A Taint in the Blood (18 page)

The world seemed to flux somehow. Before she could decide what was happening they were both standing on a beach. It was wide white sand, with a wind whipping up little gusts around their ankles and waves coming in from the east knee-high, hissing almost to their feet. A brown pelican flapped by over the water, intent on its own concerns, and gulls eyed bits of flotsam.

Adrian was in chinos and a loose shirt of beige natural cotton, barefoot, tanned darker than she remembered him last. Ellen looked down at herself; so was she, and she was in a bikini and straw hat. The air was warm and moist, blowing from the ocean and into the low scrub and occasional palm tree inland with an intense salt cleanliness.

“This is that place we went on the coast in South Texas,” she said slowly. “Last spring. Just after we got together.”

He shrugged. “I can change it if you like. It was a happy time, for me.”

His accent was a little stronger. She’d never inquired about it before; he didn’t like to talk about his past.

“For me too. You grew up in France, didn’t you?” she said now.

“Partly, some time every year as a child, and my foster-parents were French. California, for the rest, until they . . . died. Then all over the world. Texas, more than any single place.”

A hand went over his tousled black hair. “Where are
you
now? That is important.”

“I’m . . . asleep in my . . . in a place Adrienne put me. I’m alone in the bed, too.”

“Good.” He relaxed a little. “We may have enough time, then. This link is stronger than I thought.”

She blinked. “I remember now! I remember the last time you brought me to a place like this! I didn’t forget, but I didn’t think
of
it until now!”

Adrian nodded. “And I really am in a hospital bed,” he said. “In San Francisco. Two men with knives tried to kill me. Shadowspawn . . . perhaps indirectly set on me by my sister.”

“What happened?” she asked anxiously.

He
looked
healthy, body glowing like a fine slender racehorse, every muscle moving distinctly under the olive skin. But that meant nothing
here
, wherever.

“They died. I lived, due to a friend named Harvey Ledbetter who arrived most opportunely. I was badly wounded, I am afraid, but I will recover. I’m very sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“It will delay me.”

Ellen smiled at him, and got a shy answering expression. “Thanks, Adrian.”

“It’s nothing. Let’s walk up the beach, and you tell me what has happened with you.”

She did; he winced now and then. “You’re with some sort of . . . Resistance movement, aren’t you? The doctor called you terrorists.”

Adrian smiled crookedly. “Not entirely without justification, from a renfield’s point of view. The Brotherhood is not squeamish about collateral damage, particularly to servants of the Council of Shadows.”

“Then it’s all
true
, what she told me?”

“True enough, if you allow for viewpoint.”

She stopped and looked searchingly into his eyes. “You . . . aren’t like the other Shadowspawn?”

“I was raised to think of myself as human. It isn’t easy. That is why I have been so much alone. And . . . your type of human . . . aren’t instinct machines, and neither are we Shadowspawn. Some humans are good and some less so, according to the choices they make. I shouldn’t be able to blame everything on my genes either. Shadowspawn
do
blame their genes, but that’s an excuse. The fact of the matter is they were raised to evil, and they embrace it.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his. “You should curse my name,” he said.

“Adrian, you just fought two men with knives for me and got cut up. You could have been an all-powerful monster. Judging from the way Adrienne acts, it’s fun. You
decided
to be a human being. An asshole sometimes, but who isn’t? I’m just getting my mind wrapped around this stuff but that part is pretty clear.”

They laughed. “And now you know where I am. I’m—”

She paused, frowning. Her mind felt perfectly clear; clearer than it had been for days, unhazed by fear and tension. But she couldn’t
say
where she was.

“I don’t think I know, exactly,” she said slowly. “Somewhere in central California . . .”

“You know,” Adrian said grimly. “You’ve been blocked from saying it. It’s a Wreaking on your memory and volition. Small, subtle, but it would be dangerous to break it—with me weakened, certainly. You’d only notice it if you tried to tell someone who
didn’t
know.”

“But that should be a clue!” she said hopefully.

They walked again, holding hands this time. The cool salt water ran over their bare feet, and the wet sand made for good footing. Curlews bobbed and probed in the shallows with their absurdly thin curved beaks, crying
wheet-wheet-wheet
.

“Not as much of a clue as I’d like,” Adrian said. “Ellie, it’s
easy
to fox records with the Power. The Brotherhood are looking in
their
records, and those are far more complete.”

“You’ve been fighting with the, the Brotherhood?” she asked, squeezing his hand. “Against the Shadowspawn?”

Now he looked out to sea. “I did. For twenty-five years—”

“Thanks for telling me your real age!”

“I
couldn’t
—”

“I’m teasing, dummy!”

“Oh. Thank you for
that
. I . . . retired a few years ago.”

“Why?”

“Because it was futile. I was the strongest Wreaker the Brotherhood ever had, but there was only one of me. The others were far weaker; and the Council has all the resources of the earth at its call, the governments and the police and the armies and the security forces. All I could do was kill—some who deserved it, many who did not. It didn’t
change
anything.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “To use this Power for big stuff, don’t you need—”

“Blood. From the Red Cross, and handsomely paid for.”

“Oh,” she said with relief.

He grimaced. “God, it tastes terrible. And the things it does to my digestion, and the headaches . . . I can’t even completely cure those with the Power, because that would require
more
of it. That was another reason to retire. On my mountain, or here, I could . . . grapple with the cravings, the drives. Learn a degree of peace.”

“Your sister . . . seems to enjoy the taste.”

“She’s drinking live hot blood, and primed with strong emotions. It’s . . . a powerful drug. Dead blood is an entirely different story.”

She squeezed his hand again. “I hope you can get me out soon,” she said. “Jesus, it’s . . . creepy here. The people all act as if it were
normal
. Even the ones she
hurts
.”

“To them it is,” Adrian said. “People adapt. If they could not, humanity would not have survived the first rule of the Shadowspawn. But, Ellie . . .”

“Yes?”

“This isn’t just a personal thing between me and Adrienne, as I thought at first.”

“It’s certainly
partly
a personal thing! There’s all sorts of overtones in her voice when she mentions you. And she thinks about you a lot. Even her children look like you!”

Adrian froze, so suddenly that his hand tugged her to a halt; he was a slender man, not large and so graceful you forgot the solid density of him.

“She has children?” he said neutrally.

“Twins, a boy and a girl, around six or seven. Oh, God, talk about
creepy
! You didn’t know?”

“No, I did not,” he said in a voice empty of all emotion, so much so that it was as notable as a shriek. “I had no idea.”

Then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. But there is some great matter at stake here as well, somehow tied up with me and Adrienne. The Council of Shadows is moving, contemplating . . . enormous actions. There are factions and factions within factions; that is natural to Shadowspawn, even more than to humans. Please, listen to all that you can. Adrienne likes to talk, when she thinks it safe.”

Ellen nodded. “Does she ever!”

He stopped and took both her hands in his. “And . . . I hate to say this, Ellie, but until you’re rescued, that advice from the renfield doctor is good. Stay alive! Whatever it takes.”

“I’ll do my best. And
you
get better and get to work,
hombre
!”

She leaned forward and kissed him gently. Adrian’s arms went around her, and she stiffened. He let them drop and step back.

“Sorry—” she began.

A shake of the head. “It’s natural. You’re sensing . . . what I am. Sleep well, Ellie, and hope.”

He reached out and touched thumb to one side of her forehead and little finger to the other.

“Sleep well, and don’t think of this unless you must.”

A
word
, and sleep returned. She woke for a moment, grasping at the fleeting stuff of dream, turned over and hugged Mr. Wabbit against her and drifted down into the velvety blackness once more.

 

 

“Woof !” Peter said. “You
do
run a lot, right?”

“Told you,” Ellen said smugly.

“God, you long-legged people—it isn’t fair!”

They came down the bike path at a loping trot, then slowed to a walk.

“So it does solve one problem,” Peter said; she’d grown used to the way he skipped mentally among topics.

“What,
another
one?”

She liked Peter, but his mania for explaining and systematizing could probably wear, after a while.

He nodded vigorously and drank the last of the water in his bottle. “All those old legends, and the books and movies . . . none of them could explain why, if there were creatures with such power around, they didn’t rule the world.”

“The answer being, as soon as they’re around, they
do
rule the world. They just don’t like publicity.”

“Exactly. It’s horrifying, but it’s . . . intellectually
satisfying
as well. And the dislike of publicity is probably a holdover from the secret societies they started out with—the occultists and ninjas and whatnot.”

“Boy, your hobby rides you hard, doesn’t it? And there’s one good thing about it all.”

“What? That’s a first.”

“We don’t have to blame
ourselves
for the way the world’s screwed up. It’s them, goofing on us.”

Ellen mopped at her face with the towel hung around her neck as he laughed, breathing deeply but not panting; after a solid day’s rest and two good nights’ sleep her body was starting to feel
right
again.

The third run had been best of all so far, and the weather was cooperating—it had rained in the night, but the morning was cool sixties, with scattered clouds over the hills to the west. Sweat mixed with the smells of crushed grass and wet dust.

“See you later,” Peter said, as they came out onto Lucy Lane. “I’ve got some remote time on the Stanford machine. I’m working on—”

“—something I wouldn’t understand if you told me twice. Tear ’em up, tiger,” she said. “Let us know when you’ve solved the mysteries of the universe.”

They walked past Number One, and Monica waved to them from the doorway. Peter went by with a nod and a wave back, but Ellen stopped. Evidently the Sangre schools had a uniform policy—white shirt and blue shorts for boys, shirt and pleated navy skirt for girls—and Monica was seeing her two off. They hurried by with a polite murmur of “Hi, Ms. Tarnowski.”

Which makes me feel
ancient
beyond words
, she thought, as she returned the greeting.

And . . . I wonder what they know? What do they think about the times Mom has . . . company and they have to stay with Grandma? The boy’s eleven and the girl’s nine; you
do
think about things at that age. What does Monica’s mother think, that it’s some sort of deeply weird kept-woman arrangement? Could you live here eight years without a clue about what’s really going on?

Monica looked after them fondly as they ran swinging their book satchels and lunch boxes and folded Netbooks, the morning sun bright on their light brown hair.

“How are you?” Ellen asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks, though.”

“I, ummm—”

Monica laughed. “Oh, you heard me screaming the other night, did you?”

“Sorry. I was walking by that evening. And you were, uh, sort of laid up yesterday. I wondered what happened, especially . . .”

“Since it’ll be happening to you too.” A smile and a shrug. “Nothing too bad. I mean, the screams were real, but when . . . I just let it rip, let the hurt flow right up the throat, you know? It helps and she likes it.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“She came in and said, ‘Tabasco sauce in the Bloody Mary tonight, Monica,’ and right away I knew I was in for a wild time. Then she just flipped me over on the sofa, yanked off my underwear and—”

She held up a hand with the extended fingers together, moved it sharply upward, clenched them into a fist and pumped it up and down. Then she giggled again, rolled her eyes and blew air over her upper lip.

“Let’s just say I’m
glad
she doesn’t have bigger hands! You know what I mean.”

“Ah . . . yeeee
ah
,” Ellen said with a wince. “Fisting.”

“That’s what she told me it’s called; I’d never even
heard
of it before I came here. I don’t really like it all that much even when it’s, you know, not so
abrupt
.”

I found that out in my own
apartment
and I’m not inclined to giggle about it. God, I hope your variety of crazy isn’t catching!

“I think that’s harder on the guys,” Monica said thoughtfully. “But you know how guys are. They’re sort of shy, really. They don’t like to talk about things.”