Blood Rules (11 page)

“I don't know what it did, hoss, so back off, shut your ever-bitchy mouth, and watch the viszes for signs of anything that might've accompanied the machine.”

Having no response to that, Pucci merely ground his teeth. Hana still ignored him, although the oldster wasn't sure how she managed.

Meanwhile, the oldster kept track of his own visz screen, which featured a view of the west, where nothing was stirring yet. But he knew the community's time here was over. They'd have to get a move on soon, just to be certain they weren't discovered.

A twinge of weariness made the oldster sink on his cask seat. The good times out here in the Badlands had clearly passed. Back in the day, he and the other were-creatures had enjoyed free run in this area, all of them tired of the hubs and seeking a new home. He'd invited those he cared to invite into his community after he'd lived well enough among the humans in the hubs, his were-ness undiscovered. Then he'd been age-phased out of his graphic designer career. Jobless and older than dirt, he'd wondered what to do with himself. Round that time, he'd become all too aware of the pounds where they sent old human people, and damned if he was going to allow anyone to phase him out for eternity when he still had a lot of living to do, were-creature or not.

But that was then, this was now, and he was sick of feeling hunted, whether it was for being a were or for being an oldster. He was sick of losing people like Zel.

Sick to death.

“We need to evacuate,” he said, “maybe even before the sun comes up.”

Sammy seemed to notice the oldster's dispiritedness. “And go where? Goddamn it, first we had a Shredder on our heels. Now a government 'bot. Where's it going to end?”

Chaplin let out a series of barks and grunts, but none of them understood his talk. If only Zel were around to translate . . .

His chest felt speared by loneliness and loss. “They're gonna come with bigger weapons, Sammy. Last time with Stamp, Gabriel told us to stand up and fight, and we happened to survive the ordeal. But this time it's not just a Shredder and his buddies we're facing.”

Sammy didn't say anything. He just kept watching his visz.

Pucci spoke. “I think we should scoot right now.”

The oldster was in no mood for Pucci's opinions. The fact that they were the same as his own made the oldster feel just as weak-minded as the big man.

He distanced himself as much as he could from Pucci by saying, “If you've got an ideal location in mind, by all means, inform us. But Mariah scouted out this area before we settled here, and she said there's not another viable living place within miles.” Gabriel had taken a few outside night trips to seek a backup homestead even farther away, but there hadn't been enough time to find a decent one.

Pucci was working his mouth as if he meant to spit at the oldster. It would've been the ultimate insult. But when the big man refrained, the oldster wasn't surprised. Pucci was all talk.

Luckily, he became
no
talk as Hana rose from her station.

“I will pack water, then scant clothing for all of us. We will need an extra set for travel in case a were-change overtakes us and shreds our wardrobe. Without a human appearance, we haven't a prayer of passing ourselves off as people if a second robot should find us out there and have the capability to question us.”

A sense of inevitability fell over them as Hana and Pucci left.

Chaplin took Hana's place at her visz while the oldster and Sammy kept vigil, too. But as the minutes ticked by, the oldster told himself that maybe Sammy
had
gotten to the robot before it'd identified their presence, because there didn't seem to be any backup mechanisms outside querying into the robot's fate. Maybe a government analyst had chalked up the machine's malfunction as just that—a natural disaster that didn't require looking into.

But the oldster knew the government better than that. They'd be sending something or someone to check on their spy—a robot that'd probably been dispatched because of Stamp, though Mariah's careless, open-field running could've been a cause, too.

The oldster heard a rustle back in the main tunnel, where the sound carried so clearly. But he didn't pay much mind, figuring Hana and Pucci were making quick work of the packing.

Sammy was getting restless at his own visz.

“You want to pack up a few of your tech doodads?” the oldster asked.

“I wouldn't turn down the opportunity.” Sammy gestured toward his screen. “Watch my screen?”

“Hurry up.”

As Sammy left, the oldster positioned himself so that he could glance back and forth between the viszes. Chaplin helped him out by watching two at a time also.

Seconds later, the dog sniffed the air, losing focus for an instant. Then he shook his head, going back to the visz screens.

The oldster wished he could ask what that had been about, but what could the dog tell him?

So he kept surveying the screens, scratching at his whiskers, the flinty sound of hair against skin seeming to fill the cavern.

Then he felt it.

A prickle on the back of his neck.

Heartbeat flicking at him, he turned round on his cask, glimpsing the tunnel entrance.

Nothing.

The oldster laughed at himself. Was he afraid that Pucci had come to sneak up on him and whine him to death?

When he turned back toward the viszes, Chaplin was on his feet, stiff-bodied, staring at the tunnel.

Now the oldster wasn't laughing. “What's going on?”

The dog slunk forward an inch, his silence indicating that the oldster should be quiet, too. Slowly, the oldster reached for his shotgun, his pulse banging, powered by adrenaline. His temperature rose, needling his skin on its way to heating.

Chaplin sniffed the cool air again, then seemed confused.

Was it a smell he didn't recognize?

Or maybe there wasn't a scent at all, and that was what was making the dog frown. Maybe he was hearing something but not smelling it.

The oldster moved toward the tunnel, his shotgun raised, his skin beginning to waver as the change threatened. He didn't attempt to control himself—a change might be just what he'd need if something had gotten inside without them knowing....

Bristling, he wanted to call out to his friends, just to see if someone was there, but he didn't.

Chaplin went before him into the tunnel, where the solar lanterns burned in what seemed to be a flickering menace. Other tunnels, which branched off to various nooks, felt like eyes that followed the oldster. There were a few unlit tunnels up ahead, too, leading to areas they didn't use.

Those felt even more dangerous.

He heard Chaplin trying not to breathe, so he attempted to do the same thing, inhaling and exhaling with his lips pursed, hoping he didn't sound as loud as he suspected.

Something smacked the rock wall to his left, and he swung the shotgun round, ready to fire.

Chaplin barked, and it was almost like a dog scream.

Then everything slowed to a baleful crawl: Chaplin, springing forward into the nearest darkened tunnel, his teeth bared as his muscles moved under his sleek brown fur; the oldster's were-change making his skin into an exoskeleton as his muscles and bone shaped a tail and pincers out of his body; his clothes ripping, his shotgun dropping to the ground, the fine hairs on him feeling the vibrations of a predator . . .

All the while, in the bluish tinge of oncoming were-creature vision, something emerged from the shadows of the tunnel where Chaplin was flying.

A robot?

No. As it unfolded from the darkness, it became a human—one who had masked his scent. One who was wearing a dark leather armor suit with gauntlets and FlyShoes strapped to his boots, making him a few feet taller than a regular normal. One with bullets slung across his chest and guns at his sides.

The oldster's were-perception had almost fully distanced itself from his human mind, and he felt himself raise his scorpion pincers, then ready his tail to strike venom at the enemy's neck. At the same time, Chaplin finally reached the Shredder, aiming his teeth at Stamp's dimmed face.

But with a dodge that was worthy of a preter, the human Shredder avoided the dog's bite, sending up an arm to slam Chaplin behind him into the darkness. The dog yelped as Stamp whipped round, raising his revolver to target the canine.

He also had a gun in his other hand.

Dual explosions signaled a bullet blasting toward the oldster, too, and agonizing pain tore into where his shoulder would normally be. Right away, silver anguish rayed out from the wound.

He didn't hear the outcome of Chaplin's bullet, because he'd already hit the ground, his body bending and pulling back into human form because of the silver poisoning in him. Human reality zipped back, bringing quick darkness and flashes of gunpowder as the Shredder fired into the tunnel again.

The oldster didn't hear Chaplin react this time, either, but maybe that was because he was too busy cupping a hand over his injury as blood seeped out. Pain. God-all, he'd never felt such screeching pain as the poison kept spreading from the entry point outward.

How long until the Shredder put a silver bullet in his heart?

He dug into the ground with his fingers, trying to crawl away.

Then...

Was there a hissing sound coming from where the Shredder had last been standing?

The oldster looked behind him to find Stamp gone and Sammy in his place, massive in his full Gila monster were-form, his eyes humanlike except for the preter shine in his scaly lizard face. He had long claws and a flickering tongue, and stood on two feet, hunched.

“Sammy,” the oldster tried to say, but he could hardly voice anything. “Shredder . . .”

His voice turned to a gasp as Stamp eased out of the shadows again and slid behind Sammy. The only sound the oldster heard was a very faint buzzing, like gears turning.

By the time Sammy heard it, too, the Shredder already had his revolver aimed at Sammy's back.

The explosion seemed to last forever as blood splattered over the oldster, coming down on him like a rain shower.

Somewhere in the oldster's mind, he thought,
If I hadn't been talking, Sammy would've heard the Shredder. He was too focused on me. . . .

He opened his eyes through the blood, seeing Gila-Sammy with a red bloom against his scales, right where his heart was located. As the half–Gila monster fell to his knees, his body contorted, skin waving while the change consumed him, sucking the scales back into his skin, twisting the bones back to where they belonged, shortening them, bringing him back to plain old Sammy.

With a bewildered frown, he slumped the rest of the way to the floor, his cheek smacking the ground, his eyes and mouth shock-open as blood ran red.

Stamp kept his revolver targeted on Sammy, but he leveled his cold, dark gaze on the oldster. Then he smiled, giving his gun a little, cocky twirl as he adjusted his aim toward his new target.

The oldster didn't close his eyes. He stared right back at Stamp.

But before the Shredder could fire a silver bullet into his heart, Chaplin flew out of the dark tunnel, knocking Stamp to the other wall, his flailing paws batting the Shredder's weapons away. Sammy's blood seemed to streak over the oldster's eyes, or maybe he just saw the red on Chaplin's fur as the livid dog clawed and bit at the Shredder with frenzied speed.

Intel Dog-Fu,
the oldster thought vaguely.

He had no idea what happened from there, because he heard a yell just before someone scooped him up and started running with him.

Someone with hooves.

Pucci?

While the oldster's eyelids grew as heavy as his heart, he only remembered the ground rushing past him as Pucci carried him out of the cavern, galloping over the Badlands dirt.

B
y the time Stamp stood and brushed the dust off his suit, the scrubs were gone—the elk-man carrying the scorpionguy away while a mule-deer woman rescued the Intel Dog.

Gone in a flash.

No matter how good Stamp was, he wasn't as fast as a preter, even if he was wearing FlyShoes that could increase a human's speed if he fired them up. There wasn't cause to fret, though. Stamp knew how to track, and the monsters would be leaving quite a bit for him to go on during their haste to escape. The two rescuers had carryalls with them, but the bags hadn't been bulky enough to contain heat suits, so there was little chance they'd be able to keep running in the daylight. They'd be resting somewhere, and that'd give Stamp ample opportunity to catch up.

His only big disappointment was that he hadn't seen Gabriel or the werewolf he'd witnessed during that showdown over two months ago....

Stamp inspected some tears in the leather of his suit and damned that Intel Dog for getting a jump on him. The glorified pet had played dead when Stamp had blasted bullets at it, and Stamp hadn't had the time to check the thing's vitals because he'd known that the others would be attracted by the gunfire and would be upon him soon. That was the danger of silver bullets: They weren't quiet, but they pierced a were-creature's hide better than blades.

The canine had obviously dodged the bullets. Facing an Intel Dog was always tough, but this one was rougher and readier since it'd probably learned its tricks from the preters.

Hunt and learn,
Stamp thought. He was a little rusty, so he'd take every piece of information and put it to good use for the next encounter.