In Blood We Trust (19 page)

“Are you telling me they just let you go because of some monster emergency?”

“I doubt that. They know how easy it'd be to hunt us back down and they're depending on us to be there when they return.”

Stamp paused, measuring her. Her story didn't make sense at all, and it sent his suspicion into overdrive.

What were the monsters up to?

Mags kept talking. “Really, you should see—everything's in shambles out there.”

He turned back to the lock, finally getting it to cooperate. He sprung it with a click, and the door eased open.

Using that door for balance, he hopped into the hallway. Mags inserted herself under his arm, bringing it over her shoulder.

Their faces were so close that he could've kissed her, and he almost did—one big smackeroo that wouldn't mean a thing but a hurrah that they finally had a chance to run, albeit he didn't know how far they'd get.

He even had an idea of where they might go. Before they'd gotten jailed, Mags had wanted to travel to another hub, just to see if it was powerless, too, and to see if they could get help with Stamp's leg, which would now require a replacement rather than just simple medical attention.

It sounded like a fine notion at this point, because after they gathered themselves, and maybe even informed higher human leadership as to what was going on with the monsters in GBVille, he'd come back here.

Back to Gabriel so he could settle old scores, just as he'd always intended.

“Are the vamps so busy that we can make it past the perimeter of this hub without them catching us?” he asked.

Mags smiled, and for a snapping second, that smile seemed different to Stamp.

Then the smile turned normal. “Let's give it a go.”

She started to walk, and he limped along with her, still thinking of that smile and why the hell it wasn't sitting very well with him.

T
he oldster returned to my cell after Chaplin had left, and then he transferred the demons to yet a third block.

When he returned again, he didn't come alone.

If I'd had the emotional energy, I might've hit the ceiling when I saw Neelan in all his Civil chimera glory. For a half-snake who'd been behind bars a few days, he sure looked dignified with that stately beard and regal posture. But he was also intimidating as hell while he wove back and forth on his tail.

“Be nice,” the oldster said to him. “I only let you out because we need to get a few things straight round here. Monsters listen to both you and Mariah, so if you can come to some sort of understanding, it'd be in the best interests of us all.”

He had his hand on a holstered revolver. Tales went that a silver bullet would do damage to Civils, too, just as
any
bullet would, since those kind of monsters weren't as hardy as real preters.

Neelan looked down his nose at me. His eyes were those sunken type, small, embedded in faint wrinkles that he'd earned over the years as something both mortal and mythical.

When he talked, it wasn't to me—it was to the oldster.

“I could get you into a great deal of trouble for putting me away as you did.”

“But since I'm being kind, here,” the oldster said, “I'm thinking you won't go that route.”

He seemed to believe that the oldster would put him right back in the slammer, and he changed the topic.

“Where are the cell guards?”

“I told 'em I could handle watching a few demons as well as Mariah fine enough, so they left this quarter to me from the very beginning. No one will have seen you transferred here.”

“You certainly trust everyone to obey—even the Reds.” Neelan's nostrils flared, as if the very word
Red
made him ill.

“Right now,” the oldster said, “I'm not one to much trust, be they Red or Civil or . . .” He glanced at the emptied demon cells down the way. “. . . anything else.”

Neelan was still looking at me like I was dung on a boot heel.

I was still smarting from Chaplin's abandonment, so I felt like dung, too. “Don't worry—I'm not going to kill you, Neelan. That's not why the oldster brought you here.”

“One never knows.”

I let a sigh escape me, but the oldster was almost pleading with his gaze for me to just deal with the Civil.

Neelan shifted on his tail, and I hoped that the oldster remembered just how damned fast a serpent could strike.

Especially one with the ability to breathe fire.

“We'll want Gabriel in custody,” the Civil said, coming right out with his terms. “Then, as a community, we'll want to go to council on plans detailing how we're going to manage crime and punishment among us.”

The oldster looked him up and down. “Seems like you've done some thinking while you've been in the stew.”

“Don't mistake me. In the future, I, for one, would be in favor of separate monster communities so we might avoid any more difficulties. I understand that this isn't the time to advocate for that, though.”

He was acknowledging that it was the vampires who pulled most of the monster load when it came to containing the humans, but, as he'd noted, there'd be a better time to bring up post-rebellion issues in the coming months.

It was just that right now, he was demanding Gabriel.
That
was what held my immediate focus.

“What would you plan to do with Gabriel if he's turned over to you?” I asked.

“Don't worry about that,” he said. “We'll treat your boyfriend with the respect he deserves.”

“Somehow this doesn't console me.”

The oldster paid no mind to that. “Just what would this sort of respect entail?”

“First, we would have to jail Gabriel for running away from the scene of the crime, because that in itself was worthy of punishment.”

The oldster narrowed his gaze. “Running away doesn't mean that Gabriel is guilty.”

“It doesn't exactly prove innocence.” Neelan looked down at the oldster. “He hasn't been tried, but his actions have spoken loudly, Michael.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” the oldster said. “That's how any good and just society should work.”

The Civil seemed to pity the oldster for still believing that concept. “Wasn't that part of what went wrong in the past, sir? History tells us that the bad guys always got their share of the benefit of the doubt Before in this country. From that point on, things spiraled out of control and yielded a nightmare.”

I clamped my mouth shut. Long ago, our justice system had been a thing of beauty . . . until criminal rights had gone too far. Eventually, during trials, victims had been put through the wringer more than the accused, both big-time and small, and that was mainly because the government had quietly supported most of the bad guys; corporate interests demanded it from the politicians for the henchmen who did most of their dirty work.

“Gabriel isn't a bad guy,” I said, as if that were all the trial he needed.

Neelan only looked weary.

Ah, I thought. Here he was—the creature who'd been so courteous when this community had gotten started.

I backed off a little. “It's just that I know him, Neelan. He showed us what he was made of back in the New Badlands.”

He didn't get superior on me this time. “You may not believe it when I tell you this, but I do wish there were a way around jailing him, Mariah. However, you have to understand my bigger view—we can't condone a place where Civils are hunted.”

The oldster got sarcastic. “Maybe this community
should
separate, then. Right now.”

“By doing that,” Neelan said, “we halve our numbers against the humans.”

“That's what I've been getting at all along,” the oldster said, clearly at the end of his rope.

We were at such an impasse that there indeed didn't seem to be anyplace to go.

But Neelan tried again. “Mariah. Please. Gabriel won't be prosecuted without fairness. I can promise that.”

I couldn't. Wouldn't.

So I refused to take part in it.

Neelan cursed under his breath and looked to the oldster.

“I say we convene a council now so we can bring about some better action. One representative from every faction, equal in number.”

“Looks as if we have no choice,” the oldster said, giving me the stink-eye, too. Then he planted his hands on his skinny hips. “I take this to mean, then, that I won't have to put you back into solitary, Neelan.”

“I'm willing to be more diplomatic than I have been. But”—he gestured to me—“I would have to insist that she goes nowhere, just as I couldn't.”

The oldster sent me a glance that told me he was glad Neelan had turned a corner and I'd better not say anything to ruin the moment.

Yup, it looked like I'd be here until either I gave up Gabriel, which was never going to happen, or the real killer was found. . . .

A sound in the corridor made me look out of my cell, and I saw a dark-haired angel with gray wings. Or maybe I should say a “fake angel” because these kinds of Civils just had wings to make them fly—they weren't celestial, although for years, humans had mistaken them for that whenever a careless quasi-angel was sighted in the right kind of light.

The oldster didn't chide the quasi for being here after he'd issued orders to leave the area clear for this meeting. And when the Civil saw Neelan, he came right to his side.

“Where have you been?” the quasi asked.

Neelan exchanged a loaded glance with the oldster. I wondered if Michael had privately cut some kind of deal with the chimera, negotiating for his silence in return for more strenuous effort in looking into the killer.

The half-man, half-serpent kept eye contact with the oldster as he spoke to his comrade. “I've been out in the hub and beyond, watching for Gabriel. I should have left better word than just a message.”

“We were concerned.”

“I appreciate that, Tydeus. But I'm fine.”

When other Civils trickled into the corridor, the oldster grunted, surrendering to circumstance.

“Don't orders mean anything to you all?” he asked.

A Civil creature with cushiony gray skin and tusks in his man-face said, “We heard Neelan's back, so we came.”

They all looked at me, but I didn't receive the same sort of relieved welcome. As far as they were concerned, I was Gabriel's partner, former heroine status be damned.

But where were all the Reds? It seemed like the Civils were the only ones who'd broken the oldster's request.

Then I felt a breeze, and I noticed shadows on the torch-licked wall.

Shadow people? Reds?

Whoever they were, they were standing just in back of all those Civils, unnoticed, eerie in their quietude.

More of the Civils were arriving, calling out greetings to Neelan, and he kept having to explain his absence.

They were distracted enough for the Reds—yes, I saw now that they were definitely vampires—to gather.

And gather.

I never said a word, and when they sprang, chaos erupted.

Before my next breath, the vamps had barreled into the Civils, shutting them and their own selves into individual cells. In the space across from me, where a male vamp had captured Neelan, I saw that he had gloves on his hands to protect himself from the silver of the bars.

A stream of fire flared out of Neelan's mouth until the vamp produced a metal cone.

He'd actually been prepared for a flame-breathing chimera . . .

The fire column sputtered out as the vamp smacked the cone over Neelan's mouth.

Other vamps clearly had cones, too, and the fire stopped from every shut cell it'd been coming from.

“Shit!” yelled the oldster, who'd knelt down, taking cover.

At the same time, the quasi-angel took wing, rising toward the ceiling as a vampire jumped at him and missed clawing him down by mere inches.

Across the way, I saw the other vampire already staring into Neelan's eyes, whispering.

Mind-screwing?

Had this happened because me and Gabriel were back, and this was how the vamps were protecting us? By wiping the Civils' memories of the killing and then this attack?

War. If any Civils managed to get out of this, there'd be a hefty price for us Reds. . . .

I kicked at the bars while Neelan struggled with his vampire. He was able to get out from his cone to scream one last thing at Tydeus.

“Go! Find that thing once and for all!”

The quasi spread his gray wings to their full span, covering the width of the ceiling, just as Neelan blankly fell to the ground, and his vampire backed away, victorious.

I kept hearing Neelan's last words.

562?

God-all, when Ilsa and Rachel had told me that the Civils had been following the Reds,
had
it meant that the others suspected that we'd been visiting 562 in that cave?

I yelled at the oldster while pointing at the quasi. “Stop him!”

But by the time the oldster heard me, the winged creature had zoomed down the corridor, gone.

In the cells round us, more Civils were dropping to the ground. I could hear the slump of their bodies just as easily as I could see that vampire bending over Neelan across from me, whispering again to him.

They had to be telling the Civils to sleep for the time being. It would give the vampires time to mind-screw all the Civils before they called it a night.