A Taint in the Blood (45 page)

Adrian shrugged and smiled. “I knew I was drifting, but . . . there always seemed to be time to remedy matters later. I lived much in dreams of the past. Yet in the end, they are unsatisfying.”

For a Shadowspawn, it was possible to live in the interior world quite literally, shaping it to your will.

But while it feels and smells and tastes real, it isn’t; and the
people
are not real, unless they are captured souls
.

Jules shook his head. “I knew. Yet every time I warned you . . . well, why relive old fights? May I see it? You still carry the locket everywhere?”

Adrian let his mind relax and
chose
. His fingers went into a pocket and brought out the little gold oval; that was the path the Power saw as leading to the result he wanted. He opened it and glanced within; the face was delicate, huge-eyed. If the hand-tinting of the photograph was accurate, there had been an elfin loveliness. Adrian handed it over carefully, as a man would with a precious possession, and took it back almost immediately.

“Joan was very beautiful,” Jules said. “Yet . . . my friend, it is not well to become too attached to them. Fond yes, in some cases, but not . . . attached. They die. We do not. Our natures are different. That you could not be there when she was killed and Carry her soul was a tragedy, yes, but I suspect . . . that the temptations of dreams would have been even worse if you had. Forgive me if I intrude!”

Adrian shrugged and smiled with Wilbur’s face and body. “Obviously, I came to agree with you in the end,” he said. “Though it was hard.”

“You should acquire a few contemporary lucies on a long-term basis. An occasional kill is one thing, but . . .”

“I think I was punishing them for not being
her
,” Adrian said, guessing at the psychology of a dead man.

“Some things do
not
change, though,” Jules said, winking. “I noticed you dancing with my daughter’s Ellen, you sly dog!”

He shrugged. “Is that her name? A glorious creature, and her blood-scent! Maddening! Trust a Brézé to find such a vision, and to torment us all with it.”

A ruefully envious snap of the teeth, and Jules did the same; they laughed and raised their glasses in a brief toast before Adrian continued:

“But the mind was extremely strange, and . . . well, women spoke with more restraint when I was a young man. Except for those of the lower orders, of course, and she obviously isn’t that. The mixture of sophistication and coarseness is . . . disturbing. I expected one or the other. The little
chica
I picked out of Adrienne’s gift-herd is a pretty, healthy animal, and satisfying in her peasant way. I may keep her. But in our day . . .”

“Our day is not past,” Jules said, giving him a brief slap on the shoulder. “Now that you are around and about again, you must come and visit us in La Jolla. Night-polo, old man! You taught me the art in daylight eighty years ago; let me return the favor. And we have a wide human acquaintance. There is much that is interesting among them.”

“This is . . . a trial venture. I must learn to live in the world again. It’s . . . well, it’s a damned odd world now, that’s all.”

“Ah, and it will grow odder still, unless we take measures. You probably haven’t been following Council politics?”

Adrian spread a hand out, remembering at the last moment to make the gesture palm-down and restrained. Wilbur Peterson had been American-raised, though related to the Brézés. He would be not only an Anglo-Saxon in his body language, but an antique one.

“I didn’t
recognize
much of the territory I flew over to get here, except for the ocean and the mountains,” he said. “God, to think that we used to drive around San Jose for the blossoms! The scent was intoxicating even for humans. I nearly reconsidered and turned around.”

Jules made a grimace. “Yes. We have been negligent in caring for the greater estate. My daughter has some interesting plans for dealing with that, and I find her energy and enthusiasm quite compelling. Julianne and I never became withdrawn, but it is so easy to live from day to day. Perhaps the corporeals have a greater sense of urgency. Let me tell you about the Council meeting that’s to be called. And of course Hajime will be representing us . . .”

“How did that happen?” Adrian asked; Wilbur had been well into his fugue by then.

“Oh, the usual way. Overconfidence by us, intrigue and then a swift coup by them. Hajime killed me personally, though I must say it was decent of him not to inflict Final Death. Adrienne is quite close with Tōkairin Michiko, Hajime’s favorite grandchild. They negotiated the details of the peace agreement.”

“Tell me more about this ceremony, the Prayer for Long Life,” Adrian said. “And the Council meeting.”

Jules smiled. “It’s splendid to see you taking an interest again! Well—”

 

 

“Wilbur was quite a delightful man in his time,” Julianne Brézé said. “He was something of a mentor to Jules and me after our parents died so tragically . . . Everyone was so surprised when they didn’t transition successfully, given their blood-purity, but those things were not as well understood in our youth. Perhaps it was the shock of the assassination. Those Brotherhood scum were bolder then.”

Several of the Shadowspawn listening hissed; Ellen felt a small crawling sensation at the sound. It wasn’t contrived or deliberate, she decided; it was just the natural way for them to express . . .

Murderous hate
, she thought.
Frustrated sadism.

“I’m Carrying one of them,” Julianne said; her eyes had an inward look for an instant. “The other was too quick to suicide, but we caught little Thomas. He’s in a small rock chamber in my mind, feeding a very large spider. And after so many years, he’s very tired of it. The spider is still extremely enthusiastic. Occasionally it becomes . . . amorous. Then it spawns in his flesh and the young eat their way out. And I’m never, ever going to let Tom die the Final Death, though he begs for that fairly continuously. Once I let him
think
he’d been given release, and then he woke up again to the spider’s caress.”

The remark brought general laughter. Ellen sipped at her second glass of champagne and tried to ignore other comments about what could be, and gleeful recollections of what had been, done to captured Brotherhood agents. Even after the killing-hall some of them were gruesome. Peter grimaced to her as she turned away a little.

“I wonder why they let us mingle at events like this?” she said softly. “We lucies, and the renfields.”

“Control rods,” he replied promptly; his cheeks were a little flushed, and he was working on his third glass of the sparkling wine. “That’s definitely part of it.”

It’s been quite a while since she fed on him
, Ellen thought sympathetically.
God, that can get hard to take! Even knowing there’s going to be pain doesn’t make you want it less. At least not for me. I think that may be harder for him.

“What?” she said aloud. “Rods?”

“Like the control rods in a nuclear reactor, the ones they slide in to absorb neutrons and slow down the reaction. We damp down their hyper-aggressiveness. In fact, I think it’s probably the human part of their heredity that lets them cooperate as much as they do. They’re solitary killers by nature, or at least the original breed were.
^”

“Adrienne said that they don’t
want
to breed themselves much more pureblood than she is.”

Peter nodded. “But they pay for it,” he said. “I think they have a lot of inner conflicts too.”

“Too?”

“The way we do because of the dash of Shadowspawn. It . . . twists us both up in different ways.”

“Speaking of which,” Ellen said quietly.

Jose was talking with his aunt Theresa, looking martyred as she brushed lint off his shoulder and adjusted his tie. Monica hesitated, then approached Adrienne; she was a little haggard again. The Shadowspawn frowned, then glanced at her sidelong with a slight smile and moved away from the group around her mother. Monica followed and their heads leaned together.

“If you ask
nicely
,” Ellen heard Adrienne say. “It’s really Peter’s turn.”

“Oh, I beg,” Monica said quietly. “
Please
.”

“Very well. But things will be energetic. Strenuous. Social events put me on edge.”

“That’s fine, Adri. Whatever you need is what I want.”

“Damn,” Peter said softly. “That’s sad. It’s also jumping her place in line, dammit!”

“I know it’s hard to miss out on the bite,” Ellen said.

“It’s been nearly a week. Damned right it’s hard. I can’t
think
straight.”

“Well, for you especially, lack of clarity of thought is a major downer,” Ellen went on dryly. “But what part of
energetic
and
strenuous
are you so sorry to skip?”

“There is that. Though,” he added, with the relentless honesty she’d noticed was one of his habits—“
parts
of that can be OK. I don’t mind the actual sex much, apart from always having . . .”

His voice trailed off. Ellen guessed, and her voice went even drier: “Apart from always having to be the girl?” she asked.

“Ah . . . well, I wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way . . .”

She laughed; the sound even had some humor in it. “Peter, I am a girl, and one who’s a submissive masochist at that, and
I
find it extremely wearing at times, Adrienne-style. But really . . . Monica was hit very hard by what we saw.”

Something spiky flashed into the forefront of her mind for a moment . . .
a glyph
, she thought.
I wonder why?
But it calmed her, somehow.

“You
weren’t
hit hard?”

“I was.
Oh
, yeah. It was grisly beyond words. But I’m better at . . . at compartmentalizing. And Adrienne took a full teeth-in-the-throat feeding from me right afterwards.”

“Misery makes you taste good,” he said wryly.

“Yeah. But she just
sipped
a little from Monica and it’s coming back on her.”

She went on:

“More . . . interaction . . . will help. You know what I mean.”

I mean
strenuous
and
energetic
involves a fair bit of screaming, in pain and otherwise. Been there, done that. It
is
distracting and distraction is just what poor Monica needs now.

Monica fumbled something out of her handbag; her BlackBerry. She made a call on it, probably telling her mother she wouldn’t be home tonight and needed her to stay with the children, then smiled tremulously and seemed to relax a little.

Peter sighed. “I don’t suppose I can argue with that. I will now proceed to get gradually but thoroughly drunk. That and the hangover will distract
me
for a day or so until I get my dose. She’s probably going to be feeding more than usual, with all this activity.”

More guests arrived; some through the front entrance, others down the staircase, which meant they’d flown in. Some of those were corporeals too, like Adrienne’s three . . .

Coconspirators?
Ellen thought.
Which means their actual bodies must have been unconscious and carried in by their renfields. Maybe even in coffins . . . well, no, in padded boxes that
look
a lot like coffins, I suppose. And the postcorporeals must have something like that for safety when they’re traveling . . . anyway, ewww.

Adrienne stopped as she walked by. “I’ve known some of the postcorporeals to transform into a smallish creature and have themselves shipped FedEx,
^”
she said.

Peter snorted. “
Shipped
?”

“It’s no hardship being boxed up if you’re a comatose rodent,
hein
? And you can use a nice secure sealed container of welded steel when you can go impalpable—just walk in through the side as a gerbil or a ferret, say. Curl up, and then step out the same way when you get to your destination. But I think I’ll keep my jet or whatever the equivalent is by the time I’ve had my Second Birth. Getting there is half the fun.”

When she’d passed by, Ellen went on to Peter: “Has it struck you how dependent Shadowspawn are on renfields? They’d have to hide in caves or sewers without them.”

“Yes,” Peter said, running a hand through his hair. Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to stop fidgeting. “But they can
know
who’s trustworthy.”

“It isn’t
fair
,” she burst out.

Unexpectedly, he laughed. It was a little slurred, but genuine. “No, it isn’t fair. There are so few of them, and they’re no smarter than we are—Adrienne is very bright, but she’s well above average for them, too. Most of them are arrogant and self-indulgent and unbelievably self-centered, judging by the ones I’ve met. It’s the damned
Power
.”

By now the great room had seventy or eighty people in it not counting the house servants; milling around, talking, drinking and eating canapés off trays. Each Shadowspawn individual or couple—a few had teenage children in tow, looking sullen as you’d expect—was surrounded by an aura of their important renfields and . . .

“Show-lucies,” Ellen said.

“What?” Peter said.

“That’s what we are. We’re show-lucies. Trophies, as well as control rods. Notice how all the lucies are extremely good-looking and
very
well dressed?”

He smiled wryly. “Touché. And thanks.”

“You’re a very handsome man, Peter.”

“That’s probably why I’m alive. No,” he went on a little pedantically. “It’s probably why she didn’t kill me in Los Alamos. If I’d been a quarter-ton of questionable hygiene like quite a few of my colleagues, I’d have been toast. But my brains are probably why I’m
still
alive.”