A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  “Yes, implausibly long ago!” she said. “The habits you acquire in youth stick like glue, I find.”

  No wonder Adrian smokes! In a way, he’s the same generation as my grandparents.

  “That’s another reason we used to use foster parents a good deal,” Adrienne said. “To keep children from getting too out of period. Even so, when I was excited over something early in our acquaintance Jean-Charles gave me an odd look and said my French was splendid but sometimes he wondered if I’d learned it from Napoleon the Third.”

  Jules nodded. “We’re still working out how to deal with such things,” he said. “It is all too easy to become . . . lost in memories and in dreams.”

  “Do you have any elder brothers and sisters?” Ellen asked her Shadowspawn, intrigued for a moment.

  “Two. Jacques and Jeanne. They went to Chile with their mates as . . . missionaries, you might say, seventy years ago,” Julianne answered for her daughter. “They’re still there. Even still corporeal! Though they’ll transition soon, I’m sure.”

  Ellen shivered a little. Missionaries.

  Julianne held out her snifter. The blond young man rose and filled it from the decanter of Martell X.O., and brought Ellen one as well.

  “What do you think of the Getty’s repatriation policy?” he asked her.

  “Mark!” Julianne said, gently reproving.

  “We’ve heard these family stories so often, Julianne!” he said defensively.

  Ellen sipped. She’d never liked brandy before she met Adrian; if you were going to drink something concentrated and harsh, vodka went down easier. He’d enjoyed showing her the difference between liquor-store brandy and actual cognac . . .

  She closed her eyes for an instant and shoved the thought of his face smiling at her away, concentrating on the taste instead. This was as good as the type he favored, but different, heavier and smokier; a hint of dry fruit, and of almond and vanilla. It went down smoothly, but with a bite that warned it had to be taken seriously.

  I’ve got to remember not to drink to relax tension or suppress fear, she thought. It’s too tempting. It’s always been too tempting for me but now especially it’s too tempting. It’s bad enough the way Adrienne feeding on me blisses me out. I’m getting too psychologically dependent on that, too, not just physically; it’s the only time I’m not afraid.

  “Ah . . . I’m generally in favor of returning works that weren’t legitimately acquired, but I think they’ve got to draw the line somewhere,” Ellen said. “You can’t send everything back where it came from, just because the descendants don’t approve of many-times-great-granddad’s bargains!”

  I’m actually enjoying this, she thought, as that conversation went on.

  Mark Jensen knew what he was talking about; he wasn’t a professional, she thought, but he obviously cared deeply. Renata was mostly concerned with contemporary folk-art, but had something to say. The Brézés had seen artistic fashion change and change and change again.

  After a while Leila and Leon were brought in to visit with their grandparents; evidently midnight was a perfectly normal time for Shadowspawn children to start thinking about bed. Adrienne smiled benignly.

  “I’ll let you enjoy yourselves,” she said, and took Ellen’s hand. “Come, chérie. The evening is young, and our own personal carnival of the perverse is about to start.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Stop,Adrianthought/projected.

  Harvey did, and sank down with a slow smooth motion, soundless despite the twigs and last year’s leaves.

  So much for too old for this shit, Adrian thought.

  He was as quiet himself. The night buzzed and crickled with insects; it was a little rank with the scents of new spring growth. Ahead and miles downslope to the northeast the lights of Rancho Sangre were a glow through the darkness of early evening.

  The patrol he’d detected came into sight in a little clearing a hundred yards below, all going to one knee at the edge of the open space. The grass there was tall, still a little green with May; it was starred with rose and owl’s clover, columbine, lily of the valley and forget-menots, purple and yellow bush lupine and drifts of golden California poppies. The breeze blew from them to him, carrying the harsh scents of male sweat and gun-oil from the Gurkha mercenaries amid the sweet lingering fragrance of the flowers. Their rifles had argent rounds, the silver alloy a slight gritty-tingling sensation in the night.

  I’m glad I am not too proud to wear body-armor! Adrian thought.

  Two more were Tōkairin retainers in close-fitting black, including masks across their lower faces, with swords slung over their backs. The trickling menace of inlaid, glyph-wrought blades hummed past the sheaths. The black-clad men’s eyes needed no technology to see through the light spring night; they had the distinctive sharper, ranker body-scents of Shadowspawn.

  He could feel their attention fanning out. Automatically his mind pushed. Slightly, subtly, switching pathways to the ones where they missed/ignored/didn’t notice any evidence that something was amiss, which was the highest probability anyway.

  With them was a huge gray wolf. It blurred for an instant, sparkling with energies to Shadowspawn sight, then became a naked man on one knee, dark and lean and scarred, his beak-nosed brown face still raised to sample the air.

  I’m impressed, Adrian thought. I couldn’t tell he was night-walking except by deduction. And the way the soldiers are afraid of him. I can smell that. The other two are in-the-body.

  “Jirō, Kenta?” Dale Shadowblade asked softly, in the quiet conversational tones that carried least. “You catch anything?”

  The narrow gold-flecked dark eyes of Hajime’s clansmen scanned carefully. One hesitated for an instant, his hand going towards the sword-hilt that jutted over his left shoulder, then shook his head.

  “No. Though there are so many Wreakings soaked into the earth and rocks here I jump at my own shadow! Like kami, only real.”

  “Yeah, the Brézés have been busy. Let’s get the circuit complete. I gotta get back to town to meet Michiko and . . . a friend.”

  Another silent blur, and the wolf turned its long muzzle. Adrian let his own eyelids drift down as the yellow gaze seemed to meet his. Then it turned and bounded away. The men followed, scarcely less silent or less swift. After a long moment there was a quiet whoosh of breath from behind him.

  “Now, that was just a mite nerve-racking,” Harvey said quietly.

  “You could say so. Or that my luck is very strong,” Adrian grinned, with an expression halfway between relief and sheer exhilaration.

  Danger too can be addictive. I had forgotten . . .

  They waited another half-hour. Patience was a hunter’s virtue . . . or a sniper’s, if there was a difference. Then they began their step-at-a-time progress. Adrian paused with his foot in the air.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wreaking.”

  Old, old and strong. Keyed into the volcanic rock, like the structure of its atoms, but at a far finer level.

  Trace the linkages. If-this-then . . .

  “Step on that and you break your leg,” he murmured. “And trap it in that crack, so that any attempt to free yourself causes more damage. If you are sentient at all. Unless it recognizes the Brézé blood.”

  “DNA.”

  “Whatever. Let me convince it . . .”

  He drew a small sharp knife and nicked one finger with the tip. The scent filled his nose, but it would fade quickly; he willed the tiny wound to dry. A drop fell, and soaked into the porous stones beneath. He felt a response, and a glyph showed for a moment where the blood had struck.

  “Ai-siiii.”

  Congruence/recognition/fitness. With it came a ghost of the mind that had set the trap, many years ago, a snicker of gloating anticipation of pain and the long dying of someone crippled and helpless.

  “My grandfather’s idea of a joke,” Adrian said, letting out a shaky breath.

  “This is like walkin’ through a garden of carnivorous plants,”
Harvey grumbled slightly.

  He was in the same splotched dark charcoal-gray outdoors clothes—better than black at night. A heavy case on his back carried the knocked-down rifle and more than half their gear, but there was only a light coat of moisture on the older man’s face.

  “Tired of the sweaty manly stuff yet, old friend?” Adrian asked under his breath.

  “Before we began,” Harvey said, as they moved slowly on, stopping every few yards.

  He had a small electronic device in his hand, and a thin wire leading to an earpiece. A grunt from him froze them both.

  “OK, got a blip. Your sister ain’t relyin’ on hex-marks only.”

  “How progressive of her,” Adrian observed dryly.

  “There. Lemme . . . cracking the code . . . Sheila comes through again . . .”

  Harvey indicated a live-oak, its roots writhing into the fractured stone of the hillside like a slow-motion strangling.

  “Visual and audio pickup. Now foxed, you can relax. Sorta. A little.”

  Beyond the rock grew steeper. A rattlesnake stirred at his passing; its dim reptile brain obeyed the prompting of instinct and probability, threading away deeper into its hole. Then a deep cleft appeared.

  “Bingo. Here’s that observation post. Good ol’ Brotherhood, thinking ahead.”

  “To opportunities that never occur,” Adrian said dryly. “Let’s get set up.”

  “And have ourselves an MRE,” Harvey said, as they ducked into the sheltering cave. “Yum!”

  His face was darkened with camouflage paint, but his grin was white at Adrian’s expression.

  “We made it.”

  “For now,” Adrian said sourly. “There are three days yet until the . . . festivities. My sister may order another sweep.”

  “Or come ’round herself.”

  Adrian sighed as he set down his heavy pack. “I doubt it. She has much to occupy her, besides her usual . . . diversions.”

  “My parents were quite taken with you,” Adrienne told her.

  Then she pivoted and struck.

  Crack.

  “Uh! ” Ellen gasped.

  Crack.

  The nine tight-braided thongs of the silk whip hissed through the air and slapped against her lower back. It melded into the aching glow that stretched from her shoulders to her thighs after the slow, deliberate lashing. The pain was much more than a sting, considerably less than agony. That lurked, though, if the damage didn’t stop. Already her sweat stung like fire in one place where the skin had been broken a little.

  And I can’t make it stop.

  Some corner of her mind thought that, as she slumped against the padded cuffs that held her arms spread above her head. Vision blurred with tears and sweat; the smell of her own was heavy in her nostrils, and the subtly ranker scent of Adrienne’s, under the flowers and clean linen of the casa grande’s main bedroom. The chain-rack was suspended a few yards from the foot of the great bed, running up through a pulley on a rafter.

  There’s no safe word here.

  “That’s because I’m not a tame tiger, Ellen,” Adrienne’s voice laughed in her ear. “I don’t jump through hoops when the whip cracks. You do. That’s the way this circus works.”

  A hand traveled down her back, cool and delicate, fingers lingering at the base of the spine.

  “Have you ever thought of a tattoo here, chérie? A phoenix, perhaps, or a monarch butterfly, or some Celtic knotwork to emphasize these little dimples and the curve . . .”

  “A tramp stamp?” she said incredulously, shocked half out of her daze.

  “Well, you are such a pain-slut, Ellen. Yes, I definitely think it would work. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  The hand clenched hard on one buttock. Ellen arched again with a strangled grunt.

  “Hurts good, doesn’t it?” the taunting voice said.

  “Yes.”

  Which is true. God, how I hate you! That’s true too. What are you doing—

  “Unhh! No! ”

  “Delightfully dual-purpose.”

  “No, please! ”

  “No, what?” she laughed. “Is that: No, stop! Or: No! Don’t stop!”

  Ellen let everything but the flood of sensation drop out of her mind. When it receded she forced her legs to lift her again. Adrienne stood before her, and looped the whip around her neck to draw her close. The gold-flecked eyes stared into hers after the kiss, and her skin twitched at the sensation of her mind being riffled through like a collection of pages. The silk slid free and was tossed aside.

  “Shall I feed?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said, bending her head back to bare her neck. “Oh, please, yes.”

  Lips and tongue touched her throat, caressed the vein. Then:

  “As the sadist—which I am—said to the masochist—which you are—no. Not yet.”

  “Oh, God, how I hate you,” she whimpered

  The thought resounded in her head with the iron ring of certainty, beneath the burning need.

  Adrienne walked over to a table—eighteenth-century French, stone on cast-bronze legs—and wiped her hands on a hot damp towel scented with lemon and tossed it into a hamper. Then she poured herself a glass of a pale yellow wine and turned, leaning with a bare buttock braced against the smooth stone, eyes sparkling and taut nude body sheening with sweat. Her gaze fixed for a second, and the tumblers inside the cuffs opened with a click as the dance of stress and molecules aligned precisely. Ellen fell to the linen cloth that covered the carpet and tried to make her limbs work under her own command again.

  “I’m going to feed later, so don’t worry. Crawl on over. Start with the toes,” Adrienne said, extending a foot.

  Perfectly nice toes, Ellen thought, as she did. Nothing wrong with kissing clean pretty toes, in the abstract. Nice high-arched feet. Nice ankles, for that matter. Very trim calves. Muscles like a ballerina. Thighs, OK, skin like satin, a little salty with sweat . . .

  “You’re stronger than you seem, Ellen,” Adrienne said thoughtfully, some time later, stroking her hair, her voice slowing as her breath did. “You’re enjoying parts of this a great deal, aren’t you?”

  You know I am. Though I’d much rather it was Adrian and it was my idea. Sort of odd to be talking mentally with your nose pressed into someone’s navel and your arms around their ass, but what the hell.

  “It’s not that you don’t really hurt,” Adrienne said. “You do, but the reactions to it go off in all sorts of intriguing tangents inside your head. I wouldn’t have thought that a masochist would be so much fun for a real sadist, but it’s actually quite a delightful romp in a wholesome Girl Scout sort of way.”

  Well, it isn’t as if it was consensual, Ellen pointed out. I’d bolt in a minute if I had a chance and have nightmares about you for years. You must be enjoying my fear and sense of boundary violation and the emotional contortions I have to go through to keep from getting really incoherently angry at being treated like a toy. I’m not enjoying any of those one little bit. I just . . . suspend them.

  “Yes, that’s all extremely nice. And the deeply buried feelings that you deserve to be treated like this, which you continually deny; that’s exquisite. Like a hint of red chili in a creamy sauce. We can build on that together as our relationship deepens.”

  Ellen gritted her teeth as the other laughed with delighted cruelty at the uncontrollable surge of anger/guilt/pain.

  Though there’s actually a sort of erotic frisson from being completely honest with someone I hate so much, too, she thought. It’s a bit like talking dirty but more so. And knowing you’re reading my mind and sensations is like being naked twice. Naked inside, not just skin. I’m starting to see what you meant about devouring me and it’s scarier than anything else.

  “And there are the images you keep having of driving a stake through my heart. I’ve seen that one quite often and it’s very entertaining. How did Adrian like this sort of thing? The ritual, so to speak.”

  He was . . . conflicted. Afraid to let him
self go. I understand that better now.

  Adrienne laughed again and sipped. “Long-denied desires are hard to contain, which is one reason I don’t deny them in the first place. Stand up.”

  She put the glass to the other’s lips; it was sweet and cold and had a fugitive taste of flowers in Ellen’s mouth, clearing the salt and musk. Then a quick flick poured the last of the wine in a cold stream along Ellen’s collarbones. Adrienne began to lick up the droplets; Ellen shivered at the slight gentle contacts, running a hand up the back of the other’s neck.

  “Mmmm,” she sighed, hugged the Shadowspawn’s head against her breasts and thought:

  That’s nice, but oh, God, stop dicking around and bite me, will you! It’s been a week! But not there! Please!

  “In due time. Your blood would be too sweet right now; a savory—some garlic butter, so to say—will make it taste better. Perhaps it’s time to move on to a little horror? Ah, now that sent some real fear through the system!”

  She stood back and gestured to the huge bed. Ellen got into it and lay back, the cool cotton grateful against the heated glow of her skin. Adrienne lay down too, arranged her head on the pillow and then crossed her arms on her breast so that each hand rested on the opposite shoulder. Her eyes closed and she let out a long breath.

  That’s the horror? Ellen thought, holding back a flood of relief. We go to sleep? I need the feeding, but maybe I could sleep first . . .

  “Over heeeeere! ” Adrienne’s voice called.

  “Shit! ”

  Ellen leapt convulsively and scrabbled backward against the carved African ebony of the headboard. Adrienne was back by the table, arms folded and grinning. And she was lying beside Ellen . . .

  Oh, shit. She’s hardly breathing. That’s not sleep. It’s trance. She’s night-walking. That’s her aeth-something over there.

  “My aetheric body. Exactly, ma douce. And that little shriek and the way your heart went pit-a-pat and the emergency clench of those superb buttocks was worth the effort in itself.”

  She looked at her tranced physical self, and made a little punching gesture upward with both fists along with a mmmmph of wordless satisfaction: