In Blood We Trust (29 page)

He heard me think it, and I wondered if, from this point on, our link would work just when I was in this state. The end of his gloaming had changed him, flipping his inner world over, and it was as if the power I had in this form were the only thing that could bring him to me.

I didn't want to believe that this was the only time we'd ever be able to connect again, just three nights out of the month. That this was the only period when he'd be influenced by me and what our imprint had left us.

We sped the rest of the way to our first homestead, an abandoned spread under the ground that the oldster had founded and my dad had developed. My camouflaged trapdoor waited amongst the brush, and Gabriel accessed it.

After we jumped inside, we crashed onto the blankets where Chaplin had once slept. All my hands swept over the old material, which was threaded through with the familiar smell of him.

Gabriel shut the trapdoor above us and, through my red gaze, I surveyed the living area. It still had its old couch. The side room with a vault where my dad had stored his collectible geek dolls. The food prep unit . . . my quarters . . . the door leading to a tunnel that connected to a common hub, which was in turn linked to the quarters where my neighbors had lived. Another door that opened to a cave where we'd had a pump system to draw out the aquifer water, and where I'd raised hydroponic foods as well as shaped bullets for my outdated arsenal.

But my weapons were gone now, transferred to a second homestead that we'd used after Stamp had attacked us here.

“We'll stay just for the night,” Gabriel said. “Then we'll think about where we should go.”

I tried to smile at him, but it was all sharp, grotesque teeth, and I closed my mouth.

He didn't turn away. “You think I'm disgusted with you.”

I nodded, my long hair swaying.

“No,” he said. “I'm not afraid, either. You were sated with that Civil blood, and I'll bet it lasts for this entire moon cycle. You wouldn't go after my type of blood, anyway.”

He grinned at me, and suddenly the old Gabriel was back—the stranger who'd stumbled into the sights of my visz monitors, his face cut and bruised. The mysterious man who'd charmed me and Chaplin, then revealed himself to be a vampire.

“Something happened with us tonight, didn't it?” he asked. “I can feel us when I didn't before. Why?”

It looked as if he were thinking about coming to me, but I shrank back from him. How could he even look at me? And when he got too close and our appetites took over, would he touch me again?

I stayed in my corner, hoping he'd stay in his. I changed the subject to something far less intimate.

What if,
I thought to him,
Hana seeks you out here? She might predict that you'd want to go to the only home you've known in the last years.

My claws lengthened, my split tongue darting out instinctively. If Hana came at night for Gabriel, she had no chance, not with me during a full moon.

Power rushed me, and I thought,
Who in their right mind would ever challenge me?
I was more than a were-creature, and even a vampire.

The love in Gabriel's eyes didn't lie to me—it was back now, just as it'd been there before, during the gloaming.

Maybe we should never leave this place,
he thought.
Why would we have to when we can take on anyone who comes here?

I knew the truth in that. We
didn't
have to be afraid now.

Let anyone come.

At dawn, after he folded up his coat to use as a pillow and fell to rest on the couch, leaving me the blankets by the trapdoor where I could smell Chaplin's old scent, my form shifted back to normal, my link with Gabriel disappearing.

But I knew without a doubt that it would be back when the second night of the full moon awakened us again.

E
ver since Stamp and Mags had left GBVille, he'd had the feeling that something was following them.

Tonight, though, just near the border of the New Badlands—or the Bloodlands, as he'd called it after he'd tangled with the monsters there—the presence seemed closer than usual.

Near a stand of loto cacti at the base of a hill, he halted, putting down the padded rod that Mags had found for him a few nights ago from a hunk-of-junk old car that had petered out on the desert sand. He'd been using the rod as a crutch, and it'd been chafing his underarm, so he rubbed at the area now, then got out one of his shivs.

Casually, he stabbed a loto cactus. It moaned, bleeding a thin tan syrup that would have to do for water until they found the real thing.

He'd already cleaned the vampire blood off the shiv, unable to stand the sight of it, and this enabled him to lick the moisture from the blade as Mags went to the other side of the loto cactus, evidently preparing to get a drink from it, too.

“Our guest is getting bold,” he said in a low tone, wiping a sleeve over his forehead. He'd forgotten how dry and dragon-breathed it could get out here.

“Sure is.”

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw a scurrying shadow-like movement; it cast a reflection on the ground near a stand of some more boulders. Whatever it was knew how to hide real well, but not well enough.

“What do you want to do?” Mags asked.

“See what it's up to.”

Stamp took more moisture from the loto cactus, whose prickles tried to stab him in order to protect itself. But he was too fast for it.

“I don't think it's a preter,” he said.

“What makes you say that?” Mags was still behind the cactus, with its silhouetted arms. She was nothing more than a shadow in the coming of the full moon.

“The hairs on my skin tell me everything,” he said.

“Is that so? Your hairs still work that well?”

There was something like amusement in her voice, yet as usual, Stamp couldn't be sure. Mags had always baffled him, but these past few nights, she'd doubled up on the womanly weirdness, giving him more room than usual while they tracked the were-creatures. It was as if she were watching him just as much as he was watching the trail marks on the ground.

But tonight, he was going to deviate from the were-trail. He was going to Goodie Jern's shack for some transportation and maybe a little aid, and they needed to get there before the sun came up. No sane person would be in Bloodlands daylight without a heat suit, which they didn't have.

As Stamp took another helping of loto cactus juice, the fluid dripped from the shiv, and he caught every bit of it in his mouth. He felt Mags watching him, and his skin warmed up. He turned from her, in the direction where he'd last seen the shadow.

He narrowed his eyes. “I hope it's not a were-creature. Not with the first night of the full moon on us. The less agitated our guest is, the better.”

“I've got those silver bullets in my firearm.”

“Then you can go ahead and shoot whatever's following us now.”

He just wanted to get going and find Gabriel.

The talk of shooting must've turned a screw in their guest's head, because what looked to be a real shadow eased out from behind the boulders down the way.

In the blooming moonlight, Stamp spied a dark form in a dress. Veils.

He'd seen the shadow people around the asylum. Dymorrdians, some called them, because of the disease.

What was one doing way out here?

Grabbing his crutch, Stamp propped himself up. Mags didn't move a muscle, though, as if she were perfectly confident she could best anyone, even while lazing around a loto cactus.

“You'd better just tell us who you are,” he yelled at the dymorrdian.

She moved toward them, seeming to float over the sand in that long dress. Her voice was huskier than he ever would've guessed it'd be.

“My name is Taraline, from GBVille.”

“Are you here to bring me back to that cell?”

“No.”

“So why're you dogging us?” he asked.

“Dogging?” She laughed, as if he'd pulled a joke. “I believe you misunderstand my motives. I'm merely traveling with you.”

At his patent surprise, she added, “I know that you're trying to find Gabriel, and I'm doing the same. However, I don't have much in the area of tracking skills, so I'm just doing what I do best—following.”

She was honest. He'd give her that.

“What's Gabriel to you?” he asked.

She seemed to raise her chin under those veils, but she didn't tell him a thing.

Not that he needed enlightenment. “Okay, I get it. If you were listening in on my conversation with Hana back at GBVille, which I guess you probably were, you know that she's going after Gabriel for the murder of her boyfriend. And you . . .” He shot her a sidelong glance. “Are you pissed at him, too, for some reason?”

“He's a friend.”

“Aha. You're going to save him, then.”

“I owe him,” she said. “He's always watched out for me, and I'm doing the same for him. What Hana wants to do to Gabriel isn't right. He was only defending me when he killed Pucci. He was defending her, too, but that's another matter.”

“Miss Taraline, you do know that vampires are mean and capable, and Gabriel won't need your protection, right?”

“I realize that, yes.”

“And do you know that a vampire probably wouldn't care if he's on the bad side of a were-deer, of all things?”

“Yes.”

Mags had come out from behind the loto cactus now, but she was still watching him, not the dymorrdian. Stamp's flesh ruffled under her intense focus.

“All of that matters,” Taraline said. “But I'm going to Gabriel because, even if Hana is a weak opponent, she'll never let up on him, not until he's truly dead. She's a woman wronged, and that's the scariest being I can conjure in my imagination, no less reality.”

“And you can protect him.”

“I can watch for her while he rests during the day. That's got to be of some value.”

Mags laughed softly, and when Stamp looked over at her, he couldn't help noticing that the loto cactus needles were veering away from her, as if repulsed.

He got back to the business at hand. “I'm not interested in preter drama,” he said to Taraline. “So you can take it right back to GBVille with you.”

Yet the dymorrdian just stood there, as if she weren't about to be chased off by a one-legged ex-Shredder and his partner.

Her bravery made him weigh the advantages of her accompanying them. Would a shadow be beneficial to him and Mags as they traveled? She might prove a good scout or a nice backup who could sneak up on any trouble and surprise them, if Stamp and Mags were to get into a spot.

He tried her out. “I'm not sure if you're aware of the history between me and Gabriel. You might not be so eager to follow me if you were.”

“Everyone knows about it.”

“I wonder, then, what you might do when we find Gabriel. Attack me first so I don't get to him before Hana can?”

She paused, then much to his astonishment, leaned back her head and laughed again, clasping her gloved hands together.

“Oh, Mr. Stamp,” she said. “The misunderstandings between us only continue. All I meant to do was follow you until we got close enough so that I could find my own way to Gabriel. I realized you both might catch on to my presence, being what you are, but I was willing to take that chance.” She unclasped her hands. “I'm not inclined to
join
you. As I said, I'm following. It's what dymorrdians do best.”

“I don't take to being followed.”

“For the last few nights, it didn't do you any harm.”

Mags finally said something. “Leave her be, John. She doesn't offer any kind of threat to us.”

There was sympathy in her tone, but also a note of confusion. He'd never heard Mags like that, unless you counted her time in the asylum.

When he turned back to tell Taraline to scoot once and for all, she wasn't there anymore.

Mags started walking away from the loto cactus. “She'll be following us, whether you like it or not.”

“You should've just used that revolver. One good shot and the issue would've been resolved.”

“The last thing we need is to draw any shades to us,” she said, referring to the carrion eaters who more often than not attacked any nearby living beings once their appetites got going.

“Ah, shades,” Stamp said. “A Bloodlands specialty.”

“I hear some disgust in that. Does it mean you're rethinking a trip away from GBVille?”

This again. “If you want to go back, go.”

“Not without you.”

Her candor made him speechless, and instead of answering her, he just took more loto juice. Then, putting the shiv away, he used that crutch to move on, staring straight ahead of him, not thinking about how tired he was or how far they might have to go to get to the shack and a zoom bike or two.

She was right behind.

It wasn't a mile later, though, that Mags brightened up, pointing to a hill.

“There, just over the crest, as I remember it,” she said.

He didn't have to ask her what she was talking about.

Mags offered him a helping hand at the base of the hill, but with one lethal glance from Stamp, she withdrew the gesture.

“Excuse me then,” she said. “I'd hate to break a man's ego just so he can climb a little easier.”