S Stirling - A Taint in the Blood

Her looks said mid-thirties. From what he felt, she could have been that, or possibly a decade or more older. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, after all, and she smelled of the Power too. Not nearly as much as he, but considerably more than Harvey. Her mind was tightly warded under a wash of patterned no-thought, so tightly that he couldn’t even feel the dislike he was certain was there.

“Hello, Ms. Polson,” Adrian said. “A pleasure to meet you.”

She looked at his hand as if it were a cobra, or decayed, or both, and then shook.

“This place is a waste of money,” she said as they sat. “There isn’t a lunch entr?e under thirty dollars!”

“It’s Adrian’s money, Sheila,” Harvey pointed out. “And since he gives a couple of million of it a year to us, you really can’t complain about how he spends the rest of it.”

The rangy, graying man glanced at the menu. “No BBQ or hamburgers? Damn. Had my mouth set for a double bacon cheeseburger. Guess I’ll have to settle for the Lapin? la Moutarde Et Au Romarin.”

Adrian hid a smile; Harvey’s French was much less accented than his Texan-flavored English. He could have passed for someone from Tours on the telephone, in fact, as opposed to Adrian. Any Frenchman listening to him would have heard some village in Puy-de-D?me under the overlay of Paris and Sorbonne. With a very old-fashioned tinge at that.

Of course, I spent much time in my childhood with Auvergnats born in the nineteenth century. Granted, they were dead, but they were quite talkative.

“Magret De Canard Au Porto,” Adrian said; he was partial to duck breast anyway, and the port sauce, celery root and apple puree sounded interesting.

“I’ll have the sliced lamb on mixed greens,” Polson said with malice aforethought.

Adrian gave the order to the waiter, and added: “A glass of the Ronceray for me, thank you. Anyone else? No?”

She waited in tight silence until privacy returned. Then: “You resigned from the Brotherhood, Br?z?,” she said. “Nobody resigns from the Brotherhood. Why should we help you?”

“Sheila,” Harvey put in. “Remember those millions? As in millions of bucks? As in, weapons, transportation, living stipends, bribes, special equipment, safe houses, research? Hell, the organization runs on silver and it ain’t cheap.”

“Stolen money,” she said. “Blood money.”

Adrian hid his annoyance with a raised brow he knew was intensely annoying in itself.

Fanatic, he thought. Then again, who else would wage a failing struggle all their lives long?

Aloud he went on: “No. Directing money to investments that will increase in value harms nobody. And before I resigned from the Brotherhood-which, despite your statement, I did successfully do-”

Polson’s frown said all any of them needed to know: Because you had no way to punish me except at a cost you weren’t prepared to pay.

“I carried out many missions. But most of all, you should help me because I propose to kill a powerful Shadowspawn who ranks high beneath the Council of Shadows. Specifically, my sister, Adrienne Br?z?.”

“Ah, there we get to it,” she said. “You’ve left each other alone ever since the last time you locked horns. Why should she come for you? We know the Council didn’t send her.”

Their meal came. Adrian thanked the man, threw his card onto the tray and added a fifty-dollar bill; these were hard times, and a lot of restaurants had taken to raking back a share of tips. Then he took a sip of his wine; the cabernet-merlot-petite Verdot combination had just enough acidity to go with the fatty richness of the duck.

“Why is abstract at this point. She… there are personal reasons. In any case, she abducted a young lady I’m very fond of. We know she’s taken her somewhere in California, probably the central coast. I need information; all the Brotherhood files on the Br?z? properties there, their defenses, layout, everything.”

“Specialized weapons, too,” Harvey put in.

Adrian nodded. “And since this was a personal vendetta on Adrienne’s part, aiding me won’t bring the Council down on you any more than usual.”

“We should help you get your lucy back?” Polson asked.

The air went still. Harvey’s hand made a slight gesture towards his coat before his conscious mind controlled it, prompted by decades of experience with the bubbling edge of violence. Adrian carefully finished chewing and swallowing, laid down his knife and fork, and leaned forward. His gold-flecked eyes met Sheila Polson’s, and locked. After a long moment she looked aside, a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead.

“Ms. Polson, I will say this only once. Ellen Tarnowski was my friend-yes, we were lovers. She was not my lucy. I don’t force blood from living humans, and I don’t compel their minds except at urgent need. My sister does. I resigned from your war but I didn’t resign from the personal obligations of a human being. I’d be a pretty poor specimen of a man if I didn’t do what I could for her. Living with myself is… hard enough as it is.”

She looked away for an instant, nodded as if to herself, then turned back to him: “I apologize, Mr. Br?z?.” At his surprise, she smiled very slightly. “I actually am sorry. You… must know how disturbing a pureblood is to someone who can sense the Power.”

“He don’t bother me none,” Harvey said, returning to his rabbit.

“You’re a loose cannon, Ledbetter, and you bent every rule to breaking point haring off to New Mexico that way.”

“I’m also the best field team leader in the Brotherhood, so you’re not going to do anything but scold me.”

She shrugged and went on to Adrian: “Please describe your encounter in Santa Fe, if you would.”

Adrian did; Harvey nodded approval. “He can still do a damn nice after-action report,” he added.

“That Wreaking on the apartment building… that is… not good news,” Polson said.

“You could say that,” Adrian replied grimly. “If I hadn’t turned it in on itself, when the cascade fell it might have taken out everything within blocks. Driven dozens catatonic for the rest of their lives, at least.”

“It gets harder and harder to fight…” Polson half-whispered to herself. Then: “You were using stored blood?”

Adrian nodded, and spoke with careful precision: “I drink blood only when I must for major Wreakings with the Power. As do you, do you not? What is your rating on the Alberman Scale?”

She forced her eyes back to his. “Yes. Red Cross supply. I’m… thirty-eight percent.”

“Then you will have some idea of how absolutely horrible an experience drinking cold, dead blood is. It is much worse for me. Dog-piss would be more fun.”

Polson nodded, stopping her fork halfway to her mouth. Then she visibly put the memory out of her mind and ate.

“We’re preoccupied right now,” she said. “Believe me, I sympathize with the girl. I’ve done field work. But right now, the whole world is about to come down on our heads. You’ve heard about the Council meeting that’s been called for next year in Tiflis?”

“No, I had not,” he said. “Well, not until last night.”

“You heard that Gheorghe Br?ncu?i was executed? Formally the meeting’s to elect his successor.”

Executed, Adrian thought as he nodded. Or assassinated, depending on your viewpoint.

“Harvey told me yesterday,” he said.

“Christ, Br?z?, don’t you follow anything?”

“It hasn’t been on CNN, nor on the Internet,” he said dryly. “The Brotherhood has me on their shit-list, and pretty well all the Council’s Shadowspawn would kill me if they could and deceive me just for the pleasure of it if they couldn’t. Ms. Polson, what part of retired don’t you understand?”