A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  They had towels over their arms. Both twitched them aside at the same instant, revealing the shielded gloves and the glinting edges of the knives. Tantos, twelve inches of slightly curved steel glinting with the silver inlay as the men drew them and flicked aside the sheaths.

  “Michiko sends greetings,” one of them said in Japanese.

  Ellen, he thought in one fractional instant, as his body prepared for combat. She needs me.

  Then he gathered himself to leap.

  Ellen rested her face in her hands and elbows on the table for minutes after Giselle’s face left the screen, trying not to think. When she looked up again she was alone except for the sound of the Shadowspawn children romping in the courtyard, and an occasional deep whurf! from the dog. The BlackBerry beeped again, from beside a set of house keys:

  The rest of the day is your own. Bear in mind . . .

  Then it began to play a song—no, it was Adrienne singing, her voice full and sweet:

  “Look around and all you see

  Are sympathetic eyes,

  Stroll around the grounds

  Until you feel at home.”

  “I’m in the thrall of Countess Comic-ula,” she murmured. That made her feel better, somehow.

  Then: Your new place is Number 5 Lucy Lane. All should be ready for you by four o’clock. Take a tour around town first.

  “And apparently we’re not going to be sharing a room. I am so totally OK with that. It’s messy taking your cookies to bed with you anyway.”

  This time she took her time walking to the front door. The house felt old, by American standards at least. Not in the least run-down, it was immaculately maintained and there were discreet signs of periodic refits, but like a building that had been inhabited for generations by the same family. There were touches you hardly ever saw in recent designs, even historicist ones; genuine groined vaulting in ashlar masonry, for starters.

  It smelled that way too, of old stone, wax-rubbed paneling, hints of lemon and clean ancient rugs. In structure it was a set of linked E-shapes, and designed to take advantage of the varying levels to look a little less massive than it was; she suspected it was the sort of place where you could discover new rooms for years. Staff went by her now and then, usually with polite nods. She went down a curling formal staircase and out under a portico of columns and arches. The size of the stone-pines and palms and live-oaks, citrus trees and olives outside and the thick bases of some of the espaliered vines confirmed her guess.

  The outer gateway in the solid circumference wall had an archway of wrought iron above it, making words: Rancho Sangre Sagrado.

  “I guess the sense of humor is hereditary,” she said; it meant Ranch of the Holy Blood and had obviously been there a good long while.

  Though it could be a perfectly genuine Hispanic place-name, come to think of it, possibly dating right back to Mexican California or even the Mission era when Spain’s flag flew here. Her lips quirked. She’d picked up a fair bit of conversational Spanish in her time in Santa Fe, and if you changed it just a little to Rancho Sangrón it meant Ranch of the Asshole.

  There was a strip of parkland, green grass and leafless oaks and solid blocky cypresses fifty or sixty feet high sheltering the wall from easy outside view, and then the town proper, a little place of a couple of thousand people along half a dozen streets, lined with cherry trees now blossoming in a froth of pink and rose. The only really odd thing about it was the near-uniformity of style, and the fact that there were no boarded-up shops and not many for-sale signs. A civic center had a municipal pool and library and tennis courts; notices on the boards before the steps included those for a farmer’s market, the meeting of the local chapter of the SPCA—

  I wonder if we get included? she wondered, then saw the fine print: Sponsored by Brézé Enterprises.

  —and every other little bit of civic self-organization you’d expect, from the Lions and Elks through aromatherapy clubs. A biggish high school showed southward, a golf course, and after that a tangle of minor industrial stuff, fruit-packing plants and wineries, repair shops and a dairy that had a big All fresh! All organic! All local! sign, one of the few advertisements she could see.

  To the east of town were rolling fields fading into the middle distance with the occasional farmhouse or crossroads hamlet sheltered in its trees. Vineyards marched in geometric rows and silvery-green olives flickered; there were low bare-branched brushy orchards of trees she couldn’t name, and flaming apple and almond and apricot in white and pink, interspersed with intensely green fields of grain. The higher pastures to the west, above the mansion, were green too with the winter rains; tongues of forest ran down the low points, growing denser on the high hills or modest mountains that separated this area from the sea.

  The people were dead-on small-town California-normal; about half Anglo, more than a third Hispanic, the rest bits and pieces of everything with an accent on Asian and lots of mixing. They bustled in and out of shoe stores and bakeries—the buttery odor of fresh pastry made her mouth water—and stationers and the post office and electronics shops. Mothers wheeled babies, toddlers clutched hands, kids ran, elderly men sat sunning themselves and reading papers or watching the world go by. Teenagers Rollerbladed the brick sidewalks with immersive buttons in their ears, bopping to sounds only they could hear, or stood in groups at the corners.

  No, there’s one thing odd. You’d expect at least one big Catholic church in a rural town this size, and a couple of others.

  She wasn’t religious herself, but the thought made something clench a little inside. There was one building that looked like a church in the elaborately carved Churrigueresque style, but it had Sangre Community Theater on the front, with a banner announcing a Shakespeare revival.

  And a little like selling your soul to the Devil, she remembered Theresa saying.

  And that her parents and grandparents before her had made the same bargain. This was effectively a settlement of hereditary not-quite-Satanists.

  I wonder when they tell their kids? What was that Theresa said about . . . initiation?

  Suddenly she didn’t want to sightsee anymore, for all the charm that would have had a New Urbanist drooling.

  “Excuse me,” she said to a middle-aged man sitting on a bench outside a café, eating ice cream from a cardboard cup with two teenagers similarly occupied. “I’m looking for Lucy Lane?”

  He smiled at her, and she gritted her teeth. The kids were smiling too, and one nudged his slightly younger companion; it was more than the usual teenaged-male leer.

  Oh, yeah, they know. They know.

  “Just another block north up Brézé Avenue; left on Armand. It turns into Lucy after the intersection with Auvergnat.”

  “Thank you,” she said between clenched teeth.

  Lucy Lane was a cul-de-sac curling around the hill the mansion rode, backing against the perimeter wall. The sidewalk was the same herringbone-pattern brick, and the houses were overshadowed by old plantings that included orange trees in fair-sized front gardens and little walled inner yards. She passed one man sitting on a bench with a set of weights nearby. He was black, tall and impressively built without being bulky, which she could see because he was stripped to exercise shorts, and he had a shaved head and narrow hook-nosed face.

  “Hi!” she said brightly.

  He looked at her impassively, then lay down on the bench again and began a series of vertical lifts.

  Well, that wasn’t too successful.

  Number Five had a newish Volt in the open garage, with the hood up and the charger cord extended and plugged into a pole-mounted outlet by the garage door.

  “You Ms. Tarnowski?” a young Latino said around the open hood when she halted uncertainly.

  He was about twenty, in jeans and cowboy boots and a white T-shirt that showed his taut-bodied build, an inch or so under six feet. He let the hood fall with a clunk and wiped his hands on a rag; when she shook she felt workingman’s calluses.

  “Don�
�t mind Jamal,” he said, nodding towards the black man two houses up. “He doesn’t talk much. I’m Jose Villegas. I’m in Number Three. Just checking your car. Welcome to Lucy Lane!”

  “I get a car ?” she blurted.

  He grinned, white teeth in a light brown face. “Sure, Ms. Tarnowski—”

  “Ellen,” she said automatically.

  “All the fixings, Ellen,” he said in perfect California English of a small-town, blue-collar variety. “Me, I’m a mechanic when I’m not . . . you know. So I was checking it for you. Looks good. You need anything done, though, just bop over. Come on in.”

  The house had the feel of a place that had been cared for but vacant until recently; it was about two thousand square feet, with a living-room that gave on a rear court through sliding-glass doors and restrained furniture of the type that American Home Furnishings tried to imitate. A slender blond man a little below her height was finishing the connections on a wallscreen TV. He had a handsome triangular face and pale green eyes, and dusted off his hands before offering one.

  “Hi!” he said. “Peter Boase, in Number Two. TV and display here, PC in the study, omnidirectional Bose speakers here, there and in the bedroom. All networked to the content library. You’ve got a high-capacity fiber-optic Internet connection. Hey, it’s the President’s plan, right?”

  “Peter’s an egghead,” Jose said. “Forgets his own name sometimes. But he sure can make anything electronic dance and sing.”

  The slender man shrugged. “PhD, physics, so I should be all thumbs and baffled by putting a CD in a player. But you need to be able to handle equipment the way grants are . . . were . . . these days. Come on in. Monica will—”

  “Coming through!” a woman’s voice said.

  She came through the front door with a baking tray in gloved hands. Ellen judged her to be the oldest person present, thirty or a hair either way, dressed in slacks and shirt and a checked bib apron. She had pleasantly pretty features that reminded Ellen vaguely of someone, and curling dark-brown hair held back by a barrette. She was very slightly shorter than Ellen’s five-six, and very slightly heavier; they might have been sisters as far as face and figure went, coloring aside.

  “Hi! Monica Darton, in Number One,” she said. “Come on through to the kitchen. That’s where a house starts to turn into a home!”

  “Monica’s our den mother,” Peter said. “She’s been here longest, eight years.”

  Peter, Jose, Monica, Ellen thought; she had a good memory for names, and you needed one dealing with the public at the gallery. And Jamal is the black guy. With me that makes five, so that’s all five houses on Bloodbank Row . . . pardon me, Lucy Lane.

  The kitchen was south-facing, with a glassed-in breakfast nook, and a small dining room separated from it by a pierced screen. Monica set the tray down on a counter. Then she took off the oven mitts and shook hands in turn.

  “Do you want us all to clear out?” she said. “While you settle in peacefully?”

  “Ah . . . no, no,” Ellen replied hastily.

  So I could sit and look at the wall and try not to scream? Call Giselle and lie to her? Wonder where Adrian is? End up lying facedown on the floor drooling with an empty fifth of vodka in my hand? Seriously consider slitting my wrists? So . . .

  “Please, stay for a while.”

  “Good. I’ll make some coffee to christen your machine . . . unless you prefer decaf?”

  “No, premium grade is fine.”

  “. . . and these are the best homemade brownies in town! All local ingredients. Except for the chocolate and vanilla and sugar, of course, but the nuts and flour are, we have the most wonderful farmer’s market. I’ve stocked your pantry and fridge with a few basics and staples, bread, butter . . .”

  She bustled them into seats and set out plates and cups and cut the brownies into squares, then brought the pot over from the filter machine. Ellen felt her nose twitch; there was some seriously good coffee in there, and if she couldn’t have a stiff drink, she could use a cup. Monica went on:

  “And I put a lasagna and a salad in the fridge too, in case you just want to throw something in the oven for dinner instead of cooking or going out. There’s laundry stuff and basic linens and so on, and a few clothes, jeans and sweats and underwear in the bedroom, and toiletries. You can get the rest of what you need anytime, of course, but we wanted to, you know, help.”

  Ellen looked at her beaming smile and dazedly bit into one of the brownies. They were good.

  It’s June Cleaver and the Welcome Wagon of Nosferatu Manor, she thought.

  “Ah . . .” If resistance is futile, so’s tact. “You’re all . . .”

  “Lucies?” Jose said cheerfully. “Yeah.”

  I’m not surprised. You’ve all got something about the eyes, this haunted look. I think I probably do too, now.

  “Lucy is an exclusionary stereotype. I prefer to think of us as helpers ,” Monica said, a slight trace of primness in her tone for a moment.

  Yeah, helper as in Hamburger Helper, Ellen thought.

  “It’s not as much of a hard-and-fast distinction as the renfields like to think, either,” Peter said.

  Ellen went on: “This place was empty? Who was here before?”

  A ringing silence fell. Everyone looked away for an instant, except Peter, who coughed and explained:

  “Mmmm, there’s sort of a Lucy Code; you don’t ask questions like that, about people who are . . . gone. Though in fact Dave used to live here, before he got promoted.”

  “He’s up at the Company Security barracks now, teaching unarmed combat to the rent-a-cops,” Jose said. “And the Doña takes him along as muscle sometimes. Good riddance.”

  A laugh. “Though Peter kicked his ass!”

  She looked at the slight blond man with surprise. He smiled slightly and shrugged.

  “Only because he was surprised I knew anything at all. I could never have taken him if he hadn’t gotten overconfident. He’s a professional.”

  “That’s how he ended up here. Came to a tournament up in Paso Robles, and the Doña was there. Decided Hey, I want some of that and what she wants she gets. No accounting for tastes, I guess,” Jose said.

  “David could be difficult,” Monica conceded.

  Her smile broadened and she leaned forward to pat the newcomer’s hand.

  “I’m so glad there’s another girl here now! Some people in town are very nice, but some are a bit standoffish with people who, you know, live on this street. I’m sure we’ll be such great friends, Ellen!”

  Yeah, Ellen thought. We can exchange recipes and do each other’s hair and compare fucking bite marks, maybe. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar? Or a pint of blood? I’m out.”

  “So,” Peter said. “What do you think of our little town?”

  Impulse made her honest: “It’s like Stephen King, illustrated by Norman Rockwell with ads from Town & Country magazine.”

  Peter coughed, apparently choking on a crumb of brownie. Jose pounded him helpfully on the back, looking puzzled but goodnaturedly so. He rose and went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer as an alternative to the coffee; it was some local microbrew with an Art Nouveau label that incorporated part of a Mucha poster.

  “OK?” he said, raising it and glancing at her.

  “Sure,” Ellen said, and he popped the cap and drank with a satisfied ahhh!

  “Norman Rockwell is right!” Monica nodded, apparently utterly without irony. “I love it here. It’s a wonderful place to raise kids.”

  Ellen blinked. “You . . . have children?” she said neutrally.

  “Two. Joshua, he’s ten, and his sister, Sophia, is nine. They’re the cutest kids! Adrienne . . . the Doña, we usually call her . . . thinks so too and they adore her. I’m dying for you to meet them.”

  Peter evidently heard the quiver in Ellen’s question and understood the sudden tension of her hand on the thick porcelain of the cup. He leaned close and whispered:

  “They don’t
feed on children. The blood doesn’t taste right. Sour. Green.”

  Ellen let out a little grunt of relief; it was a welcome alternative to starting a scream she wasn’t sure she could stop and trying to kill the other woman with the mug.

  Monica went on without pausing; Ellen judged she was the sort of person who found it easier to talk than listen, anyway, in a pleasant-enough fashion:

  “I knew that it was the best place right away. Well, after a little while, I was a bit scared at first. It’s so quiet and pretty here, and there’s no crime, and the streets are safe for children and the schools are just wonderful. All charter, you know, with free preschool, and the best facilities in the state, no cutbacks. And there’s the health plan, too.”

  The very best straw and turnout pasture, and the stable is so comfortable, and silver horseshoes, and kindly Dr. Duggan for vet . . .

  “That’s . . . ah . . . why you moved here?” Ellen said aloud.

  The lucies—the other lucies, let’s be honest, she thought—laughed.

  “I ran out of gas!” Monica crowed. “Well, Tom left us after he lost his job and couldn’t find work, he wasn’t a bad man but he was weak, this was down in Simi Valley where we lived, and we lost the house, and Mother wanted to try and move in with her sister in San Jose but we just ran out of gas outside town. And this lady in a Land Rover pulled over, it was about sundown, and asked if we needed help. That was Adrienne. I thought it was so kind of her to put us up.”

  “Until she dropped by your room that night for a snack, maybe a little hubba-hubba too,” Jose said with a grin.

  “I thought it was all dreams at first. Nightmares. Everything was so strange. And it was kind, I still say. Just . . . there were other reasons, as well.” Coyly: “She says my blood smelled attractive.”

  Ellen sat slowly upright. “Wait a minute!” she said. “You’ve been here eight years?” Monica nodded.