A Taint in the Blood (38 page)

“Here you go,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Preservin’ the proprieties.”

“Tell me which one is Farmer’s, so I will know why my stomach’s upset,” Adrian replied dryly . . . but quietly.

He shot them both into his mouth with a thumb on the plunger and swallowed; the taste was mildly pleasant, about like a drink of cold soda-water on a hot day. It was fresh, at least; and he could display a convincing base-link to both of them if someone prodded at them with the Power. A Shadowspawn had to be able to protect his renfields.

Guha was rubbing at the sleeve of her jacket as she came back, and talking to her partner:

“And he’s
already
given us intel that may mean the survival of the Brotherhood, Jack,” she said.

Harvey spoke: “Something
that
important?”

“We can develop hardened refuges against EMP,” she said, apparently missing the slight tinge of irony. “And . . . well, I don’t know officially, but we’ve got teams going to the Congo and we’re gearing up some bio-labs.”

Adrian nodded. Keeping the Brotherhood from disappearing in the wreck was a more realistic plan than trying to stop Operation Trimback altogether . . .

“Let’s get this stuff out. I have to familiarize myself with it.”

The trunks were just that; old-style, brass-bound leather and wood. Most of the clothes and gear within had a deep musty smell of age, beneath the mothballs.

“The newer ones will have to do,” he said. “Discard the rest. We must persuade them that he was never so far gone as to neglect everything.”

Adrian sorted until the remaining garments were presentable to a Shadowspawn nose; all deeply out of fashion, but that wasn’t unknown among older postcorporeals. And there were a few private possessions—a golden locket with a picture of a woman in the short hair and cloche hat of the 1920s, a massive wind-up wristwatch, a collection of letters and a few books.

“
Jalna
, by Mazo de la Roche,” Adrian said, reading the title on the spine.

It was leather-bound, worn but almost desperately well cared for, and it had the author’s signature on the flyleaf and a publication date of 1927.

“He had that one with him when he sat up for sunrise,” Guha said.

“Must have meant something to him at one time.”

“Or just a link to life. I had better read it, and the letters,” Adrian said thoughtfully. “There is a chance he knew my parents, and they will be at the Rancho. Still, Shadowspawn are no better than others at remembering small details for sixty or seventy years.”

“These are the weapons,” Farmer said; no Shadowspawn would travel unarmed.

A revolver, the grips black bone; he could feel silver on the interior pawls that moved the cylinder and the spring that drove the hammer.

“Webley Mk. VI,” Harvey said with interest.

He took the weapon, broke it open and examined it, smiling a little in satisfaction that it was functional.

“It’s a .455 caliber, top-hinged, 1915 model. This antique hand-cannon’s got stoppin’ power to spare but it’s a wrist-breaker; you’d better practice a bit.”

Adrian nodded. He was very strong—even for a pureblood Shadowspawn—but he wasn’t particularly massive. Harvey was forty pounds heavier, and mass counted in absorbing recoil. The bullets were silver as well, rougher than modern rounds but probably effective. There were two warded and silver-edged knives, not much different from those made today if you liked straight double-edged daggers; he weighed one in his hand, satisfied. A Council trident-and-sun was set into the pommel of each.

“Good. We have about a week before the official opening of the . . . Prayer of Long Life, enough for me to reinforce the Wreakings to disguise your minds.”

Harvey grinned. “You two are goin’ to be hearing a lot of Mhabrogast.”

The two Brotherhood operatives winced. So did Adrian; he would have to
think
in it, not merely recite phrases. That did odd things to your mind. It had only two tenses, the
fixed
and the
potential
, just to start with; it was a language for solipsistic monsters.

“I will be one of the first guests to arrive, in bird-form. You will be my faithful renfields, and—”

He sketched out the preliminary plan he’d developed. By the end of it they were all sitting on trunks and crates, eating shrimp po’ boys from a place Harvey had discovered here in Paso Robles and drinking Duvel beer that had started out in Belgium before it ended up in plastic glasses in California.

“That’s a lot more risky for you than for us,” Farmer said, when he’d finished.

“I need you for the first two days. After that, all you could do would be to die. I suppose you have your suicide imperatives primed?” They both nodded. “I don’t have that option, either.”

He stood and got the markers and chalks out of his knapsack. “This is a splendid place to work with. We’ll need a rope to scribe some circles . . .”

Several hours later Farmer walked away with his hands clutched to his head. Adrian blinked as he watched the Brotherhood’s operative carefully avoiding obstacles that weren’t there, and forced his mind not to see what they
might
be. His nose twitched; Anjali Guha had a wad of tissues pressed to hers, to stop the blood. Neither of them was used to Wreaking at this level; neither was he, anymore.

“That will do for a start,” he said, and they both groaned. “We can continue tomorrow night. No more than four or five more sessions.”

He thought Farmer sounded less resentful.
Now you have some idea of what you’ll be dealing with
, Adrian thought.
We speak of minds that can rip the fabric of reality as if it were tissue. And who have the dispositions of malicious children, the type who pull the legs off one side of a spider to see it walk in circles.

“Now let’s get some sleep,” Harvey said, wielding a mop to erase the glyphs drawn in a looping tracery outside the circle. “Early day tomorrow.”

The walk to the motel they were using was short, but even with an adept’s training sleep came slowly. Rancho Sangre was not somewhere he’d ever been physically, but his parents had lived there for decades, and Adrienne since their body-death. It was graven in the history of his life; and now Ellen’s world-line was woven with it.

“I am pleased to meet you, sir, madam,” Ellen said formally to Adrienne’s parents.

Should I curtsy or something
? she thought.
In this Jean-Charles creation I’m wearing at least it wouldn’t look ridiculous. But I never learned how anyway. Polite will have to do. And . . . they’re Adrian’s parents too. God, in a skanky sort of way this
is
like being taken home to meet the folks.

“No, you’re not glad at all,” Jules Brézé said. “But it was polite of you to say so. By all means, call me Jules. This
is
America, after all. My parents were the ones who came from France.”

He advanced and took her hand. The contact had a slight shock to it, psychically cold and somehow
wet
, though the hand felt absurdly normal for a man who’d died before she was born; there was even a faint smell of wine and mint on his breath, beneath an expensive cologne.

His eyes were the thing that made what he was unmistakable, like pools of living gold. His wife came up beside him and reached out to touch Ellen’s hand as well. Both flared their nostrils slightly to take her scent; it was an oddly animalistic gesture. She could remember Adrian doing it when he forgot himself, but then she hadn’t had the context.

“Oh, I see what you mean, darling,” Julianne said over her shoulder to Adrienne. “One longs to
consume
her. Her mind is like a rose carved out of finely marbled meat until the petals are translucent, scented with fruit and flowers and blood.”

Errrk,
Ellen thought.
That’s an . . . arresting metaphor. All my life I thought my only talents were for tennis and art history, and now I find out I’m A-1 Shadowspawn fodder too.

“Even more entrancing than the others,” Jules said to his daughter. “My dear, you have without a doubt inherited the family’s discerning tastes.”

The elder Brézés were in slightly old-fashioned evening wear: a beautifully tailored suit and a long off-one-shoulder gown and slightly bouffant hairdo, like something she’d seen on the TV as a little girl back before the turn of the century. If she’d met them at a launch party at the gallery, she’d have put them down as extremely well-conditioned late thirties or early forties, with a sleek timeless look that appeared effortless and cost heavily; Adrienne’s mother was a bit fuller-figured than her daughter, and her hair not quite so dark.

They had the same slight Continental accent as their children, but there was also an indefinable difference in the way they treated their vowels and used contractions, a tinge of slow clipped harshness. The English language itself was in the process of changing out from under them.

“I’m glad I’m . . . interesting . . . Jules,” Ellen said.

“My dear, you are positively
appetizing
,” Jules said, bowing over the hand and releasing it.

Errrrk
, Ellen thought again.

Adrienne laughed. She was standing by the carved-stone fireplace; the spring evening was cool enough that the low crackle of flames on the split oak there seemed justified. She had a snifter of brandy in her hand, and a cigarette in her ivory holder. Mark and Renata were the elder Brézés’ lucies, a golden-haired younger man and a slim dark woman of about thirty, and they were reclining on the sofa, chatting easily to each other about some cultural event in Los Angeles.

“So, what do you think of the Rancho Sangre art collection?” Julianne said. “Adrienne has added to it, but we and our parents did a good deal.”

“Ah . . . it’s very impressive. But eclectic and hardly organized at all,” Ellen said, both of which were true.

Jules shrugged. “It was a case of
I know what I like
with us, I’m afraid. Adrienne is more enthusiastic. I’m sure you’ll work immense improvements.”

“I’ve gotten a preliminary redistribution roughed out and approved by Adrienne, and we’re going to start moving some items soon. Before the, ah, party.”

Both the elder Brézés smoked—slim dark cigars for him, and Turkish cigarettes in an ivory holder like Adrienne’s for her. The way she held it . . .

By God, that’s the way they used to do it in old movies!
Ellen thought.
Not an imitation, it’s completely unselfconscious, and apparently they really
did
wave it that way. Really old movies, silents, back when it was a daring novelty for women to smoke in public. And the way the two of them talk . . .
When
were they born?

“More than a century ago,” Adrienne said.

There was that sense that
something
passed between her and her parents. They both laughed, Julianne more ruefully than her spouse.

“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.