In Blood We Trust (27 page)

Holding her hand, he took her away from that room and guided her to another—one that had obviously held a few fake tide pools in the past. Starfish reliefs littered the walls, the shapes rough and raised out from the granite. Where water had once flowed down, the rock was discolored, almost like a torn, dirty bridal veil.

He sat her down on a flat rock, getting to his knees and placing the solar flashlight next to her so its glow would offer some illumination.

When she rested her fingertips against his face, he felt the thud of her pulse, hungering for the blood it carried.

He put some distance between them, and her hand remained raised, as if all she had left of him were a ghost.

She lowered it slowly.

He said, “The vampires have control of GBVille. At least, that's how it was when I left it.”

“And you came out here to take me back?”

“No.”

She wrinkled her brow, and he could see . . . feel . . . that she was getting worried about what he had to say.

As he searched for the words, she said, “Would you just tell me?”

“The Civil killing. I remembered, Mariah.”

“You know who did it?”

When he stayed quiet, she started to shake her head.

Was it the look on his face that told her the rest?

“No,” she said.
“No . . .”

At her crumbling expression, something faded inside Gabriel. At first, he thought it was an impending heartbreak, but he didn't feel it as he'd felt it before whenever he'd made Mariah sad—the aching, just as if someone were extracting parts of him while he only watched, suffering under the invasion.

No, this wasn't the same at all, because now it was as if he were watching her from a floating distance, a dark hole that was swallowing him while he held on to only a thin thread that was going to snap at any moment.

“I'm sorry, so sorry.” And it might even be the last time he meant it, because, already, the Civil killing—and even his termination of Pucci—seemed like abstract events. Stories that someone else had told him. “I didn't know until tonight, when there was some blood spilled while the vampires mind-wiped the Civils and the were-creatures.”

And after he'd killed Pucci.

“How could you not know?” she asked.

He explained more about the gloaming: the way his brain had protected the last, innocent parts of itself by blanking out the terrible truths until it couldn't be helped anymore.

“But I don't forget everything I kill,” he said, reaching for her knee before he thought better of it. “I remembered that werewolf in your Dallas home. It was justified, though—even a human would kill for the woman he loves. My mind wouldn't have been troubled by that.”

Just as his mind wasn't troubled by taking out Pucci, who'd meant to hurt Hana and Taraline.

Mariah had started looking down at the ground, as if she didn't want to face him . . . or this. He didn't have to add that the giraffe-man Civil killing had been wanton—the work of a true vampire, which was what the last of him had been fleeing.

“I had to get out of GBVille for another reason, too,” he said.

Even from over here, she seemed cold for the first time he could ever remember.

She'd shut herself off from him, and that was when he felt it—the
snap
.

The breaking of that last thread that'd been holding him together . . . and to her.

It was as if he'd been knocked over for a moment, only to be pushed back up in a different world—one where the sound of Mariah only translated into . . . food.

Just food. Blood.

Where were the effects of their imprint—the connection, the understanding?

With a new clarity, he had an answer: His link to her had vanished because his gloaming was officially over.

He didn't have the emotion to panic. Instead, there was just ice. Cool. Logic. He wasn't even hungry for Mariah as her heartbeat filled his ears. He'd had enough blood lately.

“It's Pucci,” he said, his voice so calm that it didn't sound like his anymore.

He wondered at that. Analyzed it.

Accepted it.

Meanwhile, Mariah only stared at the ground. Was she asking herself where their link had suddenly gone, too?

“He started to go after Hana again,” Gabriel said, “so I put an end to it.”

There wasn't a lick of remorse in him now. He could even taste Pucci's blood, feel his teeth sink into the were-creature's heart after he'd pulled it out of the jerk's chest.

Gabriel's fangs prodded his gums, but he held back while he told her about Taraline, as well—how she'd been following Hana and Pucci outside, how she'd tried to protect Hana from Pucci's temper and had prodded him into attacking her instead.

Then, even while Mariah stayed silent, he told her about what he'd seen under Taraline's veil. “She's healing. Or maybe she's
healed
, as much as she can be. Your 562 blood made her stronger, Mariah, but it didn't turn her.”

He considered the consequences of leaving Taraline behind. “I should've brought her with me,” Gabriel said, cocking his head. “The oldster . . . he saw everything that happened. Maybe he'll jail her now.”

Tears filled Mariah's eyes as she scanned his face for some emotion,
any
emotion.

“I think she knew, or suspected, that I might've killed that Civil,” he said, unable to give much more than that to her, “and she was willing to take the blame for me, so maybe the vampires will mind-wipe the oldster and . . .”

“Is anyone coming after
you
?” she asked.

He considered that. “I swayed Hana, but not deeply enough. She'll remember how I killed Pucci. And if she decides that she wants me to pay, there's no way the oldster or Chaplin will let her come after me alone.”

Mariah's gaze brightened slightly at the mention of her dog, but then clouds filled her eyes as the rest descended on her. And that was even before Gabriel delivered the crushing blow.

“Chaplin chose to stay behind with the others. He sided with the oldster when he could've come with me.”

She choked on her words before they came out. “Didn't you tell him that you were going to find me? Maybe he didn't understand that.”

“He understood.”

Mariah let loose with a sob, and Gabriel thought that maybe he should touch her now. So he pressed her hands between his as her tears came, ruining the brave set of her mouth as she tried to fight them.

He should tell her that
he
was here now, not Chaplin. It was time to put away childhood things and move on, to him.

To the future. She was always going to be in it, because even though she seemed so far away from him now, he couldn't picture himself leaving her behind.

It didn't make sense to do so.

Was that what McKellan had meant by having an attachment after the gloaming?

“When you were chosen by 562, you had to know that it was going to bring you someplace others might not be willing to go,” he said. “That's why Chaplin stayed behind.”

“But you're going to be with me,” she said, repeating the promise he'd made before to her.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am.”

He had her hands in his, and it was as if she were expecting more—a kiss to her palms? A fervid vow of love?

As if disappointed that he was analyzing it, Mariah let go of him. But dawn was creeping up his veins, anyway. There wasn't much time for what she obviously wanted from him—affection, intimacy.

He'd realized early on that the guard vampires would be able to hear them, even from the other room; this act of privacy was only a formality. So when Liam entered, Gabriel wasn't surprised.

In Mariah's presence, the blond vampire got to a knee. “We need to be ready to move on at nightfall.”

He was asking where they should go, now that Gabriel was with them.

Something happened to Mariah then—a resolute stiffening of her senses that completely barred Gabriel from her.

Was it because she was still fighting off the hurt from all the news he'd dumped on her? Whatever the case, it made her into something he'd seen only that one night, when the Reds had been dancing around her, chanting.

“We have to hide 562 in her/his new home,” she said. “A place where no one much goes anymore.”

Gabriel said, “But there shouldn't be any Civils at the asylum who even remember 562 by now.”

Liam shook his head. “We can't bring the origin back there, Gabriel, just in case. And if we separate Mariah from 562, we'd at least have one of them, if anything should ever happen to the other.”

He meant that if 562 ever did die by the hand of an enemy, they'd at least have Mariah's blood as a backup. Her blood might not do anything to turn them into the vampires they were now, but it would do
something
preternatural to them, if they survived the poisoned taste of her.

A thought struck Gabriel: Had 562's blood made Mariah more vampire than were-creature?

As that circled his head, she removed her hands from his grip.

Liam said, “I have a specific destination in mind, if I can suggest one. A long time ago, I used to travel the States.”

“The easy rider,” Mariah said, giving him a halfhearted smile that Gabriel assessed, then understood.

“That's right.” Liam gestured southwest. “If there's a maze left in this world, it'll be at the Grand Canyon.”

Most just called it “the Big Gape” nowadays, having no respect for history. But what mattered was that going there would put them near the south area of the Badlands, and Gabriel frowned, almost grasping what the expanse used to mean to him: the redemption he'd been seeking once upon a time.

The search for the soul he'd lost when he'd become a monster.

But again, those were just words right now, floating past.

Mariah no doubt felt his detachment, and it doubled her own as she stood, talking to Liam.

“Sounds good to me. I'll guard 562 while you all rest, then.”

Liam bent his head to her, then rose to his feet, retreating from the room.

When Mariah turned back to Gabriel, her white dress seemed to glow in that solar-flashlight beam.

A white dress and Badlander boots.

He saw her as the others must have on that night they'd chanted for her blood: an earth goddess, a pleasure principle.

But now that he thought about it, she'd always been that to him, even as he'd fought the temptation of her.

“Go rest, Gabriel,” she said softly. “We've got a lot of road ahead of us.”

She hesitated, searching his face, but all she probably saw was a vampire trying to match her intensity of emotion.

Yet with the dawn overtaking his body, the darkness was stronger than ever, and she faded under his eyesight, her sterile white dress the last thing he saw.

N
ight came, and we journeyed away from the water park, Gabriel carrying me while Liam traveled with 562 once again.

Even while I was in Gabriel's arms, I felt his coolness, and I knew for certain that his gloaming had ended. I'd seen the switch in him when he'd told me about the Civil killing—when our link had gone just as dark as GBVille after the power had been blasted out.

But I wasn't about to give up on us. What we'd had was too strong. How could that just disappear?

By the time we arrived at the Big Gape, the cloud-covered moon was just about ready to go full.

Tomorrow night,
I kept thinking.

The time of truth.

I tried to distract myself by looking into the canyon, though. Nowadays, it was all but covered in billboard ads, washed of their own color and shredded from their frames. Long ago, in the Before era, I knew that you used to be able to see every cut of the rock, the red-and-sand hues, but then corporations had moved in, just as with almost everything else.

Saddest of all, nobody came here anymore. Why should they when you had to go out of your house and brave the bad guys? Heck, you could “visit” the Big Gape on your personal computer, anyway.

The twins and I wound by all those ad signs, exploring the canyon and its crusty trails, its ragged and rusted train tracks lined by broken power poles that had once looked like crosses but were now just collapsed pieces of wood and wire. Gabriel and Liam stayed with 562 under a rocky overhang, but it didn't take long for me and the twins to find what we were looking for and return.

When we came back to our party, Liam was cupping 562's stringy-haired head like that of a sleeping child's, while Gabriel paced. In the distance, we could see the mammoth steel walls that divided us from the ocean. Thanks to our proximity to the water, the weather was cooler here than it was in some places farther in, like the New Badlands. Ever since terrorists had blown off this part of the West Coast, the shoreline had been relocated and, miles beyond the walls, there were supposedly great juts of land and rock. Corporate water organizations like Saline-Free had erected those barriers with the government's permission because they didn't want anyone near their property with homemade desalinating devices.

“We've got something,” I said to Gabriel and Liam as the twins stood in back of me. “It's an old hotel, but it looks like survivalists built tunnels underneath. Those can be blocked off, and there's an entire network that would give you room to move about with some freedom. There'll be enough wildlife outside for your blood purposes, too.”

Liam and Gabriel were curious about the location, so we all went to the proposed shelter, which was a three-story building miles down the railroad tracks, complete with chipped columns. Dirt caked most of its white façade, giving it a bearded stoicism. Round it, you could tell there used to be lots of trees, because there were holes pocking the ground. I think I'd read once, in my father's paper books, that there'd been pines in the Big Gape, and they'd smelled real good.