Trial By Blood
an excerpt

Smack!
Todd let fly and slapped Jared across the face. Jared dropped his small pocket-knife rather suddenly, and it clattered across the sidewalk. Jared’s skin turned pink for a moment, but faded rather quickly. Much more quickly than any normal person. His eyes began to tear up from the pain, but he bit his lip, which also hurt, and swallowed his temptation to cry, regaining what little composure a desperate kid has, and turning back to the coolly furious Todd.
“I told you, let me get her!” Todd shouted, then turned and stalked back into the shadows, leaving Jared sitting on the cement next to the unconscious young woman lying next to him, knife marks criss-crossing her right arm, and blood flowing freely.
Molly stood not far away, rather awkwardly, looking back and forth between Jared, trying to control himself as he hungrily watched the woman’s blood drip onto the sidewalk, and the angry Todd leaning against a building. She hated it when Todd hit Jared like that. He knew that Jared could feel it. It wasn’t like when he playfully smacked the others around, knowing it wouldn’t hurt them, so he didn’t have to hold back, even when it was just a joke. But Jared was only a halfy. He could feel it.
Renée called to her brother from where she stood next to Molly, “Come on, Todd. Sulking isn’t becoming on you. Get over it.”
Todd just shifted his weight slightly, and turned away from them.
Molly nodded slightly at Jared, knowing that Renée would be able to get Todd to quit being angry and go find someone else. Jared caught the gesture out of the corner of his eye, which instantly turned from his nature dull green to a bright, blazing red and began lapping up the blood leaking from his unconscious victim.
Adam and Katy sat down on the curb and snuggled close together, keeping watch while the others waited for Jared. They were pretty irritated that they had to wait, yet again, for the greedy little halfy to drain away enough blood that no one else could drink until they found another target. But they had the beautiful virtue of patience, and said nothing, instead simply settling down to their job.
Renée left her position next to her friends, and walked, irritatedly, over to Todd. “Come on,” she said, tugging lightly at his arm, “Let’s move on. The night is young, there are plenty of people out still. We’ll find someone else.” Grudgingly, her brother finally sighed, and stepped away from the wall. Shooting Jared one last dirty glare, he turned and he and Renée began to move off down the street. Gwen turned and scampered after her friend, as well, leaving Molly standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk. Adam and Katy watched them walk about 10 yards before turning to Molly. She knew what they wanted, and she gave it to them.
“Go ahead,” she said, “I’ll stay here and catch up later.” They smiled gratefully, if awkwardly, and walked off, arms still around each other, after the other three, leaving Molly standing over Jared who was still sucking on the poor unconscious woman’s arm.
She sat down next to him on the curb and waited patiently for him to finish. Finally, he raised his head from the woman and toppled over backwards contentedly. Molly let him lay there a moment, waiting to see if he would do anything. But he just breathed. She could see his chest moving up and down in great near-drunken gasps of pleasant satisfaction. She sighed to herself. Maybe that kid should see someone about his cravings. She had never seen anyone else who needed blood that frequently, that much, and was so happy once they got it that they could barely move.
“Give me the knife,” she said at last, and with one limp hand he felt around for it, and gingerly picked it up with two fingers and a thumb at the very end of the hilt, and held it out for her. She took it, trying to give the boy a disapproving look, but he didn’t see it. She repositioned herself over the unconscious woman, so she was lying on her stomach, with her hand about a half-inch from the place where the woman had been cut. She took Jared’s blood-stained pocket knife in her left hand and quickly sliced her own hand with it, immediately clamping the cut hand to the woman’s arm, smearing her own blood across her cuts. The process didn’t hurt at all, and within seconds both her own and the woman’s cuts had healed, leaving only the blood smeared across their skin.
Jared sat up slowly and, taking the woman’s limp arm one last time, licked up the blood left on her skin until she was at least visibly clean. Molly got to her feet, and with one smooth movement, hoisted the unconscious woman up off the sidewalk, and set her, leaning, against the wall Todd had previously been sulking against. She would wake up in an hour or so, with no memory and no indication of what had happened. Hopefully, anyone passing by would just take her for a drunk and leave her alone.
Jared scrambled to his feet and waited for her to position the woman’s arms in a comfortable position, straighten up, brush herself off, and, without looking at him, start to walk off in the direction the others had gone.
“I’m sorry,” he called after her. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He jogged after her until he was walking beside her. Molly wasn’t exactly tall, but she was still about 5 inches taller than Jared, whose tiny frame looked like it would better fit a ten year old than the fourteen years he carried. Molly snapped the bloody pocket knife shut and handed it to him without a word. He took it, and without even bothering to open it up again and clean it, shoved it back into his jacket pocket.
“You have blood on your face,” Molly said, still not looking at him. He quickly wiped his face on his sleeve, which was already discolored from the many past times he had done that.