Blood Rules (32 page)

Almost as efficiently as 562 had done, he thought.

He received the messages like vague wisps: the escaped monsters in control of the hub. The citizens who'd taken pills that knocked them out. A shadow man named Leon who'd pledged loyalty. Setting indentured people free by unleashing them and moving them across the hub . . .

When Gabriel came out of the connection, he saw that Mariah's skin was even rosier, her smile wider. It was as if she expected him to understand something that he just wasn't getting.

Had he finally reached his limitations as a vampire? Was he unable to go beyond what she
could
give to him?

He listened to her vital signs, but instead of the restless cadence of her buried were-heat, he heard very, very, very slow thumps, like the trudge of unstoppable footsteps.

She almost matched the dirgelike pace of 562's body....

The oldster seemed to comprehend that there was something between Gabriel and Mariah that he had no part of, and he finished adjusting Hana's robes around him, then headed for the main tunnel.

Mariah buttoned her mended white shirt, and Gabriel couldn't say that he noticed when the oldster was actually out of the area, because all he felt and saw was her and the terrible suspicions that were building in him.

“What did you do?” he asked, and he wasn't talking about the trip to the hub.

Under the light of a solar lantern, her gaze darted to the left, in the direction of where 562 would be resting in the main area.

Gabriel's knees weakened, but he caught himself before he lost strength. Mariah couldn't have. She wouldn't have....

“Did you try its blood?” he asked. “Please tell me you didn't.”

At his cut tone, her gaze darkened, and he could see down to what he thought to be her soul. She knew she'd disappointed him yet again, and it gripped his supposed heart right along with hers.

“Mariah?” It was a question that didn't have the will to form all the way into what it truly was. A plea. If a vampire had any soul remaining whatsoever, Gabriel's was here, in her name.

“It was only a little drop,” she said. “I had to. If I didn't . . .”

He finished the aching thought for her. If she didn't try, she'd never know if 562's image/thought of that vampire man drinking its blood and achieving such peace was true.

Jesus,
he thought, and the curse ate at him, along with the knowledge that she was just as destructive as ever.

“But Gabriel,” she said in a tiny, hopeful voice. “I feel better than ever. 562 is curing me, no matter what we thought she
wouldn't
do.”

She didn't even realize she'd attempted something terrible. But that was Mariah—wanting to do good, but always screwing it up somehow. That was her tragedy, and his, too, because he was a part of her.

“At least it didn't bite you for an exchange,” he said. “It sounds like that's how 562 transforms things, not just heals them.”

Her expression fell.

“Right, Mariah?”

“I'm . . . not sure.”

As she told him about what she'd thought to be an image/ thought from 562, in which the creature bit Mariah on her palm—just a small bite, she said—he sat on the ground.

“The both of us,” he said after her words had faded off. “We're going to finish badly.”

“No we won't.”

“You've got your obsession to get better. And I've got my bloodlust . . .”

At his confession, her posture echoed the crumbling of his voice.

“I know you've gotten hungrier.” Now she didn't sound or feel so happy. “
I
made you worse—”

“No.” He couldn't let her take that kind of blame. “My creator made me this way, not you. Maybe all vampires fight this battle during their first years, clinging to what they've lost in their humanity and slowly giving in to the inevitable.”

But he had her and their connection. That had been
his
best hope for getting better.

He remembered what she'd told him all those nights ago, while they'd trekked across the Badlands.
You're one of our own, too, whether or not you like to see yourself that way.

“I don't know what to do to stop either one of us anymore,” he said, his tone dead.

She moved, as if she meant to come to him—or maybe he felt the motion
in
her, their link pulling them together once more. But when she held herself back, it was for the best.

“Gabriel, it'll all turn out, you'll see. You want to stop your bloodlust, and that's why I took 562's blood—not just for me, but for you, too. We saw how that vampire man felt after he drank from 562 in the image/thought. It was like instant comfort for him.”

“And you don't care about being bitten?”

She had her fists bunched. So frustrated. He could imagine her leaving him alone now, just because she thought it was best for him, but Gabriel would only chase her down, unable to bear the absence of their link.

Or . . . the absence of her.

He tried to reconcile himself with that bald truth, but then a prickle of awareness scuttled down his spine, and he looked in back of him to find 562 in the entrance to the nook. Under that silver hair, its red eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on the wall near Mariah.

It was the first time the creature had left its Buddha spot in the main room, and Gabriel couldn't help thinking there was a reason. That maybe it'd been drawn by their conversation.

But why would 562 be so invested in their problems? Why would it care?

Motioning to Gabriel and Mariah, it urged them to sit together.

It had something to say.

Though the proximity of Mariah nearly broke Gabriel, he waited until 562 caught both their gazes at once, communicating what it couldn't speak out loud in a smash-jab of image/ thoughts that encompassed both of them....

It started out with the villagers gathered, the same raggarbed people from the other night's image/thoughts, but Gabriel understood that this moment was occurring before the night that the one brave, injured, sick old woman had exchanged blood with 562.

None of them were vampires . . . yet.

They'd brought a young girl to 562. She was their first experiment, and they bound her, then cut her flesh as she cried out. They forced her forward, to where 562 could scent her blood.

Tempting, lovely blood.

As 562 panted, they pressed the girl's wound to 562's lips. It drank. Drank. And just when it was on the edge of bursting, the people guided 562's mouth to the girl's neck.

It bit, sucked, the blood thick and heady, the girl's soul leaving her. Lack of a soul made a human more into an animal, like 562, and 562 fed on that spirit before it even left its own body.

Then they cut 562's skin, leading the girl's mouth to that wound, and she took blood in return, suckling as hungrily as a new child.

All too soon, they ripped the girl away, her mouth ringed with red. As 562's eyes filled with tears—it had never experienced the beauty of an exchange before—the girl's fangs flicked outward, her eyes reddening as she begged for more blood.

And the vampire child of 562 got it by spinning around and attacking one of the humans before the rest could restrain her with wooden crosses smaller than the ones that had made 562 freeze in the past....

562 brought on another image/thought that echoed one of the first ones the creature had given to Gabriel and Mariah: the dead rabbit, after 562 had exchanged with it . . . how its ears had sprouted, how its fur had turned a nasty yellow, how its eyes had grown such strangely long lashes and its mouth had suffered those front slab teeth. 562 watched as it darted about a forest, attacking a deer, sniffing up its blood, cackling, then zooming over to a squirrel, which the creature tore apart as 562 blankly observed this child it had experimentally resurrected....

Another shift in time, back again to another of 562's first shared memories: the dead woman with the dead baby—the lady who'd also been brought back to life with 562's exchange, just like the rabbit. 562 was in the same room as the resurrected woman, watching her as she sat on her bed, crying for her deceased child. As nightfall swallowed the room, the revived woman went still, but there was an eerie
“tik-tik”
sound coming from her mouth now. Then, as if it were the most normal occurrence in the world, she simply reached up and removed her head, her body still sitting while her head floated up in the air, entrails straggling out of its neck. All the while, she kept making that sound—“
tik-tik, tik-tik.”
She stopped at the bed of her pregnant sister and, using her teeth, tore into the woman's swollen belly, gulping in the blood, working her way to the baby within—

A flash of horrific time, of pain, red and liquid, and then Gabriel's and Mariah's minds revolved to another image/ thought: 562 stripped of clothing while it slumped against a wall, a giant wooden cross suspended from the ceiling over it, freezing it.

With no clothing, it was obvious that 562—she . . . he . . . it—had no sexual parts.

There was a different group of people in front of it now, in a different place, where the walls were made of crude grass and mud. A stringy-haired man in black robes stood by 562, who wanted to sob but couldn't—spirit broken, will broken, caught by these humans who didn't seem to understand....

The door opened, and a man pulled a creature into the room. It was bound with chains, its muzzle wrapped, allowing it to make only muffled, frightened growls.

A black dog . . .

Behind 562, a woman screamed. She had been chained there, stripped of clothing like 562.

The men cut the dog and brought it bloodied to 562, who couldn't stop two slim fangs from popping out of its gums. Then the men forced 562's fangs into the canine, making 562 drink and drink. Unlike it had done with the humans, 562 didn't take the dog's soul—not during this rape of both of them. A willing soul tasted so good, but this could not.

When they were done, they took the dog away. They bled 562 with blades, its life water seeping into cups and vials. They opened the pitiful animal's mouth, forced it to imbibe blood from a cup, then jumped away from it as the canine flailed, howling in spite of its muzzle, squirming over the ground until it stopped altogether, its eyes staring into space.

Yet it wasn't dead. Gradually, bones prodded from underneath its skin, stretching it and sending the black-arts man into an indecipherable chant that burned 562's ears. The dog grew, creating a sound like a scream as its teeth lengthened, its eyes glowing while it fought its silver chains.

With a howl, it jumped up, standing on two feet, its limbs looking so very human under the black hair.

It saw the woman behind 562, and she screamed even louder as the huge creature bounded over to her....

The moment whisked to darkness until objects began to float past in Gabriel's and Mariah's consciousness: a parade of different animals—wolves, cats, bears undergoing the same rituals with 562 and the black-arts man . . . forced breeding . . . birth upon birth of the were-creatures humans had created from 562's blood out of curiosity and arrogance....

Then, blackness again, and just as Gabriel and Mariah believed it was over, one last image/thought rose up: 562 hiding on a rooftop in modern times. It had escaped the black-arts crowd years ago, and it didn't need much blood anymore. It was old, and its tastes had changed to finer blood than humans'. A feeding every few months during full moons was sufficient, although tonight it fed under a waning moon.

Earlier, 562 had been attacked, but now, after it had fought off its enemy, good blood should not go to waste.

Something lay at its feet in the image/thought.

A Cyclops . . . ?

Just as Gabriel's and Mariah's minds tried to take meaning from that, 562's consciousness overshadowed theirs.

My children,
it thought as it peered over the roof to the streets below. Its children were somewhere out there. It only wished to be with them, to help them grow and prosper.

That was why it had come out of hiding many years ago. Being alone was unthinkable for a creature that hadn't found a way for itself to die. It had roamed, refraining from making more children, instead searching for descendants it already had. In old Europe, it had come upon evidence of another origin of vampires—a raging prince who'd been annihilated Before, and his composition had seemingly been much different from 562's. It had also discovered another origin and remnants of its vanquished line in Mexico.

Otherwise, it sought its own surviving vampires, plus the gremlins and tik-tiks it alone had given existence to. It had never discovered any were-creatures because they hid themselves among humans so well, but from the others, 562 heard tales of murder. And, with every one, 562 realized a little more each night that all its progeny seemed to be slipping down the food chain, extinction looming, just as it had for the lines that hadn't been birthed by 562.

Its children's blood was weaker than its own, because with every passing generation, the power thinned. It didn't like that its progeny were dying off, even faster than the other monsters out there....

In the image/thought, 562 heard a stealthy sound, and just as it prepared to spring off the roof, five Shredders roped it with cross-dangled lashes, hauling it in.

Then . . . more flashes of image/thoughts for Gabriel and Mariah: years of holding cells; force fields holding it back during the full moon; transfers from asylum to asylum; 562's blood taken out of its body through syringes, the doctors probing, investigating its composition, never learning the lessons from what their ancestors had done to 562 so long ago . . .