Bloodlands

by Christine Cody

  I made use of it. “Hiding. Always hiding.”

  Pucci shirked back, then frowned. He was the kind of man who didn’t take kindly to any female lip. Too bad.

  “Mariah,” he said, “I wouldn’t be so uppity if I were you.”

  I stared right back at him, and he knew he’d gone too far. I could see it in the twitch of his mouth.

  On the other side of the room, I could sense Gabriel tensing. He watched Pucci closely. Was he . . . protecting me?

  “Antonio,” Hana said.

  She didn’t even raise her voice, but all the same, it seemed to slap Pucci.

  He walked back to where Hana was standing, then leaned against the wall next to her, as if all were well. But he was grinding his teeth as he gradually slid his gaze to Hana.

  A split second before Pucci raised his had with the obvious intention of grabbing her robes and bringing her face-to-face with him, Gabriel rushed over—not vampire-fast, but quick enough—and inserted his arm between them as a barrier.

  Hana looked up at Gabriel with her big brown eyes, utterly calm. She wasn’t afraid, and Gabriel seemed surprised at that.

  He looked straight at Pucci, and Pucci just stared right back until the oldster spoke.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where’s Zel?”

  We seemed to come out of the malaise that the strained moment between Gabriel, Pucci, and Hana had wrought. None of us had been paying mind to Zel. She must’ve slipped through the door, through the common area and to her domain, during the distraction.

  Damn. Damn it all . . .

  Chaplin, who’d remained quiet up until now, talked to me.

  Check on her, Mariah!

  But I’d already sprinted to the common-area tunnel door and opened it, letting Chaplin through. I ran off after him toward the common room, which was empty. Then I yanked open Zel’s unlocked door.

  Her domain was empty, too.

  I barreled back to my place, just as Gabriel was halfway up the ladder, obviously intending to check if Zel was outside, beyond the scope of the viszes.

  I stopped him by yelling, “Gone!” while rushing toward the weapons wall.

  God-all, we knew what Zel was going to do, and she needed to be stopped. If things were bad now, they’d only be worse if—

  The oldster was at my side, echoing my thoughts. “You don’t think she did something foolhardy, like going off to Stamp’s with her sense of righteousness on fire.”

  Gabriel jumped down from the ladder. “She wouldn’t be that careless, especially all by herself.”

  I whittled my explanation to its safest, taking a double-barreled shotgun from the wall, plus a bag of ammunition. “Zel’s gone into worse situations. She was a cop, and if you saw what was on her face tonight, you know that she wasn’t about to tolerate a minute more of what she considers to be injustice. Besides, Zel . . .”

  A flustered Sammy cut in, editing me. “Zel can do damage. It’s only a matter of having to do it. You can only push a woman like her so far, and . . . I think she lost it tonight, you guys. Really lost it.”

  We were all watching each other in front of Gabriel—what was said, what was done—but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “This is on me,” he said. “I was the one with all the talk the other night.”

  The oldster walked over, clearly sensing that Gabriel wasn’t about to stand idly by. Not this time.

  “We can catch up to her,” the old man said.

  Pucci’s enraged voice cut in. “And what then? Goddamn it, is every one of you forgetting what the hell’s at stake? This is just what we’ve been trying to avoid!”

  Gabriel flinched at the curses, but he moved toward the common-area door, anyway. The oldster was right behind him.

  Sammy called, “Oldster, what are you planning—?”

  The old man held up a revolver. “Here’s my strategy, and it’s enough. I

  Nobody halted them as Gabriel laid his hand on the door, clearly thinking about how to proceed. Was he wondering if he should run as fast as a vampire was capable, taking the risk of exposing his monster side to whatever was out there?

  Whatever he wanted to do, I ached to go with him. I felt good enough to do it, too, with the peace over me. But Gabriel had made it clear he wanted me to stay inside, and I knew that I’d only complicate matters if I made an issue of it. We couldn’t afford to lose any more time. I’d hold down the fort here, just in case Zel pissed off Stamp and he decided to pull another stunt like he did with Chaplin—capturing one of our own and then exploiting our imbalance during his attack on our home front. The oldster would keep Gabriel in check. He’d make sure we weren’t exposed.

  He took Gabriel’s arm. “I’ve got a zoom bike. We’ll catch up to Zel that way.”

  “Is it fast enough to overcome Zel’s vehicle?”

  None of us answered.

  Instead, I went over to Gabriel, giving him the double-barreled shotgun with modified night sights as well as an ammo sack. I wanted my meaning to be clear. Use the weapon, not your fangs.

  As he accepted the weaponry, his finger slid over mine, and both of our blood flows surged, bringing up what was left of the strength we’d shared, the peace.

  Slinging the ammo sack over his head so it rested against his chest, he exited, not looking at me. But I felt like I was still in his mind.

  “We’ll be back soon,” the oldster said. “And if I find that any of you have gone outside after us, I’ll kick your asses.”

  As the door swung shut behind Gabriel and the oldster, Pucci impetuously called out, “Oldster, make sure Zel doesn’t—”

  Sammy clapped his hand over Pucci’s overly emotive speech before anything else got out, and I was right there with him, aiming a revolver at the man’s big mouth in case he tried to finish the sentence.

  21

  Gabriel

  The door slammed, and Gabriel didn’t hear the rest of what Pucci said. But his mind was in high gear, thinking about what lay ahead as he ran down the tunnel to the common area, then the oldster’s door.

  They jogged through his tunnel, too, into his domain, where the contents made Gabriel come to a halt.

  It was nothing more than a garage, with tools and chains hanging from the walls and various vehicles waiting, some with their innards spilled on the floor, some gleaming and some beautifully intact.

  “Shit, oldster,” Gabriel said.

  The old man had already climbed onto a dark gray, streamlined zoom bike, turning it on to rev its quiet jets. There was enough room on the back for Gabriel, and once he sat behind the driver, the oldster wasted no time in gunning the engine, aiming the bike’s twisted hornlike nozzle up, and blasting toward a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Gabriel was just about to yell that the fucking thing was closed when the oldster pressed a button on the handlebars and the door blasted open.

  They barged up into the gray-spun night, curving arond toward Stamp’s place as the oldster put pedal to the metal. It was all Gabriel could do to hold on to the shotgun as the old man clipped by rocky hills, leaving the whish of the engine echoing behind them.

  During the short trip, Gabriel ran through scenarios: what they would do if Zel was there. What they’d do if she wasn’t.

  When they arrived at the base of a large hill, the oldster cut the engine to a near-silent stalk. Gabriel sniffed the air, trying to find a scent that would lead them to Zel or even Stamp’s place.

  In the near distance, he heard men laughing just over that hill. Then he scented a hint of tangy, luring, coppery aroma, too.

  Blood.

  Gabriel climbed off the seat and landed on the dirt, then checked his shotgun while easing toward the hill, knowing he couldn’t make much noise and alert Stamp to their presence. Though Mariah’s effect on him wasn’t as potent as it’d been earlier, there was enough of the peace left for him to resist the draw of the blood.

  Midway up, he waited for the oldster. The gray moon provided thick illumination as the other
man hopped off the zoom bike just before it came to a gentle settling on the ground. Gabriel signaled to let the oldster know they needed to go up and over the hill.

  But the guy was already on his way, charging toward Gabriel, then right past him. He was even holding his revolver high.

  Gabriel followed him. His blood was thudding, his fingers wrapped around the shotgun.

  He and the oldster reached the top, and as they leaned forward against a boulder to see what lay before them, they heard the first of Zel’s screams, which sounded much more like an echoing screech.

  Gabriel stopped himself from cringing, but the oldster’s veins were raised from the skin of his neck, just as if he were gearing up to do something stupid and give them away.

  Before Gabriel could grab the oldster’s arm to restrain him, a crumble of rocks rolled down from a higher perch.

  Then something whacked Gabriel upside the head.

  It hit him with enough force that he went down, but he was up again just as he saw their assailant—a massive man—swinging a club at the oldster.

  As the weapon connected with the old man’s forehead, he fell, but Gabriel was already wielding the butt of his shotgun at their attacker.

  With a crack to his skull, he knocked the guy out.

  A lookout, Gabriel thought as he first checked on the assailant. He was dead.

  He heard the oldster’s vital signs, which were weaker but still going. Gabriel wondered if he could heal something in a human that wasn’t a laceration or other external wound.

  Zel screamed again, the sound drilling through him, and he peered over the boulder to Stamp’s spread, which wasn’t marked on the surface by much more than a vehicle-strewn cave where the rumblers were stored.

  And against the side of that cave was Zel, her arms outspread as if in flight, her front against the rock, her hands clawing at the wall. Blood marked the back of a shirt that was nothing more than strips of white, and the dark streaks traveled down equally destroyed trousers. There was a knife embedded in her shoulder, and that was what was causing her to scream.

  M gearh had said Stamp was the type that thrived off the pain of others. Gabriel knew the kind, because he’d soaked up Abby’s terror on the night he’d found her running from danger. He’d fed off Mariah’s bruised psyche, too.

  He knew Stamp, all right, and Gabriel was going to kill him. All of them.

  His sight threatened to go red, but he knew losing control wasn’t the answer, so he called on the solace of what he’d shared with Mariah.

  During that flash of an eternal second, Gabriel witnessed what happened next: Stamp standing to the side, his hands planted on his hips casually, as if he were again watching a show his crew was putting on. Then one of his men—a woman, actually, judging by her shape—holding another knife. Then the rest of Stamp’s crew, a few more than Gabriel had seen back at the community, circled around, lazy accomplices.

  But there were a couple of employees on the ground, too, as if Zel had taken them out. And with Gabriel’s heightened sight, he could see that their faces were bloody messes.

  He brought up the shotgun. One man against all these foes with weapons wouldn’t last, but with any luck, he’d get enough of them from up here to allow Zel to run.

  The woman with the knife seemed to be aiming it at Zel, and Gabriel fired, hoping his friend had enough energy to escape and hop on her own vehicle to zoom away.

  The shot blew the knife handler forward with such force that she slammed against the cave face-first. As she slipped down the surface of it, the gaping hole in her middle caught on an outcropping of rock, and she hung there, the knife dropping from her hand.

  The others turned around, and before Gabriel could shoot again, one of them had his own gun out—a deathlock, small and viperish and smart, with computerized bullets that mapped out and tracked human heat near its path.

  For the first time in a while, Gabriel was glad he wasn’t human.

  Still, the shooter aimed close to where Gabriel had fired, so the bullet sought out the oldster on the ground. Gabriel threw himself over the old man just in time for the bullet to nick his own shoulder, taking out a chunk of his skin and flinging him to the side.

  Running footsteps—from only one attacker, another lookout—came at Gabriel, and though he was losing blood in gushing spurts, he aimed . . .

  As the man, his long hair flying behind him, appeared over the boulder, Gabriel fired, and the guy flipped backward, his torso a thing of the past.

  Gabriel struggled to get back to the cover of the boulder, break open the shotgun, and reload before the deathlock gunner could do so; it always took a few moments for the computer on the other weapon to reset. His arm would be fine if he could just start self-healing, but who knew how weak he’d be with the blood loss.

  He reloaded and managed to cover the oldster’s body with his own just before another deathlock bullet whizzed overhead. Then Gabriel peered over the boulder, finding that Stamp’s crew had taken cover inside the cavern, behind the rumblers. Their boss was nowhere to be found, but Zel was frozen, panting, looking up at his location, shocked to have a savior among the rocks.

  Then another gunshot rang through the air, and Gabriel started. It hadn’t sounded like a deathlock, and he sure hadn’t fired.

  But someone had.

  He looked back at Zel to see a bloom of darkness spreading over her heart. She sank to the dirt, her final sound again reminding Gabriel of a screech.

  Zel . . . ?

  Gabriel ducked back down, his senses fritzing.

  A rock tumbled down near him, and he hazily swung the shotgun in its direction, but a blade got to his other arm first.

  Fire split down the wound, and Gabriel knew that the blade had been silver—poison for a vampire.

  Out of pure agony, his monster instincts took over, his vision going red, his fangs jutting out as he hissed at the attacker, who’d raised the silver knife again, the blade glinting in the baleful moonlight.

  But Gabriel was quick, and he brought the shotgun up just in time to fire at him.

  The bullet caught the man in the side, and he spun away, but Gabriel thought he still heard vital signs. He also detected a stampede of feet coming up the hill, and he looked at the oldster just lying there, knocked out. Then he thought of Zel, shot through the heart.

  He wasn’t going to let another one of them die.

  So he grabbed the old man, speeding down the hill and back to the zoom bike, tossing him over his lap and revving the vehicle into fast motion before Stamp’s men could catch up.

  As he flew away, he held tighter to the oldster than he’d ever held to anything before, unwilling to let the man fall, as he’d allowed Zel to.

  It was only when Gabriel sped the zoom bike over the hills leading to the community that he remembered the demon’s decimated body.

  And the carrion feeders that’d been sure to find it.

  The flock of shades was indeed pecking at the former demon’s skin with their grotesquely large beaks, their eyes as red as the devil’s fury in the night as they cocked their heads at Gabriel’s approach. Hoping that the oldster’s body was balanced enough on his lap, Gabriel gripped the shotgun, which he’d nestled next to the old man, raised it at the carrion feeders, then fired.

  The blast scattered their large, gargoylesque bodies, and they rose toward the waning moon until they covered his view of it. As Gabriel veered up to Mariah’s entrance, he shut down the zoom bike, tumbled off while it eased down to the ground, and dropped the spent shotgun because there was no time to reload.

  Next to him, Mariah’s door busted open, and there she was, training her own shotgun around to catch sight of any hiding shades with her weapon’s modified night-vision equipment.

  “Hurry!” she yelled.

  Gabriel didn’t need any urging as the flock hovered in the sky, preparing to dive back down.

  When they descended, their screech-howl cries pierced the air, louder, closer. Gabriel grab
bed the oldster from the bike, flinging his slight body straight at the entrance, where Sammy was now reaching out his arms.

  The oldster’s body banged into the other man as he caught the old guy, then fell backward.

  The shades’ cries got even louder.

  Mariah took a shot at them, and she must’ve hit one because it wailed just before she ducked aside to make room for Gabriel, who was already jumping inside, grabbing the door at the same time and arcing it to a close while he careened tse tground.

  As he hit the floor, his vampire reflexes making his landing graceful, he heard Mariah bolting the door behind him.

  But no one seemed to notice the strangeness of his entrance because the rest of the crowd were trying to revive the oldster, whom they’d already laid out on the ground.

  “He got a good knock to the skull with a club,” Gabriel said so they could start medical work on him. Then he bent to his haunches, weakened.

  But before he could remember too much about the silver that’d gotten into his system with that knife blade, he checked the visz screens to see the carrion feeders swooping past the lens, near Mariah’s door, then pulling back up. Outside, he could hear their frustrated cries, like the sound of metal against metal.

  The shades went back to the demon’s body, plucking apart the rest of it, and Mariah came to Gabriel’s side. She was breathing quickly.

  “The feeders came before any of our group could get out there to clean up the demon,” she said. Then in the next breath, “Zel?”

  While the others looked to Gabriel, he wasn’t sure how to break the news to them. So he merely shook his head.

  Pucci, who had his hand on the oldster’s shoulder, let out a defeated moan. Sammy hung his head. Hana sat near the oldster’s head and paused only a second before she set her jaw and gently placed her hand on the old man’s wound, near the trickle of blood from his injury.

  Mariah’s face had gone a livid red, her eyes light and glassy with what he recognized to be helpless, feverish anger. Her blood screamed through her veins, and Gabriel could tell that the remaining peace was all that was keeping her from losing it.