A Taint in the Blood (26 page)

“Bad?” Harvey said sympathetically.

“I blocked as much as I could. She wasn’t hurting her to speak of this time, but . . . The bitch is doing it to jolt me, I know it. She doesn’t realize how close a high-link I have with Ellen, but she knows
something
is getting through.”

“She
is
doing it to jolt you,” Harvey said. “And to score points; that
I drink your milk shake
thing, which she’s been doing one way or another since you two learned to walk. She’s also probably still got the hots for you, since the Calcutta thing.”

Adrian winced. “Yes. That was a bad time.”

“Five gets you one
she
doesn’t think so.”

“And . . . to Shadowspawn that isn’t incompatible with a desire to kill me slowly. Quite the contrary.”

“Right you are. And she was also doing it because she just likes humping herself blind and ain’t too particular about the ‘with who’ part long as they’re good-lookin’. How precisely did she wreck the meet?”

“Preactivated Wreaking,” he said. “A bit like that one in Santa Fe, only smaller and more . . . concentrated. The trigger was complex beyond belief. It was keyed to Hajime’s state of mind; truly, the very
act
of deciding to listen to me. If he’d been completely hostile on his own account, nothing would have happened . . . you see the difficulty, and the cleverness of it?”

“How was it placed? Keyed to the ground?”

“No, dynamic. Like a floating spiderweb strung between buildings, with a seeker function. Hanging ready to exist, and when it existed there was only one place it could possibly be.”

“Someone must have slipped her a sample of him from his mortal remains; you’d need a ground-link for something like that,” Harvey observed clinically.

Adrian nodded: “It cascaded the probabilities of his decision negative until only the black paths were left, and he never noticed.”

“She’s gotten better,” Harvey noted, resting his big hands on his knees and staring out the windscreen at nothing. “And she was always good.”

Adrian nodded. “Things went downhill from there. He decided I was attacking him, went for his sword—which he really knows how to use—and I had to switch form.”

“What to?” Harvey asked.

“The smilodon. I wish I’d had more practice with it. The animal mind swamped me; that never would have happened with my wolf. I can think about as well with that as in man-form, now.”

“Would the wolf have been enough muscle for the job?”

“Well . . . no. I took out his backup men, but he’s far too good with that sword. I wanted to leave then, but the sabertooth took me over and I was just going for Hajime when
she
hit me.”

“As?”

“The biggest damned eagle I’ve ever seen, and stooping, falling out of the sky. Probably from one of the tall buildings. It must be some real species of bird to be that tangible, but . . .
^”

Harvey took out his BlackBerry. “Describe? This we gotta know about, soonest.”

“Christ, my head . . . the body was the size of a child, perhaps five feet long. Wings twice that, broad and strong, not slender like a falcon’s. Long head, strong legs and claws like a tiger, literally. Broad tail. Mostly I noticed the claws and beak.”

He indicated his flank, and Harvey reached over to draw aside the hospital gown. The lacerations there didn’t break the skin, but they were blue and purple already, bruises that twinged savagely every time he moved, adding to the pain of his half-healed knife wounds.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the older man said when the results of his search came up, shaking his head in reluctant admiration.

“You found something?”

“Haast’s Eagle.”

He showed Adrian the picture; the younger man frowned, squinted, then nodded. Harvey read, swore again.

“New Zealand,” he said. “Went extinct about 1400, but there are skeletons and such. Guess you ain’t the only one can figure out that DNA reconstruction gets you a broader set of forms for night-walking.”

“Most birds are too fragile to be much use in a fight against another walker,” Adrian said.

“Right,” Harvey said. “But this little critter is pocket dynamite, ’bout the weight of a medium dog. Evolved to hunt those cow-sized flightless birds they used to have. Says here it attacked at fifty em-pee-aitch and hit about as hard as a concrete cinder block dropped on you from six stories up.”

“That sounds very, very right, except that concrete blocks aren’t
sharp
.”

Adrian rubbed his forehead. “The hell of it is that she and I
do
think alike. At least at the problem-solving level . . . If I hadn’t sensed the attack at the last fractional second she might have severed my spine and Hajime would have killed me before I could regenerate. When I managed to beat the bird away, she went into tiger form—Amur type, but black. I broke contact and ran; flew myself, as a peregrine.”

He glared at Harvey. “And
you
kept me flying at top speed to catch this damned car with my body in it until it was nearly dawn!”

“Better than
them
catching
us
. Somebody high-powered was looking. I’m pretty sure we lost ’em. Three gets you ten cents it’s Michiko got the tissue sample or whatever for Adrienne from her granddad that let her set that trap,” Harvey said. “You up to solid food?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll try,” he replied.

The food was bread, butter, cheese and hard-boiled eggs. The first few mouthfuls were tentative, feeling his way around his abused stomach. Then he was ravenous, and forced himself not to gobble. When his share was finished he was able to force down more of the blood. The itching became worse in his arm and thigh, which was a good sign, and he flexed them cautiously. The bruises would heal much faster. They were only transferred tissue damage anyway, his soma-memory convincing his body that it had been attacked when he returned to the flesh.

“Let’s get
somewhere
,” he said.

“Son, we’re between Stockton and Bakersfield on the west side of the Central Valley. There ain’t no where to
be
there in, thereabouts. Specially in these days of ongoing national readjustment.”

“I need to rest and heal. There is no alternative to that.”

He slumped back against the door, ignoring everything until Harvey drove them into a motel and helped him into their room with an arm over his shoulder. They were the only occupants, and the mattress smelled musty with disuse, but the room was blessedly warm and dry. He lay half-comatose as Harvey stripped off the hospital gown, checked the bandages and covered him in blankets. His mind sank into the shadows.

 

 

“Hello, Adrian,” Ellen said with a smile. “I’m
almost
getting used to this. Not as much of a mental shock when I . . . appear.”

She looked around the motel room. “Ewww.”

Adrian gestured from the bed, and the world changed. Now they were sitting; she still found
that
abrupt transition a little startling. There was the same sensation of doors opening in her mind, of memories three-quarters gone snapping back into place. She looked around; this was more complex than the confined landscapes she’d seen before.

Bright sunlight shone on tiled roofs and whitewashed walls descending a steep slope beneath them to a small harbor, and a Christian cathedral in a style half-Moorish . . .

“It’s Amalfi!” she said. “I love that town. I’ve only been once, on a package tour in university. Two days for Florence, would you believe it!”

“It’s a favorite of mine too.” Adrian nodded, lighting himself a cigarette. “I spent some time convalescing at an
alberghetto
here once.”

A striped umbrella shaded their table. Bright blue ocean stretched to the horizon, and mountains rose around the town. The air had a smell of spicy bushes and the sap of the umbrella-pine growing in the center of the little plaza, and of fruit and blossom from the rows of lemon trees to one side on the terraced hillside. Other couples and individuals chatted with lively animation and plenty of gestures, but when she tried she couldn’t quite make out words.

Adrian was in white linen shirt and pants and thin leather shoes on bare feet, with sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, tanned nearly brown. Ellen checked herself and found that she was in a cool pale traveling ensemble of silk blouse and cotton skirt, with elegant leather-strapped sandals fastened with wrought-gold buttons. A white woven hat with a trailing band rested on the table, and loose strands of hair sun-bleached almost as pale lay over her shoulders.

Can’t say he doesn’t have good taste!
she thought.

A waiter approached.

“Un Limoncello, per favore,”
Adrian said in fluent but slightly accented Italian
.

Adrian looked over and raised a brow at her. A little dazed, she nodded. He answered the man:

The pale yellow liqueur came, and the plate of marzipan-like biscuits made with ground almonds, not as sweet or nutty as the American equivalent but sharper-flavored. She sipped and nibbled.

“I was going to say this is a bit dreamlike, but that’s sort of redundant, isn’t it?” she said. “Everything even
tastes
real. Realer than real. The people?”

“Not really people. Made from edited memories. Tangible in this state, but not . . . self-actuated.”

She nodded. “I’m asleep, I think. The last thing I remember is lying on my face and Adrienne sort of . . . slapping me on the butt and telling me I’d earned some rest.”

Adrian looked away, taking a draw on his cigarette; he held it between thumb and the first two fingers, next to his palm.

That’s why he never took me seriously when I said he should quit!
Ellen realized suddenly.
He wasn’t really brushing me off; he can’t
get
cancer or anything. That would be
bad luck
, and he doesn’t have that! Wait a minute, it just occurred to me, they can
cure cancer
and they never told anyone?

“Adrian,” she said dryly, and he looked back at her. “I like the fact that you’re concerned for me. It’s sweet and wonderful, actually. But you can spare me the pity.”

He flushed. “Sorry,” he said. Then he smiled slightly. “I seem to be saying that a lot around you, Ellie.”

She nodded. “I’m already an abuse survivor . . . well, no, I’m back to being an abuse
victim
, actually, since I’ve been kidnapped by an abuser. But I’m not a child anymore, and I know the coping strategies, Adrian. And I know they’re strategies, not something wrong with
me
. It’s a lot harder with someone who can read your mind, but at least I don’t have the sense of betrayal I did before. I’m in no danger of Stockholm syndrome. I know all about that.”

“OK,” he said. Then he touched one finger to his forehead and flicked it out, a sort of sketchy salute. “I should remember that you’re not just the damsel in distress. Sorry . . . touché.”

“I need to know how this link thing works.”

He took a deep breath. “It’s stronger when I want it to be, or when we’re physically closer, or when you’re feeling . . . any intense emotion or sensation.”

Ellen laughed involuntarily; she clapped a hand to her mouth.

“My turn to say sorry. You mean you could . . . could
feel
it when your sister was scaring the daylights out of me on that motorcycle or drinking my blood or when we were in bed?”

“Yes. Not all the time, and secondhand and much more faintly, but yes.”

“That sounds sort of . . . perverse.”

“It is, even by Shadowspawn standards; it’s one reason they’re so . . . jealous . . . about their, ah—”

“Lucies. Stop trying to shield my delicate sensibilities, Adrian! I hated that attitude when we were together, but you didn’t
listen
. Right now I
am
a lucy. It’s not my fault and I don’t feel disgraced about it. Angry and frightened, yes. Defiled, no.”

“Touché. I throttled back as much as I could. It’s . . . a very strong link. Much more so than I expected. More so than she understands, I think—and hope. She almost certainly doesn’t know about
this
, that we can communicate. But she knows I’ll be getting flashes of emotion and physical sensations.”

Ellen shivered. “I hope to God she doesn’t decide hurting me more would be the way to get back at you.”

“I also . . . Me too. This environment scrambles my linguistic reflexes!”

A thought occurred to her. “How come you all seem to be so multilingual?”

“It’s easy for us. The language center in our brains is enlarged and linked to the telepathic faculty.”

Ellen shivered, reminded of a voice saying,
I’m learning Georgian
.

“Time to fill you in on what’s been going on,” she said, putting briskness into her tone. “You know about the motorcycle trip? Well, when we got to San Francisco—”

“Name of a black dog! We were probably less than a mile apart, and her laughing at me all the while! If I’d known where, I could have gone after her.”

Ellen winced, and he cursed, first in French and then in a string of other languages.

“Ouch,” she said. “Hadn’t thought of that. Anyway, Adrienne took me to this restaurant and we met a friend of hers. A woman named Michiko—”

“Tōkairin Michiko?”

Ellen shivered again. “Yes. Talk about
scary
. She wanted to kill me, Adrian—wanted to kill me with your sister. I think she would have liked to do it right then and there.”

Adrian nodded, looking down at the table and taking a sip of the yellow drink, chilled in its small ceramic cup.