In Blood We Trust (7 page)

My blood had kept her alive, but none of us knew just what kind of effect it'd visited on Taraline since she'd pulled both of her veils right back over her afterward. All I pretty much knew was that 562 and I hadn't
exchanged
blood with her—we'd just let Taraline drink it—so she wouldn't have altered into a creature like either of us.

Had my blood allowed her human face to heal, though? Had it repaired the stripped skin that showed a few patches of skull? The pushed-in nose? We'd seen lingering signs of beauty in Taraline's face—hints of what she might've looked like before dymorrdia had rearranged her bone structure into grotesque arcs and splinterlike patterns; her eyes had still been a lovely blue, her mouth the kind that might make a normal girl with a normal life look into a mirror and practice old movie star poses.

Had
she gone back to her former looks?

Taraline was the private sort, so if she'd healed, she was darn well keeping it to herself. Maybe she was also doing that because the other shadows might want me to give them some blood for mending, too.

Was she seeing what it fully did to her before she let anyone else know?

My dog sidled right up to Taraline, nudging her long black skirt. She was wearing her old clothing that still held traces of dymorrdia in its threads, according to Chaplin. He didn't seem to mind the off-putting smell, though, maybe because we'd just about mauled the cloth with tawnyvale lately.

When Chaplin peered up at her with those eyes full of the trust they'd lost with me, I took a hit right in the chest.

Taraline bent and petted my dog with a gloved hand. “It's an active time tonight, isn't it?”

Her voice was deeper than you would've expected from a lady, but that was because she'd gone through useless steroid therapy years ago.

“Do you know what's going on?” I asked.

“I'm not certain of what to call it. A celebration in the making, sponsored by the Reds?”

You would know,
I thought. Gabriel had told me that Taraline had been hanging round the vampires pretty often lately, as if observing them closely. Then again, he'd said she'd been watching those tik-tik women, too. Maybe she and the shadows thought we Reds bore lots of observation.

Taraline added, “The Civils are staying away from the festivities, though.”

Chaplin spoke up, and I translated for Taraline, who didn't speak Canine.

“Shadows are outside, monitoring,” Taraline said. “If we can keep the noise to this level, no one will be any the wiser. The rumors of the mosquito have scared off those who used to be waiting to come into the hub, anyway, so no aware human should be near enough to detect it. Visually, if there's any satellite activity, the courtyard is covered. Hence, so are we.”

I was just thankful that no one had picked up anything on satellites so far—otherwise, we'd probably have been overrun by the government.

“The distractoids sure wouldn't give a crap about noise,” I said. “And the captured higher-ups that the vampires are controlling in the hub can't do anything about us.”

As we began walking again, Taraline's veils belled out behind her. I could feel the presence of other shadows on the walls while they trailed us, no doubt undulating as they traveled, easing in with the night.

Now, I
could
sense the drumbeats in the ground. There was also an odd but somehow beautiful plucking and sawing sound, as if someone had found a few lengths of wire and was trying to make music on them.

My breath came shorter as the beats traveled up my legs, then through the rest of me. For some reason, it was as if I were back in bed, waiting for Gabriel to wake up with the dusk.

Or maybe it just didn't take much to get me back to that feeling.

We finally reached a part of the raised walkway that led to an open yet domed space between the burnished stucco walls. As the Gothic grandeur of the asylum loomed round, a gathering was indeed taking place below.

The primal beats were coming from three drums that some vampires were pounding. It looked as if they'd constructed them out of old leather that stretched over circled frames they'd probably found in the labs. They had also discovered what looked to be an archaic harp in the hub—I knew the sight of the instrument from my dad's knowledge books—and they were making discordant noises on that, too.

Whatever song they were playing, it reminded me of a serpent weaving through the other Reds nearby, dancing, their hands above their heads, their bodies swaying to the
boom-boom-booms
and the lyrical straining. Most of them were half-undressed, torchlight glistening off their skin as hands explored chests, shoulders, arms. Young were-creatures nuzzled one another. Vampires skimmed their fangs over necks and stomachs.

My heartbeat joined with the drums in earnest now, my blood imitating the strange whispers of the harp. It was like all of us Reds were one down there, a pulsing entity . . . even a consciousness that was pulling everyone together.

Lured, I stepped closer to it, but Chaplin blocked me, instead directing me toward a sight that halted me cold.

A group of tik-tik women waited in a corner, the filmy dresses they preferred to wear looking like nightgowns in the faint light.

My blood curdled at the very sight of them. They seemed ready to explode, to break free and run out into the hub to search out any pregnant women to feast on. They needed to eat from fertile bellies only once a year, but, like the rest of us Reds, sometimes hunger wasn't just about survival.

Sometimes it was just about feeling better.

Round them, a few gremlins nipped at the tik-tiks' dress hems, just as if the little nasties were trying to pull the women into the larger group. Not too far away, more tiny creeps were dancing to the music, too, standing on their hind rabbitlike legs, thrusting out their pelvises in a parody of the bigger, badder Reds.

But then, as if by some signal, the music slowed, dying a bit, leaving only the thud of a lone drum as everyone discovered me standing above them.

Me.

My heartbeat played tag with the remaining drum while the vampires smiled, flashing their fangs at me, as if they'd been waiting for me to come. The were-creatures—all young ones, I realized as I surveyed them—rubbed their faces against each other. I could almost see the sweat on them as they contained their monsters.

The tik-tiks and gremlins shrank back a little, lowering their gazes to the ground.

All this because of me, the enhanced direct daughter of 562?

Chaplin whined once, then backed away toward Taraline, who whispered, “Mariah . . .”

She sounded just as confused about who I'd become as I was, but before I could sort that out, the drums started up again, even more frenzied than before. Someone—a werewolf—howled, clearly on the edge of a willed change, and a group of other weres descended on him, like they were keeping each other in check while playing the same kind of game I'd played with Gabriel earlier, tempting our natures, seeing how far we could go now that we had liberated GBVille.

As the beats took me over again, my vision began to flush with a tinge of blue . . . and it started going violet real quick.

It only got worse when I noticed movement in another corner of the party down below, as my gaze locked onto the one I'd been hoping to find down there all along.

Gabriel.

He'd stepped into the clearing, his long battered coat making him seem like a drifter amongst everyone else as they danced near him, leaving him space. He looked up at me with a craving that growled and gnashed through me. While he stood there under the torchlight, his posture and clothing beaten, yet a man still so strong in all other respects, I just wanted to go to him.

I descended a staircase, never looking away from him. He held his hand out to me. Just as I came near the bottom of the stairs, reaching out to him across that clearing, too, someone stepped in my way.

A Badlander who knew me well.

Pucci's barrel chest was heaving. I could see it clearly because his khaki shirt had been torn open, revealing his dusky skin.

“I don't think so, Mariah,” he said, his breathing short, as if he'd been ripped away from his own dancing. “We don't need your kind of trouble tonight.”

Unthinkingly, I bared my teeth. He did the same until his girlfriend, Hana, intruded, grasping his shirt and hauling him away.

“Antonio . . .”

Then he did something I'd been waiting for him to dare the entire time I'd known him.

He took a backhanded swipe at Hana, laying her out flat on the ground.

In back of me, Taraline cried out, and it seemed as if the music should stop again, but it kept playing on as my violet sight pulsed and my blood simmered.

I leaped forward, but at the same time, someone else did the exact same thing, coming at Pucci in a blurring run and slamming into him. The only reason I didn't get to him first was that Chaplin had thrown himself against me, on his hind feet, pushing me back with his paws.

While I struggled with my canine, Gabriel grabbed Pucci by the neck, lifting him high as the bigger man choked.

“Lucky for you,” Gabriel said over the music in his unruffled vampire voice, “I got here before Mariah did.”

I panted as Chaplin batted me back up the steps. I wanted to punish Pucci for all the grief he'd given me in the Badlands, testing me with all his demeaning comments, always lobbying for my banishment.

Chaplin whispered to me in Canine.
Mariah-pup, Mariah-pup . . .

He'd eased me to sleep so many nights with that song, cuddled in bed with me, and it soothed me now . . . but only far enough so that my change didn't burst out all over.

Hana had already gained her feet, grabbing Gabriel's arm while he still held Pucci aloft.

“Please don't, Gabriel. Please . . .”

I finally found my own tongue, but my voice was shredded. “How far is he going to push you, Hana?”

My friend—a Badlander who'd done her best to support me through thick and thin—leveled her liquid, dark gaze on me. A plea.

One I'd seen a hundred times before.

“God-all, Hana.” I turned my face away from her. My sight rested on Taraline, who'd come to stand next to me like a lone jury, her veils hiding all expression.

“He didn't mean it,” Hana said. “He never goes this far. He's just excited because of the dancing and . . .”

She trailed off. I didn't believe her, anyway.

Pucci choked while in Gabriel's hold, and he wrapped both hands round my vampire's wrist. He was starting his were-change, bones wavering under his skin.

Did he think he could take on Gabriel and win?

We'd caught the notice of the Reds nearest us, and some of the dancing came to a lull. Their stillness balanced my jittery pulse while the bloodlust that had never quite gone away from earlier in the night still boiled in me.

One of the bad guys,
I thought, staring at Pucci. A brute, just like the men who'd broken into my family's home and forced that werewolf to bite me, the ones who'd killed my mom and brother.

And Pucci would keep on being a bad guy until somebody did something about it....

But as Hana buried her face against Gabriel's arm, sobbing now, it was clear that my vampire wasn't so far lost that his logic defied reason.

He touched Hana's shoulder, tilted his head, and I knew he was thinking that she was capable of saving herself, if she ever chose to.

He released Pucci, letting him plunk to the ground.

Through the dust, the big man held his neck, coughing. At the same time, Chaplin dropped to all fours, coming up the stairs to Taraline again, as if I'd stopped needing a protector and she was his new duty.

But I couldn't care about that—not with the breath wedged in my lungs.

Gabriel spoke in a mangled tone. “If you've got enough balls to change into your monster right now, Pucci, I'm just gonna rip them right off you.”

As if to challenge that, Pucci began to shake, allowing more of himself to turn, his skin absolutely flowing now with the changes going on beneath it.

Hana dropped to him, clutching his arm. “No!”

Her voice seemed to persuade him, and he closed his eyes.

“No, Antonio,” she whispered fervently.

It seemed like forever, but he stopped his trembling, eventually huffing to his feet and stomping away, through a group of grinning vampires who'd obviously been entertained by the show.

After Pucci shoved past them, they went back to dancing with each other, grinding hips, their kisses moving up and down slick bodies as if nothing much had occurred.

As the drums kept on, Gabriel glanced in Pucci's direction. “Hana had better take over from here, because the next time I drop him in the dirt, it won't be in one piece.”

Taraline spoke. “She needs help more than he does. I'm going to look after her.”

She ascended the stairs, leaving us, her veils flapping behind her.

The drumbeats filled me up again, and when I turned back round, I focused on some were-couples just to the left of the staircase—monsters who apparently hadn't given much thought to our little Badlander drama.

They were using shirts to bind each other, forcing one another into willing, panting submission. It was an echo of how our bodies bound what was inside us—how we fought our restraints each and every pull of the moon.

Chaplin barked in back of me.
Come with me, Mariah?
“No,” I said. And I guess I said it in such a way that it was final, because Chaplin barked and yawped again.