In Blood We Trust (11 page)

“Just a hunch.” Her red-painted gaze was direct, nononsense. “If I can tell anything by the way the rest of the community treats us, it's that we're rather . . . unpopular.”

He couldn't refute that. “My aim is to see that we all start to accept one another. That's why I'm busting my tail here.”

“So we all can live happily ever after as one big monster family?”

If sarcasm could literally drip from a voice, he'd be steeped in it. “You don't think that's possible?”

“Not in the least, although I'd love to be proven wrong. I'm not a fan of humans—at least, not ones who don't provide for me—and living out in the open with other monsters would be my idea of Shangri-la. But, as in the myth, I'm pretty certain it's only a dream.”

His expression had gone a little sour at her mention of humans that provided for the tik-tiks. Pregnant humans.

“Michael,” she said. “I'm only offering honesty. Being dead at one time and resurrected by another tik-tik's blood exchange alters a woman like me. We become what we need to be.”

“And if you don't give in to your appetites?”

“We degrade into what vampires would, I imagine. Shriveled, live corpses. So you see why we would subscribe to our bodies' necessities rather than starve.”

That didn't make what they ate any righter.

He muttered, “And here I thought we'd have the opportunity for some normalcy in Monsterville.”

“For you were-creatures, normalcy is going through your days like any regular human, unless there's a full moon or another circumstance that alters you. You're the most normal of all the Reds.”

“I just can't believe I'm blood-related to you through 562,” he said.

“Yes, if I were a were-creature, I would be disgusted, as well, Michael. I would hate to have a distant cousin who removes her head when she eats and is cursed to have a profane appetite that even other monsters find appalling.”

He shut right up once again, and Falisha smiled bitterly, absently fingering the ribbon round her throat.

“I suppose,” she said, “that puts an end to this whole warm, fuzzy family reunion theory.”

He rustled in his seat. Time was ticking, and God-all knew if or when Gabriel would be coming back and whether the old man could gain some sort of control over the situation by then. “Since you don't seem to have any information, would you arrange some times for your other women to chat with me?”

“I'll do that. In fact, just as I mentioned before, it might be a fine idea to actually have a vampire or two go into our minds, just in case they're able to see something we're not consciously aware of—something that might help us put this matter to rest so we can all move on.”

“That's gracious of you.”

“I figure you've got the Civils breathing down your neck and you need to move on with your investigation. I hear they're loudly demanding justice for the victim, and that could very much put the upset on our efforts to establish a community.”

Neelan, one of the Civils who'd seemed to step into the role of leader, had been preaching to his cronies that perhaps vampires should just be expelled from the hub. But that was a fine line to walk, since it was the vampires who had the mind powers and the abilities to keep GBVille running by imitating the office-bound human leaders on communication links as well as using their sway on distractoids and others who required it.

“I really do appreciate your willingness,” the oldster said, starting to rise from his chair.

“As I said, of course. But I would ask something of you, too, if you don't mind.”

The oldster rested his hands on his hips, just above his revolvers. “I should've known there'd be a quid pro quo coming.”

“Your ability to think on your feet makes you quite the sheriff.”

“Sheriff?”

The tik-tik had a gleam in her eyes, and damned if the oldster didn't think it might be some kind of appreciation for how he'd stepped in during this crisis for the Reds.

“You've been acting the part of the law for a bit now,” she said. “It didn't go unnoticed when you kept venturing out in the night to liberate water slaves in the hub.”

She was talking about the humans who'd indentured themselves to the richies who could afford corporatized water.

“Well,” he said. “Now that just about every human is passed out from pills, running their feet off, hypnotized by a vamp, or in our cell rooms, it's easy to separate the slaves from their masters. I don't know how much good my efforts will do in the long run, though.” Uncomfortable with her praise—she was a tik-tik, for damn's sake—the oldster got back to business. “What's that request you were going to make?”

“Some of my tik-tiks will need to feed. We've complied with the request to fall back while the revolution is occurring, but other monsters have been allowed to find food. We haven't.”

“That's because the others go for stray wildlife round the area.”

“Yes, but know this—we wouldn't be wanton in our feasting. Unlike a vampire, we've got strong control. That's because it's harder for us to find sustenance since our food must be . . . properly selected.”

He read between her lines: Pregnant human women didn't come along every day, so tik-tiks wouldn't be like most Reds, hopping on whatever had blood. Even the gremlins were like demented mosquitoes, taking nips where they could off other animals on the outskirts.

The oldster's stomach turned a little at even discussing this, much less at having to give a tik-tik permission to comb the hub for their once-a-year meals. Not even a stem cell bank, if GBVille had possessed one, would've compensated, because tik-tiks needed their prey live from the womb.

But who the hell was he to judge when, every full moon, he had his own kind of cravings?

Maybe he just spent too much time as a human, not a were-creature. Still, when he answered Falisha, he did it reluctantly. “You'll have to run permission past the vamps and Civils first.”

“Perhaps we need to put together a council.”

“I tell you what—you work on that, Falisha. I've got my hands full presently.”

As he left the room, he could feel her watching him, as if intrigued. Truth to tell, her straightforward manner reminded him a whole lot of Zel Hopkins, and that just didn't sit right, especially with the way the oldster had felt about her.

Loved and lost,
he thought, trying not to dwell on how she'd died at Stamp's hands. Besides, Zel, who'd been good through and through, wouldn't appreciate being compared to a tik-tik.

Not a bit.

He strode down the hallway as best as he could with this old man's body creaking and moaning. There was steam in him, though, an urge to clear Gabriel. He owed the vampire at least that much for what he'd done for the Badlanders.

And maybe he even wanted to prove to himself that he'd been right when he'd put his trust in Gabriel.

Not a minute had passed before he realized that he was being followed by something in the walls, and he stopped.

“Who's there?”

He heard breathing in back of him and turned to see Taraline, the torches providing a dim counterpoint to her black dress and veils.

He itched to lift those coverings, just to see how she was faring underneath—if she'd changed because of the introduction of Mariah's 562 blood—yet there were far more important subjects to broach.

“What's the word?” the oldster asked.

“The shadows have found . . . something, Michael. But nothing definitive.”

As the oldster puzzled over that, Taraline stretched out a gloved hand. Chaplin came out from round a corner to nuzzle it. The dog whimpered at the oldster, as if saying a sad
hi
to him, too. He was just as concerned about Mariah's disappearance with Gabriel as any of them. Even more. To boot, their trail had gone cold outside of GBVille, because Gabriel had taken obvious care to cover any tracks.

“What do you mean you found something but nothing?” the oldster asked. “Don't tell me with all the shadows running round, no one witnessed what happened.”

“We can't be everywhere at every time,” Taraline said.

The oldster grunted. “Sorry to take it out on you. I'm just frustrated by the lack of answers.”

“I understand.”

Other shadows moved over the walls, but they could've been from monsters walking in front of torches round the corner.

The oldster tried not to glance at the dark shapes. “What
did
they see?”

Taraline paused, as if she were firming up what she wanted to tell him.

Why wouldn't she just come out with it?

The oldster watched her expectantly until she talked.

“A shadow arrived at the scene just as all the young vampires with Gabriel were descending on the Civil. They actually witnessed Gabriel separating himself from the feasting crowd, as if he didn't want anything to do with it.”

Her veils hid everything: expression, reaction . . .

“That doesn't mean he's innocent,” the oldster said carefully.

“I know. It might even mean he was the one who attacked the Civil first. Afterward, he might have had a crisis of conscience, and it made him desert the feeding frenzy. We've seen him vacillate like that before.”

She hesitated, and the oldster still got the feeling that she hadn't told him everything. He thought Taraline might've even noticed his doubts.

“And?” he asked.

“I don't want to raise your hopes or incriminate anyone, but . . .”

“Spill it,
please
.”

Chaplin winced and sat on his rear end. The oldster had never wished more that he or Taraline spoke Canine. Did the
dog
know something?

No, the oldster thought. Chaplin was smart enough so that he would've dragged him to a clue and barked at him to provide emphasis for any findings.

Damn, he was being paranoid about everyone.

Taraline folded her gloved hands in front of her. “A shadow did see . . . Well, I would call it a noteworthy detail.”

“What?”

“A Civil, near the hallway where the victim was killed, around the time of death.”

“A Civil?” The oldster's adrenaline pumped. “Who?”

“Neelan.”

The half-man, half-snake chimera.

The oldster's mind went into overdrive, ideas taking form.

Neelan, who'd invited the Badlanders to the asylum after they'd carried out the power-blaster attack. Neelan, who'd welcomed them into this brave new world that the liberated monsters had begun to form. Yet, after Mariah and 562 had changed into their horrific forms at the full moon, Neelan had started to pull away from the Reds, as if he regretted ever bringing them here.

But . . . no. There was no way the oldster could even imagine that the Civil had done something like frame a bunch of vampires just to flush some Reds out of their community, especially by sacrificing a fellow Civil.

What had Falisha said?

Normal didn't apply anymore. They were monsters.

God-all.

But at least there was a new lead. Yet what if it didn't go anywhere? Worse, what if the oldster pursued this only to find out that Neelan hadn't done
anything
? Would he be stirring things up and starting a full-blown Civil-Red war?

Hating what had to be taken care of, the oldster said, “Where's the shadow who told you this, Taraline?”

“Follow me,” she said, and he wondered if there was some relief in her voice.

Like a specter, she turned and walked away, guiding the oldster to the only salvation Gabriel might have.

T
he monsters of Dallas had given Gabriel and Mariah some grief a couple of nights ago after he'd sped across the miles while carrying her, keeping to the bushes and hills for cover, then arriving at the hub's wind-whistling borders.

A line of were-creatures had been subtly patrolling the outskirts, and it had only been after Gabriel had shown proof of fang and then used a bit of sway to persuade them that Mariah was on the up-and-up that the guards had allowed them past the barbed trenches—a souvenir from when Dallas had gone to the bad guys years ago.

Since Mariah hadn't turned into her monster, these Dallas guards had no idea that she was something other than a regular were-creature.

And just as well.

Inside the barriers, the streets held circa-millennium buildings that'd been fortified with steel, giving the hub a silver-capped sense of Western-movie quiet in the night. It was a boomtown gone to ghostliness, with remnants of public screens—like the ones that had featured ever-flipping advertisement channels—gone blank. The hub had been sponsored by a conglomerate of big oil companies that had been fighting for monetary survival with the green techno corporations when the world had changed, and their symbol—a white smiley face with sparkles for teeth—was etched into every building, on every corner.

It seemed that the streets should've been emptied, just like the bloody moments after a showdown, but the monsters here had decided that
they
weren't going to shelter themselves away in any asylum, even as their own vampires copied the model of GBVille, the first liberated hub, by swaying the humans in charge and imitating their voices to those outside Dallas who wanted to come in. That action had pretty much quarantined this hub, too, because, like GBVille, Dallas had also staged its own fake mosquito sighting. And there was no doubt in Gabriel's mind that the politicians in old D.C. were going a little nuts with news of all these so-called mosquitoes coming around after they'd supposedly been eradicated.