Blood Rules (20 page)

The oldster opened an eye, inspecting the wardrobe, while Chaplin dropped the material and chewed out some sounds.

I repeated this for the others, then went straight into asking, “Since Stamp has record of his smell, are you aiming to mask it with Taraline's?”

Chaplin nodded.
This Taraline has a distinctive scent. Dymorrdia, right?

“Right,” I said.

When I translated Chaplin's sounds for everyone, there was a stir. Hana, the ex–new age nurse who'd been educated about the disease and the successful attempts to curb it, didn't overreact. Pucci and the oldster sure did, casting knee-jerk, horrified glances at Taraline's stuff.

“We won't catch anything,” I said. “They never proved that monsters were the ones who originated the disease. I don't see how we could've, anyway, with our immune systems.”

“But—” the oldster began.

Chaplin wasn't about to deal with wussy-minded monsters.
Oldster, your clothes got torn off during Stamp's attack, and I believe that the Shredder's been using
your
smell as a tracking marker. I doubt he took the opportunity to search the homestead to find anyone else's clothes and run them through his scenter unit. It would've used up valuable time for him because he would've wanted to be on our trail as quickly as possible.

Again, I told the others what my dog had said. Then I added, “I'm sure Taraline won't mind sharing clothes. She thinks there's a cure for dymorrdia along with any other cures in the asylums, and if you dressed in her duds, it'd be a small sacrifice for what she thinks she'll get in return.”

And I understood Taraline's thought process more than any of them could imagine. After Gabriel had looked into her head to gauge her loyalty, I'd decided to accept the honesty he'd sensed and trust her completely. Hell, maybe I would've even taken her willingness to help us at surface value, because I could almost taste a cure now.

As the oldster gingerly touched Taraline's clothing, I felt Gabriel watching me. When I looked over at him, he was wearing an expression that made me go jellylike, but he glanced away real fast.

Still, I held on to the moment. He'd been acting like nothing had gone on between us in that herb house, and I'd let him get away with it, mostly because nookie was the last of our concerns right now.

But I was going to call him on it when this was over. You bet I was.

Before the oldster entirely fell asleep, I helped him up and guided him and everyone else farther back into our cave, where it was even cooler and less accessible to anything outside. Chaplin stayed by the entrance, guarding it, attuned to Taraline's scent so that he wouldn't raise an alarm if she returned tonight.

And she did return, shortly after we ate some jerked meat from my backpack and drank my ever-dwindling supply of water. A were-creature doesn't
have
to eat fresh meat or fill up with blood every night, since we can sustain ourselves through human nutrition until the full moon comes round, but it sure does wonders for our systems if we can have a consistent diet that appeals to our primal sides.

Everyone but me was day-resting as Taraline crept into the cave, obviously having already met Chaplin.

She glanced at the snoozing oldster, who was wearing her black shirt and the only pair of pants she seemed to own, his ankles exposed by the ill fit.

“I hope you don't mind,” I whispered. “We think he's being tracked, and . . .”

“It's all right,” she said.

I could tell the sun had already risen because Gabriel was slumped on the floor, out like a broken lantern. I kept watching him, unable to stop until Taraline lay on the ground, too, hugging her bag to her, the veil like a blanket over her face and upper body.

“I asked my friend to meet me tomorrow at the same place I found you tonight, in view of the asylum at eight P.M.,” she said. “We'll find a secure place to talk. She didn't want us to come to her home.”

I myself remembered the days of barring other people out of my own Dallas home before the bad guys had attacked my family. “I don't blame her.”

“I'm glad Gabriel is going to see to it that Jo doesn't remember the delicate conversation we'll have,” Taraline added. “And what I'm going to ask her to do.”

The cryptic comment gave me pause. What the heck were we going to ask her friend to do that she'd probably like to forget?

Before I could query about that, Taraline added, “Jo is already very curious about why I'm back in the hub. Gabriel's mind powers will keep us safe from her curiosity.”

I didn't know how agreeable he'd be to swaying people in so public a place, but he was just beginning to feel his oats with his vampire powers, thanks in no small part to my unfortunate influence on him. It seemed as if he was getting more comfortable with himself all the time.

And I'd be glad that he was finally accepting his nature if it didn't make me feel like such crap. I didn't like being the temptation that dragged him into a darker state.

Conversation done, Taraline sighed, her veil puffing, and that soft sound made me feel better about our future. She was going to help us get there.

Then I lay down, too, closing my eyes and finally thinking of Sammy, who was hopefully sleeping somewhere far better than this.

 

Chaplin had no cause to awaken us during our rest, but that didn't mean Stamp had ceased to become a menace when dusk fell. It'd just be a matter of keeping our eyes and ears open for him as we went to meet Taraline's friend, Jo.

We cleaned ourselves up as best we could, even going so far as to alter our clothing and appearances with hats that we could pull down just above our eyes, plus disease masks Taraline had somehow snatched. I even coached the oldster to walk and move as if he were younger than he was, because if anyone saw that he was advanced in years, they'd scoop him into the nearest pound for certain.

Basically, we
all
needed to be the blendiest citizens ever to reside in GBVille, where the throngs of people—plus the precautions we'd already taken—would hopefully cover any identifying scent markers Stamp might have on us. Meanwhile, Chaplin would stay back in our camp, not only to guard it and get some rest, but because I didn't want an outlawed Intel Dog to be so exposed.

He didn't even argue as Gabriel, the oldster, Hana, Pucci, and I braved the night and mounted the slope. Taraline had left before any of us had even awakened, but we knew just where and when to meet her.

We had at least an hour to get to that General Benefactors building near the asylum, but I realized that our progress through GBVille would be slow, thanks to having to watch for Stamp as well as running into all the wonderland obstacles of the hub. It'd been a while since Pucci, Hana, and the oldster had been out of the New Badlands, and they'd be just as flabbergasted by what they'd see as I'd been.

And, indeed, as we walked through the red-light district with its vibe stations and prostitute platforms, we moved at a snail's pace while trying to seem as if we weren't interacting with each other. Just like any distracted Text citizen.

Nonetheless, Hana subtly nudged and bumped Pucci through the whore avenue, where he kept gaping at the nearnaked lady displays. Much to his credit, he pretended that he really wasn't very interested in them, but even a dunce in a deprivation chamber could tell that wasn't true.

Anyway, it wasn't until we got farther into the hub that we really slowed down.

As a stampede of wide-eyed running ones came at us from round a building corner, the oldster started running, too, as if not knowing how to get out of the way. It made me wonder if there'd been a few running ones who'd joined the group because they didn't know how to avoid the crowd.

We chased the oldster, who'd veered away from the group and off to an unfamiliar concrete square.

“Well, I'll be,” he panted under his disease mask as the group rounded another corner. One business-suited man fell to the ground, utterly exhausted. Citizens walked round him, as if he were part of the decorative plan. A cop would probably pull him to the side soon enough so he could continue his sleep, then join another group.

Not wanting to be noticed, we moved ahead, allowing spaces to fall between us. To anyone who might be checking us out, we were wandering aimlessly, but I was betting that the distracted populace wouldn't give a fig about who we were or why we were here.

We passed an alley with bonfires stabbing out of cans. I'd seen the glow of this area last night, and although I'd been curious about how something so dirty could exist amongst the gray-clean buildings of the hub, we hadn't gone close. That was probably a fine thing, though. Now that I could see, the alley seemed to be a meeting place of sorts, with a filthy, muscled, braid-bearded man chanting Text at the equally tough crowd below his perch. He was holding a chicken by its neck, a machete in his other hand.

We left the scene behind right quick, and about a block away, where the surroundings were slightly more welcoming, Gabriel seemed to think it was safe to talk. Trusting a vampire's heightened senses seemed a good bet, so we slowed down to hear him while pretending to watch a General Benefactors show screen that featured its logo changing shapes. Pretty.

“Lowlord,” Gabriel said from under his disease mask.

“Is that what he was?” The oldster panted. “But just what was a lowlord doing with a chicken?”

“I can't be sure, but lowlords are thugs who answer to even worse bad guys, and they keep any malcontent distractoids in line by controlling their own little groups—usually the people who don't gravitate toward game therapy and the like. Maybe the chicken was a meal for them, and he was using it as a reward for appropriate behavior.”

Lowlord ganging—it was another way to disassociate. No wonder bonfires and chickens fit into the hubs, side by side with everything else, even if the buildings were sophisticated and cosmo.

“Man, it's gotten bad for humanity,” the oldster said, resting his hands on his thighs, struggling for breath, maybe because of the altitude. “Maybe that chicken was actually some kind of sacrifice.”

Hana said, “It is like the Middle Ages, isn't it? No one has any purpose but to get from one day to the next.”

“I'd sure like to know just what he was doing to that chicken,” the oldster said, seemingly fixated.

Gabriel stared at that GB logo screen. “Your guess about a sacrifice might not be far off base, come to think of it. It's something to excite his followers. Everyone needs something to believe in, right? And even lowlords have to entertain to earn a following.”

Something to believe in. It seemed that whether we lived in the hubs or out of them, we were all searching for the same thing. A lot of us didn't even know what to believe about ourselves, so we had to look everywhere else for an answer.

And I'm sure the bad guys depended on that. My dad always used to say that the government especially wanted everyone to keep our eyes off what they were doing—that they hoped no one would ever take their focus from the gossip pages and pseudo scandals to really see what was happening round them.

I guess that was a hundred times truer these days.

“Supposedly,” Gabriel said, “some police look the other way with the lowlords. Or other police can be just as bad, working for the lowlords as well as the government. A few cops go vigilante, though, and they have their own followings.”

“Zel wouldn't have stood for any of that,” the oldster said, straightening up, and even beneath his hat and disease mask, I could see a muscle ticking in his whiskered jaw.

“No,” I said softly. “Zel sure wouldn't have.”

We were quiet for a moment. Even the lowlord's shouting had faded into the air, seemingly eaten up by the hovering buildings.

I hoped that, somewhere, Zel had welcomed Sammy into the best home they'd ever known. That she was there to mother him and watch out for him while he settled in.

We ventured on, still watchful of Stamp while we moved past screenboards with carnerotica available for all to see. In fact, a small crowd had gathered beneath one of the screens—an execution in what looked to be a country the United States had isolated itself from long ago. Some people were even watching on their arm screens, just to get a closer view, I suppose. Or maybe they were monitoring other channels at the same time.

Rushing past, we came upon one woman who had her arm raised, filming herself as she babbled Text to her screen, documenting her day. I'd seen others doing this last night, and Gabriel had told me that they were in their own “shows.” Amazingly, these people were even sponsored, mostly by General Benefactors, and they wore clothes with the corporate logos all over them.

Lots of people seemed to be a brand, a product, an advertisement of themselves when it didn't seem there was much content to sell. I didn't get hub life.

I don't think any of us did, especially when we saw two teen girls hand-polishing the FlyShoes of a gray-garbed businessman. They were doing the labor the old-fashioned way, without mechanical tools; humans could be more detail-oriented if they were focused enough.

When they finished, the businessman jerked at the two leashes that held the girls, and they walked on. The girls kept their gazes on the ground.

“Water slaves,” Gabriel said from behind me.

I looked again, hardly believing what I was seeing. I'd heard stories from my dad, but... “They indentured themselves to that man?”