addressing the other representatives, “is guilty of a class-one crime. The punishment for such crimes, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is death.”
“Oh, please,” Thomas scoffed. “It wasn’t a crime until you decided it should be.”
“Very true,” Colt said calmly, gazing at the prisoner. “Under the Moreaus’ leadership, it wasn’t a crime to kill a human in the way our friend here is guilty of. But do you want to know what the primary difference is between me and the Moreaus?”
He waited for an answer and searched the worried faces gathered around his table. “Anyone?” Not even Thomas chimed in. Evelyn seemed torn between wanting to kill him and her own curiosity.
“I’ll be happy to tell you,” said Colt, reaching to press his fingertips against the prisoner’s lower chest. As his claws sharpened and the tips of his fingers turned black in a transformation that stopped at his wrist rather than spreading out over the rest of his body, the prisoner’s eyes widened and he let out a muffled cry, but it was too late. Colt’s claws pierced the ghoul’s flesh, then his muscle, and finally pushed up underneath his sternum to grasp his heart and wrench it from its cavity.
A few horrified screams pierced Colt’s ears while the others at the table were stunned into silence. Colt reached for the blade at the closest guard’s side and lopped off the ghoul’s head so he wouldn’t be able to regenerate.
Colt walked at a slow, steady pace across the room and stopped in front of Thomas. The other ghoul flinched instinctively, but Colt made no move to attack him. Instead, he bit into the heart, and the crunch made Thomas cringe and look away in disgust. Colt swallowed the hunk of flesh and stringy ventricles and grabbed Thomas’ hand, dropping the rest of the dead ghoul’s heart into the representative’s palm.
“The difference is that the Moreaus are dead,” he said casually. “And I’m not. You want to walk their path? Fine by me, but don’t go crying for mercy when it leads you to the same six-foot hole in the ground. You want to live? You play by my rules,” he said, plucking the handkerchief from Thomas’ coat pocket to wipe the blood off his mouth and fingers. “That includes not killing humans. You don’t have to like it, but the same sense of revulsion you’re all feeling right now that’s putting you off those finger sandwiches you had for lunch?”
He looked around the room, making eye contact with every last guard and representative in the place as he walked back to his chair. “That’s how I feel about the humans you used to slaughter and butcher without a second thought. Now, I don’t expect any of you to feel the same way, but if you want to live in my city, you’re gonna toe the line. Do that and we’ll all get along just fine. I’m no Moreau. I didn’t go to the fancy schools, and I don’t pretend like I come from good breeding. Hell, for all we know, my bio parents were Tommy Boy’s grunts, right?” he asked with a good-natured grin. A few of the braver ghouls laughed.
“My point is, I don’t take myself too seriously. If one of you has an idea that might not have crossed my mind, you can bring it to me, and I’m not gonna chop off your head for stepping on my ego. You don’t like the way I do something, you’re free to criticize, and for those worried that I’m gonna start stepping in and micromanaging the day-to-day shit that’s already working, you can rest easy. But there’s one thing I take seriously, and that’s the unnecessary and unwarranted death of a human on my streets. You don’t have to like it, but unless you want to join our disembodied friend over there, I suggest you make your peace with it. Any more questions?”
Colt waited what he felt as an appropriate length of time for someone to answer. No one did. “Alright, then,” he said, sitting back down at the table as the guards carried off the prisoner’s corpse and head. “Now, someone mentioned a supply chain issue on the west end at the last meeting? Let’s take care of that.”
The rest of the meeting went shockingly well. Almost pleasant, even. When Colt finally met Evelyn’s gaze, it surprised him to find her smiling at him.
Well, maybe it wasn’t a smile so much as a vaguely approving smirk that lasted