Blood Rules (39 page)

I could only hope.

Just outside, Chaplin stood upright at the long, unbreakable window, his paws against it. Even with the weird estrangement we'd been going through, he'd come here, and his big brown eyes were full of worry. He looked as fearful as my heart felt.

Next to him, four vampire guards cocked their heads, extremely interested in what was about to transpire in me, their blood cousin, as well as in 562, their origin.

Civil monsters were guarding all of my friends, plus the other were-creatures, but 562 and I had more security than anyone else, including those crosses that tamed 562. Across from me, my origin seemed to be as smooth as marble, with that all-encompassing silver hair and those unblinking red eyes staring at the wall as if there were something spellbinding in the molecules of its padding.

Another second nattered by . . . then another . . .

With every shuddery heartbeat, I regretted what I'd done with 562. Why'd I taken that blood before the full moon when I could've waited to see what my origin really was?

Why did I always get myself in these messes?

I must've been wearing a jittery expression, because Chaplin barked in encouragement outside, although I couldn't hear him behind that glass.

A force was rising higher in me, raying out in every way, and I sat up straighter at the odd sensation. It was more breathtaking than the usual were-change. It felt like you do when you jump down from a high rock and your stomach turns, except it was happening throughout my entire body.

I strained at my chains, the crosses now making the skin beneath them hurt a little, like needle pricks. I wanted to ask her/him what was happening. “562 . . . ?”

But my origin gave me nothing as she/he continued to stare.

The blankness of alienation surrounded me. My restrained friends weren't nearby. My own origin didn't even seem to know I existed right now. And Gabriel . . .

I lowered my head as I felt his boot clobber my shoulder, pain screaming through me, centering in my heart. I'd been in half were-form, so I'd been able to process the shock. The awfulness of being put aside for his new intimate—the bloodlust.

As a growing were-force began to chop at my sides, almost as if a moon goddess were inside me being born, I started to panic.

I should've waited . . .

Should've never done this at all . . .

Just as I was about to moan in fear, 562 snapped her/his gaze to me. Red, shining . . .

Awake.

Her/his gaze sucked me in, and there was nothing I could do to stop the image/thoughts from assaulting me with what I knew was my future.

A future in which I was a wan imitation of the original 562 since my blood wasn't as pure. Vaguely, I saw myself sitting outside . . . or maybe it was inside . . . staring, hungering as I waited.

A deer loped by, but I had no appetite for it.

A human strolled past, so easy to catch, but that wasn't good enough, either.

Then . . . a chimera, just like Neelan, half-man, half-snake, slithering toward me and . . .

God-all, I was hungry. Oh, the want of the blood in this monster who wasn't a relation of mine. Civil blood—

Then, from 562, I understood that to drink this blood was to thrive. The very definition of peace to 562 was seeing her/his children dominating everyone, even the other monsters....

The change inside me brutally pulsed outward, and I gagged as my origin's gaze kept burning into mine.

Survival of the fittest, even among monsters. I want my children to outlive them
all
.

Everything made sense: that one image/thought of 562 and the Cyclops, which had been bloodied and gutted at 562's feet just before the Shredders had captured her/him. The progression . . . from animal to human blood, then to this. We blood monsters had inherited a pattern from 562, but we only seemed to get to the point of wanting humans, not other monsters.

And Civils were our allies against the bad guys. They were going to help me visit justice on humans like the ones who'd hurt my family....

My blood thrashed in me as my body rebelled. Monster blood? I couldn't. Wouldn't.

562's gaze broke from me as she/he succumbed to the moon's turning before I did, maybe because I was so afraid of what I'd seen in my origin that I was gripping to the last of myself tightly, as I'd done when the bad guys had attacked my home in Dallas with that werewolf in tow—when I wouldn't let go of my bedpost until they got me, dragging me off the mattress, screaming and scraping my nails along the floor.

I
wouldn't
give in. Nothing could make me.

Oh, God-all . . .

The force of change pummeled me inside as 562 gave in to her/his full-moon fate.

First, her/his red eyes rotated, going to vertical slits instead of horizontal under all the silver hair.

Then, everything else at once—

Longer teeth in a seething cavern of a mouth as she/he opened it wide and flexed her/his arms, sending the restraint chains and even the crosses into bits of clanging pieces that hit the padded walls . . . then
another
set of arms blasting out of her/his sides as 562 got taller . . . silver hair sprouting all over the body while a serpentlike tongue waggled out of her/his mouth . . .

I didn't see the rest, because the change consumed me, too, my vision spinning from a blue tinge to violet, then a bloody red. Without the benefit of easing me into it with the melting bones and simmering blood of my normal were-state, my body blasted into its new form in a vicious hurry, sending my own bindings into oblivion.

But, all the while, my mind remained intact, and it was as if I were in a glass coffin, my body buried in this clear container. It left me staring in jumbled numbness up at the ceiling while Civils—no Reds amongst them—rushed in.

They had crucifixes out, and I randomly thought that in this much more powerful full-moon state, holy items weren't going to matter. Then they screamed, and there was a ripping sound just before their blood splashed over the white of the room, over my face, and I heard 562 screech in the same otherworldly, controlled tone that she/he had used while talking directly to me and Gabriel.

The blood's smell, its wetness, owned me and, in spite of myself, I licked round my mouth with a tongue that seemed to stretch three feet.

Through the opened doorway, I heard Chaplin barking.

As I rolled my head toward him, I saw him standing in the window with a horrified expression. Then he lost his balance and disappeared.

My dog. I'd seen him retreat from me only once, when I'd been an out-of-control werewolf in the Badlands. But this was worse.

So much worse.

Outside, monsters wailed in their death throes. 562 had gotten out, and she/he was drinking Civil blood—my new friends. The army we were putting together to beat the bad guys.

The memory of those bad guys who'd come into my family's home, murdering my mother and brother, was the only thing keeping me sane right now. Without the help of Civils, I'd never find my attackers. I'd never see humans just like them come to justice.

I was hungrier for their reckoning than anything, even though this new form might make me stronger than ever.

But would that be only during a full moon phase?

I sprang up, finding that I had two sets of arms now, like 562, but I didn't feel as tall. I didn't feel as hungry.

Not for Civil blood, at least.

I sped away, following the trail of gore 562 had left in her/ his wake.

W
hen Gabriel first heard the monsters screaming, he thought Stamp was loose.

But then all the captive humans began yelling for help, and they wouldn't be doing that with a Shredder, who was bound to protect humanity.

Just as the moon-changing were-creatures began barking and yowling, a banshee-like screech shook the walls, and Gabriel recognized the tone.

The terrible cry of 562.

But Mariah—where was
she
if 562 had gotten out of its heavily protected containment?

In Gabriel's haste to get out of his cell, he grabbed the bars, and the silver hissed against his hands, burning. He let go as his skin began vamp-healing.

“Get me out of here,” he said to the Sasquatch guard, looking into its eyes and finally injecting sway into his voice, hoping it would work.

The hairy female picked the lock of the cell.

Just as Gabriel launched himself into the corridor, a wall at one end blasted open. Keesie the huge stone-creature punched the rest of the way through and stumbled out, leading a flood of Civils, all with eyes wide while they screamed and ran toward Gabriel. He saw a Red tik-tik woman who hadn't detached her head yet sprinting past Keesie while a Civil chimera turned around and breathed fire behind his horse's quarters before continuing at a fierce gallop.

In the midst of it all, through the dusty rubble, a thing appeared in that hole in the wall.

All Gabriel could see in the beginning was its gaping mouth, a collection of saberlike teeth. It seemed to take its time, screeching, before locking onto a Civil with a dart-shaped skull who was running.

Then everything happened in what seemed to be a splash of time.

562's tongue zoomed out, splitting in two. One part went one way, the other the opposite, both sections flexing, then coming together like two swords, decapitating the dart-head. Even while the skull was still air-bound, 562's tongue scooped up the headless body, shoving the corpse into its mouth, where it sucked on the neck like it was enjoying an old-fashioned lollipop.

Many of the faster monsters were upon Gabriel now, but their frantic motions didn't detract from the scent of blood down the corridor.

Gabriel's veins started to tremble, his vision going scarlet, especially when the dust cleared all the way, revealing all of 562.

A red diamond-eyed monster with the same fall of silver locks on its head but, now, shorter strands of hair were also sprinkled over its stretched body, and the silver . . . it somehow looked like ash rubbed over skin.

Then there were the arms . . . four freakin' arms, waving out of the sides of its body.

A name floated out of Gabriel's growing bloodlust and into his consciousness.

Kali?

He'd once seen the Hindu blood goddess—or what others called the goddess of time and change—in an old, old movie.

Kali with the ashes of Shiva on her—woman and man, almost like 562 but without the same number of arms. But this wasn't any goddess or god munching on a Civil monster twenty yards down the corridor. 562 was merely a creature Gabriel didn't understand, and his mind was merely grasping at a more familiar explanation for it.

After gnawing on the last of the dart-head's body, 562 tossed away the corpse, and its tongue melded into one entity. A group of gremlins skittered by, blatting out screams, and 562's tongue followed them, then quickly shrank back.

Gabriel didn't have time to think about why, as 562's tongue hovered, like it was picking out its next victim from the fleeing monsters. Then it zapped out its tongue so far forward that it caught Keesie, who was still lumbering away.

Taking Keesie by the neck, 562 raised the bulbous, stonelike creature high, then slammed her to the floor. Rocks burst from her as she opened her tiny mouth in that otherwise featureless face and cried out.

Then 562 slammed Keesie down again, as if trying to find a way to break her open.

The Sasquatch guard seemed frozen next to Gabriel as everyone else bumped into them on their way out.

“It's eating monsters,” she mumble-grunted.

Even in his growing fog of bloodlust, Gabriel noted that Keesie wasn't just a monster, she was a Civil. Same with the very dead dart-head.

But the gremlins? 562 could've had them easily, and it'd shied away.

Gremlins were Reds.

Shit, 562 wasn't eating any of its children, just the Civils. It thrived on their blood.

And the smell of that blood was taking over rational thought now, making Gabriel feel like a machine with someone else at the control panel.

As the Sasquatch started running away, the only reason Gabriel didn't rip into her was that 562 got to her first.

With a massive leap from down the corridor, it abandoned Keesie, leaving her broken on the ground with shards of stone surrounding a pocked body that wasn't bleeding—

562 screeched through the air, snatched the Sasquatch with its tongue even before it landed, and yanked the Civil straight to its mouth, where the teeth were waiting.

The were-creatures were howling and hissing, making the asylum sound like a madhouse. But even above that, Gabriel could hear sarcastic cheers erupting from one of the cells down the corridor.

Stamp?

Was he feeling safe behind those bars as he watched one monster eat others?

Gabriel's blood hunger spiked as he remembered the cut on the Shredder's arm. And while he watched 562 dismembering the Sasquatch, spitting out the hair while reveling in the blood, he wondered if he would ever have to worry about Stamp—or anyone else—again if he were like a 562.

By now, the were-creatures howled and yowled in their cells, but the other monsters had secured them so well that they couldn't break out of their bindings. Their cries only inflamed Gabriel's cravings, and just as he was about to go to 562, joining it in splashing around the Sasquatch's blood, he felt it.

The sensation of a cushioned cord pulling at him.

Heavy, sawed breathing sounded from behind Gabriel, and it curdled his blood.