A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  “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!” Softly: “I want to do this because I want to, with someone I really like. Someone I love.”

  The hand turned insistent, and his mouth came down on hers. She scrabbled at the buttons on his shirt . . .

  Minutes later she linked her fingers behind his neck.

  “Adrian?” she said breathlessly.

  “Yes?”

  “I haven’t suddenly become made of porcelain. I like to feel how strong you are. Come on!”

  He snarled then; she felt a brief surge of fear, and then it turned to a savage excitement. Her long legs wrapped around him as he drove forward, lifting her in an arch off the sheepskins until only her neck and shoulders touched . . .

  “So,” she said much later.

  He lay against her; one hard arm was across her stomach, and his breath tickled on her collarbone, like butterflies in the golden glow. There was still a little tension in him; she could feel it in the muscles of his back as she stroked it, like hard living rubber under the sweat-slick skin.

  OK, she thought, with a catch in her breath and a flutter beneath the breastbone. Here goes.

  She slid down a little more and slipped an arm behind his head; he stirred and murmured drowsily. Then she arched her neck up and began to pull him down towards the base of her throat.

  He growled, a low rippling sound in his chest. Her heart beat faster as his hand gripped her shoulder, hard almost to the point of pain. The lips touched the taut skin—

  “No!” It was half a shout as he came fully awake. “What are you doing?”

  She caught his face in her hands to keep him from scrabbling too far away.

  “Well, that’s an invitation too, lover,” she said firmly.

  He reared back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Yes, I do. I’m talking about helping you with what you need. I’m your lover, right? That’s what lovers do. And, buster, I expect to enjoy it too. That’s part of the package as well.”

  “You want me to drink your blood?”

  “Yeah. Exactly. I want you to drink my blood. Not more than I can spare, of course!”

  He quivered. “I’ve spent my life fighting not to—”

  “You’ve been fighting not to take blood. That’s wrong. That’s like rape. Now that I know about it, the way you fought it makes me love you more.”

  He panted, then seemed to come to self-control. “Then how can you ask me to give up the fight?”

  “I’m not. I would never try to sabotage what you’ve done.”

  She took a deep breath herself. “I’m . . . a little scared here, myself, Adrian. But . . . I’m asking you to drink some of my blood. It’ll make me feel very good too. That’s like making love, as far as I can see.”

  “You’re . . . addicted—”

  “Not right now. I got a fix night before this as far as the goddamned drug in Shadowspawn spit goes. This is about you and me.”

  Softly. “Come on, Adrian. This is your mind. I’m not physically here. We’re safe, right? I’ve thought about this.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you! If I drink here, it’ll feel exactly the same as reality for both of us . . . until we wake up, at least. How could I stop myself when we’re back together in the real world?”

  “That’s just it. If it’s just the same, you can test whether you can stop. And . . . even if you can’t, here, this time, I . . . won’t be angry with you. We’ll just know that it’s not an option. But I think you can.”

  “Nothing can stop me, if I start,” he said desolately.

  “Yes. You can stop you. So I can stop you. I’d say, No, can’t spare any right now and you’d stop and go back to the horrible stuff from the blood bank.”

  His gaze turned from its inward lock, and a smile warmed them without quite reaching his lips.

  “You trust me that much?” he said quietly.

  “I trust you that way with other things. You’re a lot stronger than I am physically, and I always knew that, so I trusted you every time I got into bed with you, or even was alone with you. Trusted you not to hurt me; trusted you not to make me do anything I really didn’t want to. I couldn’t physically stop you; I had to rely on your being a . . . good person. How’s this different?”

  “I . . . the need is very strong,” he said softly. “And I’m not a good person. I just try to act like one.”

  “Adrian, that’s what a good person is; someone who controls what they do. You’re what you do, not what you think about doing. And even your crazy sister can stop feeding on me when she decides to, and she doesn’t care about me at all, not really. I trust you with my life.”

  “You would have to,” he said somberly. “I . . . don’t . . . Who could be worthy of that?”

  “Adrian, you’ve got the Power. If we’re going to live together, the only way I can do it is knowing you won’t use it on me against my will. But you can’t stop being what you are.”

  “Ellie, more than anything, I don’t w
ant to hurt you.”

  “I know. I really believe that now. That’s why we should try this. But not if you say no. It’s got to be both of us.”

  He turned on his stomach and put his face in his hands; she could feel his back shake with muffled sobs as she stroked it.

  “It’s all right, Adrian. Whatever you decide, it’s all right.”

  She cuddled against him. Gradually the tremors ceased. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he turned over to face her, unselfconsciously.

  I haven’t often seen a man who can do that, she thought.

  He regarded her levelly, the gold flecks in his irises glinting a little. “You are sure?”

  “Yes. Well, I’m feeling fluttery and breathing quickly and my heart’s racing, but yeah, I’ve decided I want to try it. Bite me, for God’s sake. That’s an order.”

  She brought their faces together. “I need to do this with someone I love, too.”

  One arm went under her shoulders. She let her head fall back against his biceps and arched her neck again. Then she put her arms around his shoulders, hand behind head.

  “Do it.”

  The mouth touched her throat, and she felt the familiar motion of the lips and tongue arranging the angle.

  The feeding bite is verra precise.

  For a single instant a stab of cold terror went through her, like ice water in her chest and stomach, and something inside her screamed:

  What . . . are . . . you . . . doing! Nonononono!

  Then the teeth, hard against the skin, and a faint growl, rumbling, deeper than Adrienne’s. The sting of the cut, as the incisors moved in their exact lateral slice. Instantly the fear vanished. Warmth surged through her, deeper as she made no resistance. The blood flowed strongly under the hard insistent suction of the feeding, but she could move a little, though lights swam in front of her eyes. Her free hand stroked his throat, feeling the swallows. Peace was utter and complete, a fulfillment that needed nothing more.

  “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “Yes. Take it. Take what you need.” She waited for a time that stretched. Then:

  “That’s enough, lover,” she whispered.

  Nothing changed, except that his grip on her shoulder tightened. She tugged at his head and pushed at his jaw—feebly, the lightest touch against the ruthless predator’s strength she felt. Her mind forced her lips to move:

  “That’s enough. Adrian, stop. Stop! ”

  One more long moment . . . and his mouth broke away from her neck with a small wet sound, and he rolled over onto his back, shuddering. The cut itched fiercely for a moment, then almost vanished; she was just barely aware of it.

  Ellen gave an exultant wiggle. “Oh, my,” she murmured, and raised herself on one elbow to look down at him.

  His eyes were closed; there was a slight smile on his lips, where beads of her blood glistened darker than rubies in the firelight.

  “Your mind was like . . . moonlight making a path on water,” he said.

  “You say the nicest things,” she chuckled, and leaned down to kiss him.

  The blood tasted of salt and metal, like the sea but with a hint of organic muskiness.

  “I wish I could taste that the way you do,” she said, with her hands on his shoulders.

  “I think . . . here . . . you can. Let me try.”

  His hand buried itself in her tangled gold hair and held their foreheads together. There was a tickling behind her eyes . . .

  “Oh! ” she said.

  Like golden light poured down the throat until the tongue tingled with it, like the taste of song, like the thing that wine tried and tried and failed to be, like an infant’s memory of mother’s milk, and caramel and spices and the first sip of darkly rich hot chocolate on a winter’s day.

  “Oh, God, no wonder you want it!” she blurted.

  His eyes opened. “Now you know.”

  “Now we know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “So, any contact?”

  “Yes,” Adrian said.

  He finished dressing and leaned against the musty-sour smelling wall of the motel room and hissed as he cautiously stretched the healing leg. The Power could speed the process, but he still needed to make sure there weren’t adhesions if he was going to recover full use. The pain was deep but not shrill; he monitored it carefully.

  Pain is just a sensation. Let it go by without paying too much attention. It’s paying attention to pain that hurts.

  “OK, that was informative,” Harvey said dryly.

  Adrian grinned. “I had a nice long chat with Ellen.”

  And fortunately woke up first, so I could attend to the . . . evidence.

  “She’s . . . nothing worse has happened to her. Except that Adrienne forced her to spend a day shopping together. Adrienne was buying her clothes and seeing to her hairdo.”

  Harvey’s worn face scrunched. “Hell, that’s a new one, and I thought I was something of an expert on Shadowspawn brutality. ’Course, it would only be hell for me to be forced to spend a day looking at clothes ’n’ shoes and shit. Lots of females like that stuff.”

  “How perceptive. You were divorced three times, Harv. I wonder why? At least I like shopping, within reason.”

  “They all left you too!”

  “Yes, but that was because I wasn’t human, not because I was but did it badly like you, my old. To a woman, forced shopping is probably a subtle but horrible form of psychosexual dominance behavior.”

  “I think I liked you better depressive,” Harvey said dryly. “Why so cheerful?”

  “Amid the dresses and pantyhose, Adrienne had lunch with Michiko . . . and Dale Shadowblade.”

  “Oooohhh, shit.” The humor died out of Harvey’s eyes. “That is one mean motherfucker, even in the crowd he runs with. This is good news?”

  “Hell, yes, Harv. Because of what they all discussed. Ellen could not get all the details; much of the conversation was in languages she did not know. But Adrienne is using the credit she got with Hajime to get him to have his . . . not precisely a birthday party. A celebration called Prayer for Long Life.”

  Harvey snorted and finished pulling on his leather jacket. “Interestin’, on account of he’s been dead since I was about ten, and I’m no spring prairie chicken.”

  “They’ve adapted it to take Second Birth into account. And Adrienne is trying to convince him to have it at her estate.”

  Harvey’s blue eyes went blank with calculation. “Oh-ho. Slip you in amid the inevitable screw-ups? Me as backup? Get Ellen out?”

  “And kill Adrienne.” Adrian nodded grimly. “No point without that. We may have to run. Hajime could come after us in New Mexico easily enough. But it is an opportunity.”

  “I can see that would make a man happy. Maybe too happy. I’ll plug into the Shadowspawn rumor mill. Too easy to get details, and it’s a trap. Hard, but they’re there, probably genuine.”

  Adrian’s grin grew wider. “And Ellen wants to come back to me,” he said. “Now that we can be . . . honest with each other. I never really thought that would be possible.”

  Harvey whistled softly between his teeth. “I was hopin’ things would turn out OK for you two. But I wasn’t holding my breath, exactly.”

  “Neither was I. But Ellen was . . . quite convincing.”

  “Got mentally laid, did you? That does tend to cheer a man up.”

  Adrian made a rude gesture, as much as he could with one knee clasped to his chest.

  “I have never been loved . . . loved for myself—you understand? At most, only for the mask I wore, and that for a little while. This is . . . marvelous.”

  The older man hesitated. “You realize, you’re her lifeline right now? I’m not saying she’s not honest, but . . .”

  “. . . but her feelings might change once she is no longer in Adrienne’s power. Yes, that is possible, but I don’t think it’s likely. And that, my friend, makes me feel very good indeed. Even more anxious for Ellen, but . . . good.”

&nb
sp; He finished the exercises and walked over to his bed. His nose wrinkled slightly; the sheets hadn’t been used before they arrived, but they’d been musty. Now they smelled stale with his pain-sweat and faint traces from the bandaged wounds. He still sat. This whole place smelled bad.

  “And I was thinking also of larger matters.”

  “Uh-oh. Sex and philosophy. That’s a dangerous duo.”

  “Salop. No, I meant what you said to Sheila the other day. The Power is here to stay. And while it’s good that Ellie trusts me, humans cannot live on our individual forbearance. We must learn how to . . . to untangle that kludge evolution handed us. The blood and pain and death, they are accidents. With the Power itself, and enough knowledge, we could make it the common inheritance of humanity.”

  “Well, yeah. Except that almost all the people with a lot of the Power are your unesteemed sister’s sort. Can you see her working as a receptionist?”

  “We could be . . . doctors. Therapists. Even police.”

  “Christ, Adrian, you gonna start singin’ kumbaya next?”

  “Harvey, we have switched roles in a week.” Adrian laughed. “But seriously, a lot of it is the way we are raised. You raised me from my early teens, and I didn’t turn out so very bad, eh?”

  “Yeah. Now I’m playing pessimist. OK, first order of business, let’s sort out the files on the Brézé properties and figure which one is going to be the site of this monster jamboree. Ellen said it was an all-day trip on a motorcycle?”

  Adrian nodded. “Denn die Todten reiten schnell.”

  “She’s not dead, but she does drive damn quick,” Harvey said, completing the bilingual pun. “Speed demons, both of you. Still, it was all on two-lanes . . . OK, here’s the possibilities . . .”

  This stuff does make riding a motorcycle more comfortable, Ellen thought.

  She was in a suit of tight leathers, canary-yellow with red trim, as they rumbled through the streets of Rancho Sangre at sunset. The wheels of the machine ground fallen cherry-blossoms under their treads. Cooking smells drifted from homes and restaurants; it was dinnertime, in the early-February gloaming.