Gabriel focused on her, realizing now that she could communicate with Chaplin because police forces used to employ Intel Dogs until the government had retired them, leaving the cops with more primitive devices that were hardly a match for lower-level bad guys.
Zel sighed and lifted an eyebrow at the oldster. “Didn’t you already point out that nothing we had out there matters anymore?”
“Your aim still matters,” he volleyed. “And Sammy made a lot of money fixing junk like TVs, tech screens, and computers. He’s valuable enough these days, too.” He paused. “We’re not as helpless as we act sometimes.”
Everyone went silent, and the old guy made a disappointed sound. As he wandered back to the rooted wall, his gaze remained on the woman a moment too long, and Gabriel noted this, right along with the rest of this group’s dynamics.
He didn’t blame the denizens for keeping shut-mouthed. Everyone had learned to ease back from standing up to any threat that might turn out to hold a danger. Once, just before things had gone to ruin, people had believed in the law of this land. But as it broke down, folks lost hope, retreating into their families. Into themselves.
Into almost nothing.
Gabriel could see the evidence of that here, among the shadows on the walls, among the silhouettes of what these people used to be.
He glanced at the visz lens. Even Mariah had been different, no doubt. They all had.
He rested his forearms on his legs, hunched over. Now was the time to step into the reason he’d sought out this area. It didn’t even matter that Mariah would now hear the true motivation he’d possessed for coming to the New Badlands.
“Bet you all don’t get many wanderers coming into your sphere,” he said.
Sammy shook his head. “Not many at all. There are a few who’ve come. Less who’ve gone.”
“I know of a certain woman who headed out this way.” Gabriel glanced around the room, finding that he’d captured everyone’s focus again. “Abigail Trenton. Truthfully, I was also hoping to find her even as I found myself a new home.”
Again, none of them met his gaze, so Gabriel couldn’t scan their thoughts even if he deemed it safe to try. And if he vocally swayed them, Mariah would see it on the visz—their change in personality would be that obvious, just as Chaplin’s had been before Gabriel had toned down the hypnosis with the dog. He’d seen how Mariah had noticed the change in her companion, so Gabriel had needed to adjust.
He would go about it the old-fashioned way, questioning these people, just like any normal human would do. In fact, Gabriel liked the notion of that quite a bit.
Just like any normal human.
Abby would’ve approved.
“You ever hear her name?” Gabriel added. “Abby?”
Both Zel and Sammy shook their heads, but the oldster motioned toward one of the doors in the room. “We had an Annie here not too long ago, but not an Abby.”
Gabriel’s gaze locked onto that door as he straightened in his seat.
“She left a while ago,” Zel said, but her tone held some warning for the old man.
He clearly didn’t like being told what to do, and he stared at Zel while he spoke, as if savoring this act of defiance.
“About a year and a half ago, she laid claim to a piece of water-rich land round here.”
Chaplin huffed a bit, as if anticipating what the oldster would say next.
“But that was before,” he continued, with a challenging glance at the dog, “Stamp and his boys came along.”
Gabriel’s spine stiffened. Stamp? Had he gotten to Annie . . . ?
Abby?
Bloodlust ripped heat through his veins, and he fought the fangs, the urge to let loose and just peer into anyone who’d look at him.
But he wouldn’t let himself, and it felt . . . decent. Safe, even.
It felt right, way out here, in a place where no one knew just what he was. Abby would’ve liked that, he thought. A new start.
The old man’s eyes were shiny while he watched Chaplin, as if he hated this story of what had happened to Annie. As if he were angry and sad all at the same time.
It was hard to decide what the oldster was feeling. Vampirism had taken the raw emotion out of Gabriel, leaving only memories of what he should feel. Sometimes he even told himself that this was why he’d been so drawn to Abby—because she made him go beyond experiencing mere hunger and need. Because she was a way to access what he’d lost along the way.
Seeing the oldster made Gabriel want to feel the rage and vengeance, too, because to Gabriel, empathy was what separated the good guys from the bad, and the absence of it had put him on the wrong side. But he still had to have some good within him, and he meant to discover it again by finding the woman who’d disappeared from his life.
He summoned the concept of anger and how it used to feel.
“Are you insinuating,” he said to the old man, “that Stamp got to this Annie and that’s why she’s not around anymore?”
Zel interrupted. “Annie left. That’s it.”
“And,” Sammy added, “since Annie’s gone, you might think of moving on, too. If you’ve got no reason to be here beyond your friend, you’ll want no part of our business.”
Gabriel shifted in his seat. So Annie had just up and left. It sounded enough like Abby.
Being this close to finding her inflamed his vampire instincts, and in spite of everything he’d just told himself about being a better man—a real man—Gabriel found himself looking at Sammy, compelling him to connect gazes.
As if unable to resist, Sammy glanced at him, and Gabriel peered into his eyes.
Slam!
A wall of black, just like with Chaplin.
His body ringing with the force of being blocked out, Gabriel lost patience. When Zel looked at him, he peered into her, too.
Slam!
The oldster, who seemed to have finally taken Zel’s silent warnings to heart, also proved to be a block when Gabriel glanced at him.
Slam!
Gabriel fought the loose clench he had on his control, felt it slipping, sliding as he yearned to throw one of them against a wall and really look into their eyes.
But going deeper into them would probably expose him. Worse yet, it would cause him to lose the possibility that there was more to him than appetite and destruction.
He fixed his gaze on the visz monitor where Mariah might be watching, and the thought of her disgust at what he really was made him build a facsimile of despair that felt real enough.
It was only when one of the tunnel doors creaked open that he lost his focus.
Gabriel turned toward Annie’s door to find a man with long, trimmed sideburns and an expensive whale-hide hat stepping through, a genial smile on his face.
Zel, Sammy, and the oldster tensed, as if frightened to be discovered in the open.
This wasn’t one of their crowd, Gabriel thought. And he was coming through Annie’s door.
As a second man entered, he knew they were Stamp’s crew—they stank of the hubs: dirty, used. Their vital signs varied from one another, but there was an excitement in their pulses that confused any sure rhythms because the blood had to drag through arteries clogged by too much processed food.
Spastic. Hopped up on chemical sustenance and entertainment. These men had to be what they called “distractoids” in the hubs. The appeased ones who lived among the bad.
Last night, after the heat had waned, one of these people had found Mariah’s visz lens and had harassed her. And tonight, they’d found a real entrance. . . .
Gabriel tuned his hearing to a longer range, trying to detect any near-distant cries from Mariah, even back in her home, but he heard nothing.
And that was when he reached out with his mind, not thinking about it at all, merely reacting.
He mentally shut down her visz lens so she wouldn’t come running down here with her guns. He would handle this, just as he’d done last night with Chompers.
Two other men c
ame through the door.
They were all dressed in the sand-colored heat suits they’d probably been wearing in the elements while they’d been wandering through the last of the daylight, nosing around. The bulk of the material was pushed down to their waists, kept up by suspenders while revealing hemp shirts and long gloves on one arm that protected the small screens many urban hub people had implanted in their arms for easy, lazy access.
Even when Gabriel’s old buddy Chompers took up the right side of the group, the teeth around his boots jangling, Gabriel didn’t react.
No, he didn’t do that until Chompers stepped away from the person who was taking up the rear, revealing him in full.
A tall rangy youngster in his early twenties, almost disappearing into the background except for the gun-barrel black of his eyes. A presence more than a person—a near specter who seemed to fade in a crowd though you realized he was there more than anyone else. His pulse was slow . . . cool.
Unlike the other bad ones.
Without introduction, Gabriel guessed who he was, and the threat of the infamous Johnson Stamp made his fangs pulse at his gums while his gaze heated.
7
Gabriel
Through the seething film of Gabriel’s peripheral vision, he caught Zel and Sammy trading looks, as if neither one of them knew what to do. Chaplin even backed up toward Gabriel, pressing himself against his master’s legs, awaiting a command or maybe even . . .
Gabriel didn’t want to think it, but he did.
Maybe the canine was as reluctant to stand up to Stamp as Mariah and these others were.
But when, near the wall, the oldster took a bold step forward, Gabriel revised his thought. The old-timer was either the bravest of any of them or just plain foolish.
He pointed toward the door through which the four newcomers had entered, and Gabriel’s vision went that much hotter, though he tried to dial it back, lest his irises reveal the change his body was battling.
Annie.
Abby?
Either way, had Stamp and his crowd been instrumental in whatever had happened to her?
Gabriel lowered his gaze to the ground while bringing his level of ferocity down to a manageable limit, then looked up again.
The man-boy in charge of the newcomers leveled his gaze at all the other doors around the room, including Mariah’s.
The old man was pointing at Annie’s door. “That ain’t your quarters.”
Three of the men glanced at their apparent boss, seemingly for direction. But the youngster remained mute, refocusing his dark gaze from those doors to every single denizen instead.
His employee—the smiley one wearing the whale-hide hat—spoke in his place. “Weer ur nu frndz.”
We’re your new friends? Gabriel thought. This clown wasn’t gauging things so well, but that was no shock. Most times, Text speakers were better at reading screens than actual body cues.
The oldster stared atWhale Hide for a tense moment, and the room itself seemed to slant during the rough pause.
As Whale Hide opened his mouth to say something else, the old man chucked his canteen at the intruder, and it clipped him at the shoulder, splashing his shirt with water.
The man and his cronies flinched, their lips parted as if to protest, and Gabriel hunched, ready for whatever came next.
But he held back.
No vamp powers if you end up fighting, he thought. Don’t let any of them know what’s in their midst. You’d be signing a death warrant for these people because Stamp would think they’re sheltering you.
Ever so slowly, the youngster with the cold eyes turned to survey his comrade’s shirt.
Chaplin seemed to chew on some muttered canine sounds as the three intruders looked to their boss once more. But the young guy merely sighed, hooked his thumbs into his suspenders, and stared at his boots for a moment.
Zel and Sammy planted their hands on the crate table, as if bracing themselves. Gabriel’s body shuddered, still fighting his instincts.
When the youngster finally glanced back up, his tone was even. “I find the waste of water to be more offensive than the gesture, sir.”
Old American. Gabriel hadn’t expected to hear it from this kid’s mouth. But if he’d come out to the New Badlands to capitalize on the water, it’d make sense for a businessman, who’d still use the formality in the world at large.
As the kid locked gazes with the oldster, Whale Hide pulled his watered shirt away from his chest, then bent to touch his tongue to the moisture. Without even glancing backward, the youngster’s hand whipped out to lightly smack the man.
Gabriel’s shoulders hunched even more.
The kid tore his gaze away from the oldster and addressed everyone else. “We’ve been looking high and low for neighbors, and just today, we happened upon an entrance in the ground. Cleverly hidden, all right, but finding it was inevitable.”
“Did ya ever think,” the old man asked, hardly scared off, “that we weren’t making an effort to welcome you? Round these parts, housebreakers are shot.”
“Around these parts,” the youngster said, “I imagine it’s survival of the fittest, just like everywhere else.” He was still visually taking inventory of every one of them, as if committing all details to memory.
Then, just as if he’d deemed the lot of them safe, he switched gears, taking a step forward, sauntering toward Zel without a hint of menace, yet still as serious as could be, while he extended a hand toward her in greeting. Gabriel even thought that the kid was genuinely happy to find some fellow nonspastic humans of his own ilk out here.
“Johnson Stamp,” he said.
But Zel didn’t make a move to accept the strange gesture. Instead, she recoiled ever so slightly.
From where Gabriel was standing, there was nothing physically repulsive about Stamp, who seemed well kempt and proper. It was more of a curdle to the blood that the kid brought on, and Gabriel could understand her reluctance to engage him.
If Stamp’s employees were Text-blind to body language, the boss himself sure wasn’t. He read Zel’s message loud and clear but didn’t make issue of it, as he tn offered his hand to Sammy.
But the Mexican angled his body away from Stamp.
That seemed to do it, causing the kid’s gaze to darken even more as he drew back his hand, almost like it was a weapon about to be holstered.
“This is how it’ll be, then,” he said, his arms curved at his sides in stiff rejection.
The old man piped up from his corner of the room. “Maybe you’d have gotten a different version of hello if your men had seen fit to stay away in the first place.”
Stamp faced the oldster again, as if interested in his sparkiness. Meanwhile, the three employees loitered near the door, their arms crossed over their chests. They were assessing Gabriel and his head bandages, and he returned their stares with an outward composition that didn’t quite match the creeping heat of his vision.
Had one of them harassed Annie, just as Chompers had done to Mariah over the visz screen last night?
Had one of them chased Annie away?
In particular, Gabriel watched Chompers, whose trophy teeth clanked around his ankles as he shifted position. He was watching Gabriel right back with a strenuous curiosity. But Gabriel knew that the guy hadn’t gotten a good gander at him in the dark last night, so he wasn’t in the process of recognizing him. However, Gabriel did fear that the thug might be able to recall Gabriel’s whispered threats, which had suggested that Chompers leave before he got torn apart.
Shit. See what happened when he tried to sway somebody?
Still, scaring off Chompers last night had actually been worth it in the end, with the thug fleeing Mariah’s home.
“Sir,” Stamp finally said to the old man. “I don’t think you realize that I’m not after anything you own. Not unless you count company. I’ve found it isolating out here, and being a hub boy, I’m not used to it, even though I’m all too happy to get away from the masses.”
“Is that so?” the oldster said.
Stamp nodded. “Like you, I’m out here to just exist like nature meant us to, without all those abominations you find in the hubs.” His mouth curled up at one side—an unsaid, bitter reminiscence. But then he smoothed himself out again. “I’ll admit to you that my men need a firmer hand. I’m not used to employing anyone, seeing as I always made my way solo before now. I apologize for this tough start. But I’m also here to tell you that I don’t take kindly to the way the people around here have been dealing with the temporary waywardness of those on my payroll. If you give us the opportunity, we can be nice enough. I brought them out here to teach them better. I’m even gearing up to teach them polite language. I tell them that speaking Old American is the first step in becoming the entrepreneurs and successes we can all be.” He jerked his chin toward Whale Hide, as if the man’s smiliness provided all the example anyone might require of their intended goodwill.
The oldster glanced at Zel and Sammy, who were still keeping to themselves.
Then Stamp’s olive branch seemed to snap. “I should add that, unfortunately, one of my men was picked off the night before last. We found his remains under the circle of some carrion feeders, and I’m also here to see if there’s anything I need to do about it.”
It was as if someone had aimed a bullet at the ceiling, silent debris raining down as Zel, Sammy, and Chaplin went taut.
But not the old man. “Death is a risk of living out here in what remains of nature. By leaving the hubs, you’ve just bought yourself a stake in the ultimate craps game, so you might want to inform your boys that flitting round at night isn’t for the wise. That’s what you need to do about it.”
Stamp turned to all of them now, even Gabriel, who knew that just because the kid hadn’t singled him out didn’t mean he hadn’t been fully aware that Gabriel was there, waiting, nearly quaking with the effort of watching and wondering what any of this had to do with Annie . . . or Abby.
“If another one of my men ends up with his belly torn open,” the kid said, “I’ll be back here for better answers. But I think we can agree to live alongside one another well enough instead. Understand?”
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