Blood Rules (10 page)

A necropolis. Wonderful. “She'd have information about what's in each asylum?”

“I don't know,” the psychic said. “But I'm intuiting the name and details for a reason. And if you doubt me, don't waste your time. As I said, I'm king of prophecy. Years ago, my skills helped take down the motherfucker of all vampires. You, Gabriel and Mariah, are small potatoes next to that.”

Gabriel took a big chance then, looking into the psychic's mind. And he felt a genuineness, no duplicity at all.

But the man cut him off as he realized what Gabriel was doing. He glanced at Mariah, as if to ask her what kind of asshole vampire didn't ask to go into a person's mind.

Then his expression changed to one of sadness. Empathy.

When Gabriel turned to Mariah, he saw that she'd pressed her hands over her face, and Gabriel wasn't sure if he heard her laugh or sob into them. Maybe it was a bit of both.

She seemed so . . . human. A suffering person who was only searching for the peace no one could give her.

Gabriel laid his hand on her shoulder, and she glanced at him, her gaze profoundly optimistic. When she smiled, it was tremulous but halfway to joyful.

We're on our way,
she said via her mind.
A cure really might happen.

Gabriel didn't want to tell her that they still had next to nothing. Instead, he kept his hand on her shoulder, their imprint allowing him to take on the pain that she'd conquered for the moment.

He just wondered when it'd catch up to bite them again, just as it always did.

O
ut in the Bloodlands, Stamp saw the Monitor 'bot before it saw him.

He and Mags had camped in a nearby cave, then posted themselves on a rise about a mile from where they thought the scrubs were living now. They'd compared the stored satellite footage from Stamp's computer against some geographical software he carried in him, isolating this particular spot.

Then the 'bot had shown up, confirming their suspicions.

Adjusting his electronic field glasses to filter out the muddled dusk, Stamp zeroed in on the Monitor, which kept changing its hues, so it blended with its surroundings. It looked like a miniature old stealth airplane, and it hovered near the base of a bunch of low, strung-together hills, using a laser to sweep over the rock face of one rise in particular. It was a careful model, and it was making sure it had a solid target so it wouldn't waste ammunition.

Next to him, he heard the high-pitched whine of Mags's field glasses adjusting, too.

“You were right about the 'bot being here,” Stamp whispered. Because Monitors had obviously been returned to wide use only recently, after Stamp had retired from Shredding and left the hubs, he wasn't very familiar with them. But he kept his voice low, anyway, just in case the Monitor had high auditory capabilities.

Mags lowered her glasses. Her slanted eyes were dark in the night. “So what's the plan now?”

“I'd like to blow that hunk of junk to kingdom lost and take care of the scrubs mano a mano.” Stamp could almost see himself standing in front of the outlaw community, reveling in their horrified surprise as they slowly recognized him in his Shredder uniform, with its bandolier, gauntlets, and armored bulk. With his chest puncher lashed to his back and lurking over his shoulders like a modified turbo crossbow. They wouldn't ever know he was coming, because he knew how to move with the darkness. Knew how to mask his scent with the government formula he usually kept stored in a compartment on his suit belt—a ritual he'd made Mags undergo, too.

Who the hell needed other Shredders?

Her lips drew into a straight line. Disapproval.

“Hey.” Stamp put down his field glasses. “I'm not daft enough to assassinate a piece of government equipment. Maybe we can use the 'bot for our own purposes, though. Let it do the work for us.”

“That'll go over really well when it sends footage of you back to a surveillance center. Do you remember what Goodie Jern said about staying away from the scrubs, John?”

Her comment made him dig his fingers into the thigh of his techno-improved leg, where his Shredder suit was leathered and nearly impenetrable over a layer of body armor.

He wanted those scrubs. Walking away and letting a machine corner them seemed dead wrong because
he'd
been the one who'd suffered, not the 'bot.

Mags's expression had altered again. If Stamp didn't know any better, he'd say that she cared about what happened to him.

But that was all it was, he told himself. Concern. And he wasn't used to it, what with growing up on his own. After retirement, he'd wandered the hubs, furthering his education through observation of humanity. Thinking he could help the state of things, he'd brought employees out to the Bloodlands to give them new opportunities, but he'd been their boss, not their friend. Having a single partner was foreign to him, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

She'd raised the field glasses up to her eyes. “Would you look at that. . . .”

When Stamp glanced in the 'bot's direction, he didn't need surveillance equipment to see that it was using lasers to slice open a hole in the hill, where it obviously intended to enter.

Adrenaline pushed Stamp to a stand, and he accessed his own glasses again. He wasn't sure just what he aimed to do—stop the Monitor?—but in the next half second, it didn't matter, anyway.

Something else had noticed the 'bot, too.

Whatever the creature was, it rose behind the Monitor, as if coming from the shadows of the hills . . . a sausage-thick body that stood on two legs, its skin a clutter of beaded pale desert colors. Claws extended. A snout with a black tongue flickering.

But its face . . .

As Stamp's glasses zoomed in, he saw that the damned thing had the exaggerated face and eyes of a man, except with the scales of a Gila monster and a glowing preter gaze....

Before the 'bot could whip around to lock in on the creature, the lizard ripped the machine in half, then tore into the Monitor's casing, reaching inside its body with a claw to gut it. Wires sparked as what remained of the 'bot reared back, attacking bottom-first with spinning blades.

But the Gila creature had already darted back into the shadows, and the Monitor crashed to the ground, bellowing smoke and vomiting more sparks before it sputtered, then died altogether.

It'd happened so fast that it took Stamp's brain a few beats to catch up.

A Gila . . .

Then he thought of those visz screens the Bloodlanders used. Of course. The scrubs had seen the 'bot and sent their Gila-man out through a secret exit to confront the threat.

Stamp ducked back behind the rock, shoving his field glasses into a belt compartment, next to a gun that could peek around corners and offer him a view to a kill.

“Seems as if the presence of my enemy has been confirmed,” he said, smiling.

“They'll be watching for whatever they think the Monitor brought with it.”

“They'd never see
me
coming, Mags. I'll sneak up on them and—”

Almost violently, she grabbed him by the hair at his nape and brought his face close to hers.

“Do you
hear
yourself?”

Stamp was a trained assassin; his heartbeat didn't quicken. Not until he focused on Montemagni's eyes.

The caring.

He gripped her wrist and forced her hand away. Her chest was rising and falling as she held up her hand in a
Well, screw you then
gesture.

“What's with you, Mags?” he asked. “Good God-all.”

She began to go over her weapons, checking a revolver for silver ammunition, avoiding his gaze. “You're going to get yourself killed, that's what's up. And where would I be then? Back in the hubs trying to score riches off white collars again? That isn't my idea of fun anymore.”

“I won't get killed.”

“Did you ever stop to think that you're not in the same shape you were before the scrubs ambushed you?”

He flexed his leg; faintly he could hear gears moving. “I'm as together as ever, so stop henpecking.”

“You're out of practice. You were even off the job for a while when you called out Gabriel, and he beat you.”

Slowly, Stamp turned to her. “I had him, Mags. Then the rest of his friends sucker-attacked
us
.”

The ambush was the first time he'd ever been bested. It'd be the last time, too.

She gritted her jaw, refusing to back down, so he blew her off, doing his own weapons check, making sure his guns were loaded, his knives in place. He wasn't going to think about Mags getting angry at him for what he'd come out here to do. He wasn't going to think about Mags, period. The last thing he needed was a big sister or a . . .

Or a what?

She recommenced her field survey, sweeping her glasses over the terrain, but in a pissy way that hinted she thought he was being too rash. Then she sighed.

He ignored that. “You just stay by the van and have it ready to speed off, should I need it.”

But he wouldn't need it. He was going into the scrub compound alone, even though he'd been training Mags in Shredder techniques. Still, he was just as good as he'd been before he'd hung up his suit and come out of retirement. He hadn't been a success as a peaceful farmer out here in the Bloodlands, yet he'd always been and always would be a hell of an enforcer.

In spite of his confidence, a thought niggled at him. If he wasn't a Shredder, he wasn't sure just what he could be in this new world. That was why failing with the scrubs wasn't an option.

Mags was having none of his bravado. “By my count, there're five weres, one Intel Dog, and one vampire in there, cowboy. Those odds aren't in your favor.”

Stamp laughed. He didn't mean to sound cocky, but . . . why not? He'd never told Mags every minute detail about his past—like how he'd taken on a nest of ten vampires years ago and dispatched them all within five minutes. As Goodie Jern had said, he'd been a teenager, but he'd been climbing the ladder of success faster than most established Shredders. He was that good.

“Mags,” he said. “Just get to the van, would you?”

As she left for their camouflaged vehicle, she muttered something about pride going before a fall, and he wanted to tell her that pride wasn't what was at stake. It was something bigger than him or her.

Stamp watched her climb over a rock, her body lithe under the bodysuit she was wearing. He frowned, not really knowing why.

Then he cleared his mind, slowed his heartbeat by taking deep breaths, and slid around the first rock until he reached the next one.

And he continued rock after rock, on his way to give those scrubs what they were due.

I
n the main cavern, most of the Badlanders were on the edge of their cask seats, watching the visz screens, but Pucci, who'd hastily put on some clothes, was pacing, the stalactites hanging over his head like knives ready to thrust.

The oldster wanted to punch him.

But as Pucci passed by, the oldster stuck out his leg instead, sending the other man to stumbling before he righted himself and delivered to the oldster a death look.

“Sit down, Pucci. Sammy only did what needed to be done, and you ain't doing us any good by working the floor like a crone who's got bowel problems.”

Pucci looked at Hana, probably to see if she would take his side, but she was watching her own visz, where the trespassing robot still lay on the ground, its shell nearly blending into the dirt but for the wires sprawling out of it. Next to her, she had a double-barreled shotgun. All of them had something or another nearby, in case they needed weapons.

But they were also ready to change into their lethal forms. All they needed was a sign from outside.

Hana's failure to defend Pucci seemed to make the man even whinier. “We're screwed. Mariah probably did something lame-brained out there to tip off other creatures as to where we live. Sammy did us even worse.”

Over near a visz that showed a wide view of the east, Sammy stuck up his middle finger. Next to him, Chaplin cast a long-suffering gaze at Pucci; the dog was still tired from escorting Gabriel and Mariah as far as was prudent. He'd been in a bad mood ever since, but now that the robot had shown up, he was even closer to snapping.

No one knew if the machine had gotten to Mariah and Gabriel first, so that put them
all
on further pins and needles.

“Oh, real eloquent, Sammy,” Pucci said about the middle finger. “I'd rather hear you explain why you thought it necessary to turn into your Gila form and jump that robot rather than just come in here and hide.”

“In case you're deaf, dumb, and blind, that government surveillance'bot was coming for us.”

“You don't know for certain that's what it was doing or if that's what it really was.”

“No, you're right, Pucci. It was probably someone's pet droid that nosed its way out of the yard and was sniffing round the neighborhood.” Sammy usually kept his tongue in check, but not now. “Before I came out here to the Badlands, the grapevine round my professional tech circles would talk about Monitor 'bots like these. I never thought I'd see the day when they were put into circulation, but I was pretty sure I'd know how to shut one down tonight before it registered anything on its receptors. It was either that or risk having the thing enter our shelter, and that's just what it was doing when I caught it using those lasers on the rock.”

Pucci rolled his eyes. “Government issue or not, that Monitor's got you off your rocker if you think it didn't get you in its sights.”