'Yes, but that's the lingua demonica,' she teased. 'What they speak in Hell.'
'Bah, mere superstition. It may be the operating code of the universe, I admit that.'
Then he took the reader back and flicked the pages down with one finger.
'Mmmmm…name of a black dog! They're even specifying that it's to elect new members to the Shura al- Khayal!'
'Council of Shadows, right?'
Yes.
Ellen sighed. 'And then they decide on which version of their end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it plan to implement.'
'Which we must stop. I like the world as I know it.'
'So do I, especially now that I'm with you. I knew the honeymoon couldn't last forever. Damn.'
Adrian reached across the table and took her hand.
'Only in the narrowest sense,' he said, kissing the fingers one by one. 'Metaphorically we can keep this up forever.'
The kisses sent little tingling feelings up into her hand and arm.
Which is a good sign after a week of really energetic honeymooning, when I didn't have the collywobbles. And the way Adrian takes care of me then…that's even better, in a way.
'And there is nothing we can do immediately. Especially if we do not wish to attract attention. We will move slowly, cautiously, until it is time to strike.'
Then he leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. Sunlight dappled across his bare torso and loose chino drawstring pants; he tapped a slim brown Turkish cigarette out of a pack on the table and crossed one ankle across his knee. The bare foot was slender, like his hands, and high-arched.
'Gag. Retch. Cough,' she said. 'Ak. Ak. Pthft.'
He raised one eyebrow but didn't put the cigarette back. Instead he held it up before his face, concentrating, frowning a little with a fixed expression in his eyes, which were brown, almost black, save for tiny gold flecks. After a moment smoke began to curl up from the end of the tube, an acrid pungency with an aromatic undertone. She had to admit it wasn't entirely unpleasant; it was tobacco but very good tobacco, and it had been treated with rum.
'Show-off,' she said again. 'You only do that so you can look like a Francois Truffaut character.'
He smiled at her through the smoke, drew, and let it trickle out of his nostrils.
'But, darling, I grew up on Truffaut movies,' he said. ' L'Histoire d'Adele H. was the first one I ever went to on my own.'
Ellen blinked; occasionally she forgot that Adrian was over fifty. He looked twenty-something, like her. His breed aged more slowly, even in their original bodies.
'It's still a disgusting vice,' she said lightly. 'And not even one of the fun disgusting vices. Plus it's dangerous.'
'It's perfectly safe for me,' he pointed out, gesturing elegantly…very much like a Truffaut character, in fact, probably deliberately. 'I can't get cancer. Or heart disease. Or lose the sensitivity of my taste buds, either.'
'I can get cancer.'
'Yes, but I could cure you.'
She put her tongue between her lips and went pffffthttttt!
Adrian let his head fall back and stared at the white plaster that overlay the arched stone of the ceiling as he smoked; this place had started out as a nobleman's house six centuries ago, built into the steep almost-cliff above the little city. He was obviously in deep-thought mode, and he hated to be interrupted then. Which was fair enough. She loathed interruptions when she was working too.
Ellen poured more coffee, picked up her cup and saucer and walked out on the terrace, under an arch of arbor thick with hanging bougainvillea, purple and crimson and white. Gulls flew by below the stone balustrade, and above the strip of lemon trees on the terrace below. The polished mosaico hidrdulico tiles felt comfortable on her bare feet, as if the green and blue floral pattern were a smooth stroking. She lost herself in the moment and the view.
This is a very long way from Swoyersville, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, she thought happily. Or even from Allentown.
'Eek!'
His fingers caressed the nape of her neck, touching the fine hairs there-the rest of his hand was curled up on her head. Then he stripped the robe down, pinning her arms behind her back. She shivered, and then gasped as he gripped the knot of hair and bent her head back. His other hand stroked her. Anyone looking up from the roadway below-anyone with a good set of binoculars, at least-was going to be getting an eyeful of natural blonde having a very good time.
Which added to the excitement. And technically, she had a government license-though not one for in public.
' Con il suo permesso?'his voice murmured in her ear.
' Oh, yeah.'
A slight sting at the base of her throat, and hot fire ran through her body like a wave.
'That could get addictive,' she said some time later.
'It is addictive,' he pointed out, head resting on her stomach.
Ellen lay propped against the carved olive-wood headboard of the canopied bed and sipped at the red wine; it was an excellent way to keep your blood cell count up when your husband had…special needs. It was also around two in the afternoon, which meant she wasn't starting too early.
'Oh, I don't mean just your feeding on me and the drug in the bite,' she said. 'Though that is very satisfying. I mean the whole setup. Strolls along the seaside, the fantastic sex, we wander off to the Trattoria da Ciccio for lunch, the fantastic sex, sailboating down the coast, the fantastic sex, we go ramble around some quattrocento palace full of murals I've only ever seen in prints and on the Web, the fantastic sex, you buy those prawn things and Mrs. Boriello cooks them up for us with her handmade pasta and we have dinner on the terrace and watch the moon rise over the sea, you drink some of my blood, then the fantastic-'
'Stop, stop, you are turning me into a satyr again!'
He began trailing kisses up her torso.
'You need help for that? Not that I've noticed!'
'I needed your help to stop feeling conflicted.'
'Well, c'mon, then, tiger. The safe word for the day is whoa!'
Adrian laughed. 'I find I like the safe-word concept very much.'
'So do I, but why 'very much'?'
'It assures me I'm not being a monster.'
'Not the bad kind, at least. Well, c'mon!'
'Not now, my sweet. It is time to begin preparing you. This holiday can last longer if we make it a working vacation…or a working honeymoon.'
She sighed. 'I'm supposed to take a level in badassery, right? Starting now?'
'Just a few precautions. An unprepared…normal…'
Human, she thought, and he nodded.
'…is too vulnerable to a Shadowspawn. Even one who isn't an adept.'
' Tell me. I was your sister's prisoner for six months, remember. Of course, she is an adept.'
He snarled. She jerked back in involuntary alarm for an instant; it was literally a snarl, a predator's warning sign, showing teeth that weren't quite human. Not her variety of human, at least: Shadowspawn were hominids, but they had evolved to prey on Homo sapiens sapiens. They were as territorial as you'd expect a specialist predator to be, too. He loved her and hated his sister, but at an instinctual level he was also furious at another hunter poaching his turf.
'Sorry,' he murmured, forcing his face back to calm.
' 'Sall right. I killed her, after all. Pop goes the hypodermic in her foot, in goes the poison. God, that was satisfying! Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me the opportunity. And the hypodermic.'
He laughed ruefully. 'It is an accomplishment for which I will always envy you. And as you remembered it,
