Free Bloodlands by Christine Cody Page A

back.
    “Just hush,” Mariah said, her voice ragged with the betrayal of her friend. “He could be dangerous to us, and you know it.”
    The dog added a few more yaps. We need him, Mariah. Trust me.
    She stared at Chaplin, as if wanting further explanation, and the dog added more, though he blocked Gabriel from knowing what he said.
    Mariah sent Gabriel a strange glance.
    He hoped whatever Chaplin had said worked. He needed the dog on his side, needed all the Badlanders to confide in him so he could find out about Abby. And after a short time, after he got some answers about why there’d been rumors about his lover’s presence in the New Badlands, he’d leave Chaplin to Mariah, just as it should be.
    She’d crossed her arms over her chest, as if she were trying her best to hold in the apology that came next.
    “The dog . . .”
    Her voice faded, but Chaplin barked at her.
    Out with it.
    Her flintiness returned with the spark to match. “The dog,” she said louder, “means for me to apologize. Monster talk is a serious thing, he says, and it isn’t supposed to be thrown about lightly.”
    This was progress. “You had your reasons.”
    She searched his gaze, then glanced at Chaplin, raising her brows as if to ask, Is that a gooough sorry for you?
    Meanwhile, Gabriel couldn’t help but feel the beats of her blood running, hot and passionate, notes crashing into each other to make that music he couldn’t resist. He imagined running his mouth over her, reveling in her heightened scent until he was drunk on the hunger that was consuming him even now. He could almost feel his fangs sinking into her flesh, popping it open to let the blood seep out so he could fill himself with the anger—or was there something else combined with it that drew him?—that made her seem so alive to him.
    Near dizzy, he fisted his hands, wrestling the emergence of fangs, the reddening of his irises, which would betray him.
    He turned around before that could happen, ducking out of the room just as Chaplin barked after him.
    “I’m off to that common area,” Gabriel said, his voice low enough to barely disguise how garbled it was.
    He could hear Mariah sucking in a breath to ask a question—probably Why?
    But he cut her off.
    “Don’t wait up for me,” he said as Chaplin darted ahead of him, obviously intending to show his new master to the tunnel that connected Mariah’s home to the place where the Badlanders gathered.
    “Chaplin!” Mariah called, her voice rushed.
    It’ll be okay, the dog thought. Then he mumbled something else to Mariah that Gabriel didn’t catch since Chaplin had blocked him out again.
    She didn’t say another word.
    Gabriel followed Chaplin beyond a steel door that stood adjacent to the one that led to her own underground workshop. Shutting the barrier behind him, he leaned against the wall of the tunnel, not moving another inch as he yanked his flask out of his pocket. He gulped the last of the blood, trying to imagine Mariah’s own life liquid coating his throat, then bursting into every part of him.
    Once, he’d wanted Abby’s blood like this, as well.
    He lowered his empty flask, knowing that this appetite for Mariah would only end just as badly if he gave in to it.

6
     
    Gabriel
     
    B y the time Gabriel reached the last door separating the tunnel from the common area, he was in as much control of his faculties as he could be.
    He’d always needed to battle for any kind of handle on himself since Abby had gone. But even as his hunger had threatened to unleash itself whenever he was around her, there’d always been something about the rhythms of her heartbeat, her breathing, that kept him together. Even on that first night, when he’d found her running from a gang of bad guys through the streets and he’d saved her solely because the smell of her fear—and only her scent—she had gotten to him.
    He’d needed to feed properly around Abby. Properly and frequently so her blood wouldn’t pull