That would appeal to his feelings, and had the advantage of being true. Monica patted the sobbing woman on the shoulder.
“It’s all right to cry and be scared, honey. I was too and I cried all the time at first. But this whole thing is natural. Just remember you’re serving this need. It can be quite satisfying if you think of it that way, feeling your blood draining into the hunger. It’s what we humans are for, like flowers for hummingbirds. It can be beautiful as well as terrible. The Doña is really the nicest Shadowspawn there is, too.”
“There’s more of them?” Todd said.
“Oh, thousands. All over the place, little bunches everywhere. They run the world, pretty much. I mean, who could stop them from doing anything they want? They just don’t let people know, though I understand that’s going to change soon.”
She looked at her phone; it wasn’t long before dawn. “Come on, let’s get things ready.”
Dave Cheung motioned with the gun. Todd glared at him, but they both rose and walked down the corridor, through the sitting room and into the stateroom of the Morey. Which was named after the giant eel, a voracious ambush predator.
It was part of the stern of the ship and ran its full width, darkly lit by light reflected off the surface of the water and coming through the outward-slanting windows that made a semicircle at the rear. The panels and floor were African rosewood, and there was an oval king-sized bed and a few other items of understated furniture and some Tabriz carpets. Adrienne looked almost childlike as she lay with the cream silk coverlet drawn up under her chin and her arms crossed on her shoulders.
Jessica checked at the sight of the delicately carved ebony X-shaped frame with the restraints and the clamps bolted to one wall, and the various toys. Her eyes seemed focused on the whip, then took in some of the other things.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right,” Monica said. “That’s for play, later; I mean, I spend a fair bit of time tied up like that and it’s really quite stimulating when you’re used to it, and it makes your blood sort of…tasty. Todd, get her to lie down here on the bed, that’s right. Then you sit here, in this chair next to the bed.”
He jerked as the renfield gunman secured him to the chair with a padded restraint built into the arm.
“There, you sit beside her, Todd,” Monica said. “This is just so you don’t get in the way when the Doña goes for her. Things could get…out of hand if you did that, it’s a natural impulse, but…I mean, really bad. Never, never try to interrupt a feeding, it, um, sets them off. You can fight and resist afterwards, she quite likes that sort of game.”
Jessica’s brown eyes were wide, and her dark skin had roughed as if with a chill, though the chamber was at a perfect mild seventy degrees, with a subtle scent of flowers. Dave gave her a wink as he left, and Monica scowled at him.
It’s their first time, she thought, annoyed. Don’t spoil things, Dave. It should be dark and awful and terrible, but…pure and wonderful too. Really, sometimes I think you have no class at all.
Of course, he wasn’t really a lucy, though the Doña fed on him now and then; basically he was a renfield, a helper-worker. Monica looked at the time again, moving towards the door, and wondering if she should have warned the Bertsches about the special thing Adrienne could do to you with her mind. Technically it involved stimulating certain centers in the brain with jolts of the Power, though it certainly didn’t feel like it happened in the head. They’d certainly be experiencing that in the next couple of hours, but…
No, it’ll be such a nice surprise and help them come to terms with things. It feels so much better than you’d expect from hearing someone talk about it. Though it does sort of change your self-image.
Not long to dawn…could Adrienne have been delayed, so that she’d have to spend the day in deep water?
No. She’s here, she’s close.
There was an unmistakable flavor when nightwalkers approached, if they weren’t hiding and you’d experienced it before. A chill, a feeling of being lost somehow, even in the most familiar place, as if the world had changed around you to another place with completely different rules. The couple looked about wildly; they didn’t know what it meant. Adrienne Brézé entered her lair through the wall, flowing, twenty-two feet of reticulated python marked in blue and green and black. Jessica gave a series of hiccupping moans and shook in terror too paralytic for anything louder as the head reared over the foot of the bed and then slid under the sheet, winding itself around her body coil upon coil. Monica shivered herself and licked her lips; she knew exactly how that coiling embrace felt, so cool and resilient and irresistibly strong.
The snake sparkled and disappeared as Adrienne returned to her own flesh-body. Jessica tried to scramble up as the yellow-flecked dark eyes opened and turned to look at her with a smile, but Adrienne pounced in a blur of speed, arms and legs trapping her and mouth lunging for the neck with the lips rolled all the way back from the teeth. Monica slipped the door closed as the victim screamed once, high and desperate, and her husband shouted in helpless anguish.
The door was nearly soundproof, but Dave was looking at a screen set in the desk of the sitting room outside. Monica marched over and tapped three times on the screen, locking it out of internal surveillance mode. The sensors were keyed to her fingerprints, of course.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he protested.
“Whatever I please, because she listens to me, Dave.”
The man snarled at her; she wasn’t impressed, having been snarled at by people who did it much better.
“Where do you get off being so high and mighty?” he said. “She-”
“She’s a Shadowspawn adept, I’m a favorite lucy…and you are just a creep, Dave. You are a…a toad. Show a little respect for people’s feelings!”
He met her eyes for a second, then glanced aside. She went on briskly:
“Go and tell the captain she’s back. He knows what to do then. And tell the cooks…”
She thought. “A late lunch for two here. And something for the Bertsches in their cabin, something rich and special with plenty of liquids. They’re going to be shaky and they’ll need to talk things over and have some privacy.”
He nodded and stalked out. Monica nodded to herself as she sat and brought the screen live, setting it to turn on the camera and record, and began to compose her daily message to Sophia and Josh, composing her face into a smile.
Somebody had to keep up standards around here.
“We had a wonderful time in Istanbul. I’m sending a file of pictures and yes, there will be presents. I saw Leon and Leila with their dad in Vienna and they say hi!-”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Caucasus
“There it is,” Ellen said grimly, as the Tulip came to a stop half a mile offshore.
The wreck of the gulet they’d been chasing lay on the low muddy shore, both masts broken off and lying forward in a tangle of rigging and sails. A huge ragged hole in the shoreward side gaped empty; past this spot the coast rose to low jagged cliffs. The wind was off the land, cool and smelling of green and damp earth. Up above the waterline was a section of planking and beams, its edges matching the hole in the ship’s flank.