“It is pretending to be a Shadowspawn predator. The things I must do to avoid suspicion are too hard to forget.”
“Adrian, I don’t wish to do anything much but go back to Pecan Creek, retire, go fishing and watch football and drink beer, and amble down to the crossroads for some BBQ now and then. With an occasional trip to Arles. I certainly never became much attached to blowin’ people’s heads off.”
Softly the older man finished: “I see their faces sometimes.”
“True. Moi aussi. Goodbye, then, old friend. Remember, she will be with Hajime of a certainty at the final ceremony, if there is no opportunity before.”
“You just keep her pinned long enough for the bullet to hit.” A grin. “It’s going to be what you might call a target-rich environment and I’ve got a fair amount of ammo.”
“There is only one target that really matters.”
He leaned back against the softness of the sleeping bag and the air pillow. Dimly he could see Harvey take up the sniper rifle, its outline broken up by a scrim of fabric that turned it shaggy. The other man pulled down a bulbous face-mask with passive image intensifiers built into it, and clicked off the blue light.
Adrian let the Mhabrogast form in his mind, convincing his hindbrain that it did not need his physical form: Amss-aui-ock!
There was an instant of wrenching, ice-and-silver pain along his nerves, and he was standing and looking down at his body.
I am better, this time. Balanced and strong. Win or lose, I will not fail myself. Let’s make sure I don’t fail Ellie, either.
Another, and his body flowed. He felt duller, more constrained; Peterson had not been as purebred as he, nor as intelligent in general. The part of him that was always him struggled, and thought and senses gradually grew more clear. Adjusting a form was much more difficult than simply donning it, but possible, and once done could be locked in for recall. Harvey looked at him critically.
“That’s Peterson at about twenty-one,” he said.
“I don’t have the somatic memories,” Adrian replied. “It’s not unknown for postcorporeals to de-age their aetheric forms, and God knows he had time.”
“It’ll have to do. Good luck, ol’ buddy.”
Adrian nodded and stepped towards the camouflage curtain. He concentrated, and to the aetheric eyes the complex fabric faded to invisibility. The molecules of his stolen form slipped through those of the cloth, and he was naked in the early night. Around him was a web of floating energies; curtains of them crawled across the stars, still a little hurtful in the west where the sun had vanished. He raised his arms to the night, let the syllables he whispered shape what was, and willed.
Form flowed. Perceptions flowed and changed with it; scent dulled, but vision grew far keener than his eyes saw by day, and hearing had an unearthly sensitivity that made the rustle of a field-mouse as loud as boots on gravel and gave direction with swift precision. The sounds of the night were a roar, but after an instant each was as distinct as lines scribed with a diamond. Thought shrank, but took on a savage directness that did not seek to question itself. Broad wings five feet from tip to tip caught at the night, and a great snowy owl ghosted upward as small things skittered in panic or more wisely froze.
Exultation filled him as feathers caressed the air and danced with it, and it took the silent command of the man-mind that lurked at the back of the narrow avian brain to keep it from plunging and sporting in sheer joy. Instead he circled for height, stroking with his wings when he must, riding currents of air he could see as billowing shapes when he caught them. Land unrolled below him, not the map-image you saw with a man’s eyes from an aircraft but a living tapestry as detailed as skin beneath a microscope, down to each clear-cut leaf and grass-blade. Fields, roads, buildings… … and hovering above one a banner of energies, potentials sparkling into and out of existence.
That he saw with the eyes of the Power which never left him. A simple construct, but with the mark of his sister’s savage elegance: here.
Ellen is there, he thought with some part of him that still remembered words. I can feel the base-link. She is miserable, with more than mere fear.
It was close, but he banked widely to make sure that no other night-walker rode the air. None were nearby, though their approach tickled at his senses. He folded his wings then, and dove. Speed built, and the earth swelled; he could hear the murmur of many voices, loud and ugly to the owl’s hearing. Human voices, some carrying the freight of pain and fear. The building swelled, a long rectangular stable or barn of stucco-covered concrete with openings just under the peak of the tile roof at either end. For a form that could stoop on prey by sound alone it was simple to dive through, though the blaze of electric light was hurtful The space within was divided by a fence of wire mesh. The larger part held prisoners, eighty or so men and women.
The others… guards, in the uniform of small-town policemen. His sister, her aura like a blow, a wave of rank salt blood and slinking menace. Another woman in elegant dress, radiating fear and a sick dread and an abject abandonment. And…
Ellen, he thought. Ellen. Why did she bring you here?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Eeerrk!”
Ellen bit off the small shriek as the slim long-fingered hand fell on her shoulder while she stared at the computer screen.
God, but I hate it when she sneaks up on me like that! “I know you hate it. That’s why I do it. Sadist, remember? What’s this?”
Adrienne’s head followed the hand, looking at the arrangement of the paintings on the screen and the number- coded map of the casa grande.
“This is my plan for the next step in reorganization,” Ellen said. “There’s more than enough display space in the casa, you’re just not using it to best advantage. We’ve done the basic sectional sort-and-move; now we need to get down to fine-tuning the placement of each piece.”
“Excellent, ma douce.”
The office-study of Ellen’s house on Lucy Lane had had time to acquire touches of her own in the three months since she’d arrived; an orange cat that she’d half-adopted despite her resolution lounged in a corner, and a pot of coffee on a hotplate scented the air, along with the warm May flowers-and-grass scent through the open window, with a breath of coolness as the day spun down into night.
There were prints-a couple of Impressionists-and a genuine Mary Cassatt of two women drinking tea that should have been in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It had simply appeared on the wall one day, and she’d been caught between guilt and long periods of simply staring, transported.
“Sadist, remember?” Adrienne chuckled. Then she trailed a finger down Ellen’s neck. “You’re looking lovely, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Put this on too.”
Adrienne handed her a flat case, antique tooled leather with a diamond clasp. Ellen opened it and swallowed. It was a Victorian piece, a two-tiered necklace of collar and spray in gold and rubies against black velvet.
“That’s lovely,” she said sincerely.
“I’m glad you like it. It’s been in the family for some time, as an ornament for our lucies. Note the theme of bloodred. It really needs a blond to carry it off.”
The order to dress up for evening hadn’t specified a time, so she’d lost herself in work despite the long sheath of shimmering silver-scalloped black with a cloth-of-gold shawl thrown over her chair. The first day of the house party would start tonight. She bent her head forward and held up her hair to let the Shadowspawn fasten the goldwork.
And I’m on display as the beautiful golden peach nobody else can taste. The one Adrian couldn’t keep out of her hands.
