'I wonder where Tarnowski is?'
He didn't really want to know; kidnap victims usually didn't end up anywhere good.
CHAPTER TWO
When Ellen came out in a too-large white cotton robe with a towel wrapped around her hair he had the breakfast table set, in the big airy room that led out onto the balcony. The pensione was perched high on the slope above Amalfi's little cove, and the Tyrrhenian Sea sparkled an impossible blue to the west; white buildings tumbled down the hillside to meet it, down to the Duomo and the half-Romanesque-Byzantine, half-Saracen cathedral.
She felt much better now; the hot water had driven the last of the grue out of her mind and the stiffness out of her muscles, and she found herself eager for the day, sniffing the scent of the coffee. When she tossed the towel aside the mild warm breeze tumbled through her curly blond hair.
'Good morning, Mrs. Breze,' Adrian said.
' Salut, Monsieur Breze,' she replied.
'And buongiorno' they added in unison; this was Amalfi, after all.
'You look enchanting. And dressed like that, you also look about twelve.'
'Not really,' she said.
Ellen struck a pose with one hand behind her head and a leg showing through the slit. Adrians gaze lingered on it. She was twenty-four; she was also five-foot-six and thirty-six/twenty-seven/thirty-six, taut from tennis and cross-country running, with a face close enough to a certain fifties actress that it had been embarrassing in NYU's art history classes when they came to study Warhol's famous portrait.
'No, on second thought, of a perfectly legal age,' he said, after clearing his throat.
She sat, and began to eat. The breakfast was more or less Italian, except for the chilled mango, ripe figs, crisp crumbly frese, slightly sweet and flavored with anise, torta di nocciole e limoni di Amalfi, rich with hazelnuts and tart with lemon, rolls, jam.
'Well, that's certainly blatant,' Adrian said after a moment, a slight prickle of danger in his smooth voice.
'What is?' Ellen replied.
'This.'
He showed her his tablet across the remains of their breakfast. She took the reader and held the thin sheet between her hands. This was an announcement in the Corriere della Sera that the…
' Ikhwan al-Fajr al-Aswad is to meet in Tbilisi, Georgia,' she murmured, yawning. 'Next year, about this time.'
It was late morning, which was a compromise between their preferred hours; Adrian might be a Good Guy, but his genes gave him a thoroughly Shadowspawn preference for waking up around noon and not becoming really active until sunset. By no coincidence whatsoever, that was a preference shared by many eccentric artists and mad dictators. She'd always been an early-to-bed, morning-type person. Marriage required a lot of meeting in the middle; going to bed late sometimes left her tired despite eight hours' sleep, even when it hadn't been interrupted the way it had last night.
Nobody at the inn objected to their schedule, even though it must have played havoc with their housekeeping. They had long experience with eccentric foreigners, and Adrian had used this place before. Mostly for prolonged recoveries and convalescence, after missions for the Brotherhood during his years fighting the Council.
'It's pronounced Ikkhh -'
He repeated the name as a rapid series of gargling gutturals and rough breathing.
Mountains ran north and south from here, blue and dreaming in the Mediterranean summer warmth that brought odors of rock and citrus and stone pine through the open French doors that gave onto the balcony terrace. She shivered a little; places like this made the contrast between how the world seemed and how she now knew it really worked all the more dreadful. With an effort she cast the thought away.
Besides her native coal-country Pennsylvania English, Ellen could speak fair French and some Italian; those were the legacy of an undergraduate degree in art history from NYU. And a little Spanish, from years spent in Santa Fe. Adrian was fluent in over a dozen languages that she knew of.
'Show-off,' she said sweetly, and kicked him in the ankle under the table. 'And don't repeat it in Tibetan.'
' Merde alors!' he yelped, startled. Then he smiled: 'I thought that it was you who enjoyed pain, cherie.'
She smiled back. 'What can I say…I swing both ways when it comes to lovely hurting. That's why it's called sadomasochism, dear.'
Then more seriously: 'Anyway, what does it mean? Ikhwan al-Fajr al-Aswad?' she added, trying to get the throaty sounds right.
'It's Arabic,' he said. 'For Order of the Black Dawn.'
'You're right, that's blatant. That's an elevated finger to the whole planet. The secret conspiracy of evil that runs the world is actually announcing its meetings to the news services?'
'They do want everyone to know…at least, every one of the people who are supposed to attend. Many of whom are both eccentric and hermetic recluses, or quite mad.'
'Why not send an e-mail around?'
Adrian chuckled. 'My sweet, people don't change much after their twenties. And many of the ones attending this affair were born before the First World War, and intend to live…well, exist…forever.'
'Of course they don't change. They're dead!'
'Only technically.'
Ellen laughed ruefully herself. 'I remember Adrienne saying something about the Old Ones disliking technology, or at least any technology that didn't involve shoveling coal into a boiler.'
'Exactly. Also this announcement, it is a boast. They draw closer to the day they need not be secret. When they can rule as demon-gods once more.'
'Why in Arabic? I thought French was the Council's official language.'
'A slight unblatancy or minor disguise,' he said. 'That's the Arabic version of the original… Ordre de l'Aube Noire. It's the term the al-Lanarki clan uses, too. Probably one of them thought it was amusing; they have an odd sense of humor.'
'Odder than yours?' Ellen said sardonically. 'In which I include your disreputable relatives, my love.'
'My ancestors thought they were magicians and loup-garou, before they ferreted out the truth. The al- Lanarkis thought they were ghilan , until the Order of the Black Dawn contacted them and showed them how to reconcentrate the genes. It shows in their…subculture, you might say. As the Tokairin thought they were Ninja sorcerors.'
'Ghilan?'
'The translation would be…ghouls, roughly.'
'Ech,' she said. 'Graveyards and corpses and that?'
'Not quite. The ghul of the East is not exactly the ghoul of the West. It is a thing that can assume the guise of an animal, lures unwary travelers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them. Ghul rob graves, drink blood, and take on the form of the one they had fed upon to deceive the living.'
'Sounds familiar.'
'The Shadowspawn are the source of all legends. Tbilisi is near their bailiwick, they operate out of Beirut for the most part, and they often get handed jobs like this.'
He had a slight accent in English; Ellen thought it was charming and distinguished. It went well with his looks, raven black hair, olive skin, a slim build muscled like a cat, and no more than an inch or so taller than her five-six. Of course, he had a slight accent in every one of his many languages, as far as she could tell, including French, which was more or less his first. First if you counted a sort of quasi-Provencal patois from the Auvergne as part of that language; it was what his technically dead but still very vocal great-grandparents had spoken to him in his childhood along with the standard tongue.
'My Mhabrogast is utterly faultless, darling,' he murmured, picking the thought out of her mind.
