A Taint in the Blood (3 page)

She stiffened at the mental touch, then relaxed, closing her eyes and letting the world fade. The feel was unmistakable; like the smell of rock and dust, like watching sunset fading on a wall and eyes glittering in the gathering dusk. One of the Old Ones, a master.

An effort like a
push
behind the eyes.

This form of speech conveyed your true emotions unless you were
very
careful. She was, and kept it neutral as flowing water:

Now
he
let emotion show: confusion.
Oh. Very . . . well. Slay . . . or . . . be . . . slain.

Her eyes opened; she let out a breath of exasperation that flapped her lips and startled a pigeon at her feet.

“Nice to know I’m valued for more than my womb, you antique sexist pig!” she muttered.

A homeless man was approaching, ready to ask for a handout; leathery skin and rank scent and layers of tattered cloth. She glared at him and found the weakness—a blood-vessel in the brain ready to rupture, weakened by drugs, bad feeding, alcohol and stress from the untreated chemical imbalances that rode him more savagely than even her kind could do. She
pushed
. The world shifted slightly as might-be switched to
is
, like a breath of cold air up the spine and a tightness that went
click
and released around the brows. The man collapsed.

Adrienne rose and stepped by him; it would probably be minutes before someone noticed it was more than the usual unconsciousness. She
^’
d planned on spending the afternoon at the O’Keeffe Museum, or possibly shopping for jewelry, but . . .

A little prickle urged her; now was the time, and no later. Now.

She bought a burrito and ate it as she walked eastward, enjoying the whimsical wooden statues along the Santa Fe River—what they’d call a creek somewhere wetter. The tangy
carne adovada
was warm and bit at her tongue as she wandered up Canyon Road. Perhaps the earth-colored adobe and faux-adobe of the galleries could become monotonous in time, but for the present she liked it; it reminded her somehow of the uniformity of Umbrian hill towns in Italy. The sculpture ranged from cowboy-kitsch to weird. One attracted her eye, done in the pseudo-Hopi style; a stick-thin figure with antlers and a long blunt muzzle or mask, raising its arms to the sky.

A memory tugged at her; a recollection of early childhood, sitting on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and watching—

“It’s Bullwinkle!” she chuckled to herself. “Or close enough for government work. Bullwinkle the Shaman!”

That made her feel a little better as she reached the two-story apartment building and let herself in. Her nostrils expanded as she sprang up the stairs, taking in scents of blood and sweat and fluids; that triggered a delicious trickle of awareness as she opened the door. Pain, throttled rage, endless uncomprehending fear . . .

And is that a thread of desperate hope? Can’t have
that
disturbing the harmonies.

“Sweetie! I’m back!” she called cheerfully, and gave a little skip at the shock of despair.

The apartment was small, but so was the building, and it occupied the whole of the second story; a kitchenette, a living-dining room, bedroom, bath and tiny balcony with a decorative string of chili peppers. Even so, it had probably been fairly expensive this close to the plaza and the gallery strip on Canyon Road, and there were a couple of excellent local landscapes on the walls. The telephone was on the divider between the kitchen counter and the living-room couch, and it was ringing as she came in. The bruised, naked form of the human was out of the closet where she’d left her and three-quarters of the way across the floor, wriggling desperately towards the telephone despite the gag and the wrist-to-ankle padded cuffs and chains.

Conveniently located in that
remarkably
naughty collection of bits and pieces under her bed.

The third ring, and then—

Adrian’s voice broke in: “Ellen,
pick up
. I’m not playing head-games. You’re in danger, your
life
is in danger. Remember I told you I have enemies? They’re in town and they’ll try to get me through you. If you won’t call me, just get out of town. I’ll square it with Giselle at the gallery and cover the tab, no strings, don’t even tell me where you’re going, just pick somewhere far away and
go.
Call me when you’re across an ocean.
^”

Ellen stopped her rolling wiggle and slumped. Tears tracked silently down her oval straight-nosed face, joining the marks of others. She snuffled again and again, struggling to breathe.

“Now the telephone,” Adrienne said. “
That
is a civilized means of communication.”

She checked; three messages from Adrian, the alarm increasing with each one. More left on the cell, and a quick check on the PC showed e-mail as well.

“And you would have gotten to it on the next call if I’d been any later. Impressive determination.”

She threw her coat over a chair, grabbed the other by the slack in the chain and dragged her to the edge of the sofa. The haunted blue eyes stared at her as she sat and pulled her loose gray blouse over her head.

“You can
never
get blood out of silk, and this outfit is a Dominique Sirop original. Are you listening to me? I get upset when people don’t. It’s a weakness of mine.”

A frantic nod, and she went on: “You know what I was doing, when I could have been in the O’Keeffe or shopping or back here torturing you? I was talking to Master Mthunzi, head of the Council’s breeding program. He’s in that ridiculous Zulu witch-doctor’s shack he keeps in the Drakensberg. And how did we have our little intercontinental chat? Did he—”

She pulled an oblong object out of a clip on her belt and held it up before she tossed it onto the chair with the coat and blouse.

“—phone me or instant-message me or text me or send an e-mail on my very expensive fifth-generation everything-but-a-vibrator BlackBerry? No, he did not.”

She unclipped the small holster and automatic from the small of her back, threw it on the chair and waggled a finger in the bound woman’s face.

“Nooooo. We had our little conversation by long-distance
telepathy
. And . . . you . . . end . . . up . . . talking . . . like . . . this . . . and . . . do . . . you . . . know . . . why?”

Her voice rose. “Because . . . at . . . that . . . range . . .
telepathy has shit bandwidth!
So much for the lost Golden Age of the Dread Empire of Shadows.”

She sighed. “Why, why, why do we have these relics, these fossils, these Pleistocene cave-painting wannabes running the Council of Shadows?”

Then she put a hand to her forehead and let her eyes widen in mock surprise.

“Oh. We’re immortal. That’s why. You would not
believe
what the low turnover does to middle-management career paths.”

Ellen began sobbing again, low and quiet and desolate. Adrienne shut her eyes and shivered with a delight that made the tiny hairs down her spine stand as the skin crept and her breath came faster. Her tongue came out and touched her lower lip.

“Oh, now you’re making me hungry, you flirt, you. Well, enough about politics and my working day. Time to have a snack.”

The human began to squeal like a trapped rabbit as she was heaved effortlessly onto the sofa, shrill even through the rubber-ball gag. Adrienne knelt on the floor and slapped her face back and forth. When she was quiet again:

“Now, if you promise to scream
quietly
, I’ll take that gag out and let you blow your nose before I feed on you. All right,
chérie
?”

A nod.

“You promise?”

Another. She unbuckled the leather strap and tossed it aside, ignoring the lung-stretching breath the other was taking.

“
HEL—”

Only one syllable broke free before her hand clamped on the throat. Just a touch of thumb and little finger, but she could feel the nerve impulses running beneath the sweat-damp skin.
So
and
so
.

Ellen bucked and heaved. Her face turned dark with blood as the throat clenched, and her eyes began to bulge. Her heart hammered louder and louder as the awareness of death surged up from the hindbrain. Adrienne bent over her, lips parted.

Yes, oh God, yes . . . no, no, not yet. Was that
Help
or
Hell
? But later, later. You can only kill them once.

A whooping gasp as the muscles around the trachea relaxed. Adrienne waited until awareness returned, and then dabbed at the blond woman’s face with a Kleenex from the end-table.

“Ellen! You
promised
!” she said. “Mutual trust and reciprocity are
very important
to a successful relationship! Now, you’re not going to break any promises again, are you?”

“No.”

A breathy whisper, but there was sincerity behind it.

“Then let’s get these ridiculous chains off you. There, that’s better, isn’t it? Here. Blow. Your tears and blood are delicious, but I draw the line at snot.”

She held out her hands over the human’s body and wiggled her fingers, running them through the air from knees to chin and back.

“Where, where,
where
shall I bite? Yes, the neck is traditional but the marks might draw attention. I thought we’d go out to La Casa Sena on Palace afterwards, the
Insight Guide
recommends the food there highly. Fiber and bulk are important for me too and
you
should get plenty of protein to keep up your red-cell count. No, hands above your head. Stretch, that’s it. My, you are in good condition. I do hate the way the obesity epidemic produces deeply buried veins and over-sweetened blood. It’s like drinking secondhand McDonald’s toadburgers. And you have such delicate skin. I can see your pulse all over.”

“Please, please don’t hurt me anymore. I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt me, please.”

“Oh, are you going to beg and plead? Why, you saucy minx! I absolutely
love
that! You know, we’re not in a hurry . . . but there are those who argue that it’s immature to play with your food. You don’t think that, do you?”

A whisper: “No.”

“Good.”

She reached out a finger and touched the other’s navel, tickling.

“Because to them I say . . . well, actually, I don’t say anything to them. I just make their heads explode.”

 

 

“God, that tastes like absolute shit,” Adrian said, and spat into the sink to clear his mouth. “
Merde. Scheisse. Mierda. Shĭ dàn
. There are no words.”

“That never stopped you before,” Harvey said. “You always were an articulate little bastard. Give it a try. I’ve only heard your bitching and moaning about blood-bank surplus a couple of hundred times.”

The younger man nodded. “Like eating week-old roadkilled skunk on a hot day.”

He threw the emptied blood-bag into the waste disposal and gripped the rough edge of the granite countertop, barring his teeth as he fought against a surge of nausea. The blood burned its way down his throat like the cheapest raw bathtub hooch ever made, edged with sandpaper, and coiled in his gut like a burning snake. His breath hissed out, and then the contents of his stomach stopped trying to climb back up his gullet.

“Glad to see you’re not enjoying it,” Harvey said dryly.

“It’s dead, it’s cold, and worst of all it’s from someone who was calm and relaxed as they did their civic duty at the blood bank and listened to fucking New Age water music. But I need the oomph.”

He laughed mirthlessly and reached for the glass of red wine. It cleared his mouth, but the effect of the blood was hitting his nerves now. He could
feel
them like a metallic web beneath his skin, more alive but jangled with a nails-on-slate quiver from the crown of his head to the tips of fingers and toes. The warning flutter of a migraine started at the back of his brain stem, telling him what the payment for the foul blood’s sudden strength would be.

“Shadowspawn make a big thing of how we’re like wolves and tigers and whatnot, head bull-goose top predators, but you know what we’re really like? Mosquitoes.”

Adrian looked through the open well in the kitchen wall and into the dining area. The horizon was darkening in the east, but it wasn’t quite night yet. The coming of it thrilled along sharpened senses, an impulse to run through the sage and juniper, to hunt and howl and stalk. To leave the prisoning flesh behind. He snarled at the thought.

“Whoa, boy,” Harvey said, and he realized it must have been a literal snarl as well.