A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  “Will yes do? Even if I can’t keep the ring right now?”

  He felt his grin grow. “It is an abominable cliché, but you have made me a very happy man.”

  Harvey arrived back from his walk around the block at the same time as the wine; Roederer Brut L’Ermitage, Tête de Cuvée. Not technically champagne—it came from Mendocino—but more than close enough, and good champagne at that. The sommelier popped the cork and poured the tall flutes; Ellen extended hers towards him, and he to her. They sipped; tastes like baked apples and buttery crust, apricot and delicate vanilla bean flowed across his tongue with the tickle of the bubbles.

  Then all three of them clicked their glasses together. “To better luck than I ever had,” Harvey said. “Three divorces,” he added to Ellen.

  Adrian cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yes, but you were always drunk when you proposed, Harv. Marry inebriated, repent at leisure.”

  “I see you are good friends,” she said. “Men don’t insult each other that way unless they are.”

  Adrian spread his hands. “And now to dinner and business,” he said. “Barbarism, but there you are. I want to proceed to the wedding and the honeymoon as soon as humanly . . . in a way . . . possible.”

  Ellen’s face went grim. “Me too. Christ, that place . . . it really gets to me. Especially when I can’t remember this.”

  She frowned. “Though Adrienne says sometimes . . . not that she can tell anything specific . . . but that I don’t seem as crushed as I should be.”

  Harvey sucked air through his teeth, and Adrian nodded.

  “You don’t consciously remember, but your emotional attitudes do. She thinks we have only a base-link, and would be hoping that your torment would slide over to me. We could not keep up this pretense forever.”

  “Honey,” Ellen said, “I so do not want to think of the terms forever and Adrienne in the same sentence! The more so as it’s literally possible.”

  Just then the appetizers arrived. “I ordered for you,” Adrian said to them both. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Adrian, you always picked something interesting,” Ellen said. She grinned: “Now I know it’s because you have superhuman taste.”

  He shrugged; you had to be careful about that too, if you could taste things others couldn’t. The waiter set his burden before them; little plates of braised Berkshire pork belly with caramelized apples and celery root, herb-roasted meatballs with buttermilk potato puree and green peppercorns, and crisp calamari . . .

  “Now, tell us of everything you have observed,” Adrian said, nibbling on one of the meatballs. “Everything. However insignificant.”

  She did; she didn’t have a trained agent’s skills, but she was observant and intelligent, and so new to the world of the ancient conflict that she saw details others might have missed. Adrian felt himself hiss a little when he heard his own mother and father had arrived; his mouth twisted a little at the news of the mysterious baby.

  “The parents are dead,” he said. “If my mother and father flew in, they would be ravenous for blood when they assumed human form again. Transformation drains the Power. And it is a . . . courtesy to provide a kill for a guest, among Shadowspawn.”

  “Ew,” Ellen said; she stopped chewing for a moment, then resumed doggedly. “I haven’t met them yet. I’m supposed to go up to the casa grande for that tonight.”

  “Be very careful.”

  “Hey, I’m careful all the time!” Then she stopped and looked at both of them. “You aren’t taking notes?”

  “That would be bad tradecraft,” Harvey said, popping one of the calamari into his mouth. “Especially for this. You can remember detail if you know how. Mnemonic training’s traditional in the Brotherhood, too.”

  “What is the Brotherhood?” Ellen asked.

  “You’ve heard of witchfinders?” Harvey said.

  “Didn’t . . . they sort of torture innocent old women and that sort of thing?”

  Harvey’s mouth crooked. “Enemy propaganda . . . no, a lot of them really did do that sort of thing. But some of them were after the real evil magicians.”

  Adrian nodded. “Like my unesteemed ancestors. The Brézés were leaders of the Order of the Black Dawn for centuries.”

  Ellen nodded sharply. “That thing everyone in Rancho Sangre wears—” She pulled out her pendant.

  “That is their symbol. Was theirs, and is now the sigil of the Council of Shadows. The Order were . . . Satanists originally, or for a very long time. Black magicians, loup-garou. They could use the Power. A little, weakly—”

  “About like I can,” Harvey said cheerfully.

  Adrian nodded. “And as the Order set out to find its counterparts, so the Brotherhood did, until both were worldwide. Unfortunately the Order was much, much stronger by then.”

  “We don’t have time for general background,” Harvey warned.

  Adrian dipped his head. “Now, Ellie, here is what I will be doing, as much as you need to know. I will be attending the . . . Prayer for Long Life. Invitations were sent widely. One to a recently deceased Shadowspawn.”

  “Wilbur Peterson.” Harvey took up the tale.

  He produced a file from the attaché case. “This is a case where written records are necessary.”

  He slid a photograph across the table. It showed a man in his thirties, dressed in an archaic white-tail jacket and black bow tie, smiling with a cocktail glass in his hand. There was a vague resemblance to Adrian, and the hand on the stem had three fingers of equal length, but his hair was lighter.

  “He died . . . body-death . . . in 1960,” Harvey said. “By then he’d already sorta retired up to a little country place he had in Sonoma. Got more and more reclusive, then got rid of most of his renfields, then stopped talkin’ to other Shadowspawn except to warn ’em off. ’Bout two months ago, he sat up all night with a case of bubbly, and toasted the sun.”

  Ellen looked a question at Adrian, and he answered: “Unlike the sign of the cross, silver works, and the aetheric form is just as vulnerable to sunlight as the legends say.”

  “Tanning lamps?” she said hopefully.

  “Not powerful enough and they don’t have the full range of particles. Annoying, merely. Direct sunlight for more than a few seconds is always deadly.”

  “Why did this man . . . this Shadowspawn . . . stay up and die, then? When he could live forever?”

  Adrian shrugged. “Why do men commit suicide? Probably he had grown tired of his un-life. The weight of grief and loss becomes too much.”

  “Adrienne said that’s why so many of the really old ones hate the modern world and want to destroy it completely,” Ellen said.

  Adrian smiled grimly. “She is not as different as she thinks, Ellie. She wants to stop it now.”

  “So you’ll pretend to be this guy?”

  “And set up your rescue; the Brotherhood are helping us. My own birth-body will be nearby, with Harvey guarding it. A night-walker whose body still lives cannot be told from a postcorporeal.”

  For an instant Ellen rested her forehead on her fingertips, and her elbows on the table.

  “I wish . . . we could just go.”

  Adrian shook his head. “She would be able to haunt your dreams, and to know where you were, even if we buried ourselves in a silver-lined cave.”

  He saw her stiffen, and then scrabble in her purse. “Here.”

  It was an ordinary flash memory card of the type Office Depot and a hundred others sold, a cheap twenty-four gigabyte model.

  “There’s another lucy, a man named Peter Boase, we’re friends,” she said quickly. “He was a physicist at Los Alamos. This Council of Shadows sent Adrienne to kill him.”

  Harvey raised one eyebrow. “Adrienne’s a bit high powered for that sort of routine duty. They must have taken him serious. So why ain’t he dead, instead of providin’ the lady with refreshments and frisky recreation?”

  “Adrienne has him working for her. I remember, a while ago, he was talking ab
out why the Power can’t grasp silver. I didn’t understand a word of it, and neither did Adrienne.”

  Adrian took the chip. “Now that is very interesting,” he said.

  “He was, ah, occupied up at the casa grande again yesterday, and sort of stayed in bed today, so I dropped in and copied everything.”

  Adrian hissed. “Dangerous, so dangerous. The very desire to conceal something stands out like a flag to the Power!”

  “I’m very much aware she can read my mind, Adrian. It’s like being naked in public all the time.”

  He flushed and made a gesture of apology. Harvey glanced at the younger man. “Not just a pretty face,” he said slowly. “To think that clear with a Wreakin’ messing up your head . . . not easy.”

  “Harvey, take this,” Adrian said, tapping the chip with one finger. “The Brotherhood must examine it.”

  “How does it feel?” Harvey asked. “Got any baggage weighing its paths?”

  Adrian gripped it in one hand. The other made three precise motions over it, and he murmured under his breath:

  “Or-ok-sszee, m’naiii-t—”

  After a moment he opened his eyes again. “Now, that is extremely strange,” he said.

  “Not important?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Neither important nor unimportant. It is as if there are no potentials at all attached to this. As if its world-line vanishes rather than spraying out into a fan of possibilities.”

  “Hmmm. That is odd,” Harvey said.

  Then Adrian turned back to Ellen. “I am so proud of you!” he said. “Your mind is supple. It bends, but like good steel it does not break and springs back when the pressure is removed.”

  She shrugged. “I’m proud of myself, right now!”

  The main courses arrived. Harvey looked at the food and grinned. “Black truffle agnolotti, chanterelles, Loch Duart salmon, brown butter béarnaise . . . that’s your idea of a working dinner?”

  To Ellen: “You probably know what a food snob this boy is.” “Oh, yes,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “I remember once it was late and I suggested we stop at Blake’s Lottaburger, and he just looked at me. Like I had some skin disease or something. Then he insisted on driving an extra twelve miles to Bobcat Bites.”

  Adrian laughed. “I have been eating worse than that, often enough lately,” he said defensively. “You shouldn’t take anything this salop says seriously. He is the one who taught me to cook—and well, too.”

  The desserts came out, and for a moment they could relax and be happy. Then he reached into his jacket and held up a piece of paper. Her eyes fell on the glyph and fixed, unwinking. Then her fork went back to her whiskey-raisin carrot cake.

  “Oh, God, Adrian, I wish you were here,” she murmured softly, as they rose and left.

  “Name of a black dog!” Adrian swore. “I have to leave her like that . . . I cannot even pay for the whole dinner!”

  “Now that’s petty. And if you’re feelin’ helpless . . . well, it’s a lot worse for her, ol’ buddy.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “How do I look?” Ellen said.

  Monica made a turning motion. “Wonderful, actually. I wish I had your figure.”

  “You do,” Ellen said, turning around slowly.

  The shoes were low-heeled, but it was a while since she’d worn anything but sneakers and sandals and flats. The coral below-the-knee dress had a princess seam bodice and flared skirt, under an open-fronted turquoise jacket with a neckline gathered into the band. She went on:

  “Pretty much exactly my figure. You could wear this with only a little alteration.”

  “No, I used to have it. You’re . . . thirty-five, twenty-four, thirty-five?”

  “Just about.”

  “Add an inch or so all ’round for me. And I’m a little shorter than you. Maybe I should start running every morning too.”

  “An inch isn’t a real difference, and you’re certainly welcome to join Peter and me!”

  “I think you both look pretty,” Joshua said.

  Ellen smiled at him; at ten-going-on-eleven he was just after the age when boys find women totally uninteresting as such, but well before actual reflexive lust snaps in, and he looked at her with an almost detached critique. His sister, Sophie, was simply entranced by the dress, taking in the details over and over again. They were both in their pajamas—rabbits on hers, some sort of tentacled thing on his—which fit in with the well-kept but very slightly worn look the living-room had, the inevitable result of two active children in an ordinary-sized house for years.

  “You’re going to meet the Doña’s parents,” Sophie said. “I wish I could meet them. They’re probably really cool.”

  They’re mass murderers, Ellen thought. I’ve been perfectly glad to put this off for a while. But no point in scaring a kid.

  The door opened, and Adrienne walked in, dramatic in a classic black dress with platinum and sapphires on throat and wrists. Both the children stood politely; she smiled at them, nodded to Monica, then raised a brow at Ellen.

  “My, Jean-Charles did not labor in vain! Impressive! Well, nearly time to go. I thought we’d stroll up. My parents are eager to meet you, now that they’re well settled in with their things.”

  Suddenly Joshua spoke. “Ma’am?”

  “Yes, Josh?”

  “Do . . . you drink my mom’s blood? Is that what her being your lucy means?”

  Monica started and flushed. “Joshua! ”

  Adrienne chuckled and made a soothing gesture. “You can’t avoid rumors in a renfield town, Monica, and they’re getting to the age when little people hear things. Better they hear from us than in the school-yard at recess.”

  She turned to Joshua, bending a little so that their faces were level.

  “Yes, that’s part of what being my lucy means. I’m a Shadowspawn . . . you’ve heard that name?”

  “Like . . . like vampires? With superpowers?”

  “Vampires are just a story. Very silly stories. Shadowspawn are for real. We aren’t catching, like a cold or the flu; we’re born that way. Superpowers . . . well, we can do many things your type of people can’t.”

  She sat on the sofa and folded a piece of paper there into an origami bird, holding it out on her palm when she finished. Then she hummed . . . and the wings of the bird began to vibrate to the same rhythm. She slowly lowered the hand, and the bird stayed suspended, hovering. Then it moved, circling and swooping around the children. Sophie gave an exclamation of awed delight as it paused before her face, and Joshua’s mouth fell open slightly as it circled his head before it flew back to the table, stopped and hovered, then settled gently down.

  “It’s called the Power, Josh, and it’s . . . magic, really. That’s why we Shadowspawn rule the whole world, as I do here in Rancho Sangre. And to use the Power, we need to drink blood.”

  He swallowed, and visibly gathered himself, his face flushed with determination.

  “Does . . . does it hurt her when you drink the blood?”

  “No,” Adrienne said easily. “I only take a little at a time from her, and that doesn’t hurt. It’s fun for both of us.”

  He was silent, but visibly unconvinced. She sighed and patted the sofa cushion to her right.

  “Monica, I think they’re old enough. Come here.”

  Monica hesitated, then sat beside her and cleared her throat.

  “Come here, Josh, Sophie,” she said, with a creditable effort at calm. “Stand right here where you can see things.”

  They did; Sophie clutched at her brother’s hand, her face a little pale, blinking rapidly.

  “Now watch closely, and you’ll see it’s not anything bad,” Adrienne said.

  Ellen flushed herself, with embarrassment. I’d feel even more weird if I turned around or went out, she thought, and tried to will herself invisible. And, God, I want the bite myself right now. Want it! Want it!

  The children gasped as lips peeled back from Adrienne’s teeth in a way human equ
ipment couldn’t quite do. Monica sighed, slid her arms around the Shadowspawn and leaned across her lap, turning her head and arching her neck with her eyes closed. Sophie gave a little cry and then put a hand to her mouth as Adrienne’s head moved in the precise predatory grace of the feeding bite. Monica sighed again, a longer sound, and stroked the back of the Shadowspawn’s neck, her face soft with pleasure.

  The children relaxed as their mother straightened up a few seconds later and smiled.

  “See?” she said, her voice slightly dreamy. “Just this little nick.”

  She pulled a Kleenex from the box by the couch and touched it to her neck; the small incision had already clotted when she took it away and went on:

  “And it feels nice while she drinks from me, really. It’s . . . natural. Like the way flowers make nectar for hummingbirds. It’s what we human people are for.”

  Sophie looked calmer and nodded. Joshua hesitated again, then said:

  “Ma’am? Sometimes when we come back from Gran’s, Mom . . . looks like she hurts.”

  A little Tabasco sauce in the Bloody Mary tonight, Monica, Ellen thought grimly.

  “Ah,” Adrienne said. She paused, looking up a little in thought, then went on to him:

  “That’s because we play together in other ways, too, and sometimes we have so much fun we play a bit rough. You play soccer, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Doña,” he said.

  “Well, sometimes that gets rough, eh? Someone gets their knee skinned or a bruise. Sometimes they even cry. But it’s all fun, hein?”

  A dubious nod.

  “It’s a bit like that. You’re really not old enough to understand about those things yet. Now, you and your sister come here. Stand with your heads together. That’s right . . .”

  Her hands came up and cupped their heads, thumb at the corner of the eye and little finger behind their skulls. Her voice dropped to a murmur as she brought her face close to theirs.

  “It’s time for little children to be sleepy. You’re sleepy, aren’t you?”