Read The Lawgivers: Gabriel Online

Authors: Kaitlyn O'Connor

Tags: #romance, #erotic, #scifi, #futuristic, #erotic futuristic scifi

The Lawgivers: Gabriel (4 page)

BOOK: The Lawgivers: Gabriel
3.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Lexa’s heart sank. He wanted one of the
picture books that showed naked women and the one she had was just
drawings—and they had all of their clothes on! Again, it flickered
through her mind to simply run like hell and see if she could
outrun the bastard. Instead, she girded herself, took a step
forward, and extended her offering.

He glanced down at the tattered book
and then met her gaze.

She stiffened, knowing he was going to
grab her before the thought even fully formed in his mind. Before
his hand could close like a manacle on her wrist, she dropped the
book and snatched her hand back. She nearly fell over her own feet
as she whipped around to run. Fortunately, her clothing hung on
her. He managed to get a hold on the back of her shirt as she
headed out the door, but the material was rotted enough that she
left him holding the patch he’d grabbed as she shot forward. The
tug was still enough to throw her slightly off balance and the
necessity of regaining it delayed her for a critical second too
many. He was practically on top of her as she charged across the
boardwalk to leap down onto the dirt street. She spared the time to
use her bag of trade goods as a weapon, swinging it around and
slamming it into the side of his head hard enough she heard the
tinkling sound of breaking glass.

Dismay flickered through her that she’d
just destroyed about half her trade goods, but she didn’t have time
to spare for a lot of regret at the moment. The blow didn’t stop
him from making another grab for her, but it threw him slightly off
balance. Lexa took advantage. She grabbed the arm he’d grabbed her
with, slammed her shoulder into his midsection and kicked back
against his nearest leg. It toppled him backwards as she’d hoped,
but although his grip on her slackened as he fell, it was still
enough to jerk her off balance. She tried to recover but her center
of gravity was off enough that she only ended up running straight
at the ground and rooting dirt.

She was stunned but frightened enough
to throw off the shock and react, rolling to her back almost
instantly. She didn’t get the chance to get up. She discovered
she’d sprawled at the feet of the stranger that had so unnerved
her. He looked down at her dispassionately and planted a booted
foot in the center of her chest as she tried to rise, shoving her
back against the hard packed dirt.

She grabbed the heel and toe of his
boot, knowing his stance put him off balance and hoping she could
put enough force in a twist to pitch him on his ass. Instead, he
leaned toward her, shifting his weight to the leg she’d grabbed and
slowly pushing the breath from her chest.

“What did you steal?”

Lexa gaped at him, too stunned by the
strangely accented words he’d uttered to actually comprehend what
he’d asked.

“Get off him. He’s mine.”

That voice and comment jerked Lexa out
of her shock. “I paid the toll,” she gasped hoarsely.

“That ain’t the toll I’m aimin’ to
collect,” the man said with a leer and then glared at the stranger
menacingly. “I said move away, stranger.”

To Lexa’s relief, the weight
disappeared from her chest. The stranger leaned down, however,
grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet, nearly dislocating her
shoulder in the process. His fingers tightened slightly when she
was on her feet. “Don’t move. We aren’t done yet.”

Lexa gaped at him but he released her
as if the warning was enough to cow her and turned his attention to
the gang member just as the lout charged him. He side-stepped as
the bull charged and planted a boot in the man’s ass as he passed,
sending him sprawling. The brute let out a bellow of rage and then
a loud grunt as he hit the dirt.

She wasn’t certain if it was the grunt
and the way he rooted the dirt, or the smooth way the stranger
simply stepped aside and then booted the other man in the ass that
triggered an insane urge to laugh. As completely inappropriate to
the situation as it was, though, the urge still struck
her.

The direness of her situation quelled
it as quickly as it arose. Lexa glanced at the brute as he plowed
up the dirt in the street and then whipped a look back at the
stranger, peripherally aware that a crowd had started gathering,
contrary to typical behavior. People usually ran for cover whenever
violence erupted. She thought maybe they were as stunned as she
was, though, and it was that circumstance that held her frozen to
the spot, not the stranger’s command. That order had all but
vanished from her mind the moment he provoked the wrath of the gang
member.

The stranger stunned her even more when
he looked down at the brute dispassionately and then raised his
voice to a level loud enough to be heard by everyone who’d gathered
on the street—as if he was challenging all comers.

“I am the Lawgiver, Gah-re-al. The
penalty for the crime of assault with intent to rape is
imprisonment for not less than five years. How do you plead,
barbarian?” he growled.

In response, the ‘barbarian’ uttered a
snarl of rage, surged to his feet, and rushed toward the stranger,
pulling a foot long knife from his belt as he charged.

The stranger lifted his arm, revealing
for the first time a bulky, strange looking band around his wrist.
The gang member was within a yard of him when a blinding blue-white
light shot from the stranger’s wrist. A hole the size of the man’s
head appeared in the gang member’s chest. Blood and chunks of
organs, shards of bone, and meat shot out of his back. His momentum
carried him forward, however, and the stranger stepped out of the
way as the dead body flew past him and plowed the dirt
again.

He lowered his wrist and lifted his
head, surveying his stunned audience. “The penalty for assaulting a
Lawgiver with deadly intent—death.”

Chapter Three

“You aren’t a male and you aren’t a
resident of this village. What are you doing here?”

Lexa had been too stunned by what had
transpired to think to run while she had the chance. When the
stranger spoke again, she focused on him and discovered he was
studying her assessingly. Fear lanced through her and then her
sluggish mind finally ‘translated’ what he’d said in his thickly
accented voice and she lifted a hand quickly to check her facial
hair. Without surprise she discovered she’d lost it in the
scuffle.

A look that was almost amused flickered
across the man’s face and disappeared so quickly that she thought
she might have imagined it.

Not man, she corrected herself, too
stunned to gather her wits. She felt hot, cold, and faint all at
the same time and her thought processes seemed to crawl so slowly
that it took a supreme effort to make any sense of them. He wasn’t
a man. He was one of the angels, she realized, feeling terror make
every muscle in her body go weak. People had called them angels
when they had first arrived because they had wings but they were
cold blooded alien creatures that only had the appearance of being
human and most people now referred to them as demons from
hell.

The bulk on his back wasn’t a hunch or
a hidden weapon, she realized in dismay. He’d used the coat to hide
the wings that would’ve given him away instantly.

“Humans aren’t very observant. I knew
you were a female as soon as I smelled you.”

The insult was like a punch, piercing
her cocoon of shock. Lexa felt a flash of heat flush her cheeks
that was a combination of anger and embarrassment and so hot sweat
broke from her pores. It would’ve been insulting even if it hadn’t
been delivered in such a derisive tone, but his obvious disdain
made it more insulting.

What the hell did he mean by saying she
smelled like a woman anyway? Because if he was insinuating he could
smell her pussy she’d have the bastard know that hers didn’t stink,
by damn! It hadn’t been used by a man in a hell of a long damned
time!

His eyes narrowed. “Speak. Or are you
mute? Or too simpleminded to understand?”

Despite her fear, Lexa felt her lips
tighten. She straightened, lifting her chin at him and narrowing
her eyes. “I came to trade for food and water,” she said coldly,
lifting the bag with her broken trade goods to show him she wasn’t
lying.

Surprise flickered in his cold blue,
nearly white eyes. Those eyes sent shivers through her and made her
regret her moment of rebellion, made her regret the fact that she’d
been too shocked to even attempt to hide the fury his snide comment
had provoked.

She didn’t doubt that was why he was
surprised.

His gaze flickered over her and then
returned to her face. He met her gaze for several long moments.
Lexa cringed inwardly, but she was still too angry to allow good
sense to reign. She met his cold gaze with a steady, angry one of
her own.

“Go inside and wait for me.”

Lexa hesitated but the appearance of
compliance was all that had kept her alive these many years. It
went against the grain. It irked her to have to pretend she’d been
cowed by him. She would’ve preferred to tell him to kiss her ass
and go to hell. She would’ve far rather knocked his teeth down his
throat for the insult and the orders, but she didn’t have the
muscle to back up her rathers. Stiffly, she nodded, although she
had absolutely no intention of hanging around longer than it took
to get the water and food she so desperately needed.

Fortunately, as he had before, he
dismissed her and turned away as soon as he’d ordered her inside,
giving rise to the hope that he hadn’t actually noticed her
rebellious attitude. She would’ve bitten her tongue and resisted
the urge to argue with him anyway, but, happily, it transpired that
the order fit nicely with what she wanted to do. Now she had his
permission to finish her business and be on her way. In any case,
she discovered the moment he turned away and her gaze followed the
movement that far more trouble was heading their way.

At least a dozen gang members were
moving purposefully toward them along the street and it was clear
that the one in the lead was the local king.

As stunned as everyone else had been by
the very brief battle between the angel and the gang member they
noticed trouble marching their way about the same time that Lexa
did—clearly some moments after the angel noticed. Gasping with
fright, everyone began to scatter. Lexa was suddenly anxious to
comply with his orders as quickly as possible and hurried past the
angel.

He caught her arm before she could dash
past him and met her gaze with a hard look when she glanced at him
fearfully. “Don’t make me hunt you down. You wouldn’t like
it.”

So much for thinking he hadn’t noticed
her rebellious attitude! Lexa gaped at him, wondering if the angels
were mind-readers as she’d heard. She’d dismissed it. There were so
many tales about them—each one more fantastic than the last—that
she’d stopped believing most of the stories she heard.

He didn’t wait for a
response—fortunately. She might’ve responded with something utterly
stupid!—He released her the moment he’d issued his warning and
moved toward the center of the street to meet the gang heading
toward him.

“I am the Lawgiver, Gah-re-al, of the
udai. The penalty for your crimes against the primitives known as
humans is death.”

A shockwave traveled through Lexa. She
wasn’t certain if it arose from the sheer audacity of the angel in
issuing a challenge when he was up against so superior a force and
completely exposed or if it was that he seemed to know everything
they’d done. She felt a shiver skate down her spine,
though.

Despite her anxiety to reach a safe
distance before the violence she expected erupted, she paused in
the doorway of the mercantile and turned to survey the scene
playing out in the dusty street. Gabriel, as he called himself,
shrugged the long, black coat off and dropped it in the dust at his
feet, revealing his wings. He lifted and spread them, as if flexing
the kinks out, like someone loosening up for a fight.

It sent another shiver skating down her
back. At the same time a sense, almost of awe, swept over her. As
many tales as she’d heard about them, she’d never actually seen
one—not that she knew of, in any case.

The black wings had almost the same
iridescent sheen of a crow’s wings. The udai was dark skinned—as
dark as roamers, humans, that spent most of their days exposed to
the hot sun but without the blistering red one usually saw and she
wondered if all of the udai were as dark. His long hair hung nearly
to his waist—nothing particularly unusual about that except that he
didn’t have a beard nearly as long as his hair, in fact at all, and
most male humans did—and the hair was the same iridescent
blue-black as his wings.

The nearly white irises flickered in
her direction again and Lexa recoiled reflexively, nearly stumbling
in her rush to get inside.

The tableau she’d seen flickered
through her mind as she rushed toward the counter.

Clearly the gang had lost some of their
confidence when they saw they were rushing upon a dark angel, or
demon, instead of a man. They’d halted in the middle of the street
when the udai, Gabriel, removed his coat.

Or maybe it was the confidence in his
voice when he’d told them the penalty was death?

BOOK: The Lawgivers: Gabriel
3.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Cat's eye by Margaret Atwood
Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
Against Gravity by Gary Gibson
Lessons in Love by Emily Franklin
The Cowboy Claims His Lady by Meagan McKinney
The Collaborator by Margaret Leroy
Miss Understood by James Roy