“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why don’t you kill me? Why don’t you kill me?” he screamed. “Why don’t you just fucking kill me?”
“That’s why don’t they fucking kill you,” the man said. “I can tell you, if you want to know.”
“You’re one of them.”
Brézé was slight, a bit below medium height, pale olive skin and dark hair and gold-flecked brown eyes . . .
“You’re Adrian Brézé!”
“Yes.”
Salvador drew breath in, held it, let it out. “Okay, I get it: I’m supposed to believe you’re a good monster.”
“Oh, he’s a great monster, believe me. But all mine.”
Salvador jerked at the other voice, looked down at the pistol, then dropped it to the table he was sitting on. A copper box had spilled open, full of slim cigarettes. He took one out and lit it; some distant part of himself was proud of the fact that his hand didn’t shake. The second voice belonged to a woman. Tall, blond, dressed in dark outdoor clothes and boots, with a knit cap over her head and a rifle cradled in her arms—he recognized it, big Brit sniper job, long scope, aircraft-alloy body.
“You’re . . . Ellen Tarnowski.”
“Technically, Ellen Brézé, now. No, I’m not one of them. You don’t catch it from getting bit.”
A sudden charming smile. “And believe me, I know! Not even from getting married to one.”
“I get the feeling you’ve changed.”
“I had to . . . ah . . . take a couple of levels in badass, let’s say.”
“You killed her.”
His eyes went back to the puddle of blood; there wasn’t a body.
“Oh, yes.” Her eyes were large and turquoise blue; for a moment they held a hot satisfaction. “There’s a body, probably a long way away, but it’s empty now.”
“That . . . that wasn’t his sister, was it?”
“No. That was Michiko. She’s a friend of his sister. Sort of a wannabe Mistress of Ultimate Darkness.”
Brézé was back. Now he was dressed, in the same sort of clothes; a light jacket covered a shoulder rig with a knife worn hilt-down on one flank and a Glock on the other.
“All right,” Salvador said, taking a pull on the cigarette. “Fill me in. I know I’m really somewhere under heavy meds, baying at the moon.”
For some reason, that made Adrian Brézé smile. “I’m a Shadowspawn . . . that’s what we call ourselves, mostly. But . . . well, I try not to be a monster. It’s complicated. You can choose to learn, or you can choose to forget. If you forget, you can make yourself a new life. If you learn, it’ll probably kill you—but at least you’ll know why you’re fighting, mon ami.”
“If you offer me a blue pill and a red pill, I’ll fucking kill you!”
The couple laughed. “It’s actually two file cards. Take your pick.”
“Knowledge—and you can try being the guerrilla. Ignorance—and long life.”
Salvador looked at the butt of the cigarette. Then he tossed it accurately into the blood; it hissed into extinction.
“Like that’s really a choice?”
IT’S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY
by Carrie Vaughn