Shadows of Falling Night Read online

  “Only problem with this trip is what’s at the end,” he said. “Going up against people with precognition and telepathy and all that good shit just makes me nervous.”

  It also makes me likely to die, but hey, goes with the territory, he thought to himself, keeping it silent because the others were more-or-less civilians.

  Peter smiled. This time it wasn’t just pleasant; there was something of a shark’s grin in it as he tapped what looked like a tablet.

  “We’ve been working on that prescience-blocking field.”

  “We?”

  “Well, Dr. Duquesne and me. The Brotherhood moved us from the place in Sweden to their big base in Ecuador…they wanted us to camouflage it for them. Which we did. They’ve got lots of engineers and technicians, but not many real scientists for some reason. It’s odd—if I had the Power, I would so have been using it experimentally.”

  “What’s it like, the base?”

  “It’s in the crater of a semi-extinct volcano, burrowed into these amazing natural caves…there’s even a monorail.”

  “Do they have their own nuclear reactor?” Eric said.

  Peter frowned. “No, a geothermal unit…why?”

  “I watched a lot of old movies on my phone while I was doing stakeouts. You would not believe how boring being a detective is. Anyway, what’s that?”

  “It’s the new prescience-blocking generator. The first one, the one that Harvey, uh—”

  “Stole.”

  “Stole. That was a test bed, jury-rigged. This is the production model for small-scale concealment. We put in a big one for the base; they had protective Wreakings, but they’re much happier now.”

  He grimaced slightly. “Though I think some of them thought it was…cheating.”

  “What were they like?” Eric asked curiously. “I haven’t seen any of their bigwigs, and the grunts were all in-and-out, real concentrated on business.”

  Peter frowned. “They seemed like people trying very hard to be good, but it doesn’t come naturally to them.”

  Eric shrugged. “That’s me, sometimes. Whatever works.”

  “And they were really concerned with being able to hide. I don’t think things have been going well for them lately.”

  “Sort of a defensive crouch, yeah, I got that impression too. Not a good thing.”

  Cheba looked at the tablet. “It isn’t one of those little computers?”

  “We used the case from commercial tablets. It makes it inconspicuous.”

  “So, this is a machine that can do what the brujos do?”

  There was a carnivorous eagerness to the question. Peter shook his head.

  “I wish. No. No, that needs a lot of…”

  He paused. “I can’t explain without math.”

  “But hey, you’ll give it a try, right?” Eric said patiently.

  Peter flung up his hands: “The experiments I did at the Rancho…They need modulation, a control system as…as subtle as a human brain. One that worked like the human brain, or really like the Shadowspawn brain, on a quantum level. It’s…it’s like the difference between being able to play the violin and being able to make a loud noise.”

  “But,” he went on, “we can make a really loud noise.”

  He tapped the screen. Leila and Leon were walking back from the cockpit as he did so; they stopped abruptly, their dark brows knotting.

  “You’re not there any more!” Leon said.

  “I can see you, but you’re not there!” Leila said. And added: “I don’t like it!”

  Peter stuck his hands protectively in front of the little machine as she pointed at it. “No! Don’t hurt it!”

  Cheba shook a warning finger. “You two be good! ¡Comportanse!”

  “C’mon, Leila, let’s play some Angry Rodents,” her brother said.

  “This is going to be complicated,” Eric said thoughtfully as the children put on their earbuds and VR glasses. “How many of those things do you have?”

  “Fair number. At least one each, but don’t lose them…or get them fried. We checked, and Wreakings can fry them, they just can’t be very precise because the Power can’t sense them. There are some attachments here; this is the underwater model, for example. Dive-rated. Rechargers, testing monitors…we’ve got some nice kit here. They have their limitations, but they sure do make it easier to surprise the other side, though.”

  “Bueno,” Cheba said. She looked at the baggage rack, where her fashionista backpack with the built-in silvered machete rested. “There are some people, they should be surprised, you know?”

  Dmitri’s hands moved on the massive sniper rifle without requiring conscious direction; the three of them were lying in a little rocky declivity, with the barrel through the roots of a chamisos and Dale lying next to him with a little fiber-optic periscope peeping out to produce a picture on his tablet.

  “Well, shit,” he said. Then his head turned sharply after the departing plane. “Shit, did you catch that?”

  Dmitri focused. “They’re…gone. As if they stopped existing. As if they never did exist!”

  Dale nodded slowly. “Yeah. Something really strange is going on here.”

  “Beh pizday! And we need to know what. Next time, no holding back.”

  He finished fitting the parts of the rifle into their foam-lined receptacles in the carrying case, snapped it closed and slung it over his back. Dale halted as they turned and started down towards the four-by-four.

  “What?” Dmitri said.

  “What just happened…the whole thing. Something Alpha Bitch said after I went for them at her brother’s place. She said her kids were so pureblood that they might be screwing things up.”

  Dmitri snorted. “She is arrogant. They are too young, still latent.”

  Dale shook his head. “She said their future selves might be loading the dice from a long time from now.”

  Dmitri stopped, winced, and shrugged. “That is a…disturbing thought. But what could we do about it?”

  “Kill ’em?” Dale said. “Anyway, it’s a thought.”

  They were all very silent as they drove away down the dirt track. Behind them a convoy pulled out of the gate of the National Guard base.

  Dale Shadowblade nodded to the TSA agent at Albuquerque’s airport.

  “No, I’ve got no ID at all, and it wouldn’t help you anyway. We psychopathic killers look like anyone else. Yeah, I’ve got a shitload of guns, knives and some China White in here, and a couple of grenades. I mean, I can’t get addicted so there’s no harm in the occasional line of blow, and I might need to kill someone, right? Yeah, it’s more satisfying with your bare hands, but now and then you’re in a hurry.”

  The agent blinked. “What was that, sir?” he said slowly.

  “We’re not the droids you’re looking for,” Kai said with a giggle.

  “Have a pleasant flight, sir, ma’am.”

  “You do the scanner,” Dale said to his lucy-cum-renfield.

  It was easy enough to convince a mind it saw and heard what it expected to hear, but computers were simpler still.

  “You need the practice anyway,” he added.

  They walked through the security line, and then through the scanners. The agent looking at the screen reared back and clapped her hands to her mouth in shock, then sat back again and burst into tears. Kai was grinning her usual nasty expression, and it got broader as they went into the concourse. She snapped her fingers with both hands, made a little prancing dance-step, giggled, and people began staring at their smartphones and tablets and shaking them or punching fingers at the screens and cursing.

  Albuquerque Sunport was laid out in a T, the B gates to the right and the A to the left, with a big bronze statue at the junction. It showed an Indian—a shaman—with a feathered headdress, chasing an eagle in a flat-out run and looking like he was about to fall over.

  “Looks like one of those Navajo pukes,” Dale said. “One of the goodie-goodies who thinks they can keep you off with sand-pa
intings.”

  He grinned too, at the thought. Maybe in the old days. Not anymore. A lot of the medicine-men could manage a little Wreaking without really knowing what they were doing, but a modern Council adept was in a whole different league, like an assault rifle up against a spear.

  It was fun to suddenly turn palpable in the middle of the sand-painting when you were nightwalking, and go on from there.

  You know, it’s really more fun when they believe in you beforehand but buy that Good triumphs over Evil shit. Then evil gets ’em and…yeah, that feels real good. Tastes good too.

  “Looks like he’s about to fall on his face. Or his ass, or both at the same time,” Kai said, glancing at the statue.

  Dale laughed. “That’s appropriate. I’ll handle this,” he said.

  Kai pouted. “Aw, I wanna—”

  He clouted her alongside the head, making a hard smacking sound as the calloused palm struck, and she turned her eyes down. The action was a relief; airports had a bad aura, throttled rage and frustration. A man started to get up and come towards them, until Dale stared at him for a second; then he sat down again.

  At the B10 gate counter Dale walked up to the agent at the computer.

  “You got four last-minute cancellations in first class on the Alitalia flight to Paris with changeover in Atlanta,” he said. “We’re at the top of the standby list. In fact, we’re the only people on it. Platinum premium boarding.”

  His eyes locked on hers, and he murmured, first in his own language and then in Mhabrogast. The agent’s pupils expanded until the color was a thin blue rim around darkness…

  “Why Alitalia?” Kai said, as they strolled down the Jetway.

  They both had one small carry-on; he preferred to carry nothing but a few favorite weapons and some Wreaking paraphernalia wherever he went and just pick up anything he needed at the destination. Behind them there was a scrimmage around the counter, with the ticketing agent mumbling incoherently and would-be passengers waving their boarding passes…or trying, if they had them on their smartphones and tablets. Behind that there was another frenzy, as the Bank of America ATM began to spew cash out onto the floor.

  “Better booze on the Euro airlines,” Dale said. “And a better class of flight attendant. It’s going to be a long boring trip and we’ll need something to do. Flying…flying makes me hungry.”

  Kai giggled again. Then she almost ran into his back as he halted for a moment.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Something else from bossbitch. She’s got a job for me. And it looks like a lot of fun. A technical challenge.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mitteleuropa

  “Well, this is fucking nostalgic,” Dale Shadowblade said.

  The trail of smoke from the steam engine was a dun-colored plume in the distance, and the snow glittered in the moonlight.

  “What?” Kai said.

  “My granddad saw trains robbed sometimes,” Dale said. “As a little kid. His granddad took him along the last couple of times as a treat just before the old bastard bit it.”

  “Oh.” She searched her memory; he could feel her doing it like pages being flipped. “Like Butch and that Western shit?”

  “Yeah, though Granddad said when they caught someone his graddad used to tie ’em to a tree and then cut open their bellies and pull out the guts a couple of yards, real careful not to kill ’em. So they could watch the coyotes having dinner.”

  Kai giggled. “Hey, that sounds like fun!”

  “It does, doesn’t it? I’ve never got around to it, always meant to, but he used to laugh himself sick when he told about the way they’d wiggle. Anyway, those trains would have looked like that one, all steam and smoke.”

  He took a deep breath; the smell of the countryside was different, wetter even with the cold, greener…

  “Okay, you keep an eye on the body,” he said, turning back to the Mercedes Sprinter van. “Bossbitch wants someone killed. Roll me in clover, said the pig.”

  There was still a slight smell of blood from the previous owners, but the back had comfortable foam padding. He lay down and crossed his arms on his chest. Kai closed the doors and squatted outside, smoking and cradling a little Austrian machine pistol.

  Amss-aui-ock!

  A twist of agony and ecstasy and a great snowy owl beat its wings, up and through the metal ceiling of the van. The night turned bright as he circled, full of rustlings and movement, the scurry of a field-mouse insanely distracting. He rose, banked, dove, then turned, exulting in the way his wingfeathers grasped the air like fingers in water. That left him flying at exactly the same speed as the train; there was a curve here that made it slow down a little. Another twist, and a chacma baboon fell to the top of the train.

  Fingers and toes gripped, and the wind whipped at his grey-brown fur as the motion of the passenger-car jolted him. This was one of his favorite forms for climbing work; chacma baboons were nearly as agile as squirrels and with a hundred-pound weight and two-inch canines they were bad news in a fight too. There was more brain to them, too, which made things like maintaining purpose easier. A mutter of Mhabrogast…

  Shit, he thought.

  When you looked at it this way, the whole train lit up like a Christmas tree. With Wreakings, wards, and the personal patterns of adepts, like a chorus of flavors and smells, all of them bad to really bad. There was serious monster mojo here. He twisted again into his own base-form and began to pull not-see around himself. Tease out the threads…they were like a skein blurring the whole substance of the world around him…

  The wind was cold on his naked skin. He shivered and sweated at the same time. Now for the most difficult part of all, one most Shadowspawn never tried. He checked his location again; not all that far from the bossbitch herself, her aura was unmistakable…and right, she’d be able to claim she wasn’t thinking about anything but fucking her brains out and feeding while this went down.

  And who’s the smart one here? he thought sardonically. Who’s freezing his aetheric dick off, about to risk his life, and who’s in a nice warm bed spanking the hell out of a really first-rate piece of ass?

  Feel the roof of the railway car. Feel the quiver, the way the matter existed not as a solid thing, but instead as a grainy foamy presence more like a note plucked on a guitar. Don’t let the process become just instinct like walking through a wall, where it was easy to turn the bottom of your feet a bit more palpable as they came down. Control. Then sink into it, letting yourself match it—

  —and fall through, a flash of darkness—

  —and turn palpable again in a split second.

  —and land in a crouch. He panted for a moment, the sound harsh in his ears. Dropping through a floor was insanely risky. If your timing was even a fraction off you ended up dropping right into the earth, or trying to go palpable again halfway through something. Both would kill you.

  No sense in waiting. His don’t-see-me was better than any Shadowspawn he’d ever met; that was why the Council had used him as an executioner, and that was how he’d met Adrienne. The downside was that you couldn’t do much else but listen with the Power when you were hiding that hard, anything active showed right up and blew your cover.

  On the other hand, hiding wasn’t the only reason he’d been named Shadowblade.

  Okay, there’s Adrienne, making happy with lots of sound effects. Adrian, likewise, quieter, but a good time being had by all. And Arnaud on the other side…a trifecta of Brézés. I’ve never killed a Brézé before. It could get addictive.

  His hand touched the door to the compartment. Not locked. Then there was a sudden unexpected wave of agony from within, as if someone had been dipped in liquid fire.

  Dale Shadowblade grinned like a shark as he flicked the door aside and lunged.

  There were screams coming through the thin wall of the compartment. Mixed with moans, and a smacking sound.

  “Whose idea was it to put your sister next to us?” Ellen asked, jamming her
thumbs into her ears and trying not to think of a series of memories that were unpleasant in a whole galaxy of ways, many less than straightforward.

  Adrian grinned at her. “Any of my family who wish to do us harm, which is to say, any of them,” he said. “Starting with her, and working on out to Great-uncle Arnaud, who I think did some of the scheduling for this trip.”

  Then he concentrated and began to mutter. Ellen felt a sensation like a fierce itch inside her skull. The sounds from next door dulled, until they were fainter than the droning whine of steel on steel from the wheels and the distant chuffing of the engine.

  “You know,” Ellen said, with a slow smile, “I was telling the truth about your hands and my bottom.”

  Hours later a scream of an entirely different nature woke her from a drowsing sleep, so loud she couldn’t tell if it was psychic or physical or both. The muffling feel of the Wreakings clanging shut in her head was nearly as startling. She sat up in the comfortable but slightly narrow bunk. Across the compartment Adrian was crouched on his, alert and tensile as a great cat, the yellow flecks in his eyes glittering in the dim light.

  “What was that?” Ellen said quietly.

  “Death, I think,” he said. “The Final Death. A nightwalker, a post-corporeal perhaps, in sudden agony and great fear. And close, close.”

  A fist thumped at the door. “Open!”

  The rolling shutters were down over the lounge’s windows, and the post-corporeals were there despite the fact that the sun was up outside and the train still in motion. They were also all within arm’s length of the armored boxes held by their most trusted renfields, and they were snarling-angry.

  “Arnaud Brézé was under my protection,” Étienne-Maurice said. “It was made clear before we left Paris that all feuds were in abeyance until we arrived in Tbilisi, and we are not yet even in Istanbul!”