S Stirling - A Taint in the Blood

The two laughed again, but with a little more respect.

“It’s a little like working for the Mafia,” David said. “The money’s very good, but you can’t quit.”

“And a little like selling your soul to the Devil,” Theresa amplified.

“Half and half, perhaps. There is no God, and no Devil… but there are devils, and we serve them.”

“The health package is really good,” David said; he had a neutral Californian accent.

“Full coverage?”

Theresa smiled; there was something about it that made Ellen feel a little uneasy.

“Mostly, you just do not become sick. They lay their hands upon you, as saints were said to do. My grandparents lived past a hundred years.”

Both the others snickered; Ellen had an uneasy sense that they were thinking of her life expectancy.

“So you get a long life. Unless they kill you first,” she said, testing.

That brought shrugs. “Lucy, they can kill anyone anytime,” David said. “Where do you think missing persons go? Or those faces on milk cartons? Besides, in any job, sometimes the boss goes for your throat.”

Theresa nodded. “We have only one Shadowspawn to fear, one who has a use for us. The cattle would fear them all… if they knew. Perhaps someday they will; and we their faithful servants will be masters over the herd. We know the truth.”

Us and we not including me, Ellen thought. I don’t think empathy is high on the list of renfield qualities.

“They’re very territorial about poaching on their preserves,” David amplified. “And you don’t have to worry about taxes, police, any of that. As long as you’re off the reservation, don’t piss off the boss or do the sort of big showy shit that’s difficult to make vanish, it’s pretty well anything goes.”

“Sounds like a good gig,” Ellen said.

If you’re completely fucking crazy, she added to herself. And have the morals of a rabid weasel.

“There are some things you should know,” Theresa said.

David looked at her; she shrugged. “I am household manager,” she said. To Ellen: “There is no privacy from them, not even in your thoughts. And no safety or protection from them anywhere. Once they have tasted of your blood you are linked, linked forever. They can find you if you flee to the ends of the earth and hide in the deepest cave. And whatever they do to you, even a very painful death, embrace it rather than disobey.”

David smirked and glanced at the older woman. “There’s one other downside to being a renfield,” he said. “Your colleagues are going to be the sort of people who are cool with joining the Mafia, or selling their souls to the Devil.”

He levered himself up. “Going to go hit the bunk. We’ll be home in an hour and a half. Thanks for the chicken soup. Man, I’m looking forward to my own bed!”

Adrienne came out of the bathroom a minute after he’d wobbled to the rear. Her hair was damp, slicked back in a ponytail, and she wore a long loose colorful West African m’boubou robe with wide sleeves, printed in what Ellen thought of as a dashiki pattern.

She and Adrian even walk a lot alike, allowing for the difference in the hips, Ellen thought.

That flowing dancer’s grace was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place.

Oh, God, Adrian, come get me! And I hate waiting for someone to rescue me, but what else can I do?

Though the walk had an unpleasantly catlike quality to it, now that she thought of it. A sense of creeping menace came with Adrian’s sister, a fear that she hadn’t noticed until it returned.

“Five minutes to the Seversk call, Ms. Br?z?,” Theresa said. “Do you want me to cancel it?”

“No, no, it’s important. Hmmm. There’s an idea. He makes a great noise about his progressive attitudes but is fond of high Shadowspawn attitude… A pity David isn’t photogenic right now.”

She looked at Ellen. “Take off your clothes.”

“What?” Ellen said. Then an involuntary yelp of: “Ouch! ” as her neck twinged.

“That wasn’t a request, ch?rie. This is business. The underwear too. My, that dress is quite ruined, isn’t it?”

She tousled Ellen’s pale-blond hair, studied the results and nodded.

“Theresa, your pendant for a little.”

The manager compressed her lips, but reached behind her head. The slim gold chain held a disk with the same black sun and golden trident that she’d noticed on David’s wrist. Adrienne dropped it over Ellen’s head, and gave it a twitch so that the sigil was visible just above her breasts.

“Excellent,” she said. “Now, I will be talking with an associate named Dmitri Usov. He’s an able man but has some quirks. Ah, well, don’t we all, eh? Don’t speak unless spoken to; if he does speak to you, answer him quickly. Theresa, bring coffee and brandy. Ellen, stand by my chair within the pickup angle and serve them if I move my hand, so.”

The chair was a deep lounger. Adrienne lay back in it and touched a clearpad control surface in one arm. A sixty-inch screen swung down from the ceiling with a very faint whir of servos, and lit. After a moment it cleared with the pellucidly sharp outlines that meant a high-bandwidth dedicated satellite link.

Ellen blinked. The room that showed in it looked like a set from a Bakst ballet, with samovars and Persian rugs and colorful drapes and icons, clashing horribly with a tumble of electronic equipment. A man in an open embroidered caftan and loose drawstring pantaloons sat on a chair that wasn’t quite thronelike-it looked too comfortable-but came close. Two naked teenagers stood on either side; the boy holding a tray with small glasses, a bowl of caviar and strips of toast, the girl the mouthpiece of a water-pipe. They looked Asian, with the extremely high cheekbones, ruddy skin and flat faces found from Mongolia northward.

The man was quite different, sharp-featured, with long pale hair and gray eyes and a thin pointed nose, his torso lean but the muscles sharply defined.

What Vladimir Putin wishes he looked like, Ellen thought. What he’d look like if he were in his thirties and not ugly.

She flushed as his eyes slid over her. She’d thought she knew what it was to have a man look at her like a piece of meat.

But I didn’t. That’s a flip-her-over-and-fuck-her glance, all right, but it’s also a literal piece-of-meat look. Or a bottle-of-good-hooch look. Oh, Jesus this is scary. I wish I could wake up! “Dobry den’, Dmitri Pavlovitch,” Adrienne said. “Kak vashi dela?” in “I’m in fucking Siberia in February, Adrienne Juliyevna,” he said in good English, only about as accented as hers. “It’s cold, and that is how I am, and to make matters worse I am in fucking Seversk, which is not even the arsehole of Siberia. It is a chancre upon the lower intestine of Siberia. And I am stuck here until the Council relents. Where are you?”

“On my jet, bound for California.” She smiled. “Just think how much better it would be if you were in a castle without central heating or plumbing, and I was traveling by coach or rowed by galley slaves, talking to you by telepathy.”

He laughed. “The galley slaves would have their points.”

“Not as a means of transportation.”

“Certainly not here! If you spit, it freezes before it hits the ground. Though the long nights have been convenient. I have gotten in some excellent hunting.”

“What game?”

“Bears by day. Chechens or Tartars by night, mostly. And the odd wandering tourist. Nobody misses them, and they look so surprised. One had but the guidebook said tigers are extinct here as her last words, I swear to God.”

He smiled. “But we are impolite. First we should honor our ancient heritage with the traditional signs.”