In Blood We Trust (18 page)

His Shredder instincts went on alert. Vampires didn't whisper unless they were up to something. And it was strange that he couldn't hear any Civils in the corridor; they were
always
guarding.

A chill scuttled down Stamp's neck, over his shoulders, as he caught the breeze-soft sound of vampires coming closer. The only thing that reassured him right now was that the Civils basically kept all the other monsters in check—it seemed that they respected life, human or otherwise, more than the Reds. But without Civils here . . .

Stamp glanced behind him at the corridor, seeing that Mags was already at her bars, a few inches from them, her dark eyes wide, wisps of her black hair escaping from the tie that held the strands back from her face.

She looked . . . excited.

Then again, she'd been different these past nights. Withdrawn. Refusing to talk to him and responding only when a crowd of vampires would come into the cell block to visit, standing in front of her cell, barring Stamp's view of her until they left.

It was as if they were conditioning her for advanced Stockholm syndrome, something Stamp had learned about in training. There'd been a case long ago in which a vampire tribe in old Europe had taken human hostages, attempting to win them over to their side. But before the humans had become willing enough to give up their souls, a band of Shredders had terminated the bloodsuckers.

As Jo, the monster sympathizer across the corridor, also came to the bars, Stamp kept a vigilant eye on her, too. She'd been visiting a lot with the vamps.

He turned back to the sink unit, but out of the corner of his gaze, he could see a group of vampires coming to Mags's and Jo's cells.

More whispers.

He'd cleaned his hands, drying them now. He still didn't pick up any audible signs of the tread-heavy Civils, nor the humanlike movements of were-creatures or tik-tiks.

Where had the other guards gone?

The clank of a cell door opening set him on alert, and he automatically lowered himself, holding to the basin to maintain his equilibrium. He'd been working on balance exercises, mentally picturing himself as a Shredder who could still be fast and efficient, even without one of his legs.

He scuttled to the bars, so quiet that not even the vampires in front of Jo's and Mags's cells acknowledged him. Clanks from other opening cell doors repeated down the corridor.

Jo was already being led away, vampires stroking her auburn hair, gazing on her with adoring, hungry smiles. And Mags. . .

She was in the corridor, too, but she wasn't looking at the vampires.

Her eyes were trained on Stamp.

As their gazes met, his chest pained him because she seemed so out of place—a fighter in the midst of those vamps. But maybe that was only because he knew she would battle them to the death if she had any odds of survival whatsoever.

For some reason, she sent a sad smile his way, and he gripped the bars. She wasn't looking so great, her skin sallow from all the time they'd been shut away.

“If they're questioning you again,” he said, “hold strong, Mags.”

A male vampire with skin darker than hers whispered in her ear, and it reminded Stamp of what a lover might do to a woman he was seducing.

Then the man touched her arm.

Stamp barked, “Get away from her, scrub.”

The male vampire slowly turned on Stamp, his teeth white in the torch-hushed corridor.

Down the way, there was more whispering movement, then the heavier, less graceful footfalls of humans being led off.

The male vampire slid his hand to Mags's waist, and she peered up at him, as if she didn't mind being touched by a monster.

Were
they here to pull all the humans out of their cells and question them tonight? Or was this some sort of blood feast that Stamp had to stop?

As the vamps led Mags away, Stamp threw himself against the bars, reaching through them to his partner.

“Mags,” he said, hoping his voice would bring her out of the sway that the whispering vamp had put on her. Damn it, hadn't he trained her in how to avoid falling under their spell? She knew how to block.

She just didn't want to.

His partner sent one last glance over her shoulder as the male vampire took her by the hand, gently guiding her out of Stamp's sight.

Jo and her vampires trailed them, and he interpreted her accepting expression as a reminder of how he would no doubt be questioned again soon, too, if that was what the vamps were doing.

Stamp stayed planted. They wouldn't find him as compliant as these others, and that was probably why they'd saved him for last.

Two vampire women remained to the side of his cell while the other human jailbirds filed past. He wasn't even sure there were any more humans left in the cell block with him.

Fixing a rebellious
screw you
look on his face, he assessed the females. One woman had long black hair that fell down her back in spirals, a katana sheathed at her side under the drab distractoid coat she wore. The other pouted at him with scarlet lips against white skin and curly hair that was more red than brown. They were both centuries old; any Shredder would've known that from their talent at staying so still, as if every year made a vampire that much more detached from life's timeline.

As always, he avoided their gazes.

“What are you scrubs doing with everyone?” he asked.

Spiral Hair lowered her voice to a sway-filled whisper, but Stamp blocked it, just as if it were something being lobbed, like a quiet bomb.

“Darling, darling boy,” she said, and all he knew was that if he were less mentally fortified, she would've sounded like soft chimes by a seashore before the country's beaches had been walled off, mined, and torn to shreds.

“I'm not a boy,” he said.

The one with the red lips tried to get clever, and she bent low, attempting to snag his gaze.

No dice, because Stamp had already closed his eyes.

“You're no older than the first flush of your twenties,” she whispered with the same tempting notes of her friend. “Still a beautiful human. You'll never be this beautiful again—but you must already know that.”

Although Stamp's eyes were shut, he could feel how the female creatures had moved even nearer to the bars, their voices pounding their way into his skin.

The other vamp took up where her partner had left off. “Never again so beautiful.”

“So beautiful.”

They were repeating it often enough that the notion could've been easy to believe. But Stamp knew that he was more twisted wreckage than young man these days. He'd only been beautiful when he'd been at his best, wielding his chest puncher, slaying the monsters that haunted society, never asking for much in return besides the pride of nobility.

He heard the click of the lock on his cell door. The bitches were coming in.

Stamp thought of those shivs under his mattress.

“Bad move,” he said.

A lilting laugh from one of the vampires. “Don't be that way, darling boy.”

They should've listened.

“Go to hell,” he said.

He sensed them flinching at the holy curse. He'd used it to show them that he knew how a verbal assault would work against a vampire.

The girls recovered quickly, and one said, “Now, now. We're only here to ask you what we can do for you, then give you what you want.”

“Or maybe,” Stamp said, “you were left here to work on the most difficult human remaining. Did your old leaders think I'd actually be swayed by two crones?”

The other vamp decided it was time to stop playing around, and she lit into him with her full-sway voice.

“
I
know what he wants. It's that partner of his.”

Hearing it said out loud chipped into Stamp, getting past his defenses for a splinter of a second. The image of Mags settled over the backs of his eyelids. He even felt memories of the sweat he broke out in during the onset of sleep, the only moments when he would allow himself to wonder . . . to want . . .

“We could see to it that she loves you back,” a vampire said.

The other added, “Even
you
need love.”

No.

No, he didn't.

Images of Mags were replaced by a ball of fire—the explosive devastation of seeing someone you loved fly into pieces in a marketplace while you watched, unable to do anything about it. Then, the abyss of loneliness afterward, when you wanted them back so badly but you knew you'd never, ever see them again.

Pushed too far, Stamp let loose with a barrage of curses, beating back the vampire women from his cell. As he heard them retreating, he opened his eyes, wheeling toward his mattress—

He made an awkward dive for it, then reached underneath, whipping out the pair of shivs. Spinning around, he flailed at the closest vampire, her red, red lips open in a silent cry as she even now recovered from the onslaught of his curses.

“Rachel!” screamed the other one, otherwise frozen in holy fear, too.

But Stamp already had her friend where he wanted her.

Flash-quick, he stuck the sharpened ends of the two shivs into her neck, and with everything he had, he pulled the makeshift blades apart, ripping her open.

Blood spurted out, followed by the wet thump of her body hitting the floor.

Balance restored, Stamp pounced on her, stabbing her again, slicing, dicing.

He'd stopped cursing, so that allowed the spiral-haired vamp to jolt out of stillness and grab her friend, yanking her out of the room so fast that Stamp's eyes barely caught it.

He lifted the shivs, blood dripping from them. “Now
this
,” he said, “is beautiful.”

The other vampire backed away from the cell, her gaze fiery, her fangs out.

“Animal,” she said.

His heart was thudding so hard that he thought it might beat itself to dust. He'd just issued a suicidal invitation to get himself killed, but he didn't really care.

Born a human, die a human.

The healthy vamp hissed at him from the corridor, bending to her friend and holding her hands to Rachel's neck. He hadn't killed the scrub—he hadn't decapitated her, extracted her heart, or used silver blades or a stake or anything on her—but it would take a lot of healing for the vamp to come back around.

At least he'd reiterated to them that he wouldn't be an easy conquest.

As he sat there holding those shivs, just daring the vamp woman to come and get him, a streak of motion sped into the corridor, then solidified in front of his cell.

An old, old vampire Stamp knew by the name of McKellan took one look at Rachel bloodied on the floor, then at Stamp and his little weapons.

Without any visible reaction, McKellan said, “We have no time for this nonsense.”

He joined Spirals in pressing his hands to Rachel's chest, mending her heart, then glanced at Stamp. “Leave him here for later.”

“But look what he did—”

“
Later
, Ilsa.” He nudged her out of the way. “Go with the others. We need all the numbers we can manage right now.”

She sent Stamp a glare of such cold fury that he welcomed it, and then she zipped down the corridor, leaving the old vamp on the floor with the wounded one.

Gone. The Ilsa vamp had gone to wherever they'd taken Mags. Stamp just knew it.

McKellan was still tending to Rachel, both hands on her neck as her eyes flew open, fixed on the ceiling.

“There, my dear, it is just a scratch,” he said.

As her throat wound closed all the way, he backed off from the woman and turned to Stamp. “That was not needed, my friend. All it would have taken was one word.
Yes.
”

But to Stamp, he'd made a better choice than to be ruled by the vamps, and he kept his shivs out, just waiting for the chance to make another good decision if either vampire decided to test him again.

They didn't.

As soon as the woman could move, McKellan didn't even allow her a glance at Stamp. In a blur, he closed Stamp's cell door, the lock clinking home just before he took the healed vamp by the hand and pulled her off in a flicker of speed down the cell block.

Alone, Stamp sat down, wondering what the hell was so important to the vamps that they hadn't even bothered to exact revenge on a Shredder.

Yet he didn't sit there for long, because who knew when they'd be back for him?

He tore off some hemp from the bottom of his trousers, wrapped the shivs in it, then stored the weapons in his waistband. Next, he got that pick he'd been working on and tried the lock.

It took him a while, and with every passing second, another bead of sweat joined the ones that had already gathered on his top lip.

Hurry,
he thought. But he couldn't. Not if he wanted to keep his hands steady.

When he heard another sound down the corridor, he rolled his eyes. Looked like he'd never catch a break.

He furiously tried to force the lock just as someone came to stand just to the left of his cell, and when he looked up to see that it was Mags, he almost dropped the wire.

She was loitering, tilting her head at him, as if wondering what the hell he was about.

He looked at her empty cell, then at her.

Mags understood his question before he even asked it, and she righted her head, crossing her arms on her chest over her gray uniform.

“They didn't even notice I left,” she said. “The vamps put us in the same old room as always, but then someone came to fetch them and they took off outside, as if there was some emergency. I heard only enough to know that they're mind-wiping Civils and were-creatures. They're out of control, John.”