Chaplin skulked in a corner, one mournful howl his only response as he presented his back.
Mariah closed her eyes, and a tear rolled out. Gabriel could tell she was trying to retain composure, that she was telling herself that now wasn’t the time for grief—not with the oldster still able to be saved.
“What happened to her?” she asked, opening her eyes, and he could see it—the determination to not fall apart. He could also feel their connection tugging at him, the renewal of the peace.
He wanted to touch her, but he knew it’d only lead to more—him feeling her despair when they didn’t need any more of it to infect them.
Gabriel told them everything: about finding Stamp’s place, seeing Zel with the knife in her back, being unable to get to her before she’d been shot.
Pucci got to his feet, his massive form unsteady. “Was she dead, Gabriel? Really dead?”
“Certainly looked it.” As he grew even weaker, Gabriel met Mariah’s stare, and he knew she’d understand an entirely different meaning than the rest of them when he said, “I couldn’t . . . test . . . her vital signs to know for sure.”
Or, more to the truth, he hadn’t been able to sense Zel’s vital signs.
Mariah understood what he was really saying, but as she went back to watching the oldster, he could see that there was a little part of her that hoped Zel might still be alive with this lack of indisputable proof that she was dead.
Desperate, Gabriel thought. No one wanted to believe their friend was gone, least of all him. Not when hed been so close to rescuing her.
He even wondered if flagrantly using his vampire powers would’ve mattered, if he would’ve made things better . . . or worse.
Now all the neighbors were huddled over the oldster, shielding him so Gabriel could barely see the man’s whiskered face. Hana had used her spit and her robe to clean off the blood from his scalp, and she was still running her hands over his wound, murmuring to him.
Gabriel looked at Mariah, who was holding her shotgun in her arms, almost cradling it.
“What’s massaging him gonna do?” Gabriel asked.
A jittery Sammy glanced up from the group, to Mariah. She shook her head.
Was there something they didn’t want to tell Gabriel about Hana’s methods?
Before he could ask, he noticed that Sammy’s gaze was focused on the blood splatters over his shirt, from the wounds inflicted by Stamp’s cronies.
The other man turned to the oldster, where the rest of the group were covering their faces, as if barring their sorrow. Sammy did the same.
Mariah was staring at his wounds, too, but she had a furrow to her brow, as if bewildered. “Hana was a new-age science nurse. She knows what she’s doing, Gabriel. But you . . .”
She motioned toward his shoulder, where his ripped shirt marked the grazed deathlock bullet wound that had already mended enough to pucker together. Then she glanced at his other arm, where the knife had formed a gaping, unhealed slice from the silver blade. Weakness had already unfolded from the wound and outward, toward his chest. From what he remembered reading in that little vampire introduction pamphlet, it wouldn’t be long before the silver poison traveled to more of him, unless he could cleanse it with an infusion of fresh blood.
As the others helped the oldster, Mariah took Gabriel by the shirtsleeve, and he realized that she wanted privacy.
She spoke to the group. “Someone pay attention to the viszes.” Then she guided Gabriel to her quarters.
The Badlanders huddled together over the oldster, watching Mariah with something in their eyes that Gabriel couldn’t understand.
22
Mariah
When we were ensconced in my private quarters, I set the shotgun down and guided Gabriel to my bed so he could sit. “What do you need me to do?”
I was half in shock from Zel’s death. Survival mode. And the blood on Gabriel . . . I was fighting that off, too.
“A drink,” he said, as if hating that it’d come to this. “Just a little blood to wash the silver out . . .”
I began unbuttoning my shirt.
“Not like that,” he said, latching his fingers round my wrists. Then he explained how he’d gotten these wounds and the consequences of them. “The knife injury is minor, but the weakness is still traveling. I only need enough to keep me.”
He brought one of my wrists toward him, then rested his fingers on the inside of it, over my escalating pulse.
Regulating my responses—breathing, trying to find that peace he’d given to me—I snext to him on the bed.
My offer seemed to move him. Yeah, a vampire affected by emotion. Maybe it was because he felt my sincerity in the rhythm of my heartbeat, the constant dance of it against his fingers. He laid my hand against his cheek, then turned his face against my wrist. The skin there tingled, and the damage traveled up my arm, all over the place, clashing with the peace until my awareness fizzled like sparks all over me.
“Thank you,” he said against my wrist, with just a little sway in his voice, enough so that I was under the thrall of it. I knew he was tranquilizing me so I’d feel no discomfort.
With the utmost care, he used a fingernail on my flesh, cutting me. Under the sway, I didn’t mind the slight sting. I was a world away, watching, disconnected from the action while still connected to him.
He drank, sucking my blood, the pale of his skin flushing a little with the intake. He shivered, and I imagined that it was because the blood was wrapping itself round the silver weakness in him, stifling and choking it.
When he was done, he covered my wound with his fingers to heal me. Even in that small movement, he seemed much stronger.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I was sure he wasn’t just talking about the effects from my blood donation.
I nodded, and it seemed to jar something in me. Tears sprang to my eyes. I was a liar, all right, and not just to other people. I was particularly good at doing it to myself.
“Talk to me,” he whispered.
I didn’t want to. I wanted him to just look into me, put me under more sway so I could spend the rest of the night in that mental pool of water, floating, forgetting.
When he spoke, he included some peace. “Tell me what’s addling you.”
And, before I realized it, I was chatting, even if I wanted to pull my words back. I suppose I actually wanted to talk about this, even though I didn’t know it.
“I knew I wouldn’t ever get away from it.” Stop . . . talking . . . “It follows you everywhere.”
It. The violence, the never-ending legacy of a society that had looked too far into the abyss and then jumped right in.
Gabriel rubbed my healing wrist, as if hoping it would make me feel better. It almost seemed like doing that would improve him, too.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I tried to save Zel. She’d taken down a couple of the crew by the time the oldster and I got there, and it looked as if she’d been in a real fight with them.”
Had he seen much more than that?
“She was feisty, and that’s the reason Stamp’s guys were knifing her,” Gabriel added. “There were more of them, too. Stamp might’ve already called for reinforcements from the hubs—those connections everyone feared he might have.” He hunched, as if blaming himself for everything. “It all happened so fast that I wasn’t able to think all that much about the details at the time.”
“It always does happen fast,” I said.
Always.
He was done healing my wrist, but he kept holding my hand. “I’m only relieved that the oldster didn’t have to see Zel die. I would’ve knocked him out myself if I’d have known they were gonna do that to her. She must’ve ridden a fast vehicle to Stamp’s, then thrown down with the crew. Why did she think she could take on all of them by herself?”
I swallowed, treading lightly round his assumptions. “That was Zel. She probably even went for Stamp directly before the crowd stopped her.” I concentrated my gaze
on our entwined fingers, not at him. “Zel had a real sense of honor, and she would’ve called Stamp out to suffer for all he’s done. I’m sure, for her, Stamp stood for all the bad guys who got away with wrong during her watch as a cop. Tonight was just the last straw. She—”
Someone cried out from the other room.
The oldster?
Even through the flow of the peace in me, I struggled to get up from the bed as a ruckus exploded outside my private quarters.
Gabriel helped me up as the oldster stumbled in, his face a naked arrangement of loss and disbelief. Sammy and Pucci were right behind him, each one grasping the oldster’s trembling arms, restraining him. Hana slipped round to the front of him to whisper low, soft assurances.
When I saw that the oldster’s eyes were light and livid, my heart pistoned.
He pushed past Hana toward Gabriel. “Is it true? They murdered her?”
Gabriel nodded, as if in prelude to saying that they’d tried their best to save Zel, but the oldster was already crying out, his voice mangled in primal grief. His scream was hollow, inhuman.
Panicked, I started forward, but Pucci had already wrapped his thick arm round the old man’s neck. The oldster tried to squirm out, his sorrowful fury making him strong. Hana helped Pucci by forcefully pushing the thrashing man back toward the other room.
Sammy put the oldster in an armlock. “Don’t do this, old-timer. Please.”
But the oldster still fought them off as they pulled him back into the tunnel. His screams of rage continued until a door closed, chopping off the terrible cries, which had almost become garbled sounds, altogether.
The oldster’s emotions had gotten to me, too, and my body began echoing those cries by heating up. . . .
Gabriel just sat there, as if trying to find his own way in the swarm of emotion. Meanwhile, Chaplin rushed into the room, his ears plastered back. Thank-all he came to sit in front of me, murmuring just as Hana had done to the oldster.
It’s fine, Mariah, he said. They’ve got the oldster in check. . . .
Thanks to Chaplin’s soothing voice, plus what I had of Gabriel’s peace, I was merely trembling now. “There’re so many of them out there, and then there’s . . . us.”
Stamp would be no match for us if it came right down to it, Chaplin muttered, and I knew that he’d shut Gabriel out of hearing that comment.
I just shook my head. “They’re gonna have all weapons drawn.”
“Weapons,” Gabriel said. He looked crestfallen as he continued. “That silver knife. My reaction to it . . . They might know what I am. When one of the men came at me with that silver blade, I turned. I couldn’t stop myself. I shot him, but I didn’t have time to confirm his death because more of them were coming, and the oldster couldn’t defend himself. It was either save his hide or give him up, so I took him and ran.”
What else could go wrong?bent down to Chaplin, who was talking again, obviously including Gabriel this time.
The demon’s presence here was enough to warrant action, Gabriel. We’re already in a spot. If there are any Shredders left in the hubs, Stamp will call on one now. Or he’ll bring out every supernatural weapon his crew might have on hand. Maybe Stamp already sent some men to the hubs to gather better tools. . . .
Gabriel slowly rose from the bed, his motions weary. His body told me what he wasn’t saying: He’d tried to do such good, but he couldn’t get away from the bad.
“Maybe,” he said, “vacating the premises wouldn’t be such a misguided idea at this point. It would keep everyone safe, at least.”
Me and Chaplin whipped our gazes over to him. Was this the guy who’d tried to put some fight in everyone?
My fingers clawed against my thighs. “You know it doesn’t matter if you run or fight, right? Me and my dad and Chaplin . . . we’ve tried both before now. Fighting only made everything worse. Then we tried running away from our problems, and it seems as if that hasn’t worked, either.”
“And what happened back when you fought to make you think there’s no solution at all right now?” he asked.
Memory shattered my peace: the men coming into my family’s house. The blood. The screams.
Chaplin rested his paw on my boot, and I ran my free hand over one of his pressed-back ears. He was my constant, my comfort. Unlike Gabriel, he wasn’t going to leave once business in the Badlands was done.
“We’d moved round so much, because of my father’s science career,” I said. “He was needed here and there, but after the government took his tech research over and had him start designing weapons to be used on the populace, he elected to retire. So we went to the outskirts of Dallas, which turned out to be one of the last places to fall in the old States. And we were there when the final degradation started.”
I looked to Chaplin, seeing if I should say any more. He nodded, telling me it was okay to go on.
My fingers dug into my thigh even deeper, burrowing into my pants. “You’d always hear about the bad guys—how they were everywhere—but my father had only met up with white-collar bads in his work. We never thought we’d see the lower kinds, with our fancy alarm system and all the safety we thought we possessed in our nice living unit. But they came one night. They disabled the alarms and entered our home before I even knew they were there. They bound up my mom and brother, Serg, first. I’ve never stopped hearing their screams.” I sucked in air, my voice quivering. “Such screaming.”
Gabriel lowered his head, as if he were hearing Zel’s screams, too.
“For a few seconds—they seemed like hours—I couldn’t move from my bed,” I said. “But when I finally started to get out of it, I went for the pistol under the mattress frame. Then one of . . . them . . . barged through the locks on my door and—”
Chaplin let out a soft, woeful yowl. Gabriel stared at the ground. Was he picturing me under the greedy hands and bodies of human monsters?
Maybe, because when he glanced back up, his eyes had gone red.
I let him assume what they’d done to me. It hadn’t been full rape, but there were other nightmares bad guys brought on.
“I wsh,” he said, “I could’ve been there to bleed for you, to take all the pain. I could’ve quickly healed from it.”
“Maybe on the outside.” We all healed faster on the outside.
He didn’t answer.
I went on. “Before my dad had quit his job, he’d grabbed Chaplin from the lab, so my dog was young, fresh out of training. But by the time those men got to my room, he’d already been shot. They thought he was dead, yet they had no idea he was an Intel Dog. Still, Chaplin was in no shape to help me. It was my dad who barged into my room with his gun, and he wasted some of the men. The others escaped.”
I ran my hand to the side of Chaplin’s head. He leaned against me. “Then Dad took me to the panic room, where we had to watch on screens as my mom and brother were set upon with a . . .”
Careful, Chaplin said, shutting Gabriel out again.
I righted myself, thinking of clear water and of being held up by its cleansing cradle. I thought and thought of it until I was ready to talk again.
“I wanted to get Mom and Serg into the panic room, too, but my dad started grabbing weapons and told me not to move an inch. Then he left. He . . .” I paused, minding my words, then whispered, “He accidentally killed Mom and Serg in the gunfire. Accidentally.” I swallowed. “I’d turned off the screens by then. I couldn’t watch.”
“What about your dad? What eventually happened to him?”
Dad.
I’d said enough by now.
Chaplin came to my rescue, telling Gabriel only what he needed to hear. Dmitri brought Mariah out here and spent years making sure she’d have somewhat of an existence. Then, when he thought he’d done his job, he ended his life.
We all sat there. No condolence or platitude would fill the emptiness.
Chaplin—logical, stalwart Chaplin—put a merciful cap on the conversation. This is Mariah’s bottom line—r
unning somewhere else ends up being as useless as staying. So what’s the choice? Is there ever one?
“But if you stayed,” Gabriel said, “Stamp would ultimately come into your home, just as those intruders did.”
I thought of Chompers on my visz screen, then the other bad men who’d crept into our territory—scum who deserved what they’d gotten.
“Not necessarily,” I said.
Gabriel was taken aback at the force and roughness with which I’d said it.
I leveled off my voice. “If anyone comes round these parts with the overt intent to harm me or mine, they’ll pay. And now that Stamp’s done with all his good-neighbor talk, he’s going to pay. Believe me. Zel was right—there comes a time when enough is enough.”
I could feel the heat in my eyes, the fever, and Gabriel seemed to notice, too. Chaplin rubbed his face against my leg, bringing me back.
Gabriel looked at us, as if the sight of me and my dog touched even a vampire. He looked so isolated sitting across from us, but I wondered if finding out what’d happened to Abby would erase it.
As if he’d taken up some sort of personal stake in protecting me and Chaplin, he started to walk out of the room. “I should check on the oldster, then round the group up again. There’ll be better safety in numbers now that the shit’s really hit. We can’t sit here waiting to get plugged one by one. And we need to decide whether we’re going to run or . . .”
I followed him out, Chaplin trailing as Gabriel halted near the exit to my room, resting his hand on the doorframe.
“I’m sorry to hear about your trials,” he said, as if believing he needed to say something to me. Anything. “I truly am.”
Cold, even for his sort.
Chaplin said, And what now, Gabriel?
“You tell me.” Gabriel peered down at the dog, and there was a hint of a sad smile on his lips. “You had plans all along, didn’t you? Did you plan on using me, the vampire, to kick Stamp’s ass in the end? Is that why you shielded my identity? Well, the time for that is gone. I’d get one bite in and, if Stamp is as smart as I think he is, he’d have a machete handy to lop off my head. Then he’d rain down fire on all of you because you were harboring a monster.” Gabriel cocked his head. “I’m sure that’s not the outcome you’d been hoping for.”
Bloodlands Page 22