A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  Adrian scrabbled at the Styrofoam cooler on the floor behind the passenger seat and pulled out another plastic blood-bag. The cold sticky contents poured down his throat. It was even worse than the last time; he had barely swallowed the last of it before he shoved open the door and vomited it onto the pavement in a rush of red and the yellow liquid remnants of his afternoon breakfast. Another, more slowly; this time he managed to keep it down, like a stomachful of hydrochloric acid. But the strength seeped into him, making the shaking stop and taking the fog away from his senses.

  “Oh, hell. Shield, Harvey. Shield for all you’re worth. I think I persuaded it to fall in on itself but there’s going to be a backwash.”

  His own arms went around his head, in a gesture as instinctive as it was futile. An impact like an impalpable thud struck him, as if padded clubs were beating from head to toe, and a wash of heat that wasn’t really there.

  “Oh, the bitch. She primed the whole place like a match, too,” he said. “But there wasn’t anyone alive in the building.”

  He couldn’t see it from here; there wasn’t any smoke yet, either. But there would be. He could feel the energy release, like a blowtorch pointed at the sky.

  Harvey grunted, hunched over the wheel. “Yeah. Mr. Organic Carbon Molecule, meet Ms. Free Oxygen; on the word of command, screw like bunnies!” Then: “Incoming. From somewhere close.”

  Reality faded. Ellen! he thought.

  In her best white evening-dress, with a silvery fringed alpaca shawl over her shoulders. Standing in some no-where, with Adrienne behind her, arms around her, head resting on shoulder. The brown-gold eyes glinted at him beside her fixed blue gaze.

  “I driiiink youurrr miiiiilk shake,” the hot-velvet voice of his sister crooned.

  Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and her head darted aside for Ellen’s throat.

  “You can’t—”

  That was a security guard, and reality was back. Adrian came upright, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his denim jacket and reached into a pocket. The man tensed, then relaxed a little as his hand came out and fanned four crisp fifty-dollar notes.

  They vanished, as neatly as the Power could have managed it.

  “It might be a good idea for your friend to take you home, sir,” the man said. “I’ll clean this mess up, but you may have had a little too much. Maybe you should see a doctor too. There’s blood in it.”

  “Or maybe I haven’t had enough,” Adrian said as he sank back and closed the door.

  The next container of cold blood went down a little less harshly; he only had to struggle against nausea for a half-dozen breaths, and was never in serious danger of losing the battle. Harvey clenched the wheel as if it was a life-buoy on the deck of the Titanic as he navigated the awkward entrance, waited for his moment and drove across the divider to head south past the Deaf School.

  “Where are we going?” Adrian asked after a gray pause.

  “Albuquerque. It’s the closest place with a real airport. One we can use. I just figured something out.”

  “Tell. I’ve decided I don’t know shit about anything, me.”

  “You tell me something. Do you fly standard commercial flights when you have to travel?”

  Adrian blinked. His mind was functioning again; he was in command of his body. He just wished he was unconscious.

  “Not if I can avoid it. Shadowspawn—”

  “—don’t like crowding, yeah,” Harvey said. “So what do you do, now that the Brotherhood isn’t making you account for all the receipts?”

  “I usually charter a small executive jet if one’s available. If not, I buy first-class and get sozzled. I drive whenever possible. Trains, in Europe.”

  The streetlights flickered over Harvey’s rugged features as they crossed Rodeo; I-25 was just past there.

  “Now, does Adrienne Princess of Darkness Brézé need to buy tickets and take off her shoes and walk through the scanner like the rest of us common sweaty human-cattle peons?”

  Something went click behind Adrian’s eyes. “She’ll have her own plane. She travels more than I do, of course, and she’s got a lot more money. It’s meaningless to her, she can spend like a government. Name of a black dog, of course she’ll have her own jet! Which could fly out of Santa Fe Airport—the runway’s long enough for medium-sized ones. It would be waiting for her all day, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  “Yeah. She wanted us to catch her on the Sunport surveillance cameras and assume she’d come in that way.”

  “This is all some sort of long-term game,” Adrian said.

  “We could just refuse to play,” Harvey said.

  “Ellen,” Adrian replied, as if that was a comprehensive answer.

  Which it is, he thought.

  “She’s alive. We know that now. And Adrienne doesn’t kill her lucies all that often. At least not right away.”

  “Yeah. Thanks to me, Ellen’s been kidnapped, tortured, raped, bled, and that and worse is going to go right on happening to her until I bust her loose. And if I stop trying, Adrienne will have no reason not to kill her.”

  “You didn’t do any of that, Adrian. She did.”

  “I put Ellen at risk. Anyone close to me is at risk.”

  “She the only girl you’ve been involved with since you told the Council and the Brotherhood you were off active duty and they could both go fuck each other?”

  Harvey’s voice was sharp. Reluctantly, Adrian answered: “Well . . . no.”

  “And nothing happened to any of them, right?”

  “Apart from them deciding I was an asshole even if I was rich, and dumping me? No.”

  “You are an asshole, ol’ buddy,” Harvey said, and Adrian felt his mouth quirk. “But then, every woman I was ever involved with dumped me, too, so I suppose you learned it at my knee. At least you didn’t marry three of them.”

  The older man went on: “Adrienne decided to come after you for her own reasons in her own time. Ellen just got in the way. And at least she has someone trying to rescue her. What do you think Adrienne has been doing for kicks and food all these years you’ve been sitting brooding on a mountaintop? Playing video games and eating tofu?”

  “I . . . try not to think about that.”

  “I’m sure that’s a big help to the victims.”

  Adrian flushed, started to speak, then barked harsh laughter. “Getting me angry to get me back on my feet, eh?”

  A shrug. “Worked, didn’t it?”

  “Mais oui, mon vieux.”

  More gently, Harvey said: “Look, I’m sorry it’s your girl. But it’s always someone’s girl, or guy, or child or mother or brother.”

  “She’s not my girl. I wish she was, but it’s nobody’s fault except mine she stomped out last night. Ellen has . . . issues. I thought we could . . . be together. And I really like her. But I didn’t think it through well enough, and I never told her the truth. I couldn’t.”

  “Then let’s get our asses in gear. We rescue the girl, we kill the evil witch. And we find out what the hell she’s playing at.”

  He turned onto the freeway, the hum of the tires growing as he pushed the Land Cruiser up to the speed limit and change. It was dense dark out here, as Santa Fe faded behind them; the traffic was light even for a weekday evening. The red lights of a Rail Runner passenger train came down the tracks that ran between the strips of highway, swelling and then flashing past.

  “You got a cigarette?” Harvey asked.

  “Sure,” Adrian said, lit two, and drew on one himself as he handed the other over. “You know, Harv, you should stop smoking. I can’t get cancer or emphysema or heart disease. Or get addicted. You can.”

  “Oh, hell, I can probably cure any of that—my Wreakings are good enough for little shit. Or if I can’t, I’d just get you to do it.”

  “Now I’m your enabler?”

  “This has just now occurred to you?”

  After that, silence fell until Adrian flicked his butt out the window.
/>
  “She was waiting for the cascade to fall,” he said, his voice coldly rational. “Somewhere fairly close, close enough that she could monitor it. She felt me trigger it, went off to her Gulfstream or whatever it is, and up, up and away. Taking Ellen with her. Nyah, nyah, can’t catch me. She actually used to say that when we were six and playing hide-and-seek. It made me crazy.”

  Harvey nodded. “That’s the advantage she’s had so far, being a couple of steps ahead. Let’s not let that happen again, shall we? We’re living in a world run by monsters. You don’t give them anything if you can help it. We’re far enough behind to start with.”

  “I wish I knew what she’d been doing while we charged into her trap, though. I don’t think she was lying on a rooftop, somehow. Not her style.”

  “Yeah. What was she doing at five thirty, when we were setting out to charge her electrified windmill?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Átahsaia!” The old Pueblo woman who’d been offering the tray of silver knickknacksstared at Adrienne and backed away, slowly. There was naked terror in her eyes, pouched in the wrinkled brown face. The dying sunlight brought the folds out in stark relief, like desert canyons, as it cast the pair’s shadows over her.

  Adrienne spoke in something that wasn’t English or Spanish; Ellen thought it was an Indian language, and she could see the street-vendor understood it. She turned and ran in a lumbering shuffle with her long bulky skirts swaying, shouting:

  “Átahsaia! ”

  “I’d have to be really hungry,” Adrienne said dryly. “Though in the end blood is blood.”

  Ellen blinked. “What’s Átahsaia?” she said.

  There was no point in not asking, not when even her mind’s privacy wasn’t her own. It was less disturbing than having unasked questions answered.

  Adrienne chuckled. “A cannibal demon. Everyone has legends about us.”

  “Are all the legends true?”

  “Only the bad ones. The others . . . wishful thinking on the part of you humans, I’m afraid.” A grin, and: “I love explaining things to you.”

  “Why?”

  “To feel the way your mind leaps when you realize just how bad things are, and then the squirming as you run through the implications and they sink through layers of your consciousness. Stupid people are boring that way. Anyone can feel agony when you violate their bodies, but only the intelligent can know true mental torment.”

  They walked through the tunnel-like entrance and into the courtyard; Ellen felt her stomach growl at the smells, despite the taste of acid at the back of her throat. The body went on functioning, even when the world dropped out from beneath your feet.

  La Casa Sena was only a little way up the street from the Palace of the Governors. It had started out as the town place of a wealthy hacendado more than a quarter of a millennium ago, the blank outer walls a sign of times when a rich man’s house on the remote New Mexican frontier had to be a fortress and a workshop and a barracks as well as a dwelling. Inside two tall stories of adobe made a courtyard around a flagged garden. The planters were bare with winter and the stone bowl of the fountain was dry, but huge cottonwoods laced with lights towered above the roof level.

  The maître d’hotel greeted them at the door, beside a little glassed-in cover that showed the deep original household well.

  “Ms. Brézé and guest, for five thirty,” Adrienne said. “I requested a corner table.”

  He didn’t know her, but he could read her platinum and tanzanite necklace and her clothes—a soft draped black dress by Kokosalaki, with a high waist and a pleated front, the sort of thing that only that sort of slender androgynous figure could bring off. And Adrian was a regular customer, who’d brought Ellen here more than once.

  “Your table is ready, Ms. Brézé. And how do you do, Ms. Tarnowski? It’s good to see you again. Will Mr. Brézé be joining you ladies this evening?”

  “I don’t think so, not here,” Adrienne said. “We’re expecting him to drop in at a little housewarming party I’ve arranged in a few hours, though.”

  Within was handcrafted Taos-style furniture and museum-quality local landscapes on the pale walls. Aromatic split piñon crackled in an arched white fireplace. Waiters’ heels clacked softly on the tile floors, and there was a murmur of conversation and the gentle bell tones of well-wielded cutlery.

  This can’t be happening, Ellen thought. I’ve come here before. People know me here. What if I screamed—

  Adrienne smiled at her. “I like it when you scream, chérie,” she said. “But carrying you out when you had a fit, and telling everyone about the way you’d skipped your medication . . . tiresome. It would mean missing dinner.”

  The smile grew broader. “Then I would have to punish you. Would you like that?”

  “No. Please, no.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  The waiter returned with a basket of warm bread and rolls and garlic-herb whipped butter as she took up the menu.

  “The paprika-crusted sea scallops first, I think; ancho chile truffle butter sounds amusing. You could have the pan-seared Hudson Valley foie gras, ma douce. Then . . . the Colorado lamb shank for me, and the sika venison and wild-boar sausage for you. Followed by the lavender crème brûlée, and the six-layer dobos torte.”

  The waiter’s eyebrows rose. “An excellent combination for you and your friend, madam. And your lamb?”

  “Oh, rare, certainement. It’s not food unless it screams in despair when you bite it.”

  The waiter chuckled dutifully. “Has madam had time to examine our wine list? We’re proud of it.”

  “It’s quite impressive,” Adrienne said graciously. “I think a glass of the Rombauer Carneros with the scallops for me. Mildly chilled. One of the 1975 Château d’Yquem to accompany the foie gras for my companion. Then a Burgundy with the entrees; a bottle of the 2005 Richebourg, and open that now, please. And we’ll both have a glass of the Cru d’Arche-Pugneau with the desserts. Coffee then, of course, but I’m afraid we’ll have to be absolute barbarians and leave at around seven thirty—previous engagement—so do bring me the check early, if you would?”

  “I . . . don’t feel hungry,” Ellen said.

  The man ignored her and left with a little skip in his step; a fifteen-percent tip on that order would be more than his salary for a month.

  “My stomach is clenched tight and I’m woozy. I’d throw up if I tried to eat. Please.”

  “I know you are a bit stressed, ma petite,” Adrienne said, making a graceful gesture. “It’s been a difficult twenty-four hours for you. I admit, I can be demanding—perhaps even a little needy, at times. Give me your hand. Yes, I think I can—”

  Ellen made herself stretch her hand out across the white tablecloth, palm down. Adrienne took it in hers, fingers interlocking with fingers; she smiled into Ellen’s eyes, and lowered her lips to the knuckles. The soft touch seemed to warm her hand, then spread up the arm—up the nerves of the arm, like some heated oil, or like a sauna and spa massage at Ten Thousand Waves up in the mountains. Ellen felt muscles relax she hadn’t known existed, and her back slumped against the high rear of the chair, head rolling helplessly.

  Gold and blue crept in around the edges of sight as waves of warmth reached her solar plexus and radiated out to the ends of her limbs and back, building on themselves. Her toes curled and her eyes rolled up as tension peaked and released.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed, surprised into a long, soft involuntary moan. “Oh, no, please, God! ”

  She didn’t know how much time had passed when she came back fully to herself. La Casa Sena’s staff were elaborately not noticing anything whether they had or not, and it wasn’t the sort of place where customers would stare too openly. But half a dozen were looking in her direction, if only out of the corners of their eyes. One man moved his hands in a discreet double thumbs-up gesture as she caught his eye.

  And Giselle Demarcio was staring at her from two tables over, eyes wide with disbelief,
mouth open, a forkful of adobe-baked trout poised forgotten halfway from plate to lips.

  Giselle. Manager of Hans & Demarcio Galleries. My friendly boss. The biggest motormouth gossip in town just watched me cream my pants in public. Santa Fe’s a small town. Three hundred galleries or not, the art scene’s even smaller. Everyone will know inside twenty-four hours.

  The deep flush she could already feel turned fiery crimson with embarrassment and spread from breasts to earlobes, and she was achingly conscious of how it would show with her skin, and this off-the-shoulder dress displayed a lot of it.

  Oh, God! This is a white douppioni silk sheath! It shows everything!

  She squirmed in the seat, and then stopped when she realized that would make it worse.

  When I stand up . . . and everyone will be watching to check!

  “You’re humiliating me!” she hissed.

  She stared at the linen of the tablecloth with one hand still locked in the other’s grasp.

  “Ellen, Ellen, you complain when I make you feel pain; now you complain at pleasure. Some people are never satisfied. I fear I may become exhausted trying to live up to your expectations.”

  Adrienne turned her hand and kissed the palm. There was a soft wet contact of lips and tongue; then a small quick pain at the base of the thumb, and a steady suction. It seemed to cool away the last of the languorous warmth, but made it impossible to do anything but sit, passive and relaxed. Then she lifted her face away and let go her grip.

  Ellen jammed her napkin into the palm of her cut hand and clenched both in her lap, glaring to one side where the wall held no faces. She suppressed the impulse to wipe the light film of sweat off her face or adjust the bosom of her dress against the hypersensitive skin.

  “Some say mental torment is bland compared to physical pain and the fear of it. Nonsense. It is subtle. Ecstasy spiced with humiliation and shame . . . it makes your blood taste like warm banana fritters with thick vanilla whipped cream and just a touch of sharp ginger. And now you are hungry, eh? Really you were hungry to begin with, but I distracted your mind long enough to stop blocking it.”