A Taint in the Blood (36 page)

Adrian caught them in his, and kissed each one gently.

“
Ma belle
Ellie,” he said softly. “It has been so very long.”

They flowed together.

 

 

Harvey cleared his throat

Damn
, Adrian thought.

He broke the kiss, pulling himself away from the touch and taste and the lovely tormenting scent that was like a memory of peach and lilac and apple blossom.

“Ellen, my old friend Harvey Ledbetter. Sort of a mentor in my youth, an unofficial elder brother always, brother-in-arms for many years, and my comrade in this business.”

Ellen extended a hand. Adrian found himself surprised at how much he wanted these two to like each other. The Texan smiled as he shook, an expression that transformed his homely lined face.

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Tarnowski. Glad to see what Adrian thought was worth fighting for. Can’t say as I disagree, offhand.”

She laughed. “I won’t say any friend of Adrian’s a friend of mine,” she said. “But any
really good
friend of Adrian who risks his life for Adrian and for me is a friend of mine.”

Harvey shrugged. “Adrian and I have saved each other’s butts so often we lost count years ago,” he said.

“Harv, could you give us ten minutes?”

The older man hesitated, then said: “Sure.”

“Do we have time?” Ellen said.

They sat, each holding the other’s hands across the table. Hers were warm and slender and strong in his, still with the thumb-callus a tennis player developed on the right hand.

“We will make time,” Adrian said decisively. Then: “How much I wish we were just . . . enjoying a dinner together.”

“Me too. Oh,
yeah
.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m nervous . . . I know this is short notice, Ellie. But we are at war, and that says
hurry.
”

He freed one hand to reach into the pocket of his jacket, and brought out a small velvet case. She looked at him, and he nodded. She took it and snapped it open; within was a plain band of platinum and gold, with a small flawless diamond. His heart tensed with fear as she sat motionless for most of a minute. Then she looked up, with tears jewelling her eyelashes.

“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 about
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.”

“H
ow 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: