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their home for the day. It’ll be cooler down there than in here, and you can wear your heat suit, besides, while we get some sleep.”
    I cleared my throat, then gestured to the upset booths. “Did I do all this?”
    â€œIt was destroyed before we got here.”
    â€œGabriel, I’m . . .” Just say it. “I’m so sorry.”
    He still acted nonchalant. “Don’t worry—you left enough of the cat for me. You ripped out its side and worked on that while I had a feast at its neck.”
    Hearing him talking about our wild feeding so matter-of-factly should’ve shaken me up, but to tell the truth, it bothered me more that Gabriel had obviously refused to dress me, even after I’d turned back into my human form.
    He couldn’t stand being close to me.
    Was it because my nakedness would make him lose more control? No, probably not. He just couldn’t stand to be round me .
    I slid into my shirt, and he suddenly became real interested in the spot of pink paint-stripped wall on his left.
    â€œI’m not apologizing about the food,” I said. “I’m sorry for talking to you like I did. It was wrong. I overstepped.”
    â€œYou were right, though. There was some clearing that needed to happen between us if we’re to travel together.”
    I’d already put on my pants and was working on my boots. He’d brought in my weapons and backpack, taking good care of me, as usual.
    â€œIt’s all cleared, as far as I’m concerned,” I said. “There’ll be no more of it from me. You can be sure of it.”
    He rested his forearms on his bent knees, slouched, but not in a defeated way. He was shielding his reactions, acting as if my every move didn’t matter to him.
    I knew it just as well as I knew most things about him after we’d made the imprint through sex. Reading a vampire would’ve been a hell of a lot tougher without our link.
    â€œI’m done now,” I said.
    He finally looked at me, the blood on his chin bright against his pale skin. The sight of the red sent the same fear and hate through me as it always did—memories of those bad guys and what they’d done to my family.
    I stood, grabbing my heat suit from the floor. It was time to get into that feracat’s cove before sunrise hit.
    â€œAfter we rest,” I said, “we should leave shortly after dusk in our preter forms,” I said. “With enough speed, we might hit some population in Salts”—what they called old Utah—“pretty soon. Maybe we’ll come across a batch of people who can point us in the proper direction if we ask the right questions.”
    â€œSounds good.”
    â€œI’ll follow your lead, Gabriel. You were out here traveling more recently than me.”
    He got to his feet, too, graceful as all vampires probably were. “What I need more from you is trustworthiness.”
    I wished I could promise him that. “And I want the same thing from me. But wanting isn’t necessarily enough.” I tried to lighten both of us up. “I guess that’s why a cure would be dandy, huh?”
    For the first time in . . . well, it seemed like ever, Gabriel smiled. It wasn’t much—just a tip of one side of his mouth, really—but it sent a fizzing high through me.
    It was a smile that made me want to live up to its cautious optimism, and at that moment, I told myself that I could do that.
    I really could.

6
    Gabriel
    G abriel had a passing acquaintance with necropolises because he’d passed a few on his way to the Badlands in his search for Abby. The stench was one of a kind—a musty decay that carried over through years of hopelessness. And, here, in a nameless outpost they’d reached that was obviously about a hundred miles distant from a town of the dead, Gabriel detected the odor, even over the wood smoke that rode the main street.
    But the smell wasn’t