Bloodlands (32 page)

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Authors: Christine Cody

BOOK: Bloodlands
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“I told you,” I said, my voice almost unrecognizably rough as my emotions escalated. “I’m
not
letting you go out there.”
23
 
T
he predator hunched on the boulder where, earlier in the night, Gabriel had hidden himself, killing and ma
iming the employees with the aid of a shotgun. Obviously, the bloodsucker had needed such a weapon to pick off Stamp’s men at a long distance; the firearm had taken the place of close-range fangs.
Using the tips of his fingers to test the dried blood that the vamp had sprayed on the rock when he’d been shot, the predator marveled that the texture could be the same as a human’s. One of his men—dead now after Stamp had ordered a crew member to put the severely wounded guy out of his misery—had seen Gabriel flash fangs, and that was enough to go on. Luckily, the dead man had been in the group who’d hunted the demon and, like others in the party, he’d been carrying a silver-bladed knife as a possible weapon to control the monster. They hadn’t known what sort of demon it was before they’d discovered that brass was its bane.
At any rate, the silver had brought the fang out in Gabriel—a vamp who’d covered his true nature with a respectable decency that spoke of constant vigilance.
It’d been a long time, but the predator had always ended up cornering his vampires and were-creatures, although he couldn’t say the same about demons, really, since he’d never hunted one before.
He stood up from the rock, then wound his way down through the gauntlet of boulders until he reached the clearing, where the crew was cleaning up the dead bodies, including Zel Hopkins’s. The carrion feeders were stalking the blood and gore from above, circling, but the crew had their own guns out, warding the grotesques off.
One of the employees, who was preparing to drag Zel Hopkins’s corpse to a grave, glanced up, his lower face covered with a kerchief. The moonlight revealed a stunned glaze to his eyes. None of the men had expected this when they’d signed on to come out to the New Badlands to work the land for water. None of them had expected to go after a demon, much less fight off a vampire with a hero complex.
“Mr. Stamp,” the crew member said, addressing the predator.
Stamp, a.k.a. the man who was going to wipe away the last of their worries when he met Gabriel at midnight, nodded back. While he was busy with Gabriel, some of his men were going to take advantage of the distraction and go to the scrub community to clean them out once and for all. After tonight’s rites of passage, his crew certainly had enough confidence to go about it.
It was a shame, though, because Johnson Stamp really had wanted to find good neighbors out here. But he’d taken enough of the scrubs’ crap. At first, he’d been loath to kill the settlers because he had no proof beyond suspicion that they were outlaws. Now he knew, and there was justice in going after them. After facing down Zel Hopkins, he’d seen that they were
all
beyond redemption. He wanted to separate Gabriel from the community because vamps could be stronger and prone to inflict more mental as well as physical damage than many other monsters. More important, the vampire just might have it in him to play the hero again and screw up an attack on the scrub sanctuary.
Odd, how the vamp was so protective of the scrubs. Stamp had never seen the likes of it. He only wished his men had realized Gabriel was a monster when they’d found him in that cave several dusks ago, roughing him up for trespassing on Stamp’s territory. The guy must’ve tried hard to hide his vampiness during the scuffle. Kudos to him for that.
Gunshots blasted as the crew worked at holding off the carrion feeders, and the employee who’d greeted Johnson Stamp got back to dragging Zel Hopkins’s corpse away, kicking aside a blood-soaked feather at the same time.
As Stamp walked off, he was glad he’d brought most of his past life with him into this new one, because some things should never be let go of, including weapons. After one of his crew had identified that demon tonight—and thank-all the employee had been savvy enough to interpret the signs of a monster in time—Stamp had realized that no matter how hard you labored, the past would always be there.
He’d tried everything to get rid of it early on, though, after his parents had gone from smiling shoppers in a marketplace to bits of blood and bone after a suicide bomber for a monsters’ sympathy group had come at the wrong time to the wrong place. After their deaths, Stamp had been scooped up by the government and deposited into an orphan camp, where he’d been educated, his talents and bottled aggression then put to good use early on as a civil servant who kept society clean. But just as he was getting good at his job, they’d told him that his efforts were no longer needed. The dirt of society was under control.
The layoff had left Stamp aimless, even at the age of twenty. But then, after the government had given him a pretty severance check to keep quiet about his service to them, he’d heard about a place out west, still pure enough after the bombings and brutal weather, and he’d redirected his verve for sweeping up the garbage from the street to something else.
He’d collected humans instead, liking how it made him feel, because where things like the dregs of society could never change, people like him could. Someone like Stamp could teach his new employees right from wrong, so he had set about doing it.
He’d even tried to prove this tonight, when he’d offered apologies to the scrubs for being wrong about them killing his men. He’d only meant to show them with the demon that they could all work together. But they hadn’t seemed to see it that way.
Yet with what they’d been hiding, it was no wonder they had a tolerance for monsters.
There were more gunshots while his crew fired at the carrion feeders. But as Stamp looked to his right side, where some men were burying the employees whom Zel Hopkins had killed tonight—both of them with their damned eyes scratched out—he knew the feeders would be gone soon with the lack of dead bodies to compete for. And if the shades decided to stick round to hide and ambush him and his guys, they’d be sorry.
But soon the last of the grotesques was indeed shooed off, and Stamp was just about to go inside when he heard a noise from the boulders. In quicksilver time, he turned toward the sound, his weapon drawn from the holster at his side.
Just as fast, he raised his arm in the air, the revolver aimed toward the night sky, when he saw that it was only Montemagni, the woman he’d sent to the community to deliver the meeting invitation to Mr. Gabriel.
Mags had her hands raised as she descended. “Whoa, there. It’s only me.”
“You got the message to Gabriel?” Stamp asked, holstering his weapon. “No hassles from carrion feeders or scrubs?”
His employee nodded, lowering her hands as she came to stand in front of Stamp. She was one of a few tough females on the crew—a former white-collar thief—and she’d taken to Stamp’s second-chance program with gusto. “The shades had all gathered over here, attracted by the newer bodies. As far as the message to Gabriel goes, I looped it into all the viszes I could find above the ground.”
“I guess,” Stamp said, “we’ll see if the vamp shows then.”
“He will. If they have a brain among them, they’ll give up one to save the many.”
Stamp glanced at the bulging portion of moon in the sky. Then he caught Mags’s frown.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Well, not that I doubt our capabilities here, but instead of meeting Gabriel tonight, do you need me to go to the hubs to find help in taming a vampire? I hear they’re rough to face one-on-one.”
“You want to find a retired Shredder who specialized in vamps?” Stamp asked.
“It’s worth a try, I think.”
Stamp smiled, but the gesture was stiff. “There’s no need, Mags. We’ve already got a Shredder handy.”
It took Montemagni a second to catch on to what her boss might be saying, but Stamp was already walking toward the cave-hidden entrance to his domain, ready to unearth the past he’d hidden in that baggage he hadn’t been able to get rid of.
The silver bullets. The ash wood stakes.
Tools he’d used back in the day when he’d been recruited as a young Shredder on the government’s payroll, specializing in the termination of vampires and were-creatures.
24
 
Gabriel
 
T
he
edge of the knife blade scratched against Gabriel’s throat as Mariah held it against him.
She’d told him that she couldn’t let him go to the meeting with Stamp, and he hadn’taken her seriously. Until now.
He didn’t move. “If you know me at all, Mariah, then you know that a regular blade is only going to do temporary damage.”
She brought the knife closer to his jugular, and he noticed her hand was shaking.
“I realize I need more to restrain you,” she said in that anger-torn voice. “But don’t make me—” It sounded as if a whimper chopped off her words, and she leaned her forehead against his back. “Don’t make me force you to stay,” she finished on a rasp that reminded him of the anguished strain in the oldster’s voice as he’d been dragged away earlier.
He could hear her vital rhythms thrashing, stretching through the disorder of her emotions. As her other hand gripped his shirt, twisting it, he heard the material protest, seams popping.
Gabriel still didn’t move, but this time it was because he didn’t know what to make of her reaction. He’d witnessed . . .
felt
. . . her anger before, but this seemed beyond even that.
What was going on with her?
“Come on,” he finally said. “Ease off now.”
“I’m the one with the knife.”
“And I’m the one who can disarm you within a blink.”
Out of the corner of Gabriel’s gaze, he saw Chaplin slinking out of his corner, shadowing the wall.
He appealed to the dog.
I might need your help here, boy. Mariah’s not thinking straight.
Chaplin sat on his haunches.
No, she’s not.
The dog’s words had a tinge of fatefulness to them, and an accepting smile dawned over Gabriel’s mouth. So here was the truth—Gabriel was, in a way, their hired gun. Chaplin had paid him by taking him in, saving his hide, and now the dog was expecting Gabriel to return the favor. He’d seen right through Gabriel, and he’d known early on what this particular vampire was looking for out here.
Redemption.
And he’d known Gabriel wouldn’t have any other choice but this if he wanted to find it.
Smart dog. Dumb preter.
You got me,
Gabriel thought to Chaplin.
But I suppose there was bound to come a time when I’d have to answer to someone for what I am, anyway.
The dog seemed to smile, too—a sad acknowledgment.
Just don’t let Stamp know what you are, Gabriel. Do it for you . . . and maybe even for us?
It was a brassy request, but Chaplin knew Gabriel wouldn’t give himself—or the sheltering Badlanders—away. He’d rather face Stamp as he was now than live as what he’d put behind him. An eternity of that was his idea of true death.
Mariah, who hadn’t heard the silent exchange, spoke to her dog. “Chaplin, jump up to the weapons wall and bring me that steel cable.”
The canine circled back and leaped up, catching a loop of low-hanging cable with his teeth. Then he veered over to Gabriel and Mariah, dropping the coil near her feet before backing up, his gaze on Gabriel, who knew exactly what the dog wanted him to do, even without any mind communication.
“There comes a time,” Mariah said in that grief-warped voice as she used the tip of her boot to hook into the coil’s center, then kick it up to where her free hand could grab it, “when we have to step out of the places that shelter us. Me and the rest, we always thought we could avoid that. And we did for a while.”
“You still can,” Gabriel said. “I’m not sure you’re entirely clear on what could happen to you if you don’t let me go.”
“Oh, I know. We might have to pay with our very lives.”
“Zel sure did. Do you want to end up like her?”
Mariah’s breathing was quick and tight. “That’s the other thing, Gabriel. There’s no steel-clad proof that Zel’s dead.”
“I saw her die.”
“You thought you did. But were you able to detect any life left in her body? You were too far away to be sure.”
This was ridiculous. “Mariah . . .”
“Zel wouldn’t have gone down that easy,” she said. “There’s a small chance that Stamp’s still got her, and while everyone stays in a safe location for the time being, I could go to this meeting in your place, kill him, make my way to his domain, then find out whether Zel’s dead for certain, and . . .”
That was where her crazy plan seemed to end, and Gabriel wondered where it’d all come from. Then again, if he were human, and his friend had been killed, wouldn’t he be running on adrenaline, too? She spoke to Chaplin, her heartbeat churning in Gabriel’s ears. “Cover him?”
Obeying, the canine sat in place, guarding Gabriel, who wasn’t about to remind Mariah that wrapping him in mere cable would do even less good than using a blade on his throat. But she was apparently binding him and hoping that the time it would take for him to break out of those cables would give Chaplin an extra, valuable second to launch an attack.

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