Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel

by M. L. Brennan

  I interrupted Prudence, but I was still focused on my mother. “Suze and I have leads, and we will find the killer.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt at the moment, but if it meant the avoidance of creating a setup and a fall guy, I was willing to use Fake It Till You Make It as my personal motto. “The metsän kunigas suspect the elves, so I’ll call up Lilah Dwyer and start looking into it.”

  My sister gave a loud and wholly unladylike snort. “Well, brother, if the bears have focused on the Ad-hene, I doubt even you could shed a tear if we have to execute one as an example.”

  I deliberately ignored her. “We’ll find the killer,” I assured my mother. And Prudence wasn’t wrong—I didn’t know much about the bears, but I knew much more than I wanted to about the elves, and if the evidence led to Underhill’s doorstep, I wouldn’t be bothered in the least.

  Madeline had calmed down, and now she even looked amused. “How confident you suddenly sound, my pet. Such music to my ears. Now, do you have everything you need? Clues, information, murder weapon, all of those things they yammer about on procedurals? Such a dull genre. Though I do regret that I have no laboratory of gadgets or brilliant scientists to offer you. They always seem so useful on those shows.”

  I relaxed a little as my mother slipped back into her usual patter. That was always a good sign. “The ghouls are performing an autopsy, so we should at least find out a little. Suzume thinks that a knife was used, and there’s one missing from the karhu’s kitchen, so if we find that, it might be useful.”

  Chivalry was still pacing the room, but now he spoke quietly, his voice sounding like he was straining for normalcy. “You should talk with our retainer witch—she’s fairly reliable. Loren Noka can give you her information.”

  “What a waste of time,” Prudence snapped, disgusted. “How many times over the last decade has the witch been able to offer you the slightest help?”

  Chivalry’s voice stayed measured, but I noticed that his pacing picked up some speed. “Rosamund isn’t often able to contribute, it’s true, but when she does, it is useful. And anything that involves a body is worth asking a witch about.”

  “Seems odd to say the word worth in a conversation about witches,” said Prudence. “Useless little headliners.”

  My sister looked ready to start a monologue on the subject, but she was cut off by Madeline’s smooth interjection. “Yes, precious, you’ve made your opinion clear many times. Now Fortitude will find either the murderer or a murderer”—she smiled at me, flashing her very long, fixed fangs—“to mollify the bears. Once this happens, who will the new karhu be?” She looked expectantly at my brother, but Chivalry was circling restlessly and didn’t seem to notice his cue.

  There was a short, awkward silence, which I broke. “Chiyo Hollis asked them. Apparently Matias had mentioned his niece, Dahlia, but I’m not sure how certain that is.”

  Madeline was still watching Chivalry, and despite my effort, now looked annoyed. “Chivalry? You know the heirs.” Her voice was stern.

  That got Chivalry’s attention, and his forehead creased as he considered. “Somewhat.” He sounded distracted. “The nephew would rock the boat and be disruptive, and Matias felt that his daughter was too young to be considered when we discussed it a month ago. Dahlia seems to be the best choice.”

  Distracted was not a good response for our mother. I spoke up again, hoping to distract her from Chivalry. “Gil is definitely not a fan of our rules. I don’t know about Dahlia—she plays everything really tight to the chest. Carmen is twenty-one, though, so not incredibly young. She’s maybe ten years and change younger than the other two.”

  To my surprise, Prudence responded by agreeing with me. “Twenty-one is not too young.” She kept talking to me, but I noticed that she was watching Chivalry out of the corner of her eye. “Keep an eye on them, Fortitude. And remember that whoever becomes karhu is the one we have to deal with for the next three or four decades. Best to avoid anyone extremely annoying.” She raised her voice and pitched to Chivalry again. “Wasn’t that why we didn’t want Ilona?”

  Another awkward pause, and I did my best to set the question up again. “Ilona?” I asked. It wasn’t just to try to help cover for Chivalry—I had no idea who we were talking about, and my confusion was clear.

  That finally brought Chivalry back into the conversation, even though he now sounded very annoyed with me, which he normally saved for when it was the two of us on our own. Usually in a group setting he spent most of his time covering for me in front of Prudence. The disruption of our normal family dynamic was almost enough to make me dizzy. “Matias’s older sister,” Chivalry explained curtly. “Dahlia and Gil’s mother. Their father wanted her to inherit, but I thought she would be too difficult. She always questioned everything, never just followed an order. Matias claimed that she’d mellowed with age, but it figures that her son would be a problem as well.” He gave a small shrug. “You can get to know Carmen better if you want, but Matias said that Dahlia had the right temperament.”

  Having watched all of this interplay closely, Madeline now gave a very heavy sigh. “It’s just like dogs. You finally get one trained just the way you like, and it dies. Then you have to housebreak a puppy all over again.” She gave a grumpy wave of her hand to dismiss us. “Well, enough of this. Prudence, you can’t abandon your guests much longer.”

  Prudence used her cane to pull herself awkwardly to her feet. “Come on, Chivalry. I know they’ll be missing you.” The implication in her voice was so clear that I was sure that the women downstairs must’ve somehow felt the reverberations.

  Chivalry didn’t respond, but simply offered Prudence his arm with the gentlemanly antebellum manners that had been drilled into him over almost a century and a half ago. There was a fixed and intent look on his face as they left, and Prudence glanced over to meet my eyes, lifting her eyebrows in some expression that I couldn’t quite interpret.

  I stayed behind with my mother and watched as she fussed with the sleeve of her robe. I normally didn’t go out of my way to spend more time with Madeline, but unfortunately this afternoon had shown that I couldn’t put the feeding off any longer. After a moment it became clear that I wasn’t leaving, and my mother made a small noise in her throat and looked up at me. “Don’t judge your brother harshly, Fortitude. At least, not for his manners. It’s a bit like when our Patricia decided to go on a cleanse. She was in an utterly wretched temper all week, and when she finally gave in, she nearly devoured an entire roast.”

  That was not a very visually reassuring metaphor, but it did at least offer a segue into my own issue. It seemed odd to have to find a way to bring the topic up—usually it was my mother who offered to feed me (and offered, and offered), and I would either accept or put it off. Asking for it seemed weird. “I suppose that’s the thing, Mother. I’m feeling a bit . . . edgy.”

  She understood my meaning immediately, but there was a slight hesitation before she nodded. “Ah. My apologies, then, my dove.” Then she was rolling back her left sleeve with her usual businesslike manner, and I felt reassured. I moved from my current seat to next to her on the sofa, and tried to tamp down the eagerness that rose up inside me as my mother’s bony, age-speckled wrist was exposed. “Go ahead,” Madeline said, and drew her right thumbnail firmly across her wrist, slicing her skin.

  The blood that rose to the surface of my mother’s wrist was much darker than a human’s, and thicker. I leaned down and latched my mouth over the cut, and as the first drop touched my tongue with a sizzle that sent a shiver down my whole body, I acknowledged at last the relief that I felt at feeding. My reaction to Gil in Matias Kivela’s kitchen this afternoon had disturbed me, and if feeding from my mother would stave off a repeat of that, I would embrace it wholeheartedly.

  For most humans (barring those results of the creepy attachment parenting trend), the act of being fed directly from their mother’s body is one that is usually last performed before long-term memories begin to form. That
I still relied on my mother in such a primal way, for sustenance, was always extremely disturbing to me when I thought about it in stray moments, but during the act itself the world seemed to close in around me until all I thought of and experienced was the taste of my mother’s blood, the pressure my mouth had to exert to get the thick fluid down my throat, and the deep, yawning hunger inside of me that I was finally able to assuage.

  The blood from my mother’s cut was even thicker and slower in flowing than usual, and it felt like trying to drink a milk shake through a busted straw. I’d just taken my third full swallow when Madeline suddenly slid a finger from her free hand against my mouth, breaking my suction. Surprise rolled through me—never in my life had my mother ever stopped my feeding before I was ready. I sat up quickly and was appalled at what I saw—my mother’s naturally fair skin was so pale that I could actually see the tracings of blue and violet veins up her neck and jaw. She was slumping back into the sofa, not for comfort but from a lack of strength.

  I was off the sofa so quickly that I stumbled and smacked my knee hard against the table, setting off a loud clatter of china suddenly shifting, but I didn’t even slow down and was already halfway to the door to call for help, when Madeline’s voice, weak but with that unmistakable steely command, pulled me back.

  “Fort, don’t go.”

  “I’ll get Chivalry, or Prudence, and—”

  “Stop.” She couldn’t lift her lids all the way, but even that much was enough for her blue eyes to freeze me in place. “There’s nothing to be done, my darling.”

  “No,” I snapped automatically, my brain rejecting the idea that my mother was somehow less than permanent.

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice inescapable. She stretched her hand out weakly to me, and I saw that the cut she’d made for me was no longer bleeding, but it was still open and red when usually it would’ve sealed itself by now. “Leave your siblings be. Now, I’m very weary—help me to my bedroom. I think it’s best that I have a lie-down.”

  I put my arm gingerly under her arms and around her back, nervous about how very tiny and breakable she seemed at the moment. It was a strange thing to feel that my mother was vulnerable when only a month ago she had beaten Prudence into a pulp on the floor. And even though it amused Madeline to play at being a harmless little old lady, there had always been that palpable sense of danger to her. But as I half helped, half carried her out of the sitting room and into the bedroom, I couldn’t help but remember what my sister had told me recently—that even for our mother, there was only one path that age would lead to. And Madeline was so very, very ancient.

  Madeline’s sitting room was pink and frilled, with spindly antique furniture. It wasn’t my taste, but it did look like the kind of thing that a certain type of grandmotherly woman with a lot of money would create. Her bedroom, however, was full-on Versailles, with brocaded pink silk on the walls and the dominating force of a bed that could’ve easily slept four. It was massive, carved out of ash wood and completely lacquered and inlaid with mother-of-pearl to give it its own luminescence. All dressers, end tables, and even my mother’s baroque lady’s desk had been built to match. The bed’s high posters and frame were hung with old-fashioned gathered bed curtains made of pink silk and embroidered all over with silver thread, with a matching comforter, bed skirt, and at least a dozen extra-fluffy pillows. Overall, it was one of those rooms that seemed to go beyond a question of good or bad taste and just leave the viewer feeling completely overwhelmed.

  I helped my mother onto the bed, where she leaned back against the pillows with a deep grunt of relief. For a moment she just breathed heavily; then she turned her head to the side and stared. Curious, I followed her gaze, and I noticed a new addition to her room. A very large portrait of four people in period clothing was resting on an easel.

  “Oh, new painting?” My mother wasn’t a serious collector of art, preferring just to find pieces that worked for particular rooms, so new items usually appeared only to replace something that had broken or worn out, or as a harbinger of a complete redecoration on the horizon.

  Madeline chuckled, but it was a thin, weak sound. “A very old painting, actually. One that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Look closer.”

  I walked around the bed to get a better look. It was a group portrait of four people—three women, one old, one in the beginnings of middle age, and one young, with one man in about his early thirties. The gowns and sleeves were incredibly full and elaborate, with those antique necklines that fell low on the shoulder, dipped very low in front across breasts gathered together and up like a set of dumplings and made me feel nervous about a nipple-slip just looking at it, and then fell downwards in great sweeping drapes of fabric that must’ve been nightmarish to wear. The older woman sat in the middle of the painting, flanked by the middle-aged woman and the man, who both stood. Just off to the middle-aged woman’s side was the youngest woman, who was sitting on some kind of lower footstool, with a small spaniel dog resting almost bonelessly on her lap. There was a similarity in the noses and features of the sitters that suggested that they were family members, and while the old woman had iron-gray hair and the man’s hair was a darkish blond, the other two women both had waves of elaborately arranged chestnut curls. My eye was caught by the middle-aged woman—even in that kind of Vulcan-like stare that all people in older portraits always seemed to have, there was something very familiar and uncomfortable about the expression in her blue eyes.

  As soon as I realized it, I felt like an idiot for not recognizing it immediately.

  “Is this you?”

  She smiled. “Yes, we commissioned it in 1650 from Sir Peter Lely. He was the portrait artist to Charles the First, and so much the rage that even after the king’s execution, he continued to get scads of work. One of those Dutch imports, but really quite good. Normally he would’ve just done our heads and left the rest to his workshop pupils, but he did our whole figures and the clothes, and just brought an apprentice in for the background.” Her smile widened, and a little bit of color returned to her face as she stared raptly at the painting, lost in memories from over three centuries ago. “Constance insisted on getting her favorite dog into the picture. Silly, really, since she had already had two portraits of him done, along with every other dog she owned. We practically had a whole wing of them, to say nothing of Edmund’s horse portraits. How Mother did complain, but I agreed in the end. Such a fuss over a pet whose name no one remembers now.”

  “I’ve never seen this before. Was it in storage?” Until now I’d only ever seen one image of my oldest sister, who had died long before even Prudence was born. Madeline had a hand-size miniature of her that hung in her dressing room, beside matching ones of the rest of us. I knew that Prudence loathed her miniature, which had been painted at a time when her hair was stick brown and rolled into the most incredible sausage curls. Mine had been done when I was twenty-one and my acne finally under control, but Madeline had apparently instructed the artist to aspire to accuracy rather than flattery, and I was glad that I didn’t have to see it regularly.

  “No, it was in England. It’s the only portrait of all four of us together. Constance died just eleven years later, and I came to America. Mother died soon after that, and it was just Edmund rattling around in that old and drafty castle. He began traveling then, and he wanted to send me most of the collection, but I didn’t like the idea of putting them onto ships—one good leak and the whole thing would’ve been at the bottom of the ocean. And then in 1830, the whole place was burned to the ground during the Swing Riots.”

  “Your family’s castle?” Mother didn’t talk much about life before she’d come to America. Chivalry had told me once that he thought it was because of Constance’s premature death, and, looking at her now, I thought that he was probably right.

  “Well, it was possibly a bit of a blessing—the whole thing was eleventh century and a misery to live in, but Edmund couldn’t just admit that it was far past time to pull th
e whole thing down and build something comfortable. It was a tragedy about the furnishings and the paintings, though. Edmund was in Russia when it happened—in those days it took almost two months for him to be notified. Fortunately this painting was on loan for a Lely retrospective, and there was one tapestry of my mother and me that was done in 1388 and that Edmund had had sent out for cleaning. It’s only representative, of course, not a true likeness, but it was a relief that it survived. After that I absolutely forbade Edmund to risk the painting to travel, and he put it on loan in a nice little museum where it would be safe.”

  “But it’s here now.” I watched her closely.

  “Yes.” There was a very unguarded look on her face—one of pure pleasure and delight. “It arrived late last week. Private plane, four lovely young curators fussing over it. So thoughtful of Edmund. It’s been so long since I saw my mother’s face, and Lely did a wonderful job on Constance. Really captured something of her around the eyes. Edmund sent a letter—he was thinking of coming as well, but he’s quite tied up in Brussels.”

  I’d never met my uncle, and I’d never expected to, so the sound of a proposed visit surprised me. And after my last experience with European vampires, I honestly couldn’t fake any enthusiasm about the possibility. “Your brother does a lot of traveling. I thought vampires usually stayed inside their territories?”

  “Yes, but Edmund is a bit of an activist. He’ll just go from one territory to the next, getting nest-mate privileges and then trying to change everyone’s mind for a decade or so before moving on.” Her happiness dimmed, replaced with an expression of annoyance. But not, I was surprised to realize, directed at me. For once.

  “An activist? A vampire activist?” That was a word combination that I had honestly never expected to experience.

  “It’s just like Al Gore and his silly little slide show. The topic is dull, the damage is already done, and all his work and effort isn’t helping a jot.”