Blood Rules (13 page)

The link between me and Gabriel froze with a cautious zap, and I kept my hands hovering near my holstered revolvers. He was wary, too, and I could feel it all through me.

The man slurred out a Text question. “Wh'r u goin?”

“Ncroplis,” Gabriel said.

“No. Far enuf.” The man had his hand up, as if he could push us back.

Clearly, this guy was some kind of guard, most likely not a preter who'd abandoned the hubs, either. It was just his job to patrol outside the necropolis for some reason—maybe he'd even taken it upon himself. Could be that he wasn't even a patrolman and this was his way of robbing us.

Silly man.

I glanced at Gabriel, but I didn't send any thoughts to him. He'd warned me about using that ability too much round strangers unless we were sure we could get away with it.

Gabriel, who was so adroit at putting on a nice-guy act, hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. When I'd first met him, he'd done pretty well with the
Howdy, pardner
routine, but I'd caught on fairly quick that he was a vampire. Maybe this robber/ patrolman/whatever wouldn't notice.

Gabriel explained in Text that we weren't here to cause any trouble, that we just wanted to pay a visit to a resident of the necropolis.

“Who?” the man asked.

“Taraline. Kno her?”

The veiled man seemed to think about it, putting his hands on his hips.

As his veil stirred, I saw the bulge at his side just before he reached for it.

He skinned an old semiautomatic at the same time I drew my revolver, but Gabriel was faster, zooming toward the man and batting the weapon away from him before my finger could even squeeze the trigger.

The man's shot banged into the air, echoing, but Gabriel already had the guy's arm twisted behind his back.

Then he yanked the veil off.

As it freefell to the dirt, I gaped at the scars decorating his face. It looked as if a child had spilled blue and red and white paint on his skin, then dragged a stick through the colors so they swirled in raised layers. One eye was at least an inch below the other, his lips swollen to the point where they seemed as if they might burst open.

The living dead. I wasn't sure if he'd survived the mosquito epidemic or something worse.

“Wht r u?” he asked Gabriel.

Gabriel tightened his grip on the man. “Wht'r
u
?”

The guy whimpered before mumbling, “Srry. Lt me go, k? Wont bthr u agn . . .”

“R u gard?” Gabriel asked.

“No.”

“A rbbr?”

“Yah,” the man said, truly seeming apologetic.

I suppose I'd be, too, if I had my arm wrenched behind my back by an undercover vampire.

And Gabriel didn't let go as he asked, “U kno Taraline?”

“Yah.”

And then the man spewed out some directions that I couldn't even keep up with. Something about rights and lefts and lanes and structures. I trusted that Gabriel had it all down.

Gabriel then whispered something in the man's ear, and I knew it wasn't lighthearted chatter. The terror on the guy's face told me so.

His expression went blank, and I figured that Gabriel had swayed him into forgetting what'd just happened. Why not, while we were out here where no one else could catch him doing it?

Gabriel looked into the man's eyes, as if seeing whether he'd done the job correctly. His maker hadn't taught him jack shit, so he was a self-taught vampire. Besides that, he was a young preter, and he was never sure of just how powerful he was.

Then, obviously content, he pushed the man away. “Go.”

The man pointed to his firearm, which was on the ground nearby. Gabriel merely glowered. I don't have to describe a vampire glower again.

As the guy scrambled to his rumbler, Gabriel picked up the semiautomatic, inspecting it. The weapon was old-school, just like all the ones I'd collected and maintained. He kept it, even pointing it at the man as he started up the rumbler and put the pedal to the metal.

The vehicle spurted away, leaving nothing but flying ground.

Gabriel cocked his head at the semiautomatic, then shrugged, putting it into his carryall. As he adjusted the cloth over his lower face again, he kept looking down, so I couldn't see his expression. Our link was pretty much nil, too, as if he'd blocked me out.

I was impressed that he hadn't turned super vampy. And kind of impressed that I hadn't changed, either. Then again, the robber man hadn't scared me, maybe because there'd just been one of him and I didn't have much to protect right now—no home to hide, no dog to defend. He'd just been a bad guy that I could've taken all on my own, and there probably wouldn't have been many consequences for killing him. . . .

The thoughts trailed me as I went over to the man's veil, just to look closer at it. Or maybe I just wanted to be nearer to Gabriel.

He kept squinting at the ground, and I swear our link came alive, starting to pulse.

Was it because he was just now allowing himself to get vampire-excited because of the near violence? Or was it because I was standing next to him?

I should've walked away, but I didn't. “Did you use some sway to tell him that, if he gathered up friends to come after us, he'd be nothing but blood and bones afterward?”

“I suggested something similar.”

“Judging from how he looked like his buns were on fire, I think whatever you did say was effective.”

He didn't laugh at that, so I shut right up, not wanting to assume we were chums now. But then he looked at me, and I saw his gaze burning.

Our link throbbed, getting louder, warmer.

This wasn't about being chums. I was getting to him, and that raised my passions, too.

I whispered, “Gabriel . . . ?” I didn't know what else to say.
Did acting as the hero turn you on?

As if he'd heard me loud and clear, he sped off in a blur, toward the direction in which the rumbler had disappeared over a hill. Dust clouded in his wake.

I followed, fighting my own change, walking far behind him, knowing he'd thank me for it later.

G
abriel had halted at the crumbling wrought-iron-and-adobe necropolis gates, where a moan of wind lethargically circled dust around his boots. Under his cloth face mask, his gums had finally stopped throbbing with the needled threat of his fangs. He was almost back to being as human as possible.

What was it about Mariah that pushed him? She was the opposite of Abby, who'd been so polite on the outside that he'd never remotely suspected she was an animal-were underneath it all. Mariah was at the opposite extreme—volatile. A mass of chaos that scrambled him up, making all the orderliness he'd tried so hard to create in himself fall to pieces. She was everything he'd been running from as a monster, but she always managed to slip into him as if she belonged there.

He heard her long before she caught up, and he inspected the gates as if this were his original intent. He surveyed the stars embedded in the dark iron as well as the deadened bell that hung overhead; it was missing its clapper so it didn't ring out as the wind sent it to creaking on its hinges. Color-bled paper flowers slumped on the ground, stray petals everywhere, as if they'd broken from their fake stems and were on the fly from the necropolis. And he didn't blame them—through his improvised bandanna, he could still smell the odor of disease and death.

Her boot steps halted yards away from him. “You got directions from that guard. Are you ready to follow them?”

Thank-all Mariah wasn't going to torture him with personal talk. “He told me about a place where the live ones gather. Said that Taraline is usually there more than anywhere else.”

Then he got a move on, walking past the gates. Mariah was right in back of him. He could feel her on his skin.

Not far ahead, the main avenue branched off into smaller lanes edged by crumbled adobe that offered gaping peeks into the buildings. Graying moonlight invaded them, revealing wooden tables, benches, and broken ceramic pots. Some spaces even looked occupied, with sun-shield blankets wadded into corners.

As Gabriel and Mariah moved through the passages, he witnessed a person standing in the middle of one dwelling, a veil draped over its head so that all you could see were gloves and legs peeking out. He could've sworn that the person watched them pass, even though its head didn't swivel to track them.

If Gabriel had been human, he'd be chilled to the marrow, but all he could sense was Mariah's linked warmth behind him.

They turned down another lane, just as the robber said they should, and Gabriel's senses immediately shifted to the walls. There were skeletons embedded into them—death in motion, with bony fingers reaching out, mouths agape as if in eternal cries. And . . .

Wait. They were actually
moving
.

He stood still, realizing that the wall-bound creatures were only craning their necks, looking him up and down. They weren't attacking.

Instinctively, Gabriel guided Mariah ahead. Like him, she was more curious than afraid, but, even so, she walked with her hands by her firearms, her heartbeat stomping and then echoing inside Gabriel.

As they made their way down that lane, the walls moved even more, the skeletons parting to reveal other forms using the walls as cover; they were veiled people, just like the guard. They blended in and out of the adobe and bones, snakelike, clearly following Gabriel and Mariah.

He could feel her skin beginning to heat up—the kick-start of her fear. Soon, she'd be boiling, her body altering, and they'd have a lot of explaining to do.

“They won't hurt us,” he whispered to her calmly, a mite of sway to his voice. “They're just seeing what we're about.”

Though he wasn't sure it was the truth, his voice worked on her, and her pulse leveled off. It also helped when they emerged from the constricting lane into what looked to be a town square.

Yeah, he would've described it just that way, except, instead of a green park with a gazebo and fancy ironwork benches, there were slanted tombstones and small, chipped concrete houses of the dead, with angels and Celtic crosses silhouetted against the choked-moon sky.

One of the houses was bigger than the others—basically a plain domed hut. A dim light emanated from the doorway, and so did a smell that practically made Gabriel do a double take.

Chemicals on dead flesh. And more disease.

Mariah was breathing hard, her pulse gathering speed as the veiled shadows hovered just behind them, back in the lane.

“Is that it?” she asked. “The gathering spot?”

“Seems so.”

And they'd have to go inside to see if Taraline was there. Joy.

They wove through the graves, some of them only ragged holes in the ground, and it wasn't because robbers had invaded them, Gabriel thought. The resting places had merely been prepared for occupants ahead of time, waiting for a body to be dumped inside and covered up.

After they passed the holes, they came to the hut. Mariah stepped inside, and Gabriel readied himself to do the same. But would he be blocked from entering?

Normally, he needed to be invited into personal dwellings, but he supposed that this hut belonged to everyone, and he proved that idea correct when he stepped in, unimpeded.

That smell hit him right away, and he saw why: The place was decorated with the preserved remains of humans. Chemically treated limbs, with fingers, hands, and arms sticking out of the walls. Faces framed by adobe with their rotted teeth bared in freakish smiles. They'd been pieced together into semblances of whole bodies and, beneath each one, a fancy silver vial waited, attached to the wall.

Water tributes. These must've been important people who'd been worthy of a sacrifice, and the fact that no one had stolen their water signaled the amount of respect the necropolis residents possessed for these walled-in relics.

Everyone else in the place was staring at Mariah and Gabriel from their seats at the bar and their chairs at tables. A few wore the same veils Gabriel and Mariah had already seen. Others, like the bartender, presented their scars proudly, maybe because they weren't as atrocious as what they'd seen on the robber, who'd probably suffered side effects from black-market mosquito epidemic medicines.

But not everybody here seemed to have the same maladies.

Were any of them monsters? Or, worse yet, were any former Shredders like Stamp who'd retired out of the hubs?

Gabriel kept Mariah close to him while a frail, veiled woman wearing a long black skirt sat at the bar and fingered an earthenware jug with the tip of her glove, taking stock of the new arrivals. Next to her, a man with pustules on his cheeks spoke in a graveled voice.

“Why ru healthies hre?”

Healthies. Gabriel assumed it was a nickname for those who wandered into the necropolis from the outside and didn't quite belong.

He tugged down the cloth from his face, almost grimacing at the smell. “Taraline.”

Several people stirred, and the bartender occupied himself by sliding a canteen with a wide, slickened base to a wizened prune of a customer down the bar.

The pustule man barked out a laugh. “Taraline? Fncy nme.”

Gabriel toyed with the idea of looking into the pustuled man's eyes. But what if the others in the bar noticed? What would they do to a true monster?

Then the pustule man switched to Old American, as if to mock Taraline's fancy name.

“By gum, when's the last time someone came round asking for Taraline?” He nudged the veiled one next to him. The woman merely sat on the stool, still touching her jug.