a problem with any solution that’s good for me. I hope she can be happy, but that meant letting her go. Driving her away.”
The banter dropped out of the other man’s voice. “You’re part human, Adrian. Never forget it. You’re not a bad person. You’ve got problems, but you try hard to work around them. Dammit, I raised you for ten years. I know.”
“I killed my foster-parents, Harvey. My egg hatched and I know what came out.”
Harvey shook his head. “I don’t think you did kill them, Adrian. I think that was your sister. And… she’s back in town. That’s what I came to tell you.”
Adrian whirled. His cigarette fell from his fingers to the rough flagstone of the floor.
“You’re sure?” he whispered. “Adrienne?”
“Pretty sure. We’ve got a hack on the face-recognition program Homeland Security is running on the surveillance cameras at Albuquerque Sunport. I can’t think of anywhere else in New Mexico she’d be interested in. She’s not one of their watchers at Los Alamos and they don’t have anyone that high-powered working the State government. Their renfields handle that.”
“Christ! I thought the Council were going to leave me alone if I stayed out of things!”
Harvey stared at him, his faded blue eyes steady. “Like, you trust them?”
“Well… no. More like trusted their self-interest in keeping me retired.”
“The Brotherhood don’t think she’s here on an official errand for them, anyway. She still has a major jones for you.”
“Tell me about it.”
He picked up the cigarette, crushed it out, tried to light another. That fell from his hands onto the floor. He forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out.
Fear is natural. Let it pass without feeding on itself.
“And she might not give a damn what the masters thought. Shadowspawn…”
“Aren’t team players, yeah,” Adrian said, keeping the raw terror out of his voice by main strength. “Especially not us concentrated pure-strain types.”
He scrubbed his hands across his face, feeling his brains begin to work again.
I hate that deer-in-the-headlights feeling. Fuck, she hasn’t killed or turned me yet, and it’s not because she didn’t try! The honors were about even in Calcutta.
A little voice whispered at the back of his mind:
But since then she’s been practicing, growing stronger, and you’ve been trying to deny what you are. You both have the genes for the Power, but that only means so much. You were a warrior then. What are you now? “I can’t very well appeal to the Council to call her off, either,” Adrian said. “Not if it’s a family matter-and they’d think it was.”
“She is your twin sister, biologically speaking,” Harvey pointed out.
Adrian turned and shook his head slowly. “No. She’s my anima. My own personal nightmare. She’s the mirror I can’t break. How long has she been here?”
“A little less than two days. Probably sniffing out the lay of the land.”
Then Adrian’s face went fluid; he could feel the blood draining from it, with a shock greater than fear for himself.
“Ellen! ”
CHAPTER TWO
Adrienne Br?z? liked the sun. Her Second Birth would come in less than a century, and then she wouldn’t be seeing sunlight ever again, not if she outlived the planet. Now she sat relaxed with her face to the sky on the park bench, legs crossed at the ankle and hands in the pockets of her long duster-style astrakhan coat. Pigeons cooed; there was a slight murmur of traffic, but the narrow streets around Santa Fe’s central plaza mostly held a pleasant smell of spicy local cooking from the restaurants.
People bustled around the little stretch of grass and cottonwoods centered on the Civil War memorial, parcels in their hands. More wandered down the long portico of the Palace of the Governors behind the pine-log pillars, looking at the jewelry the Indians in from the pueblos sold, or prowled the expensive shops on the other three sides; their emotions were almost as predatory as hers. Northward reared the towers of Bishop Lamy’s cathedral, tall Norman Romanesque-Gothic in a low-slung and obsessively Southwestern town, and beyond that the snow- capped peaks of the Sangres.
What… do… you… seek… Daughter… of… the… Night?
She stiffened at the mental touch, then relaxed, closing her eyes and letting the world fade. The feel was unmistakable; like the smell of rock and dust, like watching sunset fading on a wall and eyes glittering in the gathering dusk. One of the Old Ones, a master.
An effort like a push behind the eyes.
I… hunt… our… enemies… Father… of… Darkness.
If… the… traitor… slays… you… we… will… not… aid… or… punish. He… knows… this. We… would… not… lose… the… children… of… your… children… or… his. Much… effort… many… years… and… much… magic… went… into… your… breeding. You… are… Shadowspawn… as… of… the… great… days… and… there… is… Power… in… your… very… blood.
This form of speech conveyed your true emotions unless you were very careful. She was, and kept it neutral as flowing water:
I… have… children.
Only… two… and… you… cannot… bear… after… your… body’s… death. Their… blood… is… questionable… also.
I have deposited… many… ova… with… NewGen… Reproductive… Services… master.
Now he let emotion show: confusion. Oh. Very… well. Slay… or… be… slain.
Her eyes opened; she let out a breath of exasperation that flapped her lips and startled a pigeon at her feet.
“Nice to know I’m valued for more than my womb, you antique sexist pig!” she muttered.
A homeless man was approaching, ready to ask for a handout; leathery skin and rank scent and layers of tattered cloth. She glared at him and found the weakness-a blood-vessel in the brain ready to rupture, weakened by drugs, bad feeding, alcohol and stress from the untreated chemical imbalances that rode him more savagely than even her kind could do. She pushed. The world shifted slightly as might-be switched to is, like a breath of cold air up the spine and a tightness that went click and released around the brows. The man collapsed.
Adrienne rose and stepped by him; it would probably be minutes before someone noticed it was more than the usual unconsciousness. She’d planned on spending the afternoon at the O’Keeffe Museum, or possibly shopping for jewelry, but…
But I had to expend energy talking to Mthunzi, damn it! And now I should get back.
A little prickle urged her; now was the time, and no later. Now.
Ah, well, there goes the afternoon anyway.
She bought a burrito and ate it as she walked eastward, enjoying the whimsical wooden statues along the Santa Fe River-what they’d call a creek somewhere wetter. The tangy carne adovada was warm and bit at her tongue as she wandered up Canyon Road. Perhaps the earth-colored adobe and faux-adobe of the galleries could become monotonous in time, but for the present she liked it; it reminded her somehow of the uniformity of Umbrian hill towns in Italy. The sculpture ranged from cowboy-kitsch to weird. One attracted her eye, done in the pseudo- Hopi style; a stick-thin figure with antlers and a long blunt muzzle or mask, raising its arms to the sky.
A memory tugged at her; a recollection of early childhood, sitting on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and watching“It’s Bullwinkle!” she chuckled to herself. “Or close enough for government work. Bullwinkle the Shaman!”
That made her feel a little better as she reached the two-story apartment building and let herself in. Her nostrils expanded as she sprang up the stairs, taking in scents of blood and sweat and fluids; that triggered a
