your thoughts grew remarkably predatory too.'
Well, humans are predators. The Shadowspawn are very predatoresque predators. Like supertigers evolved to hunt lions. Predators on top of predators, on true humans and on Neanderthals and Homo erectus and maybe on those funny little things on Flores, she thought.
'All of them.' He nodded. 'For a very, very long time. A hundred thousand years or more. But Adrienne… knowing she is no longer in the world has lifted a great burden from me, my love.'
He rolled onto his back, one arm behind his head, looking at the ceiling. Ellen propped herself up on her elbows.
'C'mon, there's something there, lover,' she said, ' I can't read minds, so I have to ask you.'
He was silent for a long minute. Then: 'You are not the only one to have bad dreams about Adrienne,' he said. 'Or to have good reason for them.'
Her brows went up. 'She tried to kill you a lot, didn't she?'
'That was not the problem. It was war, and we were on opposite sides. We…were antagonists as well as enemies. Counterparts, almost, in command of our respective operations, outwitting each other. That meant negotiations, from time to time. She kept trying to turn me, as well as kill me. Appealing to our memories of our childhoods…oh, not blatantly. Very subtly.'
'Hey, you didn't tell me about this!'
He shrugged and reached for a cigarette with his free hand. 'I do not like to think of it. Then in Calcutta… Operation Black Hole. I was cut off for some time. So was she-a rogue Shadowspawn was involved, one outlawed by the Council as well as hunted by the Brotherhood. I made a very bad mistake; I trusted her.'
'You did?'
'Only tactically, but it was enough. She launched a mental attack on me. I think I was her prisoner for some time, but escaped; Harvey found me wandering. Naked, scarred, bleeding and half-mad.'
'Oh,' Ellen said, and laid her head on his shoulder. 'That sounds like your sister, all right. Adrian…I haven't asked before, but you remember when you contacted me mentally, just after Adrienne took me to Rancho Sangre?'
He nodded without looking at her.
'And I told you that she had two kids? Why did that affect you so strongly?'
He let smoke trickle from his nostrils. 'Because,' he said very softly, 'they may be mine as well. I am not certain. My memories of those days are scrambled. Fragments, some that must be nightmares, others that were true-I had the scars for some time-and some that might be either.'
She nodded. 'I thought so. They…really looked like you, especially the boy. He even moved like you.'
'That does not make it certain. Shadowspawn are inbred, the Brezes in particular.'
'I couldn't prove it, but I'm morally certain,' Ellen said carefully.
A sigh. 'And me also,' he said. 'What were they like?'
'Creepy,' she said bluntly. 'But, ummm, sort of creepy in an innocent way. Charming, even…in a creepy way.'
'That is the hell of it, this war. So many innocents. So many, and it is so seldom that we can do anything to protect or help. Even Adrienne, once…It haunts me, that if she had been the one Harvey rescued, I might be on the other side even now.'
'Well, for a girl she's really hot stuff, lover, but I still wouldn't have married her. Not even in California and not even if she'd been the Good Guy who rescued me. A brief passionate fling in Saint Barts, maybe, with a bittersweet teary farewell; marriage, no. God, whole decades of 'Who took my Tampax?' No way.'
'I am glad to hear it.'
He laughed as she poked him in the ribs, then crushed out the cigarette.
'And…there is a shadow in my mind when I think of those children. Perhaps it is merely my emotions speaking. Perhaps the Power; it can be hard to tell the difference. Shadows within shadows…'
'Sometimes I think your mind is mostly made up of shadows. And don't make the obvious pun.'
She tickled him ruthlessly in the most sensitive spot she'd found, just below one armpit. They wrestled for a moment, and then he said briskly:
'Enough. Now, the protections against the Power will come later. Let us begin with the physical side.'
He lay back on the bed and crossed his arms on his chest, each hand to the opposite shoulder-the shaman's posture. She lay back herself, closed her eyes, let her mind float downward into her tired body – and was elsewhere.
This was the image he used as the entry to what he called his memory palace, a duplicate of the main living space of his mountaintop retreat near Santa Fe, New Mexico. One side held a huge fieldstone fireplace and a polished-concrete sitting shelf before it; a low fire crackled on the andirons, fragrant pinon pine. The other wall was a stark expanse of glass, rising eighteen feet high.
The smooth stone-tiled floor ran right out past it to the narrow terrace beyond; after that the ground fell away two thousand feet in crag and ravine and pinon and dwarf desert juniper, down to the lights of a little town lost amid the empty moonlit expanse. She enjoyed the view for a moment. Then:
'Hey. I just realized-you have a thing for scenic dropoffs outside the room, don't you? Here in Amalfi, and in your house in Santa Fe. You like to be in a high place, looking down.'
He paused, blinked, and nodded slowly in agreement.
'You are right, dear one. I had not realized.' A grin. 'At least I do not come out on a high balcony and make demagogic speeches to adoring crowds.'
She tossed here head. 'I like it here, though. It felt so good while Adrienne had me, when you came and… brought me here. An escape.'
He sighed agreement. 'But frustrating, that I could do no more.'
'You did more, eventually. That was more important than hurrying and failing!'
'Yes. She never…'
'Took me into her memory palace? No. Told me about it, and said we'd go there when she wanted to get more…extreme.'
Ellen shivered a little, and Adrian put an arm around her shoulder. Seriously:
'We must begin your training now. I have no objection to rescuing and defending you, my darling, but you should be able to defend yourself. I may not be enough, someday!'
Ellen nodded emphatically. 'Yeah, I like playing at being helpless sometimes. The real thing's not nearly so much fun.'
'And we will have work to do that will involve risk. I hate the thought, for you, but-'
'Hey, buster, your sister and her friends are trying to destroy the world, remember? You think I'm going to stay in a bunker or…or some resort sipping margaritas and let you do all the work? You're older than you look, but you're not that much of an antique sexist, I hope!'
He laughed, and touched the tips of his fingers to her cheek.
'No. Knowing you as I do now, I would expect you to want to fight by my side. This will involve a great deal of effort, though. You must learn how to fight-fight in a number of ways-how to hide, how to pursue, everything from defensive driving to forged documents. And I must show you a number of things about the Power.'
'I don't have enough of the Shadowspawn genes to use it, you said.'
Adrian nodded. 'But I can help plant…artifacts…in your mind that will render you less vulnerable to it. Wreakings, localized permanent modifications of reality. I am an adept, and both more powerful and better trained than nearly anyone of my generation.'
' That's comforting,' she said. 'Is there an advantage to doing it here in, ummm, your head, though?'
He nodded. 'How long have we been here?'
'Oh…three, five minutes?'
'Four and a bit, to us. Back in the real world…less than five seconds. I can stretch the perceived duration. By the time we leave for Paris in a few months, you will have had years.'
She thought for a moment. Something nagged at her.
'Hey, maybe that's where the Elf Hill legends came from? But look, this is as real to you as it is to me, right?'
Ellen took a breath, tapped one foot on the tile of the floor. Heat from the fire on her legs, thin mountain air
