Bloodlands Page 10

  I warded off the accusation. “He should’ve read up on the area before coming out here.”

  “That’s pretty much what everyone told him.”

  Gabriel was running his gaze up my body, then down, and even though I knew that he was reading my physical reactions for the truth, I couldn’t help feeling the skim of his attention, how it left scratches of sensation behind, inch by inch.

  “And after everyone set him straight,” I said, “Stamp left you in peace?”

  “After some play with us, yeah, he did. His men had taserwhips, and one of them—he wore a whale-hide hat—used the lash on the oldster because the guy couldn’t keep his dander down.”

  A lash? On the oldster?

  Anger licked at me, pushing my temper. But I’d just seen the old man on the visz, and he’d looked okay. . . .

  “He’s fine,” Gabriel said. “Stamp meant to ring a warning bell, is all.”

  “He’s going to stay away, then?”

  “I think he realizes that he can’t force friendship, so maybe he will.”

  “And you place stock in his word?”

  Gabriel seemed surprised that I was actually asking his opinion, but it wasn’t long before his expression became a cocksure grin instead. A sign that he liked how I wasn’t fighting him right now.

  I melted, just a little, but won myself back when I thought I heard Chaplin chuff.

  Then Gabriel seemed to become reflective again. “I don’t trust his boys in the least, and that’s reason enough not to trust Stamp by extension.”

  As I tossed the cleaning cloth onto a counter, I was still all too cognizant of Gabriel thinking that I’d gone and accepted him or something.

  “Then I’ll take that into consideration after you’re gone,” I said.

  He didn’t move from his spot against the doorframe, and that told me everything about how long our guest intended to stay.

  But having him here was impossible. He’d bring too much damage. “You seem fit enough. How long do you think you’re going to be round?”

  “Well, Miss Mariah,” he said in that mild tone of his, “I think it’ll be for a while.”

  Chaplin gnawed on his words. He’s fine here, Mariah.

  I almost argued with that, but then I remembered that Chaplin had a handle on Gabriel. My dog probably wanted our guest round here as backup in case Stamp acted out. Sounded reasonable enough, I supposed.

  Gabriel said, “I made a vow to Chaplin about staying on and giving a hand here, and I don’t break promises easily.”

  I shouldn’t have been even slightly happy that he was persistent about this. Best that he went soon, after Stamp had calmed down and decided to back off. Best that he—

  He was talking again. “If I have to, I’ll find myself a place outside your home so I can keep watch. In good conscience, I won’t leave just after a man like Stamp has escalated matters.”

  But it was more than that, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t leave just after he’d heard that Annie . . . or maybe Abby . . . had disappeared from New Badlands under shady circumstances. He’d be looking into that, too.

  God-all, I had to be realistic about this. Smart. Think . . . think . . .

  All right. Gabriel was serious about staying, whether it was inside my home or outside. Was there a way to lead him to answers that would satisfy his curiosity about Annie for the time being? A way to keep life just the same as it had been until things with Stamp could be resolved and Gabriel could move on and leave us in solitude?

  I went out of the room, past Gabriel, feeling the tingle of his presence over my skin, even though I didn’t touch him at all.

  Chaplin barked. We’ll make sure Abby isn’t Annie—at least as far as Gabriel knows.

  I understood what he was getting at. He wanted me to visit Annie’s domain to cover anything that’d reveal the truth about her.

  So, for Gabriel, I laid out my first real big deception.

  “Seems that the dog’s heart is gonna break if you do scoot,” I said over my shoulder while I moved toward my private quarters. “So he can play host until he gets tired of you, I guess.”

  “Good enough,” Gabriel muttered. Then, louder, he said, “Meanwhile, don’t mind me while I take a look-see outside to make sure Stamp and his boys have really gone home. I’d like to be thorough, so it might take a while.”

  Maybe he was going to try to find Annie’s outside door. God-all, I hoped not. It wouldn’t give me time to edit her belongings.

  As I entered my quarters, my body was still quivering, clenched with heat, mostly because of that near brush against him. “It’s your hide, but make sure you take a weapon from the wall. You might need it.”

  “Got you, Miss Mariah,” he said. “I’ve endured his crew a couple of times now, as well as what’s outside, so don’t worry about a thing.”

  For a second, I wondered just how he’d survived out there. He hadn’t brought any weapons with him that I knew of.

  I addressed Chaplin, hoping my voice wouldn’t tremor. “Boy, stay inside. Gabriel seems to have this covered.”

  I heard our guest gathering materials in preparation to go outside, heard Chaplin jumping round and Gabriel telling the dog he’d have to stay put. All the while, I walked the length of my room, pushing down the tension that didn’t seem to want to leave.

  Annie had never talked much about her personal history. Who had she been? More important, who was Abby?

  And what had she been to Gabriel?

  A noise in the background signaled that Gabriel had climbed the ladder to the top entrance and, suddenly, my place seemed a bit emptier. I wasn’t really sure why, but the thought of not having him round was just about as bad as having him here.

  Chaplin woofed in the main area, and I heard him settling down, probably near Gabriel’s blankets to wait for his return.

  Blankets. Bed. Gabriel.

  I tried not to think of all that, but I did, anyway.

  Him, lying in those blankets. These past couple of days, I’d been free to look at him when he didn’t know it, and my temperature had come to near withering as I imagined what a man might feel like. . . . you take /div>

  Throwing the feelings away—they made me too afraid of what might happen if I gave in to them—I decided to cool off my sweltering body, the simmering of blood and cells beneath the skin. I needed it badly before carrying out what I’d need to do about Annie if Gabriel wasn’t already going over there. So I went to a corner where the dirt met a wall of metal—my sensor-driven cleaning station, which allowed water to stream from the wall more efficiently than with the old-fashioned showers.

  I began to unlace my cloth pants, starting at the ankle just over my boot, one strip uncrossing another.

  Then, as the taboo thoughts returned, my pace slowed.

  Blankets. Bed.

  Gabriel.

  With one side of my pants undone, I went to the lacings on the other, reaching my knee before I felt . . . something.

  The same tingling that had licked at my skin when I’d passed Gabriel in the doorway.

  My fingers hovered near my knee, over the rest of the lacings. He’d gone outside, right?

  Or was he still . . . here?

  A thrill swiped me, winding between my legs and making me go a little damp. Something within me shifted violently, and even if Gabriel wasn’t anywhere round, I imagined what it might be like if he saw me, one hip bared, one thigh . . . a calf.

  Controlling my breathing, I got a little bolder, telling myself it’d be fine to entertain these new feelings for a moment. Just a moment. Bold was easy when I didn’t know if Gabriel was really here or not, and I continued unlacing myself, strip by strip, up my other thigh now, to my opposite hip, picturing all the looks Gabriel had previously given me—the visual strokes that I couldn’t help wishing were a show of his own thwarted need to be touched, too.

  A languid throb made me ache in my sex, and as only a few lacings still held my pants in place, I hesitated, my hands
shaking while I listened for any signs of movement, even of the breathing I didn’t always hear from him.

  But . . . nothing.

  Yet, even if he wasn’t here, I pictured that he was only holding his breath, and I inched my hand to my belly, under the edge of my shirt, where the cloth gaped away from my skin.

  I rested my fingertips there, and the muscles jumped, unused to contact. I’d been taught to treat the body as a temple, but years had passed. Time, and circumstance, had altered everything.

  And no one was round . . . at least, I was pretty sure no one was.

  Maybe I could make this new pressure in my body, this new frustration, go away. So I slid my fingers lower, hesitating, a tremble lining the inside of my stomach.

  Careful . . .

  I slipped my hand even lower, biting my lip as I touched the slickness between my legs.

  Closing my eyes, I inserted my fingers into the folds there.

  Wet. And when I pressed up against the sensitive bump, I drew in a breath as hunger emerged, eating at me.

  But I kept on imagining him, my repressed yearning unfolding, opening me up now that I was alone in my room, solitary enough to let go for a minute, lonely enough to need it.

  Fantasy took over. What if he hadn’t ne out yet and he was still here, watching? Maybe his fangs were going sharp, just as my fingers were pressing harder against my sex, as I stroked myself, my legs going weak, my blood heating, my bones beginning to melt.

  My knees gave out, and I sought my bed for balance, grasping at the covers with my free hand while the other one got me wetter, higher, more excited than I’d been in . . .

  Ever.

  I sank all the way to the floor, my cheek against the bed, my eyes open enough so that I could see through my lashes the sparsely rendered room—the walls, the darkness of the doorway . . .

  Then beyond, where I thought I saw something in the shadows.

  A glimmer . . . Two glimmers . . . Red . . .

  Watching.

  The threat of complete exposure, real or fantasized, interrupted my rhythm, my fingers still insinuated in my sex, my breath suspended, my skin pounding.

  I wanted this too much to stop now. I craved this. Had to have him there, even if he wasn’t.

  So I stroked myself again, harder, never tearing my gaze away from the red eyes . . . the watching.

  Redder, I thought as I imagined how he might want me, too.

  Redder . . . the hunger building . . .

  Then, just as I came to the edge, so close, so near, the red. . .

  I groaned and grabbed at the blankets on my bed.

  The red blinked out, extinguished, and I wondered if it’d even been there at all.

  Either way, the loss of the illusion tore at me, and when I tried to get back to where I’d been at the height of the fantasy, when I could’ve chased this tight agony all the way out of my body, I failed. Failed again. Failed until my throat burned with a sorrowful tightness, burned right along with my blood, which wouldn’t stop its heating rise.

  My body still pushed at itself, still stimulated to the point where I pressed against the bed, the pains growing and stretching, my gaze going dark as I kept thinking of Gabriel. . . .

  9

  Teddy Danning had imbibed way too much turtlegrape after tonight’s work shift for him to go straight to sleep.

  He was still too wound up after what had happened earlier, when he and the others had returned from the scrubdweller gathering where Stamp had allowed them to put the fear of ages into the Badlanders. Sure, the crew had come back to Stamp’s domain after that, to continue installing a water-farming system in the aquifer, but that hadn’t killed Teddy’s energy.

  So he’d ended up here, outside under the cloud-mottled night sky, drinking himself halfway to boredom as the rest of the crew obeyed directions and stayed underground for the night.

  Pushing back the whale-hide hat he’d purchased in the hubs, where Stamp had recruited him, Teddy wondered what he’d gotten himself into by signing on to this job. He missed the urban hubs. Missed the games there, especially, because if there was one thing Teddy was, it was a doer, and the Badlands wasn’t offering much in the way of allowing him to exercise that quality.

  But doing was what had drawn Teddy to his boss in the first place, even though Stamp was just a youngster. The boy was what this country was about—a well-spoken, educated leader who seized his opportunities. It was said that his parents had been obliterated by a human bomb in a marketplace, and that had brought out the aggression in the boy, yet this was a good thing. Teddy knew that there was a time in every life when the aggression had to emerge, or a person would perish.

  A rustling sound came from the brush to his right, and from his seat on the flat rock above the New Badlands in all its stark fucked-up-ness, Teddy took up a stone and heaved it at the disturbance.

  He smiled while a fox scuttled out, its eyes capturing the glow of the moon as it fixed its gaze on Teddy.

  Aggression.

  They’d see who was king of the rock here.

  He found another stone and sent it at the creature just to watch it dance.

  The little thing hissed, flashing a sharpened tongue, but Teddy wasn’t afraid of the desert mutant.

  He set down his canteen and stood, reaching to the belt of his trousers for his taserwhip, thinking it might be fun to see if the fox whined as much as the old man had earlier.

  Unfortunately, in the time it’d taken for Teddy to change position, the creature had already disappeared.

  Teddy hopped off the rock to the dirt below. That damned little thing had been fast, but there weren’t a lot of places to hide out here, and he was in the mood for fun.

  “Hya, Foxy,” he said, creeping over the dirt, his whip unfurled. “Dn’t b shy.”

  After their shift, Stamp had told his crew to stay inside—to mind the dangers of night—but Teddy had never been great at taking orders. Not in prison, not on the streets, not even in the organized gang he’d tried out before he’d quit it. Besides, he wouldn’t venture too far.

  “Foxy,” he said again, wandering away from his own rock, coming upon a stand of boulders piled against each other in a semblance of a hill.

  The taciturn moon peeked over the ragged top of it, lending light as Teddy caressed the “on” button of his whip.

  “C’mon,” he urged.

  When something broke out of the brush at the base of the hill, Teddy jumped back. But lickety-split, he enabled the whip’s electricity, and the device hummed as the fox scurried past him.

  “Spooked?” he asked, starting to go after it.

  As he raised his whip, rocks shifted in back of him, and Teddy turned around just before something else sprang, knocking him over after a whistling burst of speed.

  Pulse choking him, all he saw before he hit the ground was a shadow with livid eyes and long teeth flashing in the moonlight before it disappeared.

  WTF . . . ?

  His vision fragmented, Teddy rolled over, seeing nothing around him except the night, the boulders.

  He scrambled to his feet, wobbling, then brought the whip back, ready to strike.

  Again, the whistling burst came out of nowhere and toward Teddy, but this time it swiped out, catching him upside the head.

  Half of his sight went back, and it took him a few seconds to realize that there was pain where the left side of his face used to be.

  Uselessly, he snapped the whip, yet it caught nothing but air just before he dropped it.

  It buzzed on the ground while Teddy raised his hand to touch what was left of his cheek.

  Mush.

  With his working eye, he looked at the grounded whip again—buzzing, buzzing, just like the cacophony in his brain—and he saw something weird lying next to his weapon.

  His other eye, bulging, streaming gore.

  Teddy started to scream, but before a sound came out, a growl—or was it a demonic laugh?—ripped through the night.

&nbs
p; It struck such fright into Teddy that he pissed himself. Another whistling burst—clawed fingers swiping at him?—and Teddy held up his hands, as if to ward off a blow. But when something grabbed his neck and teeth sank into him, his arms dropped to his sides.

  Ripping. Tearing.

  As if in a convulsive dream, he heard the buzz of his whip in the background, the slurping of the creature as it feasted on him, and Teddy realized that the tables had been turned. That this animal was playing with him tonight.

  While the creature had its fun, Teddy Danning stayed alive long enough to wish he were dead way before he actually, thankfully, was.

  10

  Gabriel

  Twenty Hours Later

  When the next dusk arrived to settle into Gabriel deeply enough to rouse him from his makeshift bed, he didn’t move at first.

  His head. His . . . body.

  He held back a groan, knowing that, again, he’d overdone it. Once a reveler, always a reveler, and vampirism hadn’t managed to change that.

  Back when he’d been human, entire nights of binging had disappeared clean from his memory, too. Holes in a calendar that he’d never been able to fill up. And that was what he felt now: a little bewildered, searching for a trace of recollection in the dark of his mind.

  Thing was, this was also how it’d been a couple nights ago, just before he’d woken up with those injuries outside and come crawling to Mariah’s visz lens.

  Knowing full well that he needed to hide this hangover if he wanted to avert even more suspicion with her, he reached out with his senses to see if she was around. But he got nothing—no scent, no presence.

  He decided that she was down in her workroom, so he sat up, shrugging off blankets that he didn’t really need. Next to him, Chaplin slept, keeping watch over him. The dog probably thought that Mariah might have it in her to come at Gabriel with a crucifix while he rested, and Gabriel was thankful for the canine’s loyalty. He only wished Chaplin had been just as vigilant last night when Gabriel had been drawn to Mariah’s private quarters. . . .