Caught a couple of his people while we were clearing out.”
“Shadowspawn or renfields?” Adrian asked sharply.
“We didn’t stop to run an Alberman,” Harvey said dryly. “Things were a mite hectic. But these rounds do about three thousand feet-per-second. That’s under two seconds to impact at max effective range.”
Adrian’s brows stayed up. “Not much time to do anything, if you’re not expecting it,” he said slowly. “You’d have… a small fraction of a second to realize what the silver was, and react. By then-”
“Give the man a big cigar.”
“I’m impressed.”
Then he yawned and looked out the window. “Would you like to get something to eat? I’m not very hungry, but if I have to take blood tonight I want something for it to hit on the way down.”
“I was thinkin’ of room service,” Harvey said.
“Well enough-”
“No, room service with another friend who’s coming over. You’re not invited.”
A little hurt, Adrian nodded. They hadn’t seen each other in years… Harvey grinned.
“The friend in question is not a brother-in-arms like you, ol’ buddy,” he said. “But she’s a natural redhead and certifiably female, which in this town you can’t count on from first impressions. I figure if I’m going to be dead in a week, or if your sister is going to make my eyeballs pop, or my balls, or set my entire skin on fire or use my spinal cord to play a violin concerto or any other of the things she has been known to do when feelin’ bitchy… there’s things I want to do one more time first. And not with you. Sorry.”
“No offense, my old,” Adrian laughed. “I’ll go for a walk.”
“Next door’s fine. Might be safer.”
Adrian snorted. “Not with only a wall in between us. I can’t afford to close my senses down completely. And good friends though we are, Harv, there are certain things I don’t care to share with you either. Even only telepathically.”
Harvey grinned. “You could go exercise your sinister vampiric charm on some high school girl with perky tits longing for a pale and interesting demon lover.”
Adrian frowned in solemn thought, then shook his head. “No, she would expect me to reject anything but kissing and cuddling, no matter how much she wanted more and how tortured I was with desire. Also there would be much conversation about our feelings.”
“Talk about inhuman. God, the thought’s enough to make a man swear off women. Ones that young, at least.”
“Besides, that’s the incubus part of the legend, not the vampire. I shall walk the night, commune with my soul, and think wistfully of what might have been.”
“The things some men do when they could be fucking. See ya. Watch out for muggers.”
Adrian shrugged. “The worse for them, in my current mood.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. We want to keep you calm till we can get you and Ellen back to your mountaintop.”
Will Ellen want to share my mountain? Adrian thought two hours later. Perhaps… now she knows the secrets I could not tell her. That would make a difference. Perhaps her kind and mine can share a life, if we know, if we work to… make accommodations with each other honestly.
Then: But after Adrienne, will she want to come within a thousand miles of anyone who looks like me? Who is like me? All I can do is set her free, and convince her the rest is up to her.
Tendrils of fog lay along the street; a heavy dew beaded on the surface of his gray anorak. It carried a raw chill, and he could sense the restless power of the ocean on three sides of the city, and smell the salt above the city stinks. There was an aloneness to the brightly-lit night greater than running beneath the stars in his own mountains.
This was Geary Street; he could see the five-story tower of the Peace Pagoda ahead.
Why not? he thought, and turned into the Japanese-style baths. Heat, and a cold plunge. Then I’ll get some noodles.
It was men’s night, and for a wonder there wasn’t a line. A few minutes later he was relaxing in the heat of the dry sauna, feeling the sweat break out over his body in a single impalpable rush. He imagined it taking the poisons of the blood out of his body, the savage necessities of the Power.
A shock of very slightly colder air, under the scent of cedar. Two men came in, both young and both Asian-with a little more body hair than most, so they were probably Japanese, and with bands of colorful tattoo over their torsos. Adrian sighed and prepared to block the trickle of consciousness that came through his shields…
They had towels over their arms. Both twitched them aside at the same instant, revealing the shielded gloves and the glinting edges of the knives. Tantos, twelve inches of slightly curved steel glinting with the silver inlay as the men drew them and flicked aside the sheaths.
“Michiko sends greetings,” one of them said in Japanese.
Ellen, he thought in one fractional instant, as his body prepared for combat. She needs me.
Then he gathered himself to leap.
Ellen rested her face in her hands and elbows on the table for minutes after Giselle’s face left the screen, trying not to think. When she looked up again she was alone except for the sound of the Shadowspawn children romping in the courtyard, and an occasional deep whurf! from the dog. The BlackBerry beeped again, from beside a set of house keys:
The rest of the day is your own. Bear in mind…
Then it began to play a song-no, it was Adrienne singing, her voice full and sweet:
“Look around and all you see
Are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds
Until you feel at home.”
“I’m in the thrall of Countess Comic-ula,” she murmured. That made her feel better, somehow.
Then: Your new place is Number 5 Lucy Lane. All should be ready for you by four o’clock. Take a tour around town first.
“And apparently we’re not going to be sharing a room. I am so totally OK with that. It’s messy taking your cookies to bed with you anyway.”
This time she took her time walking to the front door. The house felt old, by American standards at least. Not in the least run-down, it was immaculately maintained and there were discreet signs of periodic refits, but like a building that had been inhabited for generations by the same family. There were touches you hardly ever saw in recent designs, even historicist ones; genuine groined vaulting in ashlar masonry, for starters.
It smelled that way too, of old stone, wax-rubbed paneling, hints of lemon and clean ancient rugs. In structure it was a set of linked E-shapes, and designed to take advantage of the varying levels to look a little less massive than it was; she suspected it was the sort of place where you could discover new rooms for years. Staff went by her now and then, usually with polite nods. She went down a curling formal staircase and out under a portico of columns and arches. The size of the stone-pines and palms and live-oaks, citrus trees and olives outside and the thick bases of some of the espaliered vines confirmed her guess.
The outer gateway in the solid circumference wall had an archway of wrought iron above it, making words: Rancho Sangre Sagrado.
“I guess the sense of humor is hereditary,” she said; it meant Ranch of the Holy Blood and had obviously been there a good long while.
Though it could be a perfectly genuine Hispanic place-name, come to think of it, possibly dating right back to Mexican California or even the Mission era when Spain’s flag flew here. Her lips quirked. She’d picked up a fair bit of conversational Spanish in her time in Santa Fe, and if you changed it just a little to Rancho Sangr?n it meant Ranch of the Asshole.
There was a strip of parkland, green grass and leafless oaks and solid blocky cypresses fifty or sixty feet high sheltering the wall from easy outside view, and then the town proper, a little place of a couple of thousand people
