SM Stirling

by Shadowspawn 01 - A Taint in the Blood (v5)

  .” “He’s a myth, alas. Now the Tempter . . . that

  was real.” The thought was appalling, but . . . Perhaps I’m getting jaded. Losing my capacity for horrified surprise at the fact that the world has turned into a theme park for demons. They walked down to Fillmore and turned towards the Bay, blue and white below; then into a café with an inner courtyard, a cheerfully bustling place, patrons sitting at marble-topped tables amid a mouth-watering smell of pastries baking. “Adrienne!” a woman’s voice called. Ellen recognized Michiko; there was a slender preoccupied-looking black man with her. Beside them were a pale-faced spiky-haired girl in black trailing clothes wearing a pillbox hat with a net half-veil, and a Native American man in shirt and vest, pants and boots. He had the broad brown beak-nosed face of one of the Southwestern tribes, with a lean trim body; his hair hung down his back in a single braid beneath a headband, and there was a gold hoop in one ear. “Hon Da

  , Adrienne,” he said, rising in a motion like a cougar coming to its feet on a rock. “Hon Da

  , Dale,” she replied. They exchanged the finger-touching gesture she’d noted before; this time there was a trace of . . . Cool and wary,

  Ellen thought. They’re sort of . . . respectful of each other. And he’s giving me the eye too. So’s Michiko, in a pouty sort of way. Suddenly the drape and cling of the running suit made her feel even more vulnerable than she knew she was. I wish I was wearing a burka, only they could still see my mind. Why do all these monsters find me so

  attractive, for God’s sake? Or is

  appetizing the right word? “She was Adrian’s, eh?” he said. “Nice. He must be slipping. I heard he’d gone soft.” “Eccentric, perhaps,” Adrienne said. She repeated the gesture with Michiko. The three—the Shadowspawn, she realized—took one end of the table. He’s got those gold flecks in the eyes. Not enough to see easily, but they’re there when bright light strikes. They began talking earnestly; unfortunately, they did it in some language she’d never heard, though she suspected it was the dark man’s. That left her . . . Below the salt

  , she thought wryly. A plate of tarts and sweet fruit breads and cinnamon rolls and tiny puff pastries was placed between them. With the other lowly food-and-amusement types. “Hi,” she said to them. “I’m Ellen Tarnowski. I’m Adrienne’s . . . lucy.” The spiky-haired girl grinned. “I heard about you. I’m Kai, Dale’s blood-bitch.” She nodded towards the man with the braid. “And he and Michiko were talking about you a bit. Pleased to meetcha.” She had a rapid-fire voice and a quick smile, and irregular-pretty features. A little younger than Ellen, with a tough, wary look around her dark eyes. They traveled up and down the blond woman’s form. “Michiko said you were hot. I sorta agree, in that classy blond way . . . That’s natural, right? You show a canary with your pants down?” “Yes,” Ellen said, startled into honesty. Then she glared. Shall I inquire about

  your pubic hair? Kai smiled again, unabashed. “I’m mousy brown so I go for this ink-black look—it’s a Wreaking, not Clairol. Michiko said Adrienne wouldn’t throw you into the pot. Got kinda shirty about it.” The black man shuddered. “She . . . killed a girl last night. One that looked like you. I had to watch. Oh, Jesus, all the blood, the sounds she made, and she bit her and bit her and then she’d stop and the girl would wake up and scream and beg me to help—” He collected himself. “I’m Wayne Jackson. I’m . . . with Michiko. I am . . . was . . . an epidemiologist at Stanford.” He knotted his hands together. Kai looked at him with a slight sneer. “Wuss. You better get your act together or you’re

  not going to last long, not with her

  . Show some positive ’tude, dude!” Then she lit a cigarette. Ellen blinked; in San Francisco that was worse than beating kittens to death in a public place, but nobody seemed to notice. Kai looked around proudly: “That’s me, not Dale or the others. I’m a twenty-six.” At her look: “I’ve got twenty-six percent of the Shadowspawn genes—there’s this test they have.” “The Alberman?” “Yeah, that’s it.” Unexpectedly, Wayne spoke: “Someone . . . like me did it for them back at the end of the last century. Twenty-six is high, for the general population.” Kai nodded. “It happens sometimes just by accident, or a Shadow-dude has some bitch and forgets to hex the sperm. I can do some Wreaking now that I’m trained, just little shit like my hair, but it’s lots of fun. Dale says it’s why I’m alive after my happy childhood

  and wasn’t some strung-out OD’d junkie or something. It makes you lucky, sorta, kinda.” “It sounds . . . useful.” Adrienne’s children could spin little feathers. What could this malicious grown-up child do? “Oh, shit, yeah,” Kai said, around a mouthful of kiwi tart. “That’s why Dale didn’t off me when we met. He could feel it when he got his mind into me.” She giggled. “Along with his teeth and dick. He lets me help with a kill sometimes, get guys or chicks thinking it’s a hookup and lead ’em in. He usually doesn’t like to string it out the way most Shadowspawn do. Or I get to watch, which is totally hot, or do other stuff. You done any of that yet?” A Judas-goat lucy,

  Ellen thought. Eww. Whole new vistas of ewwness. “No,” she said, her mouth a little dry. “I’m . . . new to this.” “It’s cool, I think. I was always into the pain stuff, I was so

  this death metal fangirl, but I never got to do

  a lot of it until this. I’ve been Dale’s for four years now.” Wayne seemed to have gotten some self-possession back. He ate a little sugar-dusted something

  and sipped at his coffee. “Michiko asked me some hypothetical questions at a public lecture. They were off-the-wall, but I answered. Then she decided she needed my services full-time.” “Yeah, services,” Kai said, and licked her lips. He sighed. “Well, professors don’t get hit on by gorgeous young rich women very often and taken out and . . . And then there were teeth in my throat, and the world . . . went crazy.” He looked down into his coffee cup. Kai snorted again and ate another chocolate-and-cream pastry. “How did you . . . meet Dale?” Ellen asked her. “Picked me up at a concert in Tucson. He totally

  started feeding right while he was boning me that first time and I still thought he was just this awesome Indian dude, and it was like, totally great. You had the feeding and sex at the same time thing yet?” “Ah . . . no,” Ellen said. A bit late to be shy, as Adrienne said.

  “Close together, though.” “That’s good too, but with the timing just exactly right, wow!

  I’m the only regular lucy he’s got right now. We travel a lot—that’s cool too. He does things for the Council. Killings mostly, you know, people who find out stuff they shouldn’t or get out of line, sometimes even a Shadowspawn. They call him the Shadowblade. Is that awesome or what?” “Aren’t you worried that—” Kai shrugged and washed a mouthful down with her coffee. “Nah. Dale says he’s going to Carry me when he finally offs me—you know that soul-eating thing they can do?” Ellen’s mind went blank for an instant. Did I hear that? There’s so much . . . I am never going to get used to this. I don’t

  want to get used to any of this. Help! Kai nodded. “He’s already done the temp version a bunch of times so he can do the extreme stuff to me without killing me. Well, killing my body; he’s killed me

  in there about . . . oh, thirty-six times. All sorts of ways, and it feels just like the real thing. The first time I didn’t know what was happening and thought it was

  the real thing. Shit, talk about a crazy ride!” Wayne blinked at her. “What’s that like?” he blurted. “Dying, I mean.” “Kinda interesting. Like, there’s this complete rush. Especially when you learn to ride the pain and fear. I figure it won’t be much different when he does me for real. Pretty weird in there, yeah, but I’m not your vanilla sort of girl and I get to live forever. Or as long as he

  does. And when he lets me I can see and feel what he’s doing, which is just bitchin

  ’. And when you think about this destroy-the-world gig they’re gonna do, it all gives me a lot better chances than most people.” “You want to live forever . . .
in there?” Ellen said. That being my own particular nightmare right now. Even with Adrian it would be terrifying. In the mind of a monster forever . . . and you couldn’t die, or even go mad . . . “Why not? Lots of company. Meantime it’s all fun. Especially the feeding part; there just isn’t

  any shit you can buy that gives you a high like that. I haven’t wanted a hit of anything else since Tucson except cigarettes and I’ve cut way back on those. And the sex is just fucking extreme

  . How’d you end up with Adrienne? Those Brézés are seriously big mojo with the Shadowspawn.” “I . . . was her brother Adrian’s girlfriend. She . . . took me away from him.” “No!” Kai said. “Kinky! I heard about her brother, too. Those two got this feud thing going. He’s like, a boogeyman to a lot of the Shadowspawn. Even Dale gives him respect.” She subsided, looking up the table at her

  Shadowspawn; the conversation had shifted into English, more or less. “Ga no iwai

  ,” Michiko was saying thoughtfully. “Prayer for Long Life,” Adrienne said. “I like it. It’s been ten years since his last?” “Exactly ten come May, and fifty since his Second Birth. I think it would be a . . . good gesture

  . . . to invite him to Rancho Sangre for the celebration.” “Which is where we’d need your

  unique talents . . . Dale Shadowblade,” Adrienne said. “I have to admit, you do no-see better than I do . . . and that’s something I rarely say.” The Indian looked into the distance. “OK. You make a lot of sense, Adrienne. Option One would be fun for a while, but that devastated wasteland thing, no.” He grinned. “My father would have loved it; he was deeply into that old-time Swallowing Monster and Bear-man on Nabîanye mountain stuff, wanted the world to be like the old stories. Michiko’s right too, though. We’ve got to get free of all that human leftover shit, tribes, countries. It’s just not relevant to us.” Michiko nodded; she had a sleek modern look to her today, hair parted in the center, sunglasses, a sleeveless white silk blouse, dark trousers tucked into high-heeled boots and a coat hanging off the back of her chair, like an up-and-coming lawyer on her day off. “Wayne,” she said, and snapped her fingers. “Come here and talk to us.” He did, fumbling up a laptop from a case at his feet and taking the spot between Adrienne and his Shadowspawn as they moved their chairs aside for him. “Tell us about those spread patterns you were working on,” Michiko went on, playfully running her fingers over the back of his neck. “With the aerosol release of the initial pathogen.” To Adrienne: “Wayne’s got me talking like an intellectual when I’m with him. You know, he even screams

  with an impressive vocabulary?” Wayne stammered for a moment, closed his eyes, then opened them. Adrienne spoke, her voice warm: “Michi, we all have our individual needs, but we—collectively speaking—need him coherent right now.” Well, there’s a first. The Yonsei Horror actually looks abashed!

  Ellen thought. Take one spoiled rich girl sorority bitch and add

  murdering sociopathic sadist, and put it all in one awful package with superpowers. And she’s not even as scary as the Apache Devil there. God! The scientist took a deep breath, let it out, and began to speak in a voice that was almost calm: “With a fourteen-day contagious latency period, what you’d need would be aerosol release at a limited number of major transport hubs . . . I’ve got graph projections here.” “Pictures are good,” Adrienne said. “A lot of our relatives are not

  intellectuals. Not given to complex verbalizations, shall we say.” “As in, some of ’em are stone stupid,” Dale said, and laughed. “One thing the Power doesn’t guarantee is that you’ll be smart

  . We don’t average dumber than humans, but when there are only a few thousand you sure notice

  the dumb ones more.” Adrienne had been studying the graphs. “You’re assuming a very high average number of contacts.” “They’d be the most highly mobile individuals, too,” Wayne said. “Ideal vectors.” “What cities?” Adrienne asked. “The fewer the better. Complex plans have a tendency to go wrong, even with the Power.” “This list.” “Twenty-seven?” “If you want to be absolutely certain.” “Thank you. You’ve made a definite contribution to our plans.” Ellen could see his face twitch. The Shadowspawn all laughed, a wicked snickering. “Then we’re agreed?” Adrienne said. The others nodded, and she raised her coffee cup. “To Option Two! And the Dread Empire of Shadow, with decent plumbing and high-speed Internet!” “Oh, thank God!” Ellen said. She was in the great high-ceilinged glass-walled living-room of the mountaintop house again. Standing near enough to the fireplace to feel the warmth on her skin, dressed in a long soft robe of dark cloth. “Ellie!” The embrace and kiss were wordless for a long time. “Where are you?” Adrian said into her ear. “In bed, alone. She told me to go to sleep quite early. I think—” She could feel his lips move in her hair, and there was sound, but it slipped out of her consciousness. “Yes, you’re under that sleep-now

  .” “I thought so.” Ellen dropped her head into the hollow of his shoulder, her breath almost a shudder of sheer relief

  ; it wasn’t until the deadly tension was gone that she realized how tightly it had drawn skin and muscle and tendon. He felt it, and began to knead her shoulders. “Bad?” he said. She raised her head with a sigh. The living-room was lit only by the low crackle of a piñon and juniper fire, scenting the air and casting a pool of ruddy flickers around the hearth. The full moon washed the crags outside with silver and darkness, its light falling on the sofas and settees and bookcases. Ellen sank down cross-legged on the sheepskins that were heaped before the fire; Adrian joined her, and they leaned against each other in companionable silence. This is like how it was when things were good with us,

  she thought. Only better. How to Save Your Relationship: Get Abducted by His Monster Relatives. After minutes he asked again: “Where are you?” “Still in San Francisco,” she said. “Adrienne?” “Mostly she’s been . . . shopping

  today. Shopping with me, of all things. Clothes and accessories and lingerie and perfume and jewelry and getting my hair done. Even books and some pictures, all bundled up and sent back to the ranch, to the place she put me in on Lucy Lane. It’s . . . weird; she knows

  I hate her, and she even likes

  that, she doesn’t expect to change it. It’s all like I was a room she was decorating, or a doll

  or something.” Adrian sighed into her hair. “She had quite a few dolls, as a little girl. She’d dress them and talk with them and have parties . . . sometimes I’d help her. She liked my hobbies too, the piano, watercolors. We were both passionate about horses, and swimming.” “But sometimes a doll would disappear?” Ellen said. She hugged him closer; the solid lean muscularity was infinitely comforting, and the familiar clean but slightly acrid smell of his body. Even the fact that it was like his sister’s didn’t make it less so. It wasn’t exactly

  the same; deeper and heavier somehow. It must be the scent of Shadowspawn, subtly different from her kind. “She’d say Francine was

  bad,

  or Isabelle wouldn’t do what she was told.

  ” “Eerrrk!” He nodded. “And that would be the last of that one. Once she cried because a doll was gone, and our mother—we thought she was our aunt—said, Let that be a lesson to you. They don’t grow back.

  ” “It’s hard to imagine you as kids. Either of you.” “Oh, we were,” he said softly. “It gives you a . . . different perspective. There was always a rivalry, but sometimes . . . yes, there was love. Love as puppies or kittens love, straightforward, there like sunlight or rain. It is easier for love to curdle into hate than become indifference. Both link you tightly. We have become utterly different, but we both started out on the same road. What else?” “And we had lunch with Michiko and . . . this other Shadowspawn. An Indian—he looked like an Indian, maybe a Hopi, maybe Apache or Navaho—named Dale.” She could feel him stiffen for an instant. “Dale Shadowblade?” he said. “That’s what they called him. You know him?” “Know of him. We’ve only . . . briefly been in proximity
. Otherwise one of us would be dead, the true death.” “He’s bad?” “An enforcer who works for the Council as a whole, freelance. Mostly he’s famous for being unseeable.” Ellen nodded. “That must be what Adrienne meant when she said your special talents

  to him. She’s planning this get-together—” “Now what could that be?” he asked when she’d finished. “An assassination? But she saved

  Hajime yesterday. Or could she really want a reconciliation, hoping to persuade him to change his stance on Operation Trimback?” He shook his head and then looked down at her where she rested one cheek on his shoulder. “You have kept your head about you, my darling Ellie. This is the break we need.” “You’re sure?” Ellen said; she fought to keep her hands from turning into claws and digging painfully. “There will be many, many Shadowspawn there, crowded together. And their guards. Frictions, jockeying for position, cross-purposes. Not a one-on-one duel between defender and attacker. Everything will be . . . confused

  .” “It will? Adrienne . . . is smart.” “We don’t do organization well, not on a large scale. Yes! This will

  be the opportunity we need! And I will

  get you out of there!” The kiss turned heated. After a moment, she took his hand and slid it onto her breast. “You are sure?” he said, looking down into her eyes. The hand moved, sliding up over the curve, touching the stiffened nipple through the cloth of her robe. She gasped slightly at the jolt of sensation, and the way her skin seemed to glow all over. The golden flecks in his irises glittered like mica seen in the depths of a cave, catching the firelight. The Power

  , she thought. That’s what they’re a sign of. This is the man the Shadowspawn themselves fear. “Adrian, when a woman does that, she’s generally sure