Blood Rules (36 page)

He excused himself from the ladies, and they watched him walk away. In all honesty, I'd have loved to gut them, but I restrained myself. Yay for Mariah.

“I heard you were looking for me,” I said.
My
breath had sure deserted me.

“Just wanted to see how you're doing.”

Aw. But he didn't say it tenderly or softly. He sounded like I was his charge, his responsibility.

And hadn't the oldster . . . Michael . . . pointed out to me the other night that I was on my own?

We began strolling, passing those vamp women, whom I expertly ignored, then moving outside to the walkway, which we felt free to use because, even if there was satellite coverage, asylum employees would've strolled, too. It was as if we tacitly agreed that we had to keep moving or else there'd come a moment that would be too quiet, too strained.

The breath still didn't come easily into me, even though I was getting used to the thinner air in GBVille. I thought I felt a skitter over my skin, as if someone else were near, but when I turned round, all I saw were shadows from the moonlight.

“If you're checking up on me,” I said, dismissing the niggle, “I should report that I haven't grown teeth like 562 yet. I haven't scratched myself silly with my nails. I'm still pretty . . . normal.”

Or what-have-you.

“What've
you
been doing?” I asked lamely. “Hanging out with all those vampires must've shown you a thing or two.”

“Yeah, today there was . . .”

He seemed to think he was being too enthusiastic and, really, I have to say that his rushed words did give the impression that he was a little excited.

He toned it down. “A couple old ones taught me about mind freezing.”

“What's that?”

“I guess I can really hurt someone's brain if they goad me enough. You look in their eyes and shoot away. It takes a lot of energy out of a vampire, though, so I was advised to use it sparingly. Vampires didn't survive all these years by leaving trails of brain-deads behind. I think my maker didn't put it in her pamphlet because I might hunt her down and use it on her someday. Or maybe she was young, and she just didn't know about it. From what I'm hearing out of the older vampires, that seems more and more likely.” He paused. “It works on preters, too, the mind freezing.”

I didn't know how to take his comment.

Then he added, “And there're other things I'm learning.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged it off, as if he didn't want to tell me. More proof was in the pudding when he quickly altered the topic.

“I've been looking around for Taraline. Monsters have been going through old hard-copy files in the lab because the computers are fried. They've been trying to match data to the blood and liquid specimens in vials.”

I went with the change of subject, wondering if he'd ever open up to me again. But what he said was important: There'd been a debate amongst the monsters as to what we'd do when we identified 562's stored blood. We'd have to experiment to see what her mere blood would do to all levels of preters, but if it offered improvement for us, we could transport it to other Reds out of the hub without having to move 562 or approach our origin to extract more from her. Some vampires argued that we could strengthen up our numbers that way, even in other hubs. But if humans ever got hold of the blood, could they get stronger, even beyond only healing themselves? Just imagine Stamp as a superhuman. We
had
to contain 562's blood, but how would we quickly fulfill the needs of monsters in other hubs who wanted to launch more efficient rebellions?

I stopped by a spot where the wall overlooked a part of the hub where monsters were dismantling some jolly box corners.

“Did anyone find news about dymorrdia?” I asked. “Is that why you're asking about Taraline?”

“Just incidental news.” He rested his arms on the wall, squinting straight ahead. The wind played with his short brown hair, and he seemed so stoic, with his tough-guy face, his placid gray eyes that seemed to have depths I couldn't reach. “They found an old report on dymorrdia that's been kept from the public.”

Wow. I hoped this would hold good tidings, and that Taraline wouldn't have to make a decision about exchanging with 562. Don't get me wrong—she'd make a conscientious vampire—but I could just see her being as conflicted as Gabriel.

“According to the report,” he continued, “they didn't discover the cause of the disease, or why it affected good-looking people as opposed to others.”

“Some used to say that the powers that be were striking back at humans for their vanity.”

Could be that dymorrdia was nature's way of extending justice. And, believe me, I understood justice, but this seemed extreme. Nature had to be a real bitch for a reckoning like dymorrdia. But I wasn't nature, so I didn't know how it might form its opinions.

“Dymorrdia was a flesh-eating, bone-shifting malady that originated from a patient zero in old Europe,” Gabriel said. “That's all we've found.”

Really, that was it?

Anger stretched in me. It didn't seem fair that there were mysteries of life without answers. With all the years we'd been on this earth, you'd think we would've learned just about everything, but we were more in the dark than ever.

I leaned on the wall, next to Gabriel, and he closed his eyes. He had to be hearing me, scenting me, and I wanted him to take all of me in. No matter how bad I was for him, I couldn't help needing him.

Below us, a group of running ones sprinted past, way off the usual paths they took through the hub. The crowds had grown, night by night, as regular humans awakened, discombobulated, and humanlike monsters directed them to start running with the others. The preters would just flash a General Benefactors badge and tell them, “Everything is good. We're fixing it all, even as we speak. We're laboring our best for you. Meanwhile, carry on with your activities.”

And, just as they'd been doing for years, the distractoids believed them.

The few shut-ins who didn't run had been brought to the asylum when they had come outside to see what was happening, and then put in newly barred cells. I wasn't sure I was keen on this solution. These were the people who looked as if they weren't on many neuroenhancers, and a lot of them had refused another dose of stunner pills or hadn't taken them the first time round. And, after getting used to us, a lot of them turned out not to be very afraid, either.

I sighed, and I swear it wasn't meant to get Gabriel's attention. But it goaded his appetite, making it rear up in our link. The force of it made my heart rate zoom and my veins quiver. He was very hungry.

“When's the last time you ate?” I asked.

“I've had blood from animal hunting.”

It clearly wasn't enough. I had the feeling that he'd graduated to human blood lately, and nothing else was going to do. And I'd stoked that in him.

“Maybe I should just let you be,” I said, getting up from the wall.

“Don't go.”

It was the closest I'd ever heard this proud man come to begging, and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't soothe him with a touch. Too high a risk. And I couldn't leave.

“You were the good one between the two of us after we left the Badlands,” he said, his gaze containing a hint of red. “You were the one who started to give me some sort of peace through our link, just like I used to give you.”

“And tomorrow night when the first phase of the moon hits?” I asked. “If I go really bad with this new, more powerful blood in me, how good will I be for you then?”

“It can't be any worse. My body takes me over now. I used to be able to control myself, but . . .”

He trailed off.

“Gabriel, you've fought for as long as you can,” I said, seeing him leaving me. I wanted him to fight longer, harder. I wanted to punch myself for ever suggesting he could keep pace with me and my bad side. I even wanted to stop believing that, tomorrow night, I might miraculously turn out to be wonderful, suddenly better than any human or monster, and he'd come with me.

He lowered his head, the burgeoning moon's light hiding half of his face, making his red eyes blaze.

“I've been thinking a lot lately. The logical side of me says that if I'm going to be a vampire—and that's the way I seem to be going—I should embrace it all the way.”

I started to get a bad feeling about this. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, I want to take 562's offer, and I want to do it just as much as you did, no matter the consequences.”

And that was when
I
deserted him. Not literally, but if he took 562's blood, he probably wouldn't be the Gabriel we all knew and . . .

Well, loved.

My heart seemed to crack open as his eyes got all the redder, seeming to take up the color of the blood that felt as if it were spilling out of me.

“You already hate what you are,” I said.

He put a hand to his chest, as if his heart were doing the same as mine, but I knew it was only an echo. “Don't you know that, where you go, I've got to go?”

A whimper, from me. Another desire to touch him, even though I knew it'd result in an ugly explosion for both of us.

Our link seemed to wrap round itself, twisting into complex patterns that I'd never be able to unwind. A rope, a leash . . . whatever it was, it bound us, and not always in a way that made for the positive.

I'd dragged him into a direr situation than I'd intended.

“Gabriel,” I said, trying to put him off, “please wait until after tomorrow. See what 562 is like when the moon calls, just in case it matters. See me, too.”

The real me.

But his fangs were already extending past his lips, his gaze a piercing red.

The idea of 562's blood was too tempting for him.

He wanted to go to our origin. He'd probably been wanting to do it all night, but being round me had goaded him to the limit.

“Wait,
please
,” I said. I'd fight him on this.

He took a step back, flashing his fangs, and I realized that if I blocked him from this nearest door, he might just use the other.

Just as I thought Gabriel was going to make a break for it, he looked at a point behind me. I followed his line of sight, thinking too late that he was trying to fake me out.

But instead of finding nothing there, I saw shadows, then a couple of monsters on the walkway, almost as if they'd sneaked up on us like . . .

Shredders?

My skin started waving, my bones melting as I recognized those two individuals I'd bumped into inside the asylum. One helping the other balance as they wore their scarves over most of their faces, their hats shading their eyes, their bulky coats covering their bodies.

The shorter one let go of the other, then shed his coat in fast motion. But with that coat off, I realized he was actually a she—not that it mattered because, lickety-split, she reached back to bring out the chest puncher she'd been wearing low on her back.

At the same time, the taller figure opened his coat, revealing two crutches propping him up on one side as he brought up a throwing knife.

“Gabriel,” was all he said.

I recognized the voice, and my body exploded all at once into my werewolf form as the first attacker fired the chest puncher at Gabriel and Johnson Stamp threw his silver-bladed knife right at my heart.

S
tamp held his breath, watching the projectile from Mags's chest puncher zoom toward Gabriel while his own silver knife spun toward the redheaded woman's heart.

Two for one—a vampire, plus what he recognized as the she-wolf who had come to Gabriel's rescue back at the Badlands showdown.

Just before the knife got to the wolf, Gabriel jumped out of the way of the chest puncher and blasted against his were-friend—

Stamp's knife swished over their heads, along with Mags's projectile.

Shit!

By the time Mags yanked back on the chest puncher cable, hauling back the projectile for another go, the vampire and the freakishly huge, red-haired, blaze-green-eyed werewolf had rolled to the side of the walkway, disappearing behind a jut of wall. Only the solar lantern that the redhead had been carrying lay on its side, amber light spilling over the pale ground.

Mags quickly cranked the chest puncher, locking the projectile into place again, but Stamp raised his crutchless hand, telling her to keep still. Then he extracted a silver throwing star from his Shredder suit belt.

When he attempted a step forward, the plate-protected gears in his bum leg whined and burned, working overtime, and Stamp bit back a grunt. He and Mags had been hoping sneak attacks would get them Gabriel, then more monsters, one right after the other. They'd pick them off like bad fruit from a dying tree.

He'd been lucky Gabriel was so distracted during their approach, until his luck had seemingly run out.

Stamp listened for any signs of his enemy. Had Gabriel sped his female pal away already? Or had he and the woman taken a secret tunnel back to the asylum to get some of their friends to help them?

If so, Stamp could wait here all night long, finding a place to hide, a spot that would cover him and Mags while they did some monster picking, offing the water robbers one by one as the preters ventured out here.

This time, Stamp wasn't going to run, not as he'd done in the Bloodlands.

Mags, who was back in her one-piece suit, obviously heard the weakened gears in his leg, and she steadied Stamp with her hand. Under the shade of her low hat, he could barely see the dark of her slanted eyes or the curls from her black hair peeking out at her nape. He'd given up his chest puncher to her only because it required both hands. It looked foreign in her grasp, but perfectly natural at the same time. He was almost jealous, seeing the two of them together.