myself. More coffee?”
“Thanks. I, um, BA in Art History from NYU. Worked in a gallery in Santa Fe. I was… involved with Adrian. Adrienne’s brother. She… took me away.”
Another ringing silence. Monica coughed into her fist and pushed the plate of brownies over.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty to do. There are just infinite amounts of art up the hill. And they send some down to the high school and the civic center, now and then, too. Exhibitions.”
Bet they don’t tell them it’s all genuine, Ellen thought. Or… it’s a renfield town. Maybe they know that too.
“I’m sure you’ll be happy here,” Monica said. She sighed. “Jamal-he’s from LA-isn’t fitting in well. I’ve tried to be friendly and help him, honest, but…”
“Don’t think he’ll last long,” Jose said bluntly. “Man, you can see it in his eyes! And he screams a lot.”
“Don’t we all!” Monica said lightly; then her smile became almost a simper for an instant. “Why, sometimes, I’m hoarse for days, when things get, you know, a little wild with Adrienne.”
“No, he screams when he’s alone sometimes too. Give you odds, the Do?a’s going to… remove him from here, know what I mean?”
“Well, maybe it’s just a phase he’s going through. I remember my first few weeks here, I cried a lot, before I realized how lucky I was. Just sobbed and sobbed and oozed like a puddle. I was, like, so silly!”
Getting really creeped out now, Ellen thought. She’s got odd body language. Look at the way she fidgets and pats her hair. Like a smoker who can’t… oh. The bite’s addictive. Addictive as nicotine, and Adrienne’s been away. I’m feeling nervous myself. Is that just because I’ve got really good reason to be nervous, or…
“Hey, there’s pain in life.” Jose shrugged. “A man’s got to deal, unless he’s a…” He glanced at Monica and amended what he’d probably been going to say into a form less blunt. “A sissy.”
“Besides,” Monica said. “It’s not always that bad. Sometimes… it’s just nice and fun or fun-scary, doing what she wants, and then you cuddle and the feeding… it’s almost like nursing. You can feel how you’re helping this need.”
Ellen sipped at her coffee again, remembering Adrienne’s face on the plane, laughing with blood on her teeth and chin. Hearing her say: I may kill you someday, slowly and cruelly and beautifully.
“And she says that then, those times, my blood tastes like warm milk and cookies before you go to bed.”
Creeping out getting closer to total now.
Jose looked out the window as he finished his beer. Peter spoke gently, but his tone was dry: “It’s not a tame tiger, you know, Monica, even if it purrs sometimes. Usually, there’s plenty of screaming involved.”
“Oh, Peter, you’re such a complainer! That’s not always all bad either. It can be sort of… exciting, once you’re used to it. And when it’s, well, very wild and you feel so… sometimes then she touches me, you know, there, and does that extra-special thing with her mind only she can do. And that feels so good!”
Oh, icky-poo yuk, total creeped-outness achieved. A thought: that thing in the restaurant was with her kissing my knuckles. I wonder if it were… could Adrian do… Stop that, Ellen!
Monica’s BlackBerry chimed. The tune had words:
“See my eyes so gold
She opened it and said: “Yes? Oh, Do?a Adrienne! Yes, of course.”
For a moment she closed her eyes and whispered: “Thank God!”
Then: “Shall I make dinner?” A giggle. “Just me? At seven? I’ll see you then!”
A brilliant smile at all of them. “Speak of the devil!”
She keyed another number. “Mom? Oh, hi, Mom, I need you to pick up Josh and Sophie from the Judo and dance classes and take them overnight. Yes, I’ve got company coming. I don’t know if I’ll be up to bringing them home tomorrow, no. It depends on, you know, how wild things get. Call me in the afternoon. OK? Love you too, Mom! Bye!”
She left with a smile and a wave. Jose washed out his beer bottle and left it upside down in the drainer.
“Well, I’m going to go visit my folks,” he said. “It was really nice meeting you, Ellen. You have any trouble with the car, the plumbing, just let me know. The guys from up the hill are on call, but I’m on hand! We usually have a potluck BBQ on Sunday. It’s my turn next.”
He left; Peter sat in companionable silence for a moment. Ellen drank the last of the coffee, looked down and realized she’d also eaten the last of the brownies without even noticing, which wasn’t like her.
“That was David Bowie,” she said eventually. “On the ringtone. But aren’t the words to that song See my eyes so green? I’ve heard it a couple of times. Giselle… my boss at the gallery… likes him.”
“The Do?a had him cut a special version for her,” Peter said.
Silence fell for another few moments. At last: “Monica…” she said. “Monica’s completely insane, isn’t she?”
Peter shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as excessively well adjusted. She really is as nice as she seems; the Susie Homemaker thing isn’t put on, either. And her four-cheese lasagna is to die for.”
He grinned. “Though sometimes I feel I should become a vegetarian. It would be appropriate, somehow…”
Then he did an alarmingly realistic “moooooooo!”
Ellen laughed, despite the crawling sensation between her shoulder blades.
“It does give you more sympathy for their position, doesn’t it? God, I feel bloated. I don’t generally eat as a displacement activity, but this has been a rough couple of days. Forty-eight hours ago, my only problem was figuring out how to tell my boyfriend it was over with us and worrying about how he’d react. Is there any place you can run, around here? I usually do three miles a day minimum.”
“There are some great trails in the hills, if you don’t mind steep.”
“Hey, I’m from New Mexico too!”
“Meet you in half an hour, then?”
CHAPTER NINE
The two killers snarled as they spread out in the big sauna and advanced, lips pulled back to show the wide white gape of their teeth. The air was rank with the scent of their aggression. Adrian answered with a snarl of his own, one that turned into a full-throated racking scream. The wordless challenge-cry of the king predator:
Mine! Mine the land, the herds, the blood, the mates! Mine!
It checked them for the merest fraction of a second. He could feel their intent narrow again, focused like the edge of their knives; they were Shadowspawn, and powerful. Not as powerful as he, but there were two of them and the silver-inlaid, glyph-warded knives were deadly, annulling luck, canceling the Power’s ability to heal the wounds they made. Adrian knew a single instant of irony; that was the same sort of weapon he’d learned to use when he was the Brotherhood’s fosterling. The two sides of the ancient struggle were more closely linked than either would admit.
Then his intent was as pure as theirs. One came in, lunging leopard-fast up the stairlike seats, sweat gleaming across the bright patterns printed into his skin. The knife ripped upward towards belly and genitals. Adrian swayed his hips aside, fluid and sure, and lashed out with the ball of his foot as he pivoted on the other. The man rode it, flinging up one arm to take the impact and tumbling down the wood-sheathed tile of the benches, coming to his feet and shaking his head at the base.
His companion was already attacking, the knife flashing in a blurring X-figure of slashes before him. Some remote part of his mind spoke in Harvey’s voice; memory held a tinge of sunlight filtering through the boards of a barn somewhere in the Texas hill country too, and the sweaty feel of a practice-hilt in his hand.
If it’s a knife-fight, accept that you’re going to get cut and cut bad. Just make sure the other mook’s worse-
