vessel with sail backup, after all. Then he drove towards it with powerful strokes of his flukes, leapt…

…and transformed.

A naked man went to one knee on the deck, looking down a grand total of six shotgun barrels full of silver shot; he could feel the cold menace in the cartridges, enough to wound even his aetheric form to the very edge of probable recovery, particularly as depleted as he was. Adrian grinned wearily.

“Commendable vigilance, my friends.”

It would be simplicity itself for Adrienne to take his form, and only a little harder to mimic his mannerisms.

“Griffyndor,” he said.

Their faces relaxed as the prearranged password activated the confirmation Wreakings in their minds. “Ellen?” he said sharply, noticing that she was gone.

“Hurt but not too bad,” Eric said crisply. “I patched her up and gave her a shot of joyjuice.”

“Good. I must-”

He staggered a little as he came to his feet. Peter started towards him with a look of concern on his face, then stopped when Adrian held up a hand.

“No!” Then more gently: “Not now. Don’t come closer until I have…refreshed. I’ve been using the Power rather extravagantly.”

Eric followed him below to his stateroom; the ex-policeman didn’t completely relax until he saw the eyes of Adrian’s blood-body open and heard his sigh. From his aura he still found the sight of two apparently identical bodies merging mind-boggling and unpleasant in equal measure, but he nodded and holstered his coach gun.

“Yeah, it’s absolutely you,” he said.

“You weren’t sure?” Adrian said, sitting up; he was dressed except for his boots.

Ellen rested beside him, her eyelids opening slightly; he could feel how deep her sleep was, urged by the narcotic, but that was wearing off.

“There’s sure and then there’s absolutely completely sure. How’d the mission go, boss?”

“I slowed Harvey down, and I have a better idea of where he’s headed than he thinks-he is not the only one who took precautions against something like this long ago.”

Eric nodded. “Yeah, that extra bit never hurts. Cheba’s cooking up something…don’t know what to call it, clock-wise, but it’ll be ready in about an hour.”

“That will do nicely. We can plan then. And now, if you will excuse me for a little…”

He felt better, although the wounds to the aetheric body usually transferred to the physical one as stigmata for a little while; that meant the equivalent of bruises and scuffs. And he was ravenous, of course. Ellen was resting, and in any case in no fit state to accommodate him; he reached into the cooler and took out the plastic pint container of blood. Warming it made it slightly less nauseating…at the cost of increasing the subsequent headache.

“Best to rip the bandage off quickly,” he muttered to himself and drank it down, trying to avoid holding it in his mouth.

He’d heard Englishmen describe pouring beer down their throats without touching the sides, and did his best to do that literally. He didn’t succeed, and spent a long moment in silent misery, fighting the impulse to retch-if he vomited, he’d have to do this again. And he tried not to breathe through his nose, either. The closest he’d ever been able to come to describing the scent of old dead blood was dog vomit on a hot day, combined with stale diapers and sulfuric acid. The taste was similar, with an overtone of rotten bananas.

He supposed his remote ancestors had evolved the aversion because the Power was so sensitively dependent on complex amino-acids and whole-chain proteins in the blood; the Shadowspawn system didn’t so much digest it as incorporate it directly. Refrigeration and the preservatives and anti-clotting agents in blood-bank supplies actually kept it quite usable, but they didn’t trip the receptors for fresh blood. Nor did it have the intoxicating tang that strong emotion gave blood, the subtleties that made a fine Bordeaux like Concord grape juice by comparison.

If it wasn’t vile, it would be as boring as baby formula, he thought. Still, I’m not drinking it for pleasure. Consider it a penance, Adrian. Stop hesitating and get it over with.

There was a reason adepts who didn’t take blood by force didn’t Wreak more than they absolutely must, either, and why those in the Brotherhood had such a powerful taboo against drinking living blood at all. A drug that actually made you as powerful as it made you feel was addictive on a whole series of levels. This stuff wasn’t going to tempt anyone to vice.

When it had settled he swallowed a second pint. That was as much as he could possibly hold down, and enough for what he needed to do, though no more than that. A stiff shot of brandy helped too, though it was a sin to use L’Essence de Courvoisier as mouthwash. The hints of plum and apricot did sooth his abused mouth, not to mention the alcohol. He took a second, sipping at a more civilized pace, and sat down beside Ellen; she was under a coverlet, and he ran his hand through the air over her injured ankle.

Yes, painful but not too serious, he thought.

Normally he would have let it heal conventionally, with perhaps a little Wreaking to ensure that there was no scarring or internal adhesions. Now…

He finished the brandy, set the glass down on the sideboard, twitched up the blanket and gently laid his hands on the bandage. She stirred in protest.

“No, lover, you’ve just worked hard,” she said.

He smiled at her sleepy face and tousled hair. “And we may both have hard work ahead tomorrow. We can’t have you limping or leaving a blood trail when you need to be Ellen the Scourge of the Shadowspawn.”

He took a deep breath and calmed his mind. Healing required a process that basically convinced your own body that it had suffered the injury itself, then duplicating the process of Power-assisted cell division.

This was going to hurt.

“Will…will it hurt?” the woman said, and Monica pulled a chair up and sat across from her and her husband.

The guest stateroom was compact but comfortable…though the porthole was far too small for anyone to squeeze through and the door could be securely locked from the outside. Adrienne Brézé hadn’t done anything as pedestrian as hire a local craft for her impromptu sea voyage. Months ago she’d had her yacht-the Morey-sail from San Diego through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic and wait for her in Istanbul on the off chance that she would need it; of course, her hunches were of a different order from those of ordinary mortals. It was a modified Grand Banks schooner originally built to order in Oregon, three hundred tons and two tall masts, with ample room to pick up a couple of lucy candidates and all the special features she desired.

Hunting and killing is all very well, but one-night stands tire after a while, she’d said. You want something more emotionally complex. And I don’t want to leave a trail of floating empties across the Black Sea. That would be…uncouth.

“Ummm…” Monica said, wondering how to put things tactfully.

You poor dears. It’ll take a while to adjust.

“Well, not the feeding so much,” she went on, trying to be reassuring without an offensive chipperness. “At first there’s only a little sting and you feel…detached, accepting…And later, after a couple of times, it gets really, ummm, nice. A major rush, better than anything including…well, better than anything. You start craving it quite a lot after a couple of days without.”

Worse than cigarettes or even heroin, in fact, but there was no need to go into that just now. The couple sitting on the guest room bunk were quite young…though no younger than Monica had been when her car broke down passing through Rancho Sangre that evening so long ago.

They’d gone into the wrong…or right…café in Istanbul on their honeymoon and caught Adrienne Brézé’s eye as she prepared to depart, and ended out stumbling after her in a daze of Wreakings. It was touching to see how the young man kept his arm protectively around her shoulders, despite his own terror.

Right café, Monica told herself firmly. Pretty soon, being a lucy is going to be the luckiest thing in the world. It’s all for the best in the long run. I’m sure we’ll be good friends eventually…it will be nice to have some company again, people who understand.

“Th…that doesn’t sound so bad,” Jessica said hopefully.

Monica sighed and went on gently: “But other parts of it are probably going to hurt a bit, yes. And be…stressful. You should just keep thinking I can do this all the way through and it won’t go too badly, though. It takes a while to get used to.”

Jessica Bertsch whimpered slightly and gripped her husband Todd’s hand; his eyes flicked to her and then to Dave Cheung leaning in the doorway with a Glock in his hand. They were both extremely frightened, of course; your first glimpse of a nightwalker transforming evoked primal terrors. A hundred and fifty thousand years as the prey species of Homo nocturnis ensured that the genes remembered, besides the way it knocked the world out from beneath your feet.

Then there was the kidnapping, the armed guards and the prospective violation.

“The Doña is going to be, ummm, very hungry when she wakes up. She’s doing a lot with the Power tonight, you don’t need to know the details yet, but it makes a Shadowspawn ravenous. Our blood is the fuel for the Power. Though they eat normal food as well, of course.”

“She turned into…a tiger,” Todd said; his voice held the peculiar tone of someone who had no doubt that they’d seen something but still didn’t really believe it. “A tiger. And she walked through the wall. And her body was still there.”

“They can do that, yes. It’s called the aetheric body, and when they come out it’s called nightwalking. And…umm, they can read your mind, too, so…no fibbing! It has to be a completely honest relationship. And they can do a lot of other things. Right now, though, you need to focus on getting through your first feeding.”

“And you…” he said.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been a lucy for ten years now. So you see, it isn’t that bad. What I’d advise is that you, Jessica, be right next to her when she comes back from nightwalking and re-enters her body. She’ll just go for your throat then, and after she’s drunk a pint or two of your blood you’ll be…sort of glassy and spaced-out for a while. That will be the drug in the bite getting a hold on you.”

Todd Bertsch was a graceful-looking man, with wavy dark-red hair and freckles and a body that looked like a gymnast’s, shown to advantage in the briefs that were all either of them wore. He also looked mutinous. Monica smiled at him and spoke reassuringly.

“No, really, Todd, I understand your concern and it’s very sweet, but that’s safest for her. Then Jessica will be quiet while the Doña, ummm, well, she’s going to be feeling playful by then. Excited. When the Doña has been at you for a while and fed again on you she’ll be more relaxed and less…well, a bit less dangerous for Jessica when it comes to playing. So you’ll be protecting her this way, really.”

That would appeal to his feelings, and had the advantage of being true. Monica patted the sobbing woman on the shoulder.

“It’s all right to cry and be scared, honey. I was too and I cried all the time at first. But this whole thing is natural. Just remember you’re serving this need. It can be quite satisfying if you think of it that way, feeling your blood draining into the hunger. It’s what we humans are for, like flowers for hummingbirds. It can be beautiful as well as terrible. The Doña is really the nicest Shadowspawn there is, too.”

“There’s more of them?” Todd said.

“Oh, thousands. All over the place, little bunches everywhere. They run the world, pretty much. I mean, who could stop them from doing anything they want? They just don’t let people know, though I understand that’s going to change soon.”

She looked at her phone; it wasn’t long before dawn. “Come on, let’s get things ready.”

Dave Cheung motioned with the gun. Todd glared at him, but they both rose and walked down the corridor, through the sitting room and into the stateroom of the Morey. Which was named after the giant eel, a voracious ambush predator.

It was part of the stern of the ship and ran its full width, darkly lit by light reflected off the surface of the water and coming through the outward-slanting windows that made a semicircle at the rear. The panels and floor were African rosewood, and there was an oval king-sized bed and a few other items of understated furniture and some Tabriz carpets. Adrienne looked almost childlike as she lay with the cream silk coverlet drawn up under her chin and her arms crossed on her shoulders.

Jessica checked at the sight of the delicately carved ebony X-shaped frame with the restraints and the clamps bolted to one wall, and the various toys. Her eyes seemed focused on the whip, then took in some of the other things.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right,” Monica said. “That’s for play, later; I mean, I spend a fair bit of time tied up like that and it’s really quite stimulating when you’re used to it, and it makes your blood sort of…tasty. Todd, get her to lie down here on the bed, that’s right. Then you sit here, in this chair next to the bed.”

He jerked as the renfield gunman secured him to the chair with a padded restraint built into the arm.

“There, you sit beside her, Todd,” Monica said. “This is just so you don’t get in the way when the Doña goes for her. Things could get…out of hand if you did that, it’s a natural impulse, but…I mean, really bad. Never, never try to interrupt a feeding, it, um, sets them off. You can fight and resist afterwards, she quite likes that sort of game.”

Jessica’s brown eyes were wide, and her dark skin had roughed as if with a chill, though the chamber was at a perfect mild seventy degrees, with a subtle scent of flowers. Dave gave her a wink as he left, and Monica scowled at him.

It’s their first time, she thought, annoyed. Don’t spoil things, Dave. It should be dark and awful and terrible, but…pure and wonderful too. Really, sometimes I think you have no class at all.

Of course, he wasn’t really a lucy, though the Doña fed on him now and then; basically he was a renfield, a helper-worker. Monica looked at the time again, moving towards the door, and wondering if she should have warned the Bertsches about the special thing Adrienne could do to you with her mind. Technically it involved stimulating certain centers in the brain with jolts of the Power, though it certainly didn’t feel like it happened in the head. They’d certainly be experiencing that in the next couple of hours, but…

No, it’ll be such a nice surprise and help them come to terms with things. It feels so much better than you’d expect from hearing someone talk about it. Though it does sort of change your self-image.

Not long to dawn…could Adrienne have been delayed, so that she’d have to spend the day in deep water?

No. She’s here, she’s close.

There was an unmistakable flavor when nightwalkers approached, if they weren’t hiding and you’d experienced it before. A chill, a feeling of being lost somehow, even in the most familiar place, as if the world had changed around you to another place with completely different rules. The couple looked about wildly; they didn’t know what it meant. Adrienne Brézé entered her lair through the wall, flowing, twenty-two feet of reticulated python marked in blue and green and black. Jessica gave a series of hiccupping moans and shook in terror too paralytic for anything louder as the head reared over the foot of the bed and then slid under the sheet, winding itself around her body coil upon coil. Monica shivered herself and licked her lips; she knew exactly how that coiling embrace felt, so cool and resilient and irresistibly strong.

The snake sparkled and disappeared as Adrienne returned to her own flesh-body. Jessica tried to scramble up as the yellow-flecked dark eyes opened and turned to look at her with a smile, but Adrienne pounced in a blur of speed, arms and legs trapping her and mouth lunging for the neck with the lips rolled all the way back from the teeth. Monica slipped the door closed as the victim screamed once, high and desperate, and her husband shouted in helpless anguish.

The door was nearly soundproof, but Dave was looking at a screen set in the desk of the sitting room outside. Monica marched over and tapped three times on the screen, locking it out of internal surveillance mode. The sensors were keyed to her fingerprints, of course.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he protested.

“Whatever I please, because she listens to me, Dave.”

The man snarled at her; she wasn’t impressed, having been snarled at by people who did it much better.

“Where do you get off being so high and mighty?” he said. “She-”

“She’s a Shadowspawn adept, I’m a favorite lucy…and you are just a creep, Dave. You are a…a toad. Show a little respect for people’s feelings!”

He met her eyes for a second, then glanced aside. She went on briskly:

“Go and tell the captain she’s back. He knows what to do then. And tell the cooks…”

She thought. “A late lunch for two here. And something for the Bertsches in their cabin, something rich and special with plenty of liquids. They’re going to be shaky and they’ll need to talk things over and have some privacy.”

He nodded and stalked out. Monica nodded to herself as she sat and brought the screen live, setting it to turn on the camera and record, and began to compose her daily message to Sophia and Josh, composing her face into a smile.

Somebody had to keep up standards around here.

“We had a wonderful time in Istanbul. I’m sending a file of pictures and yes, there will be presents. I saw Leon and Leila with their dad in Vienna and they say hi!-”