Blood Rules (23 page)

“Even a short time in the nowheres makes me realize that the hubs are bullshit, John,” she said. “Just look at them. Makes me happy that I never swallowed a drug in my life.”

Stamp didn't have to tell Mags that the dumber the populace, the easier they were to control. In Shredder training, he'd read old sci-fi literature and seen movies to study the notion.

At first, he'd just told himself that humans could be misguided, that most of them could snap out of it if given the chance. He was human, too, and he wanted to believe there was something worthy about his race, even if they had the propensity to willingly lose all reason and become things like monster sympathizers.

But the more Stamp watched the thugs with the hammers, hooting and hollering and flying in the face of the humanity Stamp had sworn to defend as a Shredder, the more he thought that no one but ex-hubites like Mags and him seemed to get it.

A blip flickered on his scent tracker screen. Then it blipped again, only to disappear before he could get a good read on a location.

Somewhere on the west edge of GBVille . . .

Stamp picked up his bag, which contained small weapons, and walked toward a ladder that would take him and Mags back to the ground. In his eagerness to get going, he reached for her, brushing her wrist.

She startled away from him, and he held up his hand, feeling a weird tingle on his fingertips.

Mags gave him a look that meant she was either angry or kind of pleased. He wasn't certain which it was, but he wasn't about to analyze it.

Just as he was willing his heart rate to a deliberate Shredderpaced crawl, Mags rolled her eyes at him and started down the ladder.

“Let's find our scrubs,” she said.

Somehow, he thought she was mocking him.

But it wasn't a Shredder's priority to determine why that'd be, and he went down the ladder, too, on the trail once again.

A
s I and my neighbors huddled beneath the outer brick wall of the asylum, I kept glancing up at the dark sky, where the new moon hid. In eleven nights, a full one might rule me again if tonight was a bust.

Gabriel hunched a few yards away, where I could barely detect him with my human sight. Subdued brightness from beyond the walls, where the asylum bled light from its windows, was my main source of illumination.

It showed me how Gabriel remained a few feet from the rest of us, probably because we were all as naked as newborns. Our bareness was necessary because we'd be changing real soon, if everything went according to plan.

As silent and still as always, he watched the top of the wall. He was listening, anticipating sentinels. Shredders.

The rest of us—Chaplin, the oldster, Hana, Pucci—were waiting for
the
signal, which would come in the detonation of a power blaster. Taraline was much farther down the length of the asylum's wall, as near to the hub as possible, and she'd told us what to look for when she unleashed the device.

That we'd definitely know when it hit.

So we counted the seconds, listening for any noises in the building beyond this tall wall . . . or from behind us where anyone might've seen our group edge up the hill or had found our clothing behind a mass of rocks.

The noises never came. Hell, my heartbeats were way louder than anything else. My breathing seemed to dominate, too, because it was so heavy and sharp.

Pucci released a near-frantic whisper. “What if Taraline detonated both blasters already and they just aren't working?”

“Pipe down,” the oldster said.

“I'm just—”

Hana said, “You are only nervous, Antonio.”

He chuffed. “That's because we're gonna die, and when that happens to a man, he tends to get—”

The oldster must've clapped a hand over Pucci's mouth because he didn't finish.

I turned back to the wall again, then sucked in my laden breath when I found that Gabriel had slid up right next to me. I hadn't heard him or felt him. Then again, I'd all but shut out my perception of our link, focusing instead on my adrenaline.

He put his fingers under my chin, directing me to look into the almost feral shine of his eyes so he wouldn't have to speak out loud.
There's something up there, all right. I can't scent it, but I can hear a hint of it. Something as careful as a Shredder.

Then he seemed to recall that I wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing, and his gaze flared to a spark of red. He backed away, quiet and smooth.

My pulse flooded me, sending prickling heat over my skin, making me sweaty, my flesh waving with the threat of my change. My heart twisted round in me, thudding with a chipping cadence.

Thank-all Chaplin was on the other side of me, nudging me, as if relating that Gabriel had opened his thoughts to him, too, and we needed to be frosty when it came to Shredders . . . or anything else up there.

What I'd give for Gabriel to be able to fly as a vampire. He could've done a check to see for sure what we might be encountering....

As another heartbeat crashed through me, I realized that one silver bullet, one slice of a decapitating blade, was all it'd take for my dreams of a better future to die.

Something landed next to me, and I leaned away from it, my skin blasting with change-heat.

When another smack on the ground followed, I realized that the objects were coming from above us, as if someone were peering over the wall and making debris from the brick shift and fall.

I didn't even have a chance to look up, because that was when it came.

An explosion of sorts that altered the atmosphere—a crack that made me close my eyes for a second. I just knew that, round us, batteries were frying, transformers were shutting down, and generators were whining off.

Power, dying.

The light that had filtered upward, just behind the walls—the illumination from the asylum's windows—disappeared, too, leaving us stranded in the dark.

My body pulled at itself, beginning the usual melting and thrusting, hair pricking my skin as my form lengthened, taller, stronger, while my sight expanded with emerging blue, allowing me to see better.

I panted as I looked up again to see a shape flitting away from the top of the wall.

Shredder?

Thoughts jumbled, I quivered, restraining myself from changing all the way. We'd all decided to fight off a full were-turn at first so we could keep our human wits about us, and I pushed back my animal instincts. Our attack depended on smarts for us to detect any and all cures. We might need to talk to other preters as well as the employees, too, and if we let our monsters fully take over, bloodlust might win out, and we'd mindlessly feed instead of doing our best to investigate.

I heard Gabriel hissing beside me, then say, “Go!”

Taking Chaplin by the scruff of the neck and putting him on my back, where he latched onto me, I backed up to gain momentum, then jumped, grabbing onto the jutting bricks of the wall.

Then we climbed and climbed.

It almost felt as if I were removed from my own body, half-watching myself go to work from a near distance. That meant my monster was coming, and I struggled all the more to stave it off as the others followed us up the wall, in half were-form, too, while Gabriel scrabbled up just ahead of me, faster, lighter. A quicksilver vampire.

He disappeared over the top of the wall, and I bit back a wild howl, dying to get loose.

As we breached the top, Chaplin sprang off me, sailing through the air until he landed on the walkway. I followed, pouncing, then crouching, peering round at the muddled blue-tinged expanse of empty walkway in my half-were vision. It would've been so much clearer if I'd let myself change all the way. My lungs might've even allowed me to breathe better, too.

The others finally made it up, half-monsters, half-humans with their eyes glowing, wide and alert. They still had the features of people, but with the hint of animals: the oldster with his flesh hardened to semishell consistency, his tail beginning to emerge, his hands half-pincered while other appendages emerged from his sides; Hana, who bounded off the wall in a stiff-legged jump to all four of her feet, leaping about, her skin covered by dark, gray-brown hair with white patches, her large mule deer ears moving constantly to catch sounds; Pucci and his huge, lethally tipped antlers and tannish brown hide.

Like Gabriel and Chaplin, we sniffed. Besides the lowlord bonfire smoke seething off the hub, there was a sharper burning smell—the aroma of cooked hardware. I thought the air even felt a bit warmer, with all the frying and destruction.

Then we were off, canvassing the walkway. My partly heightened hearing picked up the yells coming from the darkness to the right, where the asylum squatted.

Men bellowing about the lights and generators and . . .

Monsters?

The information Jo had gotten us had mentioned force field–protected cages....

Again, my monster prodded me to succumb to it all the way, but I got to all fours and loped along the walkway instead, knowing the stolen blueprints by heart, knowing the most likely place for a cure would be in the labs at the center of the asylum, beyond the cell blocks.

We were all moving right along when Gabriel blurred ahead of me, then stopped, sticking out his arm and winding it round my waist to yank me back. Then he blurred over to the oldster, Pucci and Hana and Chaplin, stopping them, too, and I got to my four feet, ready to attack whatever he'd sensed.

Didn't take long for me to see our newest problem.

Four scentless . . . things . . . stood about twenty yards down the walkway. Even during this split second of witnessing them, I knew they weren't Shredders—at least, not like Stamp.

“Fuck,” Pucci muttered out of his elklike mouth with its already-sharpened teeth. He could've articulated more in his half-form, but not in the face of this situation.

“Angels?” Hana said, as if profoundly fearful of these sentinels.

My hair bristled as I faced the shapes, who really were like angels dressed in white, with hair so light it glowed in my near-preter vision. Two of the beings boasted long curls; two had short, cherubic hair. All of them had big clear eyes, reminding me of some Japanese dolls my father had kept in his collection—little darling toys with pointed chins and delicate noses.

But these darlings had what looked to be dark wings at their backs. It was only after a second that I realized they were wearing chest punchers, which would clamp onto a preter—especially a vampire—and split open its chest, then extract its heart before destroying the organ.

In my half-were sight, I could've sworn the sentinels also had a symbol burned into their foreheads. It looked like the peace sign.

I didn't have time to confirm this, because, without warning, something rushed at me and the group, banging into us.

I tumbled over the ground, more surprised than hurt as I hit the wall alongside Chaplin.

What had hit us? I hadn't seen anything coming....

My dog barked low to me.
Mind powers. These things are more than Shredders....

Like the rest of the group, I sprang back to my feet, ready to go at them, but I didn't see the sentinels anywhere now.

Where'd they gone?

Onto one of the towers nearby?

Into thin air . . . ?

Chaplin bumped into me.
You're the strongest were. You've still got to go in, even if the rest of us don't make it.

“He's right.” Gabriel came to the front of me. “Whatever these things are, they're using psychokinesis.”

“But are they Shredders?” Pucci garbled out of his half-elk mouth just before grinding his teeth, agitated. I could tell he was eager to go full animal, too.

The half-scorpion oldster ducked as Pucci swung round his antlers while scanning for the sentinels.

Hana said, “Shredders or not, one of us has to make it inside.”

There wasn't any time to plan, no time to debate. As my body thudded, I pressed back my urges, needing my mind far more than a good, raw meal....

I looked at Gabriel, who'd gone entirely vampire, with exposed fangs, wide red eyes, the works. For a moment, he opened up his gaze and I fell in, hearing his thoughts.

Go for the asylum with Chaplin,
he mind-said.
That leaves four of us to hold off these four guards. If we don't catch up to you, do what you have to and we'll meet you at the rendezvous point.

I let him read me.
But you wouldn't have to be invited into a public place like an asylum, right? You can come, too—

He knew that I didn't want to leave him behind, so he took desperate measures.

He showed me thoughts of Abby, knowing that it'd be the cruelest sight imaginable. Knowing that when I'd killed her, I'd done it because I'd had to defend my status and existence against a werewolf who'd challenged me.

Blond, beautiful Abby . . . just as
he'd
seen her.

Jealousy throttled me, the memory of her blood covering me and making my skin bubble.

Making me remember why I needed a cure.

And it got even worse as I saw the sentinels suddenly reappear on the walkway behind Gabriel, just where they'd been standing only minutes before. It was as if they'd come out of nowhere . . . or maybe they'd just hidden themselves against the pale expanse of the walkway.

Gabriel saw the look on my half-human face and, as if he wanted to avoid the devastation in me—or as if he wanted to forget Abby—he whipped round, then zoomed toward the sentinels.

It tore apart the pain of the connection between us, and I gasped.