who can sense the Power.”
“He don’t bother me none,” Harvey said, returning to his rabbit.
“You’re a loose cannon, Ledbetter, and you bent every rule to breaking point haring off to New Mexico that way.”
“I’m also the best field team leader in the Brotherhood, so you’re not going to do anything but scold me.”
She shrugged and went on to Adrian: “Please describe your encounter in Santa Fe, if you would.”
Adrian did; Harvey nodded approval. “He can still do a damn nice after-action report,” he added.
“That Wreaking on the apartment building… that is… not good news,” Polson said.
“You could say that,” Adrian replied grimly. “If I hadn’t turned it in on itself, when the cascade fell it might have taken out everything within blocks. Driven dozens catatonic for the rest of their lives, at least.”
“It gets harder and harder to fight…” Polson half-whispered to herself. Then: “You were using stored blood?”
Adrian nodded, and spoke with careful precision: “I drink blood only when I must for major Wreakings with the Power. As do you, do you not? What is your rating on the Alberman Scale?”
She forced her eyes back to his. “Yes. Red Cross supply. I’m… thirty-eight percent.”
“Then you will have some idea of how absolutely horrible an experience drinking cold, dead blood is. It is much worse for me. Dog-piss would be more fun.”
Polson nodded, stopping her fork halfway to her mouth. Then she visibly put the memory out of her mind and ate.
“We’re preoccupied right now,” she said. “Believe me, I sympathize with the girl. I’ve done field work. But right now, the whole world is about to come down on our heads. You’ve heard about the Council meeting that’s been called for next year in Tiflis?”
“No, I had not,” he said. “Well, not until last night.”
“You heard that Gheorghe Br?ncu?i was executed? Formally the meeting’s to elect his successor.”
Executed, Adrian thought as he nodded. Or assassinated, depending on your viewpoint.
“Harvey told me yesterday,” he said.
“Christ, Br?z?, don’t you follow anything?”
“It hasn’t been on CNN, nor on the Internet,” he said dryly. “The Brotherhood has me on their shit-list, and pretty well all the Council’s Shadowspawn would kill me if they could and deceive me just for the pleasure of it if they couldn’t. Ms. Polson, what part of retired don’t you understand?”
“Then you wouldn’t have heard that they’re going to implement Plan Trimback?”
He looked at her, drank the last of his wine, and said: “No.”
Harvey tore a piece off the baguette and buttered it.
“Usually they couldn’t organize an orgy in a Bangkok whorehouse and they put everything off and off and off because they’re planning on living forever ’n’ figure they’ve got time,” he said, biting into the bread with a crackle. “This time it’s different.”
Polson nodded. “We’re trying to figure out a counter-strategy-”
“Bullshit,” Adrian said crisply.
She glared at him; Harvey grinned and continued methodically demolishing the loaf and mopping his plate.
“I quit because the Brotherhood isn’t a threat to the Shadowspawn,” Adrian said. “It’s a nuisance. You kill a few lower-level types-”
“We got Br?ncu?i,” she said.
“That was me, actually, and Adrian’s right,” Harvey said. “Two members of the Council in thirty years. And that’s… what… less than half of the number of Council heads who’ve died in faction-fights or family coups. We’re never going to be able to kill our way to victory, Sheila. There are just too damned many of them now. And they’ve got the Power.”
“You want to give up too, Ledbetter?” she rasped.
“No. I think we should admit that the Power is here to stay. Sure, if you gave me a magic button I’d push till my thumb got sore. But even the Power can’t undo the past.”
Harvey went on: “So we need to use the Power. Y’know, you could have gotten into the Order of the Black Dawn if you’d been around back then. Hell, I might have made it. And we’re not evil… well, not most of the time.”
“The Order were evil,” Sheila said with flat certainty.
“Yeah, but that’s ’cause they were demon-worshipping shits who figured out they could become demons. They’d have been just as evil if all they’d had was knives and bad attitudes.”
He pointed his fork at Adrian. “Guys like Adrian are our hope. The Power isn’t evil either; it’s just a… technology.”
Polson took a long breath. “That’s a policy question. We’re here to talk about this one instance. OK… I’ll see what I can do. We do have a lot of information about the Br?z? family. We’ll get it to you as fast as we can; some of it will have to be dug out of hiding places. But I’m not going to clear everything off our plate just for this.”
“We won,” Harvey said, when she had gone.
Adrian methodically finished the last of his duck. He would be needing his energy, and ordinary food had its part in that too.
“And Ellen is… wherever she is,” he said.
He snarled, then controlled the sound. A glimpse at his face in the beveled glass mirror stopped it more effectively. The sharp teeth showed between the drawn-back lines of his lips, and his eyes might have been glowing from a Pleistocene night by the reflected light of a frightened tribe’s campfires.
“Christ, Harvey, I don’t want to do this.”
“You’re going at it awful hard for a reluctant man,” Harvey said.
His blunt fingers made pills from the last of the bread. Adrian gripped the edge of the table until rims of white stood out in his fingernails, welcoming the pain of it.
“Do you know why I’ve spent these years sitting on a mountaintop, Harvey? Running, meditating, swimming, talking to people at safe remove through a keyboard. Playing tennis when I felt daring? Because that life… life on an even keel… is one I can control. I don’t like what this… walking armed towards a fight, thinking in terms of threats and counter-threats and strategy-does to me.”
“It ain’t all that much fun, I grant you.”
Adrian shook his head violently. “No. It is entirely too much fun, at some levels. I know myself. I was made for this.”
“You don’t like you nearly as much as I do, ol’ buddy,” Harvey said quietly, looking away. “Think you might reconsider? You’d be a happier man.”
Adrian felt himself smile; the expression in the mirror was worse than the snarl had been.
“Consider my sister, my friend. She has an excellent sense of self-esteem, feels comfortable in her skin and enjoys her life.”
Softly: “And she has Ellen. For a whole day now. What has been happening, there, in that creature’s nest?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Somethingchirped in her ear. Ellen woke, yawned, stretched, and frowned. The place smelled different from her own bedroom, and not like Adrian’s either, with its faint undertones of expensive tobacco and leather-bound books and juniper. Not bad-fresh linen, flowers, coffee, a spicy scent like eucalyptus-but different. She whimpered as memories crashed in on her. Then she realized she was alone in the big rumpled bed, and relaxed. The chirping came again; she turned her head and saw a BlackBerry resting on the pillow next to her.
This is yours, the note on the screen said. Schedule loaded. First, go get checkup at clinic: 10:00 a.m. Dr. Duggan fully briefed. Don’t be late or I will spank you.
The time display read 9:00. “Am I going to…” she started to mutter to herself. Then: “Of course I’m going to go for this checkup. She’s not kidding about that spanking. I don’t think she means just a pat, either.”
