A Taint in the Blood (42 page)

“
Vaya con Dios, carnala!
” he called. Then:
^“
Go!
^”
as she hesitated.

Mendoza stopped her at the gate.

“
Doña
?” he asked, looking at Adrienne.

Her nostrils flared for a moment, and the man who’d pushed her forward closed his eyes and crossed himself.

“A little too young for feeding,” the Shadowspawn said. “Doesn’t smell quite ripe yet. She can help with the other youngsters.”

“Come, little ones,” Ellen said, her voice trembling. “Some nice ladies will take you to a good place.”

Getting the children out was like herding sobbing cats, and several of them tried to break back towards their mothers; outside SUVs driven by Monica’s friends were waiting. Ellen stood, clenched her hands, and made herself turn around and walk back in.

Adrienne produced an envelope that probably had high-denomination bills and tossed it to the coyote. He counted it, and flushed.

“This isn’t two thousand each!”

“Hey!” someone shouted from within the pen. “
We
paid him two thousand each, lady!”

Adrienne snarled. “It’s the full amount for the ones who met my request. This is your last chance to walk away, little man.”

“I want my money—” he began.

The riding crop slashed across his face. He stood for a moment in shocked surprise, clutching at the bleeding weal. Then his hand darted under the tail of his shirt.

It came out with an automatic. His face showed an
ooops
reaction even before he leveled it, then a frantic determination.

“Nobody hits Paco!” he said.

There was a ringing silence. Ellen could tell that he hadn’t expected Adrienne’s grin, or the indifference of the policemen. The prisoners were stock-still, watching breathlessly. The Shadowspawn’s smile grew wider, and she lifted the riding crop again, slowly and deliberately. Paco’s lips tightened, and his grip on the pistol. Ellen’s breath caught as she saw the finger close on the trigger.

The gun misfired, and there was the unmistakable crinkling sound of something metallic snapping as it did. He stared at it incredulously, and tried to fire again three more times as the crop slashed at him. Then her hand blurred and he screamed with the pain of a broken finger as she snatched it away.

“Automatics have a high probability of failure,” she said cheerfully.

Paco began to back up, hands in front of his face. Adrienne followed, teeth showing in a happy smile, delivering a series of cruelly precise strikes with the crop, each ending in a meaty
smack
sound.

Several of the prisoners surged forward as Paco was driven back towards the wire mesh, reaching their hands through towards him. One very dark and very pretty young woman was leaping up and down, shaking her fists in the air and shouting:

“Meaning,
smack him, harder, fuck him up
,” Ellen muttered to herself, clutching one hand against the other to control the shaking. “Oh, I guess he’s not really popular in there right now. And I can guess why
she
doesn’t like him in particular.”

Adrienne laughed and pounced. Suddenly Paco was held helpless across her body, one of her arms pinning his, the other bending his jaw back. The shouts from the cage died away as she struck; Paco froze, and her throat moved as she fed briefly. When she released him he slumped down, dazed, and she looked up smiling with blood on her chin and lips and teeth.

One man blurted into the silence: “
Es chupacabra!
^”

The goat-sucker of Hispanic legend.

Another barked harsh laughter: “
No seas güey . . . Paco no es cabra, es cabrón!
^”

Ellen found her eyes prickling for the first time; the second man had managed to make a
pun
, of all things, in the middle of this, calling the coyote
cabrón
, a bastard, rather than
cabra
, a goat.

Adrienne laughed. “I completely agree,” she said.

She grabbed Paco by the back of the neck. Three steps and she flung him through the door, and Mendoza clashed it shut. For a moment nobody moved, and then the young woman stepped forward, waving the others back:

“
Mío! Es mío! Y solo mío!”
she half-screamed.

She launched a vicious kick, gathering up her skirts in both hands to get a better swing, and shouting to the rhythm of the solid blows as she struck again and again. Ellen didn’t have any trouble following it despite the volume and machine-gun speed; curses were the first things you picked up.

Thud.

Feeling like a big man now?

Another
thud
.

Try to screw us over now!

Adrienne was laughing as she watched. Then she called out sharply:

“Niña!”
The young woman looked up, and Adrienne shook a finger at her.

Kill him if you want, but you’ll be doing him a big favor
, Ellen translated to herself.

“What’s your name?” Adrienne went on.

“Eusebia,” the woman said.

“I like your spirit, little Cheba. And now . . .”

She looked up. There were open windows at both ends of the barn-prison, under the peaks of the roof. A great snowy owl swept through, turning and banking and braking to a landing, folding its five-foot wingspan. Then there was a naked man rising from one knee.

“
Efectos especiales
,” one of the Mexicans said, loudly as if to convince himself.

“
Inahualli, inahualli!
^”
another cried, which wasn’t Spanish at all.

“It’s Nahuatl.
Shapeshifter
,” Adrienne said over her shoulder to Ellen. “Absolutely
everyone
has legends about us.”

The man stretched and then bowed over Adrienne’s extended hand with the panache of one used to the gesture, touching only the fingertips.

“Wilbur Peterson,” he said; he spoke as if his voice was slightly rusty with disuse. “We haven’t met, Miss Brézé. I’ve been . . . very out of touch for a long time. Thank you for your invitation. My . . . baggage and servants are on the way, but . . .”

Ellen looked at him and felt an odd shock of recognition and relief.

“Then I’m honored you should choose this little affair to get back into the social circuit, cousin,” Adrienne said. “You must be ravenous. Feel free to choose.”

She indicated the prisoners with a gracious wave of her hand. They were stock-still now, staring huge-eyed. Several crossed themselves, and Ellen heard the murmur of prayer.

“Thank . . . you. That one, please.”

He pointed to the girl who still stood near the semiconscious Paco. The others backed away from her as if from plague, and she looked wildly around herself.

“A good choice,” Adrienne said. Then sharply: “
Ven tú
, Cheba. Come and meet your fate, the purpose for which you were born.”

Mendoza opened the gate. “Better for you if you come now,
chica
,” he said roughly. “Don’t make them chase after you.”

She did, first wiping her palms on her skirt, then walking slowly towards them. Mendoza opened the door briefly, then clashed it shut again. She slowed still more as she approached the Shadowspawn, walking step by step. The man took her by the arm and smiled; she gave a little gasp as she met the sulfur-yellow eyes.

“Feel free to feed as you will,” Adrienne said. “It’s . . . neater to start here, if you mean to kill your first one.”

Ellen’s eyes darted around. The textured concrete of the floor and lower walls, the big screened drains . . . and the neatly coiled hoses beside the large-capacity water outlets for sluicing it all down. Things like bronze showerheads shaped into the mouths of bats, with wrought taps below them. And all of it
old
, generations old, carefully maintained but at least three times as old as Ellen Tarnowski. For an instant she thought she could feel the shrieks sunken into the fabric of the place, a century of agony and death, and she gave a little whimper.

“No, I’ll . . . take my time,” Peterson said.

“Ah, a man of taste. My renfields are waiting to show you to your rooms in the
casa grande
. If you don’t kill her, she’s yours to take with you when you leave, of course.”

“Very . . . hospitable of you. But I wouldn’t expect anything else of a Brézé.”

He bowed slightly and began to lead the girl away. She started to squirm and then try to pull free, but the grip on her upper arm was evidently like a band of steel as she was marched into the darkness.

“The early bird and the choice worm,” Adrienne said absently.

Another whisper of wings, and three more birds soared into the big chamber; a golden eagle, a bald eagle, and a red-tailed hawk. They fluttered to the ground, and were Shadowspawn in human form—Dale Shadowblade, Dmitri Usov and Tōkairin Michiko. A moan went through the men and women behind the cage as the three touched fingertips with Adrienne.

“You’re early, but you’re not the first,” she said. “Wilbur Peterson, of all people. I never expected him to actually
attend
.”

“I thought he’d gone seriously hermit?” Michiko said, stretching luxuriously, rising on the balls of her feet with her fingers linked high over her head. “God, but I love flying.”

“He hasn’t left his nest for thirty years!” Adrienne confirmed.

“Peterson is another ancient fossil of the type we will have to deal with,” Dmitri snorted. “An obstacle to the progressive forces.”

“Oh, now, Dmitri Pavlovich, we have to be tolerant and inclusive,
^”
Adrienne said unctuously.

Then she laughed like a cruel girl-child and clapped her hands together. “Oh! I forgot! We don’t! All we have to be is evil and ruthless,
hein?”

“
Da
,” Dmitri said. “And I also like flying. But it leaves one with an appetite. Is all in order?”

“All according to plan so far,” Adrienne said. “Have a little snack, and we’ll talk later as everyone mills-and-swills, eh?”

Dale was looking at the cage. “Not bad. I always was partial to Mexican. Mind if we make a mess?”

“Of course not, within reason. Pick a pair each and go crazy. I can always have a few extras sent up from San Simeon if we run short; the place is like a perpetual revolving larder with those tour buses.”

Adrienne made a flicking gesture with her hand, and Mendoza and his men left; one of them stumbled a little, and another helped him along. Michiko giggled and walked towards the unlatched door of the cage, her nude body moving cat-graceful with a mocking sway of the hips.

“Paco, Paco,” she said, her voice silvery. “Adrienne says you’ve been
very
naughty. But I’m naughty too sometimes. Let’s play a little game. It’s called,
you die now
.”

The coyote was fully conscious again, but he had missed the last twenty minutes. Ellen saw his eyes bulge as Michiko let herself fall forward . . . and landed on paws. The animal was a Himalayan snow leopard, smoke-gray with black rosettes on its silky fur, even then beautiful enough to make the breath catch. The long tail swung a little as the great paws placed themselves with smooth precision, and the fangs showed bone-white as it snarled, a high-pitched half-yowl that echoed from the roof. Paco turned and ran, bounced into a wall of people who thrust him back and then faced around into the leopard’s leap.

He screamed once as he went down beneath the beast, and then again, and again and again on a rising squealing note of unbearable agony. A spray of blood flicked across the faces of the other prisoners, and there were wet ripping noises. The metallic scent was suddenly, shockingly intense.

Ellen shut her eyes for an instant, but lights still flashed across her vision; her mouth was paper-dry, a ringing sounding in her ears above the rending sounds. Monica suddenly buried her face against Ellen’s shoulder and clutched her, and they leaned against each other for support.

They fluttered unwillingly open. An Amur tiger and a great black wolf were slinking forward through the gate in the wire fence, ears laid back, teeth showing as their heads swung back and forth to scent their prey. Michiko was in human form again, crouched over Paco with her face buried in the blood that welled from his torn throat, turning her pale neck and breasts crimson. It coated her face in a glistening bright-red sheet when she turned it upward, laughing.

“Let’s pick one and play a bit longer, boys,” she said to the two beasts; they halted on either side of her, and she rested a hand on each ruff as she crouched. “That one. She’s in milk. We could have a fascinating mix of tastes.”

“And now we should depart, my sweet ones,” Adrienne said as the three predators stalked forward, dividing to cut the chosen victim out of the mass. “The next few will be arriving corporeally, or at least by ground.”

Adrienne walked out; Ellen followed as best she could, feeling her knees buckling and helping Monica along as she staggered, gulping at the cleaner air. Theresa Villegas was outside, and nodded to Adrienne as they passed. One of the policemen began to swing the door shut behind them, and then something cannoned into it.