Free In Blood We Trust by Christine Cody Page B

as if it’d gone into him and taken hold, and he craved it deep in his belly. He shuddered. His appetite had gotten much worse during the gathering, when he’d been so close to Mariah . . .
    As he watched the group, he felt as if the only remaining humanity in him were floating, isolated, a part of their hunger yet not a part of it. But then a jagged screech brought him out of his lull, and he clawed the floor as he saw the chimera Neelan, half-man, half-serpent, quickly writhing into view, breathing a stream of fire at the brunette vampire and pulling her by the hair away from the body while pressing a silver cross to her forehead.
    She screamed while more Civils came out of the shadows, all with crucifixes that they used on the vampires, their skin sizzling as they cried out.
    Gabriel didn’t move as a Civil came at him, too. When the quasi-angel—its gray wings only for show, its disposition hardly heavenly—pressed a crucifix to Gabriel’s cheek, he took it as his punishment, gritting his teeth, scenting the burn of his flesh.
    â€œNo,” he heard someone say over by the victim’s body. It sounded like the oldster.
    The quasi-angel with the crucifix backed off Gabriel when he saw that he was getting no resistance from him. Gabriel’s cheek flared with hot agony as he looked over at the carnage again.
    The oldster was on his knees in front of the victim while the Civils pulled away the tamed vampires. He still had his revolvers in hand as he raised his arms, burying his face in the cradle of them, rocking forward.
    â€œJust get them out of here,” the oldster said, voice muffled. Then he lowered his arms and yelled, “Get them in silver restraints and keep them in the empty north cell block until I come.”
    Neelan spoke up. “You’re in charge?”
    â€œWho else?”
    Neelan’s bearded jaw stiffened, but his fellow Civils had already started wrapping silver chains around the vampires, roughly pushing them out of the hallway as the criminals stumbled along. None of the Civils had attacked them yet, though they kept glancing at the dead body with a mix of shock and rage on their faces.
    As Gabriel’s quasi-angel guard moved to bind him, the oldster barked out, “He’s already calmed down—can’t you see that he dragged himself away from this?”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œI’ve got him for now. Go on with the others.”
    The Civil kept standing there. “You’re a were. A Red. Why should I—?”
    â€œDon’t make this more of a fight than it already is.” The oldster took a breath, exhaled. “The community’s gonna decide what happens next, and I aim to provide enough coolheadedness so that right is done. Understand? We need to find out who initiated this before punishment’s wielded. You can’t fault vampires for hopping on a spill of blood after it’s out there.”
    â€œYes, we can,” the quasi-angel said.
    â€œThat’s how vamps are .” Then the oldster shut his mouth, gathered himself. He quietly said, “You need us just as much as we need you if we’re going to band together against the people who’d hunt us.”
    The quasi-angel looked down at Gabriel with such venom that even a vampire might’ve withered under it, if that vampire weren’t already decimated from self-hatred.
    The Civil didn’t attack Gabriel, but he remained close. “We’ll take the matter to the community, like you said. We lock up the ones who were a part of this until we decide what to do. And when you isolate the vamp who brought down . . .” He gestured toward the bloody victim, grimacing. “When you do that, we take an eye for an eye.”
    The oldster nodded, his gaze slipping to Gabriel.
    Hell, Gabriel thought, the word biting through him. There’d be hell and more to pay, and he wasn’t so sure he and all the others didn’t