off.
Adrian lunged into the other’s attack. That broke his rhythm for the merest second; he’d been counting on the unarmed man retreating. Silver-veined steel slashed down his deflecting forearm and into his thigh, like a razor of sun-hot fire.
Pain! Painpainpainpain- Blood-scent, his own, rank and terrible; the knife-arm slipped free of his grip and whipped back for the stab up under the short-ribs. For an instant they were locked chest-to-chest, and Adrian’s other hand flashed up and clamped on the back of the knife-man’s head with fingers like iron rods.
“Sh’tzeeeez ak-ot! ” he spat, while their faces were close as lovers’.
Mhabrogast commanded the mind; the Power flowed out of him. The man’s galvanic reaction sent him to the floor in a twitching, writhing, heel-drumming fit, and hurled Adrian back. A thin keening sound came out of him, endlessly. Adrian snatched up the knife where it had fallen; more pain lanced up his right arm, without the shielding glove. The other blade-man halted his rush and poised in a wary guard.
Then he smiled thinly. Adrian’s leg buckled under him. The blood was flowing too fast, and he couldn’t spare the focus to clamp the vessels from within. On one knee he kept the blade pointed out, swaying as gray gathered around the edges of his vision. Cold seemed to be blowing around him, despite the dry heat of the sauna“Hey, asshole!” a gravelly voice said cheerfully.
The tattooed Shadowspawn turned in a blur of speed. The massive bummpf! of Harvey’s coach gun seemed to flow into the motion, and the knife-man jerked backward as the soft slug struck his face just above the nose and smashed open his skull with a dull wet cracking sound. Pinkish-white-gray tissue and blood spattered on the tiles and mats. Harvey took another step forward and brought the other barrel to bear on the head of the convulsing figure on the floor.
Bummpf! “Good Shadowspawn,” he said with satisfaction, breaking open the weapon’s mechanism and slipping in two more shells. “Good ’n’ dead. Dead-dead, too, not just body-dead.”
Adrian let the savage focus slip away from his mind. Harvey caught him as he buckled; even the burn of silver in the leather jacket was distant. He felt himself laid down, and the towels turned into tourniquets.
“Let’s let the Council cover things up, ol’ buddy,” he heard, as if from another room or another year. “Got to get you to a doc.”
Hands clamped on his wounded arm and thigh. The pain was there, but didn’t matter.
“And let’s see if I can Wreak a little, here, partner, before we move you.”
“Ellen,” Adrian whispered.
Then he screamed, as Power flowed into the open wounds.
The welcome wagon hadn’t tried to unpack her personal possessions. Ellen’s bags rested on the king-sized bed. It was made up with fresh sheets, and the walk-in closets and the drawers of a tall rubbed-oak armoire held the sort of thing Monica had mentioned, clothing that could be bought off the shelf on short notice. The room had a half-empty feel anyway, no knickknacks or pictures on the walls. The window opened onto the small interior yard between the house and the casa grande’s perimeter wall; it let in a sweet scent of cut grass.
She’d packed the bags to a quick command of Take what you can’t replace with money, and evidently her subconscious had been functioning. All she remembered from the time was a blur of terror, but they were full of a jumble of things like Mr. Wabbit-loved into shapelessness when she was small-and her family photographs and other mementoes. She hesitated; taking any of them out would be like admitting she was living here. Then she defiantly put Mr. Wabbit on the shelf over the head of the bed.
“There. Keep an eye on things, you wascally wabbit!”
She dressed in sweats with a sports bra beneath and a headband and a pair of very good running high-tops, and started stretching outside the house. The Lane was very quiet; Jamal had finished his routine with the weights and was sitting on the bench. He stared expressionlessly at her, made no response to her wave and then went inside.
Peter showed up; his gear was well-worn. The bruises and sore spots made her wince a little and go slowly at the limbering-up motions; he waited patiently.
“Ummm… Jamal really isn’t friendly, is he?”
Peter sighed. “I’ve had exactly one sentence from him since he arrived last September. From LA, I think.”
“What was that?”
“I’m nobody’s bitch, you faggot, so fuck off.”
“Ouch!”
“Yes.” A hesitation. “I usually sort of resent that; I’m not gay, I’m just small, for Christ’s sake! But… it’s hard to feel hostile to someone in his position. And I have this horrible feeling that he replaced me at the bottom of the list.”
“The list?”
“The one she’d kill if she felt in the mood for that. The one she would miss least afterwards. Don’t mention that to the others, by the way. I just violated the Lucy Code.”
Ellen winced. “Double ouch. Let’s run, shall we?”
He nodded, relief on his face: “How tough do you want it?”
“Not too-too, in new shoes-though these feel like suede gloves for the feet. And I’m still feeling a bit rocky in spots.”
“I usually run in the mornings, when I can. Care to join me?” He held up a hand. “I’m not hitting on you. Not that you’re not attractive, but… that sort of thing is not really practical for any of us here.”
“Why do men always apologize for not hitting on you all the time including the grossly inappropriate ones?” Ellen asked, with a wry quirk to one corner of her mouth. “It’s like sorry for not interrupting you incessantly or I regret that I can’t breathe onion in your face.”
“Because we wish women would hit on us all the time,” he answered “Because we wish women would hit on us all the time,” he answered promptly. “I realize the reverse isn’t true.”
They set out slowly, warming up as they left the end of the cul-de-sac. There was a brick bicycle path at first; that faded out as they worked their way onto a dirt path that snaked beside a seasonal brook under eucalyptus and native oaks. She kept quiet for half an hour, simply feeling the push of legs and flex of muscle, enjoying the body doing what it was supposed to do. It cleared her head as well.
“Did you… have anyone in Los Alamos?” she asked after a while, pacing the words to her breath.
“Not seriously, lately. And I’m very glad things were that way.”
She nodded. He went on: “You were really involved with Adrienne’s brother? And he didn’t…”
“No. Things got sticky, but he never… well, obviously he never drank my blood! I didn’t know about any of this stuff; that was a big part of why we were splitting up. He wouldn’t tell me things. I knew he was keeping a lot of secrets. He’s a good guy, basically. I can see now looking back how hard he had to fight not to… do things. I may have unintentionally been tempting him.”
Peter nodded. “Left up here, past that clump of bamboo. You know, they can play games with your memories, if they can get close to you for a while. Break your brain-codes. You sure he didn’t do that?”
That made her miss a stride; then she laughed harshly. “That’s like trying to prove that the world wasn’t created six minutes ago!”
“Yeah, classic non-falsifiable hypothesis. Sorry!”
“No, I can’t be sure. I’m morally certain, though. Thanks for giving me another creepy thought to keep me awake!”
“De nada. Do you hate him for getting you into this?”
“No,” she said.
Odd. I wasn’t certain that I didn’t until just now.
Aloud: “No, what Adrienne’s done is Adrienne’s fault, and they hadn’t had any contact for years. She’s got some twisted love-hate-desire thing going on with him, at least on her part; he hates her and he’s afraid of her. All he wanted was to be left alone and live something as close to a normal life as he could. I was part of that, I think. And she… wants… me because he did. I get this really creepy feeling that to her… messing… with me is like fucking him.”
“I don’t know if I could be that objective. And, yes, the Do?a tends to give you that creepy feeling, doesn’t she?”
