Free Shadows of Falling Night by S. M. Stirling

hatred.
I’m popping their illusions about what they are.
    Many of the Shadowspawn inclined their heads deferentially to Adrian, as to a walking legend. He’d killed more of their kind than any other individual in history, with the possible exception of Harvey Ledbetter, which was something that brought profound respect. Ellen surprised herself by feeling a perverse but warm sense of pride in the accomplishment. It wasn’t as if they didn’t
deserve
it. Or he had any choice.
    No, he
did
have a choice. He could have joined his relatives and been a lord in darkness. He chose to fight
for
people instead of preying on them.
    “Ah, my dear boy, you are in Paris once more!” a voice said.
    It was apparently a man in his thirties, and to all appearances corporeal—his eyes were a common Shadowspawn color, very dark brown with yellow-amber flecks, like Adrian’s. In fact he looked very much like Adrian, except that he was dressed in full Edwardian formal turnout, of a rather foppish nature—black swallow-tail coat, double-breasted white piqué waistcoat, white tie, a double strip of black braid down the outside seam of his trousers, pearl and moonstone links and studs, and white kid gloves. A carnation graced the buttonhole.
    “Great-great-uncle Arnaud. Not accompanied by thugs and trying to kill me on this occasion?”
    Arnaud made an elegant gesture. “It would have been great fun to do so, and then throw your bride down across your corpse and ravish her in some amusing form and drain her, but it was the mere impulse of a moment. Something…told me it would be advisable.”
    “Ah, well, no hard feelings, then,” Adrian said, and even Ellen could barely detect the ironic edge.
    “None whatsoever!” Arnaud said cheerfully. “Another time. There are tiresome matters of business my so-arrogant brother has delegated.”
    “You volunteered? I was under the impression that you had spent an entire century in absolute idleness.”
    “I volunteered, but under threat of death.”
    “I am not surprised. Is there
anyone
even in the Council’s ranks who does not desire to see you meet the Final Death?”
    “Only those who have not met me,” the dapper figure said with a charming grin. “But then, that is no particular distinction.”
    “Farewell, Arnaud. You may not be so lucky if you try to indulge another such
impulse
.”
    “We shall see.”
    The name rang a bell as he turned away; that and the style of dress.
    “Was he the one who tried to kill Professor Duquesne last year?” she said. “Him and those hired goons.”
    That had been the first time she’d had someone try to kill her, and had to kill in self-defense. It had been necessary…but she would very much have preferred not to lose that particular virginity.
    “And to kill us, yes.”
    “No hard feelings, then, but at the first opportunity…let’s kill
him
. Nothing fancy, no artistic embellishments, just
dead.
”
    “I agree.”
    “He turned into a giant…that Madagascar lemur-eating cat thing just before he blew Dodge, the…”
    “
Fossa
, yes. He spent some time there a century ago, or a little more. In
la legion,
oddly enough.”
    “What was a brother of the honcho doing as a Foreign Legionnaire back in the
Beau Geste
days?”
    “Having fun, mostly. They had to be more…cautious, then, here in Europe. That was why Étienne-Maurice and Seraphine went on long holidays to the Congo Free State under Leopold, and to Mexico in the Porfiriato, to Yucatan and the Valle Nacional in Oaxaca. Of course, Diaz and King Leopold were Shadowspawn themselves, albeit not of very pure blood. Leopold
almost
transitioned to post-corporeality, but not quite.”
    Something else teased at her mind as they strolled through the corridors and chambers. She thought for a moment and snapped her fingers.
    An elegant sloe-eyed woman in a late Edwardian hobble skirt outfit that would have wowed them on the
Titanic
raised a lorgnette and stared at her for a moment before