Bloodlands Page 12

  Annie’s wasn’t far off, and I’d kept telling myself that as I ran there as fast as I could.

  When I arrived, I could feel her all over the place, but I forced myself to go about adjusting her possessions to my satisfaction, even if Gabriel had already been there. I couldn’t tell if he had, though, because it was obvious that Stamp and his men had already been present to confuse things, the bastards.

  Nonetheless, I collected the only objects that might’ve given personal clues as to who Annie might’ve been during her pre-Badlands life. I took her hairbrush, a flame lighter that she’d used to smoke the feyweed that grew round here, the few items of worn, coming-apart-at-the-seams clothing she’d left behind. Then I quickly used my hand to wipe over a makeshift calendar Annie had carved into the dirt.

  I got the possessions out of sight and blessedly out of mind, stuffing the items well below the ground, shoveling dirt back over them, moving a hill of rugs over the site and hoping that would suffice to hide the burial. I returned home as fast as I could, shutting the entrance behind me and heading straightaway to my room while trying not to look over at sleeping Gabriel.

  So it was done, and I should’ve felt all the better because of it. But guilt’s a wily thing that sneaks into you and hides real well, coming out every so often like a ghost under the bed, just to remind you it hasn’t left.

  Now, weighed by it, I looked round my workroom, the last waterpack on my back. My body was about to collapse on me. It’d been through too much, and although there was a lot left to be completed down here, I couldn’t put off going upstairs any longer. I’d have to do it sometime.

  I slogged to the top of the steps, where I stood on shaky legs in front of the shred of crucifix billboard image on the door. I rested a palm against the beaten image. I should’ve taken it down a while ago, yet the symbol of it had given me such hope when there was so little of it nowadays.

  Unable to look at it any longer, I unpinned the poster, and it unfurled, cringing to the ground. I rolled it up and propped it in the corner, near a crate.

  Inhaling, my lungs almost too tight to take in much oxygen, I shed my helmet and opened the door.

  Luck be with me . . .

  I held my breath, my nerves jumping as I listened in. Quiet, except for a . . . chuckle?

  I hesitated, and another laugh filtered over to me from my dad’s old fortified quarters, which were hidden by a wall.

  Grasping every ounce of control I could muster, I tried to remember that Gabriel might not have been privy to my waywardness last night at all. He might have been outside the whole time, and I’d just imagined him as an audience, with those red eyes in the dark. Still, my belly tightened as I heard him say my name to Chaplin, and the tautness in me turned fluid, warming me in the places I’d touched so recently.

  “You sure this ain’t hers?” Gabriel said, and just hearing him talking about me made me feel owned by him in a small, disturbing way.

  I’m sure, Chaplin woofed, and I wondered if the dog had been with Gabriel all along.

  Our guest continued the conversation with my dog, although I was pretty sure Gabriel didn’t understand Canine. Or was he misrepresenting that about himself?

  “I can’t imagine Mariah would’ve been so keen on dolls,” he said, “though a tough role model like this Princess Leia would’ve been her speed, if any doll was.”

  I quietly positioned myself at the lip of the room, behind the fragmented wall, already knowing what they were up to. Chaplin was obviously showing Gabriel my dad’s vintage geek collection, which the equally geeky dog had always gone silly over. Dad had kept the items locked safe, all the components vacuum-bagged just in case our Badlands hideout failed us and we needed to trade for essentials with some urban hubite who still cared about old movies and nostalgia. Also, my father had once told me that geeks just plain packed up their collections like this. It was a sign of caring.

  I could just hear him in my head, clear as the day used to be. Dad. He felt near to me right now, because of those damned dolls. Maybe that was why I’d kept them in the safe, even after his death—because bringing them, and him, out was too painful.

  Peering round the corner, I found Chaplin and Gabriel looking at the bagged dolls. There was Princess Leia, Arwen, Apollo, and Batman. As a girl, I’d never touched them, but it hadn’t been becaus I hadn’t wanted to. Dad had made it clear that these weren’t for play.

  Even though Chaplin, at least, had to sense that I was nearby, he and Gabriel still kept their backs to me, chatting away as if things were dandy and lovely in the world at large.

  “Know what I wish, boy?” Gabriel asked.

  Chaplin cocked his head.

  “That you and me could have a real discussion.” Gabriel put the doll back. “About things like Mariah having a predilection for dolls.”

  My skin went hot again. I was embarrassed and, okay, also angry that he’d been riffling through everything in here, not maybe just at Annie’s.

  Or I could’ve been flushing because of something else. Something like . . .

  My heart started pounding because, last night, I wouldn’t have minded some riffling.

  Gabriel was talking again while he shut the safe’s door. “You and I could also chatter about things like how I suspect your mistress isn’t quite as thorny as she’d like most to believe. It’s an idle theory, but I’ve seen her be nice enough to you, so I know she’s not all fireworks and vinegar.”

  The dog laughed, and right before my temper got riled high, Gabriel slowly turned his gaze on me, his crooked grin revealing that he’d known I was there.

  But was he also remembering my behavior?

  Had he seen me . . . ?

  “I heard the door shut a moment ago,” Gabriel said. “Chaplin’s ears perked up at the sound, but I told him to play along with me.”

  He was acting as if he hadn’t seen anything untoward at all in me. As if all my fears had been for nothing.

  Thank-all, a million times over, thank-all.

  I breathed easier, at least for now, and deigned only to cast an exasperated look at Chaplin and Gabriel, then walk toward the food prep area so I could get a meal on its way.

  “Mind that you shut that safe up tight,” I said. “Dad’s gone, but he wouldn’t have ever taken kindly to anyone pawing through his stuff.”

  Thank-all, thank-all, thank-all . . .

  I passed the visz wall, glancing at the common-area screen. The gathering place was empty. Then I went about brewing some loto cactus–tinged water. When I heard Chaplin bark near the workroom door, I realized that I’d neglected to shut it all the way, but that was fine. The gape of it often allowed a stream of cool to enter our domain.

  Chaplin kept barking, so I went to him, seeing that he’d nudged through the door and to the other side. He was sticking out his head, jerking his chin toward the spot where the crucifix billboard used to be.

  You took it down, he said.

  I shrugged, but not before I detected a faint slant of thanks on Gabriel’s mouth.

  I didn’t ask him why he might appreciate my taking down the poster shred, mostly because pursuing the subject of him being a vampire had done me no good the first time.

  “I’ve got cactus water on,” I said to him instead. “You going to want a mug of it?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  I’d expected im to refuse. Vampires didn’t drink regular stuff, right?

  “I suppose,” I said, gearing up for what would surely prove to be the night’s big discussion, “you’d be pretty thirsty after a day of searching round for Annie.”

  I waited a beat. And when his light gray eyes went dark, I knew I’d arrived somewhere.

  “I don’t know you all that well,” I said. “But in some ways, I can predict you to a T.”

  He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. “You got me then. I did go to Annie’s after this last sunset.”

  Tonight? He’d gotten there after I had . . . ?

&nb
sp; “I didn’t want to be out too long searching for her place last night, after it was plenty dark,” he said, “so I waited until today’s dusk. I don’t have a heat suit, or else I could’ve gone earlier.”

  I had beat him to Annie’s. Hell-a-lu-jah.

  I said, “You could’ve used my father’s old suit, but Dad didn’t quite possess your . . .” I refrained from scoping out Gabriel’s body. “. . . dimensions. Although having it’s not a bad idea for when you do take it upon yourself to leave.”

  “Much appreciated, Miss Mariah.”

  Now I was wondering about why he might’ve put off his search for Annie’s until after the sun had settled. I’d read that some breeds of vampire couldn’t go out in the daylight without burning right up.

  “You could’ve also gone through the common area to get to Annie’s room,” I said. “Unless you thought someone might try to stop you from entering her place once you were down there.”

  “That did occur to me.” Gabriel was so still that I wondered if he’d shut down altogether. Then he took in a deep breath, as if recalling that humans needed to do this to survive. “Actually, I didn’t want to fly in anyone’s face, flaunting my going into Annie’s. It’s true that I didn’t want anyone to stop me, either.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  Gabriel stared at the ground. “Not much. Not what I’d hoped.”

  My knees went weak with relief. “And what were you hoping for?”

  He began to respond, then halted.

  But I’d already predicted his answer. “You do know that Annie isn’t the same as your Abby, right?” The comment emerged quieter than I’d expected.

  “How would you be sure of that?”

  Because I didn’t want Annie to be Abby. Yet I could hardly say that out loud.

  Instead, I shrugged again while, in the background, the boiling water moaned, like wind through stripped, deadened branches.

  He started to walk away, and I blurted a question. “Who was Abby?”

  Who was she to you?

  Gabriel spread his fingers as his thumbs kept hold of those belt loops. “Wish I could tell you that, Miss Mariah. But I suppose I’m here to find out.”

  He finally glanced up at me, as if wondering if I wanted to hear more. I was fairly sure my face couldn’t hide that I did, so he kept on going.

  “Abby was . . . special to me.”

  I didn’t know what to say, how to feel, so the numbness overtook me.

  Chaplin shifted from foot to foot, sensing my disquietude along with enduring his own. I backed into the food prep area, going to remove the water from the burner.

  Special. Damn it all, Abby had been special.

  “You don’t need to continue,” I said, my words sounding strangled. “I didn’t mean to get personal.”

  “Of course not.”

  His tone was dry, and it could’ve denoted all kinds of things, none of which I quite understood.

  If Abby was so special, why didn’t I hear it in him?

  Trying to keep my hands busy, I steeped the hot water with a loto cactus–filled wire mesh strainer. I hoped Gabriel didn’t see how my hands shook.

  When I was ready, I brought the steaming mugs out, handing one to Gabriel, then taking my own toward the study, where I thought it might be a good idea to hole up for a while.

  But halfway there, something on the visz stopped me.

  Sammy Ramos and the old man had taken up space in the common area, yet they weren’t sitting round lazily gabbing with each other. They were in front of the lens, where the old man was waving his arms, as if to get attention.

  Gabriel and Chaplin were drawn to the visz, too. Our guest even turned up the volume.

  The oldster yelled, “Mariah!”

  From the way he was shouting it, he sounded more worried than ecstatic. I froze in my very steps.

  Sammy chimed in. “If you didn’t hear us before, another of Stamp’s men was found dead. Gutted. Half-buried in the dirt with that whale-hide hat of his sticking out. Come over here if you hear us!”

  “We’re gonna keep repeating ourselves, Mariah, because we can’t get through the inner locks barring your doors!”

  My hand darted toward the monitor to shut it off, blanking the screen.

  Blanking everything. And, for a blessed second, the darkened visz truly made me feel as if nothing were there.

  If it wasn’t there, it couldn’t affect me.

  But Chaplin was whimpering, and I couldn’t shut that out because it sounded like puncturing yells. And when Gabriel reached out to turn the visz back on, one look at his face told me that the hiding was over.

  Thanks to another dead body, Stamp was going to be coming for us.

  12

  Gabriel

  Beyond Mariah shutting off the visz screen, it was obvious to Gabriel that she didn’t want to hear anything else from Sammy and the old man. Her rejection of their news was in the remoteness of her expression, the drag of her heartbeat.

  And, just as if she felt Gabriel’s gaze all over her, probing, wondering, she stepped over to a second monitor—one whose lens was trained on the wide, desert-empty view outside. She adjusted the definition of the picture, her pulse taking up its normal time again, then speeding up with every passing moment.

  “Why’d you ff the common-area visz?” he asked. “The news doesn’t concern you?”

  Her throat worked around a swallow, and Chaplin sat on his haunches, resting his paw against her leg while sending a troubled gaze up at her. Otherwise, the dog had shut his mind.

  Gabriel heard Mariah’s pulse stretching, a weak vibrato in its tremble, and the sight and sound of it moving in her neck vein dug into him.

  “Mariah,” he added, “maybe we should be planning to batten down the hatches.”

  She backed away from the monitors, as if this were the only way she could escape any trouble. Then she went to the weapons wall, running her hands over the deadly choices as she faced away from him. “Stamp didn’t listen,” she said unevenly. “And they’re paying the price. But he’ll be putting the cost on someone else.”

  He could understand her anger. It was delivered out of fear, and the two often went hand in hand. Miles yonder, where Stamp lived, he would also be angry—enough to retaliate against those he blamed—and it would’ve come out of his own fear for his men.

  A vicious circle, Gabriel thought, just like a formation of carrion feeders in the sky.

  “Tell me, Mariah, just how would Sammy and the oldster know about this new death? How can they be sure it’s even a reality with the way everyone keeps to the sanctuary?”

  Her shoulders were slumped, like she was trying to clamp down on a burgeoning pain inside her. “Unlike some of us, Sammy puts on a heat suit and ventures a decent distance away from here before most dusks hit. He hunts for meat out there, brings it back for trade, and that’s how he discovered the . . . first body.” She seemed to fold into herself even more. “Then a second one tonight.”

  Gabriel’s eyes rested on the outside visz screen, which showed the moon, the grasping shadow of the nearby loto cactus under which he’d buried his blood flask.

  “Stamp’s gonna be back,” he said. “He told us he would be if this happened again.”

  Now she was breathing faster, approaching panic.

  Where had the woman who’d initially confronted him with that crossbow gone? Was he so much less scary than Stamp that she’d been able to stand up to him but couldn’t bring herself to do the same with the kid?

  Ironic, Gabriel thought. He, a vampire, seemed less intimidating to her than a regular bad guy, and he had to wonder why that was. Letting him into her home might’ve been the worst decision she’d ever made; it was even possible that he’d been the one who’d brought Stamp’s ire upon them. Gabriel only wished he knew what had happened during every one of his blackouts, wished he knew who or what his meals had been consisting of lately.

  Instinctively, as if to compensate, he move
d toward Mariah, lifting his hand. What if he could manage to soothe her with just a touch?

  For some reason, Chaplin growled at Gabriel. Back off.

  He let his hand fall to his side, seeing the dog’s glare.

  It wasn’t okay to be a vampire with Mariah, Gabriel thought to himself. That was what he believed Chaplin was getting at, anyway.

  And the dog was right. It wasn’t fine to act that way. He didn’t even want to. Besides, either she would be wise to what he was doing or she would shirkff altogether. Also, last night, all he’d had to do was take a gander at her undressing, and it’d sent him off the deep end.

  Gabriel shouldn’t be getting near her.

  After a conflicted glance at Gabriel—a look that made him back off even more—Chaplin went to the trapdoor, making agitated woofing sounds. Mariah angled her face toward him.

  “No,” she said, her voice lower and far more jagged than he’d ever heard it. “I don’t want you out there.”

  The dog opened his mind so Gabriel could understand the discussion. No worry. I can scent Stamp’s men far off if they’re coming. I go out, I come back in. Give me fifteen minutes. The dog shot a glance at Gabriel. Meanwhile, you stay away from her.

  Gabriel didn’t argue—not about staying away and not about the prospect of Chaplin going outside. The canine’s abilities weren’t anything to scoff at. Back in the day, Intel Dogs could fight almost as well as any monster, and that was why the government hadn’t wanted them around. They’d started to rebel in some circles, and the bigwigs had feared the dogs would turn on them one day.

  Addressing Mariah, Gabriel pretended that he didn’t understand what Chaplin was saying. “Is he asking to go outside?”

  “He’s asking,” Mariah whispered, “but he’s not getting.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  Chaplin jumped in with a direct mind-link to his temporary master as Mariah emphatically shook her head.

  Don’t, Gabriel, the dog thought. My nose is better than yours. I can see if Stamp is on his way and how many he might be bringing with him. I won’t take long at all.

  His last words were more warning to keep a distance from Mariah than Gabriel had ever heard from the dog, and without waiting for a response, Chaplin hit the trapdoor release, scrambling up some ledges that circled the wall while sand poured down. The dog jumped through the rain of it, disappearing outside, the door automatically shutting behind him.