The Lawgivers: Gabriel (8 page)

Which meant that, so far, there was no
actual proof one way or the other about the primitives. They could
be the remnants of that civilization or, as others had concluded,
another species entirely.

He shook his head. Apparently, they’d
felt like their achievements were of more importance than they were
themselves. Either they’d never succeeded in completely mapping
their own genetic code or they hadn’t managed to preserve the
records and the udai hadn’t found remains that would allow them to
extract DNA.

His mind wandered back to the lump on
the bed and he found himself trying to estimate her age from the
things she’d told him. He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t seem to
know herself. None of the primitives that he’d had contact with to
question seemed to have any notion of age—theirs or anyone else’s.
He supposed that wasn’t surprising when they seemed completely
focused on survival. Not much mattered besides food and water and
they were constantly on the hunt for that and fighting over it and
slaughtering one another over it.

Although, apparently, they were also
preoccupied with breeding if he could believe what Lexa had said,
and he did. It was the way she’d said it as much as what she’d said
that sounded completely convincing, and he thought he could
extrapolate and consider it widespread and not simply her personal
experience.

Her personal experiences still bothered
him. He wasn’t certain why he felt so disgusted and outraged by it
beyond the pure barbarism of it so he dismissed it.

It was for the thinkers, the scientists
and politicians, to decide what to make of the behavior of the
primitives. His job was merely to dispense justice, eliminate the
worst of the savages, and deliver the ‘redeemable’ to his people
for ‘rehabilitation’. Maybe they were right and he’d been wrong all
along. Maybe all they really needed was a little guidance and
discipline—and someone to prevent the strong from preying upon the
weak.

And maybe he’d been right all along and
he’d merely stumbled upon one primitive that seemed more
intelligent than the others and could be civilized?

In the end, he didn’t see that it
mattered a great deal to him or his mission. It was likely to take
generations to civilize them if it could be done at all.

If Lexa was the most promising example
he’d found—and he considered her that—then the people who’d taken
it upon themselves to ‘rehabilitate’ the natives had a long, hard
road ahead of them, because she was a little savage!

Chapter Five

“Get up.”

The order was delivered in a calm,
evenly modulated voice, but it might as well have been an angry
bellow. Lexa’s subconscious reacted to it as a threat, pumping a
flood of adrenaline through her system so abruptly that she shot
upwards toward consciousness too fast for the reasoning part of her
brain to catch up. Fear contributed to her confusion when she
discovered she was trapped by something she wasn’t currently in any
condition to identify. Struggling with panic, she fought her way
out of the cover she was tangled in and fell off the
bed.

The only good thing about that
circumstance was that it seemed to knock her closer to real
awareness and helped her free her arms and legs even while it sent
throbbing pain through every point her body made contact with the
hard floor. Through burning eyes she stared at the dark form bathed
in brilliant sunlight standing little more than a yard from her for
many moments before her sluggish brain finally began to assemble
the situation into something comprehensible.

“Now we talk.”

His expression was grimly determined
and set off more alarm bells in Lexa’s head even while it threw her
into deeper confusion. She felt her jaw go slack. She blinked at
him, trying to clear her vision and gather her wits at the same
time.

“What are you doing here?”

Completely at sea, Lexa blinked more
rapidly and glanced around the room, trying to figure out where
‘here’ was. Slowly, her memory returned. She frowned. “You brought
me here.”

His lips thinned. “I brought you back.
What were you doing here before that?”

Lexa furrowed her brow, wondering if
she’d dreamed half of what had happened even as the images
flickered through her mind. It seemed to her that she remembered
him asking her that the night before. “Don’t you know?”

Irritation flickered across his
features. “Tell me.”

She was sure she already had—she
thought. “I came to trade for supplies.”

“So you don’t live in this
village?”

Lexa’s confusion deepened but began to
clear as she recalled he’d said something about questioning her.
This was the interrogation she’d been so fearful about the night
before?

That didn’t seem right,
though.

Interrogations were generally proceeded
by knocking someone around to ‘soften’ them up and make sure they
knew one meant business and, quite often, the questions were
punctuated with blows if the answers didn’t come fast enough or
weren’t satisfactory.

At that thought, she shook her head.
“No. I stopped for supplies.”

He asked her everything he’d asked her
the night before and when she’d answered all of his questions, he
asked them all over again, merely posing the questions in a
different way. She was afraid to lie, but she began to get the
sense that he wasn’t satisfied with her responses and wanted her to
say something else. Uneasy despite the fact that he didn’t seem
inclined to beat the information he wanted out of her, she began to
search her mind for answers he might like better—short of saying
anything that might make her sound guilty of something.

If that was what he wanted, she
certainly wasn’t going to say it because she wasn’t guilty of
anything that she could see and she wasn’t about to give him an
excuse to punish her.

But maybe the answers were just too
short?

She began struggling to elaborate on
her responses, throwing in any details she thought might make him
accept her answers.

After a while, he ceased to question
her and merely stared at her hard enough she squirmed inwardly.
Straightening away from the wall he’d been propped against, he
turned toward the door. “Come.”

Dismay flickered through Lexa. Her
belly tightened with anxiety. “Where?”

Gah-re-al turned his head and fixed her
with a hard look. Granted, he’d found her pluckiness both
intriguing and amusing—to a degree—but he couldn’t allow her to
undermine his authority by questioning it at every turn. He might
not know the humans quite as well as he’d thought he understood
them, but he certainly knew that any sign of weakness or softness
would only encourage them to go for the throat.

Not that he was concerned that Lexa
would. For all her outward bravery, he could see that she was very
afraid and she was too fragile to offer much danger, but it
wouldn’t do for any of the others to see that he was soft as far as
she was concerned.

Or think that he was, he
amended.

Because he wasn’t. Empathizing with her
situation didn’t mean he would allow her any more latitude than the
others. He was a lawgiver. He was impartial.

In any case, he was in a foul humor. He
hadn’t slept particularly well—mostly because the floor was damned
uncomfortable—partly because he’d spent a good bit of the night
going over and over the things Lexa had told him.

And partly because he’d discovered he
was uncomfortably aware of sharing the room with a
female.

But mostly because the damned floor was
uncomfortable.

Lexa scrambled to her feet awkwardly.
“I didn’t do nuthin’ wrong,” she said plaintively.

“Not as far as I can ascertain at the
moment.”

She should’ve been relieved, but she
wasn’t. “I can go then?”

“You can come with me.”

Lexa stared at his back in dismay. “But
… you said I didn’t do nuthin’. Can’t I just go now?”

“No.”

The response was flat,
implacable.

Lexa snatched up her belongings and
hurried to follow him as he stepped out into the hallway. He
gestured for her to precede him. Dismay filled her. She’d hoped for
some opening to escape. It had flickered through her mind to try
the window, but the drop was far enough she was afraid the only
result in trying that would be a broken bone. If that happened, she
didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving even if she did manage to
escape—and she wasn’t likely to outrun him with something
broken.

Which would very likely lead to some
punishment for attempting escape.

There would be a chance at some point,
she assured herself as she preceded him down the hall and the
rickety stairs at the end. She discovered when she reached the
street that there were a good many people milling around.
Surprised, she glanced around to see what might have drawn them
out. She didn’t see anything that answered that question in her
mind, but before her imagination could supply her with anything
horrific, the angel spoke loudly directly behind her, making her
jump.

“Is this everyone?”

The people in the streets glanced at
one another uneasily.

Gabriel clapped a hand heavily down on
her shoulder, making Lexa’s knees go weak. “Go stand over
there.”

Lexa glanced up at his face and then
followed the direction of his gaze and his pointing finger. Nodding
a little jerkily, she obeyed with lagging steps, wondering if she
dared make a run for it. She had her supplies, after all, and the
street was full of people. Surely she could slip away without being
noticed?

By the time she’d reached the spot he’d
indicated, she discovered that Gabriel was striding along the
street, selecting people from among those gathered and sending them
to stand with her. Puzzled, wondering if there was some
significance to his selection, she hesitated, watching. He seemed
to zero in on the women with children first. That made her more
uneasy at first, but then he asked each if they had a man and, when
they reluctantly pointed the man out, he sent the man she indicated
with the woman.

Thoroughly confused by that, Lexa’s
curiosity overcame her fear sufficiently to distract her from the
search for an avenue of escape.

She’d felt a threat in being singled
out that hadn’t dissipated a great deal when he first began
separating other people out and sending them to stand with her. As
the group surrounding her grew, however, instead of feeling an
increasing need to act, Lexa began to feel far less threatened. She
didn’t know what his intention was, but he didn’t merely choose
women, so the idea that he was picking breeders fell by the wayside
along with the suspicion that he was choosing the ‘guilty’ for
punishment. He also didn’t select only men or predominantly men—who
were far more likely to be guilty of having broken some of his
laws, she was sure—so she began to think punishment wasn’t what he
had in mind.

Besides, he’d simply waded through the
gang members and slaughtered them. It didn’t seem unreasonable to
consider he would’ve done the same with anyone else he thought
guilty of breaking one of his laws.

After glancing toward her, or the group
with her, several times, he finally turned to the others who were
gathered and told them they could go about their business, that he
would return for them later.

That sounded ominous but even as Lexa
realized she’d completely mistaken his intentions, he approached
them.

“You have been selected for relocation
and rehabilitation.”

Lexa wasn’t alone in being completely
and totally baffled by that announcement. It didn’t sound like
punishment, but she was no longer convinced it wasn’t. She was
still trying to get up the nerve to ask what he meant when someone
else spoke up.

“What’s that mean?”

Gabriel stared coldly at the man who’d
spoken. “It means I’ve been ordered to take you to a place more
suitable to live so that my people can teach you how to take care
of yourselves.”

Everybody stared at him blankly—no
doubt because they had as much trouble understanding the words
veiled by his strange accent as she did!

“What’s wrong with what we got here?” a
woman asked in a quavering voice.

He sent her a look Lexa found difficult
to interpret. “Beyond everything?” he asked dryly.

“But … what if we don’t want to
go?”

“I don’t recall asking for volunteers.
Gather up the supplies you were instructed to bring.”

Everyone stared at him blankly. “The
food and water,” he clarified, and then glanced up at the sky. “If
we move quickly, we should be able to reach the first campsite I
selected before nightfall.”

Everyone merely stood where they were,
gaping at him with expressions that varied from angry disbelief to
terrified suspicion. He pointed. “That way. Now!”

Since he punctuated the command by
assuming a stance that seemed distinctly menacing—feet spread,
balled fists on his hips, a dark scowl on his face—and then lifted
his wings in such a way that he suddenly seemed twice his size the
entire group whirled enmasse and fled down the street. Lexa, a
little slower to react, was buffeted by the throng and nearly mowed
down. She stumbled but was able to keep her feet under her and leap
into motion with the others. She was carried along with the
panicked wave until they’d nearly reached the gate. She managed to
spare a look back then, however, and discovered the angel, contrary
to what she’d expected, wasn’t right behind them. He’d
vanished.