In Blood We Trust (25 page)

There was no good explanation for why an ex-Shredder would attack a 'bot, so the Witches wanted to find out the reason. And they had already taken measures to do so, because a few nights ago, a visiting Witch from Dallas had been able to make her way through the outskirts of GBVille, carefully avoiding all vampire guards in particular because if anyone would find the Witches, it was those monsters.

The new Witch told the GBVille slayers how Dallas had been taken over, too, confirming everyone's suspicions that the power-blaster attack here wasn't just an isolated incident. None of the GBVille Witches who had set out for other nearby hubs to see if they had also gone dark had returned yet, but without powered vehicles or zoom bikes, it would be a while before they got there and maybe even fetched reinforcements.

In the meantime, it seemed as if it were up to the Witches gathered here to save humanity.

A male sneaked in back of the first two, just as silent as they were except for his mind.

Ex-Shredder, him,
he thought to them in greeting while he focused on Stamp, too, catching up to what his comrades were seeing.

None of them had data on these were-creatures or the dog because they weren't close enough for facial recognition. But they did know of the dark woman who seemed to be backing up Johnson Stamp. Deitra Montemagni, a corporate freelance hubite who'd gone off the social register over a year ago until showing back up here with Stamp.

No fighting yet?
the new Witch asked, also wondering why Stamp and his friend were simply talking with the monsters.

No fight here,
confirmed the male.

Just big fight earlier,
thought the female Witch, who'd been casing the asylum not long ago, standing on a watchtower to monitor the eruption that had broken out among the monsters. She had come close to being engaged by a vampire—name: Gabriel Bruce, age thirty-three, last officially seen in the Southblock area of the country. He'd been watching over a were-deer, much like the one who was down below now, plus a were-elk. But the Witch had been forced to desert her watch when Gabriel had noticed her spying.

Based on what other Witches had seen and shared this past week, he was the same vampire who had broken into GBVille headquarters in the hub nearly a week ago with his redheaded female friend—identified by remaining facial recognition scans in the Witches' brains as Mariah Lyander, age twenty-three, last seen in Dallas at age fourteen.

The sentinel who had been spying on them had retreated before getting caught, so the Witches didn't have a full idea of what Gabriel and Mariah had been doing out of the asylum. But they were piecing data together little by little, collectively spying on the monsters, noting weaknesses and troubles between them and mentally marking places where just a push would topple them.

Data collection before action—that was what training had taught the Witches.

Actually, just this evening, one of them had reported something that bore more investigation: Early tonight, down by a cave near Little Romania, a Witch had witnessed a quasi-angel Civil being pinned and mind-screwed by a vampire, just as all the other Civils and were-creatures were being wiped at the asylum. But it seemed as if this Civil had been going after a particular goal. Perhaps even a significant monster who might put an end to the mind-wiping?

Then the Witch had seen a blur run into the cave and matched one of the voices inside to that of Mariah Lyander's.

From listening, undetected, after the vampire had taken the quasi-angel back to the asylum, a Witch had heard the occupants talking about “562,” as if this were a very important monster to the Reds.

As in “Subject 562,” a creature that had been housed in the asylum before the monster break-in.

It was a Red creature that the data files deemed ultra-dangerous. Hence, the staff had set it aside for mere observation, in need of constant watching, especially whenever it turned into its hideous form during the full moon.

After hearing mention of Subject 562 in that cave, the Witches had watched the monsters speed away from the premises just about an hour ago. And when the Witches had investigated the abandoned cave afterward, they had discovered what looked to be gifts near shattered glass.

But there was nothing else.

No Subject 562.

Had the speeding vampires been chasing down this monster after it had run away in all those blurs of speed? Or had they
taken
it from the cave and were they relocating it somewhere else?

That would mean they were protecting it, and there had to be a good reason.

Down below, a new development caught the Witches' full attention: The were-creatures had fully shifted, and the were-scorpion picked up the dog and the were-deer, then sped off.

Johnson Stamp remained with Deitra Montemagni, who'd drawn a gun and was just now slipping it back into the waistband of her suit pants.

The male Witch accessed both of his associates' minds at the same time. He thought of a bit of data he'd received from his last download before GBVille had gone dark, showing them files of ex-Shredders who'd last been reported out west. There was even a shack where many of them gathered—out of work, lazy, turtlegrape-drinking castoffs.

When he was done, one female Witch thought,
Reinforcements?

Perhaps.
Then he showed them images of the zoom bikes most of them rode.

The other Witches understood. The ex-Shredders could supply them with fast transportation that had been too far out of the range of the power blast to have been disabled. The Shredders might not join the Witches in their hunt for the monsters—and perhaps even Subject 562 if the monsters had the creature with them—but they would be patriotic enough to at least provide vehicles for their country.

If not, then the Witches would just
take
what they needed.

Two will go,
the male said, pointing to the female.
You, I.

Then they rose as one, still watching below while Stamp came out from behind his boulder and began tracking the departed were-creatures.

Odd, though,
the male thought as he focused on Deitra Montemagni. She stood so very still while watching over her partner.

So very still.

He shared that with the others, then filed the data away in his brain while all the white-clad Witches retreated from the stone forest, slipping back into nothing, just as if they didn't exist at all.

W
e'd been speeding 562 out of GBVille for hours, heading west and racing the sunrise, when me and my vampire guards started to look for a good spot to rest for the approaching day.

We found it in some lowlands, at the base of mountains, where the dirt was abraded by brush and the cracked asphalt of old roads. Monuments seemed to rise out of the small hills: a faded sphinx with an open mouth and a long funneled tongue lapping over its paws, a three-headed dragon bleached to white and tangled in a network of slides.

A sign greeted us in front of it all: SLIPPERY SLOPES.

A water park where kids used to play the summers away, splashing and laughing. You could almost hear the echoes of all that now against the arid emptiness. A place of plenty reduced to just about nothing.

It was already warmer in these climes, away from the mountains where GBVille rested, out here where the sun started to bake the land during the days. It was also easier to breathe at this altitude. But all that affected me much more than it did the vampires.

Liam, the friendly, rough-and-ready blond one, had been carrying 562 with nary a complaint this entire time. As we ventured inside the water park, seeking a place to lie down for a spell, he held 562 as if she/he were a large infant, cradling our origin to his chest.

I was using a solar flashlight that I'd grabbed before leaving the GBVille cave, shining it over the inside of a building that had been dug into a hill. It'd clearly held some sort of tank for fish gazing, but the glass was busted out now, leaving the gaping emptiness of it with nothing but fake kelp still strung from the ceiling.

Liam gently put 562 in a corner, where she/he flopped in loose-limbed disarray until the vampire once again arranged her/his limbs into that lotus pose. Then he backed away and found a comfy area in which to sit near the broken tank. Both twins, Kemp and Kerr—the latter of whom had caught up with us well outside GBVille—took up positions on both sides of 562.

Liam said, “There're a couple of hours until dawn comes, Mariah. Why don't you rest before we vampires get knocked out?”

I would be keeping watch over 562 when that happened, just as Hana and Pucci had been doing during the sunlight hours before all the insanity had struck the monster community.

I removed some water necklaces that I'd taken from 562's altar from round my neck, breaking the beads of one open so I could relieve my thirst. The vampires had seen how changing form back and forth had taxed me, so they'd asked me to stay in my humanlike state while Kemp had carried me over the miles tonight. It'd reminded me of how Gabriel had done the same for me not too long ago, when the two of us had fled to Dallas.

I stopped drinking, held a hand to my lips. Gabriel. When would I be seeing him again?

And Chaplin? Would I ever get back to GBVille to make amends with him?

Liam's voice wove through the room, which was lit only by that lone solar flashlight. “You're sad. Is it because we had to leave the hub?”

The twins had been surveying me, too. In spite of their pale skin, it seemed as if they had windburn on their cheeks—patches of slight pink from all the speeding they'd done. It made them look like they were no more than teenagers, with their short, spiked strawberry-blond hair adding just an extra touch of innocence.

“I
am
sad,” I said.

Liam looked at the shattered tank for a moment, as if he were trying to recall what sadness felt like.

“I can't hardly believe,” I said, “that I had a whole different life only a few months ago, before we had to desert the Badlands.”

No use in talking round it—all the monsters knew my history in the New Badlands, with how I'd killed Stamp's men for the safety of my community.

“You talk like blood is ugly,” Liam said.

Through his voice, I saw me as
he
saw me—and probably all the rest of the Reds, too. He spoke as if the blood I had let was a matter of course, that I shouldn't think twice about having to do it.

I felt no better than Stamp. I was the bad guys I'd always hated. I was the rotten werewolf who'd sired me. I couldn't even think of a way that I was any different from the lot of them. Didn't they all have
their
reasons to kill, too?

But these vampires still looked at me with loving expressions, as if anything I did were okay with them. It was a far cry from how my neighbors, and now Chaplin, had pretty much shunned me, even though I'd always done my best for them.

I drank more from the beads of the water necklace. Then I asked, “How long do you think we're going to have to stay away from GBVille?”

“Are you talking about yourself or us?” Liam asked.

“Any of us.”

“I don't know about you, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it'd be wise to stay away for good. Keeping the origin close to the Civils is a bad idea, even if they've been mind-screwed.”

So he'd come to the same conclusion. “You decided to rebury 562 and stay on as guardians?”

“Yeah. We vowed to be the watchers when the community first realized what we had on our hands. This is just part of the job.”

One glance at Liam, so blond and gorgeous, then at the young twins, made my heart feel bruised. It seemed that they had no regrets about making this vow. They were confident that they still had plenty of time to live full lives, even though they'd volunteered to shut themselves away for a part of them.

“You're sad again,” Liam said. “But I think it's for us this time. Don't be that way. Others will come to spell us someday. Besides, it's the least we can do for the mother and father. We wouldn't have any existence at all if it weren't for 562.”

The twins grinned at him, just like younger brothers who hung on an older one's every word.

They were so cavalier, but maybe I saw it that way only because
I
had no real conception of how long vampires could exist. Unless 562 had done something to my mortality, I would still have the life span of a regular person. That was fine with me, though, because, to tell the truth, the idea of going on and on made me uncomfortable, just like thinking about the idea of forever and how it stretched into places that I couldn't even imagine. Places too big to exist.

But mortality would eventually matter to me and Gabriel. We'd see in a few years' time if we needed to address a longer life for me. Then again, we'd have to survive that long without getting into more trouble and ending up killed.

Liam leaned his head back against the wall. His throat was pale, corded, sensual. I wondered how many human women he'd lured to him in his time.

“What kind of vampires,” I said, “would volunteer to shut themselves away like you three have?”

“I've never pondered that.” Liam jerked his chin at his fellow guards. “Just what kind of vamps are we?”

Kemp laughed while Kerr shrugged.

Liam answered for them. “We defy classification.”

“I suppose you do,” I said. “Did you talk those boys into that vow you took for 562?”

“The twins do anything I do. No minds of their own.”

“Hardly,” Kerr said. “You're not
that
cool.”