Blood Rules (19 page)

After Gabriel and Mariah walked around some more, they finally came into view of a massive building with red stucco and steeples that rested on the slope of a bland hill.

They traded a glance from their spot below it, near a streamlined structure with GENERAL BENEFACTORS embossed on the gleaming overhang.

“What do you think?” Mariah asked.

There was a catch in her voice, as well as in the connection between them. Gabriel didn't want to break her heart by telling her anything other than this might be the place that could hold a big change for her . . . and their . . . future.

“Looks like it could work for an asylum,” he said. “But I sure wish we had that psychic with us now so he could tell us for certain.”

He smelled something nearby—the familiar scent—and he put a hand on Mariah's shoulder. She knew better than to ask him what was wrong as he kept still.

That smell . . .

The necropolis?

Then he saw a figure blending with the shadows of the office building where they were standing.

A veil.

Gloves on the hands.

Taraline.

Without calling on his vampire speed, he made fast time over to where she was just now disappearing, as if knowing she had been caught. Mariah kept up with him.

“That'd better not be you,” he said to the pillar where Taraline had ducked.

“Don't be angry,” she said, her low voice bouncing off the concrete. “I knew you'd be coming here.”

“I told you—”

“I told
you
I could blend. And guess what? There are a lot of others like me who know how to do the same. It's just that everyone is too busy to notice us.”

“Taraline,” Mariah said, half-chiding, half-accepting that this was how the woman wanted it and this was how it'd be.

Taraline's gloved hand appeared from behind the pillar, and she pointed toward the hill. She was telling them that they'd come to the asylum.

A pump of profound happiness pistoned in the link between him and Mariah, and he traded a glance with his forbetter-or-worse partner. She was smiling to beat the band.

Their connection expanded even more until Gabriel stepped away, into the shadows toward Taraline.

Mariah didn't follow, maybe because she knew it was best for them both if he removed himself.

Taraline was already talking. “You need me. Admit it.”

Gabriel grunted. He'd give her that much.

Warily, he reached forward, clasping her gloved hand. She sucked in a breath—she didn't have vampire sight so she hadn't seen him coming.

He didn't have to say anything, because their joined hands said it all. They were in this together.

Mariah's voice owned him just as much as her presence always did. “Gabriel . . . ?”

He could feel her trepidation, as if she were thinking that he was going to hurt Taraline for betraying their instructions. Before he could dwell on the irony of Mariah trying to hold
him
back, he released Taraline.

And maybe he was also recalling the dymorrdia.

Anger burned in him because remembering the disease had been too simple.

But Taraline didn't seem to mind. She was already planning their next steps, and Gabriel could hear Mariah's vitals beginning to pump with the same excitement. She stepped into the shadows, and Gabriel's chest clenched.

“I'll contact my friend discreetly,” Taraline said. “I'm pretty sure she'll meet me, even just to see what became of me. She was immune to dymorrdia in the first place, and she was never afraid. From her, we might get descriptions of the asylum's inner workings, details. But you'll have to put your work in, too, Gabriel, if I bring her to you.”

Swaying. That was what she was talking about.

By now, Mariah's blood was practically singing to him, and he couldn't deny her this.

“When do you think you'll have your friend ready for me?” Gabriel asked.

But there was no answer, because Taraline had already left, melding with the shadows, gone just like that.

After a second, Mariah said, “This is it, then. No going back.”

In the darkness, he could see her with his vampire sight, like the outline of a ghost who couldn't see him back. The near voyeurism sent his blood to tingling, and from the way she sucked in a breath, he knew she felt it, too.

When he pulled away, she closed her eyes, as if wishing he would've stayed.

He headed toward the subtle light of night. “Let's just hope the course of our adventure is a little more predictable than Taraline. I don't know if I can take any more surprises.”

He would recall those words later, when Mariah's comm came alive with the last voice they'd expected to hear in the hubs.

G
abriel and I were on the road back to our resting place near Little Romania when we heard the voice crackling over the comm.

“Mariah!”

The oldster?

I almost dropped the comm after I dumped my backpack and brought out the device.

“You there?” the old man asked. “God-all,
answer
me, girl!”

I darted behind a boulder, Gabriel right behind me, avoiding the parade of vehicles going to and from the hub.

“Oldster?” I waited a moment, trading an anxious look with Gabriel. My heartbeat seemed to ping out of my chest and into him.

A garble of static came back at me. Or maybe it was the oldster's relieved and tetchy laugh. Then, “We need to find you, quick. Chaplin's having a hard time tracking you here near the hubs.”

Oh, Chaplin.

I swallowed, my throat aching. It stopped me from asking why they were here instead of out there, but that wasn't as important as giving the oldster the location for our hideaway.

Afterward, he broke off without further comment.

Gabriel and I rushed to our site before the oldster and the rest of them could get there, but we took care to keep blending with the hubites all the way.

“Not to be base,” Gabriel said as we rushed down the hill, him a few feet behind me, “but do you think the scent of Taraline's belongings masked our smells so Chaplin couldn't find us?”

“Could be.”

In my human form, I wasn't terribly offended by her scent. Taraline had even used the masking effects of the tawnyvale herb to freshen herself up before we'd left the necropolis. But to Gabriel the full-time vampire, she was off-putting, although I didn't know if it was because she'd had dymorrdia or because of what the disease had brought about on her.

We arrived at our boulder cave about a half hour before everyone else did, and, boy, did they ever enter at a gallop. Chaplin just about knocked me backward as he said hello.

While he licked my face, I saw Gabriel exchanging hearty greetings with the group, who were wearing heat suits. They took their masks off one by one, and that was when I noticed that someone was missing.

“Where's Sammy?” I asked.

Chaplin stopped licking me as a fraught second passed, and even in that stitch of time, I knew. It was in the way the oldster stared at the ground, his heat mask in his hands. It was in the way Hana closed her eyes and how Pucci touched her shoulder and how Chaplin tucked his muzzle against my neck.

Pucci was the one who said, “It was Stamp.”

“Stamp,” I repeated, as if I didn't comprehend, even though I actually did.

Then a hunger shot through me—anger. A thirst for vengeance. A second later, I realized that I wasn't even the one from whom the turbulence was originating.

Gabriel. He was as stiff as death, his jaw clenched, his eyes an echo of red.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

My own body heat began to simmer, but I held it down as Pucci told us about the government robot, the stealth attack from Stamp, how Chaplin had used my scent to follow my and Gabriel's progress as the group sped across the nowheres to get away from Stamp.

A bad guy. Just another one who needed to suffer for the sins he brought upon others.

“I guess,” the oldster said, “that we all need a cure now as much as you, Mariah. Shredders like Stamp have a code about not killing humans, don't they? We figured that, if we became people again, that would surely keep him off our backs.”

He wore a frown, and I knew why. The oldster liked who he was already. He had no big desire to be human, if a true-born even had a prayer of it.

“Is Stamp still on your trail?” I asked.

The oldster set down his heat mask to the side of the cave. “Your guess is as good as ours. He masks his scent from us so we don't know where he is.”

Hana said, “And we have not seen him since the outpost.”

“But,” Pucci said, “Stamp must have a mechanized scent recognizer. We think he's an expert tracker, besides. That's why he was on us like sweat on skin. We tried to take care of the problem by . . . finding . . . some heat suits in that outpost, just so we could travel by day and get here all the speedier.”

Hana was already unbuttoning her gear. “We have been subsisting on prey blood every night, and left our entire supply of water in place of the suits we took. It would be unconscionable to strand someone without items of value in their stead.”

It seemed as if she felt guilty about stealing, but I surmised that, in the bigger picture, my neighbors had needed those suits more than someone in that outpost would have. I had seen how the occupants could burrow during the day to avoid the sun, but they seemed to lack water. Frankly, the burgled people might have gotten the better end of the trade for the time being.

But I had good reason for guilt, too. “The robot that pinpointed the homestead . . . It might've been out there because of me.”

Hana had stepped out of her suit, revealing that she wasn't wearing her robes underneath. Gabriel turned away from the sight, but no one else cared much. We were used to each other's bodies in a functional, were-creature manner.

“Or the robot might have been there because of Stamp,” she said. “Sammy had told us that robots were only recently being put into use again, and the one that found us might have been part of a first wave of new surveillance. The government seems to really be getting back on its feet to take care of the smaller details.”

I sent her an uncertain smile, thanking her for standing up for me, and Pucci took hold of her bare shoulder.

But no one's forgiveness was going to make me forget Sammy. Quiet Sammy, who didn't ever do much to draw attention to himself. Sammy, who went about being useful without a need for recognition. I was a lone wolf in more than one way, and I hadn't hunted with him. I hadn't much hung out and shot the breeze in human form with him, either. But he'd always brought me meat after hunting during the full moon, during the times I was restrained. He'd always made sure I was comfortable in the chains that my neighbors bound me in to keep me under control.

Sammy.

By now, Chaplin had gone straight to Taraline's bag of belongings. All this time, he'd obviously been waiting for a good moment to cock his head at me, pretty much asking whom we'd picked up during our trek.

Time to put Sammy aside. As it was, thoughts of him were going to keep me awake during our day rest, so there'd be time enough for me to spend private hours with my sorrows.

I gave my neighbors the short version of our trip: how Gabriel and I had found the psychic at the outpost—or how he'd sort of found us, more likely. How he'd told us about the asylums and Taraline.

A wave of excitement traveled between all of us. It was a nervous type of trill, mostly made up of a new desperation for that cure.

Then Pucci said, “A psychic. I wish we had discovered him, too. He might've been able to tell us where Stamp is now.”

The oldster was taking off the rest of his heat suit. “We can just assume that the Shredder is on our heels.”

I supposed that when they were out of were-creature form, they'd tried to pass themselves off as humans who'd been traveling between hubs while wearing those heat suits, and they hadn't taken them off when the atmosphere had ceased to become hostile enough to need such gear. They'd probably switched off the protective functions, though. Plus, I suspected that the suits were maybe even hiding their scents from Stamp's tracker. Maybe. But the clothing would draw attention here in the hub, and that was the last thing we needed.

While Chaplin kept nosing through Taraline's stuff in the corner, I told them about meeting her in the necropolis. I thought it best to omit the part where she caught Gabriel and me in the herb house and highlighted how she was even now in the hub gathering information. All in all, I made it sound like Gabriel and I had thought it best to bring her with us, seeing as the psychic had urged us to seek her out in the first place. I added that she knew we were all monsters because we'd had to speed here to the hub in our basest forms, but Gabriel had seen in her mind that she wouldn't betray us.

The oldster went along with my explanation fine enough. The others looked skeptical, but what else could they do? Taraline was the psychic's chosen one, and we needed her.

Maybe my neighbors were too worn out to ask a lot of questions, but the oldster, at least, was already lying on the ground, half asleep, the heat suit acting as his pillow. Probably he was still weighed down from any remnants of his silver poisoning, which would disappear within a couple of days, I suspected. Maybe he hadn't healed fully during his time in were-form, or maybe he was just plumb spent.

Chaplin had nipped some clothing from Taraline's bag and dragged it over to the oldster. It looked like a black pair of pants and a shirt.