A Taint in the Blood (9 page)

He smiled. “But we are impolite. First we should honor our ancient heritage with the traditional signs.”

He made a gesture with his left hand. “Hail to the Dread Empire of Shadows and the Secret Reign that is to come!”

Adrienne raised her right hand, divided the first and second fingers from the fourth and fifth to form a V, and solemnly intoned:

“Live long and prosper!”

Ellen bit back a startled snort. Then they both stuck their index fingers in their ears, waggled the little fingers and chanted:

“Uga-Chuga . . . Uga-Chuga . . . Bow! Wow! Wow!”

With both fists in the air: “Goooooo TEAM!”

Both dissolved in laughter. “Ah, Adrienne, it does me good to speak with you again, after dealing with the Gheorghe Brâncuşi matter for so long. If you knew how many times I had to actually go through those pseudo-medieval rituals, as if I was some legend-besotted Victorian secret-society occultist like our ancestors . . .”

“You haven’t had to deal with the Demon Daimyo of the West Coast as long as I have, Dmitri. Any real progress?”

“Yes,” he said. “Progress that can be laid before the Council. Let us toast success!”

He made another gesture, one that seemed natural; forefinger to thumb, like the sign for
OK
, and a finger tapped to the neck. Then he reached for the tray, dipping a strip of the dark toast into the caviar, and taking one of the small glasses.

Ellen almost missed Adrienne’s signal. She turned and took the service from Theresa and bent to put it on the sideboard and pour; it had a dark rich aroma, different from anything she’d smelled before. Her flush grew deeper as her full breasts swayed with the gesture; the whole thing made her feel horribly like an extra glimpsed in some obtrusive pop-up ad for an Internet porn site.

He downed the whole glass, Russian-style.

“À votre santé
,
”
she answered and sipped the cognac, following it with black coffee.

“The plutonium was definitely from here,” the man in the screen went on. “The cattle who sold it to the Brotherhood agents
thought
they were selling it to the Iranians; I suspect a small, subtle Wreaking on their memories. They have all been dealt with, but the successors . . . I do not know if they will be any better.”

Adrienne hissed a little between her teeth. “We really have to do more about this, Dmitri. We are . . . vulnerable.”

“Tell me. In my opinion we should never have closed down the Communists, at least their security around closed sites was competent and we only had to control a few key men to control all. That there are so
many
to deal with now is why I’ve been trapped here, like some exile in the days of Stalin or the Czars.”

His face darkened a little. “As if
I
were responsible for Gheorghe’s final death! Have you seen my report on his security? A
farce
! Tzigani with knives and shotguns and bandanas around their heads. All that they needed was violins and balalaikas. Maybe their grandfathers were at least formidable savages, but these were merely drunken louts putting on a show, as if for tourists! You expected to see the movie cameras and fog made from dry ice at any moment!”

“Yes, one must move with the times,” she said.

There was a short significant pause; they met each other’s eyes and then looked away.

I missed something there
, Ellen thought.

“I use Gurkhas, as you know,” Adrienne said into the brief silence. “They stay bought, too.”

“And how was your visit to Santa Fe?” Dmitri went on, taking the mouthpiece of the hookah and drawing a deep bubbling lungful. “You spoke hopefully of it last week.”

^“
Rather productive.” Another short pause. “In more ways than one.
^”

“Ah,
ochen’ horosho
,” he said. Then he looked at Ellen.

“Either you are developing a sense of style, Adrienne, or this is some sort of subtle mockery of mine.”

“I? Mock? Impossible, Dmitri. Oh, well, possibly a little of both. I acquired her in Santa Fe, yes. Previously my brother’s. Perhaps that explains my desire to show off a little, although he got surprisingly little use out of her. Guilty, I suppose. Such a grubby human emotion, guilt.”

“Not just human.
Petit bourgeois
, which is worse,” Dmitri said. Then to Ellen: “You are some sort of Slav, girl?”

“I . . . Polish, German, some Scots-Irish, a little Cherokee, sir,” Ellen replied.

“And she has the most intriguingly complex psyche, too,” Adrienne said. “Childhood trauma, I think. Odd pleasure-pain links.”

He replied in Russian, and probably to
her
. Ellen searched her memory and managed to produce what she thought was a polite disclaimer of ability to speak the language, learned when they had some clients from St. Petersburg:

“
Ya poka ne govoryu po russki, Gospodin.
”

“I said,
You have nice tits, too, to go with the psyche
,” he replied with a smile.

What the hell am I supposed to say to
that
?
she wondered, feeling her throat lock on the words.
Fuck off, you posturing moron? Oh, Christ! I can’t even
think
it! Or
bite me
, maybe?

Adrienne sighed. “Dmitri, your lucies have tits. Or even boobs. Mine have
breasts
. Or at least the females do.”

“What happened to the Chinese boy with the delectable arse, then?”

“Still delectable, useful in several ways, and currently resting after—”

Adrienne turned her head and snapped aside just short of Ellen’s thigh, a biting gesture with an audible
click
of white sharp teeth.

Dmitri snorted. “What a collector you are! Don’t you ever just
kill
them, Adrienne? It’s like endless foreplay with no fucking!”

Ellen swallowed. She thought the boy holding the tray did too, with an almost imperceptible quiver in his hands.

Adrienne sighed again. “Dmitri, Dmitri, what a . . . gourmand you are. I suppose you even like béchamel sauce.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“That it makes everything taste the same, Escoffier’s original sin? There’s nothing wrong with agony and death, but you miss out on so much if you hurry, experiencing the direct mental overtones as well as the actual blood. Emotional degradation, despair, self-loathing, transference . . .”

He snorted. “Girlie stuff.”

“Dmitri, I
am
a girl! When I’m corporeal, at least, and most of the time night-walking too.”

“Quantity can have a quality all its own, even for drinking emotions. In mass, they can be overwhelmingly potent. Ah, if you had only been at Srebrenica when the massacre began—”

“Dmitri, I was a child. Besides, my old, do you realize
how many times
you’ve told your Srebrenica story?”

“Oh.” He winced. “Tell me I’m not as bad as von Horst with the
Hindenber
g.”

“Nearly as bad as McFadden with the
Titanic
! And he’s transitioned successfully to postcorporeal so he’ll
never
shut up. You’d think with a potentially infinite span ahead of him he’d focus on the future sometimes.”

They laughed again. Adrienne touched the controls.

“I’ll do what I can with Tōkairin Hajime,” Adrienne said. “He has not any dog in this fight, so he may be reasonable. Michiko listens to me, and she has his ear. She’s of our generation. You’ve earned release, Dmitri. There’s definitely going to be a meeting in Tiflis next year, the full Council and all candidate-qualified purebloods. They have to elect a successor to Gheorghe, after all.”

“I shall be forever in your debt. And the more so if I can get to Tiflis and a decent climate. We will have to remind Putin of who he really works for, so there are no disturbances.”

“Good. There’s talk that they may select a corporeal this time, which would be the first since . . . when? 1932, I think.”

“Ah. A younger voice on the Council. That would be . . .
progressive
.”

“Yes, it would. Possibilities, eh?”

The screen died and hummed upward. Adrienne smiled like a lynx. “That went smoothly, very smoothly. Theresa, you’ve earned a visit to Jean-Charles.”

Ellen cleared her throat.

“Yes, yes,
chérie
,” Adrienne said. “Get dressed, and let Theresa have her pendant back. You did very well, putting Dmitri in a good mood. Yes,
dangled in front of him like a piece of steak
is one way to put it, and no doubt you’ll feel better with . . . what’s that thought there?
Without my ass bare to the breeze?
We’ll be landing soon, anyway.”

She smiled and linked her hands behind her head.

“Life is
good
.”

W
here am I? Ellen Tarnowski looked around. She was sitting in . . .
It’s Adrian’s living-room!

The great windows showing an endless tumbled stretch of moonlit high desert and mountain, the lights dim, a fire of piñon logs crackling on the fieldstone hearth and scenting the air. Even the faint smell of tobacco she’d found so irritating was comforting enough to make her almost sob with gratitude.

And Adrian, standing gravely by the mantelpiece, taut and elegant as a cat.

“Oh, thank God!” she burst out. “Adrian, I had the most horrible—”

Full wakefulness crashed back. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

He shook his head, the silky hair sliding around his lobeless ears.

“I’m afraid not,” he said softly, his face stark with misery. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I am so very sorry.”

“Then—”

She looked down; she was in a long denim skirt and Indian blouse outfit she remembered. She pinched herself, hard. It hurt, but her surroundings stayed just the same. She had never had a dream like this, not complete with every detail of all five senses.

“Where am I?” she said slowly.

“Your . . . mind is here.”

“Where’s
here
, Adrian?”

He hesitated. “This is my memory palace. We’re inside . . . ummm, my mind. I’m on a flight to San Francisco, trying to find you.”

Ellen put a hand to her forehead and clenched it until the fingers dug painfully into the skin.

“And you never thought to tell me any of this before?” she said, keeping her voice from rising dangerously. “We were sleeping together for
six months
and it just never seemed the right fucking time? No wonder I
knew
you were lying to me!”

He crossed and knelt before her, taking her hands. “Ellie, I
wanted
to tell you. But this is dangerous, dangerous stuff, and I was trying to keep you as safe as I could.”

“Keeping me ignorant is not
protective
! From now on, you will
tell me things
or I will not . . . not speak to you at all!”

“I feel guilty as hell that I let us get involved at all, but it had been years, I was supposed to be left alone—Ellie, we don’t have time for me to tell you two hundred years of history. Multi-millennia, some of it. I need you to help me, and I promise I’ll make it as right as I can. Whatever it takes.”

She took a long deep breath and forced a degree of calm on herself. Her fingers closed around his with a strength bred from years of tennis.

“My mind is here? Where’s the rest of me?”

“Where . . . you were before you went to sleep.”

“
I’m still in bed with your crazy vampire sister?
” she half-screamed. “Get me out, get me out, get me out, Oh, God,
the things she
did
to me—”

Air gasped into her lungs and she forced control on herself and choked down sobs.

“My mind is here? Literally?”

He nodded. “I’ve got your genetic template already loaded. I’m . . . running you on my hardware. Wetware. Your body is in trance state, like mine—but it’s, ummm, empty.”

She stared at him. “You drank my
blood
? Without telling me?”

He winced and looked aside. “No. But, ah, it’s really anything with DNA in it, you see, which pretty much all body fluids have. So it doesn’t have to be blood, strictly speaking, for a link.”

“Oh.” Then a thought. “But what she said was true? You
wanted
to drink my blood? To really hurt me?”

“I didn’t, did I?” he said. “I love you, Ellen. It’s just . . . hard for me to show that the way normal people can. But I didn’t hurt you.”

The lonely pride in it moved her suddenly; the hot anger she’d felt less than two days ago felt as distant as her childhood.

“You’re not like her. I said that and she laughed, but I think it made her angry.”

“I try not to be like that. I try very hard. Now immediately, darling, you have to tell me where she took you. We might get cut off at any moment.”

“I’m . . . not sure. California—”

He gave a small hiss of relief and nodded. She continued:

“South of the Bay, I think. North of LA for sure, and near the coast.

Someone mentioned Passo something. We landed, there was a car, but I couldn’t see out the windows much. A big place in the country, I think, and everyone was really tired, even Adrienne, we all just went to bed and sacked out. I’m . . . in her room.”

“Paso Robles? It might be. The Central Coast. That’s very good, that helps a lot. I can put a . . . block in to conceal your memory of this. You’ll still be able to remember it, but not unless you’ve got reason to. Be cautious about that, be
very
careful. She’s extremely good at subtle Wreakings . . . mind-stuff.”

“Oh, there aren’t any
words
for how careful I’ll be!”

Then another thought. “Wait a minute. What happens if I just
stay
here? She can’t force me back, can she?”

“No. Only I can send you back. If you stay you’d be like this as long as I lived.”