S Stirling - A Taint in the Blood

“Yeah. How’s that show it wasn’t intelligently designed?”

“Because-by sheer accident, by a fucking evolutionary kludge-the genes which let you use the Power are tightly linked to traits which make you into a solitary megalomaniac serial-killing monster who has to drink human blood and finds the taste of pain addictive. If that isn’t proof of the randomness of evolution, what is?”

Harvey chuckled. “But it could be evidence for Malevolent Design on the part of the Big Fellah, right? Monsters with the powers of gods?”

Adrian opened his mouth, then closed it. After a moment he said: “And most of the time I think I’m a cynic and a pessimist!”

They came to the desk at B5. Adrian put on his charming smile; he also let his accent thicken until it was as strong as his sister’s. For some reason most people in this country found a bit of Parisian soothing and impressive from a handsome young man, unless you met a chauvinist at a time of international tension.

“Mademoiselle, you have two vacant first-class seats to San Francisco, is it not? For standby passengers Adrian Br?z? and Harvey Ledbetter.”

The harried woman had dark circles under her eyes; he could pick up a little of her weary resentment at the cascade of demands that were always more than she could meet, a life spent trying to do three people’s work. She glanced down at the computer: “I don’t think-why, I do! Here’s your boarding passes. We’re boarding first class and Gold Pass customers right now.”

“And we aren’t the droids you’re looking for anyway,” Harvey muttered as they went into the boarding tunnel. “So move along, now.”

“Shut up, Harv. It’s easier-”

“-if nobody notices anything’s screwy, yeah.”

As they settled into their seats he went on: “Damn, I wish I could always travel this easy. Brotherhood makes us fly coach these days, would you believe it? And no jumping the queue.”

Adrian looked out the window at the moonlit slopes of the Sandias, still with a tiny dusting of snow on their gullied peaks. They wheeled as the engines of the Boeing whined and the plane began to roll, the night-lights of the airport a galaxy of colors.

“It’s cheating,” he said. “I can’t afford to give in to temptations.

I know what’s at the bottom of the slippery slope. Yes, a vodka sour, miss, s’il vous pla?t.”

“Buddy, you are too good for this wicked world.”

“No. Ellen is, and now she’s in a world a lot worse.”

Decision firmed. “Watch my back, Harv.”

He let the seat back and arranged himself in as close to the hands-crossed-on-shoulders trance position as he could inconspicuously.

“You sure about that?”

“Judgment call. But we need information if we’re not going to waste time. If they’re landing in this continent, they’ll be where they’re going by now. I’ll try and grab-link as soon as she’s asleep; I can tell that easily enough.”

A Word, and his mind drifted down through layers of darkness.

“I driiiink youurrr miiiiilkshake,” Adrienne’s voice crooned in her ear.

Ellen gave an involuntary gasp of terror as the teeth touched her throat. Then Adrienne whirled her away.

“No, not yet. Not this time.”

Instead she turned and leapt, like a black-haired cat. The young Chinese man who’d played guard in the limousine went down with a startled scream; Adrienne’s face was locked into the angle of throat and shoulder. Ellen swallowed and turned her eyes away at the liquid sounds and the scrabbling. She lurched as the big Airbus CJ sped into its takeoff run. When she made herself look again the metallic coppery-iron-salt scent was strong. Adrienne raised her head, blood wet on her chin and her eyes glittering with joy.

God, this is hell. It’s absolute hell! Ellen thought.

Adrienne laughed, her teeth red and one hand on the young man’s throat.

“Yes, it is. Nor are you out of it,” she said as she rose. “Theresa, take care of David. I’m going to freshen up.”

“Well, give me a hand, lucy,” the briskly efficient middle-aged Latina said.

Ellen did. The Asian man-David, she reminded herself-was half-conscious, a limp weight as they lifted him into one of the recliners. His slack grin made her a little queasy, but he came back to himself as the older woman taped a bandage to his neck, went into the kitchenette and then came back and handed him a mug of what smelled like chicken broth.

“Tsk,” she said. “The maintenance staff will complain about the upholstery, again. Gracias, lucy. Would you like a drink? The bar is available to us.”

“You’re welcome,” Ellen said uneasily. “Yes, a Bloody Mary.” That produced a chuckle, and she flushed a little. “But… my name is Ellen, not Lucy.”

She sank into a chair, uneasily conscious of how grubby her white silk dress was becoming. That was absurd under the circumstances-there was a spray of blood droplets across the hem now too-but the crisp business suit Theresa wore had that effect. So did the ambience of the jet; there was a compartment forward that was probably a bedroom, a central lounge-dining-office area, and the galley and a shower-bathroom at the rear. It was all pale and elegant, curved lines and blond wood and slightly nubby fabrics. The noise of the engines was very faint, and if it hadn’t been for the windows and curved ceiling she wouldn’t have thought it was an aircraft at all.

Theresa reminded Ellen of the attendants who hovered around the very highest echelon of clients at the gallery. The ones who were sent back later to deliver checks with a lot of zeroes in them. She handed Ellen the drink and sank onto a sofa, sipping her own; it looked like something with tequila.

David’s laugh was a little weak still. He felt gingerly at his throat. She noticed a cuff-bracelet on his hand, and a small gold bangle, obsidian and jet, a rayed sun black-on-black with a jagged-looking trident spearing up through it.

He must have lost about a pint. No more than you give at the donor’s clinic. Even counting-her eyes skipped over his soaked T-shirt, stuck to a sculpted chest-the spillage. Christ, it was awful to watch, though. Or hear. I thought she was going to rip him right open. And she might. Or do it to me, anytime. I need this drink.

“Lucy is really a job description,” David said. “You’re a lucy. It’s not even gender-specific, in English.”

“Una lucy,” Theresa amplified. “O un lucy.”

“We’re renfields,” he finished.

“You?” Theresa said, with a half-scornful smile. She put out a hand palm-down, and waggled it back and forth. “Masumenos. Now I am a renfield for the Br?z? familia, like my parents and grandparents before me. You were a lucy to start with, and half one even now.”

“As if you’ve never been bled,” David snorted.

“Not since I was a girl, as initiation. And I did not like it as you do, putito. I endured it. A good manager who can handle IT systems as well as I is much harder to find than someone who can only scream and bleed. Or twitch and moan.”

“Lucy? Renfield?” Ellen asked, bewildered.

“An old joke,” the woman in the business suit said. “From the time of my grandfather. A joke so old it has become merely the way we speak among ourselves. We renfields are those who serve the Shadowspawn, knowing what they are. A lucy is… you are… food and amusement for them.”

Well, thank you! Ellen thought. Bitch! “Though one may become the other.”

Ellen took a sip of her drink. The vodka beneath the tomato juice added to the wine from dinner to make her feel…

Dutchly brave? But I have to learn whatever I can. My life depends on it. I’ve got to stay alive until Adrian comes for me. I can’t die like this. I can’t! “How is it, being a renfield?” she asked, trying for cool nonchalance. “As a job. I can see it might be an improvement on what I’m pulling now.”