Blood Rules (3 page)

I watched Pucci's treatment of Hana, who never fought back. I could never figure out how such a strong-minded woman loved such a jerk. She always seemed to hold her own against him, but she never left when he seemed to give her good reason to.

As I stood, my legs wobbled, and I sucked in a breath at the piercing reminders of the shift. Chaplin nudged me into a shaky walk, keeping up with my unsteady pace as we sought the boulders, then other camouflage.

Chaplin, my remaining friend. I knew that he also resented me sometimes, but we'd been through a lot together, including the Dallas attack and my dad's death. Hell, my father had trained Chaplin as an Intel Dog in the lab, way back when Dad had still been a scientist, so we'd both lost a father.

“Then there it is,” I said quietly so the rest wouldn't hear, although maybe Gabriel would pick up my words because of his heightened vampire hearing. “I didn't mean to put us in danger.”

You had a moment, and it's over,
Chaplin said.
We'll need to watch those visz screens to see if anyone comes round, but we're very well hidden, Mariah. You've just got to be more careful.

“Right. I just had a moment.” But there'd be more and more moments as the years wore on, and we both knew it.

The metal gray of the sky made Chaplin's brown coat look drab as we darted out of the shadows and into the safe cover behind rocks or more Joshua trees.

It'll be a long time before everyone forgets what happened back at the first homestead,
Chaplin said, chewing on his words.

“My lack of control made us vulnerable to Stamp, so I earned the wariness.”

Before the big showdown, I'd killed a few of Stamp's men when they'd encroached upon our territory, threatening us. We'd suspected they wanted our aquifer-enhanced dwellings, and, in my anonymous were-form, I'd made sure they didn't get them. Then Gabriel had appeared one night, wounded, and Chaplin had invited him into our home. My dog had been under his sway, but Chaplin had overcome it, manipulating Gabriel into confronting Stamp for our sakes. But I, and the rest of the community, hadn't been able to stomach his sacrifice, and we'd gone to the showdown to defend him.

So if you went right back to the beginning, the death and destruction had all been because of me.

Mariah, there's always . . .
Chaplin began, then cut himself off.

I wasn't dumb enough to believe that my dog had an unfinished thought. He was luring me into something. Intel Dogs had been genetically bred and trained to be practical and lethal when the time called for it. He was my best weapon and, sometimes, my worst.

“Spit it out,” I said. A sand-rabbit leaped out of some brush in front of us, causing a rustle.

Everyone ahead of us startled toward the sound, even if they were under the cover of the shadows, but when they saw it was only a little flit of an animal, they moved at a faster clip. Anything could be a Shredder or even another preter who'd deserted the hubs. We didn't need to be discovered by either one.

My heart was blipping in my veins because of the interruption. “You gonna say it, Chaplin?”

I could've sworn my dog smiled at my vinegar. It meant that I was fully back to being human. For now, anyway.

There's always hope for a cure,
he said.

And that was all, but that final word had the power to give me pause.

A were-cure—that was what he meant, and he'd been mentioning it in private ever since we'd moved into our new digs. He hadn't ever expanded on his thoughts, but it was as if he'd been watering a seed every time he muttered it. Although it was a ridiculous idea, his comments had made me think. They also made me ache that much more, and not in my joints and muscles, either.

“There's no cure for monsters.” I'd discussed this with Gabriel before he even knew what I was, and Chaplin had been in the same damned room. Obviously, this rebuttal bore repeating. “Stories about cures are just legends, and every bad guy who doesn't believe that monsters were eradicated probably uses the rumors to lure what's left of our kind into the open. That way, they can beat the location of any hidden preter communities out of the idiots who take the bait.”

What if you're wrong about there being a real cure?
Chaplin asked.

And there it was—he was about to grow that seed into something I'd have to confront right here and now, fresh after losing control to the point where I hadn't even thought to hide while I was running outside.

“Dad tried every concoction he could think of on me,” I said, “and nothing worked. And if he couldn't figure it out, who could?”

Up ahead, hills rose out of the ground like the curves of a serpent's spine. Pucci and Hana had already run ahead to access a trapdoor to a tunnel that led to our homes, but it looked to me as if Gabriel had slowed down before going inside. The moonlight skimmed over his beaten white shirt and pants. His close-cropped hair looked darker than I knew it actually was, and his face, with that slightly crooked nose, had gone back to its normal stillness—like the façade of an abandoned house, the windows gray and cloudy.

His head was cocked.

Was he listening?

His possible interest lit something in me. Hope.

Actual hope.

If I improved my disposition, would that make him look at me differently? Would he feel whatever he'd started to feel for me back before the truth about Abby had come out?

Sorrow and anger began to simmer deep in my belly, but I tamped it down before it resulted in another change . . . and in more trouble.

More than anyone, I needed some kind of cure, and the only one I could think of right now was for me to end my life. I'd already tried that after Gabriel had found out the truth about me, but he'd stopped me for some reason. Now, I still figured he would've been better off.

I realized that, maybe, Chaplin was really going at this subject right now because Gabriel was near, and my response might be affected by that. It was also becoming more obvious that my dog might've asked me to come to this new homestead not only because he loved me, but because he'd wanted to lead me to accept the idea of a cure, all while making it seem as if I'd agreeably arrived there with minimal assistance.

Too smart for his own good, this dog.

If there
is
a cure,
Chaplin said,
what would you do to find it?

“If it were true, I'd do anything.” The comment was out before I could even think, but I knew with all my heart that it was what I'd been feeling for a long time now.

“What do you mean?”

I recalled how Gabriel had tried to slay me after hearing about Abby's death. How, beneath his words and actions, he hated me even now because I was a killer who couldn't help herself.

I suppose, in life, there's always a moment where you run into the wall of yourself. That was what I was feeling now, the crash of knowing there's nowhere else you can go because you can't turn back.

“As I mentioned,” I said, “I'd do whatever it takes.”

Up ahead, Gabriel glanced partway over his shoulder until he met my gaze.

His eyes . . . red glows in the night.

I held my breath, then used my energies to think to him, willing his vampire mind to pick up my inner voice.

His only answer was to turn round and slip into the cavern entrance, leaving me behind with an Intel Dog who gave me a sympathetic look, then stranded me, too.

G
abriel had no sand-picking idea why he'd even slowed down enough to listen to Chaplin and Mariah talking about a cure.

He'd almost gone looking for one himself after learning about Abby's death, but he'd stayed in the Badlands. Who even knew where to search?

Talk of one was nothing more than typical Badlander blabbity, anyway, he thought, making his way through the rockfaced tunnels, which got cooler the lower he went.

Nothing more than something to make everyone feel better while their world fell apart here, just as much as it had everywhere else.

Chaplin loped past Gabriel, who could scent the were-creatures in the main room: clean sweat on skin, dirt worked into simple clothing. Gabriel could even hear the blood running freely through their veins, a trait that separated them from the urban hub normals, who ate such shitty, processed food that their bodies sounded like cell-clogged traffic jams.

Then he heard Mariah, who'd obviously rushed down the tunnels to catch up with him. He always knew her from the rest of the Badlanders, even from a distance, because her angry vital sounds resembled thunder in her veins—a sensation that rattled him, too, though he'd come such a long way in accepting what he was after Stamp had made him face it.

A vampire. A monster who'd never stop wondering if there was more to him than just hunger.

As Mariah's boot steps echoed against the walls and twined through him, he braced himself, his baser instincts urging him to turn around and grab her so he could bury his face against her skin. It happened all the time when she was around, his fangs prodding his gums, his gaze going a deep red. But now, with how he'd tried to give her the peace, with him being inside her mind . . . ?

Gabriel fisted his hands and fought his urges.

He even won himself back a bit, until she came to within about ten feet of him. Tremors lined his veins as he felt that link he'd forged with her when they'd lain together and she'd shown him that maybe he wasn't all monster, that maybe he still did have it in him to be human.

If he was the very definition of what everyone thought a monster was, it'd be much easier to turn his back on her right now.

Her voice flooded him. “Did you hear me and Chaplin talking out there?”

“Does it matter?” Her earthy scent was crazing him, but he told himself she was toxic.

That helped, and he finally turned around to see her standing in the midst of the solar-battery lights edging the tunnel.

Something like emotion tumbled through Gabriel as her body rhythms pulled at him. She was so young, only twenty-three in human years, yet only a few years old as a newer, uncontrolled were-creature. She looked innocent, like what people would've called a waif, with her red hair sawed to her jaw by a knife, her wide, apologetic green eyes. But, then again, she stood like an outlaw, her slim, tall body stiff, her arms at her sides, her hands hovering near the holsters covering her torn, laced-up trousers. Her baggy white shirt was ripped at the shoulders, too—evidence of the latest change that'd almost consumed her.

Her heartbeat played like confused music, and that was what got him the most. He'd heard the same haunting tune in Abby before she'd left him in the hubs, disappearing one night. He'd gone off in search of her, never knowing what she was. He hadn't even known about Mariah or the rest of the community, either, seeing as were-creatures had their powers only when they underwent the change.

They hid themselves so well.

Obviously sensing his desire to get away from her, Mariah lowered her gaze, and it struck Gabriel hard, because though he despised what she'd done, she practically cried out to be saved.

He almost laughed at that. Mariah, a vicious werewolf in need of rescue.

He made himself talk to her. “Are you so at the end of your rope that you're willing to pin your hopes on rumors of a cure out there?”

“I said as much.”

“Then you won't mind my adding that pursuing a false dream is an epically terrible idea.”

“At least it'd take me away from the community.”

Gabriel allowed himself a chopping laugh. “That's Pucci talking. He'd like nothing more than to get you away from here, but did you hear him when he said that if Stamp caught you, you'd be a liability?”

“I'd never reveal where we're hiding now.”

“Not easily.” He'd give her that. If anything, Mariah was loyal. She'd lied to him, as well as many others, but she'd done it out of protective instinct for herself
and
her community. She was a first-rate deceiver, yet he doubted that'd be enough to bolster her if Stamp ever got hold of her.

“All I want,” she said, her tone strangled, “is to keep us safe, Gabriel. If that means I have to chase some wild dream, I'd consider it.”

“Supposed cures aren't any kind of answer.” He decided to push his point, then leave. “When I was made a vampire, I was converted by a crusader who turned people because she believed it'd save them from the ills of the new world. Her faith was based on the fact that monsters seemed to have immunity to the mosquito epidemics and everything else that dwindled the earth's numbers, and I was one of her lucky lambs. That was
her
idea of a cure.”

Even back when he'd been speaking to Mariah on friendly terms, he'd never told her all this before. He'd recently had chats with others in the community, but they hadn't killed Abby.

Mariah opened her mouth, as if to offer compassion, but he capped off the chatter.

“Of course, my creator left me with nothing more than a near-useless pamphlet that described nothing but the joys of vampirism and not a whole lot else. So, if you do go out there, Mariah, I expect you'll get nothing but that, too, yet without the slim paperwork.”