Read Online Shadows of Falling Night by S. M. Stirling - Free Book Online Page B

generation…”
    “I’d rather not,” she said. Then, dropping into English because there were things you just had to say in your native tongue: “I’m not one to insist on vanilla heteronormativity. But why does coming into contactwith this bunch make me feel I should be wearing a whole-body condom?”
    “I presume that is a rhetorical question? The answer being
because they are vile, degenerate and evil
?”
    “Yup, pretty much. What next?”
    “My great-grandfather will want to torment us by delay, of course,” Adrian said matter-of-factly. “And indeed with this Council meeting coming up—the first full gathering in decades—he will be very busy.”
    “Why Tbilisi, by the way? Why not here in Paris?”
    “Two reasons. First, paleontologists working for the Council determined back in the 20s of the last century that the Shadowspawn probably evolved in the Caucasus late during the Riss glacial period, trapped in a little pocket by the ice. They escaped and overran the planet during the Riss-Würm interglacial, when the warmth returned.”
    “Some
Empire of Shadow
, putting the bite on lice-crawling cavemen and Neanderthals and those little hobbit thingies out in Indonesia.”
    Adrian shrugged. “The Order of the Black Dawn were depraved Satanists, but they were also Victorian romantics and loved dramatic grandiose titles and dressing up in elaborate costumes, imposing their own concepts upon the past. They thought of it as the French or British empires of their time, or those of Rome and Greece they had studied at school. Only more evil, with Wreaking, prehistoric beasts, better clothes and run by themselves.”
    “Great, Sir Walter Scott and
Quo Vadis
with magic powers and all done to an obbligato composed by demons.”
    Adrian nodded. “And so the meeting is a return to where we began.”
    “Oh, sort of a ‘roots’ thing.”
    “And…would you want this assembly of devils in your backyardany longer than you must, even if you were the arch-devil? In the meantime, we should circulate.”
    “Mill-and-swill at the serial killer’s convention,” Ellen said hollowly. “Joy.”
    He looked around and hissed slightly in anger, drawing a few dark looks or sets of bared teeth. Occasionally his body-language reminded you that he might think of himself as a human being, but his genes were another matter.
    “I have never been in a single building with this many adepts present, all tangling the world-lines. It’s like being
blind
. I dare not extend my senses! There are reasons Shadowspawn are not gregarious with their own kind.”
    “Yeah, you sort of cancel each other out.”
    Inwardly she shivered. In a way—several ways—outright fighting the Shadowspawn would be easier than socializing with them. More terrifying, more dangerous, but less…
    Gruesome,
she decided.
Not least because if you’re fighting them, you don’t have to acknowledge they rule the planet, and don’t
run
it only because then they’d have to work too hard, reading reports and going to meetings, and they don’t do that because they’re lazy. The Brotherhood’s
la resistance
and not a very strong example of the type, either. Great-granddaddy back there is the Emperor of the World, or near as no matter, as long as he doesn’t use the power so much it’s obvious. And they’re planning to remove
that
limit too.
    The interior of the Hôtel was more or less standard Rococo, if of
high
standards. The gathering was a substantial one. Not only were many adepts here, but some brought their higher renfield aides, or a favored lucy or two, or both—Shadowspawn custom was to have humans about their gatherings, to damp down the primal emotions of their highly territorial breed. She’d heard it compared to control rods in a nuclear reactor.You could usually recognize the lucies by the haunted look in their eyes, and the renfields…well, if you knowingly served evil, it left its mark.
    Some of both shot her looks that bordered on