In Blood We Trust by Christine Cody

Author:Christine Cody
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Vampires
ISBN: 9780441020874
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

15

Gabriel

McKellan had brought Gabriel to the vampire house in the middle of the hub before he’d gone to check in with the asylum, where he was to coordinate the mind-screws and human-to-vampire conversions.

As Gabriel stood in front of a window in a bedroom, he thought that their headquarters wasn’t half bad—a spacious home that had once belonged to the mayor who’d been tucked away here upstairs. The vampires swayed the public official often and also imitated his voice on megaphones with tubes connected to the roof—the better for the distractoids not to see their young leader while hearing his assurances. Back when there’d been people outside the hub waiting to get in, the vampires had even ushered the mayor to the outskirts, where the hypnotized man had shouted messages about the power outage and the mosquito threat to those outside who’d been waiting to get in.

He’d told them to flee far, far away, and they had.

Now, since most of the denizens of GBVille were either at the asylum, distractoided, or swayed by vampires into compliance, there wasn’t much use for the mayor, and he was happily stowed here, a fey smile decorating his face as he looked out the window at his city.

Gabriel stood just in back of the man, who wore his hair slick and straight, his beige suit suffering from nary a wrinkle. There were waves of action coming off the hub tonight—sensory disturbances, really—and Gabriel couldn’t put his finger on precisely where they were coming from.

He frowned. It could be that most of the disturbance was inside himself, though he couldn’t say why. It might’ve had something to do with Taraline and how she’d volunteered to give herself up as the killer.

Or how she’d looked at him a moment too long when she’d told him her plan.

Gabriel closed his eyes, reaching into himself, trying to see once again just what had happened that night.

Mariah’s scent while everyone had been dancing and chanting . . . the craving for her blood . . . walking into the asylum with the other vampires, then . . .

Still darkness.

Still nothing.

Downstairs, Gabriel heard a door bang open, and in the next second, he was joined by McKellan, who solidified in front of him with a whoosh.

The elder didn’t waste any time in talking, though he was just as composed as ever. Even that dark lock of hair over his forehead looked planned and controlled.

“Progress,” he said, then gave Gabriel a status update: vampires isolating then mind-screwing Civils into complacency while many nonloyal were-creatures were a little scrappier and resisting the wipes.

“But,” McKellan added, “they all should be stabilized presently.”

“And Mariah?” Gabriel asked.

McKellan’s gaze betrayed an impatience with this continuing attachment. “She was locked up by your oldster, yet she was surrounded by vampires who watch her. She will be safe.”

The oldster. . . . Gabriel wasn’t sure where Michael’s allegiances lay anymore, or how far he would go to see a united community.

Were the vampires going to mind-screw him, too?

Not likely. If they made an attempt, the oldster knew how to shield.

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