Gabriel's Sacrifice (The Scrapman Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free

else lingered within as well, its hefty metal pressing against her back as she escaped with her life. In it, beneath the softness of the blanket, was another of their blackish weapons.
    Adeamyn had seen them use it before, but wasn’t entirely sure how the thing worked.
    Point and kill, seemed easy enough.
    As for the meat, allowing herself only two pieces per night, she was already reaching the bottom of her second bag. Adeamyn, rationing herself more strictly, would be taking only one on this night; but the hint of salt had been on her tongue long before the taste of dried meat. Death was in the air, pungent and close; its unique, metallic quality quite obvious, even from her bed of rusted steel.
    With the world draped in night, Adeamyn still kept to deeper shadow, walking the underside of the machine until she reached a clearing. There, where death was most palpable, she emerged cautiously. The horizon itself became lightly crowded, giving way to the rolling hills in the distance–the night sky meeting them at their peaks. Perhaps, by the next few sunrises, she could reach them, away from the structures and into the region sparsely speckled with trees.
    Granted, there would be far less cover, pitting it against her current logic for survival, but something told her the pale-ones didn’t exist out there. And if that much were true, there would be no need for cover any longer. But those hills were still far, and Adeamyn couldn’t allow herself to become lost to them just yet.
    The place she currently entered was racked with pockets of dust and debris, surrounded by stacks of dismantled and discarded machines. Some, scaling higher than others, reached nearly half the height of the building to her left. Adeamyn crossed the clearing, in search of the one that had fallen earlier.
    Her body must be here ... somewhere . Adeamyn would find them, if she could, if it was safe, and place her hand upon their cold skin–as if in death it were still somehow comforting. Be delivered , she would think, to a place where no pale-one can ever harm you again.
    The stench of the girl was well-present as Adeamyn traveled through the clearing, becoming stronger as she moved. Finding an array of nocturnal creatures engaged in an ominous lapping of tongues, they’d collectively gathered at the rim of a dark puddle. With the moon glistening across the liquid’s muddled surface, the creatures scattered as Adeamyn came to examine it.
    She died right here, spilling out, and was moved … recently.
    She then heard something within the darkness; and like the animals of night, Adeamyn took to nearest shelter.
    And there, beyond the hardened ground of the clearing, she found a single pale-one; and in his arms–loose legged, head bent badly at the neck–dangled the source of death in the air. Hers were the screams Adeamyn heard early in the day, followed by the rejoicing of pale-ones.
    Adeamyn watched him, his hands on the girl, and hated him with a growing fire in her chest. Was there no rest for the dead? Was there no end at all?
    But it was with an air of sadness that the pale-one placed her into the earth; and in doing this, no visible joy formed his features. There was only … regret.
    Adeamyn joined the numerous nocturnal creatures in wide-eyed study of this occurrence, when the pale-one, raising his voice, appeared to address her. Collapsing to shadow, she hid herself again. Had he seen her? The pale-one continued to talk, his voice soft and steady … but he wasn’t talking to Adeamyn … no … he was talking to someone else. She peered again in his direction. He was talking … to the girl in the earth.
    This pale-one, she realized, out of some form of respect, had come out this night … to care for her body.

3
Friggin’ Ninj a
    M ohammad pressed the back end of the shovel against the earth, leveling it the best he could. “Rest now,” he said. “Rest.”
    Scraping the soil from his boots and fastening the shovel to his back, he