Blood Rules Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2 - Mariah

  Chapter 3 - Gabriel

  Chapter 4 - Stamp

  Chapter 5 - Mariah

  Chapter 6 - Gabriel

  Chapter 7 - Stamp

  Chapter 8 - The Oldster

  Chapter 9 - Stamp

  Chapter 10 - Mariah

  Chapter 11 - Gabriel

  Chapter 12 - Mariah

  Chapter 13 - Stamp

  Chapter 14 - The Oldster

  Chapter 15 - Gabriel

  Chapter 16 - Mariah

  Chapter 17 - Gabriel

  Chapter 18 - Stamp

  Chapter 19 - Mariah

  Chapter 20 - Gabriel

  Chapter 21 - Mariah

  Chapter 22 - Gabriel

  Chapter 23 - Stamp

  Chapter 24 - Mariah

  Chapter 25 - The Oldster

  Chapter 26 - Gabriel

  Chapter 27 - Gabriel

  Chapter 28 - Mariah

  Chapter 29 - Stamp

  Chapter 30 - Gabriel

  Chapter 31 - Mariah

  Chapter 32 - Gabriel

  Chapter 33 - Mariah

  Teaser chapter

  Out of the Shadows

  The metal gray of the sky made Chaplin’s brown coat look drab as we darted out of the shadows and into the safe cover behind rocks or more Joshua trees.

  It’ll be a long time before everyone forgets what happened back at the first homestead, Chaplin said, chewing on his words.

  “My lack of control made us vulnerable to Stamp, so I earned the wariness.”

  Before the big showdown, I’d killed a few of Stamp’s men when they’d encroached upon our territory, threatening us. We’d suspected they wanted our aquifer-enhanced dwellings, and I’d made sure they didn’t get them. Then Gabriel had appeared one night, wounded, and Chaplin had invited him into our home. My dog had been under his sway, but Chaplin had overcome it, manipulating Gabriel into confronting Stamp for our sakes. But I, and the rest of the community, hadn’t been able to stomach his sacrifice, and we’d gone to the showdown to defend him.

  So if you went right back to the beginning, the death and destruction had all been because of me.

  Mariah, there’s always . . . Chaplin began, then cut himself off.

  I wasn’t dumb enough to believe that my dog had an unfinished thought. He was luring me into something. Intel Dogs had been genetically bred and trained to be practical and lethal when the time called for it. He was my best weapon and, sometimes, my worst.

  “Spit it out,” I said. A sand-rabbit leaped out of some brush in front of us, causing a rustle. “You gonna say it, Chaplin?”

  I could’ve sworn my dog smiled at my vinegar. It meant that I was fully back to being human. For now, anyway.

  There’s always hope for a cure, he said.

  Ace Books by Christine Cody

  BLOODLANDS

  BLOOD RULES

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  BLOOD RULES

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / September 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Chris Marie Green.

  Excerpt from In Blood We Trust copyright © by Chris Marie Green.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54359-7

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Torrey—a lady and a princess and my beautiful friend.

  I love everything about you—especially you!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Again, I bow to my Ace team—everyone from Ginjer to Kat to the art and marketing and sales departments to the wonderful editors who catch my errors and the design team. Thank you to each and every one of you who worked on these books! And to the Knight Agency, I salute you, too. Sheree and Judy, you guys are my inspiration and anchors.

  My critique partners aren’t the only ones who inspire me—there’s also Thomas Friedman, whose ideas about the future helped to shape some of GBVille. And a big acknowledgment to the “poet/prophet” William S. Burroughs: Thank you for the “running ones.” I have no doubt whatsoever that we will soon see them all over the place!

  In a work of fiction, there are bound to be some licenses taken, and there are many of those in the Bloodlands. Forgive my overreaching and any mistakes, but I also hope you “enjoy” your stay in this new land. I so appreciate that you’ve taken the time to read these books, and hope that you will continue....

  1

  It’d been a quiet night in Asylum AA-23 until Patroller Hughes decided to check out the maximum-security block.

  As he disabled yet another force field that separated the command center from the labyrinthine hallways, his ear communication implant crackled.

  “Blok 10 secr,” said another patroller, using the casual Text language of the streets to say he’d secured his block for the night.

  “Blok 5 secr,” said a third employee.

  Hughes had already reported in, so he was on free patrol now. This block wasn’t even on his normal beat, but he’d had an itch to scratch ever since last night, when Subject 562 had been brought from an asylum in old D.C. over here to GBVille. Subject 562 was supposed to be a high-level preter, and Patroller Hughes had a way of breaking in each new occupant. The staff had been warned about messing around with it, but Hughes knew how to handle even the most intimidating monsters.

  He strolled the dim, steel-enforced ma
ze, where cries echoed from each cell he passed. The invisible shields held the subjects captive, muffling screams, hisses, and whatever annoying sounds they made. Hughes could see every one of the grotesque shapes huddled in corners, staring at him with glowing eyes.

  He passed a subject waving its lengthened, slimy fingers near its cell shield, and Hughes whipped out his taser baton, threatening the creature. It hunched, backing up, its spine bristling with spaded projectiles.

  Patroller Hughes laughed and went on his way. He’d screwed the subject over but good when it’d first gotten here. With one shot of lazy-donna into its veins, Hughes had done his own little experiments. But the creature hadn’t been humanlike enough to interest him for long.

  Now he came to the cell he was looking for, where Subject 562 stood in a corner, its back turned, its hands hidden in the folds of its bleak, baggy institution gown. Humanlike. Its long silver hair was sheet-straight, hiding its face, skimming over the pale arms scraped with nearly healed, self-inflicted nail marks.

  Patrolman Hughes fixated on the wounds. There’d been a lot of vague talk among the patrollers about 562’s blood. He wondered just what was so special about it.

  He flipped up the goggle lenses from the mask of his protective suit, allowing a panel-bound laser beam to scan his retinas. As soon as the security device recognized him, lasers zapped down from the cell’s ceiling, surrounding Subject 562 like a temporary, purple-barred cage. The impenetrable shield dissipated long enough for Hughes to cross the threshold, then hummed back to an invisible wall behind him right after he entered.

  Subject 562 remained motionless.

  “Hya, wtr rbbr,” the patroller said, trying to get the creature’s attention.

  But it didn’t react to being called a water robber. A lot of preters tended to ignore this particular insult, maybe because they didn’t steal water in the human way, by siphoning it from dwelling tanks. No, sir, about half the preters here were unapologetic parasites that took the blood right out of humans, getting their liquids in that manner.

  Or maybe Subject 562 wasn’t reacting because it only spoke Old American, like most preters who’d tried to hide away from society and its goings-on after the world had changed. Maybe the thing didn’t understand Text because it’d been tucked away with other water robbers for years and years, avoiding eradication and missing out on all the trends.

  Hughes was always happy to teach preters the new ways.

  With his gloved hand, he fetched the lazy-donna blaster out of a compartment in his utility belt. The gun held a dose that could put down thirty humans. It’d be enough for one monster.

  He aimed the gun at Subject 562, and when the drug bullet slipped through the lasers and hit the creature, the skinny thing didn’t even flinch. It just kept its back to him, its head lowered, its fall of hair covering any response.

  A minute later, the subject withered to the ground, and Patroller Hughes used a vital sign scanner to determine whether it’d be safe to proceed.

  GO, the scanner said.

  He smiled, then used a voice command to turn off the laser cage that surrounded the prone monster. Leaving the rest of his protective suit on, he stripped off one of his gloves, leaving his hand bare so it could feel.

  As he approached 562, he thought he heard a cry from the monster across the hall: a wail. Maybe even the start of a howl. He ignored it.

  “Im not gonna hrt u,” Hughes said to his pupil as he bent forward, catching sight of 562’s slit eyes glowing through its hair. Red eyes, like something lurking in a forest of silvered trees.

  It still didn’t move. No preter would be able to, with the dose Hughes had given it.

  He crept his fingers over the thing’s shin, where a long scratch gouged pale flesh. The abrasion disappeared over its knee, under its institution gown.

  He trailed along the mark, but the creature still didn’t move.

  As always, Hughes wanted to know just how human these creatures could get, so he kept coasting his fingers up its thigh, feeling sleek muscle and smooth skin as he got closer to the middle of its legs.

  Then he heard a low laugh.

  Pausing, he peered at the subject’s face. Silver hair. Red eyes beneath it. A massive set of dagger-sharp teeth.

  Before Hughes could wonder how the creature had overcome the drugs, the thing opened its mouth to a grotesque yaw that obscured its face altogether. It sprang forward, clamping down on Patroller Hughes, smashing his head to a pulp, his skull flying in a shattered mess of protective mask, blood, and bone that splattered all over.

  Subject 562 turned back to its corner, licking the blood off its fingers before going motionless once again.

  2

  Mariah

  Even though the moon had been in its waning phase for a few nights now, I was seething, my bones shifting in what felt like a brutal melt, my skin hot as it stretched during the fever of were-change.

  The murky midnight sky flashed by, blue swishes in my emerging monster sight, while I sprinted over the New Badlands, trying to get away—

  But he was right behind me.

  “Mariah!” he yelled, his vampire voice gnarled.

  A fractured second later, Gabriel crashed into me, driving me to the dirt near a cave in a hill, my chin and palms skidding on the ground and abrading my skin to rawness.

  Backhanded, I swiped at him, but he caught my half-human hand, which was more like a claw. Everything was starting to happen as if I were watching from a near distance, remote.

  I panted like the animal I was becoming as we struggled, him flipping me to my back as I arched, growled, snapped at him. His eyes blazed against his pale skin, his fangs sprung.

  “Stop it, Mariah!” he said.

  “Can’t . . . ”

  My voice was just as warped as his own. Hollow beast voices.

  Before I could bite at him again, he grasped my head, looking into my eyes, slipping into my mind. My thoughts went watery, as if I were suddenly a pool and he’d dipped into it.

  Peace. He was trying to give me the peace, and I opened myself fully, still panting. My temperature was already cooling in the hope of receiving his calm.

  Easing. Serene.

  As he infiltrated me, my vision wavered; he was on the top of water and I was under it. I felt the flow of his sway over my skin, smooth and numbing.

  Thank-all, I thought as my bones started flexing back to their human shape.

  I floated in sensation for a few more moments, almost afraid of it ending. I sucked in the dragon’s-breath air, which was still hot during late spring here in the nowheres.

  Gabriel kept looking deep into me, and I breathed some more, letting him take the place of my turmoil. Then . . .

  Then I saw it in his eyes—the resentment. The stifled hatred for what I’d done to the woman he’d come out here to find nearly two months ago.

  Abby.

  As soon as her name entered my head, it seemed as if the water that’d been calming me boiled. And I could feel it in him, too—he was thinking about how I’d killed her.

  The boiling intensified, the water parting, splashing out in a roar that I felt in my own lungs—

  Our peaceful connection shattered, my body straining against itself again with the start of another change, my breath rasping. I could also feel the scrapes on my chin and palms healing with preter speed.

  “Get . . . off . . .” I growled.

  But Gabriel kept pinning me, putting more effort into giving me the peace. With his stronger sway, my body whipped back toward humanity—the watery hush of it, bones and muscle slipping and sliding. For a second . . . then two . . . then more, I stayed in my good, human shape, whimpering because I ached. Ached so bad.

  As he pushed me toward that better place, I hurt some more. Were-change had been natural when me and the rest of my community had been taken by the full moon. My neighbors had chained me up in our new homestead, and afterward I’d thanked them for keeping me restrained. They hadn’t dared let m
e run free after what’d happened with Abby and the rest.

  Natural moon change was so much better than the turning that consumed a were-creature because of emotional upheaval. Anger, passion . . . it all hurt a lot less during those three or so nights a month when the darkness combined with the moon’s peak to compel a were-creature to madness and terrible hunger.

  Gabriel whispered, “There you go, Mariah . . .”

  I grunted. A tiny fever still had hold of me.

  “Just a little more,” he said. “Come on.”

  My teeth were still long, and I bared them at the vampire, not because of any innate hatred or a need to war against a different breed of preter, but because my wildness just couldn’t stop itself.

  Yells and barking arose in the background. More than one person was running, no doubt also keeping to the shadowy, hiding cover of the Joshua trees and standing rocks. I didn’t want them to see me like this.

  My dog came to a dirt-spraying halt next to me in the sheltering cove.

  Mariah? he asked. Running over open ground . . . why . . . ?

  Even in the hazy near-completion of my change cycle, I thought that Chaplin sounded inarticulate for an Intel Dog. I growled, flashed my teeth at him, too.

  Chaplin barked at Gabriel.

  What set her off this time?

  Gabriel could translate Chaplin’s sounds because they were communicating mind-to-mind, vampire to familiar.

  Although Gabriel was still pinning me, he wasn’t breathing heavily, like a human, because vampires didn’t breathe. “I don’t know what it was, but the peace isn’t working so well anymore. I can’t soothe her like I used to.”

  At the mention of something so personal, I turned my face away. It helped not to look at Gabriel, even though my breaths still came hollow and deep, my sight still a little blue-tinged. I just wished he’d get off me, because it reminded me of the first time he’d given me the peace, with his body flush against mine. We’d done sex, and with him being a vampire and me being a were-creature, something strange had happened.