“You still think Annie was Abby.” My heart sank a bit.
“After talking to Hana, I know for certain now. She found me at the beginning of the night when I came out of the grave and sat me down for a chat.”
I blinked at him. Hana had been Annie’s only real friend here, but the woman had never revealed any secrets between them. That was probably what friends did for each other.
“Hana said after the other night, when she found out I was a vampire, she put two and two together. She thought it’d only be right to tell me her thoughts first, before any of you were privy to them.”
“Okay.” It seemed as if his time in the grave had robbed him of much response, his voice dull, his movements slow. Or maybe he just wanted to make me feel even worse before he left.
“Hana started off by telling me about a dress Abby gave to her once,” he said. “Abby told her that there’s more to life than wearing robes. Hana thought how beautiful this dress was, and she couldn’t resist trying it on. But when Pucci saw her in it, he didn’t like it. He said he preferred the robes, but she thought he merely didn’t want her accepting anything from a wolf. He always told her ‘Annie’ was a troublemaker, and he wanted nothing to do with hr.”
I could hear the doubt in Gabriel’s tone. He still didn’t believe Abby had been a werewolf who’d challenged me.
But how well had he really known Abby?
“Abby,” Gabriel added, “told Hana to keep the dress, because she might wish to wear it again someday.” He stopped packing. “Earlier tonight, Hana took that dress out of its box for me. It hadn’t been disturbed. Still had Abby’s scent all over it.”
And there it was. Utter, total devastation. Mostly in me, although from the sound of his voice, the destruction could’ve been all round.
“Hana never mentioned the dress to anyone—especially after Abby’s death,” he added. “She said that you all agreed as a community never to speak the truth about her again. It kept you together, even in delusion, especially from a stranger who would only come and go. That’s another reason none of you would talk about Annie to me.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. There’s no use for that anymore.”
I nodded past the lump in my throat. “The two of them confided in each other. They would disappear and then return, all quiet and secretive. We knew they were close.”
“True, but Hana said she wouldn’t have called them the best of friends.”
I watched him carefully. He still sounded as if he were taking and choosing what he believed, and since we’d deceived him, I couldn’t see why we deserved the benefit of any doubt.
“Hana also told me,” he said, “that Pucci was right about Abby. She did have a wild streak that kept Hana cautious, no matter what the two of them might have talked about with each other. She said sometimes, there’re people who are easier to unburden yourself to than others. People who listen better than anyone else on a certain subject, though that’s as far as your relationship might go.” Gabriel began packing again. “We never show all of our true selves to anyone, she said. We share different pieces with different people, and all that’s left in the end is to fit what we know of that person together.”
I didn’t ask him if Abby had showed him only a part of herself. I didn’t need to, because I could hear the suspicion of that in his voice.
“Abby never revealed her real name to any of you. She must have changed her identity out here to start her life again. But she did offer Hana a reason for coming to the Badlands.” His voice broke. “She told Hana of a sanctuary where she’d been hiding back in the hubs. There, she expended a lot of effort to cover her condition—she had been a werewolf for years, and she was weary of it. Then there was a night she was out for food, and a group of robbers saw her and chased her through the streets. She screamed, thinking they were going to find out what she was. But just before she was about to change form to defend herself as a last resort, someone interceded. She found out later, after he joined her in the sanctuary, that he was a vampire.” Gabriel came to an abrupt stop, then started up again. “Hana didn’t realize until the night of the showdown that I must’ve been that vampire.”
I was never that great at consoling, but I wished I had the chance to try it with Gabriel. Could be I’d fail at it, but just standing here was so much worse.
“I can see that night all over again,” he said, “but in Abby’s view. Her screaming and running from the bad guys, me being so attracted to te sounds of her—the terror, the beat of her body. She was a monster, just like me, and that colors everything in such a different way. She was capable of rescuing herself from those bad guys, but I saved her first, and that allowed her to masquerade in front of a vampire whom she thought to be a man.”
“Why didn’t she tell you?”
“She came close. But she saw the writing on the wall. A vampire and a were-creature should never be together. That’s what common sense said, and she was practical enough to believe it. So, though she was tempted to stay with a vampire, she didn’t. She left before I could find out what she was. She said I looked at her in a way that she could never live up to in reality, and for me to find out that she wasn’t the woman I seemed to think she was . . .”
He trailed off, the blunt fade of it hurting, because even now, he obviously hadn’t fully accepted that Abby had been a were-creature.
Not “his Abby.”
“So she came out here,” he said. “It was no less dangerous than the hubs. Far less, in fact. Back at the sanctuary, she’d been living on the canned goods smugglers brought in, because fresh meat was so chancy to come by. She’d grown weaker. I almost resurrected her with my bite, and she was thankful for that. But she couldn’t accept what I had to give. She couldn’t accept me.”
He shoved his flask into the bag. “But I won’t be around too much longer for anyone to do any more accepting. I know you and the others have also been looking at other locations to move to, because Stamp, if he survived, or his female sidekick, could bring back a mob of humans at any time.”
He’d left talk of Abby behind, but it bothered me, because it meant he’d done what he thought he needed to do before leaving—clear the boards.
“The community’s ready to flee at first notice,” I said. “We posted lookouts round the area. Sammy’s out there now.”
“Hana said that you yourself have taken up most of the dusk-hour shifts, on top of the nearest hill.”
It was true. Night by night, I was venturing even farther than the lookout hill. I had no other choice.
No more lying, even to myself.
Gabriel picked up the revolver he’d been using, but he didn’t pack it. “Anyhow, it sounds as if your friends haven’t given up on you. Chaplin already told me that you volunteered to stay behind while the others look for a new place to live. After they move into it, you’re planning to go to them, but only subsequent to any return by Stamp.”
“If I can report what kind of assets he’s brought back with him, the community will be that much better prepared if he finds the new place.” I fisted my hand. “But they don’t know that I won’t be joining them there.”
He jerked his attention over to me, and I didn’t meet his gaze.
“I’m going to do anything it takes for them,” I said. “For the first time, I’m not going to disappoint them.”
I’d do just as much for Gabriel, too. Yet he’d always meant to leave, and nothing I could say would change that.
“You’ll be a sitting duck here,” he said.
“Maybe.”
He considered me, and for a moment, I thought that he meant to talk me out of it. But then he stuf the revolver into the bag with more force than necessary. “Never in my life did I think I’d ever be so angry at another that I would bury myself for nights on end.”
“If I were you, I would’ve wanted to kill me, too.”
Like father, like daughter. Suicide apparently ran in the family.
<
br /> But Gabriel, of all people, had stopped me. I wasn’t sure why. I only wished that he would lend me even more forgiveness now—that he would stay with us and give me another chance. My neighbors had done so, in spite of Pucci’s protests, but I thought that they might only still be doing it out of respect for what I could do to them by were-force.
Yes, the community would be better off without me.
When Gabriel got to that pink bit of material I’d seen that first night he’d come to us, he held it, as if unwilling to stuff it away. It had to have been Abby’s.
“She was the best human I knew,” he said.
I wanted to sink into the earth, because he wasn’t mourning the fact that Abby was a were-creature. She’d been enough to make him come out here across the miles to find her again. I was nothing compared to that.
“Before you knew that Zel and the oldster and Sammy were were-creatures,” I said, not daring to use myself as an example, “didn’t you think they were good humans, too?”
“I thought you all were.”
Finally, he met my gaze. “I’m trying to reconcile myself to everything, but I can’t. I can’t wrap my mind around how the thing I so hate about myself was also deep down inside her. But most of all, when I found out that you killed Abby, I can’t imagine her as the kind of beast that would merit such an action.”
A flash of “Annie,” with her flaring eyes, her pointed claws and teeth, flying at me in the night, consumed me.
“Why imagine that when you have much better memories of her?” I asked.
Then I filled myself with one last look at him before I began to leave.
“Mariah.” It was the first time he’d said my name since almost killing me.
I halted, helpless to do anything else.
He took another glance at the pink patch, then put it back on the table, obviously intending to leave it here, along with everything else that’d be abandoned. “I don’t know what to think about anything. When Stamp killed that demon, half of me thought it was okay, because I believed it was a murderer. When I found out about you, I wanted you to suffer, too.” He put his hand on his bag. “But monsters don’t function like the rest, and I don’t know how I can look at the bunch of you and think you’re not like I am. I wonder if I still think too much like a human sometimes. And I wonder if I’ve even got the same prejudices as one.”
Was there some hope for me in his confession? No, it couldn’t be that simple. “Your philosophical crisis doesn’t wipe away what I did to Abby.”
“You’re right. And it doesn’t wipe away everything I’ve ever done to survive, either, before I decided I didn’t want a part of it anymore.”
The hint of forgiveness put a spark in me, but it died as he merely closed his bag, then slung it over his shoulder. He was wearing his long coat, appearing almost the same as when he’d come to us, except without the injuries now. At least not the physical ones.
“Where will you go, Gabriel?”
He seemed to wonder, too. “I don’t think there’s much direction for me. All I know is that leaving might bring me to a place where I’ll find more answers about all the things I’m not able to figure out here. Or maybe there’s even a cure out there for vampires—besides having to terminate my own maker. Or a cure for were-creatures, and it isn’t the one for lycanthropy we talked about. If I find one, I’ll . . .”
What, be in touch?
That wasn’t true, yet he tried to act as if it were, anyway. I pushed back more tears. Hateful, damned tears that wouldn’t do me much good.
“Mariah, don’t.”
He sauntered over to me and, in his gaze, deep in his irises, past the gray, I saw that a part of him did still feel for me, in spite of everything.
And it was that part that made me throw my better instincts away and take hold of his coat. I stifled sobs—a woman who’d rarely given in to them before he’d shown up to heighten my troubles with his very presence. A woman who’d never shown much of anything to anyone.
Then Gabriel gently took my hands and made me let go.
He couldn’t stay here, because that would force him to think about Abby every night. Abby only brought out the truth about me and about himself. They were matters he’d rather leave behind.
But wasn’t that what he’d been doing? Leaving it all behind in the hopes that there’d be something better in front of him?
He released my hands, yet as soon as he backed away, he seemed to realize he couldn’t leave me guilt-ridden, leave me here to clean up a mess he’d taken a role in, as well.
For a second, I thought that he might be thinking that I was the one who was here now, not Abby.
But he was going to go—I knew it—and as a good-bye, he looked into my eyes and shared the only gift he seemed able to give anymore. The peace. A lengthy dose that wouldn’t last as long as I’d need it to.
In his eyes, I saw thoughts of the world as it had been: children, laughing in a field while throwing round a football. Candlelight glowing on the faces of neighbors in the streets in memory of that long-ago day on 9/11. The warmth he’d felt when I’d laid hands on him, imprinting him, just the two of us bared to each other.
Then he disconnected, obviously because he hadn’t meant to include the last image. He donned his bag and walked toward the ladder, as if he needed to go before he changed his mind and the terrible cycle he’d started here began all over again.
Never looking back, he climbed up and opened Abby’s entrance door, then got out and shut it behind him. Meanwhile, the peace whirled in me, and things became clearer than they’d ever been before.
I exited the door, also, and low dusk rushed over me, baked and forlorn in the moonlight. Joshua trees bent in silhouette, creaking in the wind. Nearby, the upset dirt from Gabriel’s temporary grave mocked me.
He was already off in the near distance, but he walked slowly, as if deciding which direction to take.
Was there anywhere left in the world that would welcome him?
Yards away, where the rest of the community had come out o see Gabriel leave, Chaplin barked. But Gabriel didn’t look behind him.
Chaplin barked again, and I bit my lip, realizing that my dog was forlornly calling Gabriel back.
But he just kept going, his gaze on the hill in front of him. I’m sure he thought that, once he got over it, it’d be easier.
Then the oldster cried, “Gabriel!”
His steps faltered, but he kept on.
The others called for him, and I finally joined in, even though the rest of my community was separated from me by what felt like an ocean of desert.
“Gabriel?”
My cry seemed to linger a split second longer than theirs.
I could’ve been wrong about this, but it was like he only heard my voice.
It was as if his gaze were pulled back as he glanced over his shoulder to the other group. Individuals, each with their own power, who hadn’t amounted to much until they’d taken themselves back.
And then he looked at me.
I closed my eyes, thinking hard, hoping he’d somehow pick up on it with his vampire mind. Don’t you know that we have something you wanted to find so badly? Don’t you realize a community can keep you sane during the darkest times?
When I opened my eyes, he was cocking his head, as if he had heard.
He turned all the way round.
My legs moved without my telling them to, and I walked toward him, closer, closer, so unsure.
I stopped about ten feet away. “Don’t go. I promise, I’ll do good from now on. I can be that way, especially with you here, Gabriel.”
He looked at my boots, as if noting that I’d come past the border of the community’s caves. Encouraged, I stepped over that invisible line I’d always drawn, going the rest of the way.
“Just come back?” A question. A hope.
Then I saw something I’d thought never to see: Gabriel’s eyes going wet, affected by something that wasn’t red, and I knew it
for what it was.
He’d recognized acceptance. Here, in the last spot where it should’ve been, there was purpose and togetherness. A place where he belonged.
I backed away, having said all I could. If he turned round and walked off, I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Don’t leave, I thought again.
Gabriel closed his eyes, just like he could hear my pulse inside him. Then, opening them, he began walking to me.
A sob welled in my chest and throat, my gaze going teary, although I was sure it remained the darker green of my humanity. I continued on back to the community, and he followed, the rest of the group coming forward to meet him now—others he’d have to accept, too, if he wanted the redemption he so needed for himself.
As the moon looked down in graying calm, our stride grew surer and surer, bringing us both back to a sanctuary we’d always been meant to find.
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BLOOD RULES
Available September 2011 from Ace Books!
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 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.
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