In Blood We Trust (26 page)

“Is that so?” Liam bent a leg and rested an arm on his knee. “And who were the two little vampires who didn't even know how to throw a mind block when I found them?” He talked to me again. “Back when there were still high school football games, these two were the stars of their team.” He pointed to Kemp. “There's your all-state quarterback”—then Kerr—“and the all-state running back. Both these shitheads were from a privileged family on the East Coast before it was fully corporatized. They had their whole lives ahead of them watching that old MTV channel and choosing which college scholarships they were going to take.”

The twins were listening intently.

“Then,” Liam continued, “two pretty girls came along, strangers in town. Can you guess what happened next?”

Kemp grunted, as if he didn't want to hear it.

Kerr chuckled, apparently not minding the story himself. “So we took those girls under the bleachers after a game. What red-blooded American guys wouldn't do the same?”

“Were they vampire girls?” I said. Easy guess.

“Yeah, but we didn't know about vampires,” Kemp said. “Not at the time.”

Kerr interrupted. “You mean, we didn't
believe
in them. But there they were, with their tight shirts and pretty lip gloss, too good to resist.”

They got quiet once more, as if they'd reached their word quota, and Liam started up again.

“After the blood exchange was complete, the girls told the twins that their parents wouldn't understand what they were now. So they staged a car crash and made everyone believe they died in it.”

Kerr added, “Then we left town with them. Even before the funeral.”

“It wouldn't have been a good idea to spy on our departure ceremony, anyway,” Kemp said. His voice rode a note of confusion, like he was trying to access that feeling he'd still been able to create during his gloaming. Sorrow. The agony of getting to see his parents one last time before he and his brother left them.

Liam picked up a piece of glass from the tank, idly inspecting it. “Your makers were two greedy, careless little vampire slags. Young. Untaught. Finding their way because they had no one to guide them. Thankfully they mellowed with time.”

“Were they in their gloaming when they exchanged with the twins?” I asked.

“They were in their first year,” Liam said, “abandoned by their own creators and avoiding other vampires while they were at it. They were rogue. But this was long before the government started cracking down on monsters, and vampires were freer back then. Eventually, humans were even mightily entertained by us, romanticizing our legends. Those were the days. We could go just about anywhere and it wasn't a big deal. Eventually, the world collapsed and society became concerned about how we'd attack them for their water content. That's when vamps went back to being scary, like we started out.”

All three vampires had their heads cocked, and I hugged myself, the solar flashlight casting shadows on the walls that made me feel far outnumbered.

I looked to Liam. “How were
you
born?”

“Same old, same old,” he said.

Kerr broke in. “Liam was what they would've called an easy rider.”

Liam chucked the piece of glass toward him, but Kerr ducked it.

Kemp seemed not to have even noticed the kerfuffle. “He walked into the wrong bar one night and got friendly with the wrong girl, so when he talks about me and Kerr like we're chumps for getting lured under the bleachers, he's full of it.”

“What happened to Liam's maker?” I asked.

Kerr said, “She already had a partner, and he was an old, old vamp. Centuries. He didn't like Liam so much and he told him in no uncertain terms to get lost.”

When I glanced at Liam, he just blew it off. “She didn't mention she had an old man until he showed up.”

“And they left you alone during
your
gloaming?” I asked.

“Yup.”

I shook my head, thinking that there were some similarities here with Gabriel's maker. She could've very well been in her own gloaming. “Are there any master vampires who stick with their progeny?”

“Vampires don't normally like to band together,” Liam said. “We're basically solitary creatures. Predators. But some of us don't mind the company, especially when it's necessary, like right now in GBVille. Some even take training their progeny seriously. But like I said, that wasn't the case for these freckle-faces. When I saw the twins for the first time, they were feeding out in the open in an alley by a movie theater, and I had to take them aside and teach them a thing or two about secrecy. They didn't know a thing about survival.”

“He told us,” Kerr said, “that he'd be gone after we became too annoying.”

Liam made a slight gesture with his hand, dismissive. “But they kept following me. Couldn't get rid of them.”

Kemp kicked a stone at Liam. “He means that we all went into hiding eventually, underground in GBVille while everything went to crap above us. You know the rest because you lived through it, too, with the threat of Shredders and eradication. When we heard news about the fall of GBVille a month ago, we were liberated.”

And here I'd thought that they might've been captured by Shredders and brought to the asylum. But no—they were just a few of the monsters who'd been attracted by the rumors of the GBVille fall.

“So here we are, then,” Liam said, looking at me expectantly, as if it were my turn now to provide more stories besides what everyone else already knew.

I plucked another bead off my water necklace.

Liam obviously understood that I wasn't in a talky mood when it came to myself. “You've gone a long way around what you really meant to ask us in the first place, Mariah. You're not really wondering how long we vampires will have to stay away from GBVille as much as how long
you'll
have to stay away.”

Why'd they have to be so perceptive?

He added, “Too bad I don't have any answers for you. You're the one who's going to have to decide when it's okay for you to go back.”

Kerr was obviously an optimistic vampire. “Don't worry, though—Gabriel's going to find you. When I told McKellan about your being jailed, Gabriel flipped. Mac made him go to the asylum first to do some mind-screwing, though.”

Liam's tone was darker. “Don't be cruel, Kerr. He'll find her only as long as he's motivated to.”

It was as if a spike had burst up from the ground and lanced my middle. “What does that mean?”

They all sent a long look to me, telling me that I already knew.

The gloaming.

“What he has for you now,” Liam said, “is the closest to love he's ever going to get again. After he matures, he might still have certain attachments, but they won't be based on emotion.”

They didn't know about our link. Our imprint.

And there were other points in my favor. “
You
love 562,” I said.

“Love?” Liam ran a hand over his hair, pulling the long blond strands back from his face. “Someone who doesn't know any better might call it that. But I would say it's more devotion.”

Was that what they had for me, too, whenever they gazed at me?

I hugged myself tighter. It'd gotten cold in this room, even with the warmer air outside.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I get the feeling that
I'm
562 for you guys, just because I have a little of the same blood in me.”

“562 chose you,” Liam said. “562
is
a tiny part of you.” He couldn't have said it any more clearly. Then again, that night when the Reds had gathered, dancing, calling for my blood, it had been pretty transparent, too.

“So,” I said, “am I going to end up behind glass somewhere someday, just like 562?”

“Doubtful,” Liam said. “We fear that if 562 dies, her/his death will bring all us Reds back to a nonpreter state. But
you
aren't our origin. We'll let you rest in peace.” He grinned.

That was a relief. I didn't have any children, and I didn't even want to dwell on what might happen if I exchanged with or bit someone. I'd never wanted to bring babies into this world—human or preter—so I suppose falling in love with a vampire, who couldn't produce them unless it was through a blood exchange, made sense.

Kemp took up where Liam had left off. “You're not our origin, Mariah. You're more like . . .”

Kerr finished for him. “The strongest child of us all.”

There was that devotion in his tone.

But they seemed to sense some bewilderment in me about how exactly I fit in with the scheme of things, and they stood, going about their business as if our conversation had never happened. All of them removed their sword sheaths from their belts, then positioned themselves in front of 562, setting their covered weapons across their laps.

“You don't have much time to sleep, Mariah,” Liam said.

My gaze wandered to 562, dim and frozen in the light from my solar flashlight. I could see a faint red reflection in her/his eyes, just behind the hair, so I snapped off the device.

But that didn't do much good, because now I could see all the vamp eyes glowing in the dark.

So I closed my own eyes, knowing Liam was right. I needed rest because, all too soon, I was going to be up again when the vampires went down for the day.

Slumber didn't come. I went back and forth on the ground, trying to find a comfortable position. But it wasn't my body that wouldn't relax.

It was my brain. My heart.

I kept thinking of Gabriel, if he would really find me.

And if it would happen before the gloaming ended.

That was too much to bear, though, so I tried to concentrate on my friends, especially Chaplin, whose rejection just kept getting heavier and heavier inside me, like a black mass that darkened every bit of light that still might've been burning.

I don't know how much I tossed and turned, but suddenly the vampires stirred, the sound of swords being drawn from sheaths making me go to all fours, listening. The vampires' eyes glowed in the dark.

Then I heard them put their weapons away.

I grabbed my solar flashlight and turned it on, only to see Liam smiling down at me, the twins in back of him looking just as pleased.

Did we have some friendly intruders?

Something zoomed into our room, materializing.

A man.

As I sucked in a breath and stumbled to my feet, Gabriel rushed over to me, almost knocking me over with his enthusiasm when he took me into his embrace.

He'd found me in time.

At least for now.

H
e'd tracked Mariah over the miles, but it wasn't her scent or the faint call of her vital signs that had led Gabriel to her.

Her vampire guards had left subtle hints for him: a piece of Liam's clothing here, a sliding vampire footprint there. And Gabriel had done his best to erase every one from existence on the way, though he knew that might not be possible.

When he'd gotten close enough to them, the trail signs had disappeared; the guard vampires had even thought to leave red-herring scents—a dead sand-rabbit or beakhead bird that might confuse the senses of others. But, at that point, Gabriel's link to Mariah had emerged like a piercing ache in the center of him, pulling, leaving him no choice but to follow.

Finally, he was holding her in his arms, unwilling to let go, stroking her hair, burying his face in it. Every twisted heartbeat of hers became his, completely and thoroughly.

To be apart from her again . . . He couldn't imagine it. Right here, right now, with her, he knew that he'd never find a more powerful solace.

Especially after tonight.

He put off telling her what he'd discovered about the Civil killing, about what had gone down with Pucci, just until he could get one more rush of her, his olfactory buds filled, making him drunk on her scent.

She backed away from him an inch, looking up at him, as if her memory of him didn't quite match up to what she saw now. But then she smiled, like he'd finally come together for her.

“They told me you were safe,” she said, “but I didn't believe it until this second.”

“Same here.” He brushed her hair away from her face. In the near darkness, her eyes glowed like stars, deep lights that burned from within her.

Around them, he could see how the guard vampires had gathered near 562, their backs to Mariah and Gabriel so they wouldn't intrude on the reunion. But it seemed as if 562 were looking right at Gabriel with that vacant, hair-filtered stare.

Looking through him.

Emotion deserted him at that moment, just as if he were pulling away from his origin—his mother and his father.

Or coming
closer
to his parentage by going toward the blankness that he'd been trying to outrun ever since GBVille, when the truth had descended on him.

The killing.

The unnecessary murder he'd committed just because he could.

Thank-all when Mariah wrapped her arms around his waist again and a twinge of his humanity made him press his cheek to the top of her head, his gaze averted from 562.

Mariah seemed to feel the push/pull in him. The strain of the gloaming before it became the darkness that would define him for the rest of his existence. He was only inches ahead of it right now, and he could feel it creeping up in him.

“There's something wrong,” she said. “What is it?”

He couldn't put this off any longer.