A Taint in the Blood (27 page)

“Yes. They’re blood-siblings. It’s . . . sort of a mix of friends, fictive kinship, and lovers. And it involves joint kills. That’s a very . . . intense experience.”

“They were talking about some plan to, to wipe out half the human race with smallpox, some genetically engineered variety, they called it parasmallpox. And I got this horrible feeling that that was
better
than some other plan they were criticizing!”

“It was,” Adrian said grimly. “The other plan involves EMP . . . a way to burn out all the technologies the world depends on. The Council of Shadows calls it Operation Trimback, Option One. I suspect it wouldn’t work as smoothly as they think.”

Ellen nodded quickly. “Yes! That was what Adrienne’s been saying. She doesn’t want that—
drastic
, she called it—a plan. She’s
angry
with this other plan. Michiko was the same way. I think she . . . looks up to Adrienne. Admires her. But I wasn’t catching everything they said.”

Ellen frowned, concentrating. “There was something about
field tests
, in the Congo.”

An appalling thought occurred to her. “Adrian . . . does that mean they were testing it on
people
?”

“Yes.” Gently: “Ellie, Shadowspawn are the ones responsible for virtually everything monstrously bad in the past hundred years. Just before World War One, there was a great scandal in Europe because one Alsatian shopkeeper was put in jail for one weekend for offending a Prussian officer. That was before the Council secured the world.”

Ellen shivered. “She said more, about drugs and vaccines, and stockpiling them.”

“That fits,” Adrian said.

“So after we left the restaurant, we went to what she called the
Brézé town house
.”

Adrian’s brows rose. “That used to be on Nob Hill, but it was destroyed twenty years ago, when the Tōkairin ousted the Brézés as the foremost Shadowspawn clan on the West Coast . . . long story.”

“This was
new
. The building wasn’t more than ten or fifteen years old max, a big luxury hotel with . . . sort of super-condos on the upper floors. The town house was a two-story penthouse on the top of the tower, huge, glass walls, pools . . . like something out of a Modernist fantasy of Haroun al-Rashid’s bachelor pad.”

Adrian cursed again. “The St. Regis Hotel! We were within
walking
distance of each other. And that’s where she launched herself when she stooped on me.”

Ellen felt her eyes growing wider and wider as he described the meeting and the fight that followed.

“You can . . . you can
actually
turn into animals?” she said. “Literally into fur-feathers-and-fangs actual
animals
?”

“Technically it’s . . . well, for all practical purposes, yes. As long as we have . . .
les vieux
say,
taken the spirit of the beast into ourselves
. In fact, it’s a DNA sample you need. Nearby. Swallowing it is best and most permanent.”

^“
Then . . . those Norse berserkers . . . Sigurd with the wolf-skin he wore . . .
^”

“Mostly just psychotics with delusions. But some, yes, they had enough of the inheritance to do it.”

This is
truly
weird
, she thought.
But hey, Ellen, weird is the new normal for you.

Then she went on: “OK, she took me back from the restaurant to the town house, we had a swim, a sort of strange philosophical chat which scared me quite a bit, she led me off to bed and we had lots of hot sweaty writhing sex and a little feeding—”

She smiled with a crooked twist of the lips at his carefully controlled expression:

“Adrian, hold the pity again, will you? Yeah, I’d
much
rather she couldn’t force me to do things. Being helpless is
not
fun, not in reality. I want it all to stop, and badly. But if she
is
going to make me do things, which right now can’t be avoided, forcing me to eat wonderful elaborate meals and then have hour upon hour of multiple orgasms just
so
totally beats ‘feeling nauseated piss-your-pants bowel-loosening terror’ and ‘screaming in agony as sensitive tissues tear.’ And . . . the high from the feeding doesn’t actually
damage
me, does it?”

“It’s addictive.”

“I know about that, and I’ve gone cold turkey on things before when I thought they were getting too much of a hold on me. I was even a smoker for a little while and sweated bullets stopping. That’s why I kept getting on your case about the cigarettes; and it made me
crave
one myself in the worst way.”

“You never told me that you’d smoked. See, I am not the only one to keep secrets!” he said, trying for lightness and just about achieving it.

Ellen leaned over and prodded him in the ribs. “That’ll teach you to ignore a lady’s complaints! And I have to watch it with alcohol too. But the . . . drug . . . isn’t physically harmful, is it?”

“No. As far as I know, there are no harmful effects apart from the feelings it causes, and the craving. It evolved to make the victim willing to be bled, not to hurt them.”

“OK. It might totally screw the head of someone who didn’t know what was happening, but I can tell the difference between the way the feeding makes me feel friendly and actually
being
friendly; I know that even when it’s happening. The . . . effect itself actually feels pretty good.”

His smile was broader, and he made a gesture with both hands and bowed his head slightly.

“You are a stronger person than I thought, Ellen. Many would be totally shattered in your position, but you are keeping your wits about you. Forgive me for underestimating you.”

In fact . . .
she looked at him speculatively.
You know, buster, if you’d approached it the right way and just
told
me about things instead of trying to
protect
me all the time . . . I might have surprised you. I might yet.

“Provisional forgiveness given. OK, I go to sleep—I was surprised how easy that was even at the time because I was feeling shivery and jazzed, the way you are when you’re tired but can’t sleep—”

“Partly a Wreaking.”

“OK, she zapped me into enchanted slumber, went out on the terrace again, turned into this big-ass eagle—”

“Her body stayed in the bed; that’s one reason she put you under a Wreaking. We’re . . . very helpless in that state.”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed, and she surprised herself with the flood of savage images that filled her mind for an instant.

“Oooooh,
wouldn’t
I just like to get
her
helpless. With a hammer and a sharp wooden stake!”

“Ellie, you don’t need a wooden—”

Ellen laughed. “It would still
work
if I drove it through her heart, wouldn’t it?”

“On a tranced body? Quite well.”

“And then I could hit her in the head with the hammer for a while and see how funny Countess Comic-ula thought
that
was!”

Adrian laughed, but looked at her seriously a moment later: “If you get the chance, take it. But don’t hesitate, strike to the heart or brain, and then strike again and again. We are . . . very hard to kill, with anything but a silver weapon.”

“Silver makes it easy?”

“About as easy as killing an ordinary person. The Power has no grip on it. We don’t know why.”

“I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never even really
wanted
to kill anyone, just get away from them however I could, but I’ll make an exception for you-know-who. So, she was . . . her body was lying there?”

“Yes, like this, in a sort of coma.”

He halted for a moment and crossed his forearms, each hand resting on the opposite shoulder, before he went on:

“The aetheric form went out onto the terrace in her default day-walking shape. Then it waited until it sensed the Wreaking turning Hajime against me, transformed and attacked. You have to be careful in animal form. You’re . . . still you, but you
are
the beast as well. It can be hard to retain purpose.”

“Thanks. And so Adrienne swooped down to rescue Michiko’s grandfather. Who she hates and despises. Who
Michiko
sort of hates, I think, or at least resents an awful lot.”

“We’re not a very social species and I think Tōkairin Hajime hasn’t quite realized what it means. His grandchildren are so much closer to pureblood. Seventy-five percent and up. He’s about two-thirds, and he was raised by people who were less than half. There’s more human in him, and he’s trying to run his clan as if it were made up of humans.”

“But then why did she
rescue
him?” Ellen puzzled. “I don’t think she’s the sort who just swoops in to save the day.”

Adrian frowned and sipped again at his drink. “That’s the question; though maybe what she stopped was him spitting me on that damned silver-plated katana. Was she trying to use me to kill him without any blame attaching to her? But then as you say . . . or was she trying to get
credit
with Hajime? But what for? And she didn’t try to pursue me in winged form—that eagle looked fast, and it could have twisted the head off any bird-form I have. There is some elaborate game here, one with multiple strands, multiple objectives.”

“Which right now we don’t know. How long do I have here?”

“Probably a while. It’s natural for us to sleep most of the day and wake in the afternoon.” A small smile. “Notice how many mad dictators had work patterns like that? Not a coincidence.”

“Then . . . this may sound odd, Adrian, but can we take a walk? I’d like that.”

He smiled, the charming expression with a hint of shyness she liked, and they rose and walked down the steep streets hand in hand. He bought them
gelato
; they fed the pigeons in front of the cathedral, and she explained the details of the frescos—his knowledge of art was broad but without system, a jackdaw’s accumulation picked up in spare moments. He seemed at first amused and then impressed as she told—showed—him the links between the High Medieval techniques in the thirteenth-century building and the Quattrocento and the Renaissance.

“We should have talked about this more,” he said at last.

“Says the man who used to derail any conversation that wasn’t commonplace!”

Adrian laughed ruefully and ran a hand over his hair, taking off his sunglasses and hanging them through the neck of his shirt.

“When you begin on a basis of lies . . . even lies of omission . . . the areas you cannot talk about grow and grow, I find.”

“We don’t have to lie now. It’s . . . almost worth it all.”

“I’m glad to be honest, but I
don’t
think it’s worth what you’ve gone through, Ellie.”

“I said
almost
.”

They wandered on by the busy harbor, amid a smell of fishing-boats and yachts, tourists and locals and thin, wandering, wary cats. The sun declined into the Mediterranean, and the terraces of stone and stucco above them took on a green-blue translucence. At last she took a deep breath and asked:

“Adrian, after this is over, if—
when
—I’m back in, ummm, real life, do you want to try again? With the two of us.”

“If you do. I would like that very much. But—”

“
Don’t
tell me how I’m going to be feeling then, Adrian!
I
don’t know that yet!”

He laughed, a wholehearted sound. “Touché once more, Ellie!” He took her in his arms; he was just an inch taller than her, perfect height for a kiss. It grew lingering.

“Dammit, I don’t want to go back!”

“It’s time.”

“All right. Zap me back, then. And we’re going to
win
!”

Adrian slept, woke in darkness to stumble to the bathroom, hardly noticing that his leg would bear him once more; drank enormously from bottled water by the side of the bed, slept again and woke clearheaded, the wounds itching less fiercely.

And smiling
, he thought for a moment.
And it has been a while since
that
happened.

“You’re looking a mite more cheerful,” Harvey said.

He was sitting at the table, making sandwiches from commercial rolls and convenience-store cold cuts. His coach-gun was on the table by his hand, and Adrian was awake enough to feel the slight drifting chill of a no-see Wreaking, not powerful but enormously subtle.

“It’s calories,” the Texan said, jerking a thumb towards the pile he’d made. “That’s all that can be said for it. Except that the preservatives will keep your corpse lookin’ pretty without the expense of an embalmer.”

“It is to food as the Red Cross supply is to blood,” Adrian agreed.

He limped carefully to the table and looked at the platter with disgust. But he ate, trying not to think of the taste.

“At least it’s morally permissible to eat decent
food
, most of the time. It compensates for the foul blood, a little.”