S M Stirling
A Taint in the Blood
CHAPTER ONE
Ellen Tarnowski pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine; utter silence fell, save for the pinging sounds of hot metal contracting. With the car stopped, she could rest her forehead on the wheel and let the tears flow.
“I love him. I loved him. And he never let me in, he never told me the truth. Oh, shit, shit, shit!”
When she raised her eyes again the glow of the headlights broke in rainbows for a moment from the drops on her lashes.
“And I hope the flying gravel ruined his stupid Ferrari!”
The thought made her hiccup laughter and then choke on another sob. Then she rubbed a hand across her eyes and started at the sight of a human figure standing at the edge of the pool of light. Her foot hesitated over the gas pedal and her hand was on the shift when the half-seen shape walked towards the car-towards the passenger side. She turned her head to follow, and her left elbow slipped down on the lock and window controls.
Chunk. Whrrrrr.
The high-desert chill poured into the slightly steamy warmth of the car and the overhead light came on. Ellen felt a cleansing surge of anger as an infinitely familiar countenance stooped to look in at her.
“If you think you can talk me around again, you fucking-”
That’s not Adrian, she realized an instant later. It’s not even a man. Get a grip, girl! Start separating and stop obsessing!
But the resemblance was eerie. The same oval sharp-chinned face on a long skull, lobeless ears, the same wide forehead, the same yellow-flecked brown eyes and smooth olive complexion. The hair was raven-black and silky too, but far longer than Adrian’s ear-length. And she was in her mid-twenties, like Adrian, like Ellen herself. Embarrassment gave her a little strength; she knew her face must be streaming tears.
“Excuse me,” she managed, after clearing her throat and swallowing. “I thought you were someone else.”
She couldn’t see another car and this was a long way from anywhere, unless you were a coyote. The city-glow of Santa Fe was barely visible eastward through the high-desert night, the blaze of stars almost undimmed.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, you are,” the other said.
“What?” Ellen said, wiping at her tears with a wad of Kleenex.
“My, my,” the woman went on, in a voice like warm velvet stretched over the edge of a knife. “How could Adrian bear to give up such sensitivity? Your emotions have a bouquet like steak tartare with a little chopped wild onion and a touch of horseradish. Marvelous!”
The words were English-with a slight trace of an accent and foreign diction; French-but-not-quite, she thought, like Adrian’s except stronger. But they made no sense. Ellen felt as if she’d run down stairs and expected one more at the bottom that wasn’t there. The stranger leaned forward through the window, with both her elbows on the upper edge of the door.
She’s got the same sort of hands, too, Ellen realized suddenly. Long fingers but the first three all the same length. Pianist’s hands. Strangler’s hands.
Her teeth were white and even and a little disquieting as she smiled cheerfully.
“You’re subject to muscle cramps, aren’t you? Especially when you’re under stress. High probability, at this point.”
“I think you’d better go-”
The sick pain gave just enough warning for Ellen to grab at her neck and bend away from it to relax the knot. It felt as if the muscle were about to tear loose from the base of her skull and her shoulder at the same time. A breathy gasp escaped her. She could see the stranger open the door and slide into the other seat through a blurred gaze. Then her knee jerked up as another cramp knotted into the sole of her foot. But that was impossible; they never came more than one at a time.
The third hit in her thigh, just above the back of her knee. Her diaphragm locked on a retch and her eyes rolled up in her head as her hands locked and the fingers curled in spastic quivers. There was nothing in all the world but her flesh trying to writhe off her bones like snakes.
She never lost consciousness, not quite, but everything blurred away. When she came fully back to herself she was hunched across the wheel making small snuffling sounds. The humiliation of feeling strings of drool dangling from her lips made her wipe frantically with the Kleenex; there was nothing she could do about losing control of her bladder except get home. It had never been that bad before, or not since she was a child.
Even without the agony that had left her trembling and weak she wouldn’t have been able to resist the hands that gripped her right arm at wrist and just below the shoulder, turned and locked it. The stranger’s face bent towards the inside of her elbow, hidden by the fall of black hair, but dull curiosity was all she could feel. There was a sudden icy pain in the thin skin there, a mere flicker compared to what the cramps had done but sharper somehow.
The fog lifted from her mind, but the weakness remained; that gradually gave way to a glassy, almost pleasant calm where she didn’t want to move. She slumped against the door, unable even to look away.
Someone is drinking my blood, she thought. Some remote objective part of her decided: This is gross.
“Marvelous,” the other said when she sank back, licking her lips.
Her face was glowing with delight, as if lit from within. She touched a finger to the small wound, and it clotted with unnatural speed.
“Properly prepared, the right emotions give these layers of taste. I don’t care what our biochemists say, it’s not just pheromones and serotonins and analogues to MDMA. There’s a deeply spiritual aspect. Don’t you think so? Forgive me if I’m babbling, but to me that was like a really massive hit of snow. Or pure crystal meth.”
“Who are you?” Ellen whispered; the calm was thinning, but it lay like melting ice across panic. Her breath came faster. “What are you?”
“Well, on the what front, I don’t need to be afraid of perky cheer-leaders with sharpened broom handles,” she said. “And my name is Adrienne. Adrienne Br?z?.”
That gave her mind something to grasp at. “You’re his sister?”
A peal of laughter. “I’m his evil twin!”
Adrian isn’t a monster, she thought; the odd clarity still held her a little. He’s an asshole, but he’s not a monster.
“Do you mean he actually never… Oh, the poor boy is even more troubled than I thought!”
Ellen screamed and tore at the door handle. It snapped in her hand; that was enough to jar her to silence, staring at the little curved shape of metal. She released it, and it fell to the carpeting with an almost inaudible thud.
“There’s always a possibility of that happening,” Adrienne said. “Fatigue in the crystalline structure. And you were pulling very hard. Now drive us to your place. We have so much to talk about. After all, we both want what’s best for Adrian, don’t we?”
“No! Get out, get out-”
The other’s hand gripped her jaw with brutal, astonishing strength and pulled their faces together until they almost touched. The velvet tone turned to a hiss: “Drive, she-ape. Or I’ll peel you like a tangerine!”
“Thank you, Herr M?ller,” Adrian Br?z? said, in German. “Most comprehensive and detailed.”
Thank you for making me do this with a hangover, he added mentally, blinking in the bright late-afternoon sunlight that poured through the great windows behind him and reflected off the pale stucco of the wall and the backs of the books.
One might argue it’s my fault, but it’s also far too painful for me to be fair, he went on to himself as he hit the
