She took the knife away from him and undid the length of cable. “After everything that’s happened with Stamp, I can’t imagine what price I wouldn’t pay to see a reckoning for Zel’s sake. She set out to do what none of us have had the guts to.”
“Didn’t you tell me not fifteen minutes ago that nothing—not fighting or running—would do any good?”
She grabbed one of his wrists, winding the cable around it, creating a cuff by using a catch on the end of the length. Then she slid the rest of it across his back and to his other wrist, where she made another useless bracelet.
“Now that Stamp has called you out,” she said, “I know I was wrong about the fighting. With the bad guys who ruined my family, I never got a chance to do any while I was in that panic room. Maybe this is where
I
make up for it—not you, Gabriel.”
He let that sink in. He realized that she’d gotten feisty after Stamp’s invitation to meet up in the gully. It’d taken a threat to
him
to break her out of the fear that’d controlled her for so long.
But it was too late for that. “Mariah, I’ve got to go now.”
She was roughly pulling on the cable, bringing his wrists together at his back.
“Mariah . . .”
She began to wind the cable down and around his legs, vising him.
Regretfully, Gabriel tensed, intending to yank apart the cable and get on out of here.
But Mariah was ready for that.
ont siNo,”
she yelled, kicking his legs out from under him.
Off balance, he crashed to the floor, disbelief handicapping him for an instant—one in which Mariah flew into action.
Levering a leg onto his throat to keep him down, she somehow found the angry strength to pull up his legs and continue wrapping the cable around them.
Survival mode kicked in, and Gabriel’s sight reddened. He vamp-hissed in a warning.
When she looked at him, her chopped hair covered most of her face.
“Don’t,” she said in that garbled voice he barely recognized.
But he’d had enough, and he burst out of his bonds, then sprang to his feet.
Mariah was prepared for that, too.
She whipped out the knife she’d used at his throat, plus a longer blade that she crossed together to form the sign of the cross, which she knew would freeze him.
It was as if a bolt of silver split him in two, and he fell to all fours, agonized, not only because of the hopelessness embodied in the cross—the mental flash that he’d never win forgiveness, ever—but because Mariah was the one doing this to him.
“Chaplin,” he heard her say in a pained tone, “fetch the crucifix billboard poster. The sight of it’ll bind him. Hurry.”
But the dog didn’t move.
“Chaplin!”
He barked viciously at her, and through the haze of Gabriel’s anguish, he thought he heard a snarled response from Mariah that was just as ferocious.
Then the canine sprang at her, knocking her over, breaking apart the blade crucifix and shattering the hold Mariah had on him.
Gabriel leaped to his feet as Chaplin pinned her facedown on the ground, her fingers digging at the dirt, guttural cries of rage making her thrash beneath the dog like a wild animal.
This wasn’t like Mariah. She was so different—
Go!
the canine mind-said to Gabriel.
Get your weapons and get on that zoom bike.
With a cry, Mariah reached back at Chaplin, clawing, and the dog snapped at her hand. Then he almost blew Gabriel’s brain apart with the force of his next words.
Get out of here before I chase you out myself!
Gabriel didn’t try to override the Intel Dog’s brain, because there was no reason to. Besides, his familiar’s rejection was too thick inside him for much else to rise above it.
So while the dog restrained Mariah, Gabriel grabbed everything he could—a revolver, a machete, knives, a grenade—from the wall, jammed them into his clothing, and then ascended the ladder, unlocking the door to the night.
He glanced back once more to find Chaplin giving him a look of such apology that Gabriel couldn’t help but respect the dog’s determination to save his mistress by whatever means possible. And with Mariah beneath Chaplin, moaning and fighting, her voice going low, hollow, Gabriel wished he didn’t have to remember her this strange way if Stamp ended up getting the best of him.
He started out the door, and just as he was about to close it, Mariah cried out.
“Gabriel . . .”
His name ended on another moan, so twisted and tortured that he could only shut the door on it. If he didn’t have to leave, he might’ve stayed to revel in the warped fact that he’d earned such a reaction from her—that he’d finally done something in his pitiful existence to deserve such an entreaty to come back to someone.
But he needed to leave it—
her
—behind, and he went to the waiting zoom bike.
He was going to show Stamp that no further warring was needed—that he wasn’t hiding anything.
Testing the bullet wound on his arm, Gabriel found that it had almost healed to normal, unlike the injury from the silver on the other, which was still mending. Then he tried to wipe the last feral sight and sounds of Mariah out of his head, yet couldn’t.
He revved the bike’s engine and took off toward the loom tree gully, the night drained of color around him while, in the sky, a lone carrion feeder that’d broken away from its group tracked Gabriel, just like a long, never-ending shadow.
25
Mariah
C
haplin still had me pinned to the floor, my face against the ground as my body roiled, heating, exploding in my frustration and grief.
Don’t fight me,
the dog kept saying.
I’m doing what’s best for all of us.
“It’s over,” I said, struggling to form words now. “Zel, the demon, Gabriel . . . I can’t live with myself if I stay here while he does what we should be doing—”
Calm—down!
Chaplin put his mouth to my neck, as if he were going to tear into it if I didn’t obey.
I sank all the way into the floor, rage pushing through me as I half-cried, half-whimpered, my body pulling at itself, hurting so bad that I clawed at the ground. Through my unrestrained sobs, I asked, “Do you . . .
really
think Gabriel . . . is gonna satisfy . . . Stamp?”
If he doesn’t, we’ll be ready,
Chaplin said.
But there’s no reason for us to put ourselves out there when Gabriel’s willing to do it for us.
I panted, and with every passing second, my body regained some calm, my fever cooling, my body pressing back into itself so it felt near normal again. Only the vivid memory of peace from Gabriel was what did it in the end. The gift he’d given me.
And this was how I was going to repay him?
The dog backed off of me slowly, still keeping watch.
No funny moves, Mariah.
I let myself sob some more, still facedown on the ground. Minutes went by while I scrabbled at the floor, my fingers bleeding, my very bones hurting with all they’d been through.
It was only when I heard Chaplin sit on his haunches that I stopped lying to him.
No more lies . . .
I sprang at him, grabbing him by the neck and pinching a pressure point—a sure way to overcome an Intel Dog. Soon enough, Chaplin passed out.
My breath heavy and hollow in my chest, I arose. I picked up my knife from where it was lying and, in the blade, I caught a demented glimpse of my eyes.
My livid green eyes.
Sprinting, I clamored out of my domain to the oldster’s quarters, where I knew my neighbors were tending to him. I burst through the unlocked door, and they all looked up at me: Hana tending the prone oldster, who was chained to his bed. Pucci. Sammy.
“
Goddamn
it, Mariah,” Pucci said, looking me up and down, as disgusted as usual. But he had more reason to be right now, while I was in this terrible state. Every time I got like this brought trouble.
My breath came raggedly, hollow in my chest. Body, gnarling inside. Hot . . . stretching . . .
Sammy was already coming toward me, motioning to the others. “Mariah, it’s a good thing you came here. We’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”
He sounded as scared as I felt at the thought of getting outside our domains.
But for the first time, I
needed
to go out there, no matter the consequences. I couldn’t be afraid of what I would do.
Sammy reached for me, but my voice was a near growl as I lashed out at him. “Wait—listen to me. Please . . .”
And I told them about Gabriel and what he was doing on our behalf. I even told them what he was.
Before I was even done, the oldster had asked Hana to unchain him, and he got out of bed, stripping off his clothing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Pucci said.
“What we should’ve done before it came to this.” The oldster wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I didn’t blame him. “It doesn’t matter how you or I or anyone feels about Mariah. Stamp’s people killed Zel. And if you just sit here like we’ve been doin’ . . . then
fuck
you, Pucci.”
One by one, they all came to their senses, too.
One by one, blood screamed, bones melted, bodies stretched, as we fully gave in to what we’d tried so hard to control.
And to hide.
26
Gabriel
G
abriel arrived at the gully all too soon, the throttled glow of grayed moonlight spilling over the gulch’s craggy walls and flooding over the spindled loom trees, whose dark branches were like webs, ready to catch prey.
As he veered the zoom bike into a copse of them, he tried to scent out another presence. Or many presences, to be more accurate, because he suspected it wasn’t above Stamp to put together an ambush with all his men in attendance.
But Gabriel only sensed one person nearby, somewhere among all the trees, and he recognized the deliberate, cool vital signs as Stamp’s.
The kid had been waiting here for him, right on time, stroke of twelve.
Images of Zel washed over Gabriel: her body helplessly pasted against that cave wall with the knife in her shoulder. Her screams.
Gabriel cut the quiet motor and got off the bike, and when his boots hit the ground, he felt and heard a hollow thud beneath his feet. The old mining shaft, he thought. Dead space beneath him.
Stamp’s voice floated down the gully, filtering through the spun branches. “Mr. Gabriel. I had a feeling you’d be wise enough to come out here. Alone, too.”
width="1em">
The kid probably had surveillance equipment on him, so Gabriel took casual shelter behind the bole of a tree, under the hunch of branches. “That’s what you asked of me, Stamp.”
Unless the kid was an expert with any vampire-killing weapons he’d managed to rustle up within the last few hours, this could be a manageable confrontation. Gabriel would just make the case that he and the other neighbors would pose no further danger—he’d prove they were all human and willing to call off any brewing wars between them. He could fix this situation, but he was definitely prepared should it go awry.
Stamp got to the meat of the matter. “As my messenger said, I know what’s been going on in that community of yours. You, Mr. Gabriel . . .” His disembodied voice seemed to wander among the branches, getting lost until he started up again. “To think—when I initially met you, I saw a man I could’ve come to respect. Someone who seemed to have low tolerance for rudeness and wrong, although he’d inadvertently fallen in with a crowd of scrubs. But I was mistaken. And I’ll give it to you—you hid your baser qualities.”
“And what would those be?” Gabriel rested his hand on the butt of the revolver he’d tucked into the waistband of his trousers.
“Let’s not treat each other like asshats,” Stamp said, sounding as if he’d come a little nearer. “You know what you are, and you were smart to keep it hushed for as long as you could.”
There was a bladed nick to the kid’s voice, and right off, Gabriel could tell that Stamp had some kind of history with monsters. Maybe one had gotten to his family. Or maybe he’d only been set down to sleep each night, nursed by tales of the bogeymen who ran the streets, waiting to feast.
Gabriel kept looking around him, sweeping his gaze over the unfriendly landscape—the seething sky, the rocks, the grasp of branches over his head—but didn’t see any sign of the kid moving around.
“Stamp,” he called out. “Just say what you brought me here for, because I’m not in the mood for beating around any bushes. I want to know what you intend to do with my friends.”