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Authors: Christine Cody

Bloodlands (30 page)

BOOK: Bloodlands
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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.
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
 
W
h
en 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.”
BOOK: Bloodlands
10.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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