S Stirling - A Taint in the Blood

“And nothing happened to any of them, right?”

“Apart from them deciding I was an asshole even if I was rich, and dumping me? No.”

“You are an asshole, ol’ buddy,” Harvey said, and Adrian felt his mouth quirk. “But then, every woman I was ever involved with dumped me, too, so I suppose you learned it at my knee. At least you didn’t marry three of them.”

The older man went on: “Adrienne decided to come after you for her own reasons in her own time. Ellen just got in the way. And at least she has someone trying to rescue her. What do you think Adrienne has been doing for kicks and food all these years you’ve been sitting brooding on a mountaintop? Playing video games and eating tofu?”

“I… try not to think about that.”

“I’m sure that’s a big help to the victims.”

Adrian flushed, started to speak, then barked harsh laughter. “Getting me angry to get me back on my feet, eh?”

A shrug. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“Mais oui, mon vieux.”

More gently, Harvey said: “Look, I’m sorry it’s your girl. But it’s always someone’s girl, or guy, or child or mother or brother.”

“She’s not my girl. I wish she was, but it’s nobody’s fault except mine she stomped out last night. Ellen has… issues. I thought we could… be together. And I really like her. But I didn’t think it through well enough, and I never told her the truth. I couldn’t.”

“Then let’s get our asses in gear. We rescue the girl, we kill the evil witch. And we find out what the hell she’s playing at.”

He turned onto the freeway, the hum of the tires growing as he pushed the Land Cruiser up to the speed limit and change. It was dense dark out here, as Santa Fe faded behind them; the traffic was light even for a weekday evening. The red lights of a Rail Runner passenger train came down the tracks that ran between the strips of highway, swelling and then flashing past.

“You got a cigarette?” Harvey asked.

“Sure,” Adrian said, lit two, and drew on one himself as he handed the other over. “You know, Harv, you should stop smoking. I can’t get cancer or emphysema or heart disease. Or get addicted. You can.”

“Oh, hell, I can probably cure any of that-my Wreakings are good enough for little shit. Or if I can’t, I’d just get you to do it.”

“Now I’m your enabler?”

“This has just now occurred to you?”

After that, silence fell until Adrian flicked his butt out the window.

“She was waiting for the cascade to fall,” he said, his voice coldly rational. “Somewhere fairly close, close enough that she could monitor it. She felt me trigger it, went off to her Gulfstream or whatever it is, and up, up and away. Taking Ellen with her. Nyah, nyah, can’t catch me. She actually used to say that when we were six and playing hide-and-seek. It made me crazy.”

Harvey nodded. “That’s the advantage she’s had so far, being a couple of steps ahead. Let’s not let that happen again, shall we? We’re living in a world run by monsters. You don’t give them anything if you can help it. We’re far enough behind to start with.”

“I wish I knew what she’d been doing while we charged into her trap, though. I don’t think she was lying on a rooftop, somehow. Not her style.”

“Yeah. What was she doing at five thirty, when we were setting out to charge her electrified windmill?”

“?tahsaia!” The old Pueblo woman who’d been offering the tray of silver knickknacksstared at Adrienne and backed away, slowly. There was naked terror in her eyes, pouched in the wrinkled brown face. The dying sunlight brought the folds out in stark relief, like desert canyons, as it cast the pair’s shadows over her.

Adrienne spoke in something that wasn’t English or Spanish; Ellen thought it was an Indian language, and she could see the street-vendor understood it. She turned and ran in a lumbering shuffle with her long bulky skirts swaying, shouting: “?tahsaia! ”

“I’d have to be really hungry,” Adrienne said dryly. “Though in the end blood is blood.”

Ellen blinked. “What’s?tahsaia?” she said.

There was no point in not asking, not when even her mind’s privacy wasn’t her own. It was less disturbing than having unasked questions answered.

Adrienne chuckled. “A cannibal demon. Everyone has legends about us.”

“Are all the legends true?”

“Only the bad ones. The others… wishful thinking on the part of you humans, I’m afraid.” A grin, and: “I love explaining things to you.”

“Why?”

“To feel the way your mind leaps when you realize just how bad things are, and then the squirming as you run through the implications and they sink through layers of your consciousness. Stupid people are boring that way. Anyone can feel agony when you violate their bodies, but only the intelligent can know true mental torment.”

They walked through the tunnel-like entrance and into the courtyard; Ellen felt her stomach growl at the smells, despite the taste of acid at the back of her throat. The body went on functioning, even when the world dropped out from beneath your feet.

La Casa Sena was only a little way up the street from the Palace of the Governors. It had started out as the town place of a wealthy hacendado more than a quarter of a millennium ago, the blank outer walls a sign of times when a rich man’s house on the remote New Mexican frontier had to be a fortress and a workshop and a barracks as well as a dwelling. Inside two tall stories of adobe made a courtyard around a flagged garden. The planters were bare with winter and the stone bowl of the fountain was dry, but huge cottonwoods laced with lights towered above the roof level.

The ma?tre d’hotel greeted them at the door, beside a little glassed-in cover that showed the deep original household well.

“Ms. Br?z? and guest, for five thirty,” Adrienne said. “I requested a corner table.”

He didn’t know her, but he could read her platinum and tanzanite necklace and her clothes-a soft draped black dress by Kokosalaki, with a high waist and a pleated front, the sort of thing that only that sort of slender androgynous figure could bring off. And Adrian was a regular customer, who’d brought Ellen here more than once.

“Your table is ready, Ms. Br?z?. And how do you do, Ms. Tarnowski? It’s good to see you again. Will Mr. Br?z? be joining you ladies this evening?”

“I don’t think so, not here,” Adrienne said. “We’re expecting him to drop in at a little housewarming party I’ve arranged in a few hours, though.”

Within was handcrafted Taos-style furniture and museum-quality local landscapes on the pale walls. Aromatic split pi?on crackled in an arched white fireplace. Waiters’ heels clacked softly on the tile floors, and there was a murmur of conversation and the gentle bell tones of well-wielded cutlery.

This can’t be happening, Ellen thought. I’ve come here before. People know me here. What if I screamedAdrienne smiled at her. “I like it when you scream, ch?rie,” she said. “But carrying you out when you had a fit, and telling everyone about the way you’d skipped your medication… tiresome. It would mean missing dinner.”

The smile grew broader. “Then I would have to punish you. Would you like that?”

“No. Please, no.”

“I didn’t think so.”

The waiter returned with a basket of warm bread and rolls and garlic-herb whipped butter as she took up the menu.

“The paprika-crusted sea scallops first, I think; ancho chile truffle butter sounds amusing. You could have the pan-seared Hudson Valley foie gras, ma douce. Then… the Colorado lamb shank for me, and the sika venison and wild-boar sausage for you. Followed by the lavender cr?me br?l?e, and the six-layer dobos torte.”