A Taint in the Blood (49 page)

The sight line isn’t good enough while everyone’s seated
, Adrian decided grimly.
And Hajime’s between Harvey and Adrienne.

The head table wasn’t sheltered by the roof of the shrine—Harvey’s shooting position above the cave would clear it. But not by
enough
; he hadn’t allowed for the fact that the seating was so low, cushions on tatami-mats on the ground instead of chairs.

The surge of murderous rage that twisted at his pseudo-gut was so intense that a few of the other Shadowspawn immediately looked his way. He smiled at them and lifted the wooden
masu
again.

Wakatake Onikoroshi this time, a bit sweeter; and after all, gusts of murderous passion weren’t all that uncommon among his breed. A deft servant refilled it, and he cursed her mentally with a smile still on his lips.

The next dish arrived:
Akiyasai no Tempura
, deep-fried seasonal vegetables in a light crisp batter, with green-tea-infused salt, and Japanese plum-infused salt too.

“Umejio!”
his neighbor said with relish. “Really, I’m surprised. The Brézé has outdone herself! These are
Japanese
plums in the infusion, I’m sure.”

“If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right,” Adrian agreed.

His aetheric body was producing a slight sheen of sweat on the forehead. He took a stick of the asparagus; it was meltingly tender yet with a faint hint of crispness, and half-sweet against the salt savor of the plum; it went well with the peppers and maitake mushrooms as well.

Hajime and his wife and Adrienne and Michiko were all laughing together, looking disgustingly contented. He gritted his teeth; there was nothing quite as annoying as someone else carefree and happy when you were trying to throw yourself into combat mode. Dmitri was there too . . . and night-walking, for some reason.

“Kampai!”
Adrienne called to the guests. “Bottoms up!”

Damn you!
Adrian thought.
Food! Bring me food, or I’ll have to make my escape in python form because wiggling on my belly like a snake will be all I can do!

The rustling silk of the servant’s kimono rescued him; this time it was rough earthenware plates with
Maitake to Yuba no Usudaki
, mushrooms wrapped in Yuba tofu with special soy, and then diced horse mackerel with green onions to make a tartare in a lettuce cup. The oil in the fish would insulate his stomach.

And damn evolutionary kludges!
He wasn’t even really
here
, but his hindbrain insisted on treating his aetheric form as if it were his birth-body.

More food: sashimi of Scabbard Fish, char-grilled young conger eel, deep-fried breaded fillet of Berkshire pork with katsu sauce, baby sweetfish steamed in an earthenware
donabe
pot with rice . . .

Rice at last!
Adrian thought, and wielded his chopsticks; he let the Power pick an instant and poured the sake from his wooden box into the pot as well, getting it out of sight.

. . . shiitake mushrooms with burdock root, buttery Monkfish livers, free-range chicken broiled in Hoba leaves, a rice soup of red sea bream, Hirame halibut, crab and shrimp, stewed together . . .

I’ve got to stop going with the flow,
Adrian thought desperately.
This place is too goddamned
soothing
. I can feel the Wreakings making me feel all social and disinclined to make a fuss. I’ve got to make something happen . . . something that
uses
the way she’s set it up!

Mhabrogast spilled through his mind. Sense the possibilities,
push
here . . .

It was surprisingly easy; the Wreakings Adrienne had soaked into the field to dampen aggression and soothe suspicious, isolate Shadowspawn natures worked in the same direction. So did his link with Ellen; he could feel it resonating as he pushed delicate lines and needles into the Wreakings sourced from her blood and pain, and he could see her shiver suddenly as if a cold touch had skimmed across her shoulder blades. Their eyes met for an instant as the yuzu-citrus-flavored sherbet was set before each guest in a champagne flute.

“A few words, Tōkairin-sama!” he called.
So Adrienne has to get up and give a reply.

The man in the scarlet kimono looked over, surprised. Another
push
, and smiles spread down the table and to the rest; a scatter of applause grew into clapping and calls of:
Speech! Speech!

“This is my hundredth and tenth birthday,” the silver-haired man said as he stood. “I am nearly eleventy-one today—”

No!
Adrian thought.

Hypersensitive, the tendrils of the Power
felt
the oncoming wave of violence.

Suddenly Adrienne
was
standing, or half-standing. She crouched on her feet and threw an arm around Hajime.

“Lord Hajime! I sense an attack! Your life is in danger! Dimitri, transform!”

Damn
, Adrian thought with grim resignation.
Merde. Name of a black dog. My plan has met their plan and the inevitable fuckup has begun. Now to improvise faster . . .

Aloud: “
Amss-aui-
ock!”

Change flowed through him, effortless, the unbearable complexity of human thought slipping away into the simple focus of the sabertooth’s incarnate purpose.

Kill
.

The guests on either side of him tumbled away, yelling, as the great beast crouched on the discarded tumble of Adrian’s kimono. He
felt
Hajime decide not to go impalpable—and felt the push behind it, the sudden taste of his sister’s Power, like a razor across the tongue. He screamed and leapt.

Power hummed through the air, twisted at the fabric of existence as dozens of Shadowspawn minds reacted with instinctive fear and rage to the sudden shocking threat. World-lines writhed and tangled.

Hajime snarled and whipped out the curved
tanto
-dagger that had been hidden in his sash. Then the lined face turned towards the smilodon went rubbery with shock—physical shock, a rippling idiot’s grin as the massive high-velocity .338 sniper round punched into his skull behind the left ear and blasted out most of the front of his head. Almost in the same instant the dying mind lost control of its pseudo-body; to Shadowspawn senses there was a silent scream, as the personality and the others it Carried within dissolved into entropy. A brief glimmer, as if seen from the corner of the eye, and the scarlet kimono and the knife fell to the ground amid the harsh unpleasant smell of stomach contents.

She was holding him,
the remote human portion of his mind knew.
Holding him in palpable form.

The rest of him was outstretched paws with claws like giant fish-hooks, mouth open a hundred and eighty degrees to bare the ivory daggers for the killing strike.

Adrienne leapt backward herself. That put her in view of the waiting marksman . . . but just then another form erupted upwards, in the shape of a Ruwenzori gorilla, a giant silverback male. One of its great black hairy-spider hands
happened
to throw a plate into the air. At precisely the angle needed to deflect the bullet that would have smashed her spine. Fragments of it hummed through the air, and he jinked aside as he landed.

The gorilla threw itself forward and came down with both bent, immensely powerful legs between his shoulder blades. Five hundred pounds of bone and muscle hammered the sabertooth’s belly to the ground, and the gorilla’s bunched fists hit him in the back of the head with all the strength of the tree-thick arms. A fang splintered agonizingly on the rock pavement as his head was driven downwards.

“Alive!” he heard his sister snap. “Alive, Dmitri!”

 

 

I am not afraid
, Ellen knew, as the ceremonial dinner dissolved in chaos.
I may be about to die, but I’m not
afraid.
For the first time in months.

Peter was down on one knee, looking around . . . curiously. Jose had grabbed Monica and thrown her to the floor, pitching his body over hers protectively and swearing in English and Spanish.

Ellen’s head turned, to where Adrienne sprawled backward a yard away from two great battling animal forms.

“Alive!” she heard the Shadowspawn woman say. “Alive, Dmitri!”

Ellen pulled the lead foil tube out of her obi, took a deep breath and whipped it down on Adrienne’s half-bare sandaled foot with all the strength of a forehand smash. The Shadowspawn doubled over with a—literally—inhuman screech as the hypodermic within slammed through bone and tendon, pumping its load of silver-solution and radioactive waste into her tissues.

“Hey, bitch, I’m not your bitch anymore!”
Ellen shrieked, in an abandonment of rage. “
And
fuck
your fancy lingerie and
stupid
sadistic head games!
”

Adrienne’s head came down, her teeth bared in a killing lunge. The flask of hot
Honjōzō-shu
sake in Ellen’s other hand splashed out and took her full in the eyes; she went over backward in a flailing heap, the barest instant before another of the heavy .338 bullets cracked through the space her head had occupied.

 

 

Adrian-smilodon’s forepaws gripped the flagstones and flung him upward despite the weight on his back, the taste of blood and pain in his mouth, the whirling in his head. He turned as it left him in a blur almost as fast as the double strike of his talons; flesh and hair ripped as one scored across the gorilla’s belly. It screamed and rolled backwards, wrenched a board loose from the table and took stance—kendo modified for the giant ape’s form. Behind it Adrienne shrieked in mingled pain and rage herself, sprattling in the confining silk lengths of her kimono.

“
Adrian!
”

The voice cut through his rage, and he stopped the strike that would have disemboweled her.

“Adrian, the soldiers are coming. We have to
go.
I got the hypo into her. Go, go!”

Her weight landed on his back. He launched himself forward in the same instant, high above the gorilla’s strike. His foreclaws caught at the wooden beams of the shrine’s roof, then his hind-legs sank into the wood and launched him forward. Ellen clung desperately, and the night rushed by them.

 

 

Harvey Ledbetter let the sniper rifle drop on its bipod, patting it affectionately.

“Said I’d go for Hajime if you gave him up,” he chuckled softly.

“Didn’t say nothin’ to your little friend Michiko about not killing
you
next if I got the chance, did I?”

He rose and stepped through the camouflage screen and onto the edge of the steep almost-cliff. A ripple went down his spine, the Power speaking, and ancient human fear; a night-walker was coming.

The smilodon was staggering as it approached, and Ellen Tarnowski slipped to the ground, struggling out of the remnants of her kimono.

“Th-th-that was
wild,
” she wheezed, and then astonished him by grinning.

“You and Adrian may pull it off yet,” he said, as the great cat slipped past.

Adrian had a hand to his jaw as he walked out of the cave in his birth-body; the other held his Glock. His fatigue-clad form moved with a slight stiffness, three days of inaction telling even on one so fit.

“I still
feel
as if I have broken a tooth,” he said; then he looked at Ellen and smiled a long slow smile. “It feels
good.
You were magnificent, and I love you utterly!”

“Hey, the feeling’s mutual, Big Cat Guy—”

“Let’s go,” Harvey said. “Save the mushy stuff for later.”

“The rifle?” Adrian asked, all business.

“Leave it, too heavy. Monster Truck gun here will do; she’s my main squeeze anyway. The Hummer’s still two miles thataway and we ain’t clear yet. Vamoose!”

 

 

“This is the weapon,” the Tōkairin retainer said.

“Yep,” Dale Shadowblade said, handling it gingerly.

Even with protective gloves the silver was painful, and the glyphs were a menace. Though not to a user who pointed it at a Shadowspawn with ill intent.

The flash strobed through the night, a dazzling T-shape from the muzzle-brake and the muzzle itself. The bullet punched the Tōkairin in the center of his black-clad body and hurled it backward in the wake of fragments of heart and lungs and spine, and Dale worked the bolt to chamber another.

The assault rifles of Captain Bates’ squad misfired as one, all aimed at the second Tōkairin.

“Pretty impressive Wreaking.” Dale nodded, grinning.

Crack
.

This time he had the leisure for a head-shot, and the back of the other Shadowspawn’s head struck the rock wall of the cliff as the bullet
peeenned
off into the darkness.

Bates was sweating as Dale closed his eyes and concentrated.

“Don’t worry,” the Apache Shadowspawn said easily, wiping off the weapon before he set it down again. “Looks like those Brotherhood terrorists killed another couple were-Japs and made their escape. How fucking tragic. Still, we tried, hey?”