Authors: Christine Cody

Tags: #Fantasy, #Vampires

In Blood We Trust (34 page)

BOOK: In Blood We Trust

3.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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When they returned to where he'd been standing, there was nothing.

Taraline darted to the ladder faster than I'd ever seen her move. So fast that her veils caught on the edge of one of the hooks that had held my old weapons, and it tore the coverings clean off her head, revealing her face and more in the lantern light.

Webbed skin that stretched over a few reconstructed cheekbones, an emerging nose . . . She
was
partially healed. And for the first time, I saw her hair, tufts of blond struggling out of her skull in patches.

I crawled to the viszes, next to Taraline, the closest thing I'd ever have to progeny, just as the lenses finally rediscovered Gabriel in the visz closest to the homestead.

He was on the ground, wrapped in silver chains, some of which were against his neck, sizzling against his skin. His fangs were bared at two Witchesâa boy and a girlâpoised above him.

“Subject 562, where?” the boy said to him, and all I could concentrate on was that peace sign burned into their foreheads, marking them as products of General Benefactors.

Before Gabriel could answer, another human strolled into view of the visz.

Johnson Stamp, using a crutch to balance.

And he had his chest puncher out, targeting Gabriel.

“Looks like I'm just in time for the fireworks,” he said.

He meant the moon's peak. Taraline had said that Stamp was using it against the Witches. He was hoping we'd engage with them, keeping them busy while he got a straight shot at Gabriel.

He was using
everyone
, and he was going to come out of this alive, as he always did.

But not if I could help it.

I dug dirt to the ladder. The moon's peak was coming. Any second, I was going to burst open, becoming that other beast.

But . . . Gabriel. I had to get to him
now
. . .

“Taraline,” I groaned, starting to strip myself of clothing for the change. “You need to hide.”

“NoâI need toâ”

“Just do it!”

The moon finally gave a mighty push in me, freezing me, and all I could do was watch those visz screens as two more humansâa nearly bald woman dressed in old leather and a one-eyed manâbacked up the Witches, their chest punchers out and pointed at Gabriel.

Had Hana and the oldster resurrected their visz screens wherever they were hiding? Were they watching this, too, as they went through their were-changes?

Then I remembered that they would never come to Gabriel's aid again.

What about Chaplin, though?

I reached up to the first rung on the ladder, but that was when the full moon really got me, punching from the inside out like a rounded baby that wanted to emerge no matter what.

I broke the rung as I pulled back with the shock of feeling. I roared just as the long hair shot out of my skin, as my eyes went vertical, my sight rushing from blue to violet to red, my mouth expanding along with my teeth, limbs, torso, tongue, and multiple arms.

Gabriel!

I thought it more than said it, because I couldn't create words anymore.

My link to Gabriel burned as I saw him on the viszes, looking into the lens, smiling as if I shouldn't worry, his fangs showing. That smile was for me.

Only me.

I loomed to my feet while Taraline shrank back from me, not even bothering to put her veils back on. She had that same look of devotion and terror that the guardian vamps had worn last night, when Gabriel and I had left them with 562.

On the viszes, the two Witches disappeared from view, almost as if they were ghosts.

Stamp looked after them with a wry grin and muttered, “You sure you want to go down that door to meet the rest of the weres?”

Witches were coming, and Stamp was leading them right to me.

This was one time I wouldn't mind helping him out, but Gabriel came first.

Then the door opened in my ceiling, giving way to two white streaks that darted down the ladder. Two shotsâ
swish, swish
âand I was bolted against the dirt-packed wall.

It'd happened fast: silver spears in two of my arms, bloody pain.

Within the next second, the same agony split my other set of arms, and there I was, pinned like a bug fit for study.

I didn't know where Taraline had gone, but she sure wasn't here anymore. On the visz, I heard Stamp's voice cursing a holy diatribe, then shots being fired.

Then silence.

I still felt my link to Gabriel, so he was as alive as he could be. Somewhere. And I needed to trust in him to stay that way.

The Witches were lowering their weapons, assessing me, and I didn't assess them in return, because I was already thinking of something else. Blood. Bad-guy blood.

And more kinds of blood than even that.

The hunger was even worse tonight, escalated. Was it because the moon was at its worst?

In my red view the Witches came into better focus: two preteen kids with big pale eyes. Little dolls, mementos from a stealth nightmare.

My split tongue flicked out of my mouth, but I couldn't get to them. They were calm, though, probably wondering why I wasn't wriggling round from the pain in my arms or screaming for mercy.

“Subject 562, you?” the boy asked me, and his gaze was preoccupied, as if he were accessing something in his brain. When he glanced at his partner, it seemed as if they were sharing information.

Then, without any warning, the girl unleashed a taser-whip from behind her, flung it out, and lashed my tongue with it.

The electric charge buzzed through me, and I gurgled low in my throat.

It tickled.

The boy repeated, “Subject 562, you?”

I laughed, and it sounded like a thousand snakes hissing in a pit.

“No Subject 562, this,” the girl said, doing that glaze-eyed thing that made her seem as if she were looking up inner data.

Maybe they had mental pictures of the real 562 in the asylum during its own full-moon changes, and I didn't match up.

The boy looked real hard at me, and I realized that I couldn't move. Not anywhere.

A psychic hold?

“Civil, you?” the boy asked me.

“No Civil, this,” the girl said.
“Red.”

“Not vampire,” the boy said. “Not tik-tik, not gremlin. Were-creature?”

I was getting tired of this verbal biopsy, but with my tongue lashed and my body pinned, I'd have to gather some strength, maybe even get them a little closer to me, to do much about it.

Then something weird happenedâthe silver-poisoned blood in my body seemed to gather itself up and rush up my throat.

I spit a bunch of gunk at the Witches, the blood burning at their feet.

No vampire or were-creature or
any
Red could do that, to my knowledge.

Now the girl looked hard at me, too, and I felt my mouth being jarred open.

She was launching a psychic attack . . .

My jaws kept being pushed apart until my mouth covered my whole face. The hinges cracked as they kept pushing, pushing . . .

Enough.

I roared, yanking my arms from the wall while bringing up my legs, pressing my feet against the dirt, then pushing off so that I tore my speared arms out of their traps at the same time. Then I wrenched my tongue out of the taserwhip's hold.

Everything stungâfrom the gapes in my biceps to the electric buzz on my tongueâbut that didn't matter as I jumped at the Witches.

They were fast enough to fight a regular vampire or were-creature, but not me, and with the split of my tongue and my two sets of arms, I had them in my grip within a blink.

I held both Witches across my body, like a human X, and ripped them apart.

They hit the walls with a wet smack, more red than white now as their blood covered my floor. The dirt absorbed it, as if it were just as thirsty as I was.

Blood.

More.

Any blood.

I dove into it, glutting, reveling in the hot mess of it. Human blood tinged with vampire. They weren't related to meâthey'd stolen that blood, so it wasn't like I was feasting on progeny.

When I was done, I licked it from all my fingers, shuddering. Last night, the Civil blood had extinguished the need for one type of taste, but it hadn't been sufficient. I heard noise from the viszes, and I turned, my arms and tongue waving. I stood tall, and I could almost believe I was the blood goddess the vampires thought I was.

The screens weren't blank anymore, and what I saw made me roar louder than ever.

A bouncing, stalking wereâmule deer.

Hana.

She'd gotten out of wherever she'd been hiding, and she was hunting down Gabriel.

I knew he wouldn't have gone farânot with me still feeling him nearby: a pounding connection, a live wire that might make me go dead inside if it ever flamed out.

I went to the ladder, my body already healing, the holes in my arms sucking into themselves. Avoiding the first broken rung, I slipped upward until I went out of the exit.

It took only a second for my eyes to adjust to the moony night and my skin to acknowledge the pressing warmth, and in that moment, I spied Gabriel on top of a small hill, laid out flat.

I tilted my head when I saw that Taraline had made her way out here, too, and she'd thrown herself on top of Gabriel, covering him and holding up a spear.

And she was doing it because Stamp, the bald woman, and the one-eyed man were circling the hill, their chest punchers still out.

But Taraline was smartâshe knew that Shredders had taken an oath not to destroy humans, only monsters, and she was using her body to shield Gabriel.

Her cleverness wouldn't last for long, though.

Hana was fast approaching the hill, too, and I had no doubt that my neighbor was moon-crazed enough to attack, whether or not she was with child.

I barely heard the rustle of some shades' wings as they circled nearby, attracted by the promise of violence and carrion. I looked round for the oldster and Chaplin, but they weren't here.

Weren't anywhere.

Anger bit at me. Cowards.

And I thought of blood . . . their blood.

Shaking the notion out of my headânot Chaplin, I couldn't think of him that wayâI bounded out of my doorway and went at that hill at full speed, my hair streaking in the night.

When I reached the top of the hill, beating Hana with my speed, I plucked Taraline off Gabriel, threw down her spear, then pushed her down the other side, where she rolled out of danger.

Then I hunkered in front of Gabriel, my blood, his blood as my pulse echoed into him. I swayed, growling, looking straight into the faces of every single enemy so they'd see what they were up against in these diamond-sharp glowing green eyes of mine.

Hana arrived, screeching at me, her were-deer teeth like little needles compared to mine.

I roared at her, so forcefully that she slipped backward, down the slope, her legs flailing. She'd better run, I thought, because I wouldn't have minded tasting her blood.

Or her baby's.

The tik-tik sentiment shook me, but why was I surprised? With 562's influence, I was a were-creature, a vamp . . . and maybe even a little bit tik-tik and nasty gremlin.

Gabriel must've felt this in me, and he touched the back of my leg, balancing me, as if knowing I'd never be able to live with myself outside the full moon if I let myself go like I wanted to.

Peace,
I thought. Was he able to give me the peace again during the full moon?

He'd done it when we'd first met, back when everything had been simple between usâa man and a woman who didn't know how complicated it'd get when vampires and were-creatures mixed it up.

One Shredder, plus Stamp, had their punchers trained on me now. The other was targeting a frothing-at-the-mouth Hana.

Stamp, leaning on his crutch, lowered his puncher, as if he'd formed a different plan in his devious mind.

“Stand down,” he said to his partners. “These weapons aren't going to do any good on her, and I'm going to make a wild guess that the Witches are dead, anyway.”

The one-eyed man swallowed hard. “Just what
is
that?”

“A whole big splat of shit if you don't play nice with it,” Stamp said. “I mean it, Dicing. I've seen Mariah in action at the asylum. We haven't been trained to deal with its like, so it's retreat time. For now.”

The two Shredders didn't lower their punchers from me or Hana. Stamp tightened his jaw.

I laughed, if you could call it that.

Then Stamp cast me a look so loaded with hate that I almost counted that as his mightiest weapon. I was the only thing standing between him and Gabriel, and he knew he'd be dead in a croaking second if he crossed me.

But I had no doubt he'd be back if we didn't do something about him. With the Witches dead, he'd just wait for the full-moon phase to go by, and now that he'd found Gabriel again, there'd be no stopping him.

Near him, Hana panted, her vaguely human face just as rancor-filled, her lips twitching. Near some scrub brush, I saw a shadow.

Taraline had changed position, and her spear gleamed.

Hana, still under the spell of the animal moon, bounded back up the hill on all fours toward Gabriel at the same time the one-eyed Shredder fired his chest puncher at me.

It smacked into me, mooring into my chest, prying it open, and then the attached stake lit up in readiness to puncture and torch my heart.

At the hiss of fire, I tore at the moorings, yanking them out of me. Blood splattered as I threw the fiery projectile back at the male Shredder.

BOOK: In Blood We Trust

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