S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

It meant she was a renfield. That she knew who and what ran this place, and had been initiated. A collaborator.

He astonished himself with the wave of violent hatred that swept through him: a blast like stomach acid at the back of his throat, a vision of a bomb scything through the crowd around him in fragments of nails and bolts and furniture and leaving wreckage and flames.

Whoa, he thought. Watch it! The kid can't help where she was born. She might be an okay person.

"Another latte, please," he said, and read her name badge. "Tiffany."

Instead of letting the images cycle through his head he ate another apricot-walnut muffin: very good indeed, and even the butter had real taste. The menu said, All local, all organic, right under the classic Art Deco Sunkist label cover from the nineteen twenties, and had a little small-print, Breze Enterprises, down in the lower left corner.

Ellen had also said the place was like a rich man's show-ranch, only with people instead of palomino horses. Everyone in it was a renfield, except for stoop labor trucked in for the day from elsewhere. And occasional travelers, not all of whom made it out alive.

When the waitress returned to fill his cup he let his wrist bangle show; it had the mon symbol of the Tokairin clan on it.

"Oh!" the waitress said. "Hi! You're one of the faithful too! We don't get all that many outsiders here, not faithful. Meat sacks don't count, of course."

"Of course."

He decided that making allowances for Tiffany's upbringing was futile. These people were, for all practical purposes, devil worshipers from long lines of devil worshipers.

Faithful and meat sacks. Well, that's one way of looking at it, he thought. One thing about being a detective, you get used to talking to skanks like this little puta without letting your feelings show. And yeah, the briefing said its hard even to find this place if you're not in the know. Brigadoon from Hell, not on the maps, the computers don't reference it, Google Earth can't find it.

"Yeah," he said easily. "Down here from the bay to do some purchase orders at the fruit co-op. I'm part of the acquisition team for the clan's town houses. They insist on the best, and now that the Tokairin and the Brezes are buddies again, you're it here."

Rancho Sangre was surrounded by farms, mostly in orchards and vineyards; they rolled away to the varied green of the Coast Range just west of town.

"You don't look like a produce buyer," she said, smiling. "You look more like you work on the muscle side, a house soldier or something. Kind of rough, not a cubicle dweeb."

A thrill of alarm shot through him; the problem was that he did look like that. Not just his build, but the scars on his arms and face, and the way he held himself. He hadn't expected a waitress to pick up on it, though.

Goddammit, I'm not a spook! I wasn't an undercover cop, either. Everyone in Santa Fe knows who all the cops are!

"I used to be on that side of things," he said. "But I'm retired from ops now. We get old, eh? Even if people your age can't believe it."

"Oh, you don't look old, just scary. The Gurkhas here are too, I suppose, but they really keep to themselves and they're too different. And there usually isn't anything for them to do but run through the woods and train. You look like you really did stuff; I suppose up in the big city they need a lot of guys like you."

Well, that's flattering.

"You're born here, obviously."

"Third generation. My dad works for the co-op," she went on pleasantly, nodding. "Supervisor in the packing plant, that's really hard when you don't use any preservatives, it has to be just right. Mom's a guidance counselor at the high school."

"I'm glad to be here. It's quiet in San Francisco with all the daimyo out of town, and this makes a change of pace. Not that I'm sorry to have missed that big ruckus last year."

"Oh, God, yeah, that party and the fight and everything!" she said. "And it was so much fun up until then before it all got spoiled, all the new people and the celebrations. I was working up at the casa grande for the party, Theresa the manager tapped me, and it was a complete blast. Lucky I was in the infirmary and tranked out of my mind when the bad stuff came down, so I only heard about it later. Couple of people nearly got killed, and there was that horrible thing with Dona Adrienne."

"You were sick?" he asked. "How'd that happen?"

She sat down to talk; business was slow, and this was a small town, only a few thousand people and no tourist trade.

And, of course, we're both faithful.

"Oh, not sick, just banged up and low on blood. They had a lot of extra staff in to help with the guests, you know, Theresa had the sheriff go around and pick us out at school. Mainly I was sort of a temporary lucy, you know, 'cause I'm pretty, which sure beat cleaning the rooms or the kitchen. Even if it was more twenty-four/seven."

"You certainly are pretty enough for anyone, even the Masters," he said gallantly.

"Thanks." Another giggle. "There were two of the Tokairin Shadowspawn tag-teaming me, some sort of security guys from things they said…God, I was sore all over for a week, I didn't know there were that many ways to get screwed! They had those funny tattoos all over, too, and I mean all over."

"Ah…not too scary, I hope."

"No. Well, yes, but usually hot-scary, not just plain scary. I knew they probably wouldn't really kill or cripple me, you know how it is with us, and they had the refreshments the Brezes brought in for that. I saw them go at a couple of those meat sacks and it reeeeeally got gross, I nearly barfed. But they're just meat sacks, after all."

"Nothing too bad, eh?"

"Not once I got into it. It just got sort of blurry for me when they were turning into animals and stuff and fucking with my head with the Power, so I can't be sure what they actually did to me after that, except I'm not pregnant, of course, and all the bite marks and bruises and stuff healed up. I mean, I thought they'd bitten parts of me off and eaten them while I watched, but obviously they didn't. Wild!"

"They wouldn't want to insult the Brezes by killing a renfield without permission," Salvador observed.

"Right. And I got bled enough to get a bit of the addiction, which made coming down a complete bummer, like a mixed-drink hangover for days, even with the transfusions. But fun while it lasted, I was really starting to enjoy them feeding on me, it's better than grass any day after the first couple of times. My sister Jill was too young, and boy, did she get sniffy and whine about missing the party. You know how sixteen-year-olds are about acting like adults."

"I've got a couple of younger brothers and sisters too," Salvador said sympathetically.

And she's what, nineteen? Christ.

"Yeah." A malicious smile came over the perky face, a moment's leer. "Then her initiation came up a couple of months later, and with Dona Adrienne gone and Don Jules and Dona Julia back here they handled it, really old-school."

"Old-school?"

"Yeah, at mine Dona Adrienne just bit me on the neck and gave me a kiss; the bite didn't even sting much, and that was it, 'Here's a Band-Aid for the hickey, here's your funky black robe, here's your pendant, worship the Shadowspawn faithfully and you'll be one of the masters over the cattle, the meat sacks, yada, yada; now go back to studying for the SATs like a good girl.' But Jilly, they went at her the way my mom says they did with her and my dad back forever ago. It was sort of fun to watch her wiggling and hear her yell. First Don Jules stuck his-"

Salvador didn't consider himself a particularly squeamish man; he hadn't been as a marine, and years as a cop gave you a plumbers-helper view from society's toilet bowl. He still blinked a little at the blow-by-blow description of what had happened to this Jilly on an altar in front of a crowd of family and neighbors chanting the equivalent of amen while swaying back and forth, holding candles and clad in black robes.