Read The Lawgivers: Gabriel Online

Authors: Kaitlyn O'Connor

Tags: #romance, #erotic, #scifi, #futuristic, #erotic futuristic scifi

The Lawgivers: Gabriel (3 page)

BOOK: The Lawgivers: Gabriel
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The first colonists to arrive had
nearly starved because the pests invaded their fields, trampling
down the delicately nurtured plants they didn’t uproot and feed
on.

It hadn’t aroused any pity or empathy
for them in the hearts of the colonists.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the
colonists, at least the first colonists, sided with the faction
that thought eradication of the pests was the best
solution.

The scientists believed that the event
that had brought the world of the builders to an end was a cosmic
collision—one devastating enough to cause a mass extinction—or at
least set one in motion. As far as he was concerned that nixed any
possibility that these beings were related to those who’d built the
cities they’d unearthed.

The problem with being too dependent
upon the technology of an advanced civilization was that the
typical citizen had no real knowledge or understanding of the
technology they were so dependent upon and when it was taken away
from them they had no skills to survive. That, he was sure, was
what had become of the builders—who’d been intelligent enough to
build great cities and advanced technology but too arrogant to
husband their resources or prepare themselves for disaster. They’d
died out and this savage species had survived because they were
savages.

Lifting his nitin for a drink,
Gah-re-al tilted his head and looked up at the star the natives
called the sun. It rode low on the horizon, edging toward
sunset.

It was dangerous to enter a human
village in the day time but even more so after dark.

Particularly if one happened to be
udai.

The humans were terrified of them—which
meant they attacked viciously and killed on sight if they could
manage it.

He shrugged. One udai of the Elite was
more than a match for a dozen humans—no matter how
savage.

Of course, he thought wryly, if there
were more than a dozen, he might be in trouble. Questioning the
guards might be the quickest way to discover what he was up
against, but it would also be the quickest way to alert the entire
village of his presence and intentions.

There was nothing for it. He was going
to have to take the guards out and see what he could discover from
a reconnoiter once he was inside the village walls.

Chapter Two

Lexa knew she was in trouble as soon as
she entered the mercantile.

Her luck had held up until that moment.
Neither of the guards had roused to challenge her or chase after
her and the few people she’d seen apparently believed she’d been
allowed entrance. None of them had seemed alarmed or confronted
her. They’d merely glanced at her curiously, or uneasily, and
hurried on their way.

She saw two men and a woman that looked
to be an older but probably wasn’t much, if any, beyond breeding
years before she saw anybody that looked safe enough to approach
for directions. The trade area of any village was usually in the
middle for the best protection, but she couldn’t afford to waste a
lot of time hunting. She glanced at the boy several times as she
approached him, trying to decide whether he was old enough to be a
threat or not and finally decided he was still young enough he
probably didn’t have a lot of interest in women yet.

“You know the way to the
mercantile?”

The boy stopped abruptly and stared at
her owl-eyed.

It sent a frission of fear through her.
She finally decided it wasn’t her voice, though, that she hadn’t
inadvertently given away her gender, but rather his fear of
strangers.

“You got stuff to trade?”

Lexa resisted the urge to roll her eyes
and point out that there wouldn’t be much point in going to the
mercantile if she didn’t. “Do you know or not?”

The boy nodded vigorously and turned to
point. “Three streets down and then one that way.”

‘That way’ was left—his left. There
didn’t seem to be a lot of people that knew their left from their
right anymore if they ever had, but the directions were simple and
clear enough and that was all that mattered. She nodded, glanced
uneasily at the horizon, and kept going.

She should be able to reach the
mercantile before the sun dropped below the roofs, she decided.
Thirty, maybe forty minutes of haggling, she calculated, and she
should be on her way out of the village before it was good
dark.

As she’d expected, the closer she got
to the trade center of the town, the more people she saw. They
glanced at her curiously—no surprise! Nobody was used to seeing
strangers and she always got plenty of glances, but they dismissed
her as they generally did. She didn’t look anybody in the eyes.
That was dangerous. She merely glanced at them long enough to be
sure they weren’t overly interested in her and then moved on to
assess the next possible threat.

The mercantile was in sight when she
saw the stranger entering the trade center of town from the
opposite direction. She knew that he was a stranger just as she was
because everybody he passed either stopped abruptly and stared or
glanced at him uneasily and rushed away.

He was a bold son-of-a-bitch, striding
down the center of the road as if he owned the place. In fact, she
thought for several terrifying minutes that he did own the place,
that he was the local king. The long, black coat flapping around
his narrow hips, long, muscular legs, and knee high boots was
dusty, though, not spattered with the typical mixture of filth she
was accustomed to seeing—a combination of months of grime, grease,
food, and usually a mixture of blood spatters from people who’d had
unpleasant encounters with him.

The orange dust denoted somebody that
had crossed the barrens.

Stranger, she decided and tried to
dismiss him.

The arrogant swagger of his walk was
hard to dismiss, though. This was somebody either too stupid to
live—a fact not upheld by the harsh plains of his face that
suggested he was well past first maturity despite the odd lack of
any kind of facial hair—or he was completely confident that he was
the most dangerous of all.

No great surprise that he felt that
way, she thought uneasily as his long stride brought him closer and
closer. He was armed to the teeth. There were two knives in his
belt, one in his boot, some kind of club dangling by his side and
something bulky enough strapped to his back beneath his coat to
make him look like a hunchback.

Please, gods, don’t let him be headed
to the mercantile, Lexa thought unhappily, slowing her step and
moving a little closer to the edge of the road.

Either the movement or something else
about her caught his attention because his gaze zeroed in on her
and his eyes narrowed assessingly. She felt her heart skip several
beats and lifted a shaking hand to her moustache to check
it.

* * * *

Gah-re-al wasn’t sure what it was about
the small figure approaching him from the opposite direction that
caught his attention, but something did and he studied the boy
assessingly. After a few moments, he realized it was the fact that
nothing fit and nothing fit because the ‘boy’ was actually a
she—disguised to look like a boy.

Except that she didn’t, regardless of
the stringy mat of hair she’d covered her face with.

The question was, what was she up
to?

In his experience, no one went to such
lengths to project a lie unless they were up to something and that
something was generally unethical at the very least and usually
something illegal.

Even that didn’t seem to fit, though.
As hard as it was—between the dirt and the hair--to penetrate her
disguise, he thought she was young. Her stature and build also
implied that. The ragged, filthy clothes she wore fluttered around
her and barely touched the body beneath, which suggested she was
thin to the point of emaciation.

Of course that didn’t necessarily mean
that she was young, it just suggested it. It could also mean she
simply couldn’t fight for enough food.

Or it could mean that she was not a
villager.

None that he’d seen beyond the bullies
that ran the place looked well fed but they didn’t look starved
either.

So maybe she was up to nothing more
nefarious than stealing food and the disguise was in the hope that
she couldn’t be identified if she managed to succeed and
escape?

It bothered him to think that was the
plan. The law was clear and unyielding. There were no gray areas.
Stealing was stealing and against the laws of the land—the laws
laid down by the acting colonial government—the laws he was duty
bound to protect.

Stealing food was, in some ways, a far
worse crime than stealing anything else when food was so scarce and
so necessary to survival.

On the other hand, it was also
necessary to her survival and it chafed to consider punishing her
when it was clear she was in desperate need.

He shook the thought off. It wasn’t any
part of his job to uphold or ignore the laws as he pleased. There
were no extenuating circumstances as far as the judiciary was
concerned.

She hadn’t stolen—yet—as far as he
could see, though, and until and unless she did, she hadn’t broken
any laws.

And he had far worse lawbreakers to
contend with at the moment.

If she slipped through his fingers
while he was dealing with the murderous, cutthroat gang that ran
the village ….

Well, he couldn’t be expected to round
up and punish every lawbreaker! It seemed doubtful there would be
many of the primitives left roaming free if he gathered up every
one that had ever committed any crime.

* * * *

When the stranger stopped in the middle
of the street, Lexa stepped up onto the boardwalk and headed into
the mercantile. Relief flooded her when she’d stepped into the dim
interior but it didn’t last long.

One of the local gang members had the
proprietor by the throat when she entered. Hearing her enter, he
glanced over his shoulder and looked her over in a survey that took
in everything from the top of her hat to her boots. Cold crept
through her when she saw interest light his eyes.

She was in trouble and she knew it.
Either he’d seen right through her disguise and figured out she was
a woman or he liked boys and neither possibility boded well for
her.

Visions of being knocked down and
rutted by the beast danced through her head—images supplied by past
experiences she’d worked hard to block from her mind. For a handful
of seconds, she considered simply giving in to the inevitable in
the hope that he would finish quickly and not do her too much
damage in the process.

She knew that would be the smart thing
to do. All she had to do was not resist. She didn’t have to try to
pretend she wanted it—which she knew she absolutely could not do to
save her life! If he hadn’t been half as revolting as he was she
couldn’t carry that off. None of her experiences with men had made
that anything less than repulsive or pure torture. It didn’t matter
that it never took them long to get done. It made her skin crawl,
revolted her to her soul, and it took forever to put it out of her
mind.

He released the proprietor abruptly,
turned, and settled his elbows on the counter behind him. Grinning
broadly, he showed a double row of blackened, half rotted teeth.
“Well,” he drawled. “What have we got here?”

She couldn’t do it, she realized in
dismay. If he touched her she wasn’t going to be able to just let
him do what he wanted to do. She’d fight. She wouldn’t be able to
help herself and when she did he would either beat her into
submission or kill her.

Either way, she wasn’t likely to make
it out of the mercantile intact.

She intended to give it a damned good
try, though!

Running wouldn’t do any good. He was
fat—the soft, well fed look of the predators that never actually
worked for their food—but less than two yards separated them.
Barefoot, she thought she could’ve given him a run for his money
even if he was tall enough his stride alone was more than a match
for her speed. With the ill-fitting boots she was wearing she
didn’t think she could get up to speed fast enough to evade the
reach of those long arms.

“Don’t want no trouble, mister,” she
said in a gruff voice. “Just lookin’ to trade for a little food an’
water an’ I’ll be on my way.”

“You got somethin’ to
trade?”

It wasn’t the proprietor that
asked.

Clearly the kid wasn’t the only genius
the town boasted.

“Got a couple of things.”

“But you ain’t paid yer village
taxes.”

Dismay settled in Lexa’s gut. It wasn’t
uncommon for the gangs to demand toll but she knew from the way the
man was looking at her that the toll he wanted wasn’t going to be
anything she wanted to pay.

“I got somethin’ for that, too,” she
said shakily, digging in the pocket of her pants and fishing out
the tattered paper there. “It’s a picture book.”

For a few moments she thought she had
the situation handled. Hope surged through her with a knee
weakening sense of relief when his eyes lit with interest that
seemed less personally threatening. “What kinda
pictures?”

BOOK: The Lawgivers: Gabriel
8.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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