He smirked. “Thanks. You know. For saving my life and all.”

  “No problem.”

  “Even if you shouldn’t have. You’re the one who needs to make it out of here.”

  “Wouldn’t matter. You got a few of them with that flash-round thing you fired up, and the others were so pissed off they didn’t take a rig. Then it was simply rendering them to pieces with the wheel blades, and you finished off the rest. Except for three.”

  “Wait, they’re all dead?”

  “Yeah. I’m heading back to check on the rigs.”

  He blinked. So they were, and not quickly, either. He’d been out of it after the fight.

  “Don’t think I’m going to forget your ungrateful ass, though.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Next time, I’ll leave you to become a chew toy for a bunch of hungry werewolves.”

  “Chew toy? I did thank you, didn’t I?”

  Clare skidded the rig to a halt, and Anselm grabbed his knife at the sound of a voice from the back. Both turned with weapons at the ready.

  A small, wretched-looking human male, wearing little more than underwear and a dog collar around his neck, scrambled to the back of the rig’s cabin. He was painfully thin and gibbered nonsense while covering his head. He couldn’t have been past his early twenties. Aside from his ribs showing, he appeared to be in good health.

  “Fuck, how long has he been there?” Anselm pointed his pistol at the young man, who continued to cower. “Who the fuck are you?”

  That only drew more gibberish.

  “Not great with subtlety, are you?” Clare whispered and nodded at his weapon.

  “I usually am.” Anselm scowled at her, then at his pistol. “Been one of those days.”

  Reluctantly, he slipped the weapon into its holster inside his coat. “I’m sorry. Weapon’s gone. Why don’t you tell us who you are and what you’re doing here?”

  His tone and the absence of a visible weapon caused a change in the young man. He broke into a smile and turned toward them. “Treat.”

  “Treat?” Clare narrowed her eyes.

  “On the collar.” Anselm pointed. It was made of delicate leather with the word “Treat” carved into a piece of metal at the front. A chain led from the collar to fasten somewhere back there. “I assume it’s both his name and what he was doing in the back.”

  Scars covered the man’s body. Anselm could only imagine what a “treat” might suffer among the Maneaters.

  “Fucking hell.” Clare leaned back in her seat. “You think there are any others in the rigs?”

  Anselm returned his attention to the treat in the back and cleared his throat. “Are there more like you in the other vehicles? Treats?”

  “Not treats.” He shook his head. Seemed he was more than capable of understanding them and only struggled to vocalize. The scars around his throat indicated damage there. “Chew Toy.”

  Others were back there, but not with the same name. Chew Toy was another person chained to a rig. Anselm motioned for the chained man to remain where he was, probably a useless gesture, and stepped outside.

  Clare joined him and tilted her head at a rig that had been torn to pieces. Chunks remained, but the rest had been scattered across the desert. Pieces had been flung hard enough to drive them into the sides of other vehicles.

  “What the hell did you do to that one?” Anselm approached the remains. Whatever happened likely kicked off explosives, which had then shredded it.

  “I didn’t do anything.” Clare frowned. “Looks like something blew it up from the inside.”

  “I thought the same. Something had to ignite the explosives, though.”

  “Yeah. Your little stun-round thing.”

  “That’s not how it works. Your electromagnets could have triggered an accelerant.”

  He didn’t know which device was responsible. It was a problem when using neural weapons, but electromagnets played all kinds of hell with electronics around them. If a detonator had been plugged into the explosives, that could have been triggered.

  It didn’t matter what caused the explosion. What mattered was that it had claimed at least five werewolves and probably wounded a few more. A few scattered bodies lay near the victims Clare had claimed.

  He’d been lucky she didn’t run off. Lucky to be alive.

  “I think I found the Chew Toy fellow.” Clare waved him over to a rig where another painfully thin man carefully stuck his body out the window to see what was happening. He was older, with a stringier look, indicating he’d been with the Maneaters longer than the first.

  Scars rippled across his mostly bare skin, showing that his life had not gotten easier over the years. The Maneaters lived up to their name. He was missing two fingers from his right hand and three from his left.

  He ducked back into the rig when he saw Anselm and Clare and didn’t respond when they called his name.

  “Shit.” Anselm crossed his arms and almost jumped when he realized Treat, or whatever his real name was, had followed Clare out of the rig on his hands and knees.

  He hadn’t heard him either. As if he’d been instructed never to make a sound or be seen in the presence of his werewolf owners.

  Clare jumped when she saw him, too. “Shit! When I let you go, I thought you’d run off to wherever the fuck you came from.”

  Treat stared at her, likely trying to determine what she was talking about before turning his attention to his surroundings. He hadn’t noticed it before and seemed surprised.

  “Did you kill all the missus?”

  “Yep, me and Anselm here.” She shrugged. “You’re welcome. Time to get on with your life.”

  Treat didn’t look pleased. “Who will feed Treat? Keep Treat safe? Who will protect Treat when the sands whip? Poor, poor Treat! No missus for Treat on the sands!”

  Anselm cocked his head as the man fell to his knees and beat his hands against the sand. He was in genuine distress over the loss of his missus, although which one he belonged to was a mystery.

  “Treat takes care of Treat,” Clare pointed out, trying to calm him down. “You’re not going to be beaten or scared anymore. You can do your thing.”

  It wasn’t working. Treat returned to chattering gibberish, beating his hands, and openly weeping. Clare continued trying to calm him down, which seemed like the best choice. She was a woman, and Treat was more used to dealing with them. Meanwhile, Anselm turned his attention to Chew Toy. Treat’s wailing had brought him out of his catatonic state. He snarled and growled as he poked his head through the window.

  “What the fuck’s your problem?” Anselm didn’t like the look in his eyes. Whatever the weres had done to him had messed with his brain. He should probably show more sympathy to someone who’d been through so much, but it had been a long-ass day. He was out of sympathy. “Clare, try to shut Treat up. He’s riling the other one.”

  “I’m fucking trying!”

  For all his injuries, Chew Toy was healthy and packed a wallop. The moment Anselm turned away to check on the situation behind him, the full weight of the creature hammered into his back. He’d jumped clear through the window and tackled the adjudicator.

  Chew Toy jumped off and sprinted at Clare and Treat.

  “Look out!”

  Clare turned around in time for Chew Toy to knock her off her feet, sending them sprawling onto the sand. He put up a fight with his mangled hands. Anselm caught sight of him snapping his teeth at her. Several were missing. The remaining ones had been filed into points, and he was desperate to sink them into Clare.

  For his part, Treat was nowhere near as mentally feeble as he’d seemed a second ago. All that wailing disappeared the second Chew Toy was out the window, and he sprinted at an impressive speed for the rig they’d left him in.

  Treat started the rig and peeled away before Anselm could raise his weapon to stop him. The only vehicle they knew worked was leaving.

  “Anselm, a little help here!”

  He forced his breathing to slow. A rig was getting away, which could leave them stranded. On the other hand, a crazy person had chomped into the shoulder of his mission objective. Chew Toy earned his name by shaking his whole body as if trying to yank a chunk of flesh free.

  “Fuck! Stun!” Anselm shifted his aim to target Chew Toy. The madman noticed and let Clare go in time for the stun round to hit his chest.

  It snapped him off Clare and sent him staggering, but the round didn’t have the intended results. Either Chew Toy was hopped up on adrenaline, or the pain coursing through his system was nothing compared to what he’d been subjected to before. He reared up and rushed at Anselm next, teeth bared and ready to tear his throat out.

  Anselm didn’t have time to shout an order into his sidearm. He flicked the control to the next lethal round with his thumb before pulling the trigger. The pellet round ripped through Chew Toy’s throat and removed the lower half of his jaw.

  The emaciated man’s rush continued after the shot. Anselm sidestepped his charge, and he managed three more steps before he dropped to his knees, then smacked face-down in the sand.

  Anselm brought his pistol back toward the dust cloud from the retreating rig. He could get a shot in, but his visor told him Treat was already over two hundred and fifty meters away and moving fast. It was an impossible shot without a rifle.

  “Shit,” he spat and holstered his weapon.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Florence was worth every centi-cred Clare spent on her. The smaller version was more than capable of treating the bite wound. Antibacs and anti-virals were applied before it sealed the wounds. That little shit had torn muscles and tendons, but painkillers erased the agony.

  Anselm handled the device like he’d used it before. He carefully let it continue sealing wounds and reattaching the ripped tissue with dissolvable material.

  It wasn’t the first time she wished she could heal like a were, though. The painkillers were a blessing, but her arm would ache for a while unless she went back for them regularly. She would have to be careful not to tear the stitches out.

  “You don’t think he was infected, do you?” Anselm asked.

  Clare didn’t want him to pause with the machine. She narrowed her eyes, though he wasn’t looking at her. “Infected with what? The antibacs and virals should take care of that.”

  “No. The virus. You know, the werewolf virus. It’s transmitted by bite. He didn’t look like he’d been changed, but you can’t always tell. He was strong enough to have been one.”

  She didn’t immediately answer because she didn’t want to talk down to him or make him feel stupid for asking. She’d once thought the same thing. Curtis had educated her on the matter after a few jokes at her expense.

  There were no stupid questions, he’d explained. Only stupid people who think they’re too good to ask the right questions.

  “Being bit by a werewolf doesn’t change you, man.” She wasn’t sure she’d cleared the mockery from her voice, but he didn’t react. “It’s a whole fucking process to change a human into a were. One that requires genetic grafting and usually kills the human involved.”

  He paused and studied her for a moment before he continued with the treatment. “So it’s inherited. Not transmitted.”

  “Pretty much. Makes me think people got their research mixed up because becoming a vampire is transmitted. Like a venereal disease, although fangs don’t appreciate the comparison. Then again, it’s also not as simple as being bit by a fang.”

  “Huh.” When the device beeped at the treatment completion, Anselm pulled it away. The wound still looked messy but better than the chewed-up splotch it had been ten minutes ago. “Seems like people need to update their research.”

  “That’d be difficult. Like you said, weres aren’t lining up to be test subjects.” Clare tested her arm’s mobility. It wasn’t great, but it would do. “Neither are vamps, but more research went into them. As I recall, a bite needs to be mixed with the vamp’s blood, or they need to press their blood into the bite.”

  “Does it need to be a bite, or can you inject someone?”

  “I don’t think injection works.” She stopped testing her arm when the stitches strained. “From what I heard, their saliva plays a part in the activation. Not sure what part, though. It’s virulent and disruptive to a person’s system. If it’s not carefully managed, it’ll kill the host in almost ninety-nine percent of cases. The parent fangs are responsible for their progeny’s life, and if one lets too many die, the others stop them from turning more.”

  Anselm settled onto the sand. They rested in the shade of a rig, which removed them from the sun’s blazing, almost unbearable heat.

  “People still go to them.” Anselm rolled his neck and checked his injuries. “By the hundreds. Reports from the Corpus Sanguini and the Dominio de la Noche tell us they’re not lacking for recruits.”

  “Yeah.” Clare winced and shook her head. “Vamp cities are a real fucking mess. Wilds and ferals are rare, considering most of them die before they complete the process, but the sponsored ones are more likely to survive. They were chosen specifically or raised in the life, so they’re kept under strict medical watch to give them the best chance. Nobody wants to be bitten and left to die. They flock to the bigger covens and wait, hoping they’ll qualify for sponsorship.”

  Anselm nodded. He was littered with injuries, but the nanobots inside him worked to heal everything. Not as quickly as weres but faster than humans.

  “There are sat-pics of shanty towns around the old quarries near the fang bastions where people stay, trying to be accepted.” He sighed and leaned back against the rig. “Vamps don’t mind, of course. A steady stream of walking, talking blood bags, as long as they don’t exsanguinate too many.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Anselm had prejudices when he first came down, but Clare appreciated that he was willing to abandon them when presented with evidence to the contrary. She probably couldn’t erase all his shitty beliefs, but at least she wasn’t dealing with an idiot.

  Idiots had a habit of getting other people in trouble for their fuckups.

  “We should probably get moving.” Anselm stood, wincing when a few sharp pains told him it was time to chill out. “Are any other rigs working?”

  She shook her head. “The one I picked up must have been shielded from whatever happened. The electrics on the rest are fried. I could get one moving, but it’d take hours. We have people hunting for us. We’d better get out of here, even if it’s on foot.”

  Not a pleasant idea. The midday sun was headed back down to earth. They could possibly afford to wait until nightfall, and she could put her back into getting a rig running. That way, they could figure out who was to blame for icing their electronics.

  She disliked the idea of sticking around, though. If their enemies had sent the psychotic Maneaters to make sure they were dead, what the hell was on its way next?

  “Town is back that way.” Anselm pointed vaguely southwest. “We could get there in a couple of hours if we leg it and turn our thermal regulators up to protect us from sunstroke.”

  It would have to do. Clare didn’t love the idea, but it wasn’t the first time she’d spent her day out in the blazing sun. She hoped it would be her last. She wouldn’t admit it, but while she was happy to save lives, she clung to the appeal of being able to name a price for her services.

  If she wasn’t allowed access to the elevated cities because she was a filthy mute, she’d take enough money and resources to set her pack up with an enclave outside the city. No more scrounging or taking stupid security gigs to keep the lights on. She’d order parts and pieces directly from the factories. Tinkering was her job, and she wouldn’t stop once she didn’t need the money.

  Thermal regulation helped, but they were far from comfortable as they trudged across the desert. The blazing sun was bad enough without the whipping winds kicking sand into their faces. She’d be picking the stuff out of her clothes for weeks. At least he had a visor that kept it out of his eyes.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” Anselm’s tone indicated he wasn’t looking to distract them and pass the time.

  “Sure. As long as you accept that I might not answer it.”

  “Of course. This isn’t an interrogation.” He sighed. “I wondered. Mutes won’t ever accept you. The werewolves in your family seem to treat you like a fragile porcelain doll in need of protection. Vamps don’t like you because you’re associated with the werewolves. People up top would have their issues, too.”

  “This question. Does it end with me punching you?”

  He grinned. “No. I wondered if you’d want to be a vampire. I might view them as unhinged monsters who only think about the next carotid they can tap, but for people grounded in reality, it could be appealing. You’d have a clan of your own. A family.”

  Clare pulled her goggles on. While they kept her eyes safe, they made it difficult to see anything. She’d have to invest in smart-glass so she could have a visor like his. “I guess that makes sense. Fangs aren’t mindless monsters, for the record. They have to feed on blood, but most bind themselves to a widespread code of ethics. They only take when it’s willingly offered and offer fair compensation in return.”

  “People sell their blood to fangs?” Anselm made a face.

  “Sure. There’s good money in it, not to mention benefits. A few of them are sick fucks, but they know better than to run rabid through a human population. Most fangs rely on willing blood donors. They’ll fuck up anyone who endangers the flow.” Clare shrugged. “If you think about it, there isn’t much difference between that and a laborer who sells his time and sweat for creds to keep himself alive. For instance, I’m assuming you have prostitution up there?”

  He opened his mouth a few times like a fish before nodding. “It’s regulated and licensed, but sure.”

  “So, a guy or a girl sells sex for money. What’s the difference?”

  Anselm scratched the rough bristle on his cheek. “I guess you make a solid point. Not one I agree with, but still.”