Authors: Christine Cody
Bloodlands (39 page)
28
Gabriel
G
abriel’s reddened v
ision took in Mariah on her knees as she pulled out the knife, and he opened his mouth, baring his fangs even more, shuddering with such rage he could hardly keep still.
abriel’s reddened v
ision took in Mariah on her knees as she pulled out the knife, and he opened his mouth, baring his fangs even more, shuddering with such rage he could hardly keep still.
He didn’t have sure proof that Annie was Abby, but he’d smelled a trace of the woman he’d loved in the domain. He knew enough.
But why hadn’t he known before now? It’d all been in the vital signs. Mariah’s and Abby’s, so similar. He’d been thrown off by the variance, two different songs—one using angrier, more desperate notes than the other—played on the same instrument.
Canines. He was drawn to them: Chaplin. Mariah.
Abby.
But the more he thought about her, the more he realized she was gone—that she’d been away from him for a very long time—and it left him feeling disembodied, more apart from himself than he’d ever been.
Mariah was trembling now, her eyes light green. Gabriel hoped she’d turn. Hoped for a fight, a showdown that he would win this time.
“I should’ve left you all a long time ago,” Mariah said through her tears.
She brought up the silver blade, and it glinted in the solar lamps.
Death. She was going to kill herself.
Shock blazed through Gabriel, and like the live wire it was, the connecting line between him and her buzzed to life. He realized in a lightning instant that it might’ve even been her were-blood that created such a link between two preters. . . .
Without thinking anymore, he sprang toward her, wrenching the weapon from her grip.
She gasped at the pain, and the weapon stuck point-first into the ground. Mariah slowly raised her head to fix her gaze on Gabriel.
That light green shade of uncontrollable emotion . . .
“Let this end the way it needs to,” she said, her voice low and rough, just as it always got when her beast overcame her.
He hissed at her, flashed his fangs, not sure if it was because she was putting every ounce of his instincts on high alert or because he couldn’t watch her self-destruct.
Then she began her change, too.
It happened quicker than he’d expected, with Mariah shaking just as if her blood were so hot that it bubbled under her skin, with her bones seeming to change shape in a rapid melt that reconstituted her skeleton into a bigger, badder form: her limbs stretching, ripping her clothing as she yellhowled until she loomed over him, her back going into a morbid arch, her face pushing into a snout that held rows of long, pointed teeth. Hair burgeoned over her skin, her ears pointing, her fingers clawing.
She growled, the deep, hollow sound warning Gabriel to back off, and though he could still see the tears in her green eyes, his vampire was in charge, and he gripped her throat with one hand, raising her off the floor and far above him.
Justice, he thought. Zel had died for it, and Stamp had come close to getting it tonight.
Abby deserved justice, too.
Gabriel heaved the wolf to the other side of the room, where she hit the opposite wall, causing crumbles of rock to slither down to the floor around her. But she was up in a blink, leaping at him with a quickness that left him no time to react beforer, flrreled into him, sending him into the opposite wall with such force that he embossed his shape into the rock.
As Mariah’s claws wrapped around his neck, he hissed. “You gonna kill me like you killed her?”
Her eyes emptied of anger, just for a split second, and Gabriel hissed again, striking out with his arm, spinning her across the room near the oldster’s art wall with its roots sticking out. She barely avoided slamming into a curved one, instead grabbing onto it to swing back and forth.
When she looked at him again, it wasn’t with rage, and that bewildered Gabriel.
But the confusion only stoked his fury, because he didn’t know how else to rectify what she’d done.
Zel,
he kept thinking.
Stamp.
he kept thinking.
Stamp.
Abby.
He flew at the wolf, but she pulled herself up the roots, climbing with ease and coming to a claw-wielding hunch while balancing on the wood bar Zel had once used for exercise. But she wasn’t so far up that he couldn’t reach her, and he sprang upward, yanking her back down to the ground.
They came to a grunting crash, sending up a huff of dirt, and Gabriel pinned her. Maybe he could’ve swayed her into obedience with his voice or gaze, but that would’ve given her what she wanted—peace. And Mariah didn’t deserve any. She’d earned an eternity in fire, the kind of anguish that was driving him right now.
When he met her gaze, expecting to see a refueled anger, he froze, because there was no ire at all.
Just water.
Tears.
Tears.
They’d become the eyes he’d looked into when the two of them had been together in the most transforming act of his existence.
Though he couldn’t define what it was, some form of emotion traveled from his brain and down to the place in his core where his soul used to be. But he spurned it, bunching his fists in her fur, pulling her up, hearing her whimper.
Then he bared his fangs, readying himself for a righteous bite. He’d tear out her throat, then shove her silver knife into her heart.
Another look into her eyes told him that she would accept this, but something else was in there, too. She didn’t want this bloodlust that had been ruling her. She’d tried to outrun it.
He hesitated, seeing himself reflected right back at him.
Then she closed her eyes, waiting.
He held her by the hair like that, knowing he had nothing to look forward to but endless battles. He was tired of them already. So tired.
His fangs receding, he pushed her to the ground, backing off from her.
He didn’t look behind him as he went to Abby’s door, pulling it off its hinges and slamming the thick wood to the ground. Nowhere left to go. No direction. No Abby to find anymore, no sense of purpose now that his codes and beliefs had lost the fight.
He bolted through Abby’s room, using her exit to go outside, where the sun was on the cusp of its rise.
Thankful for the coming mental darkness that would swallow him up, he madly dug himself a shallow grave in the Badlands dirt, then covered himself for what turned out to be several blank nights where he wouldn’t have to recall the tears in Mariah’s feral eyes.
Where he wouldn’t have to ask himself how
any
monster could have it in them to cry.
any
monster could have it in them to cry.
29
Mariah
I
t wasn’t until a few night
s later that I saw Gabriel again.
t wasn’t until a few night
s later that I saw Gabriel again.
I’d gone to Abby’s room in what had become a ritual since he’d disappeared. There, I would sit, using her domain as a cathedral of sorts—a place where I wanted to find forgiveness, if it would have me. My neighbors left me alone to do it, too, and for that, I was grateful, if not even lonelier.
Before tonight, I’d known just where Gabriel had buried himself. It wasn’t far from Abby’s entrance, and the dirt was so disturbed that it was obviously a quickly dug grave. A section of Gabriel’s shirt was even sticking out, so when I’d ventured outside in a heat suit with Chaplin accompanying me, I’d covered him all the way up, wondering when Gabriel would come back.
Or if he ever would.
But here he was tonight, in Annie’s place, clearly having straightened up, all the handmade rugs piled neatly near the common-area tunnel door, all of Annie’s scant possessions tucked away so that it seemed as if a new occupant were ready to continue on from where Annie had expired.
As I entered through the common-area tunnel door, he didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I’d find myself alone here.”
He kept packing up his carryall bag, which he’d, at some point, fetched from my domain. It was the final sign of his moving out and on.
Didn’t he still want to kill me?
“If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d think you planned to stay in this place.”
“Abby’s?” he asked, as if he wanted to hear me say the name.
There was no cruelty in his tone, and his loss of passion saddened me. But he was talking to me, and he wasn’t doing it while trying to maim me, either.
“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.”
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