A Taint in the Blood Read online

  Then how old is she? How old is Adrian, for God’s sake?

  She took another bite of the brownie.

  Maybe these would be better with hash, she thought. Oh, Christ . . .

  “Me, I was born here, went to school here, graduated Sangre High here,” Jose said. “Theresa, you met her, she travels with the Doña? She’s my mother’s cousin, but she went away to Cal Poly for a while—she’s got most of the brains in the family and I got all the charm. We’ve been here since before the Brézés came—”

  “1862,” Monica filled in helpfully. “That was Don Justin. He was from France. I’ve been doing a little local historical pamphlet for the library. I work there as a volunteer.”

  “—yeah, we were vaqueros and all that good sh . . . stuff, before they bought the Rancho. Hell, the Indio part of us has been here forever . My uncle was a lucy here for a while on the lane; I figure with any luck it’ll be a couple of years for me; then I get a pat on the fanny and told to go get a girl and make some babies to work for the next generation. Meantime I work on the cars and stuff uphill, when I’m not, um, busy.”

  He grinned. “Hey, you know, some of the girls, they sort of think it’s cool for a guy to be a lucy for the Doña. Think you pick up stuff.”

  His smile died for a moment and he took another swig of the beer.

  “And no money worries making your stomach twist up so you shake every month. And then there’s the travel,” Monica went on. “I’ve been to, oh, London and Shanghai and Paris and Rome and Cairo and everywhere. On that wonderful plane.”

  Taken along for snackies, Ellen thought. For those midnight cravings when room service is over and you can’t go out.

  “I did my graduate degree at MIT. I was at the National Lab in Los Alamos when I started getting some anomalous results,” Peter said.

  He grinned ruefully. “And I wouldn’t stop trying to get people interested, no matter how heavy the hints were. They sent Adrienne in to kill me with a nice little perfectly genuine heart attack or stroke or getting hit by a truck, since she was in the neighborhood on personal business—they’re informal about things like that, I’m told. But she decided to give me another option instead. You bet I said yes! Actually, I’ve done some more work here, for her. She can get me all the computer time I need and I’m mostly a theoretician.”

  “Do you have any outside interests, Ellen?” Monica asked brightly. “I got married right out of high school, myself. More coffee?”

  “Thanks. I, um, BA in Art History from NYU. Worked in a gallery in Santa Fe. I was . . . involved with Adrian. Adrienne’s brother. She . . . took me away.”

  Another ringing silence. Monica coughed into her fist and pushed the plate of brownies over.

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty to do. There are just infinite amounts of art up the hill. And they send some down to the high school and the civic center, now and then, too. Exhibitions.”

  Bet they don’t tell them it’s all genuine, Ellen thought. Or . . . it’s a renfield town. Maybe they know that too.

  “I’m sure you’ll be happy here,” Monica said. She sighed. “Jamal—he’s from LA—isn’t fitting in well. I’ve tried to be friendly and help him, honest, but . . .”

  “Don’t think he’ll last long,” Jose said bluntly. “Man, you can see it in his eyes! And he screams a lot.”

  “Don’t we all!” Monica said lightly; then her smile became almost a simper for an instant. “Why, sometimes, I’m hoarse for days, when things get, you know, a little wild with Adrienne.”

  “No, he screams when he’s alone sometimes too. Give you odds, the Doña’s going to . . . remove him from here, know what I mean?”

  “Well, maybe it’s just a phase he’s going through. I remember my first few weeks here, I cried a lot, before I realized how lucky I was. Just sobbed and sobbed and oozed like a puddle. I was, like, so silly!”

  Getting really creeped out now, Ellen thought. She’s got odd body language. Look at the way she fidgets and pats her hair. Like a smoker who can’t . . . oh. The bite’s addictive. Addictive as nicotine, and Adrienne’s been away. I’m feeling nervous myself. Is that just because I’ve got really good reason to be nervous, or . . .

  “Hey, there’s pain in life.” Jose shrugged. “A man’s got to deal, unless he’s a . . .” He glanced at Monica and amended what he’d probably been going to say into a form less blunt. “A sissy.”

  “Besides,” Monica said. “It’s not always that bad. Sometimes . . . it’s just nice and fun or fun-scary, doing what she wants, and then you cuddle and the feeding . . . it’s almost like nursing. You can feel how you’re helping this need.”

  Ellen sipped at her coffee again, remembering Adrienne’s face on the plane, laughing with blood on her teeth and chin. Hearing her say: I may kill you someday, slowly and cruelly and beautifully.

  “And she says that then, those times, my blood tastes like warm milk and cookies before you go to bed.”

  Creeping out getting closer to total now.

  Jose looked out the window as he finished his beer. Peter spoke gently, but his tone was dry:

  “It’s not a tame tiger, you know, Monica, even if it purrs sometimes. Usually, there’s plenty of screaming involved.”

  “Oh, Peter, you’re such a complainer! That’s not always all bad either. It can be sort of . . . exciting, once you’re used to it. And when it’s, well, very wild and you feel so . . . sometimes then she touches me, you know, there, and does that extra-special thing with her mind only she can do. And that feels so good!”

  Oh, icky-poo yuk, total creeped-outness achieved. A thought: that thing in the restaurant was with her kissing my knuckles. I wonder if it were . . . could Adrian do . . . Stop that, Ellen!

  Monica’s BlackBerry chimed. The tune had words:

  “See my eyes so gold

  I could stare for a thousand years—”

  She opened it and said: “Yes? Oh, Doña Adrienne! Yes, of course.”

  For a moment she closed her eyes and whispered: “Thank God!”

  Then: “Shall I make dinner?” A giggle. “Just me? At seven? I’ll see you then!”

  A brilliant smile at all of them. “Speak of the devil!”

  She keyed another number. “Mom? Oh, hi, Mom, I need you to pick up Josh and Sophie from the Judo and dance classes and take them overnight. Yes, I’ve got company coming. I don’t know if I’ll be up to bringing them home tomorrow, no. It depends on, you know, how wild things get. Call me in the afternoon. OK? Love you too, Mom! Bye!”

  She left with a smile and a wave. Jose washed out his beer bottle and left it upside down in the drainer.

  “Well, I’m going to go visit my folks,” he said. “It was really nice meeting you, Ellen. You have any trouble with the car, the plumbing, just let me know. The guys from up the hill are on call, but I’m on hand! We usually have a potluck BBQ on Sunday. It’s my turn next.”

  He left; Peter sat in companionable silence for a moment. Ellen drank the last of the coffee, looked down and realized she’d also eaten the last of the brownies without even noticing, which wasn’t like her.

  “That was David Bowie,” she said eventually. “On the ringtone. But aren’t the words to that song See my eyes so green? I’ve heard it a couple of times. Giselle . . . my boss at the gallery . . . likes him.”

  “The Doña had him cut a special version for her,” Peter said.

  Silence fell for another few moments. At last:

  “Monica . . .” she said. “Monica’s completely insane, isn’t she?”

  Peter shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as excessively well adjusted. She really is as nice as she seems; the Susie Homemaker thing isn’t put on, either. And her four-cheese lasagna is to die for.”

  He grinned. “Though sometimes I feel I should become a vegetarian. It would be appropriate, somehow . . .”

  Then he did an alarmingly realistic “moooooooo!”

  Ellen laughed, despite the crawling sensation bet
ween her shoulder blades.

  “It does give you more sympathy for their position, doesn’t it? God, I feel bloated. I don’t generally eat as a displacement activity, but this has been a rough couple of days. Forty-eight hours ago, my only problem was figuring out how to tell my boyfriend it was over with us and worrying about how he’d react. Is there any place you can run, around here? I usually do three miles a day minimum.”

  “There are some great trails in the hills, if you don’t mind steep.”

  “Hey, I’m from New Mexico too!”

  “Meet you in half an hour, then?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The two killers snarled as they spread out in the big sauna and advanced, lips pulled back to show the wide white gape of their teeth. The air was rank with the scent of their aggression. Adrian answered with a snarl of his own, one that turned into a full-throated racking scream. The wordless challenge-cry of the king predator:

  Mine! Mine the land, the herds, the blood, the mates! Mine!

  It checked them for the merest fraction of a second. He could feel their intent narrow again, focused like the edge of their knives; they were Shadowspawn, and powerful. Not as powerful as he, but there were two of them and the silver-inlaid, glyph-warded knives were deadly, annulling luck, canceling the Power’s ability to heal the wounds they made. Adrian knew a single instant of irony; that was the same sort of weapon he’d learned to use when he was the Brotherhood’s fosterling. The two sides of the ancient struggle were more closely linked than either would admit.

  Then his intent was as pure as theirs. One came in, lunging leopard-fast up the stairlike seats, sweat gleaming across the bright patterns printed into his skin. The knife ripped upward towards belly and genitals. Adrian swayed his hips aside, fluid and sure, and lashed out with the ball of his foot as he pivoted on the other. The man rode it, flinging up one arm to take the impact and tumbling down the wood-sheathed tile of the benches, coming to his feet and shaking his head at the base.

  His companion was already attacking, the knife flashing in a blurring X-figure of slashes before him. Some remote part of his mind spoke in Harvey’s voice; memory held a tinge of sunlight filtering through the boards of a barn somewhere in the Texas hill country too, and the sweaty feel of a practice-hilt in his hand.

  If it’s a knife-fight, accept that you’re going to get cut and cut bad. Just make sure the other mook’s worse-off.

  Adrian lunged into the other’s attack. That broke his rhythm for the merest second; he’d been counting on the unarmed man retreating. Silver-veined steel slashed down his deflecting forearm and into his thigh, like a razor of sun-hot fire.

  Pain! Painpainpainpain—

  Blood-scent, his own, rank and terrible; the knife-arm slipped free of his grip and whipped back for the stab up under the short-ribs. For an instant they were locked chest-to-chest, and Adrian’s other hand flashed up and clamped on the back of the knife-man’s head with fingers like iron rods.

  “Sh’tzeeeez ak-ot! ” he spat, while their faces were close as lovers’.

  Mhabrogast commanded the mind; the Power flowed out of him. The man’s galvanic reaction sent him to the floor in a twitching, writhing, heel-drumming fit, and hurled Adrian back. A thin keening sound came out of him, endlessly. Adrian snatched up the knife where it had fallen; more pain lanced up his right arm, without the shielding glove. The other blade-man halted his rush and poised in a wary guard.

  Then he smiled thinly. Adrian’s leg buckled under him. The blood was flowing too fast, and he couldn’t spare the focus to clamp the vessels from within. On one knee he kept the blade pointed out, swaying as gray gathered around the edges of his vision. Cold seemed to be blowing around him, despite the dry heat of the sauna—

  “Hey, asshole!” a gravelly voice said cheerfully.

  The tattooed Shadowspawn turned in a blur of speed. The massive bummpf! of Harvey’s coach gun seemed to flow into the motion, and the knife-man jerked backward as the soft slug struck his face just above the nose and smashed open his skull with a dull wet cracking sound. Pinkish-white-gray tissue and blood spattered on the tiles and mats. Harvey took another step forward and brought the other barrel to bear on the head of the convulsing figure on the floor.

  Bummpf!

  “Good Shadowspawn,” he said with satisfaction, breaking open the weapon’s mechanism and slipping in two more shells. “Good ’n’ dead. Dead-dead, too, not just body-dead.”

  Adrian let the savage focus slip away from his mind. Harvey caught him as he buckled; even the burn of silver in the leather jacket was distant. He felt himself laid down, and the towels turned into tourniquets.

  “Let’s let the Council cover things up, ol’ buddy,” he heard, as if from another room or another year. “Got to get you to a doc.”

  Hands clamped on his wounded arm and thigh. The pain was there, but didn’t matter.

  “And let’s see if I can Wreak a little, here, partner, before we move you.”

  “Ellen,” Adrian whispered.

  Then he screamed, as Power flowed into the open wounds.

  The welcome wagon hadn’t tried to unpack her personal possessions. Ellen’s bags rested on the king-sized bed. It was made up with fresh sheets, and the walk-in closets and the drawers of a tall rubbed-oak armoire held the sort of thing Monica had mentioned, clothing that could be bought off the shelf on short notice. The room had a half-empty feel anyway, no knickknacks or pictures on the walls. The window opened onto the small interior yard between the house and the casa grande’s perimeter wall; it let in a sweet scent of cut grass.

  She’d packed the bags to a quick command of Take what you can’t replace with money, and evidently her subconscious had been functioning. All she remembered from the time was a blur of terror, but they were full of a jumble of things like Mr. Wabbit—loved into shapelessness when she was small—and her family photographs and other mementoes. She hesitated; taking any of them out would be like admitting she was living here. Then she defiantly put Mr. Wabbit on the shelf over the head of the bed.

  “There. Keep an eye on things, you wascally wabbit!”

  She dressed in sweats with a sports bra beneath and a headband and a pair of very good running high-tops, and started stretching outside the house. The Lane was very quiet; Jamal had finished his routine with the weights and was sitting on the bench. He stared expressionlessly at her, made no response to her wave and then went inside.

  Peter showed up; his gear was well-worn. The bruises and sore spots made her wince a little and go slowly at the limbering-up motions; he waited patiently.

  “Ummm . . . Jamal really isn’t friendly, is he?”

  Peter sighed. “I’ve had exactly one sentence from him since he arrived last September. From LA, I think.”

  “What was that?”

  “I’m nobody’s bitch, you faggot, so fuck off.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Yes.” A hesitation. “I usually sort of resent that; I’m not gay, I’m just small, for Christ’s sake! But . . . it’s hard to feel hostile to someone in his position. And I have this horrible feeling that he replaced me at the bottom of the list.”

  “The list?”

  “The one she’d kill if she felt in the mood for that. The one she would miss least afterwards. Don’t mention that to the others, by the way. I just violated the Lucy Code.”

  Ellen winced. “Double ouch. Let’s run, shall we?”

  He nodded, relief on his face: “How tough do you want it?”

  “Not too-too, in new shoes—though these feel like suede gloves for the feet. And I’m still feeling a bit rocky in spots.”

  “I usually run in the mornings, when I can. Care to join me?” He held up a hand. “I’m not hitting on you. Not that you’re not attractive, but . . . that sort of thing is not really practical for any of us here.”

  “Why do men always apologize for not hitting on you all the time including the grossly inappropriate ones?” Ellen asked, with a wry quirk t
o one corner of her mouth. “It’s like sorry for not interrupting you incessantly or I regret that I can’t breathe onion in your face.”

  “Because we wish women would hit on us all the time,” he answered “Because we wish women would hit on us all the time,” he answered promptly. “I realize the reverse isn’t true.”

  They set out slowly, warming up as they left the end of the cul-de-sac. There was a brick bicycle path at first; that faded out as they worked their way onto a dirt path that snaked beside a seasonal brook under eucalyptus and native oaks. She kept quiet for half an hour, simply feeling the push of legs and flex of muscle, enjoying the body doing what it was supposed to do. It cleared her head as well.

  “Did you . . . have anyone in Los Alamos?” she asked after a while, pacing the words to her breath.

  “Not seriously, lately. And I’m very glad things were that way.”

  She nodded. He went on: “You were really involved with Adrienne’s brother? And he didn’t . . .”

  “No. Things got sticky, but he never . . . well, obviously he never drank my blood! I didn’t know about any of this stuff; that was a big part of why we were splitting up. He wouldn’t tell me things. I knew he was keeping a lot of secrets. He’s a good guy, basically. I can see now looking back how hard he had to fight not to . . . do things. I may have unintentionally been tempting him.”

  Peter nodded. “Left up here, past that clump of bamboo. You know, they can play games with your memories, if they can get close to you for a while. Break your brain-codes. You sure he didn’t do that?”

  That made her miss a stride; then she laughed harshly. “That’s like trying to prove that the world wasn’t created six minutes ago!”

  “Yeah, classic non-falsifiable hypothesis. Sorry!”

  “No, I can’t be sure. I’m morally certain, though. Thanks for giving me another creepy thought to keep me awake!”

  “De nada. Do you hate him for getting you into this?”

  “No,” she said.

  Odd. I wasn’t certain that I didn’t until just now.