Blood Rules (30 page)

But there was also another element to his watching. The oldster was dying to return to the hub, and he wasn't sure yet just how he was going to finagle that.

He'd started measuring his neighbors very closely, wondering if any of them were also still thinking about the indentured servants and all the other wrongs that the hub held. And, night by night, he'd recognized something in Mariah. She was just as fit to fly out of her skin as he was.

Did she feel just as aimless, waiting round here like a sitting duck? Unlike Gabriel, the oldster wasn't entirely persuaded that “lying low” was the best use of their time. Also, unlike a live-long vampire, he didn't have many hours left in the countdown of his own years.

When Mariah excused herself from 562, she had her hands tucked into the back pockets of her mended pants. For a parttime big bad wolf, she sure looked sheepish, as if she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't have been doing.

The oldster hadn't been watching her long enough to see what that might be, though.

“Hey,” she said to him. “What's on your mind?”

The area was clear except for 562, so the oldster didn't entirely beat round the bush. Might as well see if he'd been right about his assessment of Mariah.

“I've been thinking about the hub, and I decided that I'm not going to sit round here while there's so much still left to tend to up there.”

For some reason, she seemed relieved. “Are you talking about those water servants again?”

“They're a part of it.”

She rested her hands on her hips, and it made her come off like the Mariah he'd always hoped she'd be.

No one had ever really been the leader of their Badlands community, but when he'd accepted Mariah into it, he'd seen a strength hidden under all the fear and prickliness. From previous experience with were-creatures, he'd known that inviting her inside would be okay since their kind didn't crave the blood of each other, even if Mariah was a predatory wolf and Pucci and Hana were an elk and a deer—they'd all be toxic for her. They'd needed a protector who was territorial enough to defend her community from outsiders, someone they could depend on if it ever came down to it. But then Annie—or Abby, as they'd found out her real name was—had come along, another werewolf, and he'd foolishly allowed
her
in, too, after he'd started to believe that Mariah wasn't a leader after all.

Abby had challenged Mariah not because of a lust for her blood, but because she'd wanted the alpha role, and they'd fought it out, Mariah coming out the winner. Yet then Mariah had withdrawn, becoming more of a lone wolf than ever, even in the midst of a community.

A pariah. A sad woman they tolerated.

But, deep down, the oldster supposed he had never really given up faith in her, and now he needed to know if it'd been justified.

Her gaze searched his. “Do you know what you're proposing, oldster?”

Sure,
he thought.
I can't stand to know that, not too far away, there're some people who could use my help, and sticking it to the ones who're taking advantage of their weakness sounds downright delicious to me.

He tempered his explanation, still testing her out. “If we're going to dig in here for a while, it might behoove us to find out what we're up against. Do the authorities know who's responsible for the power blast yet? Are they on our case? We also might want to discover if GBVille has even recovered from the power failure. If they haven't, then that means we still have an advantage over them. Just look outside—there've been no signs of increased surveillance. It's as if no one beyond GBVille knows what happened there.”

“You think nobody made it out to any comm stations to inform the authorities of an attack?”

“I might be thinking that.” The oldster shrugged innocently. “There were a lot of preters we set loose. A lot of different abilities that humans tried to erase because they thought monsters would overcome society one day. I wouldn't underestimate the vengefulness of a captive monster.”

He had her. She wasn't posing any counterarguments now.

Pressing his advantage, he said, “Let's just go over to GBVille—you and me. We'll tell the others that we're off to hunt locally. We've been hunting in shifts, anyway, so it wouldn't look out of the ordinary.”

Her skepticism hadn't totally left. “And if something happens to us in the hub and we don't come back?”

“Damn, girl, if it makes you feel better, I'll scratch out a note with the sharp end of a rock on a bigger one and leave it behind for them to find.”

She pursed her lips. Yup, he was winning her over, and it hadn't taken all that much. Then again, that was why he'd approached Mariah and not any of his other neighbors.

“Gabriel would kill me for going behind his back,” she said.

The oldster thought she was talking about something more than just deceiving Gabriel for a trip to the hub. She'd hated herself for lying to the vampire back in the Badlands, when they hadn't revealed their were-states to him.

“We're doing this for the common good,” the oldster said. “And, don't mind my saying so, but the last I looked, you were your own person. Unless you up and married Gabriel without my knowing.”

He hadn't meant to belittle her, but her expression fell, anyway. Certainly, everyone knew that there
was
something going on with Gabriel and Mariah, and the oldster almost apologized for questioning it.

She'd stiffened, as if maybe there were more strain between her and the vampire than the oldster knew about.

“When it comes to Gabriel,” she said softly, “I suppose I should be on my own.”

She looked so sorrowful that the oldster wanted to reassure her, yet, before he could, she was already glancing back at 562, who was mutely resting in that peaceful yogi pose, shutting the rest of them out.

Then Mariah bit her bottom lip, almost as if tasting something on it. But that had to be the oldster's fancy. She was probably only making a final decision about his proposal.

“Can you wash off any trace of Taraline's smell with that dry shampoo of ours?” she finally asked.

“I'll scrub as hard as I can.”

“We could also rub as much tawnyvale as possible over ourselves. It should throw off those beast dogs if they're tracking. . . .”

The oldster stopped himself from doing a little shuffling victory dance.

“But,” she added, “we need to be back here way before dawn. No shenanigans up in GBVille. This trip is just so we can take a little look-see at what's going on. Understand?”

“No shenanigans.” He had his fingers crossed behind his back.

Mariah gave him a stern look, but he just grinned.

“How about you get Chaplin,” he said, “since there's little likelihood of anyone caring that he's an Intel Dog now? We'll bring him along.”

For some reason, Mariah was already shaking her head, and that startled the oldster. Chaplin and Mariah were like grain-peas in a pod.

Mariah said, “Chaplin's tuckered out. We should leave him to rest.”

Ah, okay. The oldster got it. “You think the dog's gonna lay into you for leaving this mine shaft. No need to explain.”

And he wasn't about to argue, even if Mariah did have a confused sort of expression on her face, as if she maybe weren't leaving her dog behind for the reason he'd cited after all.

She walked off to prepare herself, but somewhere underneath it all, the oldster saw a spark of excitement in her pace, as if, like him, she was dying to get out of this mine shaft. Dying to do some good as she made up for doing so much bad.

Fifteen minutes later, he'd written the best note he could manage on a flat rock in his own private nook of the mine shaft—a note that confided their trip to GBVille, should he and Mariah fail to return before dawn. Then he told everyone they were going hunting. After that, the oldster and Mariah sped off into the darkness, which was lit only by an emerging sliver of moon over the rocky, gray-spun landscape.

It didn't take long to get to the hub, even while taking cover, as usual, on the way there. Once they arrived, changing back into their human forms and dressing in the clothing they'd carried in Mariah's backpack, it seemed like a ghost town.

And that was no exaggeration. GBVille appeared to consist of those buildings that leaned over the streets like watchers, accompanied by blanked show screens and a straggling army of abandoned zoom bikes. The acrid stench of fried hardware made the oldster's nose scrunch, and he had to labor even more than usual to fill his lungs with air.

It was only when they passed the concrete expanse of an open General Benefactors dome that they were able to see a slew of bodies, all just lying there, side by side on the ground.

“Did the power blaster kill people?” he whispered to Mariah. Higher volume might break the silence, which felt like a glass partition between him and the rest of the surreal hub.

“It wasn't supposed to,” she said, heading toward the bodies. She bent to a woman who wore a broken smoker unit, which consisted of two tubes running from her mouth to a smoke box connected to one arm while another tube connected to a filtering air recycle bag on the other. Nicotine addicts wore them to keep secondhand smoke away from others.

After Mariah felt the woman's neck for a pulse, she said, “She's alive.”

The oldster did the same to a man wearing a General Benefactors ad jumpsuit. “This one's beating, too,” he said.

Nearby, he saw a hefty woman dressed in a gray overcoat and a water necklace—a luxury if there ever was one. And she had hold of three leashes, even in her sleep.

Those leashes connected to two young men and a woman.

The oldster itched to release the indentured water servants. It'd be so easy right now . . .

But then voices sounded from behind them, ricocheting off the dome and back down to the ground.

He and Maria scrambled away from the bodies and, just before they got to the shadows, they heard another voice coming from the darkness.

Deep. A man's?

“Those are the police,” the anonymous person said, as if he'd already hidden himself from the authorities.

The only human the oldster knew who liked the shadows was Taraline, but this wasn't her—

Two gloved hands reached out of the darkness to pull the oldster and Mariah in, but he wasn't stupid enough to yell. Neither was Mariah, and they both shut up as the cops, dressed in white suits with riot helmets, strolled into the dome area. The oldster could imagine Zel a few years ago, garbed in the same gear, upholding the peace, and his chest stung with yearning to see her, just one more time.

These cops used batons to nudge at several passed-out citizens, then left, obviously on regular patrol.

Their shadow-bound rescuer or captor or what-have-you held tight to the oldster's arm for a minute longer. A smell reminiscent of Taraline's traveled to the oldster's nose.

When the person let go of him, the oldster said, “You're not Taraline.”

“No, I'm not, but she made certain we were familiar with you and your friends.” This shadow man had a measured news-announcer way of speaking, just as anchormen used to sound before being phased out by computer-generated broadcasters.

The oldster wished he could see whoever was talking, or if this person was also veiled, like Taraline. If he was a victim of dymorrdia, too.

When Mariah spoke, she didn't sound afraid. “Taraline did say that there were many others round the hub who moved through the shadows like she does.”

“Yes, and she wanted to make sure you were always trailed while you were in the hubs.” The man paused. “We know what you did.”

The oldster could hear Mariah's intake of breath, but before she could start to change into were-form out of defensive instinct, the oldster asked, “Who are you?”

“Friends. We're only friends, and what you did in that asylum won us to you for life.”

The oldster thought he heard Mariah exhale. Thank-all, because having a wolf-girl on the loose again would mess up all the oldster's best intentions here in the hub.

“We know you asked about a cure for dymorrdia in the asylum,” the man said, “and we appreciate that. Even before you came, we'd all been thinking of ways to go into that building ourselves to see what secrets it holds.”

“Taraline had a lot to do with the plan,” Mariah said.

“She left for the necropolis before she would've needed to go into hiding here, like us, so she never had need to plan before now.”

The oldster asked, “And when she came back here, she found people of her own kind that easily?”

“We're everywhere, oldster,” the man said.

Everywhere. “Then have you been present enough to see a kid with a scent tracker and a female partner wandering round as if they're searching for someone?”

“Johnson Stamp,” the shadow man said. “Taraline told us about your ills with him. And, yes, I believe we've seen him. Besides Mr. Stamp, his associate, and the running ones, we haven't observed awake hubites outside any homes lately. Not after the police announced that it was time to take the biological attack pills.”

“Ah,” the oldster said, finally understanding those bodies laid out on the ground. He recalled the pills being introduced just before he'd left society. He'd heard that even the lowlords and their followers had been allotted their share.

The shadow man said, “Now that we're here to watch, we see that the government didn't bother to relate the truth—that the pills are meant to stun during an emergency like this one.”