Gabriel just nodded, but instead of seeing Abby in his mind’s eye, he saw Mariah. Still felt her on his skin, her blood even now throbbing through him.
The old man continued. “I’d probably go to the far reaches for someone like that, too.”
“Didn’t you?” Gabriel asked, meaning Zel Hopkins.
The oldster seemed to understand just who Gabriel was talking about, his skin going ruddy. “I came out here on my own a long time ago, when the sky began to figuratively fall.”
“Long enough not to be in the facial recognition database that Stamp was using.”
He grinned. “I had a few friends who knew how to hack computers. Let’s leave it at that.”
Gabriel allowed the old man to go on.
“I was the first,” he said, “and the rest trickled on out here. I let them in if they seemed to my . . . liking.”
“And Zel was to your liking.”
The other man laughed, but it was a reflective sound, not his usual amused cackle. “She’d never know it.”
“Then why don’t you tell her?”
“No, no.” The oldster swatted at the air, and Gabriel heard the man’s heartbeat string together bump after bump, disturbed by this very discussion. “It’s enough that she came here and hasn’t left. Not that Zel or I would ever swagger back into civilization, anyway. She’s no spring chicken, but she’s not quite as useless as I am in my waning years. Still, the hubs are no place for anyone over forty. If it was hard for oldsters there before, it’s even worse now.”
No doubt, Gabriel thought. Recently, it’d become commonplace for all oldsters to be locked away in rest homes, which were casually referred to as “pounds” now. Everyone knew that once admitted, the ancients were put down like unwanted dogs. No one talked about it. Society just pretended that it didn’t happen, and it allowed the pursuit of happiness to continue for those who were young and rich enough to afford it.
“No sense of respect from the young back in the hubs,” the oldster added. “A fifteen-year-old can post most kinds of work on the Nets—especially in graphic arts, which was my bag. They can get a job without a lick of experience, so there’s no laboring a person’s way up the ladder of success these days. And who could stay caught up with all that technology except for the young?”
“Phased out,” Gabriel said. “But you made it here instead.”
“That I did.” The oldster shrugged. “Don’t you let me catch you gossiping with the others about this.”
“Don’t they know?”
“Just the basics. But talk leads to conjecture, and I don’t need anyone coming up with stories about me.” He kicked at the dirt. “And I don’t need any foolish stuff circulating about me and . . . anyone.”
“I know how you feel about getting too personal.”
As the oldster nodded in confederacy, Gabriel got caught on the words he’d just said.
I know how you feel . . .
For the first time since Abby—and in spite of how he’d lost his control tonight—he thought that maybe he
was
closer than ever to feeling. Even as a human who’d chased away emotion and pain through the flow of drink, he’d been looking to feel.
The oldster was aiming himself toward the stairs. “Guess I should scoot before Mariah wakes up. She sleeps in fits and starts. That’s what Chaplin told Zel, anyhow, and I predict a privacy-monger like her’d throw a fit if she caught me skulking round.”
“Why do you think she sleeps that way?”
Another shrug. “Because, as much as we try, sleep doesn’t get us away from the living nightmares. But we
have
to try, anyway.”
Without elaborating, the oldster departed. All the same, Gabriel knew exactly what he was talking about.
Living nightmares. Everyone was just doing their best to get through them, no matter who or what they were.
As he picked up the tomato tub and went to set it by the stairs, he couldn’t help remembering what he’d managed to glimpse in Mariah’s head when she hadn’t been guarding herself properly: a younger Mariah cowering. A wave of red.
Again, he felt her blood stirring in him, but even though that much of her was a part of him, he couldn’t absorb anything else about her.
He felt dawn coming upon him and headed for the stairs. But the oldster had distracted him from keeping good track of time, and Gabriel sank to the ground at the foot of the steps, knowing he’d never make it all the way up before rest claimed him.
At least he was away from Mariah, he thought as a black yawn seemed to envelop him, sucking up all his energy until . . .
When he awakened at dusk, fully aware, his gaze fixed on the cavern wall, which was lit from a lantern burning illumination from behind him, for some reason.
Then his skin tuned in to another presence.
A hand on his waist. A warm body stretched out against his back, nearly fitting to him except for a vibrating chasm of inches.
Mariah.
18
Mariah
T
he only reason I knew he was awake was that his body stiffened under my hand. Otherwise, he wasn’t breathing.
I had sneaked down here out of . . . I don’t know. Gluttony? Neediness? A spark of addiction that made me finally appreciate all the stories I’d read about being with someone?
Or maybe it had to do with what Gabriel had given me earlier—a sense of peace. Floating on a calm lift of water, my hands spread to the sky, my body weightless and held up by something other than my own exertions. I’d been so tired of living that his peace gave me rest. I was even experiencing remnants of it now, my thoughts dizzy, my body soft and sharp at the same time, as if I were still being raised from the inside out.
It was almost like the time I’d smoked feyweed, shortly after arriving in the Badlands. What Gabriel had given me temporarily made me forget everything that hurt. But it was more, too, like a song that played in me, bonding me through notes both high and low.
At any rate, I’m not sure if I’d meant to awaken him by coming down here. I’d just wanted to put my hand on Gabriel because it felt nice. I’d just wanted to be next to someone because it made me feel that I wasn’t so alone, I suppose.
“Mariah,” he whispered, and there was a choke to the way he said my name.
Now I felt as if I’d been caught doing something naughty, too intimate. So I covered my discomfort by saying, “I saw the oldster sneaking out the trapdoor earlier. Was he talking to you while I was asleep?”
“He just wanted to make more plans about Stamp.”
Gabriel must’ve realized that I wasn’t here to talk about the oldster, because he rolled to his back, onto the blankets I’d brought down here from above. They were bunched round us, where we lay at the foot of the stairs. Those bandages were still on his head, but I doubted he needed them. Probably had never needed them much at all.
I was on my side, cradling my hands against my chest now. He ran his gaze over the nightclothes I’d changed, seeing as he’d mauled the ones I’d worn last night. And I’d sure enough allowed him to do so.
As my skin went flush, my mom’s voice tried to make its way out from under the remaining peace and to the top of my thoughts.
Your body is a temple,
said the echo of her.
I didn’t want to hear it, so my next words rushed out of me. “Would it be possible for you to . . . ?”
His body clutched as he sensed my excitement at asking for more of his vampire hypnosis.
I saw a flare of red in his eyes, as if he were remembering what’d transpired between us upstairs. “I shouldn’t have done it the first time.”
“I was already pretty certain you were a vampire, so you didn’t give anything away on that account.”
“That’s not exactly it. If I oblige you, I just might take more blood this time. It’s hard to stop the inner greed for it. I tried to stay away from you—that’s why I came down here—because I didn’t know if I could handle a second time.”
Little by little, the peace was leaving me, and I almost wanted to cry. I already missed it. “I don’t feel sick from the lack of blood. I’m fine. You shouldn’t worry about that.”
“I’m not. But when would the whole community find out? And how far of a head start would I need to get?”
“I’ll make sure they don’t know.” I think what was left of the peace gave me more courage than I would’ve normally possessed. “I don’t believe you’re here to harm us, Gabriel. If you wanted to, you would’ve tried already. That’s why I did what I did when I saw your eyes in the shadows ny room . . . that night.”
Again, something in his eyes flashed in the dimness, a turn of thought, as if he were imagining me taking off my clothing. His eyes began to glow a hotter red.
The color made my belly tighten. I wanted to bring him to the point where he couldn’t say no to me. I wanted
more
. “I haven’t told anyone about you.”
“Your dog already knows.”
In my pool of serenity, the news didn’t come as any shock. Chaplin had said he had a handle on Gabriel, and I’d put my faith in him, because he often knew more than I did.
So what was my dog up to? I’d have to have a real sit-down with him.
“Did you
tell
Chaplin to stay quiet about you?” I asked.
“I insinuated that I wasn’t a threat, and I needed him to help me out by keeping mum. I didn’t want to alarm you or the community.”
Right. He’d wanted to search for Abby, and being identified as a monster would’ve gotten him run out. But I didn’t want to have Abby interfere with what was between me and Gabriel now.
“If I haven’t revealed anything about you to the rest of the community by now,” I said, “you can rest assured that I won’t be doing it anytime soon.”
I hesitantly touched his arm, and his muscles clenched.
“When you came into me,” I said, “you gave me something I thought I’d never find. You made me forget about . . . outside.”
“And you want to keep forgetting.”
My escalating desires were eating away at me, and I pressed a hand to my stomach, as if that could control them.
He seemed to know how much I craved his aid, and he rested a hand on my forehead, as if he were feeling guilty about withholding from me. As if he were reminding himself that he could ease me, even temporarily. He could make the nightmares go away. And wasn’t that better than not helping me at all?
Gabriel stroked my temple with his thumb. My skin burned, and he looked into me, as if wanting so badly to cool me down.
I let him mentally enter me, let him go to the only place inside myself that I kept undefended. Right away, my breathing smoothed out. I smiled, relief bubbling through me in a small laugh as he offered magic, soothing images, like how people used to climb trees with leaves.
By his coming into me, I could intuit his musings, too. He was thinking that good thoughts came so very easy with me. The positive notes of the past, the decency of what we all used to be. I could also sense that he was clinging to this peace just as much as I was. He
couldn’t
let go, because doing so would plunge him into bloodlust.
And he didn’t like the bloodlust. He despised that about himself, mostly because of . . .
Abby?
The name was like smoke in the wind, and I couldn’t hold to it as it floated off. But that was fine, because Gabriel was now riding the peace with me. The vibrations distracted him from jabs of appetite, sending us into a hushed place. A limbo, electric and welcome.
I took enough of him to last me, then closed my eyes, laughing until the happiness almost turned to crying again. Besides the peace, something else from him stayed with me—a yearning. A plea for humanitmaris profound longing for it choked me up.
“What?” he asked, as if unable to comprehend what was happening with me.
I guess not even a vampire could go deep enough into me to see everything.
“It’s only that . . .” I couldn’t draw any words from my confusion. So I settled for something safer to say. “You just bring out the wicked in me. But you bring out some good, too.”
I opened my eyes, and he tilted his head at the sight of them. I’m sure fever was burning in my gaze, just like earlier, during the first time we’d been together. I didn’t want him to see it.
“I need the good so badly,” I said.
“Don’t need it too much.” He was still staring at my eyes, and I breathed and breathed, calming myself until I felt better. “This can’t become a pattern, Mariah. I won’t facilitate it.”
“An . . . addiction?”
In my floating state, the idea almost sounded ridiculous. His tone told me it wasn’t.
“I should know addictions, because I used to depend on booze. Then I graduated to blood.”
And then finding Abby?
I stroked his face, over all the scars that had basically healed since that first night. His eyes went redder, and I could’ve sworn he peered past the fever in my eyes and deeper for an instant—one in which I could see how he’d taken lovers during his human days and they’d laid hands on him just as I was doing. But there hadn’t been many instances of tenderness after he’d turned vampire, because the worse the world had gotten, the more interested he’d been in fast and easy than slow and meaningful.