SM Stirling

by Shadowspawn 01 - A Taint in the Blood (v5)

  sorry. You . . . must know how disturbing a pureblood is to someone who can sense the Power.” “He don’t bother me none,” Harvey said, returning to his rabbit. “You’re a loose cannon, Ledbetter, and you bent every rule to breaking point haring off to New Mexico that way.” “I’m also the best field team leader in the Brotherhood, so you’re not going to do anything but scold me.” She shrugged and went on to Adrian: “Please describe your encounter in Santa Fe, if you would.” Adrian did; Harvey nodded approval. “He can still do a damn nice after-action report,” he added. “That Wreaking on the apartment building . . . that is . . . not good news,” Polson said. “You could say that,” Adrian replied grimly. “If I hadn’t turned it in on itself, when the cascade fell it might have taken out everything within blocks. Driven dozens catatonic for the rest of their lives, at least.” “It gets harder and harder to fight . . .” Polson half-whispered to herself. Then: “You were using stored blood?” Adrian nodded, and spoke with careful precision: “I drink blood only when I must for major Wreakings with the Power. As do you, do you not?

  What is your rating on the Alberman Scale?” She forced her eyes back to his. “Yes. Red Cross supply. I’m . . . thirty-eight percent.” “Then you will have some idea of how absolutely horrible an experience drinking cold, dead blood is. It is much worse for me. Dog-piss

  would be more fun.” Polson nodded, stopping her fork halfway to her mouth. Then she visibly put the memory out of her mind and ate. “We’re preoccupied right now,” she said. “Believe me, I sympathize with the girl. I’ve done field work. But right now, the whole world is about to come down on our heads. You’ve heard about the Council meeting that’s been called for next year in Tiflis?” “No, I had not,” he said. “Well, not until last night.” “You heard that Gheorghe Brâncuşi was executed? Formally the meeting’s to elect his successor.” Executed

  , Adrian thought as he nodded. Or assassinated, depending on your viewpoint

  . “Harvey told me yesterday,” he said. “Christ, Brézé, don’t you follow anything

  ?” “It hasn’t been on CNN, nor on the Internet,” he said dryly. “The Brotherhood has me on their shit-list, and pretty well all the Council’s Shadowspawn would kill me if they could and deceive me just for the pleasure of it if they couldn’t. Ms. Polson, what part of retired

  don’t you understand?” “Then you wouldn’t have heard that they’re going to implement Plan Trimback?” He looked at her, drank the last of his wine, and said: “No.” Harvey tore a piece off the baguette and buttered it. “Usually they couldn’t organize an orgy in a Bangkok whorehouse and they put everything off and off and off because they’re planning on living forever ’n’ figure they’ve got time,” he said, biting into the bread with a crackle. “This time it’s different.” Polson nodded. “We’re trying to figure out a counter-strategy—” “Bullshit,” Adrian said crisply. She glared at him; Harvey grinned and continued methodically demolishing the loaf and mopping his plate. “I quit because the Brotherhood isn’t a threat to the Shadowspawn,” Adrian said. “It’s a nuisance

  . You kill a few lower-level types—” “We got Brâncuşi,” she said. “That was me

  , actually, and Adrian’s right,” Harvey said. “Two members of the Council in thirty years. And that’s . . . what . . . less than half of the number of Council heads who’ve died in faction-fights or family coups. We’re never going to be able to kill

  our way to victory, Sheila. There are just too damned many of them now. And they’ve got the Power.” “You want to give up too, Ledbetter?” she rasped. “No. I think we should admit that the Power is here to stay. Sure, if you gave me a magic button I’d push till my thumb got sore. But even the Power can’t undo the past.” Harvey went on: “So we need to use

  the Power. Y’know, you

  could have gotten into the Order of the Black Dawn if you’d been around back then. Hell, I might have made it. And we’re not evil . . . well, not most of the time.” “The Order

  were evil,” Sheila said with flat certainty. “Yeah, but that’s ’cause they were demon-worshipping shits who figured out they could become

  demons. They’d have been just as evil if all they’d had was knives and bad attitudes.” He pointed his fork at Adrian. “Guys like Adrian are our hope. The Power isn’t evil either; it’s just a . . . technology.” Polson took a long breath. “That’s a policy question. We’re here to talk about this one instance. OK . . . I’ll see what I can do. We do have a lot of information about the Brézé family. We’ll get it to you as fast as we can; some of it will have to be dug out of hiding places. But I’m not going to clear everything off our plate just for this.” “We won,” Harvey said, when she had gone. Adrian methodically finished the last of his duck. He would be needing his energy, and ordinary food had its part in that too. “And Ellen is . . . wherever she is,” he said. He snarled, then controlled the sound. A glimpse at his face in the beveled glass mirror stopped it more effectively. The sharp teeth showed between the drawn-back lines of his lips, and his eyes might have been glowing from a Pleistocene night by the reflected light of a frightened tribe’s campfires. “Christ, Harvey, I don’t want to do this.” “You’re going at it awful hard for a reluctant man,” Harvey said. His blunt fingers made pills from the last of the bread. Adrian gripped the edge of the table until rims of white stood out in his fingernails, welcoming the pain of it. “Do you know why I’ve spent these years sitting on a mountaintop

  , Harvey? Running, meditating, swimming, talking to people at safe remove through a keyboard. Playing tennis when I felt daring? Because that life . . . life on an even keel . . . is one I can control. I don’t like what this . . . walking armed towards a fight, thinking in terms of threats and counter-threats and strategy—does to me.” “It ain’t all that much fun, I grant you.” Adrian shook his head violently. “No. It is entirely too much

  fun, at some levels. I know myself. I was made

  for this.” “You don’t like you nearly as much as I do, ol’ buddy,” Harvey said quietly, looking away. “Think you might reconsider? You’d be a happier man.” Adrian felt himself smile; the expression in the mirror was worse than the snarl had been. “Consider my sister, my friend. She

  has an excellent sense of self-esteem, feels comfortable in her skin and enjoys her life.” Softly: “And she has Ellen. For a whole day now. What has been happening, there, in that creature’s nest?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN S

  omethingchirped in her ear. Ellen woke, yawned, stretched, and frowned. The place smelled different from her own bedroom, and not like Adrian’s either, with its faint undertones of expensive tobacco and leather-bound books and juniper. Not bad—fresh linen, flowers, coffee, a spicy scent like eucalyptus—but different

  . She whimpered as memories crashed in on her. Then she realized she was alone in the big rumpled bed, and relaxed. The chirping came again; she turned her head and saw a BlackBerry resting on the pillow next to her. This is yours,

  the note on the screen said. Schedule loaded. First, go get checkup at clinic: 10:00 a.m. Dr. Duggan fully briefed. Don’t be late or I will spank you. The time display read 9:00. “Am I going to . . .” she started to mutter to herself. Then: “Of course I’m going to go for this checkup. She’s not kidding about that spanking. I don’t think she means just a pat, either.” She tore through showering and pulling on the cotton dress and sandals provided, clipped the instrument to her belt and grabbed a fluffy kiwi pastry and a slice of fruit-bread from the breakfast trolley. She scarcely noticed the quiet sumptuousness of the great room and the fixtures, except the painting hung to the left of the bed, Adrienne’s side. That caught her eye, enough to make her bend close for an expert’s quick appraisal. What a splendid reproduction!

  she thought, the professional taking over from the personal for a moment; she’d seen the original during her student years at NYU, on a field trip to France. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better one. A small plaque below had
a poem inlaid in gold on some dark tropical wood: “And when I turned, no face I saw For the shadow was my own Death Angel’s shadow.” That was certainly appropriate. The painting was by Schwabe, La Mort et le Fossoyeur

  , with the Death Angel shown as a slender dark-haired woman poised over the old gravedigger in the snowy cemetery, her wings making a beautiful curve like a scythe-blade against the willow-twigs and tilted headstones. Ellen had always liked it, as far as she liked any Symbolist work, and the reproduction was striking; it caught the cruel impersonal compassion on Azrael’s face beautifully. Then she looked more closely, reaching out to touch and then taking back her hand. “Wait a minute,” she whispered. “Gouache, watercolor and pencil, that’s right. And it’s old

  , not just artificially aged. Look at the structure of the micro-cracks. And the frame is about a century old too! It isn’t a reproduction. My God, the Louvre would never willingly part with this, not for any amount of money!” Inside her head she could hear: Oh, quite unwillingly,

  chérie.

  That didn’t need any spooky telepathy. For an instant she sat on the bed, winded and gasping. After shock came a wave of anger; to have something like this hanging in your bedroom,

  exposed to all the possible accidents . . . The BlackBerry beeped at her, a half-hour warning. She fumbled at it until it came up with a map of the route to the clinic, and ran—that was another thing she could do well, even in sandals—out into the hallway, down a service stair, out a rear entrance, down a long pathway, out through a boundary wall and gate into what looked like a smallish town or large village tucked under the hill where the casa grande

  sat. It wasn’t even far enough to raise much of a sweat, not in the cool springlike weather of a fine February day in the California lowlands. The clinic wasn’t quite what Ellen would have expected; well-equipped, cheery, an efficient-looking receptionist, a waiting room with the usual magazines and a TV . . . Even the smell was nicer than usual, with flower-and-damp-earth scents wafting through an open window to cut the standard ozone and disinfectant. She had just enough time to stop breathing deeply before: “Dr. Duggan will see you next, Ms. Tarnowski.” A renfield doctor willing to sell his soul to the Devil

  , she thought, as David Cheung passed her on his way out, with a smirk and a nod and a fresh dressing on his neck. Or maybe . . . he’s more like a

  vet? The doctor turned out to be a her, a pleasantly plain middle-aged woman with a slight Scottish burr and a pile of faded ginger hair pulled back severely. She smiled ironically at Ellen’s relief as she ushered her into the examination room. That looked conventional too, if upscale, except for the two replica skeletons in opposite corners. One of the skeletons looked a little odd in ways she couldn’t name. There were even family photos over the desk, a Chinese man and three striking hapa children, two girls and a boy, at various ages up to the mid-teens. Connections

  , she thought. Everyone’s story has connections that spin out until they’ve got the whole world in the web. How did . . . they . . . buy or knuckle her? Why’s she working at Hacienda Literally Sucks? “Dr. Fiona Duggan,” she said, and shook hands, a brisk no-nonsense gesture. From her expression she guessed her new patient’s thoughts. “Everyone at this clinic is a doctor, Ms. Tarnowski, and a good one. But even if we were no professionals . . . lass, you’re the safest person for miles around. Think it through.” Oh. Don’t mess with the tiger’s bone. “Bet there’s a low crime rate here,” she said slowly. “Unauthorized

  crimes at least.” “Ye’d win that wager.” A thought struck her. “Except murder-suicides?” A grim smile. “Here, murder or any other serious crime is

  a form of suicide. A slow, painful form.” “Oh.” “If it will make you feel better, I was recruited as a second-year medical student in Edinburgh with—I’ll say it myself—brilliant marks. And incurable pancreatic cancer; a classic rapid-onset adenocarcinoma. They offered to make the cancer cells have fatal accidents.” “You accepted.” “And so would you, I’d

  wager.” “Why do they need a doctor

  , then?” She smiled. “The Power is powerful, but it needs knowledge to apply. Imagine them trying to correct your humors . . . only, we don’t have humors. We have cells. And there are accidents and traumas and plenty of things too small for their attention. Let’s get started.” The only difference between this and the last exam she’d had in Santa Fe was the state-of-the-art equipment; instant blood analysis with only a tiny pinprick sample, just for starters, and the new thinbar scanners that could do things only massive hospital units had been able to manage a few years before. She dressed and sat on the edge of the examining table as the doctor finished tapping at her keyboard. “Well, Ms. Tarnowski, as no doubt your previous doctor has told you, you’re in excellent health. I wish all my patients showed your degree of care with diet and exercise. You might be interested to know that you’re also an eighteen-point-nine on the Alberman Scale.” “Alberman?” “The test for nocturnus genes—the ones linked to the Power, of which there are between seventy-five and one hundred, mostly recessives. Average is around twelve percent.” “Ah . . . thanks, I guess.” “Aye. You should be thankful. There are behavioral complications with a twenty-to-forty result that often have unfortunate consequences.” “Unfortunate?” “Gilles de Rais. Stalin, Hitler, King Leopold of the Congo Free State . . . Or Joan of Arc.” “Joan of Arc was unfortunate?” “Think of how she ended.” “Oh.” “Now, it’s your special health circumstances we’ll move on to next.” Special health circumstances!

  she thought. I suppose everyone needs euphemisms. “You’ve been subject to three feeding attacks so far, correct? Typical attack bites on the inner right elbow, the inner left knee, and the smaller one on the left hand.” “Right. None of them seem . . . infected, or anything. Just slightly discolored.” “Nor will they be. Homo sapiens nocturnus

  —” “Wha’?” Ellen said. She snorted and pointed at one of the skeletons. “Them. The Shadowspawn. Which is a ridiculously melodramatic name . . . Their bites heal cleanly. It’s halfway between predation and parasitism, ecologically, and I’ve done some fascinating research . . . Well, another time. There’s also a coagulant which acts when the wound is exposed to air, and a psychotropic element. A drug.” “I . . . couldn’t move while she was, um, feeding. I didn’t feel numb or anything, just didn’t want to move.” “Yes, standard initial reaction. That effect’s strong, but wears off quickly when the mouth is removed. There’s an addictive euphoric, too, I’m afraid, wi’ a cumulative effect after multiple exposures.” She froze. “How

  addictive?” “A bit worse than nicotine.” Ellen relaxed, and heard her breath whoosh out. “That’s not so bad.” “Mmm, Ms. Tarnowski, nicotine is more addictive than heroin, clinically speaking. The effect on the victim is similar to MDMA, but without the side effects.” At Ellen’s blank look, she went on: “Ecstasy is the street name. Intense feelings of intimacy, and sharply diminished fear and anxiety. If you could synthesize it the market would be huge.” “Oh, Christ,” she said, hugging her shoulders. “How often . . .” “That’s unpredictable. You’ll no’ be her only source of blood, of course; that would

  be . . . unfortunate. For them the blood itself is an addictive drug, particularly if it’s primed by strong emotion. I’ve not been able to experiment on that side of things as much as I’d like.” “The marks aren’t . . .” Ellen said, and made a stabbing gesture with two fingers at the inside of her elbow. “It’s more like a little line with a bit of a curve.” There was a ghoulish fascination to the talk; and it might

  be useful. Something that tickled at the back of her mind said so. Duggan nodded enthusiastically and went to one of the skeletons. She pushed back the upper part of the skull until there was a bony gape and pointed. “This is a replica. It’s the maxillary central incisors, d’you see? Advanced so they’re a bit proud and slightly inclined inward. Larger canines would be silly in a human-shaped mouth if you want a clean cut along a vein. These have microserrati
on, so when they’re presented at just the right angle they slice like steak knives; the lips and tongue arrange the flesh so that the feeding bite is verra precise . . .” She wrenched herself away from the details and went back to the screen. “Now, there was a sexual assault with at least one of the feeding attacks, correct? From your reaction to the pelvic exam.” Ellen flushed. “Ah . . . yes.” And that utterly weird thing in the restaurant

  , she thought. It’s absurd to be concerned about something like embarrassment

  now but I’m

  still cringing at the thought of that. “Only some very minor stretching or bruising, so we don’t have to worry about that.” “We

  don’t have to sit on it! I

  do!” “Sorry for the physician’s ‘royal we.’ Any difficulty in walking or urination?” “No. Just a bit of a sting when I pee.” “I assume the penetration was manual?” She thought about that for a moment. “Umm, yes. That’s what caused the chafing feeling, at least. I don’t remember it all.” Thank God

  , she added to herself. “Normal with a traumatic memory.” She handed over a small container with a tube and applicator inside. “Here’s a topical cream. You’re fortunate the attack had that pattern.” “I am

  ?” she said, trying to control the rising tone of her voice. “Yes,” she said dryly. “The likelihood of a fatal

  feeding attack is much lower that way. There’s a mutual exchange of blood when they mate among themselves; in small quantities, but always, as far as I know. I’m no’ sure if it’s cultural or instinctual.” “Oh.” “Try to cooperate as much as you can the next time it happens; that’ll reduce the chance of lesions.” “Just lie back, I suppose,” she said dully. “No. The other thing that makes a fatal attack more likely is passivity or depression on the part of the victim. For lucies, as the slang here has it—” “Where does that come