"A Taint in the Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S M)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Adrian watched.

This is not real, he thought. Then: No. It has not happened yet, and might not. But it is very real.

A file of trucks and two Humvees passed down a street in San Francisco-Market, he thought. The soldiers in the utility vehicles were in the uniforms and body-armor and equipment of the US Army, often ill-fitting as if salvaged from others and worn for want of better. The trucks were civilian, dirty and battered-looking, on the edge of failure from bad maintenance. Every building was closed. Not far away a body lay half-out of a broken shop window, two bottles of liquor still resting below it with the contents mostly spilled. Flies buzzed, and the wind blew through the steel-and-glass canyons, but there was only a distant hint of engine noise. Parked cars along the edges rested on the rims of flat tires, but the center was clear except for patches of broken glass.

A poster in red-and-black on one intact plate-glass expanse shouted: Emergency Quarantine Regulations-Please Read! Its edges were ragged, as if it had been there for some time.

The vehicles’ exhaust was faint; stronger still was a sweetish-rank scent he knew well.

The little convoy stopped. An officer dismounted, and then a short slim figure Adrian recognized as his sister. She was in the same uniform and wore a pistol at her hip, but without the standard insignia of rank. Instead a black patch on her shoulder held the image of an upthrust three-tined golden trident, jagged and irregular and barbed. If he’d looked closer he sensed that it would have been held within a rayed sun, black-on-black. It was the glyph that had once been the secret sigil of the Order of the Black Dawn, and for a hundred and twenty years that of the Council of Shadows.

“Two days at least,” Adrienne said coolly, looking down at the body. “In this climate, possibly as much as a week. Have the workers load it, Colonel Hawkins, but I think this district is more or less clear.”

The officer was a hard-faced black man in his thirties. He had the blank eyes of someone who has seen things he can neither forget nor deal with, and is running on a precarious mental slope to keep his balance. He hesitated, and she went on impatiently: “It’s quite safe, Colonel Hawkins. Look.”

She stooped and touched the bloated flesh. Men and women in overalls and dirty white face-masks and heavy plastic gloves jumped down from one of the trucks and took ankles and wrists. They carried the body over to another truck and slung it in with an efficiency that spoke of long practice. It landed with a soft thud.

“Then the plague really is over, ma’am?” the soldier asked. “Christ, I thought it would go on until nobody was left.”

“Quite over, Colonel,” she said. “Not one person who’s received the new vaccine has developed Dalager’s Parasmallpox; and we have more doses on hand than the remaining population of the world. There are still eighty million people in this country alone. Nine-tenths have been vaccinated already, the rest will be by the end of spring, and we can end the quarantine lockdown and begin to rebuild. With the new World Council to allocate resources we can do it everywhere. Rebuild on the new basis.”

“Thank God,” the man said; his shoulders slumped a little. “I don’t know Thing One about this Council, the way communications have been screwed up the last couple of months. We haven’t even heard from National Command HQ in weeks, just Regional in Redding. But if the Council’s ended the plague, if they can do that… well, they’ve got my vote. Geneva can be capital of the world and good luck to them.”

He laughed, a rusty sound. “Though with a World Council running things now, I may be out of a job.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The world cannot become that peaceful, truly. Not as long as human beings are human beings.”

The man snorted and nodded. “Damn right. I’ve seen… enough of that lately. People will be crazy for a while yet and then they’ll be, well, people.”

Adrienne gave a long slow smile. “I’m sure the Council will find a need for your services. There are always… recalcitrant elements. Keeping the peace will be your task. Keeping our peace. You’ll have… powerful new backup, too.”

The Seeing cut off. He drifted in darkness; shapes rushed by him, like subway trains roaring down through a darkened station. Adrian pushed, looking for purpose in a universe of chaos. Then he could see again.

See, he thought. I am Seeing.

The same street showed, and on the same day and hour. But here the buildings leaned crazily, scorch marks showing where flames had burst out of windows. One had fallen across the intersection, and lay in a tangle of girders and shattered concrete still held together by the rebar. Cars littered the street, many with their doors and hoods still open, stopped where they had been stricken all at once. A group of men and women waited in the rubble, guns and clubs and knives clutched in their hands; they were skeletally thin, and wore a patchwork of rags and hair and dirt. He could smell them, the scents of madness and bodies sick and starving.

Other men came down the street, dressed in tough nondescript uniforms and carrying assault rifles and grenade launchers. Their leader stopped, raised a hand in a gesture Adrian recognized, spoke a Word. The ragamuffins tensed; then one sprang up, screaming and slapping at himself, then gouging his own eyes into bloody holes in his face. Three more simply slumped over, dead before they hit the ground. Another leveled a pump-action shotgun at the newcomers and pulled the trigger.

Crang!

The shells in the magazine gang-fired, and he ran three steps waving the spouting stumps of his arms below a ruined face and then toppled to lie still. The rest broke in panic, scuttling like rats back into the tangle of ruins. The newcomers opened fire, short accurate bursts, the empty shells sparkling in the sunlight as they spun up and the flat elastic crackcrackcrack echoing off the dead buildings. The shoonk… boom! of grenade launchers sounded.

Their leader stopped and removed his helmet. Pale hair showed beneath, pale eyes, a sharp-nosed Slavic face, though his followers were of half a dozen races. His eyes were faded blue, with tiny golden flecks visible only when the light struck at an angle.

“Kakoy naverh trahaviy!” he said, with limitless disgust in his tones.

Adrian’s observing mind translated automatically: “What a fuckup! ”

“We return,” he continued in English. “There’s obviously nothing worthwhile here.”

The pointed nose wrinkled at the corpses, and his upper lip rose to reveal his teeth.

“Not even any clean blood, and I am hungry. We go!”

Adrian sat upright-or tried to. The restraints around the wounds in his forearm and thigh stopped him, and the tubes and holders rattled where lines dripped plasma and saline and carefully metered drugs into him. He sank back with a hiss at the sharp stabbing pain and looked around the room by rolling his head from side to side.

“Hospital,” he muttered.

The institutional smell, clean and dismal, was unmistakable; the tray of congealing food somewhere near made it even plainer with its scents of overdone green beans and reconstituted mashed potatoes. Green-beige walls, linoleum on the floors, tracks on the ceiling for privacy curtains to be drawn around the beds. This was a smallish room, set up for two patients.

Waking up in hospitals without being sure exactly how he’d gotten there was no new experience. But…

Wait. I’m retired. I haven’t done this shit for years and years.

Memory crashed in, the killers with the silvered knives in the Japanese bathhouse. Ellen. His sister.

Ellen woke me up. I could feel it. It’s been a while. I was deep in trance, and then the link with Ellen.

He shivered, and continued to flog his mind back into working order. There was a drained feeling to it, as if he’d been Wreaking at high level without blood, forcing the Power to feed on himself.

Harvey, he thought.

The other man was lying on the next bed with his boots off, limply asleep. Adrian blinked in shock at how old he looked, silver stubble showing on his cheeks and the eyes fallen in a little.

When did that happen?

In his mind’s eye Harvey Ledbetter was always a vibrant thirty-five, a tireless mass of gristle and bone and lean muscle and sharp penetrating blue eyes. Adrian was alert now, however weak his body. He let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes, because that weakness made them prickle with half-shed tears.

All human beings are mortal, he thought. Including those you love, Adrian. Prepare yourself for more of this grief, unless you plan on dying soon.

The other bed creaked. He opened his eyes again; Harvey was sitting up, stamping his feet into the boots and lacing them, rubbing at his face. The grin was back, and the sparkle in the eyes that made you forget the gray and the wrinkles and the way the hands were getting knobby.

“You look like shit, Harv,” he said-or croaked.

“Said Mr. Kettle to the honey-bucket. You look like shit that’s been through the baby twice. Hold one.”

He went out; a few minutes later he returned with a big mug. Then he put a hand behind Adrian’s head and put it to his lips. The scent of the blood hit him a second before that, revulsion and longing together. It was almost warm. He looked a question.

“Usual source, just a bit fresher. Pretty well straight from the donor. You need it, ol’ buddy. We got connections here, but it ain’t altogether a Brotherhood establishment. Drink before someone comes by and asks questions.”

He drank. For an instant it tasted only of salt and metal, a sign of how drained he really was. Then it was like tofu-stale tofu with an overtone of slightly spoiled milk. There was only the mildest quiver of nausea as it hit his stomach, empty though that felt.

“Ahhh,” he sighed. “My God, don’t give me this Grand Cru Burgundy too often, Harv.”

“It’s back to the rotgut as soon as you’re out of here. I was gettin’ worried. You were in a trance lockdown-I had to jimmy those with a Wreaking-”

He pointed at a bank of monitors, which were now showing his real heartbeat and respiration and blood pressure. It would have been hard for the older man; everything came from his own reserves.

No wonder he looked so exhausted! “-but it didn’t seem to be doing you all that much good, not like a real healin’ coma. Thought I might have to hold your nose and pour the blood down your gullet my own self.”

Adrian made a dismissive gesture. “Ellen woke me. Adrienne was… feeding on her.”

“You’ve got a pretty close link with that girl, don’t you?” A grin. “Don’t work with just blood, does it?”

“Dirty-minded salop,” he replied. Then: “Ellen is becoming acclimated to it, developing the addiction pattern. That was… not pleasant to observe. She was very frightened, and then… nearly ecstatic.”

Harvey sighed. “Look, ol’ buddy, you knew that was going to happen. It actually makes things easier for her and less likely to get on the receiving end of an overfeeding frenzy-which in case you hadn’t noticed, is fatal while blissing-out isn’t.”

“She has an addictive personality. She knows it and deals with it well. But in this situation she is more vulnerable.”

Harvey shrugged. “She can go through detox when we get her back. Concentrate on getting healed up so we can do something about it.”

Adrian crossed his arms and rested his hands on his shoulders. Breath in, out, in, out…

A few seconds later he opened his eyes again and hissed, “Damn those knives! I’m healing only a little faster than… ah…”

“Us normals,” Harvey said cheerfully. “Well, that’s what the blades were designed for. Sort of ironic, isn’t it? The Shadowspawn using ’em, that is.”

They had been witchfinders’ tools originally, the predecessors of the Brotherhood as the Order of the Black Dawn and kindred groups were of the Council of Shadows.

Adrian shrugged. “I’m going to give it another try. Flash cards for me, would you?”

Harvey grunted agreement; he pulled out a set of blanks the size of playing cards and spent a moment marking them with the artist’s pencils from Adrian’s pack.

“OK,” he said. “This is the s-at’lauissi it’k-baiy sequence.”

Adrian sank back again. As the glyphs were held before his eyes he murmured words-Words, rather, one of the earliest patterns children learned when the Power came on them.

I’ve failed World Lit; now I’m back to using alphabet blocks.

There was a soft heavy resistance, the lingering traces of the knives in his flesh. Let the pattern grow stronger, let the Mhabrogast syllables echo in his mind, louder and louder, until his personhood felt their edges…

He was gasping when his eyes opened again, but the pain in arm and leg had grown to a fiery itch. There was no way of avoiding that, and he set himself to ignore it.

“More,” he croaked.

Harvey lifted his head again. The blood vanished as if his tissues were soaking it up, but his head felt less light. Then water, and he sighed.

“I’ll be walking in a day or two. Real recovery… not too much longer.”

“If we live that long,” Harvey said grimly. “Got the make on those two mooks we assisted to shuffle off. Definitely T?kairin clan muscle, partners who worked together regular. Up-and-comers.”

“Why?” he said, mystified.

“Could be general principles. They did edge out the Br?z?s for top-tiger position on the West Coast back when.”

“As if I cared! They know that.”

“The two you got were part of a security detail run by Michiko T?kairin. She manages that for this section of the West Coast. Old Hajime lettin’ family feeling overcome prejudice about the weaker sex.”

“T?kairin Michiko,” Adrian corrected absently as his thoughts spun. “Surname first.”

“Well, excuse me your exalted multiculturalist poobah-ness. She ain’t really Japanese. Hell, strictly speaking you could argue whether she’s human.”

“And she’s a sibling-of-blood to Adrienne. And definitely not the weaker anything.”

Harvey made a grimace. Among Shadowspawn the sibling-of-blood relationship was a kind of fictive kinship; it also had sexual overtones but mainly referred to shared kills.

Not that that is altogether different from the way actual siblings among Shadowspawn act, Adrian thought.

The older man reached under the bed he’d been napping on and hauled out a cardboard take-out box.

“Whatever the reason, if she came after us once, she may again. Put the cops on our trail, or Homeland Security spooks, too. We’re not official Brotherhood and we’re vulnerable.”

“I shall live with it,” Adrian said. “What have you got there?”

“Chicken b?nh mi sandwiches on sourdough with cilantro, chilis and five-spice. And some croissants that actually taste like croissants, which ain’t so easy to find this side of the Atlantic.”

Adrian accepted one of the sandwiches gratefully; the mere scent of it drove out the smell of limp green beans and reconstituted mashed potatoes and mystery-meatloaf from the trolley out in the corridor. Accelerated healing required food.

“And Sheila came through with the report on the Br?z?-clan properties,” Harvey went on.

He carefully cut the cards he’d marked with the glyphs-ideographic Mhabrogast-into confetti-small pieces and scraped them into a plastic Ziploc, to be burned later.

Then he wrapped his mouth around a huge bite of his sandwich. Indistinctly: “Whole lot of Br?z? properties, but there are only three or four likelies in the Central Coast area.”

Adrian’s lips thinned. “That is the problem. I got a visual impression with that… feeding incident, and the distance was less. Adrienne and Ellen were traveling. She’s moving, Harv. Where?”

“Getting closer, you said?”

“I think so.”

“Then maybe… we need to talk to the T?kairin honcho ourselves.”

Adrian looked at him in surprise, and he went on: “Michiko likes Adrienne. Hajime don’t. I’ll put out feelers, but if he accepts, it’ll be you he wants to talk to. I’m just an ape, remember?”

“How could I forget, my old? You are an ape.”

Harvey laughed. “Now you need some more sleep.”

“Yes.” He sighed. Then: “No. First I must tell you of the Seeings I had, before the feeding woke me.”

He did. Harvey whistled. “Sheila was right. They are plannin’ something a mite drastic.”

“Several things. Those were unrealized alternates. They both felt… loose, not nearly determinate. And Adrienne and Dmitri were in both. Somehow something we do affects those outcomes.”

Harvey’s mouth twisted. “Neither of ’em’s what I’d call desirable.” Adrian shrugged, half-conscious. “Ellen. I must rescue Ellen. The rest… it can wait.”

Harvey leaned over him and smiled, a tender expression incongruous on the rugged bristly face.

“Right, ol’ buddy. You get some shut-eye.”

“Ellen,” he murmured, and sank into the waiting darkness.

Hungry, Ellen thought, as the motorcycle burbled to a stop amid a small parking lot. Stiff. Cold.

She’d been drifting for most of the ride through the endless outskirts and suburbs south of the city. Now they were in San Francisco’s core, bright and lively. Ellen shivered again as she glanced at the people and traffic.

It’s all a false front, she thought. Now I know what’s real. And oh, God, how I wish I didn’t.

“We’ll get you warm and fed, ch?rie,” Adrienne said.

The restaurant was on Post Street, near Union Square; Ellen had a confused sense of recently-renovated antique magnificence, arched ceilings with mosaics and Art Nouveau marine-themed lamps. For a moment she felt hideously underdressed in her plain jeans and rumpled T-shirt and wind-tangled blond thatch; then her stomach twisted at the subtle scents.

I look like I’m homeless! “And I’m in motorcycle leathers,” Adrienne pointed out. “This is San Francisco. Nobody would bat an eye if you were in a bustier and pink boxers with your head shaved.”

The ma?tre d’ came up, smiling. “This way, Ms. Br?z?. Ms. T?kairin just arrived and is in the Sevruga room.”

He had the art of being deferential but not oily. The door to which he ushered them had an unusual addition; two Japanese-looking men in expensive suits flanking it, standing with their hands crossed. Within was a small private dining chamber, restrained in white and beige, the walls mostly covered in a wine library-bottles on slightly inclined shelves. There were a couple of nautical-fisherman paintings as well. The round table could have held four comfortably. The young woman sitting there was alone, andWearing a Sailor Moon costume? Ellen thought.

Certainly a manga-version of a Japanese schoolgirl outfit-white sailor blouse, blue skirt and red bow. Her raven hair was up in a complex design held by long golden hairsticks and a comb; Ellen recognized it from an Edo-period print by Koryusai. The face below was classic as well, doll-like and pretty; she was a bit shorter than Adrienne, which put her three inches below Ellen’s five foot six.

“Adrienne!” she said happily, rising.

“Michiko!”

She extended a hand and they touched fingertips, a greeting Ellen had never seen before. There was a sense of something passing between them, of words spoken too quickly and softly for her to hear.

They also exchanged several sentences aloud in Japanese before Adrienne switched to English: “Not blond anymore, I see.”

The Asian girl smiled and indicated her hairdo. “Grandfather! He wanted something more traditional, I gave him traditional.”

The two Shadowspawn women laughed and sat. Michiko went on: “How do you get that sweaty authentic look with the leathers? On me, it’s always like a twelve-year-old trying to butch up.”

“The authenticity is simple. Put them on and then drive a motorcycle for three hundred miles.”

“That’s going a bit far.”

“Ichir??”

“He’s in Japan with the kids, supervising them while they learn to contemplate raked sand and rocks and the other profound Buddha-Shinto-ninja-clan shit. As if human nations and traditions meant anything to us anymore!”

“The Wreaking training and the physical side are useful,” Adrienne said. “But I sympathize. On the other hand, T?kairin Hajime’s father thought he was a human being for most of his life. It’s only natural your grandfather still thinks in those terms.”

“Your Br?z?-clan Old Ones are miracles of flexibility by comparison.”

“We were… in at the beginning. We’ve had more time to adjust.”

Ellen hovered uncertainly for an instant, then sat as waiters brought a tray of drinks and platters of Kumamoto oysters on beds of shaved ice and rock-salt and seaweed, with thin-sliced buttered brown bread on the side.

“Ah, I can always rely on you, Jason,” Michiko said in a friendly tone to the man overseeing them.

To Adrienne: “When I come here, I just put myself in Jason’s hands. I’m like putty and he’s never gone wrong.”

Then to the man once more: “What’s with? Not the Staglin Chardonnay this time?”

“I’m recommending this cocktail instead for the oysters. Skyy 90 vodka infused with Antiguan black peppercorn, Manzanilla dry sherry, shaken, served up with cucumber.”

“Definitely linked to the pleasure principle,” she replied, sipping one. “Jason, if only you were straight, or at least flexible, what a lover you’d be!”

“Not even for you, Ms. T?kairin,” the slim handsome man said with a smile of his own. “Enjoy!”

“Ah…” Ellen said, when the staff had withdrawn. “I’ve never actually eaten a raw oyster before.”

The slanted eyes considered her. At first Ellen thought they were the normal brown so dark it was almost black, but then she could see tiny golden flecks here and there.

“A new lucy?” she asked, glancing at Adrienne. “You always did favor those Marilyn Monroe types on the distaff side.”

Wait a minute, Ellen thought suddenly. I do look a little like Monroe.

She’d studied Warhol’s prints closely at NYU and half a dozen people in the class had pointed it out, some far more often than she liked. The resemblance had been even stronger before she took up running and tennis intensively.

And come to think of it, Monica back at the ranch looks a fair bit like Norma Jean Mortenson before she went blond and got discovered. Is that a thing with the Br?z?s? Oh, that’s a bit of an ick… Well, some guys just have a subconscious preference for a type, I suppose… Adrian may have liked my looks, but he stayed for me. I was the one who broke it off.

“Though I should be charging you corkage!” Michiko continued with assumed umbrage. “You’re perfectly free to hunt in San Francisco while you’re my guest-we put that in the peace agreement-and it’s not as if we didn’t have a wide assortment. Bringing your own fresh bitch to bleed is almost a slur on our hospitality!”

Ellen fought to control the spike of resentment. From the smiles, that was absolutely futile, and Adrienne chuckled.

“Ch?rie, you’re my lucy. That means you are my bitch, in several senses of the word. Here. Take a sip of the cocktail-”

Cool, sweet-pungent, a tiny peppery bite, then white ice-fire down the throat.

“-then put a tiny bit of these marinated scallions on the oyster, a squeeze of lemon, and use the oyster fork to help the whole thing sliiiide in. Then take a bite of the brown bread.”

Ellen let the morsel and shell-full of liquid drop into her mouth. It was good, if a little strange-salty and meaty and fishy at the same time. The earthy texture and half-sweet taste of the brown bread and butter cleared her mouth.

“Like kissing the Pacific Ocean on the lips,” Adrienne said.

To Michiko: “But this is the one I took from dear Adrian. And quite unusual in herself. Less pillowy than Monroe, too, judging from the films.”

“Oooh, she was Adrian’s? Mind if I take a look?”

“Be my guest.”

This time the gaze took her seriously. Ellen decided she preferred dismissal. The eyes locked on hers, and she found she couldn’t look away. The sensation that followed was purely mental, but the exact equivalent of having someone put a fingernail on the base of her spine and run it slowly up to her neck. She shivered involuntarily. Michiko reached out without breaking the eye-lock and took her hand, put her thumb on the web between the little finger and the next and pressed sharply.

“Ouch!” Ellen said; she barely suppressed the impulse to snatch the hand back.

Michiko’s teeth came together with a click. She began to turn the hand to expose the wrist, her mouth opening again as she bent forward, lips curling back in a way that made her suddenly look far less human. Ellen’s breath caught as she shivered, and she looked over at Adrienne with her eyes wide in involuntary appeal.

OK, aren’t I supposed to be your bitch?

The other Shadowspawn chuckled and rapped her friend’s wrist with an oyster fork.

“Ta-ta-ta, Michi, I said look, not taste. You know how I hate people touching my things.”

“Oh,” she said with a start, and released Ellen’s hand. “Sorry. Still, I see what you mean. There are depths there. I wonder how her blood would taste as her heart skipped and quivered and stopped?”

“Absolutely marvelous, I’m sure. That is always a treat. But then she’d be dead, and no fun at all. I have plans for this one.”

Michiko shrugged as she squeezed lemon on an oyster.

“There’s always more, even of the special ones. The planet’s overpopulated, after all. And Adrian will come after you whether she’s alive or dead.”

“Be careful, or you’ll start to sound like Dmitri.”

Michiko made a gesture of theatrical horror, throwing up her hands; one of them held an empty oyster shell.

“Oh, no, not that. I don’t kill what I can’t eat. Well, usually.”

“Dmitri is definitely a gourmand. Still, he’s earned release. And he has the supreme virtue of being useful.”

“Ah,” Michiko said, and ate another oyster. “Well, that’s about the only good news I’ve got for you tonight. Grandfather will extend T?kairin patronage so that he can attend the meeting… and leave Seversk in time to prepare.”

“Seversk, that oozing chancre upon Siberia’s lower intestine,” Adrienne said with a grin. “Still, it’s a good place to reminisce about Srebrenica.”

Ellen kept eating through the Shadowspawn laughter. Four oysters were just enough to remind her that it had been a long day since lunch.

And that I lost half a pint of blood, she reminded herself grimly. This cocktail is going straight to my head. Then: So what?

The longer the time that passed, the less…

Peaceful, she thought. Dreamy, peaceful, pleasant, right-and-proper… the memory of Adrienne’s ecstatic face, turned to the sky, mouth open with Ellen’s blood trickling from the corners.

I can remember thinking at the time that I’d be grossed out later, and I remember now how good it felt then. And I really don’t like the way Michiko keeps glancing at me, as if I were one of these oysters. Eating with people who think of you as food is nerve-racking.

“The bad news is that he’s pretty much decided to support option Trimback One,” the woman in the elaborate hairdo went on.

Adrienne sighed and took the last oyster. She replied… and it was in Japanese, as the head-waiter came in again.

“Champagne-cured Monterey sardines for you, Ms. T?kairin,” he said triumphantly, laying out the appetizer. “With French fingerling potato salad, micro beet greens, and sauce verte.”

Another flourish. “And for you, Ms. Br?z?, artichoke-stuffed local calamari, with Iacopi Farms white bean puree, mizuna, and preserved Meyer lemon bagna cauda.”

Another plate was deftly twitched from a server and set in front of Ellen: “And for the pretty blond lady who looks so hungry, seared hand-line-caught Ahi tuna, accompanied by yellow foot chanterelles, braised salsify, and wild mushroom consomm?. Now with these, I recommend the Paul Hobbs Russian River Valley Chardonnay.”

Ellen took a forkful; the tuna was almost as much like rare steak as fish.

Oh, my, this is good! But why are these Shadowspawn all such foodies? Adrian was too. I had to add an extra mile to my run to keep from inflating like a blimp, and he never gained an ounce.

“Because we have much sharper senses of taste and smell than you do, ma douce,” Adrienne said. “And very active metabolisms. When we’re not in trance, it cranks right up. Our bodies are treating it as a brief hunting season, but we don’t have to wait out glacial winters anymore.”

“You’ve got her verbalized thoughts already?” Michiko asked, raising a thin black brow. “It takes me a couple of days at least.”

“Our acquaintance has been brief, but intense,” Adrienne said. “And even though he didn’t feed on her, there was a ground-link between her and Adrian. I could taste it the first time her blood hit my tongue.”

“Kinky,” Michiko laughed.

“Delightfully so. I’m disappointed to hear about your grandfather. I had hopes he’d be reasonable.”

“He wavered, but the al-Lanarkis talked him around. Convinced him we could handle things like the reactors melting down after the EMP.”

“Oh, now we’re going to rely on our administrative abilities to pull things through? Name of a black dog!”

Adrian used that same odd curse, Ellen thought. For a moment her throat squeezed shut; then she took a deep breath and doggedly kept eating.

“Adrienne, you’re preaching to the converted here. The Lanarkis don’t have to worry so much; it’s mostly camels and goats out in their bailiwick anyway.”

“And then there would be the burning cities, and the refineries… Oh, what’s the use? You’re right, Michi; I don’t have to convince you. We’ll just have to hope we can convince a quorum at the Council meeting, or at least block hasty action.”

“I’m getting ready for Tiflis,” Michiko agreed, sipping at her wine. “My, this does go well with the cured sardines.”

“I hope you’ll have all the East Asian data so we can circulate it-and nothing too technical. PowerPoint, with lots of pictures. You’ve got better access there than I do. My cousins will have Europe more or less sewn up-the downside to Trimback One is fairly obvious there, enough so that even a lot of the postcorporeals are en courant.”

“My people are working on it,” Michiko said. “We’ll have it in good time. And I’ve got just the expert for calculating the spread on the initial exposures.”

I suspect that my people here means something like my horses, Ellen thought.

“And I’m learning Georgian,” she went on. “Me minda ts’avide tbilisshi. It’s so much better when you can understand them, and I expect to do a little hunting there.”

“Who are you learning it from?” Adrienne inquired.

“An adjunct professor down at Stanford named Vakhtang Choloqashvili. Darkly handsome and-”

She giggled and put a hand to her mouth; when she went on it was with a fake-guttural accent: “In Georgia, are real men! Are like wild”-with a crook-fingered grabbing gesture-“bull of ze mountains!”

She went on in her normal mid-Californian voice: “He’s just beginning to suspect that the nightmares aren’t really nightmares. He gave me this look the last time I drove down for a tutorial, and his hands were shaking.”

“I could teach you a few words,” Adrienne said, and they snapped at each other with a sideways flick of the head and a mutual click of pearly teeth.

Literally snapped, Ellen thought, and turned her eyes down to her plate.

The gesture had looked absolutely natural, and playfully flirtatious.

God. Oh, God.

“I should be fully fluent by the time things are concluded,” Michiko said. “Then I could console his grieving widow. She’d need someone who really understood her, all alone in a strange country.”

She glanced at Ellen. “Aren’t we awful?”

They both laughed at her involuntary mental wave of agreement. Platters of Maine lobster claws and Dungeness crabs and Kona Blue sashimi came in and were enthusiastically devoured amid gossip about people and places and politics Ellen had never heard of; what she did grasp would have killed her appetite a few days ago if she’d believed it. Now she found she could push it all out of her mind and concentrate on each bite; it might be her last meal.

At least if it is, I can console myself that I didn’t die with the taste of KFC on my tongue. Adrian managed to turn me into a bit of a foodie too.

It helped that the conversation shifted unpredictably among at least five languages, two of which she didn’t even recognize. Jason returned to consult about the desserts; or dictate them, as far as Michiko was concerned: “Chocolate blackout cream cake, dulce de leche, raspberry sorbet, and sweet and salty peanuts,” he said, setting the plate before her. “I’d suggest the Late Harvest Sauvignon Black-Semillon, Rancho de Oro Puro. And coffee? Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, perhaps: a slight cherry fruitiness but also the bitterness to balance the unctuous sweet here.”

“This Rogue Creamery cheese from Oregon looks very interesting,” Adrienne said; she was perusing the menu.

“It is, it is,” Jason replied. “Cold smoked over hazelnut shells, sharp and sweet together. To die for, ma’am.”

“I’ll go French for the wine. Loire Valley?”

“Excellent! We have a very nice Vouvray Moelleux…”

“I’ll have that. You pick for my friend here. She needs corrupting and I suspect you’re good at that, Jason.”

“We’ll soon get rid of that wholesome schoolgirl innocence!” Jason said. “Depravity is the way to go.”

He probably thinks I’m some sort of cheap hookup! Ellen thought. Some student putting out for glamour and a taste of the high life.

When you were in terror of death it was absurd to be concerned about social embarrassment. She found that perfect fear did not drive out shame.

They just synergize.

“Then the quince-apple turnovers for you, miss, with brown sugar pecan ice cream, and cinnamon caramel sauce. A white Riesling, I think. The Anderson Valley Navarro Cluster Select.”

It appeared, and tasted as good as it sounded. She was distracted enough that something almost escaped her: “-parasmallpox.”

Her ears pricked up at that.

“Well, at least something went right,” Michiko said, chasing the last crumb of the cake around her plate.

“The Congo field tests were just what we’d hoped.”

Michiko clapped her hands together. “Stopping things just where we want. My family would be perfectly happy with ten million on the West Coast.”

Adrienne nodded. “And the humans would offer their necks to us out of sheer gratitude to the savior gods.”

“Mmmm,” Michiko said dreamily. “I can see establishing this ceremony, somewhere, where they offer a youth and a maiden to me every year. Like a kami, you know? Something beautiful and sad, with music and dancing.”

“Exactly. And then we could have all the modern conveniences and still be absolutely sure they’d never, ever be dangerous again, or learn anything we don’t want them to know. Now that’s what I call a Dread Empire of Shadow!”

“Wonderful,” Michiko breathed.

She bowed her head for an instant. When she raised it again her eyes were moist.

“Adrienne, it’s a beautiful vision!”

Oh, God! They’re talking about destroying the world!

Michiko sighed. “I just hope we can convince enough of the others. And on a personal note, things turned out fine with Adrian; you got the note?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “That was a little close to the mark.” Michiko shrugged. “It’s a high-stakes game with a lot of powerful Wreakers involved. Nothing lost except two of my least favorite cousins. And all’s well-”

“-that ends well.”

“I’m going out clubbing now. Want to come along?”

“Not tonight, Michi. I know how that ends up. We wake up together with blood-soaked sheets, headaches, and an empty going into rigor mortis between us.”

“You didn’t have any complaints last time,” she said with a wink and a pout.

“He was just a pickup,” Adrienne said with a smile.

She looked over, and Ellen felt a slow flush traveling up her throat.

“As I said, I have plans for this one.”

Michiko laughed as she rose. “I can imagine.”

They repeated the fingertip-touching gesture. “Thank you, Michiko. You’ve been une vrai amie. We can do this!”