S Stirling - A Taint in the Blood

Ellen cleared her throat.

“Yes, yes, ch?rie,” Adrienne said. “Get dressed, and let Theresa have her pendant back. You did very well, putting Dmitri in a good mood. Yes, dangled in front of him like a piece of steak is one way to put it, and no doubt you’ll feel better with… what’s that thought there? Without my ass bare to the breeze? We’ll be landing soon, anyway.”

She smiled and linked her hands behind her head.

“Life is good.”

Where am I? Ellen Tarnowski looked around. She was sitting in… It’s Adrian’s living-room!

The great windows showing an endless tumbled stretch of moonlit high desert and mountain, the lights dim, a fire of pi?on logs crackling on the fieldstone hearth and scenting the air. Even the faint smell of tobacco she’d found so irritating was comforting enough to make her almost sob with gratitude.

And Adrian, standing gravely by the mantelpiece, taut and elegant as a cat.

“Oh, thank God!” she burst out. “Adrian, I had the most horrible-”

Full wakefulness crashed back. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

He shook his head, the silky hair sliding around his lobeless ears.

“I’m afraid not,” he said softly, his face stark with misery. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I am so very sorry.”

“Then-”

She looked down; she was in a long denim skirt and Indian blouse outfit she remembered. She pinched herself, hard. It hurt, but her surroundings stayed just the same. She had never had a dream like this, not complete with every detail of all five senses.

“Where am I?” she said slowly.

“Your… mind is here.”

“Where’s here, Adrian?”

He hesitated. “This is my memory palace. We’re inside… ummm, my mind. I’m on a flight to San Francisco, trying to find you.”

Ellen put a hand to her forehead and clenched it until the fingers dug painfully into the skin.

“And you never thought to tell me any of this before?” she said, keeping her voice from rising dangerously. “We were sleeping together for six months and it just never seemed the right fucking time? No wonder I knew you were lying to me!”

He crossed and knelt before her, taking her hands. “Ellie, I wanted to tell you. But this is dangerous, dangerous stuff, and I was trying to keep you as safe as I could.”

“Keeping me ignorant is not protective! From now on, you will tell me things or I will not… not speak to you at all!”

“I feel guilty as hell that I let us get involved at all, but it had been years, I was supposed to be left alone-Ellie, we don’t have time for me to tell you two hundred years of history. Multi-millennia, some of it. I need you to help me, and I promise I’ll make it as right as I can. Whatever it takes.”

She took a long deep breath and forced a degree of calm on herself. Her fingers closed around his with a strength bred from years of tennis.

“My mind is here? Where’s the rest of me?”

“Where… you were before you went to sleep.”

“I’m still in bed with your crazy vampire sister?” she half-screamed. “Get me out, get me out, get me out, Oh, God, the things she did to me-”

Air gasped into her lungs and she forced control on herself and choked down sobs.

“My mind is here? Literally?”

He nodded. “I’ve got your genetic template already loaded. I’m… running you on my hardware. Wetware. Your body is in trance state, like mine-but it’s, ummm, empty.”

She stared at him. “You drank my blood? Without telling me?”

He winced and looked aside. “No. But, ah, it’s really anything with DNA in it, you see, which pretty much all body fluids have. So it doesn’t have to be blood, strictly speaking, for a link.”

“Oh.” Then a thought. “But what she said was true? You wanted to drink my blood? To really hurt me?”

“I didn’t, did I?” he said. “I love you, Ellen. It’s just… hard for me to show that the way normal people can. But I didn’t hurt you.”

The lonely pride in it moved her suddenly; the hot anger she’d felt less than two days ago felt as distant as her childhood.

“You’re not like her. I said that and she laughed, but I think it made her angry.”

“I try not to be like that. I try very hard. Now immediately, darling, you have to tell me where she took you. We might get cut off at any moment.”

“I’m… not sure. California-”

He gave a small hiss of relief and nodded. She continued: “South of the Bay, I think. North of LA for sure, and near the coast.

Someone mentioned Passo something. We landed, there was a car, but I couldn’t see out the windows much. A big place in the country, I think, and everyone was really tired, even Adrienne, we all just went to bed and sacked out. I’m… in her room.”

“Paso Robles? It might be. The Central Coast. That’s very good, that helps a lot. I can put a… block in to conceal your memory of this. You’ll still be able to remember it, but not unless you’ve got reason to. Be cautious about that, be very careful. She’s extremely good at subtle Wreakings… mind-stuff.”

“Oh, there aren’t any words for how careful I’ll be!”

Then another thought. “Wait a minute. What happens if I just stay here? She can’t force me back, can she?”

“No. Only I can send you back. If you stay you’d be like this as long as I lived.”

Ellen freed her hands and placed them on her knees.

“But if I stayed here I’d be safe… well, as safe as you… and I could live forever? God, Adrian, that is so tempting. She told me I had all sorts of interesting new sensations and experiences to look forward to! I’m so scared all the time.”

He nodded. “Yes. And that’ll be just as bad as you can imagine. More than you can imagine. But there’s a chance of getting you away from her, and there are drawbacks to staying here.”

The room began to fade. Sunlight appeared overhead, grew bright, reflected off marble columns around a pool. Prussian-blue mountains rose in the distance, against a cloudless sky. Scents of thyme and arbutus drifted on warm dry air under the rustling shadows cast by the leaves of live-oaks arching overhead. Cicadas buzzed as many-colored birds flew among great alabaster pots, and flamboyant bougainvillea spilled down their sides in purple and gold.

“This is Maxfield Parrish!” she exclaimed, distracted into delight. “But real! It’s so beautiful… This is heaven!”

The clear cruel laughter of a young girl came from the bushes. Then the water in the pool rippled. Something passed beneath it in a smooth curve. She could see a glimpse of… tentacles? She stumbled back from the edge of the water with a sudden sick dread.

“This is my mind, Ellen, and it’s not anything like Heaven. It’s a Shadowspawn mind, and I’m no more completely in control of it than you are of yours.”

Ellen looked at him and spoke slowly: “Could… she do this to me too? Swallow me?”

Adrian winced and nodded. “We call it… Carrying. Any strong Shadowspawn can.”

She fought not to scream as he nodded again. Bitterly: “There’s no God, no Heaven, we don’t have souls, but we can still go to Hell forever?”

“That’s… probably where the idea of Hell came from in the first place.”

Her hands went over her face. “This just gets worse and worse. All right, Adrian. I’ll go back. But you get me out!”

A deep breath, and she stood and faced him. “She had a videoconference with a man named Dmitri on the flight from Santa Fe. He scared me nearly as much as she did, even on a flat-screen and eight thousand miles away.”

“Dmitri Pavlovitch Usov?”

“Yes. He was in Seversk, in Siberia. There was something about plutonium smuggling, and a man, a very old Shadowspawn, who was assassinated with it.”