In Blood We Trust (16 page)

The oldster sighed, and I saw what kind of wear and tear me and Gabriel had given him. Didn't he know that we hadn't had any choice
but
to run?

And we'd do it again if we had to.

He motioned for me to get into the cell while Keesie held open the door for me to enter. My vampire escorts paused but then let me go. I had the feeling that the vamp women would be keeping lookout for me and probably Gabriel, too.

I was even sure the vampires on the perimeter were sending out a search party for him by now. Would Gabriel sense them and flee from that cave?

“Can we have some privacy?” the oldster asked the others as Keesie shut the door on me.

With some reluctance, the stone creature and Hiram left us. McKellan and his two vampire women lingered just long enough to show me that they weren't abandoning me, even if it seemed to be that way.

I stayed back from the bars and jerked my chin toward the residents of the other cells—three in all.

“Who're they?”

“Demons.”

I'd been right. “This isn't quite privacy, oldster, having them in here still.”

“And this isn't quite locking you up, either, when all you have to contend with are these bars.”

He motioned toward my cell door, which would hardly hold me if I had a mind to change into another form, get up a head of steam, then barge out. The silver might give any other were-creature pause, but I'd get over it quicker than most, thanks to 562.

He added, “Putting you in here is just a formality, and you can be sure the Civils are going to be back with some bindings as well as a deep desire to speak candidly with you.”

“But you already pointed out that I didn't have any part of the killing.”

“That's what I keep telling them.”

So I'd been right about the oldster, too. I inferred that he'd indeed protected my reputation by telling everyone that Gabriel had made off with me.

“He didn't do anything wrong, Michael.”

He glanced about, lowered his voice. Demons weren't supposed to have heightened hearing in those human bodies, so we could talk. “They're on the warpath, those Civils, and they require appeasement.”

“Sounds like you've been walking on your tiptoes the whole while. Especially when it comes to Neelan.”

The oldster blew out a breath. “They think he's out in the hub searching for Gabriel.”

“
Did
Neelan have any part in the killing?”

He shook his head. “Vampires went into his head and saw that he's innocent. He was close enough to hear the victim's screams, though, and to be one of the first to crucifix-burn the attacking vamps. I'm only keeping him locked away so he don't cause a riot, what with all the mouthing off he's been doing.”

“Do you have
any
leads?”

“No. And the more time it takes to get to the bottom of this, the more fiery those Civils will be. They want justice right damn now.”

I couldn't deny them that, either—not when I'd gone after my own justice in Dallas.

But I didn't regret it, and the oldster must've seen something in me that looked bold, unafraid,
un
like the scared little girl I used to be.

“Mariah,” he said, “I get the feeling you came back here because you wanted to take the temperature of the hub before Gabriel returns. But you'd do well to just tell me where he is.”

“Why—so you can lock him up, too, even if he's innocent?”

“That
would
be the most diplomatic move . . . for all of us.”

And there it stood—the oldster on one side, me and Gabriel on the other.

My throat got tight as I refused to speak.

“Girl.” The oldster loomed near the bars. His skin was ruddy under his longish whiskers. “I don't think you grasp the enormity of this situation.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.”

It bothered me to even say that, because Chaplin, my friends, and 562 were important, too.

Just not as vital as Gabriel.

There was a new emptiness in me, right near my heart, at a corner of it. The oldster didn't seem to care as he turned away, toward the slap of paws hitting the floor of the corridor.

Chaplin appeared, halting next to the oldster. At first, my dog looked so happy to see me that I reached out through the bars to him.

But then the oldster said, “Maybe you can talk sense into her, boy.”

It only took that for Chaplin to get the same look as the oldster in his eyes—ragged disappointment, helplessness at what to do with me. It hadn't even taken a second for that to happen, because I'd done so much to let him down lately.

My dog barked at the oldster, no translation required.

I lent one, anyway, whispering, “He wants you to leave us for a moment.”

The oldster made a thwarted sound but still abided by my dog's wishes.

As soon as the oldster cleared out, Chaplin started in, yowling, woofing, and chuffing at me. In short, nagging.

Yup, he knew that I'd accompanied Gabriel willingly. And there was no way my dog would tolerate a big lie from me, even if I had it in me these days to give one.

“We went to Dallas,” I said, finally feeling a bit of mortification. Regret.

Chaplin dropped to his belly, as if his legs had lost every ounce of strength. My heart went down with him.

He had to know that someday, I'd end up here. It was where I'd always been headed, and there was no stopping it.

Right?

“Chaplin . . .”

Dallas,
he whined, and it stung like sharp wire whisking right through me.
Not Dallas.

I didn't offer more, and that spoke volumes to Chaplin. He didn't have to ask what I'd done, although I wanted to explain.

“You always said that our bad guys got away with so much,” I said. “That someday, they'd get their just deserts—”

Chaplin jumped and barked at me with such vitriol that I moved back from the bars. He barked again and again, and with every admonishment I shrank away all the more.

But it was his final few barks that stole my breath clean out of me.

“Chaplin—”

When he turned his back on me and ran off, I knew in my sore heart that he truly meant it.

I sat on the cell floor, where all the adoring vampire smiles in the world wouldn't fill what Chaplin had left gaping inside me.

G
abriel was so far back in the cave where he was waiting for Mariah that he could feel the darkness in his very bones. His vampire vision cut through the dimness with a faint red glow and, to pass the time, he'd started to amuse himself with a bat that had winged through the cave earlier, when the colony had been disturbed by his presence.

He'd isolated just this one from the others with the force of his mind, holding it frozen, its eyes red in Gabriel's view as the animal struggled to get free.

He wasn't going to harm it. He was only curious. And it was as good a time as any to exercise his mind, as the older vampires—especially the one named McKellan—said he should.

What's in you?
he thought to the mammal, reaching inside its head.

Its thoughts were impulses, not a language, and Gabriel felt the bat's instinctive fear rather than having to translate it: the urge to get from one place to another . . . The need to stay warm, to sleep, to merely go from this moment to the next . . .

Was this all that Gabriel would think about, too, one day, after he'd become full vampire? Would he be so tuned into rote survival that there wasn't much else to him?

He let the bat go, and it flapped away. He waited, knowing only a short time had passed since Mariah had gone.

Was she inside GBVille yet?

Was she okay?

Then Gabriel heard something in the otherwise silent cave: a sliding movement, the brush of clothing.

At first, he mistook the sounds for the ones he'd heard on the night of his escape from GBVille, when he'd caught something creeping around the General Benefactors building and wondered if the Witches were still about.

But these sounds weren't quite the same.

These hardly even existed. Instead, they were almost like what you might hear in a dream—the sort where you woke up and asked yourself whether what you'd just experienced was fake or real.

He tilted his head, listening, listening. Realizing now that it was only another vampire who'd come into this cave.

There'd been good odds that his kin would search him out. And, of course, they would've gotten here before Mariah returned, after they saw her enter GBVille.

“I had a feeling you'd have no problem finding me if you put your energy to it,” he said into the near darkness.

The vampire showed himself.

It was the oldest one, McKellan, who didn't look a night past thirty. He'd lived as a human back when a great queen had died in England and left her throne to a Scottish king who wasn't even her son. McKellan had fought in world wars as a vampire, watched the years go by in cycles of destruction and rebuilding. Eventually, he'd come to this country, laboring his way across the States, just like other humans who'd wanted new chances, too. He'd pretended to be one of them—talking like them, working and laughing like them—until he'd been captured by a lucky Shredder years and years later and stored in this asylum for study.

Long ago, Gabriel had seen an image on the Nets of what a kind, young god might look like—a man with shining dark hair and a smooth, understanding face sitting on a throne, his hand reaching out to a crowd of children. Except for the Vandyke beard, that very picture was McKellan in his beige hemp clothing, gazing upon Gabriel with serene pity right now.

The eldest vampire's Old American accent was flawless. “Your timing could not be better, Gabriel. We were going to institute a weekly Night of Rest for the first time tomorrow, and I would have found it trying to travel out here for you then.”

Gabriel knew what McKellan meant. Ever since the vampires had started to visit 562 in secret, they'd been talking about this Night of Rest, a worshipful time to appreciate their good tidings.

But as McKellan sat near Gabriel, there was something else brewing in his gaze.

The old vampire opened his mind up to Gabriel, in fraternity, allowing him to see that their Night of Rest wouldn't involve only 562 . . .

He saw Mariah in McKellan's mind, too.

Gabriel contained a shudder. There were times he didn't like how the other vampires looked at her, smiled at her.

The older vampire held up a hand. “We have larger matters to weigh than that one. Much larger. Suffice it to say that Mariah is safe with your oldster right now.”

McKellan noted Gabriel's relief with a flicker of interest.

“Still attached to her, are you?” he asked.

Gabriel nodded. During an instructional moment recently, McKellan had said that all vampires eventually learned not to have emotional attachments like the one Gabriel nursed for Mariah.

“It's our imprint,” Gabriel said, trying again to explain it to the other vampire, though he knew his bond to her was even more than that. It had to be.

“Yes. The imprint. It should be enlightening to see how that develops. No vampires I know have ever taken the blood of a were-creature, then coupled it with bodily intimacy.”

He sounded as bad as one of those human doctors who'd prodded and poked him might've been.

“But we digress,” McKellan said. “It's
your
absence that was duly noted by everyone in the community, so we have made a few decisions while you have been away. In fact, your reappearance has already set much into motion.”

With one glance, the elder conveyed current events to Gabriel: how the oldster had been investigating and hadn't yet come upon any answers as to who'd killed the Civil; how the other Civils were getting angrier by the night because of the lack of action from the Reds; how the vampires had pulled together and shut out the rest of the community in an effort to deal with this killing themselves. How they had waited to see when and if Gabriel would come back.

The killing. Gabriel hadn't thought about it for a while. As he did now, a pang racked him. A clang from his fading conscience.

“Have the vampires at least figured out who first attacked that Civil and started this whole mess?” he asked.

McKellan cut Gabriel off from his gaze for some reason.

“We did arrive at a solution,” the elder said.

Why did that sound so cryptic?

McKellan was so still and quiet that it sent a scratch of discomfort through Gabriel.

Strange. He couldn't figure out why his conscience was back now, here in the dark, where it should be very easy to be a vampire.

Instead of explaining anything else, McKellan glanced over his shoulder. A second later, Gabriel heard another furtive sound, but there was also a familiar scent that he hadn't experienced in several nights. . . .

Soon, a shadow stood near them, holding a solar-powered lantern.

Taraline.

McKellan hardly seemed surprised by the arrival of this lady, whose clothing was steeped in the neutral tawnyvale herb so that the smell of dymorrdia wouldn't overcome them.

“Hello, Taraline,” the old vampire said, recognizing her as an ally. Gabriel had vouched for her long ago, when he'd first introduced her to his kind.