A Taint in the Blood

by S. M. Stirling

  He groaned. “I can’t.”

  Her blue eyes sparkled. “I know, but teasing you is so much fun. When we’re together again, well, if you felt like punishing me for it . . . maybe in her form . . .”

  She laughed at his expression. “Now I’ve shocked you, darling! Hey, if I’m going to have a vampiric shapeshifter for my guy, I intend to take full advantage of it.”

  “I just may take you up on that.” Adrian grinned, and gave her a quick tweak that made her yelp and jump.

  Then he sobered. “But now we must hurry. I need to scout the area where the ceremony is to take place, and I need you with me.”

  “Why?” she said. “No problem, but . . . I’m not the fem-ninja type.”

  “Because your blood and mind are involved with any Wreaking she’s been doing lately. Shadowspawn call it sourcing.”

  “Sort of like me being fuel, right?”

  “Right, but there’s an element of . . . flavor involved, with repeated feedings. Now I need to see what Wreakings have been preset there. She would have done that before Hajime arrived—he’s not as . . . as subtle a user of the Power as she is.”

  She drew a deep breath. “OK, let’s get going. I’ll put on something more suitable.”

  She looked down at her filmy garment. “Suitable for something besides being ceremoniously ripped off me like the wrapper off a chocolate truffle, that is. Or used to tie me up. Or both. I knew from popular culture that being a vamp-victim got you great lingerie and fabulous hair—”

  Adrian snorted incredulous laughter at the dry humor. That’s my Ellie!

  “—but I run through these things pretty damned fast. It’s a shame; they’re handmade and really pretty.”

  She vanished for a moment, leaving him with a brief vision of stripping a silk peignoir off her that was arresting even with urgent business at hand. When she returned, it was in practical khakis.

  Though she looks enchanting in anything, he thought.

  “I’ll carry you to the ceremonial ground,” he said. At her surprise: “That will be much quicker on four feet than two. Be prepared. This is going to be, ah, startling.”

  “What will be startling?”

  “The form. Smilodon populator. Big cat. Very big.”

  Transformation took him.

  Eeek! Ellen thought, jumping back a little at the sparkling blur that didn’t last quite long enough to really see.

  Then aloud: “Oh, my!”

  The sabertooth looked up at her. Its eyes were on a level with her chest; she didn’t suppose it was more than six feet from nose to stumpy tail, not outlandishly more than a big lion—

  Which is plenty long enough!

  —but it was much thicker-built, giving an impression of something halfway between a cat and a bear in build, a hulking heavy-shouldered gracefulness on paws the size of dinner-plates. Art training had made her good at estimating volumes; it must weigh as much as a smallish horse or a medium grizzly. The great curved ivory daggers of its canines stretched below its lower jaw, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertip, and the tawny hide was spotted with darker circles, fading to a light cream under the throat-ruff and belly.

  “That’s . . . quite a critter, Adrian,” she said.

  She could smell it, too; not a bad scent, but hard and furry and dry, the breath slightly rank. Tentatively she put out a hand, running it along the long skull of the beast, over the short slightly bristly fur; it licked her hand with a rough tongue the size of a facecloth and gave a deep rumbling sound like a diesel engine trying to purr.

  No, it sounds like a sabertooth the size of a small horse, purring. It’s scary, but magnificent. Christ, no wonder our caveman ancestors worshipped the Shadowspawn!

  Her half-adopted orange tabby Just-a-Cat had been sleeping on top of an ebony étagère she used for art-print books. It came awake, gave a look of bug-eyed horror at its distant relative, and made a flying leap that took it out the sliding door without touching ground amid a squall of:

  “Eeerrrow!”

  She didn’t know if sabertooths could laugh, but Adrian obviously came close. Then the great fanged head butted at her and jerked over its own shoulder.

  How should I do this? she wondered.

  The sabertooth wasn’t as tall as a horse, even if it weighed in at the heavy end of the pony scale. The back wasn’t like a horse’s, either, and not just because it sloped down from the massive shoulders to the rump. When she touched the skin over its spine the bone was imperceptible under the roiling coils of muscle. The beast’s rumble grew a little louder; it crouched and butted her again, and she gulped.

  Didn’t he say once that it was hard not to . . . get lost in the beast?

  Ellen gulped again and straddled the great cat, lying forward with her hands sunk in the not-quite-mane around its neck and her toes locked—firmly, she hoped—in the narrower spot just ahead of the hips. The sabertooth stood and turned, pacing out into the night; she clutched harder at the rolling foot-foot-foot-foot pace that tried to pitch her from side to side. Then the padding quickened and the hindquarters bunched, and Ellen suppressed a startled eeep! as it leapt effortlessly to the top of the ten-foot wall that formed the outer wall of the estate gardens about the casa grande. Her weight didn’t seem to matter at all as it soared, a single instant of birdlike flight.

  The huge paws touched the stucco-covered stone with a slight dry scritch sound and a click of claws, and then they were in the air again. The landing was so soft that the thud sound was startling; no matter how well the pads and paws and legs cushioned it, better than half a ton was hitting the close-cut grass. The landing turned into a bound that carried them better than twenty feet, flowerbeds and trees rushing past in a silvery night-blur. Her hands and legs clutched convulsively at the hard hot warmth beneath her, and her breath came faster as the huge cat took the hillside in a smooth reverse-cascade of leaps.

  Past a great marble pool and fountain, soaring over a flowering hedge, past rows of cypresses beside a bridle path, an onrush like flight in a dream. At last they came to a Japanese-style garden, or the California version of one as conceived a century ago.

  Which is actually pretty authentic, she thought. Most of the gardeners in this state were Japanese then.

  The great cat reared a little, panting like a bellows as they came to the gateway with its swooping tiled roof and backdrop of tall black pines. The scent of them filled the cool night, spicy and almost incense-like. She slid to the ground and the figure was Adrian again, rising to his feet, naked and as lithely graceful as the beast he had been. His chest slowed, but he was still the slightest bit breathless as he said:

  “Those things were ambush hunters. No endurance.”

  “That was like flying!” Ellen said, distracted into delight for an instant.

  “No, flying is different . . . better. I will show you someday, Ellie.”

  Beyond the gate were two great stone Koma-inu, lionlike dogs from Japanese mythology. Ellen’s mouth quirked as she looked at them.

  “They’re supposed to keep away evil spirits,” she said.

  Adrian snorted dryly as he walked past them. “Apparently they don’t work,” he said.

  “Adrian!” He looked around, and she went on sharply: “You are not evil! And believe me, I now have a wide enough acquaintance with people in your family who are real-thing no-fucking-doubt-about-it evil to tell the difference!”

  He quirked a smile at her. “Perhaps you can convince me, someday.”

  Beyond the gate paths wound, lined now and then with Kasuga stone lanterns, unlit, like miniature shrines on stone pillars. The low hills on either side were covered in azaleas, dim beneath the moon in white and pink—more color than was usual in a Japanese gardening scheme, but this was California. Rocks lined the edge of a lake, the still water reflecting moonlight and starlight. A low waterfall made music, with a half-arch bridge across the stream below it, the reflection making a circle; the sides of the bridge were carved with pho
enix birds, destruction and rebirth.

  “Rebirth of what?” Ellen asked, low-voiced.

  “Knowing my family, I don’t think there’s much doubt as to that,” Adrian said grimly.

  They came to the shrine itself, stone and black-weathered beams; through it they could see the rock-garden, raked gravel and stones in their natural shapes. Slow-growing black bamboo surrounded the flagged enclosure. It soughed and rattled slightly with a breeze that ruffled the surface of the water; then that died away.

  “You know, Adrian,” she said slowly, “if your family could appreciate this, Shadowspawn and humans have more in common than you seem to think.”

  “Aesthetics, at least. Stand here, Ellie. And . . . I need a little of your blood.”

  She smiled at him. “Go ahead.”

  He took her hand and raised it to his lips. There was a slight sting, and when he held it out over the gravel a red drop welled from one fingertip to drop slowly to the ground.

  Adrian made a slight hissing sound as it struck. “Yes, Wreaking sourced from you. Let me see—”

  Ellen was silent while he paced the enclosure; occasionally he would pause and make a gesture with his hands held palm-down above the ground. Now and then he would speak—syllables that seemed to twist as she heard them, fading away before her mind could hold them.

  And it gives me a chance to look at the ol’ bod, she thought. Yeah, all other things being equal, the male form really does have a lot going for it. Particularly the narrow-waisted, slim-but-broad-shouldered, really taut but not bulky types with that focused look to the butt. Like for example my fellah here. Yup, girls just don’t basically compare.

  “Now that is very odd,” he said at last. “The basic protectives have been renewed, yes. Here they seem to be intended to nudge minds toward harmony and cooperation, as well. But the external wards . . . the warnings of hostile intent, the twisting of paths towards ruin and disaster . . . they have not been renewed at all. Still there, still strong if old-fashioned, but they are precisely as the Brotherhood records indicate. Very few modifications.”

  “That’s not in character for Adrienne,” Ellen said. “She likes to give these devil-may-care vibes, but she’s got a chess player’s mind. Careful and she thinks ahead.”

  Adrian nodded. “Still, I would not care to be a human approaching this place with hostile intention.”

  “What would happen?” Ellen said.

  “You would make noises no matter how careful you were. Your belt would snap, your equipment would break, weapons would misfire. Dogs would happen to catch your scent and bark. If you came in a group, you and your friends would quarrel with each other. And if there was the slightest chance of a heart attack or a stroke or a detached retina or a fall that twisted your ankle and then your head happened to hit a stone . . .”

  She shivered, and he went on:

  “But they are all directed outward. That is what I had to know.”

  He hesitated. “I am afraid I must become the beast again to take you back.”

  Ellen put her hands on her hips. “Why afraid?” she said.

  He blinked, taken aback. “Because . . . well, it’s a large predatory animal. Ellie, you don’t even like dogs!”

  “That’s dogs. Who said anything about cats?”

  His smile was unwilling. “You are a very brave person, Ellie.”

  “I hope so. But it isn’t courage. That sabertooth thing is beautiful. And that ride . . . if I weren’t scared of what’s going to happen tomorrow and the day after, I’d say that was just plain fun.”

  “I . . . well, it is sort of . . . bestial. An abandonment of myself. And . . . I thought you would find it repulsive, Ellie.”

  Now her smile grew into a grin. “Adrian, did you ever see Beauty and the Beast?”

  “You mean La Belle et la Bête by Cocteau? Yes, of course . . . though, frankly, it bites a bit close to the bone. I liked the ending, despite knowing better.”

  She nodded. “Yes, that’ll do. Though I had the Disney version in mind. What do you think of the ending? What went through your mind when you saw it?”

  “It’s Disney . . . so of course the ending is happy. Well, to be fair, the Cocteau isn’t much different. The story always gave me a little hope.”

  “I’ll tell you what I thought of it. Here I was, putting myself in Belle’s place . . . and inside I’m shouting at the end: What’s with this pansy prince? I want my Beast back!”

  This time he laughed aloud. “But, Ellie,” he said gently. “Mine is not an animated beast.”

  She shrugged. “Sure. If it was just a sabertooth . . . I’d be a bit nervous. But it’s got you inside it, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, certainly. But, Ellie, I am the most dangerous beast of all.”

  “Nah. You’ve got you inside you too, if you’ll pardon the grammar. What you are is strong, Adrian. I can deal with that. I like it, actually. Women generally do—like strong, dangerous-but-safe men, you know? Bad boys who aren’t really bad down deep. It’s one reason I fell for you in the first place.”

  His laugh had something of a groan in it. “Oh, please, please, tell me I am not Heathcliff!”

  “No, no . . . Mr. Rochester, maybe . . . though we don’t have to remove the hand or make you blind to make you safe. Your conscience is a much more effective set of controls!”

  “You flatter me,” Adrian said.

  “Hey, we’re engaged. It’s my job.”

  “And mine to see you safe,” he said, humor fading to grimness. “Come. We must get you home before anyone notices you are gone.”

  “It’s a house, not a home, but I know what you mean. Here, kitty, kitty!”

  His smile faded into the fanged grin of the sabertooth, like a Cheshire cat in reverse.

  Let’s make my brave words true, she thought, and swung herself across the great animal’s back. Be what you want to seem, as the man said.

  “Hi-yo Silver, away!”

  Lounging by the pool in the afternoon felt good after a swim and a late rising.

  In fact, I feel good generally, Ellen thought. Odd. Nothing’s changed, but I’m . . . hopeful. Why?

  Somehow she didn’t feel really curious about that either; the thought faded from her mind.

  There were a number of swimming pools in the grounds of the casa grande. This one was a rectangle of pale-veined Vermont marble with rounded ends, a hundred feet long and sixty wide. A fountain threw water high in the center, three stone basins stacked above each other on a central shaft. There were several pieces of statuary around it, done in the smooth French moderne style of the 1920s.

  They included a classical-themed Leda and the Swan that grew more disturbingly realistic the longer you looked at it. Unnervingly so, if you were a lucy, with Leda’s splay-legged position and the expression of hopeless horror on her face beneath the great rampant bird that gripped her with wings and beak. That made you think about the truth behind the myth, and the mocking joke behind the statue.

  Leila and Leon were playing in the shallow portion, like two lithe brown otters, with a nanny watching from the edge; Monica’s children were there too. The other end had a curving semicircular colonnade, two rows of stone pillars supporting a bronze trellis with wisteria growing woven through it, the purple-white-lavender bunches of blossom hanging overhead and scenting the air with a delicate, elusive scent amid the flickering shade. Adrienne and Dale and Michiko were resting on couches grouped around a low table, close enough for conversation, which was in some sneezing-clicking guttural language. Ellen suspected it was Apache, but couldn’t have been sure even if she’d been able to break the sounds down into separate words.

  “I’m glad Josh and Sophie are getting to know the Doña’s children,” Monica said to Ellen.

  The lucies were lying on loungers underneath the pergola, a little aside from their Shadowspawn.

  “You are?” Ellen said neutrally.

  “Oh, yes. By the time Leon and Leila are old enough to need luc
ies, Josh and Sophie will be ready for initiation,” Monica said happily.

  “Ah . . . well, that’s one career choice,” Ellen said neutrally.

  “Wouldn’t it be marvelous? Well, it all depends on what Leon and Leila want, of course. I’ve got such bright kids, I’m sure they’ll have a lot of alternatives. They won’t have any problems with college!”

  Dale’s lucy Kai was wearing nothing but a black bowler hat; the rest of them had bathing suits on, albeit topless for the women. She held up a bottle of lotion-cum-sunblock.

  “Anyone want a rubdown with this stuff?” she asked brightly.

  “No, thanks,” Monica said.

  Ellen and Peter and Jose shook their heads; Wayne Jackson didn’t notice the invitation. He was thinner than she remembered from San Francisco, and occasionally tears dripped from his eyes. The other lucies ignored him courteously.

  Or because it’s just too difficult to deal with it, Ellen thought grimly. It could be any of us, if Adrienne decided to destroy someone. Nobody talks about whatever happened to Jamal, either. Or maybe he’s destroying himself with guilt, too. Christ, I feel guilty enough, and I haven’t been helping plan the destruction of the world!

  “Hell, anyone want to give me a rubdown?” Kai inquired.

  “No, thanks,” Monica said again.

  Kai subsided and picked up a book of hentai manga; from a glimpse, it mostly involved tentacles and orifices. Ellen smiled a little to herself. Monica went on with a luxurious, but cautious, stretch:

  “By the way, Ellen, thanks for introducing Adrienne to that delicious silk whip thing.”

  “Ah . . .” Ellen said. “You’re welcome, I guess.”

  “I’ve always liked the smacking and spanking and smothering—well, I learned to get into that pretty quick after I came here—but I could never really enjoy being beaten with things before, however hard I tried. That riding crop just plain hurts. Adrienne chased me around with the silk whip last night after the first feeding; she used to use the riding crop for that. Those lovely silk thongs can give you a nice toasty glow, though.”

  “Glad you had a good time.”