“This one is just for clothes, ch?rie,” Adrienne said. “Really, I thought you’d be more interested in the last. All the things we bought there were replacements for your own… gear.”
I got all that stuff on the Internet, dammit! Ellen thought, her ears still burning.
Not in a sex store with attendants asking questions about whether I like plugs or clamps! And playing up to you as if you were… well, you are the top and I am the bottom, but it was still embarrassing! “You should become more comfortable with your identity. Now, clothes.”
The establishment was so exclusive that it didn’t resemble a store at all; it was more like a wealthy family’s house with stockists-cum-models on call, amid a smell of rich fabrics and flowers and upscale consulting rooms. The owner beamed delight at Adrienne; he was a middle-aged man with a gray mustache and a rather blocky build, immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit and shoes that had to have cost more than Ellen had ever made in a month.
“?a va, Jean-Charles?” Adrienne said, as she drew Ellen in through the door by the hand. “I am sorry for the short notice.”
Except that she didn’t quite say that, Ellen realized suddenly.
She’d used the standard French casual greeting, which meant roughly How goes it? Ellen spoke fair basic French and understood and read it much better; that and some Italian were pretty well compulsory in her field if your area of study was Western art.
She pronounced it something like cha va, instead.
“Tu dit-moi ‘?a va’?” he replied, drawing himself up and crossing his arms. “Rien pendant toute une ann?e! Infid?le!”
Well, that’s friendly, in a gal-pal sort of way, Ellen thought. They must have known each other a long time.
Adrienne made a shrugging gesture, almost apologetic, and continued in the same language: “Jean-Charles, I never promised you a monogamous relationship. I was in Paris three times in the past year. In Paris, one buys clothes, is it not so?”
She’s got an accent in her French, I think. Something nasal and quick, faint, I didn’t notice it until I heard it together with someone who doesn’t. Regional, maybe? “Ah, it could be so,” he said, and opened his arms. “And you are here now.”
They exchanged an embrace and kiss on both cheeks. He held Adrienne at arm’s length and said: “My God, it is over a year since I saw you and you have not changed at all. In the ten years since we first met you have aged perhaps one or two.”
“Oh, three or four, certainly.”
“While I have gone gray and wrinkled. In a very distinguished way, but still, gray; and you were not a young girl then. How do you do it?”
“I have told you so many times. Wicked sorcery and the drinking of human blood, my old. Besides, there is a wrinkle. One. Here, beside my eye, you see?”
He laughed easily. “And I thought you were called Br?z?, not Bathory,” he said.
He doesn’t know, Ellen thought, and relaxed very slightly.
Then he turned to Ellen and raised an eyebrow at her rumpled jeans, clean plain T-shirt and padded jacket; not entirely out of place-Pacific Heights was still part of San Francisco-but not exactly fitting in either.
At least my hair’s combed and I had a shower and the underwear and bra are fresh, she thought mordantly.
Adrienne was in a severe outfit of dark blue, with a modishly asymmetric skirt that came to a point beside the left knee, and a gold-link belt; it somehow made her look a few years older.
“This is a young friend, Ellen Tarnowski,” Adrienne said. “She lost all her possessions in a fire. I need a complete outfitting for her. I have taken her under my wing, as one says.”
Elegant, batlike wing, Ellen thought, and saw a sardonic look in the gold-flecked eyes.
God, telepathy adds whole layers of meanings to conversations even when you don’t have it yourself.
“You have certainly given us something to work with,” he said enthusiastically. Then to her: “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Tarnowski.”
Another lift of the eyebrow to Adrienne. “Ms. Darton… she was here only two months ago…”
“Monica and I will always have a deep bond.”
“You are a constant and faithful friend, Adrienne.”
Or a collector, Ellen thought. Then she remembered Dmitri Usov saying Don’t you ever just kill them? and the hopeless caged desperation in his lucy’s face. And T?kairin Michiko’s avid eyes when she wondered how the last living drops of Ellen’s blood would taste, as her heart quivered and died.
Let’s hear it for collection! she thought fervently. At least until I get out of this madhouse-slash-Hell.
“Never are you out of it,” Adrienne whispered in her ear. “Abandon all hope, remember?”
Then she went back to her discussion with the designer. The premises included a laser scanner in a changing room that made a complete three-dimensional model of her body. When she came out it was already on the screen, and the proprietor and Adrienne were consulting over the curiously sexless silver shape.
“Oui, mais-” the owner said. “With such a complexion and such a figure-magnificently traditional, a veritable maize-fed American goddess-it would be criminal not to-”
“Mais non, Jean-Charles; you make her sound like a prize Jersey at a state fair in Wisconsin. She is also a woman of great intelligence and sensitivity, an artist. Look at that face, those eyes-”
Ellen offered an occasional comment as clothes appeared on the figure or mysteriously wafted out of the depths of the establishment; once or twice they took her seriously, or more often gave her pitying looks and then ignored her. Once the man did a series of quick impersonal measurements with a tape, and several times models came in wearing one item or another. Then a cloud of assistants descended and bore her off to fitting chambers, expanses large as a living-room; fine chairs and rugs, and only the mirrors and mannequin stands and the sewing station that let down from the wall to show their purpose. Tucks, pins, hems, voices advising: “This skirt is just right for madam, but it needs to be longer, Madam has such elegant legs, she can carry off the longer length as other women can’t…”
Another: “This slip goes with this dress and it will be better if we change your bra. The thong will show-let’s use the elastex full undergarment instead… These pantyhose… try these shoes, Miss Tarnowski, no, I think the satin Eau de Nile slippers are better for this one…”
One of the assistants flipped up her BlackBerry: “Jack? Shoes. Size seven and half medium, satin Eau de Nile, evening and dancing… Bring five or six examples…”
But they aren’t really treating me like an object, Ellen thought suddenly, as one of them stepped back glowing with enthusiasm and clapped her hands together.
These are artists at work. They’re having fun. They’ve been turned loose in a candy store with a gold card. Or they’re painters suddenly given the key to the supply closet. That’s why they keep asking me too.
“Madam is a true champagne blond, very natural, very beautiful,” one said around the pins clenched between her lips. “Your complexion can carry off many difficult colors, even this sunset pink, most women would kill to have madam’s figure; it makes dressing you a pleasure… God, if you only knew what we have to do to make some of the cows who come in here look like human beings. Talk about being masters of disguise-the CIA have nothing on us… Someone get Margaret and tell her to bring her emergency kit!”
Margaret guided her to one of the chairs and put a towel around her shoulders and went to work on her hair.
“My God, it’s all real,” she said, fingers and comb deft. “Look at this color, and the density! You could grow this to your ankles like a silk waterfall if you wanted. But what have you been doing with it, madam?”
More clothing, and double doors opened to show a long corridor nearly as wide as a room. Ellen walked down it, with the critical group spacing themselves out to see how the outfits looked at a distance as well. At the end around the ell was an ironing board and cleaning station. Jean-Charles made an occasional entry at discreet moments, spoke an imperial word and left.
“Good,” he said at last.
She’d returned to the original room, feeling oddly diminished in her jeans and T.
He made a final note and turned to Adrienne: “That’s settled, then. A final fitting? In any case, we should have the complete ensemble ready by… oh, the end of the week. You have priority, of course.”
“Your work is always right the first time,” Adrienne said. “In any case, I have perfectly competent seamstresses at home when it’s a matter of tiny adjustments to a hem. It’s your creative genius I need. Also, of course, a few things for her right away. I appeal to you, my old friend!”
Jean-Charles turned to her, tapping his hand on his chin. “A fire, you say,” he muttered. “Pauvre petite! ”
Then, decisively: “You are wandering around our windy city in that junk, a girl of my own daughter’s age!”
He snapped his fingers. “Martha! The brown and turquoise running suit with a pale blue shell and a tan shell, the ones Richarda models. Also, bring the off-royal blue wool dress, the camel coat… Francisco wanted to change the design on that anyway. Grab those nice lined wool slacks… in a dark olive and a chocolate, and one of the asymmetrical jackets in that dark ivy and black pattern. We should have two or three silk blouses in tan, lilac and green, oh, and that twinset in nile. That should help! You cannot be with nothing but those jeans. Just a few things to tide you over this week.”
Ellen found herself flushing. “Merci, Monsieur,” she said, trying for her best pronunciation. “Vous?tes si tr?s gentils. So very kind.”
He really is, she thought, her eyes prickling a little. I haven’t had much of that lately.
“It is nothing,” he said, smiling at her. “I am merely following my trade.”
Adrienne smiled herself and pulled a checkbook out of her handbag. Hats, gloves and pantyhose appeared as if by magic, and Ellen tried to pay attention.
I have to wear them, after all.
“Good deeds should not go unrewarded.”
She filled in the check. Then she tore it from the book and slid it across the table to the man.
“After Mademoiselle Tarnowski’s so-gracious words, I feel like a whore to charge anything,” he said. “But one must live.”
“You are a grande horizontale in the ancient mode, Jean-Charles,” she said; they laughed and exchanged another set of cheek-kisses.
“I am a veritable Liane de Pougy, then! I shall write a novel about our liaison!”
They were laughing together as the assistants reappeared with his list, to bear Ellen off one more time.
At least I feel less conspicuous walking beside her, Ellen thought when they came out onto the street.
She’d been chilly before. The fine double-knit merino wool of the running suit and the knit silk shell fit like her own skin, but they were supremely comfortable as well.
And this stuff feels fabulous. Like my clothes are stroking my skin all the time.
Ahead steepness fell away to show the Golden Gate Bridge soaring above water royal blue, and the hills of Marin green with the winter rains. It was sunny but brisk, and she was glad of the suit’s jacket. She put her free hand in the right pocket; Adrienne had her left again, swinging it like a happy child as they walked.
Though inconspicuous is an odd way to feel considering I’m wearing six months’ salary.
“Or conspicuous in the same way as others,” Adrienne observed.
“Why are you doing this?” Ellen asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, we could have stayed in and found other ways to pass the time until my meeting. The replacements for all that… equipment you lost have arrived by now, I’m sure. There’s that nine-thonged braided silk whip with the delightfully explicit dual-purpose handle…”
Errrk! Ellen thought, flushing with a complex play of emotions.
“I wasn’t objecting, Adrienne! Ah, it’s weird, but yeah, I like the clothes. They’re fun. I’ve always gone funky before because it was what I could afford.”
“Well, even wearing a burlap potato sack you would look like Aphrodite rising from the waves.”
“Ah… thanks.”
“No, truly. You should develop a more positive self-image. And, of course, you are supremely bite-able, which is a matter of the psyche and mind as much as the body, though physical beauty helps. Have you noticed how much Michiko wanted to drink your blood, even though she was sated? I think nearly every Shadowspawn you meet will. Adrian certainly would have too. How it would have tortured him, the scent, the pulse beating so close to his lips! You are like a sweet, fragrant golden peach one longs to taste.”
“Ah… thanks, I suppose.”
I think. Sort of. That’s sort of eerie and creepy and… thinking of Adrian… sad. If I’d known… I mean, if I’d known and hadn’t run screaming for the hills… Poor Adrian! I was teasing him all the time and I didn’t know it. He must have willpower like titanium steel.
“I like having beautiful things,” the Shadowspawn went on, giving her hand a squeeze. “You deserve the proper settings. Also there are some… social engagements coming up, if things go well. I want to show you off to best advantage-for yourself, and as a sort of subtle statement about Adrian. He has quite a reputation as… a person of formidable, dangerous talents, you know.”
“He does?”
“Oh, certainly. He has killed more Shadowspawn than any living… well, more than any corporeal.”
Good for you, Adrian! she thought. You’re the only Shadowspawn I’ve met I don’t want dead!
Adrienne laughed. “I won’t miss most of the ones he got. He very nearly killed me at least once, and vice versa… not unusual for brothers and sisters of our breed. As is passionate love. Love, hate, they are closely linked.”
I wish he had killed you, Ellen thought.
It was automatic, but she winced. Adrienne laughed again, and freed her hand for a moment to administer a slap to the fundament that made her yelp and jump.
“Keep that up and I’ll think you don’t appreciate me,” she said.
“I hate you. And not in any ambiguous way, either!”
“Of course. It adds a delicious spice to things. But to return to Adrian… whom you seem to be falling in love with again, perhaps by way of contrast to me… That I have his lucy strengthens my reputation.”
“Sort of like… running off with his flag, or stealing his car, or something?”
“Exactly. And so I wish to display you to best advantage, and because it amuses me. But keep in mind that I’m not a tame tiger, Ellen. Peter was quite right about that.”
Yesyesyesyes, she thought, nodding.
“I promised you many new and interesting sensations and experiences. This is one of them. There are going to be others that you’ll find much more stressful. I suggest you learn to live for the moment.”
She’s jerking me around.
“Of course I am. I am a sadist! But not a guzzling brute like Dmitri; he’s the type who gave werewolves a bad name. I’m going to devour you utterly, Ellen, in several senses of the word, but slowly, artistically, a sip at a time. You may or may not survive the process, but it’s going to be interesting for us both.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“He’s a myth, alas. Now the Tempter… that was real.”
The thought was appalling, but…
Perhaps I’m getting jaded. Losing my capacity for horrified surprise at the fact that the world has turned into a theme park for demons.
They walked down to Fillmore and turned towards the Bay, blue and white below; then into a caf? with an inner courtyard, a cheerfully bustling place, patrons sitting at marble-topped tables amid a mouth-watering smell of pastries baking.
“Adrienne!” a woman’s voice called.
Ellen recognized Michiko; there was a slender preoccupied-looking black man with her. Beside them were a pale-faced spiky-haired girl in black trailing clothes wearing a pillbox hat with a net half-veil, and a Native American man in shirt and vest, pants and boots. He had the broad brown beak-nosed face of one of the Southwestern tribes, with a lean trim body; his hair hung down his back in a single braid beneath a headband, and there was a gold hoop in one ear.
“Hon Da, Adrienne,” he said, rising in a motion like a cougar coming to its feet on a rock.
“Hon Da, Dale,” she replied.
They exchanged the finger-touching gesture she’d noted before; this time there was a trace of…
Cool and wary, Ellen thought. They’re sort of… respectful of each other. And he’s giving me the eye too. So’s Michiko, in a pouty sort of way.
Suddenly the drape and cling of the running suit made her feel even more vulnerable than she knew she was.
I wish I was wearing a burka, only they could still see my mind. Why do all these monsters find me so attractive, for God’s sake? Or is appetizing the right word? “She was Adrian’s, eh?” he said. “Nice. He must be slipping. I heard he’d gone soft.”
“Eccentric, perhaps,” Adrienne said.
She repeated the gesture with Michiko. The three-the Shadowspawn, she realized-took one end of the table.
He’s got those gold flecks in the eyes. Not enough to see easily, but they’re there when bright light strikes.
They began talking earnestly; unfortunately, they did it in some language she’d never heard, though she suspected it was the dark man’s.
That left her… Below the salt, she thought wryly.
A plate of tarts and sweet fruit breads and cinnamon rolls and tiny puff pastries was placed between them.
With the other lowly food-and-amusement types.
“Hi,” she said to them. “I’m Ellen Tarnowski. I’m Adrienne’s… lucy.”
The spiky-haired girl grinned. “I heard about you. I’m Kai, Dale’s blood-bitch.”
She nodded towards the man with the braid. “And he and Michiko were talking about you a bit. Pleased to meetcha.”
She had a rapid-fire voice and a quick smile, and irregular-pretty features. A little younger than Ellen, with a tough, wary look around her dark eyes. They traveled up and down the blond woman’s form.
“Michiko said you were hot. I sorta agree, in that classy blond way… That’s natural, right? You show a canary with your pants down?”
“Yes,” Ellen said, startled into honesty.
Then she glared. Shall I inquire about your pubic hair?
Kai smiled again, unabashed. “I’m mousy brown so I go for this ink-black look-it’s a Wreaking, not Clairol. Michiko said Adrienne wouldn’t throw you into the pot. Got kinda shirty about it.”
The black man shuddered. “She… killed a girl last night. One that looked like you. I had to watch. Oh, Jesus, all the blood, the sounds she made, and she bit her and bit her and then she’d stop and the girl would wake up and scream and beg me to help-”
He collected himself. “I’m Wayne Jackson. I’m… with Michiko. I am… was… an epidemiologist at Stanford.”
He knotted his hands together. Kai looked at him with a slight sneer.
“Wuss. You better get your act together or you’re not going to last long, not with her. Show some positive ’tude, dude!”
Then she lit a cigarette. Ellen blinked; in San Francisco that was worse than beating kittens to death in a public place, but nobody seemed to notice.
Kai looked around proudly: “That’s me, not Dale or the others. I’m a twenty-six.”
At her look: “I’ve got twenty-six percent of the Shadowspawn genes-there’s this test they have.”
“The Alberman?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Unexpectedly, Wayne spoke: “Someone… like me did it for them back at the end of the last century. Twenty-six is high, for the general population.”
Kai nodded. “It happens sometimes just by accident, or a Shadow-dude has some bitch and forgets to hex the sperm. I can do some Wreaking now that I’m trained, just little shit like my hair, but it’s lots of fun. Dale says it’s why I’m alive after my happy childhood and wasn’t some strung-out OD’d junkie or something. It makes you lucky, sorta, kinda.”
“It sounds… useful.”
Adrienne’s children could spin little feathers. What could this malicious grown-up child do? “Oh, shit, yeah,” Kai said, around a mouthful of kiwi tart. “That’s why Dale didn’t off me when we met. He could feel it when he got his mind into me.”
She giggled. “Along with his teeth and dick. He lets me help with a kill sometimes, get guys or chicks thinking it’s a hookup and lead ’em in. He usually doesn’t like to string it out the way most Shadowspawn do. Or I get to watch, which is totally hot, or do other stuff. You done any of that yet?”
A Judas-goat lucy, Ellen thought. Eww. Whole new vistas of ewwness.
“No,” she said, her mouth a little dry. “I’m… new to this.”
“It’s cool, I think. I was always into the pain stuff, I was so this death metal fangirl, but I never got to do a lot of it until this. I’ve been Dale’s for four years now.”
Wayne seemed to have gotten some self-possession back. He ate a little sugar-dusted something and sipped at his coffee.
“Michiko asked me some hypothetical questions at a public lecture.
They were off-the-wall, but I answered. Then she decided she needed my services full-time.”
“Yeah, services,” Kai said, and licked her lips.
He sighed. “Well, professors don’t get hit on by gorgeous young rich women very often and taken out and… And then there were teeth in my throat, and the world… went crazy.”
He looked down into his coffee cup. Kai snorted again and ate another chocolate-and-cream pastry.
“How did you… meet Dale?” Ellen asked her.
“Picked me up at a concert in Tucson. He totally started feeding right while he was boning me that first time and I still thought he was just this awesome Indian dude, and it was like, totally great. You had the feeding and sex at the same time thing yet?”
“Ah… no,” Ellen said. A bit late to be shy, as Adrienne said. “Close together, though.”
“That’s good too, but with the timing just exactly right, wow! I’m the only regular lucy he’s got right now. We travel a lot-that’s cool too. He does things for the Council. Killings mostly, you know, people who find out stuff they shouldn’t or get out of line, sometimes even a Shadowspawn. They call him the Shadowblade. Is that awesome or what?”
“Aren’t you worried that-”
Kai shrugged and washed a mouthful down with her coffee. “Nah. Dale says he’s going to Carry me when he finally offs me-you know that soul-eating thing they can do?”
Ellen’s mind went blank for an instant.
Did I hear that? There’s so much… I am never going to get used to this. I don’t want to get used to any of this. Help!
Kai nodded. “He’s already done the temp version a bunch of times so he can do the extreme stuff to me without killing me. Well, killing my body; he’s killed me in there about… oh, thirty-six times. All sorts of ways, and it feels just like the real thing. The first time I didn’t know what was happening and thought it was the real thing. Shit, talk about a crazy ride!”
Wayne blinked at her. “What’s that like?” he blurted. “Dying, I mean.”
“Kinda interesting. Like, there’s this complete rush. Especially when you learn to ride the pain and fear. I figure it won’t be much different when he does me for real. Pretty weird in there, yeah, but I’m not your vanilla sort of girl and I get to live forever. Or as long as he does. And when he lets me I can see and feel what he’s doing, which is just bitchin’. And when you think about this destroy-the-world gig they’re gonna do, it all gives me a lot better chances than most people.”
“You want to live forever… in there?” Ellen said.
That being my own particular nightmare right now. Even with Adrian it would be terrifying. In the mind of a monster forever… and you couldn’t die, or even go mad…
“Why not? Lots of company. Meantime it’s all fun. Especially the feeding part; there just isn’t any shit you can buy that gives you a high like that. I haven’t wanted a hit of anything else since Tucson except cigarettes and I’ve cut way back on those. And the sex is just fucking extreme. How’d you end up with Adrienne? Those Br?z?s are seriously big mojo with the Shadowspawn.”
“I… was her brother Adrian’s girlfriend. She… took me away from him.”
“No!” Kai said. “Kinky! I heard about her brother, too. Those two got this feud thing going. He’s like, a boogeyman to a lot of the Shadowspawn. Even Dale gives him respect.”
She subsided, looking up the table at her Shadowspawn; the conversation had shifted into English, more or less.
“Ga no iwai,” Michiko was saying thoughtfully.
“Prayer for Long Life,” Adrienne said. “I like it. It’s been ten years since his last?”
“Exactly ten come May, and fifty since his Second Birth. I think it would be a… good gesture… to invite him to Rancho Sangre for the celebration.”
“Which is where we’d need your unique talents… Dale Shadowblade,” Adrienne said. “I have to admit, you do no-see better than I do… and that’s something I rarely say.”
The Indian looked into the distance. “OK. You make a lot of sense, Adrienne. Option One would be fun for a while, but that devastated wasteland thing, no.”
He grinned. “My father would have loved it; he was deeply into that old-time Swallowing Monster and Bear-man on Nab?anye mountain stuff, wanted the world to be like the old stories. Michiko’s right too, though. We’ve got to get free of all that human leftover shit, tribes, countries. It’s just not relevant to us.”
Michiko nodded; she had a sleek modern look to her today, hair parted in the center, sunglasses, a sleeveless white silk blouse, dark trousers tucked into high-heeled boots and a coat hanging off the back of her chair, like an up-and-coming lawyer on her day off.
“Wayne,” she said, and snapped her fingers. “Come here and talk to us.”
He did, fumbling up a laptop from a case at his feet and taking the spot between Adrienne and his Shadowspawn as they moved their chairs aside for him.
“Tell us about those spread patterns you were working on,” Michiko went on, playfully running her fingers over the back of his neck. “With the aerosol release of the initial pathogen.”
To Adrienne: “Wayne’s got me talking like an intellectual when I’m with him. You know, he even screams with an impressive vocabulary?”
Wayne stammered for a moment, closed his eyes, then opened them. Adrienne spoke, her voice warm: “Michi, we all have our individual needs, but we-collectively speaking-need him coherent right now.”
Well, there’s a first. The Yonsei Horror actually looks abashed! Ellen thought. Take one spoiled rich girl sorority bitch and add murdering sociopathic sadist, and put it all in one awful package with superpowers. And she’s not even as scary as the Apache Devil there. God!
The scientist took a deep breath, let it out, and began to speak in a voice that was almost calm: “With a fourteen-day contagious latency period, what you’d need would be aerosol release at a limited number of major transport hubs… I’ve got graph projections here.”
“Pictures are good,” Adrienne said. “A lot of our relatives are not intellectuals. Not given to complex verbalizations, shall we say.”
“As in, some of ’em are stone stupid,” Dale said, and laughed. “One thing the Power doesn’t guarantee is that you’ll be smart. We don’t average dumber than humans, but when there are only a few thousand you sure notice the dumb ones more.”
Adrienne had been studying the graphs. “You’re assuming a very high average number of contacts.”
“They’d be the most highly mobile individuals, too,” Wayne said. “Ideal vectors.”
“What cities?” Adrienne asked. “The fewer the better. Complex plans have a tendency to go wrong, even with the Power.”
“This list.”
“Twenty-seven?”
“If you want to be absolutely certain.”
“Thank you. You’ve made a definite contribution to our plans.”
Ellen could see his face twitch. The Shadowspawn all laughed, a wicked snickering.
“Then we’re agreed?” Adrienne said. The others nodded, and she raised her coffee cup.
“To Option Two! And the Dread Empire of Shadow, with decent plumbing and high-speed Internet!”
“Oh, thank God!” Ellen said.
She was in the great high-ceilinged glass-walled living-room of the mountaintop house again. Standing near enough to the fireplace to feel the warmth on her skin, dressed in a long soft robe of dark cloth.
“Ellie!”
The embrace and kiss were wordless for a long time.
“Where are you?” Adrian said into her ear.
“In bed, alone. She told me to go to sleep quite early. I think-”
She could feel his lips move in her hair, and there was sound, but it slipped out of her consciousness.
“Yes, you’re under that sleep-now.”
“I thought so.”
Ellen dropped her head into the hollow of his shoulder, her breath almost a shudder of sheer relief; it wasn’t until the deadly tension was gone that she realized how tightly it had drawn skin and muscle and tendon. He felt it, and began to knead her shoulders.
“Bad?” he said.
She raised her head with a sigh. The living-room was lit only by the low crackle of a pi?on and juniper fire, scenting the air and casting a pool of ruddy flickers around the hearth. The full moon washed the crags outside with silver and darkness, its light falling on the sofas and settees and bookcases.
Ellen sank down cross-legged on the sheepskins that were heaped before the fire; Adrian joined her, and they leaned against each other in companionable silence.
This is like how it was when things were good with us, she thought. Only better. How to Save Your Relationship: Get Abducted by His Monster Relatives.
After minutes he asked again: “Where are you?”
“Still in San Francisco,” she said.
“Adrienne?”
“Mostly she’s been… shopping today. Shopping with me, of all things. Clothes and accessories and lingerie and perfume and jewelry and getting my hair done. Even books and some pictures, all bundled up and sent back to the ranch, to the place she put me in on Lucy Lane. It’s… weird; she knows I hate her, and she even likes that, she doesn’t expect to change it. It’s all like I was a room she was decorating, or a doll or something.”
Adrian sighed into her hair. “She had quite a few dolls, as a little girl. She’d dress them and talk with them and have parties… sometimes I’d help her. She liked my hobbies too, the piano, watercolors. We were both passionate about horses, and swimming.”
“But sometimes a doll would disappear?” Ellen said.
She hugged him closer; the solid lean muscularity was infinitely comforting, and the familiar clean but slightly acrid smell of his body. Even the fact that it was like his sister’s didn’t make it less so. It wasn’t exactly the same; deeper and heavier somehow. It must be the scent of Shadowspawn, subtly different from her kind.
“She’d say Francine was bad, or Isabelle wouldn’t do what she was told.”
“Eerrrk!”
He nodded. “And that would be the last of that one. Once she cried because a doll was gone, and our mother-we thought she was our aunt-said, Let that be a lesson to you. They don’t grow back.”
“It’s hard to imagine you as kids. Either of you.”
“Oh, we were,” he said softly. “It gives you a… different perspective. There was always a rivalry, but sometimes… yes, there was love. Love as puppies or kittens love, straightforward, there like sunlight or rain. It is easier for love to curdle into hate than become indifference. Both link you tightly. We have become utterly different, but we both started out on the same road. What else?”
“And we had lunch with Michiko and… this other Shadowspawn. An Indian-he looked like an Indian, maybe a Hopi, maybe Apache or Navaho-named Dale.”
She could feel him stiffen for an instant. “Dale Shadowblade?” he said.
“That’s what they called him. You know him?”
“Know of him. We’ve only… briefly been in proximity. Otherwise one of us would be dead, the true death.”
“He’s bad?”
“An enforcer who works for the Council as a whole, freelance. Mostly he’s famous for being unseeable.”
Ellen nodded. “That must be what Adrienne meant when she said your special talents to him. She’s planning this get-together-”
“Now what could that be?” he asked when she’d finished. “An assassination? But she saved Hajime yesterday. Or could she really want a reconciliation, hoping to persuade him to change his stance on Operation Trimback?”
He shook his head and then looked down at her where she rested one cheek on his shoulder.
“You have kept your head about you, my darling Ellie. This is the break we need.”
“You’re sure?” Ellen said; she fought to keep her hands from turning into claws and digging painfully.
“There will be many, many Shadowspawn there, crowded together. And their guards. Frictions, jockeying for position, cross-purposes. Not a one-on-one duel between defender and attacker. Everything will be… confused.”
“It will? Adrienne… is smart.”
“We don’t do organization well, not on a large scale. Yes! This will be the opportunity we need! And I will get you out of there!”
The kiss turned heated. After a moment, she took his hand and slid it onto her breast.
“You are sure?” he said, looking down into her eyes.
The hand moved, sliding up over the curve, touching the stiffened nipple through the cloth of her robe. She gasped slightly at the jolt of sensation, and the way her skin seemed to glow all over. The golden flecks in his irises glittered like mica seen in the depths of a cave, catching the firelight.
The Power, she thought. That’s what they’re a sign of. This is the man the Shadowspawn themselves fear.
“Adrian, when a woman does that, she’s generally sure!” Softly: “I want to do this because I want to, with someone I really like. Someone I love.”
The hand turned insistent, and his mouth came down on hers. She scrabbled at the buttons on his shirt…
Minutes later she linked her fingers behind his neck.
“Adrian?” she said breathlessly.
“Yes?”
“I haven’t suddenly become made of porcelain. I like to feel how strong you are. Come on!”
He snarled then; she felt a brief surge of fear, and then it turned to a savage excitement. Her long legs wrapped around him as he drove forward, lifting her in an arch off the sheepskins until only her neck and shoulders touched…
“So,” she said much later.
He lay against her; one hard arm was across her stomach, and his breath tickled on her collarbone, like butterflies in the golden glow. There was still a little tension in him; she could feel it in the muscles of his back as she stroked it, like hard living rubber under the sweat-slick skin.
OK, she thought, with a catch in her breath and a flutter beneath the breastbone. Here goes.
She slid down a little more and slipped an arm behind his head; he stirred and murmured drowsily. Then she arched her neck up and began to pull him down towards the base of her throat.
He growled, a low rippling sound in his chest. Her heart beat faster as his hand gripped her shoulder, hard almost to the point of pain. The lips touched the taut skin“No!” It was half a shout as he came fully awake. “What are you doing?”
She caught his face in her hands to keep him from scrabbling too far away.
“Well, that’s an invitation too, lover,” she said firmly.
He reared back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes, I do. I’m talking about helping you with what you need. I’m your lover, right? That’s what lovers do. And, buster, I expect to enjoy it too. That’s part of the package as well.”
“You want me to drink your blood?”
“Yeah. Exactly. I want you to drink my blood. Not more than I can spare, of course!”
He quivered. “I’ve spent my life fighting not to-”
“You’ve been fighting not to take blood. That’s wrong. That’s like rape. Now that I know about it, the way you fought it makes me love you more.”
He panted, then seemed to come to self-control. “Then how can you ask me to give up the fight?”
“I’m not. I would never try to sabotage what you’ve done.”
She took a deep breath herself. “I’m… a little scared here, myself, Adrian. But… I’m asking you to drink some of my blood. It’ll make me feel very good too. That’s like making love, as far as I can see.”
“You’re… addicted-”
“Not right now. I got a fix night before this as far as the goddamned drug in Shadowspawn spit goes. This is about you and me.”
Softly. “Come on, Adrian. This is your mind. I’m not physically here. We’re safe, right? I’ve thought about this.”
“I don’t want to hurt you! If I drink here, it’ll feel exactly the same as reality for both of us… until we wake up, at least. How could I stop myself when we’re back together in the real world?”
“That’s just it. If it’s just the same, you can test whether you can stop. And… even if you can’t, here, this time, I… won’t be angry with you. We’ll just know that it’s not an option. But I think you can.”
“Nothing can stop me, if I start,” he said desolately.
“Yes. You can stop you. So I can stop you. I’d say, No, can’t spare any right now and you’d stop and go back to the horrible stuff from the blood bank.”
His gaze turned from its inward lock, and a smile warmed them without quite reaching his lips.
“You trust me that much?” he said quietly.
“I trust you that way with other things. You’re a lot stronger than I am physically, and I always knew that, so I trusted you every time I got into bed with you, or even was alone with you. Trusted you not to hurt me; trusted you not to make me do anything I really didn’t want to. I couldn’t physically stop you; I had to rely on your being a… good person. How’s this different?”
“I… the need is very strong,” he said softly. “And I’m not a good person. I just try to act like one.”
“Adrian, that’s what a good person is; someone who controls what they do. You’re what you do, not what you think about doing. And even your crazy sister can stop feeding on me when she decides to, and she doesn’t care about me at all, not really. I trust you with my life.”
“You would have to,” he said somberly. “I… don’t… Who could be worthy of that?”
“Adrian, you’ve got the Power. If we’re going to live together, the only way I can do it is knowing you won’t use it on me against my will. But you can’t stop being what you are.”
“Ellie, more than anything, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know. I really believe that now. That’s why we should try this. But not if you say no. It’s got to be both of us.”
He turned on his stomach and put his face in his hands; she could feel his back shake with muffled sobs as she stroked it.
“It’s all right, Adrian. Whatever you decide, it’s all right.”
She cuddled against him. Gradually the tremors ceased. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he turned over to face her, unselfconsciously.
I haven’t often seen a man who can do that, she thought.
He regarded her levelly, the gold flecks in his irises glinting a little. “You are sure?”
“Yes. Well, I’m feeling fluttery and breathing quickly and my heart’s racing, but yeah, I’ve decided I want to try it. Bite me, for God’s sake. That’s an order.”
She brought their faces together. “I need to do this with someone I love, too.”
One arm went under her shoulders. She let her head fall back against his biceps and arched her neck again. Then she put her arms around his shoulders, hand behind head.
“Do it.”
The mouth touched her throat, and she felt the familiar motion of the lips and tongue arranging the angle.
The feeding bite is verra precise.
For a single instant a stab of cold terror went through her, like ice water in her chest and stomach, and something inside her screamed:
What… are… you… doing! Nonononono!
Then the teeth, hard against the skin, and a faint growl, rumbling, deeper than Adrienne’s. The sting of the cut, as the incisors moved in their exact lateral slice. Instantly the fear vanished. Warmth surged through her, deeper as she made no resistance. The blood flowed strongly under the hard insistent suction of the feeding, but she could move a little, though lights swam in front of her eyes. Her free hand stroked his throat, feeling the swallows. Peace was utter and complete, a fulfillment that needed nothing more.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “Yes. Take it. Take what you need.” She waited for a time that stretched. Then: “That’s enough, lover,” she whispered.
Nothing changed, except that his grip on her shoulder tightened. She tugged at his head and pushed at his jaw-feebly, the lightest touch against the ruthless predator’s strength she felt. Her mind forced her lips to move: “That’s enough. Adrian, stop. Stop! ”
One more long moment… and his mouth broke away from her neck with a small wet sound, and he rolled over onto his back, shuddering. The cut itched fiercely for a moment, then almost vanished; she was just barely aware of it.
Ellen gave an exultant wiggle. “Oh, my,” she murmured, and raised herself on one elbow to look down at him.
His eyes were closed; there was a slight smile on his lips, where beads of her blood glistened darker than rubies in the firelight.
“Your mind was like… moonlight making a path on water,” he said.
“You say the nicest things,” she chuckled, and leaned down to kiss him.
The blood tasted of salt and metal, like the sea but with a hint of organic muskiness.
“I wish I could taste that the way you do,” she said, with her hands on his shoulders.
“I think… here… you can. Let me try.”
His hand buried itself in her tangled gold hair and held their foreheads together. There was a tickling behind her eyes…
“Oh! ” she said.
Like golden light poured down the throat until the tongue tingled with it, like the taste of song, like the thing that wine tried and tried and failed to be, like an infant’s memory of mother’s milk, and caramel and spices and the first sip of darkly rich hot chocolate on a winter’s day.
“Oh, God, no wonder you want it!” she blurted.
His eyes opened. “Now you know.”
“Now we know.”