In Blood We Trust (8 page)

He bounded up the stairs, following Taraline. What, was he going to bring back a bunch of Civils to haul me out of here, away from Gabriel?

I didn't think so.

I didn't watch him go because I was already locked onto Gabriel, whose irises had gone red, his fangs sprung.

Maybe I should've just listened to Chaplin, but seeing Gabriel step up to Pucci had made my sight go a deeper violet, my blood taking over like high, sharp, cold/hot screams through my veins. It killed me to be even this far away from him, and I didn't know what I would do if I ever had to be away for long.

The drumbeats had slowed, and from across the clearing, I realized that a mixture of ethereal voices had added themselves to the music.

Russian?

Perhaps, because we had a family of werewolves from that part of the world that we'd liberated in this asylum. I didn't speak their language, but I could've sworn it was poetry braiding itself into the chaos.

Under the spell of everything that had happened tonight, I finally went to Gabriel, resting my hand on the back of his cool neck. As I thought of what he might have done to Pucci—
blood, bad man, a reckoning
—I pulled him down to me, speaking against his lips, avoiding his fangs while testing the danger of them.

His thoughts coursed into mine, and I gasped with the thrust of our link.

The drums became my blood, drawing it toward my skin and to Gabriel with urgent need, making it so that I wasn't sure where the music ended and me and Gabriel began.

Our world was steeped in blood, defined by it while it tumbled in us, our rhythms racing until there was no more thought, just impulse.

We tempted each other, mouth to mouth, brushing, gauging. No kissing, just strained breaths, his cool, mine warm. His fingers were equally cool as he toyed with the lacings of my blouse.

I gasped, not expecting this. But it seemed natural with the heat in the air, in
us
. With the exposed skin, the sensual swaying and the nuzzling and nipping, the rising aroma of lust round us as nails drew blood lines on flesh.

I wanted to be a part of it all. A part of him.

So very ready for more, even if it might harm me.

Gabriel understood that, and he undid my shirt. When he parted it, the air hit my skin. His palms covered me as he gripped my waist, his thumbs tracing my stomach. My shirt scratched against my breasts, making the tips go hard.

Behind me, an interested bystander ran a hand down my back, as if wanting to be a part of me and Gabriel, too, a real community of Reds.

Only Reds.

Nothing else mattered when Gabriel skimmed his hands upward, cupping my breasts. The creature behind me tugged down on my shirt and, for the first time I can remember, I didn't mind being revealed.

We were monsters who didn't have to hide now.

When Gabriel seized me by the waist and lifted me into the air, I couldn't breathe. Other hands grabbed at me, at the lacings on the sides of my pants, but their fingers didn't undo them. Maybe they wanted to be able to feel me as I exploded into what fascinated them—a form echoing 562's.

The daughter our origin had chosen to exchange with rather than anyone else.

Gabriel pressed his face against my bared belly, rubbing against it, absorbing my scent. Through our link, I could sense his temperature rising, adapting to my own.

By now, more Reds had gathered round us, whispering words I couldn't really hear. Most had shed their clothing, and trails of blood marked their skin—nail skids, appetizers for something that hung in the atmosphere like a brutal promise. It seemed that the drums were louder than ever, stomping on my chest, or maybe that was only my body giving way to what it should.

“Your blood,” said someone in the crowd.

And, suddenly, others took up the chant.

I looked down at Gabriel as he looked up at me, fire in his eyes, his fangs sharp in his adoring smile.

He was going to bite me again, even if it would poison him. He wanted me that much.

No one had ever felt that way about me before.

In utter ecstasy, I leaned back my head, listening to the chanting—
your blood, blood, blood
—then spread my arms as if I could take flight. My shirt hung off me like wings.

I could feel Gabriel, ready to strike at a tender point in me, and not knowing exactly where it would be only added to my excitement.

I sucked in a breath . . .

But before I felt a bite, someone yanked me down, away from Gabriel, plunging me into a sea of bodies that forced me to the ground.

In the next fevered heartbeat, I felt silver links wrap round my limbs, restraining me, and I grunted in discomfort as it sent me to weakness.

A gunshot split the air. So did a familiar voice.

“Back off!” the oldster yelled over the cacophony.

The music had stopped, but the hissing and growling had just begun.

I strained at the bodies round me, but they were determined to keep me on the ground—older, wiser were-creatures who'd gone through a half change so that they were part animal, part human. Half-pumas, lions, tigers . . . They were all still capable of logic before it melted away with the reshaping of the bones and form.

The oldster fired his revolver again. I started to cool as I noticed that the older were-creatures carried stakes, too, and that a whole lot of Civils were down here backing them up.

So Chaplin
had
gone after help.

“Her blood is off-limits,” the oldster yelled. “You hear me?”

From somewhere, a vampire hissed, “You weres want it.”

The growling intensified from the monsters who were guarding me. It sounded as if the younger were-creatures who'd been dancing were slinking back to their elders now, chastened.

I knew that the were-community was curious about what might happen if they tasted my blood, much less exchanged with me. And I knew that right before me, a power struggle was beginning between them and every other faction—the ones who couldn't claim me as their actual blood sister.

As I took that in, I went still.

Finally accepted,
I thought, and I knew just how psychotic that was as tears started to blur my gaze. But after all this time being stranded on the outside of my Badlander group, I couldn't help myself.

I could see Gabriel through the bodies surrounding me, and I knew I needed him just as much as I needed everyone else. Even more so.

“Listen to you vamps,” the oldster muttered, before saying even louder, “Nobody gets her blood. She stays one of a kind, got it?”

“One of your kind,” said a vampire.

The oldster ignored him and spoke to his posse. “Take her away until these fiends calm down. You older weres corral the younger ones and give them a talking-to
pronto
. We need to stand together—all of us, Reds and Civils—or there'll be shit to pay if the humans ever start fighting us.”

A pair of Civils, who weren't affected by silver, lifted me, carrying me toward the asylum, where I was pretty sure I'd get a talking-to, also.

The silver had cooled my half-changed body back to normal in record time, and I cooperated with the Civils as they brought me to my quarters and set me on the bed.

“She's kosher,” said the oldster after inspecting me and tucking his revolver into a holster on his hip. I was sure the old-time weapon was full of silver bullets, which would poison a vampire, sucking energy and power just as surely as a shot in the heart would do away with a were-creature.

The guards unwrapped the chains from me, and I rubbed my skin.

“Thanks, Michael,” I said.

Judging from the slant of the oldster's mouth, I could tell he wasn't sure whether I was being a smart-ass or not.

“I mean it,” I said. “We just got caught up in . . . something . . . out there.”

“Something? How about we just call it a near feeding frenzy? Do you have any idea what they would've done to you, Mariah? Chaplin's so pissed at you that he wouldn't even come with me out there.”

I swallowed, then raised my chin.

“They wouldn't have done a thing I couldn't have handled,” I said, surprising even myself with my cheek.

The oldster raised a gray eyebrow. “Cocky. Maybe you think you've become some kind of goddess who's untouchable or something.”

The memory of what that vampire had proclaimed when I'd been visiting 562 slapped at me: It wasn't our origin who was going to “break out,” he'd said to me with that strange vampire's smile. And when I remembered how those three guard vampires had
all
looked at me, I could almost believe I
was
untouchable.

The oldster put his hands on his hips. “Mariah, it'd be dandy if you'd avoid getting yourself into a situation like that again. We've got a passel of worked-up vamps now and a bunch of pissed-off Civils having to look over their shoulders. It'll be bad enough for them when the full moon hits and they'll have to team up with the other Reds to restrain you and us were-creatures. We need teamwork round here, girl, not bloodletting parties that threaten the Civils' comfort.”

He didn't add anything about what might occur with the dormant 562 on the full moon. Not with the Civils still standing in my quarters right now.

I glanced at the pair of Civils who'd restrained me. Fauns. As expected, their human faces weren't amused.

“I'm sorry,” I said, relenting for their sake.

One of them shrugged his bare, broad shoulder. In the torchlight, his chest glistened until it got to his hips, where the body of a goat took over.

“Not 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?”

“We'll work all this out,” I said, ever the optimist. Mainly.

“We 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.

“I swear, Michael, it just . . . happened,” I said. “We were having fun out there, like humans, and—”

“Not 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.

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.