Free In Blood We Trust by Christine Cody Page A

of a goat took over.
    â€œNot sorrier than I was when humans had me locked up in this place,” he said. “But I sure don’t want to go back to days like those with any community.”
    Okay, so he was a major diplomat. He wasn’t even very convincing, but maybe there was a grain of truth to his comment. At least Reds weren’t prodding and poking him in the labs, like humans would still be doing if we Badlanders hadn’t liberated the place.
    The oldster said, “What the hell happened to the concept of a honeymoon period after our great triumph over the humans, anyway?”
    â€œWe’ll work all this out,” I said, ever the optimist. Mainly.
    â€œWe have no choice.” The oldster nodded at the Civils, and they left the room.
    I remembered that my shirt was undone, and I held it together, suddenly not feeling so free or celebratory.
    â€œI swear, Michael, it just . . . happened,” I said. “We were having fun out there, like humans, and—”
    â€œNot like humans, Mariah. Not the ones who weren’t lowlords or their followers. Or religious zealots.”
    He was right.
    What had happened?
    And how had I lost so much control that it’d been simple to become such a part of it?
    My questions were interrupted by a screech outside my door in the hallway, and just like that, the oldster had his revolver out again.
    But when someone screamed “Murder!” as they ran by, he drew both of his pieces.

7
    Gabriel
    I n a darkened stone hallway, lit only by the few working solar-powered lanterns that the Badlanders had preserved outside the hub during the power-blast attack, Gabriel stared through the haze of red covering his vision.
    His hands.
    Blood.
    He wasn’t sure how it’d gotten there. He only recalled the gathering, Mariah . . . then the oldster and a group of Civils and older were-creatures breaking them all apart before shooing them off. That was when he and some other vampires at the same early stage of development had grouped together while going back into the asylum. Then . . .
    Gabriel tried to remember the rest of it. But he only knew that he and these other younger vamps had been restless after all the foreplay in the courtyard had amounted to nothing. They’d understood each other’s torment, too, because, at their stage—“the gloaming,” McKellan the elder called it—everything was a confused tug-of-war between what they’d known as humans and what they wanted as vampires.
    Gabriel had genuinely believed that a nip of blood from his flask would help him get steady, so he’d been heading to his room to take care of himself.
    But he’d clearly never made it. Everything in his mind was dark until this moment, when he’d heard a voice in the near distance scream, “Murder!”
    Dizzy, he looked around the hallway. His red vision began to clear, and he realized he was on the floor, leaning against a wall, hearing sounds—slurping, moaning. Hissing.
    Then he saw a swarm of vampires feasting on a body. A . . . Civil monster?
    A tide of horror reared up in his chest, sending his eyesight to a wash of dim, normal colors. Something like humanity had surged back to him, but it was too late.
    As he kept looking on, he saw that the body was that of a Civil . . . a man who had the long neck of a giraffe and the spots of one, too. He was mangled, his throat torn out, his belly flayed open, his fur scattered and mixed with a pool of gritty red.
    Then Gabriel’s view was cut off as the young vampires who’d left the courtyard with him flooded over the Civil again, their heads bobbing, utterly animal as they drank.
    Just like me, Gabriel thought as if his mind were detached from the rest of him. They are me.
    One of the vampires, a woman with long brunette hair, reared back from the greedy crowd, blood dripping from her chin then to the ground as she hissed in pleasure.
    Gabriel scented that blood