tongue. The puffed bread with honey tasted even better.
'Mighty strange how sometimes the best tacos are in these little places you'd swear probably cooked up roof rabbit. I recall this time near Abilene-' Harvey began reminiscently.
'Shut up with the funny, rustic good-ol'-boy thing, Harvey,' she said. 'I'm a small-town girl myself and it doesn't fool me. And I'm not going to forget those kids because I'm stuffing my face.'
She took a bite of her taco and glared. Harvey shrugged; he was about the most imperturbable man she'd ever met. At least he couldn't sense her emotions anymore, not with his limited talent and the protections Adrian had installed.
At last she pushed the plate away and drank the last of her Diet Coke. Adrian looked at it and raised a brow, chuckling.
'What?'
'It just seems a little…'
He indicated the plates, now mostly clear of their tacos, burritos, refried beans and much else.
'I just prefer the taste of aspartame. And you're not going to distract me either, Adrian. Tell me honestly-will there ever be a better time?'
He sighed and rested his face in his hands for a moment, elbows on the table.
'I am so tired,' he said softly. 'No. There will not. But answer me honestly, cherie. Why do you care? Why are you ready to take risks for children who are not yours? Did you fall in love with them on brief acquaintance?'
'No. I only saw them a couple of times, and…' She hesitated. 'Frankly, I thought they were…'
'Creepy, you said. Then why?'
'Because they're yours, and I love you. Tell me you haven't been thinking about this since I first told you about them. You froze then and it's been eating at you ever since. So I think this is something you need to do.'
'Yes, I have been thinking about them.' Adrian sighed. 'It…has been obsessing me. I thought I hid it better.'
'Honey, we're sorta linked. It isn't all one-way, you know.'
Softly he went on: 'I try to suppress it because it isn't really concern for them in any immediate sense. I think of them, but what the, the eye of my mind sees is myself, as a little boy. Myself and Adrienne, when we were like kittens playing together in the sun. Before we ate of the tree of knowledge and had to choose between good and evil.'
Harvey touched Adrian on the shoulder. Ellen fought down a slight pang; they'd been together for a long time before she met Adrian at all. It was illogical, but…
What was that old saying? The heart has its reasons that the mind knows not?
'Son, you should let that go,' Harvey said, his voice quiet but compelling. 'You can't help those two kids you remember, even if one of them was you. They're both dead. They became you, you and your sister. You both made your choices.'
Adrian looked up at the Texan. 'Harvey, I made the choices I did because of you. You took me out. Adrienne stayed behind and became…what she is. It was a close thing for me even so, sometimes, Harvey. Being good is hard for us. It's so easy for you humans-I've known a lot of bitterness, a lot of envy over that.'
Ellen laid her hand on her husband's shoulder, beside that of his friend.
'You did manage it, darling.'
'But…I had the opportunity. Adrienne never did; and the little girl I loved is dead, murdered by the thing she became. How can I leave the flesh of my flesh there, to lose them the same way?'
Ellen nodded. 'You can't. And no child should be treated the way they will be.'
Adrian sighed and looked down at his elegant, slender hands. 'My parents will…love them, in their way.'
'That makes things worse, not better. You can turn against an outright abuser. Someone who really loves you can lead you into the pit.'
'And the children are Shadowspawn, Ellen. Purebreds, even more than I. Perhaps the purest-bred in twenty thousand years. Very powerful, hideously dangerous.'
Ellen snorted. 'Now, that's, well, racist. You aren't a bad man, Adrian. And you're extremely powerful and dangerous. There's no reason they have to be bad, no matter what they can do. You're vacillating. It isn't like you.' More quietly. 'They look so much like you. The boy was like seeing you at that age.'
'Oh, Jesus,' Harvey said wearily. 'Do you two do this we-are-the-dyadic-unit thing all the time! '
Ellen flushed; she'd become very used to being alone with Adrian. Adrian's face firmed and lost the slightly wistful expression it had worn for an instant.
'And there is a nexus here, Harvey.'
The Texan's face altered, going very still. A probability nexus was nothing to take lightly. The fact that they could seldom be pinned down in detail simply made that more essential. Nobody who had enough of the Power to Wreak at all doubted the existence of the precognitive ability, and Adrian had an awesome degree of it.
'What sort?' he said cautiously.
'I am not altogether sure, but a powerful one. Extremely powerful, and growing very rapidly; I can feel it looming out of the spray of futures, cutting across one path after another. And I am increasingly convinced that not doing this is black-pathed. When I try to invoke common sense and convince myself not to do it, cold winds blow. Both for me personally and for the world. It has been troubling me for some time; I think that was why I avoided thinking of the children as much as I could. Since Ellen mentioned them it has been forcing its way into my conscious mind.'
One of the grizzled eyebrows went up. 'You sure your feelings aren't pushin' you there?'
Adrian spread his hands. 'No, I'm not sure of that at all,' he said frankly. 'But one can never be sure. Even with an overt Seeing, rather than just an intimation like this. It is enough to convince me, my old. And my subconscious has a lively sense of self-preservation. If the Power is prompting me to do this thing, despite the obvious risks, then there is some hideous danger involved in not doing it. We cannot know what the danger is, but it is there. And if we ignore the warning, we will find out the danger far too late.'
' Or someone stronger than you is tweakin' it.'
Harvey held up a hand as Ellen began to speak; she felt a little relief. Even now, parts of her brain screamed, This is crazy! at logic like that.
And that's after I've seen people turn into… well, not bats, but things with wings, and walk through walls.
'All right,' Harvey said slowly. 'I've got a powerful respect for your precog, Adrian. Plus we do have some downtime in a few months, and it is the best opportunity…which don't make it good. It's an unjustified risk before the Tbilisi thing. Though I can probably even sell it to Sheila Poison.'
Adrian raised a brow and said to Ellen: 'Did I mention her? The Brotherhood's executive for western North America?'
'Yes. Bigoted bitch was the term you used.'
Adrian grinned. 'I didn't think she altogether liked me,' he said. 'And I thought that she disliked me for my genes, which I can't help, rather than my actions, which I usually can. Doubly ironic because she has considerably more of the Shadowspawn inheritance than Harvey here. Projected self-loathing is one of the occupational hazards of the Brotherhood. Also a reason I, ah, resigned.'
Harvey snorted. 'She didn't like you, until you pulled off the Rancho Sangre thing. Hajime and the late unlamented Adrienne, that's quite a bit of counting coup. You got real chops with her now, son.'
' We pulled that off.'
'Yeah, it ain't hurt my chops with the organization either. There's not a person in the Brotherhood didn't cheer, which makes up for bein' a loose cannon, sorta. A little.'
Ellen murmured. 'Harvey Ledbetter, organization man?'
'Not so much. More like the Brotherhood's indispensible skunk,' Harvey said. 'But I think I can sell it to her. Say rescuin' a pureblood and raisin' him right worked with you, and there's no reason we couldn't do it again; and we should strike fast, because the younger we get 'em, the more likely it is to work out right. It'd make a powerful difference if we had more major mojo like yours on our side. I can bring her 'round…if I work at it for a while.'
'Ah,' Adrian said. 'That is good!'
'And I'll go on the op, too, of course.'
'No,' Adrian said, shaking his head. 'You were definitely made as the shooter during the fracas. Not the first
