Stamp’s surveillance screen exploded with the impact of the bullet, and the kid dropped the gun altogether. But then Gabriel heard the rustle of dry twigs to his left, and he aimed there, seeing, too late, that it’d only been a tossed rock.
Then he felt a chill on his right side.
Gabriel darted his gaze over to find Stamp just ten feet away, his gun pointed up into the tree, the nozzle sparking and the Shredder bullet gnawing through the air toward him.
Diving to the ground headfirst, Gabriel let go of his revolver, feeling Stamp’s bullet grind into his calf. He grunted as it dug through him, exiting the other side of his leg.
Silver. It’d had silver in it, and the weakness spread like a bloom of shriveled skin.
He gripped his leg, crawling for his zoom bike, which was only about six feet away. If he could just get to it, he could speed off much faster than his silver-addled powers would allow. Then, back at the community, he’d ask someone, anyone, for help in cleansing him with a drinkof their blood.
Shit, why hadn’t he thought to bring his flask?
The regret weighed him down as he crawled, inch by inch. Always it came back to this . . . being a vampire . . .
He slowed down, so weak, so tired.
Was it even worth going back to the way he’d been before?
“Gabriel!” Stamp was stalking him, approaching. “Damn it, you freak, why don’t you just turn and then face me like a real vamp?”
Even as Gabriel flinched at the curse, he heard the frustration in the kid’s tone.
The silver—much more than what he’d gotten from the cut of the knife earlier—spread up Gabriel’s leg, breeding weakness, and he knew that aside from the knives and the machete and the grenade he’d grabbed back at Mariah’s, playing on Stamp’s frustration was all he had left.
Funny, but now, when he truly could use his powers, they weren’t so available.
He saw the kid come into the open. Finding Gabriel near his zoom bike, Stamp holstered his revolver and reached over his shoulder, whipping out the chest puncher.
It resembled a long crossbow with clamps and cables. Unable to control his body, Gabriel felt his fangs needling his gums, and he groaned.
“You’re not going to win!” Stamp said. “The way of the world won’t let you win!”
Then he was right in front of him, the chest puncher aimed. But Gabriel had already slid a knife out of his back pocket, bringing it up to target Stamp’s neck, where there would be no leather armor.
Neither man moved.
At least, not until Stamp started laughing again. This time it sounded real unsure.
“Mutually assured destruction?” the kid asked. “Is that how this is going to end?”
“Seems like we’ve been hurtling toward that conclusion all along.”
The nose of the chest puncher dipped. “I could use that cross on you right now, you know. I could cuss up an unholy storm that would make you writhe until you screamed for me to stop. I only wish I’d had the chance to hunt down any remaining holy men in the hubs for holy water, too. That’d get a confession out of you.”
“Do your job, then.” The silver had rolled up to Gabriel’s chest, lulling him, and he smiled.
It flustered Stamp. “Why do I have to resort to crosses and words with you?”
Gabriel could only whisper. “Because you were wrong about me.”
“No. I can’t be.”
He wasn’t looking Gabriel in the eye, probably because he’d been trained to avoid it with vampires. But Gabriel would use his knife rather than hypnosis or his voice, anyway, especially since the silver had doused his power.
The blade started to fall from his grip. He couldn’t hold it up any longer.
“Silver,” Stamp said. “It got to you, Gabriel. Open your mouth. Show me that fang. Show me some red in the eye.”
“You’re pathetic.” The knife dropped to the ground.
A muffled sound of rage pushed out of Stamp, and he swung around with the chest puncher, using it as a .”
Stars. Gabriel hadn’t seen such clear stars in a long time, thanks to the red haze enveloping the atmosphere. . . .
“Turn, damn you to hell! You should’ve already turned!”
Nothing less would be good enough for Stamp, and that made Gabriel even more determined to stay a man, even though his chest was tearing itself apart at the curses.
Stay a man. No fangs . . . no red . . .
Stamp delivered another blow to Gabriel’s head, then prepared for another—
Still ringing from the curses, Gabriel gathered what remained of his strength, lifting his hand and catching the puncher, and it trembled in his grip as he kept it between him and the Shredder.
He opened his eyes, still seeing through those stars, seeing Stamp hovering above him, breathing hard, smiling a little at Gabriel’s determination not to turn.
Carrion feeders began to gather overhead.
When a burning sensation sizzled against Gabriel’s skin, he was barely aware that the kid had struck without him knowing it, pressing a cross into his forehead.
Gabriel couldn’t hold on to the chest puncher anymore, and he slumped all the way to the ground as he lost the weapon to Stamp.
“There!” the kid said. “See? We are what we are. There’s always something that’ll betray it in us.”
Forehead crisped, Gabriel struggled to push himself back up, to show Stamp that he . . . was . . . a man.
No matter the common definition, nothing could take this moment from him.
Stamp pressed the cross against Gabriel’s cheek this time, and Gabriel went down, again, eating dirt.
“I really am sorry it turned out this way,” the kid whispered, taking the cross away. “I’m sorry for you, for Zel Hopkins . . . for everyone else in the scrub compound who’s been hiding.”
Gabriel was so discombobulated that the last part hardly registered.
Everyone else . . . ?
Everyone else?
A voice cried out from somewhere in the gully, and Stamp faced it. Gabriel remained on the ground, the grit of dirt in his mouth, the chars of the cross branding him from his skin down to the empty area where he would’ve stored a soul.
Standing, Stamp hailed the voice and, within a minute, one of his employees had sprinted over on FlyShoes. Gabriel couldn’t really hear what the woman was saying, because he was too close to the black, near a place where he wouldn’t have to be one thing or another anymore.
Even so, he inched his fingers toward the knife he’d dropped.
“The scrubs aren’t there,” the woman said in the thick of Gabriel’s mental murk. Old American. The messenger who’d called Gabriel to the showdown?
Stamp started asking her questions, but Gabriel had already tuned out, the woman’s words swirling around his head as if trying to find a catch to cling to.
He was remembering how Stamp had called Gabriel out via that message delivered by this very woman . . . Remembered how the community had been left unguarded . for
Stamp wasn’t talking anymore. Neither was the woman.
There was just a slice of silence.
Gabriel tried to look past the swelling around his eyes to see that all of Stamp’s crew had gathered around them by now, and they were glancing toward the top of the gully, frozen.
He sensed what Stamp’s crew had just now discovered—vital signs rimming the gulch. Signs that Gabriel had deemed more appealing than any human’s when he’d first sensed them. Signs that
couldn’t
have been so different from any human’s just because the air and water out here were purer. . . .
“Fck,” said one of the Text men.
Then, before any of the crew could draw weapons, mass confusion rained down on the gully.
Explosions from what seemed to be grenades, cries from a few groups of employees who were torn apart from the multitude of blasts. Then came enraged cries, howls, hisses. Human yelps of pain lit the air as whatever was attacking them overcame the crew.
Gabriel attempted to push himself up, yet couldn’t. The silver was too much, but he did grab the knife. As he opened his eyes the widest they’d go, he heaved the weapon toward Stamp.
It hit him, though Gabriel didn’t know where, and the kid dropped the chest puncher, falling backward.
The woman standing over Stamp in her FlyShoes bent down to catch him, yelling something inarticulate at Gabriel just before taking a submachine gun and shooting a circle into the ground around her and her boss.
Then, with a stomp of a FlyShoe, both she and Stamp dropped down into the old mine, the descent covered by a gush of dust.
Gabriel tried to yell, to relay where Stamp had gone to anyone who’d listen, but then a spray of blood dashed over his face, wetting his lips. Unable to stop himself, he licked at it.
The taste wasn’t sufficient to push out the silver weakness, but he had enough strength left to turn toward the source of the blood.
The bleeder—one of Stamp’s men—was screaming as a creature gored him with its antlers.
Gabriel’s vision wavered. A fever dream from the silver, he thought. This couldn’t be real. . . .
The attacker was only half-man, standing on his two legs as he bent to thrust his antlers into Stamp’s employee again. The other half of him looked like a massive elk, with hooves, long legs, a short tail, and a tannish brown hide. . . .
It gazed at Gabriel, grinding its teeth, its eyes a glowing yellow in what almost resembled the grimace of a man’s face. Then it used its antlers to push its victim’s body to Gabriel before it ran away. With surreal fascination, Gabriel heard that the prey’s heart had stopped beating, and though he wanted blood, he knew a dead man would poison him even more.
The elk-thing had galloped to where another creature—part woman, part mule deer—was pummeling another member of Stamp’s crew with her front legs, rapidly stomping on his stomach. The elk man nudged her aside and gored this thug, too, tossing him away with his antlers.
Gabriel heard the first gunshot from the crew, and he had the presence of mind to pull the grenade out of a pocket, enable it, then toss it at what seemed to be the last bunch of employees who’d huddled behind a nearby boulder to take cover.
Rock and flesh burst into the air with the explosion.
Collapsing, Gabriel watched as he tried to gather more strength. Meanwhile, in his fever dream, he saw a man-scorpion, multiple limbs waving as it used pincers to crush two crew members at once while lashing its tail out to sting a woman who dropped the rifle she had been aiming at him. Next to the scorpion, a Gila monster–man was chewing down on an employee who’d already had his guts clawed out.
Gabriel’s sight wavered again just as he heard a howl, an angry roar, and he rolled to his back, finding a wolf creature flashing its teeth, then tearing into two more employees at one time with frightening speed. When it had finished, the woman-animal tossed down its prey, then panted as it hunched and surveyed the scene for more targets.
Like the rest, this monster was bare of clothing. Its reddish fur bristled away from a slim body, its teeth sharp in a snout, its ears canine, its eyes a glowing green.
It paused, as if startled to find Gabriel looking at it. Then, just before the silver crept over his sight altogether, he heard the creature’s vital signs—how they sounded like a livid crash of notes that infiltrated him with a song he’d always been on the brink of understanding. He felt a vague connection, a link he’d forged when he’d looked into those eyes earlier tonight, before she’d fought him about going outside—before her voice had become almost unrecognizable, before she’d fought so ferociously with Chaplin.
Gabriel remembered what Stamp had told him.
Everyone else who’s been hiding.
He sank into the silver, which felt more like grief, as the last thing he saw was Mariah’s feverishly green eyes glowing in the face of a monster.
27
Mariah
A
couple of hours la
ter, my body aching, I huddled into myself while waiting for Gabriel to awaken from his resting spot on the floor of the common room, where all of us had laid him out.
In a way, I didn’t want him to open his eyes, which had looked at me with such compassion and . . . Hell, I didn’t know what it was, but I knew Gabriel would hold no tenderness for me now.
He’d found out why we’d been so secretive and, from this point on, there’d be no more lies.
No more for anyone.
The hatred I expected from Gabriel didn’t mean I’d stopped feeling for him. Back at the loom tree gully, after the melee had gotten under control, I’d turned back to my good, human form. With my senses returned, I’d seen how weak he was, seen the cross wounds that marred his forehead and cheek. He’d passed out, and I’d assumed it was because of silver poisoning, so I’d opened my wrist to allow blood to drop into his mouth. Soon, I’d seen the shriveling effects of the silver on his skin fading, and I’d felt like at least one portion of the world was righted.