In Blood We Trust (31 page)

“The Witches and monsters would wipe each other out,” Goodie Jern repeated. “Two dead birds with one blow.”

Stamp gave her an
Am I a genius or what?
glance.

They all thought over the plan and, in the end, Dicing had one last comment to offer.

“If this doesn't work, we're guaranteed death.”

“But, as Goodie Jern pointed out,” Stamp said, “we might be in line for the big sleep if we just sit here, anyway. We've got to think ahead, Dicing. Or maybe you've forgotten how to do that.”

Dicing looked affronted while Goodie Jern peeked at her braided partner behind the bar again. The girl nodded, and the older woman straightened in her chair.

“I'd rather die trying than sit here waiting for a shot in the head, myself.”

“Good,” Stamp said. “I'm going to tell them that we need to get straight to tracking, too. No stops at other hubs to see how they're doing, no nothing. We need that full moon.”

Before Dicing could fully commit, the little female Witch walked back into the shack and came to the table. She was breathing a little faster than normal.

Had they been chasing Mags out there?

The male Witch had come back into the room, in the same state as his partner.

Time to put things into motion.

“I have a way to find out where Subject 562 is,” Stamp said to the Witches. “I can track a vampire named Gabriel, and he'll be able to tell us.”

It might be a lie, but it got their attention.

And the best part was that, with the aid of those zoom bikes outside, the Witches and the working tracking devices that they were sure to have in this ex-Shredder shack were about to take Stamp straight to Hana and the oldster, or even to Gabriel.

The girl Witch pointed at each of them in turn. “Shredder, Stamp, Johnson. Shredder, Jern, Goodie. Shredder, Dicing, Ronald.” She went around the circle again. “Activate, activate, activate.”

As the Witch walked away, Stamp said, “Well, how about that. Deputized.”

The male Witch went for a locker behind the bar, pulling it open without even springing the combination. Inside, a bevy of weapons awaited: taserwhips, deathlock guns, guns with bullets that would open up enough to shred the hell out of any vampire in range, chest punchers, UV flash grenades, silver debris grenades, and field glasses. No FlyShoes, though, which was a pity.

Stamp just about salivated, anyway.

The male Witch threw a deathlock gun at Goodie Jern, and she swiped it out of midair. She pointed a finger to her companion behind the bar.

“She stays here.”

Prairie Braids seemed ready to piss her britches as the Witch assessed her.

“Stay,” the Witch finally said to her.

Goodie Jern's girl didn't disagree.

The male Witch finished doling out the weapons, and Stamp held tight to his chest puncher, relishing the crossbow-like contours of it against him. He imagined shooting it at Gabriel, the puncher prying apart his ribs to get at his heart and set it on fire . . .

Outside, the sound of a zoom bike revved up, then took off, and the two Witches ran to the door, quicker than any human, but not nearly as fast as a monster.

Had Mags just taken off with one of the vehicles?

The Witches communicated, gaze to gaze, then efficiently went back to the weapons locker, stepping up the process of outfitting Stamp, Goodie Jern, and Dicing with all the weapons they could carry.

Then they sprayed them with scent killer and pushed the recruits outside, toward the remaining zoom bikes.

Stamp grinned. Mags would catch up with him at some point.

The girl Witch fixed her and Stamp's chest punchers to the bike, made Stamp sit right behind her on the seat, and took the controls. He stowed his crutch, plus his other weapons, then held to the sides of the bike instead of her.

The boy Witch took Goodie Jern with him, while Dicing was given his own bike.

Then they all blasted off, combing over the desert ground, the full moon shining down on them.

“C
ome on, Hana—did you really think they'd come here?” asked the oldster under the darkened New Badlands sky.

They stood in front of what looked to be a sand-blasted beaded necklace of desolate hills, the entrance to the last homestead they'd lived in before they'd been flushed out toward the hubs and ended up at GBVille.

Even after speeding away from Stamp there a few nights ago, Hana was still stripped of her clothing. The oldster was the same—wardrobeless, bootless, carrying nothing but his holstered guns. The night they'd run away from Stamp, the oldster had only stopped progress hours away from GBVille, where he'd finally put Hana and Chaplin on the ground and sunk to the dirt, so winded that he could barely move.

Of course, that was when Hana had sped away from
him
, forcing the oldster to chase her with Chaplin in tow. But he'd been slow, even while he'd tracked her, wasting time as nature ticked down to the appearance of the full moon last night.

Before it had come, they'd found Hana burrowed up in an abandoned church, near the border of the New Badlands. She'd made it clear that nothing would stop her from tracking Gabriel, so what could the oldster do about it? At least she hadn't insisted on going back to GBVille to get Stamp so he could be her hunting buddy. She had that many wits still about her.

But she was bent on payback all the same, that was for sure, and the oldster wasn't about to see her get into more than she'd bargained for with Gabriel and lose this baby, much less her life. Surely he could prevent tragedy by sticking by her.

And he had done just that last night, after the moon had shown its full face and they had hunted, eating and drinking until the sun had risen and they'd had to go back to their resting spot in the church and out of the heat.

They'd journeyed on at dusk until they'd gotten here, and now Hana was leaning up against the wall of the hill, where an entrance blended in with the rock. Chaplin was right behind her, nosing round the spot where that deadened Monitor'bot from the government had expired. Sammy Ramos had done the deed, changing into his were–Gila monster form and striking out at the machine. Later that night, Stamp had arrived and killed Sammy, may he rest in peace.

The oldster didn't think it a good sign that the 'bot wasn't here now.

Chaplin started barking as if he'd come to the same conclusion and was advocating for them to leave.

“If you are telling us to vacate,” Hana said, “my answer is no. Ever since we entered the nowheres, you and I have not gotten a good trail on Gabriel, Chaplin. But I think he came here, to a familiar place. I would bet my life on it.”

“He's got to be with Mariah,” the oldster said. Judging from the way Chaplin had reacted recently, the dog had picked up her scent on the oven wind in these Badlands, only to lose it within minutes.

The canine whined while the oldster glanced up at the sky, where the moon was only strengthening.

“Either way you slice it, we do need to rest in a safe place until we change in about an hour, judging by the moon.”

Hana pushed on a patch in the rock, and it rumbled open, revealing a dark passage that branched off into different areas: an aquifer room, private quarters where their little community used to take rest, the central cavern where stalactites and stalagmites reigned. Among them, visz monitor screens would stare out, shut down and blanked from the lack of motion inside the hideaway, hardly useful in helping anyone keep watch now.

Ignoring those other rooms, the oldster headed for the water area first off. He'd only filled up on fluid from blood last night, from the scampering creatures that had tried to get away from him and his were-side. The sustenance hadn't lasted long enough with all the stress and activity.

Chaplin and Hana weren't far behind him, and they took advantage of those aquifer pumps, opening their mouths under the water that still came out, then washing themselves.

But soon after they were done, Chaplin began sniffing the air. The oldster took a better look round, too, drawing his firearms before going to his old quarters.

“Hellfire!” he shouted when he saw the state of them.

The clothing he'd left when they'd had to flee from Stamp was all over the place, some even torn to bits. Everything was knocked over, from his nightstand to his bed.

Hana and Chaplin arrived in time to see the oldster pick up his favorite pair of denims, ripped beyond recognition.

Then she rushed off to her old room.

When they got there, they saw that her essentials were also in shambles, and the oldster jogged right to the common room, where he found the visz screens busted in. It also didn't escape his notice that what they'd left behind of their weapons arsenal was stripped.

“It was Stamp,” the oldster muttered. “He must've come in here and trashed the place.”

Then again, the Shredder had been on their trail real soon afterward. How would he have had the time to do all this damage? And would he have cleared away that Monitor 'bot from outside, too?

Chaplin barked, but the oldster didn't get the gist of the dog's communication.

“Do you have another idea about who did this?” he asked. “Who would've even known there was a community in here at one time besides Stamp?”

Chaplin kept jerking his muzzle toward the entrance, and he even pantomimed a shape in the air, then fell to the ground as if he'd been gutted.

“The Monitor 'bot?” the oldster asked.

The dog woofed and bounded back up to his feet.

Chaplin had to be right. The destruction of the Monitor 'bot had probably attracted attention on a higher level, and maybe it'd signaled government workers to come here . . . or maybe even more 'bots had arrived and gutted the homestead.

Did that mean they were still nearby?

“Do you smell anyone who's been in here recently?” he asked the dog.

Chaplin sniffed and sniffed, then shook his head. But even with that assurance, he ran back toward Hana's quarters, as if to persuade her to get on out of the room.

When the oldster arrived there again, Chaplin was at the foot of her hemp-covered mattress, on his belly, probably reluctant to approach her for the time being.

She'd righted the bed, pulling the covers back up, all neatlike. Lying down, she was resting near the long, wide spot where Pucci had set his own body night after night.

Chaplin's head was on his paws, and he raised his brows at the oldster. There seemed to be a thousand things he wanted to say.

Hana put her hand on the pillow next to her, as if she could still see Pucci's face there. Tears wet her cheeks.

“I keep seeing it, over and over,” she said. “Taraline throwing Pucci against that wall. Then Gabriel shoving his hand into his chest—”

“Stop that.” The oldster didn't want to relive it. “You're going to torture yourself if you keep on, Hana.”

She wasn't listening to him. “Taraline. Gabriel was saving Taraline because he thought Antonio was going to hurt her.”

“Pucci
would
have.”

Both Chaplin and Hana raised their heads, hardly believing the oldster had the balls to say such a thing of the departed.

He regretted it. Now wasn't the time to speak of Pucci's true colors.

But Hana talked before he could apologize.

“Something happened to Taraline after she drank Mariah's 562 blood. It had an effect, just as it might have on any one of us, if we had tasted it, too.” Hana clutched the bedcover. “I wish now that I had tried.”

“Why—so you could be some super freak, too?”

Hana lay back down, running her hand over Pucci's place as if it would summon him right back.

“Eh,” the oldster said, making a dismissive motion at her. He regretted that, as well. “You know that all we would've gotten from a taste of her was blood poisoning. Mariah's still a were.”

“No, she is not. We cannot lie to ourselves about that.”

Chaplin closed his eyes, and it was the most painful sight the oldster had seen in an age. Pure heartbreak.

“She has
got
to be with him,” Hana said. Back to Gabriel again.

“I wouldn't doubt it.”

“Do you think they went to the first homestead and not this one, and that is why Chaplin picked up her scent in the Badlands?”

Hell, she was a terrier. “Could be, Hana.”

“We should go there. It is not so far away, especially if we speed. And if we time it correctly, we will have the full moon at our disposal.”

“But so will Mariah.”

“So we will speed and get there before the darkness goes deepest on the moon and before Mariah can change.”

That was it then. They'd be off and running again all too soon, even though the oldster's bones couldn't take much more speeding. It was bad enough the moon would force a change on him tonight. He was pooped.

Still, what he'd seen in this homestead presented a mighty compelling case to leave, should the vandals—Monitor 'bots or not—have posted a lookout and the bunch of them returned.

He told Hana about the damage in the other rooms and what he and Chaplin suspected had caused it. “We don't want to be here if 'bots are keeping watch on this place, anyway, but I'm just not sure about going to the first homestead, Hana.”

“I am sure.”

She got up from the bed and went to a hidden spring door she'd built in the ground. She stomped on it, and it flapped open, revealing a few weapons she'd had the presence of mind to keep there.