A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  “Oh,” he said quietly. “Well, whatever happens, it’s not your fault, Ellen.”

  His mouth quirked. “Compared to direct Power jolts in your pain centers or sensitive parts, it’s probably not bad. See you later.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Oh, Jesus wept, now what?” Harvey asked, panting as they toiled up the last, almost vertical stretch of the dune. “You auditionin’ for a remake of Rocky now, boy?”

  “I’ve gotten soft,” Adrian said.

  He pushed himself to the top and stopped, feeling the burn in his thighs, and the way the cool wind off the Pacific flushed the wet warmth of his soaked T-shirt to instant chill. He paused for a moment, testing his leg for any twinges from the healed wound. There was nothing but the clean strain of hard effort. Then he pulled the practice blades out of his rucksack.

  “Not so much in body, as in mind. I have to be a warrior again if I’m to free Ellen and kill my sister.”

  “I haven’t gotten soft. I’ve just gotten goddamned old, Adrian! Hold up!”

  Seabirds wheeled overhead, or skittered long-legged through the low waves below. The air smelled wet, salt, cold, and faintly of the wrack along the high-tide line.

  Harvey joined him, bending over and resting his hands on his knees for a moment to suck in more air.

  “Y’know, boy,” he said, taking the wooden blade. “If this were a movie instead of real life, we could have a great montage right now. It’d be more economical.”

  “Montage of what?”

  “You know, little short clips of us doin’ all these sweaty manly warrior things, and then they skip to the part where we’re all toughened up for the fighting. Saves the waste of good killing and bikini time in an action movie.”

  Unwillingly, Adrian grinned at him. “Instead we have to do all the sweaty, manly warrior things.”

  “You do. Ol’ buddy, you’re going in close. I’m going to be hanging back with my fancy sniper rifle. Nothin’ wrong with my trigger-finger yet, as opposed to my reflexes, my knees and my wind. I leave that personal-style stuff with knives to you youngsters.”

  Adrian snorted. “I’m fifty myself.”

  “Yeah, you’re fifty years old chronologically and physiologically maybe twenty-eight. You-um purebred Shadowspawn prince. Me-um lowly human ape scum. I’ve seen quite a bit more than fifty years and I feel every physio-fuckin’-logical one of ’em.”

  “You have a guarantee you won’t be face-to-face with Dale Shadowblade?”

  Harvey straightened and looked out over the blue-gray Pacific waters and the endless ripples of white foam that stretched eastward.

  “No, but I can guarantee you I’ll be dead if I do. Couldn’t have handled him by my own self on my best day, even in a silver suit. Less I took him by complete surprise.”

  “I’d like to know what he’s doing now,” Adrian said grimly.

  “Well, I bet it ain’t running up a sand dune.”

  “And we need to know. We need a great deal more detailed information.”

  “Anything from Ellen?”

  “I haven’t dared risk a high-link with her lately, not for more than a few moments. The multiple feedings and . . . closeness . . . mean that Adrienne is deeper and deeper into her mind. I have to be cautious.”

  He smiled, and Harvey looked at him dubiously.

  “But there’s another way, and it’ll be easier than running up and down dunes. I did manage to tell Ellen about that. She agreed.”

  Softly: “I would never set a compulsion on her, unless she agreed.” Then Adrian’s smile grew into a grin. “And now, my old . . . old . . . old friend . . .”

  He crouched and held the knife in the ready position. Harvey groaned and took his in a thumb-on-hilt dagger grip, his other hand stiffened into a blade across his chest. They began to circle.

  “Age and treachery beat youth and strength,” Harvey grumbled.

  Adrian lunged, his feet sending up spurts of sand. Harvey countered with a backhand slash to the face; he dodged and dove to the side with a shoulder roll that brought him back upright out of reach.

  “But I have both age’s treachery and youth’s strength,” Adrian taunted genially.

  Harvey said: “Just makes you want to—”

  Harvey launched himself forward, pivoting on his hands and kicking out. One boot thudded painfully into Adrian’s thigh, and he fought not to topple. The edge sliced upward in a curve that whipped the edge across his abdomen.

  “—cry, don’t it?”

  “I’m going for a drive before I go home,” Ellen said.

  “God, how can you have any energy left?” one of Monica’s tennis-club friends said. “After beating us all into the ground on the court.”

  They sat around a table not far from Rancho Sangre’s civic center pool. The early-May sunshine was warm, this Sunday afternoon, another perfect golden Californian day. All had tall frosty glasses of fresh lemonade or iced tea or soda before them—or in one or two cases, something stronger. The place was more like a private spa than the usual bare-bones public facilities towns had; there was a pleasant clubhouse with a café, a bright well-equipped gym and a big circular swimming pool with a fountain in the center, besides tennis courts and much else. The yelling children splashing in the water made a pleasant burring background to conversation, and the smell of chlorine mingled with cut grass and lilac blooming along a wall.

  “Ellen’s improving our games,” Monica said proudly. “She beat me to flinders back in February, but now it’s May and she just had me running like a mad thing!”

  The other women ranged from their twenties through late middle-age, and initially hadn’t seemed much different from any other clutch of small-town, middle-class Californians. One was head of the town library; another principal of the high school; there was a pediatrician, a dentist and the town clerk, and several teachers. The housewives had an architect, a surveyor, the winery and dairy factory managers and others of like ilk for husbands. Dr. Duggan was there, along with her older daughter and several of the others’ offspring, one of whom was attending Cal Poly and had given Ellen a serious game.

  Let’s see . . . most of them have these little black-sun-and-trident pendants or bracelets somewhere visible; maybe some keep theirs tucked away, like I do. And apart from that everything’s normal . . . until suddenly it isn’t.

  “Monica,” one of the matrons said. “Do you know if the Doña is going to have an initiation ceremony soon?”

  Like that, Ellen thought. The simple physical well-being of hard exercise and a hot shower faded. Then it isn’t normal, like that.

  “Yeah,” a honey-blond teenager named Sherry added.

  She was the coed’s younger sister and about sixteen, very pretty in a wholesome way, but the type a student from India she’d known at NYU had said was called a tung admi where he came from, a tight lady. In American terms she had no more than ten years before a lifetime battle with the waistline started. Sherry went on with a note of complaint:

  “Like, I’m months overdue, we’ve taken all the classes and practiced and watched the videos and everything. I want my pendant before we take the SATs!”

  Like that. It’s the normal adolescent lust to grow up, I can remember that pretty vividly, but . . .

  The freckle-faced youngster looked at Monica. “I . . . ah, Ms. Darton, is getting bitten as cool as some people say? A really big rush?”

  “Not the first time, dear,” Monica said, to her visible disappointment.

  “I told you, Sherry,” the college girl said. “But you’d rather listen to junior year geeks who don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Sherry looked mutinous, and Monica went on gently:

  “It doesn’t hurt, only a little sting, but you’re just . . . very calm, the first few feedings. After that, yes, it starts to feel extremely nice, but that’ll only happen if you become a lucy, and that’s not likely.”

  Calm, as in, you can’t move while you watch them drink you
r blood, Ellen thought. Of course, before the feeding you feel scared, or in the case of my first time agonizing pain and bewilderment and terror and then afterwards you feel horrified. Or maybe not, if you grew up with the idea.

  “What’s involved in this initiation?” she asked aloud. “I’ve only been here a couple of months, and I’m a lucy and a new one at that, so . . .”

  The college girl answered: “Oh, there’s this ceremony, with your family and friends. Everyone sort of dresses up—”

  “Black robes with hoods,” her mother said. “That’s traditional. It’s held up at the casa grande. There’s a big room just for initiations. Like a chapel. In a way.”

  “—and there’s chanting and kneeling and stuff like that, and you pledge yourself to the Brézés and the Shadowspawn.”

  “Our blood and souls are thine, thou who will live and rule when we are long dust,” her mother said in a reminiscent tone, obviously quoting from memory. “Take, drink. With our blood and lives and bodies we worship thee.”

  “Then the candidate goes up—”

  “Naked! ” the younger girl said breathlessly, her eyes glittering.

  “—well, yeah,” her older sister said, with affected worldliness. “You wear this white robe, and then you stand up and let it slip off and go up in front of everyone. Which is so totally hideous if you’re overweight and you’ve got a big wobbly butt or something like poor Madison did on my night. I thought she was going to die of embarrassment right there, or cry, or hurl. Or if you’re a guy and little like Bob Tyler. So watch out, Sherry.”

  “I am not fat! I’ve got a twenty-five waist!” Sherry said hotly.

  “Didn’t say you were. But think about that next time you see a milk shake. At least you can do something about it, which is more than poor Bob could.”

  Turning back to Ellen: “And you lie on this stone altar thing—it’s got padding—and you put your arms around the Doña while she bites your neck and feeds on you while everyone watches. She’s naked too, and God, what a body. Like Monica said, Sherry, it just makes you feel . . . calm. Not much blood, a sip from each, and then you get your pendant and a black robe and everyone gives you a hug and a kiss on both cheeks and you sing.”

  Her mother crooned a verse:

  “Spawn of Shadows

  Rule our nighted hearts—”

  The elder daughter nodded. “Then there’s a big party. It’s a bit like a sorority or fraternity pledge.”

  Sorority Sisters from . . . Heeeellll, Ellen thought, keeping an interested smile on her face. Oh, Christ!

  “Or like a first communion, in other places,” someone else said helpfully. “Or a bar mitzvah.”

  An older woman tinkled the ice in her drink; she was a well-preserved sixty-something, neat in her tennis whites and billed cap, with blue-white hair and a fresh pink face and eyes like an ancient snake.

  “Tame, tame, tame. Now, in my day, when Don Jules and Doña Julianne were heads of the family here, if you were pretty you were likely to get deflowered as well as bled, right there on the altar in front of everyone. Don Jules had my brother, Henry, on our initiation night, and then me right after. My mother fainted dead away watching. But Mother wasn’t born here, of course.”

  “Oh, wow! ” Sherry said, her face wavering between fascination and dread. “That would be so totally extreme.”

  “Yes,” the older woman said softly, swirling her drink again and looking into the distance.

  Then, in a normal tone: “That changed my perspective on things, let me tell you. Of course, most girls were virgins at sixteen, in my day. Are you, Sherry?”

  The girl’s mother glowered at her as Sherry blushed crimson. Monica put in:

  “Doña Adrienne doesn’t do that very often. Though,” she added thoughtfully, “her parents are visiting, so maybe they’ll give you an initiation to remember, Sherry.”

  “Well, I’m off,” Ellen said brightly, looking at her watch.

  “Would you like to catch a movie later?” Monica said. “I’m taking Josh and Sophie to the new Disney, the Snow White remake. We finally got 3-D here.”

  “I’ve, ah, got a heavy date tonight,” Ellen said. “Up at the casa. I’m supposed to meet the Doña’s parents, and then, ah, you know. I was hoping I could drop by your place to make sure the dress is exactly right. She said look nice.”

  And she said don’t plan on anything energetic tomorrow, too. Which means she’s got something . . . whimsical planned. Oh, Jesus.

  “Oh, of course,” Monica said. “Have fun on your drive! See you about seven, then.”

  Everyone else waved or called goodbyes. Ellen went out through the stucco and wrought-iron entrance to the civic center, got into her Volt and let her head drop onto the steering wheel while she struggled to keep her breath even. The knowledge that she couldn’t just wake up and be back in a sane world was a cold, thick lump in her stomach. She craved a cigarette and a couple of stiff vodka-and-orange-juice mixes.

  I’m craving being bitten, too, she thought. It’s been everyone else but me for the last six days and I need it. My skin’s itching and I’m starting to resent the others. I want it and I’m scared of the other stuff she’s going to do to me and I still want it.

  “I’ve got to get out of this place!” she said to herself, resisting the urge to beat her forehead rhythmically on the padded surface of the wheel. “Got to, got to, got to!”

  The temptation to just point the car in any direction but west and accelerate was overwhelming. She fought it down and began taking deep breaths: in until the chest creaked, hold for the count of three, slowly exhale, repeat. It had seemed silly when she’d first started it after her therapist talked her into yoga classes years ago, but it did help. When she was sure her hands wouldn’t shake anymore, she turned the key. The quiet hum of the electric motor sounded as she pulled out into the street; a glance at the gauge showed nine-tenths charge, enough to get all the way to Paso Robles and most of the way back before the gasoline engine kicked in.

  Warm air poured in as she drove; the outskirts of town passed quickly, with its Rancho Sangre Sagrado elevation 666 pop. 3964 sign. Then a stretch of countryside mostly in vines and orchards and olive groves with the odd horse-ranch, rising towards hills westward where the grass was turning gold between tongues of forest, more open to the east. And then the outskirts of Paso Robles itself, with a scatter of outlet stores and fast food . . .

  It looks so normal I could cry, she thought. I even love the sight of some boarded-up stores.

  She parked in a side street near the town center; she was wearing a pants-and-blouse ensemble with a worked-leather belt and a sun hat, casual-chic. The man at the podium-desk of the Craftsman restaurant greeted her with a smile.

  “Mr. Ledbetter will be waiting,” she said.

  Why did I say that? Who is Ledbetter? What am I doing here—

  Adrian rose from the table as she entered the starkly elegant room. For a moment time and memory dropped away; then they came crashing back into her mind, like a surf-wave that crumbles a sand-castle on the beach. Tears started from her eyes, but she blinked them away in her eagerness to see.

  He was smiling at her, but there was something grave in the expression as well. Only a little taller than her, but with a hard, slender masculinity; after not seeing him for three months she was struck again by his presence, the way he dominated any room he was in. His face was tanned dark, so that the golden flecks in his eyes stood out more vividly, and there were sun-highlights in his raven hair.

  He looked more stark than he had in Santa Fe, but with some of the distance gone from his expression, less of the remoteness that had frustrated her. She started towards him and extended her hands; they were trembling slightly.

  Adrian caught them in his, and kissed each one gently.

  “Ma belle Ellie,” he said softly. “It has been so very long.”

  They flowed together.

  Harvey cleared his throat

  Damn, Adrian
thought.

  He broke the kiss, pulling himself away from the touch and taste and the lovely tormenting scent that was like a memory of peach and lilac and apple blossom.

  “Ellen, my old friend Harvey Ledbetter. Sort of a mentor in my youth, an unofficial elder brother always, brother-in-arms for many years, and my comrade in this business.”

  Ellen extended a hand. Adrian found himself surprised at how much he wanted these two to like each other. The Texan smiled as he shook, an expression that transformed his homely lined face.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Tarnowski. Glad to see what Adrian thought was worth fighting for. Can’t say as I disagree, offhand.”

  She laughed. “I won’t say any friend of Adrian’s a friend of mine,” she said. “But any really good friend of Adrian who risks his life for Adrian and for me is a friend of mine.”

  Harvey shrugged. “Adrian and I have saved each other’s butts so often we lost count years ago,” he said.

  “Harv, could you give us ten minutes?”

  The older man hesitated, then said: “Sure.”

  “Do we have time?” Ellen said.

  They sat, each holding the other’s hands across the table. Hers were warm and slender and strong in his, still with the thumb-callus a tennis player developed on the right hand.

  “We will make time,” Adrian said decisively. Then: “How much I wish we were just . . . enjoying a dinner together.”

  “Me too. Oh, yeah.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m nervous . . . I know this is short notice, Ellie. But we are at war, and that says hurry.”

  He freed one hand to reach into the pocket of his jacket, and brought out a small velvet case. She looked at him, and he nodded. She took it and snapped it open; within was a plain band of platinum and gold, with a small flawless diamond. His heart tensed with fear as she sat motionless for most of a minute. Then she looked up, with tears jewelling her eyelashes.