“Haast’s Eagle.”
He showed Adrian the picture; the younger man frowned, squinted, then nodded. Harvey read, swore again.
“New Zealand,” he said. “Went extinct about 1400, but there are skeletons and such. Guess you ain’t the only one can figure out that DNA reconstruction gets you a broader set of forms for night-walking.”
“Most birds are too fragile to be much use in a fight against another walker,” Adrian said.
“Right,” Harvey said. “But this little critter is pocket dynamite, ’bout the weight of a medium dog. Evolved to hunt those cow-sized flightless birds they used to have. Says here it attacked at fifty em-pee-aitch and hit about as hard as a concrete cinder block dropped on you from six stories up.”
“That sounds very, very right, except that concrete blocks aren’t sharp.”
Adrian rubbed his forehead. “The hell of it is that she and I do think alike. At least at the problem-solving level… If I hadn’t sensed the attack at the last fractional second she might have severed my spine and Hajime would have killed me before I could regenerate. When I managed to beat the bird away, she went into tiger form- Amur type, but black. I broke contact and ran; flew myself, as a peregrine.”
He glared at Harvey. “And you kept me flying at top speed to catch this damned car with my body in it until it was nearly dawn!”
“Better than them catching us. Somebody high-powered was looking. I’m pretty sure we lost ’em. Three gets you ten cents it’s Michiko got the tissue sample or whatever for Adrienne from her granddad that let her set that trap,” Harvey said. “You up to solid food?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll try,” he replied.
The food was bread, butter, cheese and hard-boiled eggs. The first few mouthfuls were tentative, feeling his way around his abused stomach. Then he was ravenous, and forced himself not to gobble. When his share was finished he was able to force down more of the blood. The itching became worse in his arm and thigh, which was a good sign, and he flexed them cautiously. The bruises would heal much faster. They were only transferred tissue damage anyway, his soma-memory convincing his body that it had been attacked when he returned to the flesh.
“Let’s get somewhere,” he said.
“Son, we’re between Stockton and Bakersfield on the west side of the Central Valley. There ain’t no where to be there in, thereabouts. Specially in these days of ongoing national readjustment.”
“I need to rest and heal. There is no alternative to that.”
He slumped back against the door, ignoring everything until Harvey drove them into a motel and helped him into their room with an arm over his shoulder. They were the only occupants, and the mattress smelled musty with disuse, but the room was blessedly warm and dry. He lay half-comatose as Harvey stripped off the hospital gown, checked the bandages and covered him in blankets. His mind sank into the shadows.
“Hello, Adrian,” Ellen said with a smile. “I’m almost getting used to this. Not as much of a mental shock when I… appear.”
She looked around the motel room. “Ewww.”
Adrian gestured from the bed, and the world changed. Now they were sitting; she still found that abrupt transition a little startling. There was the same sensation of doors opening in her mind, of memories three-quarters gone snapping back into place. She looked around; this was more complex than the confined landscapes she’d seen before.
Bright sunlight shone on tiled roofs and whitewashed walls descending a steep slope beneath them to a small harbor, and a Christian cathedral in a style half-Moorish…
“It’s Amalfi!” she said. “I love that town. I’ve only been once, on a package tour in university. Two days for Florence, would you believe it!”
“It’s a favorite of mine too.” Adrian nodded, lighting himself a cigarette. “I spent some time convalescing at an alberghetto here once.”
A striped umbrella shaded their table. Bright blue ocean stretched to the horizon, and mountains rose around the town. The air had a smell of spicy bushes and the sap of the umbrella-pine growing in the center of the little plaza, and of fruit and blossom from the rows of lemon trees to one side on the terraced hillside. Other couples and individuals chatted with lively animation and plenty of gestures, but when she tried she couldn’t quite make out words.
Adrian was in white linen shirt and pants and thin leather shoes on bare feet, with sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, tanned nearly brown. Ellen checked herself and found that she was in a cool pale traveling ensemble of silk blouse and cotton skirt, with elegant leather-strapped sandals fastened with wrought-gold buttons. A white woven hat with a trailing band rested on the table, and loose strands of hair sun-bleached almost as pale lay over her shoulders.
Can’t say he doesn’t have good taste! she thought.
A waiter approached.
“Un Limoncello, per favore,” Adrian said in fluent but slightly accented Italian.
“Subito, signoe. Bello gelato, naturalmente… Noi lo facciamo con i limoni che crescono qui davanti,? una specialit?, qui lo sanno tutti. Lo prende anche la signora?”
Adrian looked over and raised a brow at her. A little dazed, she nodded. He answered the man: “Si, certo. E dei biscotti di pasta di mandorle.”
The pale yellow liqueur came, and the plate of marzipan-like biscuits made with ground almonds, not as sweet or nutty as the American equivalent but sharper-flavored. She sipped and nibbled.
“I was going to say this is a bit dreamlike, but that’s sort of redundant, isn’t it?” she said. “Everything even tastes real. Realer than real. The people?”
“Not really people. Made from edited memories. Tangible in this state, but not… self-actuated.”
She nodded. “I’m asleep, I think. The last thing I remember is lying on my face and Adrienne sort of… slapping me on the butt and telling me I’d earned some rest.”
Adrian looked away, taking a draw on his cigarette; he held it between thumb and the first two fingers, next to his palm.
That’s why he never took me seriously when I said he should quit! Ellen realized suddenly. He wasn’t really brushing me off; he can’t get cancer or anything. That would be bad luck, and he doesn’t have that! Wait a minute, it just occurred to me, they can cure cancer and they never told anyone? “Adrian,” she said dryly, and he looked back at her. “I like the fact that you’re concerned for me. It’s sweet and wonderful, actually. But you can spare me the pity.”
He flushed. “Sorry,” he said. Then he smiled slightly. “I seem to be saying that a lot around you, Ellie.”
She nodded. “I’m already an abuse survivor… well, no, I’m back to being an abuse victim, actually, since I’ve been kidnapped by an abuser. But I’m not a child anymore, and I know the coping strategies, Adrian. And I know they’re strategies, not something wrong with me. It’s a lot harder with someone who can read your mind, but at least I don’t have the sense of betrayal I did before. I’m in no danger of Stockholm syndrome. I know all about that.”
“OK,” he said. Then he touched one finger to his forehead and flicked it out, a sort of sketchy salute. “I should remember that you’re not just the damsel in distress. Sorry… touch?.”
“I need to know how this link thing works.”
He took a deep breath. “It’s stronger when I want it to be, or when we’re physically closer, or when you’re feeling… any intense emotion or sensation.”
Ellen laughed involuntarily; she clapped a hand to her mouth.
“My turn to say sorry. You mean you could… could feel it when your sister was scaring the daylights out of me on that motorcycle or drinking my blood or when we were in bed?”
“Yes. Not all the time, and secondhand and much more faintly, but yes.”
“That sounds sort of… perverse.”
“It is, even by Shadowspawn standards; it’s one reason they’re so… jealous… about their, ah-”
“Lucies. Stop trying to shield my delicate sensibilities, Adrian! I hated that attitude when we were together, but you didn’t listen. Right now I am a lucy. It’s not my fault and I don’t feel disgraced about it. Angry and frightened, yes. Defiled, no.”
