Blood Rules (14 page)

Gabriel sensed Mariah glancing at him, and he looked down at her. They didn't have to mind-speak for her to tell him that this man knew something.

Probably the most secure way to get out of here would be for Gabriel to do some mind-looking. He'd gotten much better at it since coming out to the Badlands. Plus, he'd taken care of that robber outside the necropolis well enough with mental vampire tricks.

The temptation was overwhelming, especially when he thought of the cure. If he and Mariah found one, maybe there'd be a day soon when he wouldn't have to act like a vampire. He'd gladly play the monster now just so he wouldn't have to later.

He connected thoughts with Mariah.
So how do we get it out of him?

She paused, then smiled.
Would a distraction give you enough time for a peek?

He could feel her yearning for a cure, just as if she were yelling it out loud. It echoed in him, too.

Do what you need to do,
he said, moving toward the bar and standing next to the pustule man. It'd be the first time he was putting true faith in her. He only prayed she wouldn't bring the roof down on them.

When he heard the sound of a body slumping to the ground behind him, he had an idea of what her plan was.

He turned back around to see Mariah lying on the floor.

“Dn't wrry,” he said to everyone. “Sh'll cum 2 soon.”

Some of the veiled people at a nearby table leaned over to get a closer look at Mariah, who was still doing a fine job of being passed out. No one got out of their chairs to help her, though.

The pustule man stared at Gabriel, as if he were thinking Gabriel was as heartless as they came for leaving his woman lying there on the ground.

He locked the man into his sights.
Where's Taraline?

The man immediately pointed to the veiled person next to him.

As Gabriel disengaged—reading this one had been incredibly easy—he used the sway in his voice to whisper, “You won't recall a second of what just happened. Now go back to your dwelling.”

The man blinked, his pupils enlarging back to normal size, just as Mariah “awakened” on the floor, then sat up and glanced around. Without any more drama, she shrugged, as if she had a fit like this every night.

Even the living dead gave her space as she made her way to the bar while the pustule man deserted his position, obeying Gabriel's sway and creating an open space next to Taraline. A rush of something like pride in doing a job well infiltrated Gabriel as he sat on the stool next to the veiled person, reaching into his bag and extracting one of the flasks of aquifer water he'd thought to pack. He'd anticipated that it might come in handy for trade, since he didn't drink the stuff himself. Besides, he could smell the junk they served in that jug of hers, and it looked as if he had some superior product here.

“Wtr?” he asked, offering it to her.

She didn't accept. From under the veil, her voice was deeper than Gabriel could've predicted.

“Wht u wnt?”

The bartender was at the other end of the bar, so Gabriel was free to get to the Old American point with Taraline. That way, Mariah would be able to understand, too.

“We heard you'd be able to communicate some information to us in a nice, expedient manner,” he said.

Taraline huffed out a choppy laugh, her veil belling. When it settled back down, he inspected the outline of her face—an elegant forehead, high cheekbones . . . but where there was supposed to be a nose, there was next to nothing.

She picked up Gabriel's water flask, opened it, and put it under her veil to smell it. He heard her sigh, as if she hadn't enjoyed the prospect of quality water for a long time. Then she slid off her stool.

He supposed it was an invitation to follow.

Mariah grinned at Gabriel. Once again, she didn't have to access his mind, because he could already tell that she was thinking,
Can I set up a situation or can I set up a situation?

He resisted the urge to grin back at her, just as he would've done when he'd first gotten out to the Badlands and hadn't known she was a hard one to trust. Instead, he jerked his head toward the exit, and they stepped out, after Taraline.

She led them past the graves, but not too far beyond as she stopped near a small house of the dead with a broken pair of wings serving as a steeple. She slipped the water flask under her veil, throwing back her head to gulp in the nectar.

Next to Gabriel, Mariah waited, her longing evident in their connection. Her raised temperature pricked at Gabriel's flesh.

When Taraline was done, she gasped. “Pure. We can only collect water here when it rains, and storms come so few and far between that the water tastes old.”

He didn't tell her that what she'd just drunk had been pumped from their Badlands aquifer. They didn't need more refugees out there.

“You willing to talk with us?” he asked.

Taraline was clasping the flask for dear life. “Are you from the government? Associated with it?”

“No,” both Gabriel and Mariah said at the same time.

“You speak Old American, just like a higher-level would.”

Mariah said, “We had proper educations before coming out here. I suspect you did, too, but that's not important.”

Gabriel got out a second flask. A further installment on their initial down payment of water. He'd rather use this means of persuasion than voice swaying at first, should someone else happen by here in the open—like those shadows they'd seen in the lane.

He didn't give the water to Taraline just yet. “A friend told us that you might know about the asylums where they keep lycanthropes.”

Under her veil, their informant glanced from Mariah to Gabriel, then back again, as if wondering who this “friend” was. He raised the water again, and that seemed to erase the question from her.

“I used to have a homebound administrative job for contract workers, and I have an acquaintance associated with an asylum. Hardware design. Why do you want to find out more about the asylums?”

Mariah opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated. Gabriel felt despair from her, and he wondered if it was because of all the lying she'd done previously and how she didn't want to do it anymore. How she wanted to refrain for
his
sake.

It gnawed at him, and before he knew it, he was saving her from having to backtrack on her personal promises. “My sister . . . She was taken from her home about a year ago. She'd been depressed, and was acting . . . Well, she thought she was a wolf.”

“And she went in for treatment.” Taraline seemed to have sympathy for this story. That and the promise of more water obviously loosened her tongue. “Most asylums are back east, but they established some out west to see if different weather and conditions would affect the patients. That was what I gleaned from the vague memos I read, anyway.”

The wind bit at the fringes of her veil, and Gabriel wondered just what was under it. Exactly what disease had she contracted?

But those weren't the answers he wanted or needed.

He held the water flask just that much closer to Taraline, as if she would have to earn it with a little more effort than this. “Do they have lycanthropes in the nearest asylum?”

“GBVille? Yes.”

It was short for General Benefactors–ville. Years and years ago, it'd even been called Denver until the GB corporation had taken it over. Interesting that “lycanthropes” had been brought out there, because the air was still thinner than most places. Since the same amount of oxygen didn't get to the blood as it did at normal altitudes, did they think that might weaken and stunt the healing process for preters?

Mariah turned to Gabriel, but they didn't communicate mind-to-mind. Her hopeful grin said that maybe they were close. So very close.

Gabriel's belly warmed, and not only because of their link. He was picturing her as a human, free of everything that haunted her.

He pulled himself out of the wishful thinking. “Can you tell us what this asylum looks like?”

“The GBVille location is red stucco. It was one of the only old buildings left in the area and has fortifying brick walls outside. The doctors who established it had a sick sense of humor, thinking it was clever to have the most Gothic surroundings they could in the hub, like their very own scary story.”

He could practically feel the focus of her gaze from under the veil as she stared at the flask.

But was she just telling them what she thought they wanted to hear in order to get the drink?

“You do know that asylums don't take appointments from loved ones, right?” she added.

“We can think of ways around that,” Gabriel said.

“They have heavy security. I heard about top-level consultants that roam the grounds.”

Did she mean Shredders?

If the asylums dealt with something other than patients who had psychological disorders like lycanthropy, the government would need Shredders there, even if the enforcers were supposed to have been dumped by the government, leaving only remnants like Stamp around.

Gabriel itched to ask Taraline more about it, and he actually flirted with the idea of whipping off her veil so he could look into her eyes.

She seemed to be staring straight at him instead of the water now. “What lengths would you go to in order to get inside?”

Mariah didn't even pause. “Great lengths.”

Gabriel covered up what he thought to be too much information coming from Mariah. “We were all the best of friends, so you can understand why we'd be emotional about this.”

“Yes,” Taraline said. “If you're anything like me, you wouldn't hesitate to take matters into your own hands when you come to believe that justice won't otherwise be served. Getting your sister back seems enough to warrant extreme measures.”

Mariah clenched her jaw, but Gabriel knew she wanted to agree with Taraline. She'd confessed as much back when they'd started this trek, when she'd told him that she'd go after the bad men who'd killed her family, if she had the opportunity.

The warmth between them went cold, and he barred his arms over his chest, keeping this side of Mariah as far away as possible.

Taraline motioned to her veil. “I wish there were an avenue of justice for every wrong.”

“What happened?” Mariah asked softly.

“I caught dymorrdia.”

Gabriel took an unintended step back from her, then regretted it. So obvious.

Mariah's heartfelt gaze told Gabriel that she'd been in society when dymorrdia had introduced itself. It'd been around for a while—a social contact disease that had somehow supposedly originated in the monster community. That was what the scientists had said, anyway, and a mere touch from a carrier could spread it if you had the genetic disposition to catch it.

It seemed to infect the most beautiful among the population and, as if envious, infected sociopaths had gone around touching people, just for the fun of knowing how it'd slowly disfigure their faces. It'd even gotten to the point where diseased burglars had used it instead of weapons. Rumors had even circulated that carriers were undercover monsters wreaking havoc.

All in all, it'd infected only a small segment of the population, though it'd seemed like many, many more. Scientists had come up with a cure as fast as possible; the victims had taken the remedy to kill their ability to transmit the disease while the rest of society had gotten inoculated against it, just in case. There wasn't a cure for those who already had it.

Not long afterward, dymorrdia had ceased to become a concern for humanity, except to serve as a reminder of how ugly anyone could get. It was also just another way to blame the monsters for society's downfall.

Taraline's veil rustled in the breeze, and it seemed like so much more than a covering now. It was her own perdition.

“Are you really going to the asylum?” she asked. “Back just before my dymorrdia started to show and I was still working, I got the feeling that, among the cures they might be developing for lycanthropy, they might—”

So this was what she'd been leading up to with all the questions.

“No,” he said. “There's no way you can come with us to see if there's a cure for dymorrdia that they've been holding back from the public. Besides, asylums are supposed to be for mental patients . . . not anything else.”

Or everything else.

Now he felt as if he were just as bad as any of the humans who hated monsters. As if he were just as prejudiced, only in the most ironic way he could think of.

But he didn't want to take the risk that dymorrdia was only a selective disease and that it'd been vanquished altogether. And they needed to travel quickly, without a human to slow them down. They also couldn't afford to blow their cover with someone who stood out as much as Taraline.

They had too much at stake for Mariah and the community back in the Badlands. And, he thought, maybe even for himself. He hated that he thought it, but there it was.

Taraline spread her arms under the veil. “You don't understand . . . I may as well be dead out here.”

Gabriel gave her the second water flask, then took Mariah by the hand. Seriously time to go.

“I'm sorry,” he said to Taraline. “I wish we could help you. If we find something, we'll try our best to come back.”

And that was all he could do.

Mariah was like a plow behind him. “Gabriel . . .”

He'd have to talk sense into her later, but as he looked behind to see Taraline standing by a grave, her veil blowing around her as if she were a dark ghost, he felt deader than ever, too.