Of course, a bad Shadowspawn, which most of them most emphatically were, could use it to torture you eternally, beyond the death of your physical body. And you couldn’t even go insane. Tradition that might or might not actually date back to the Empire of Shadow said that a post-corporeal could survive tens of thousands of years until sheer chance eventually caught up to them.
Adrienne had promised to let Ellen spend lifetimes experiencing her own death…
She froze in the happy tumble just before things got really interesting. Adrian’s embrace instantly turned from ardent to soothing, holding her until the shivering stopped. Her fingers dug into the hard lean muscle of his shoulders until her nails went white.
“God damn your sister,” she whispered. “It’s worse because I thought I’d killed the bitch.”
“She has damned herself more effectively than any deity could do,” Adrian said somberly. With a smile: “Therefore out of family feeling, perhaps we should see that she is denied eternal life.”
Ellen took a deep breath, controlling the panting. That was not the fun type of fear, no indeed.
“Yah think?” she said, forcing herself to relax.
His smile grew white against the tanned olive complexion of his narrow sharp-featured face, a lock of raven hair falling over his forehead, his hand on the curve of her hip.
“And you did make her very, very, very sick for some time. I’m still astonished that she managed to survive a hypo of silver nitrate and radioactives in the foot. We are hard to kill and even harder to bring to the Final Death, but that is a bit much.”
“Michiko cut off her foot before the full dose got out into her system. I didn’t notice that at the time. Of course, I was blowing that particular pop-stand at high speed, riding on a sabertooth tiger doing the full-tilt boogie. You make a great tiger, by the way.”
“And sabertooths have acute senses but are, to be frank, rather stupid even compared to wolves, so I didn’t notice it either. It is a good thing, too, that we were able to…deal…with Michiko later; she was uncomfortably acute, when she bothered to think. Her luck wasn’t as strong as Adrienne’s, at least. Or mine.”
Luck wasn’t just a metaphor, when you dealt with the Power. Ellen bared her teeth, and for an instant looked as predatory as any Shadowspawn. Her blue eyes met Adrian’s yellow-flecked brown-black, and she knew he was seeing the scene in her mind-the view through the telescopic sight as the nocturnis woman’s head shattered, and then the aetheric form sparkling into nothingness. Also that memorable dinner a few months earlier when Michiko had tried to persuade Adrienne that it would be great fun to kill Ellen slowly and have that last mouthful of blood as her heart stopped as dessert.
“Blowing the bitch’s head off…her aetheric head, granted…with a silver-plated.338 Lapua Magnum round was a good start,” she said.
Adrian smiled fondly and kissed her on the tip of her small straight nose. “Less dramatic than the fight she and I were having while switching forms-her snow-leopard was very pretty-but extremely effective.”
“You distracted her nicely. Let’s get cleaned up. And go tell your delightful great-grandparents that Adrienne has been a naughty little girl and is playing with nukes again. I just love visiting them. Not.”
“I realize it must be nerve-wracking mingling socially with those who look on you as a canapé.”
“It’s not just that. They’ve got a psychic smell like rotting flesh. They think they’re alive, but they’re not. They’re the walking memories of a very bad dream.”
“I will not dispute it. But then, I have no family feelings.”
“Yeah, you do, lover. Strong family feelings. Even obsessive. They’re just all negative.”
The apartment on the Île Saint-Louis wasn’t big by American standards, but it shone with expert care and smelled slightly of sachets and wax, under the earthier scents of the bedroom; Adrian had lived here while he attended the Sorbonne, and off and on since as the fortunes of clandestine war brought him through Paris. The floors were polished hardwood, with a few Oriental rugs, and the furniture mostly plain in a subtle way that said expensive and old. Only the kitchen, electronics and plumbing were thoroughly 21st-century. The bathroom had a tub big enough for two, a smooth shallow curve like an abstract seashell, and a walk-in shower with multiple heads whose walls were glass etched with designs of reeds and bamboo.
The hot water and verbena soap seemed to leach the grue out of her body.
She leaned back against Adrian, and his arms went around her waist.
“I may have to Wreak this evening. With your permission?” he murmured against her ear, then touched his mouth to the damp curve of her throat.
“Bite me. But not in the metaphorical sense,” she said, with a breathy half-giggle. “And permission? Hell, that’s an order.”
Dressing took some time; you didn’t slop over to the Brézé place in sweats to have hamburgers in the backyard, and her husband was as fastidious as a cat about appropriate appearances anyway. She had expert assistance, at least. Adrian was one of the rare straight men who took a skilled interest in women’s clothes and hair for their own sake, rather than just staring at the result like a hungry dog drooling at a pork-chop.
He appreciates, then drools.
Ellen did an exaggerated runway-style pirouette before Adrian’s knowledgeably critical eye as they left the bedroom.
“You look enchanting in that, my dear,” he whispered in her ear. “Though even better in the lingerie.”
She was in an ankle-length cap-sleeved lace gown of Valentino red belted with a double string of gold-linked Madras pearls the color of polished steel; there was a modest mandarin collar that was a hint about her carotids being off-limits to those looking for a snack. The collar was covered in a band of the same pearls as the belt, strung asymmetrically on gold chains, and there were two more in her ears.
He poured them both a glass of white wine and handed one to her with what Europeans called a biscuit roses de Reims, meaning a crisp pink cookie. Oddly enough they had no word for what Americans called a biscuit. Adrian put his arm around her waist, and they stood for a moment looking out at the 17th-century townhouses and silent streets, and the lights glittering on the Seine.
I really needed this, she thought as she sipped the steely dry Chitry and nibbled, careful not to let any crumbs fall on the gown. To settle my butterflies.
He winked at her; there were advantages to being married to a telepath. Even when he wasn’t actually reading her mind he was uncannily attuned to her moods. The glimpse of herself reflected in the window looked ready to beard the rulers of the earth in social combat. And it all felt indecently comfortable, for high fashion.
And a little plain indecent. The high-strapped sandals with their coral and tanzanite clasps alone cost more than her coal-miner grandfather had ever made in a month, or two, or four. Or her father before he’d been laid off and descended into alcoholic decay. She turned one ankle to look at them, and the way the natural silk stockings shimmered beneath the lace on her slender sinewy runner’s legs.
“Enchanting,” he said as he helped her on with the ermine coat.
Then he grinned. At her raised eyebrow he said: “I am old enough to remember fur protests.”
“So am I! Well, when I was a teenager.”
“As a matter of fact, on the way to the opera at Santa Fe once-years before we met-someone tried to spray-paint the mink of a lady I was accompanying.”