by Seth Eden
“What just happened?” She said, feeling stupid with astonishment.
“Revolution,” Kal said, shrugging. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes,” Tess said. “I’m just surprised.”
“Sounds like Loren got persuasive,” Kal said. “I think that liberation of the creche really got to them. Anyway, I’m starving.”
Tess stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Then let’s get you some blood, baby.”
6
Kal
“This isn’t over,” Kal said darkly. Free the Children and all its new allies decided to celebrate the birth of the new Vampyren-human government by stopping at one of the taco pop-ups that had sprung up in Chicago. That meant eating meat from an unfamiliar source which was always a dodgy proposition but several people vouched for it. They cleaned the place out. In fact, a couple dozen people had split off and gone to another taco place for more food. But now Kal was sitting on a curb with Tess, Mark, and Crystal. He was feeling alright about the Council meeting. He was certainly happy not to be dead. But he wasn’t as celebratory as the others and neither was Tess, he noticed. He thought this was yet another sign of her high intelligence.
“Of course, it’s not,” Tess said darkly. “There’s still the military leadership to contend with.”
“Exactly,” Kal said. He was eating a taco, having already drained a few packets of blood. Human food had grown on him. It wasn’t necessary for his survival the way it was for humans. But he found himself enjoying it on occasion. He’d come to love coffee, and he did respond to caffeine. That had been a fun epiphany.
“Do you think there will be a coup?” Mark said. He was sitting behind Crystal, gently rubbing her back as she sipped a horchata.
“Yes,” Kal said. “And I wish we could do something about those middling Council members. I don’t trust them.”
“Didn’t seem fair to kill them once they came around to our side,” Mark said.
“It’s gonna be trouble,” Kal muttered. “I’m sure of it.”
“Okay,” Crystal said, rolling her eyes. “But can we just enjoy this for a second? This feels like the first good day I’ve had in two years.” Mark gave her a disbelieving look and she said, “Okay, okay, maybe not the first. But you know what I mean!”
They had spoken to Loren after the meeting, the four of them. The Council asked Tess to start outlining how she would handle the caretaking of the children and how best to resolve that situation. Kal could tell she was distracted thinking about it. He looked forward to distracting her from her thoughts when they could be alone later.
“Mark,” Crystal said now. “If this works at all… I mean the abolition of the creches… I want to get our baby back from Nina and Jet. I’ve barely had a chance to visit. I miss her so much.”
“Okay,” Mark whispered, kissing her neck. “We will, as soon as we can. We’ll see how things play out. Maybe we can all move into your dorm.”
Tess watched them and Kal, seeing how affected she was, put down his food and wrapped his arms around her. It was nice to take this little bit of time and pretend they were just two normal couples. Two brothers and their girlfriends out at night, having tacos. It seemed like an intensely human thing to do to Kal and he liked it. They stayed out a few more hours, just walking around this part of Chicago that was just populated enough by people to feel a little safer. Crystal found a trader and after some finagling, she got her hands on a few bottles of whiskey in exchange for nothing more than I.O.U. They strolled along sidewalks and finally settled around in the abandoned courtyards of some bombed-out office buildings, drinking and passing the time, basking in their measure of peace for a little while.
Finally, they all went home to the dorms. The new people were lucky there were still a lot of empty dorms, though most of them wanted for furniture. Kal suspected they had faced worse, having been in the resistance for a while now. They weren’t about to complain about sleeping on the floor. If nothing else, at least Crystal was keeping the cafeteria well stocked.
That night, Kal went with Tess to her place. They didn’t discuss it. It was just understood. He liked that. He wanted to be as sure about their future as Mark and Crystal seemed to be.
That night he slid inside Tess and braced himself on his elbows, looking down at her. Tess had unbraided his hair and now she ran her fingers through his thick, dark locks that fell around his shoulders, a soft smile on her face.
“I love you,” Kal said. His voice sounded gruffer than he’d intended. His cheeks burned. Blushing was something he had only ever experience since he started living among humans and assimilating to their ways. Vampyrens really didn’t blush but apparently he’d learned how to. Because now he was a little mortified. Talking about your feelings was difficult. Kal was better at it than most Vampyren men, but expressing love? What if she didn’t say it back?
“I love you too,” Tess whispered.
Kal sighed in relief and she giggled, leaning up to her kiss him. He kissed her long and slow and thrust into her. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him close. “You were nervous just now,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Mmm, no I wasn’t.”
“You were!” She said, her bell-like laugh becoming a gasp of pleasure. “Nervous little Vampyren…”
“Shhh…” He hushed her with another kiss and thrust into her again so that she threw her head back and two of them stayed intertwined until long after they made each other come.
In the morning, Kal woke up in Tess’s bed alone. That wasn’t unusual. She seemed to be an early riser. Sometimes he wished he could wake up with Tess in his arms, but perhaps that was a reward he’d just have to wait for. For now, he knew he would shower and dress and find Tess in the cafeteria, probably already working on her plans for a new infrastructure to take care of the children and reunite some of them with their parents if possible. Kal cleaned up and slipped on his well-worn jeans and a white t-shirt. He regarded himself in the mirror and opted to tie his hair up in a bun. It felt a little strange, but he’d seen human men wear it like that. The Vampyren braid was traditional and tied to their military service. He didn’t want any part of that life now. He slipped on his boots and grabbed his jacket. Meeting his brother in the hall, he smiled to himself.
He clapped Mark on the back as they went down. “Good morning. How’s it going?”
Mark snorted a laugh at that. “Ah, small talk. You’ve finally become totally human.”
“It’s useful,” Kal said, shrugging. “Makes people more comfortable. Besides, isn’t it nice to tell people the morning is good?”
“Whatever you say,” Mark said, making a dramatic show of sighing heavily. “Next you’ll be high fiving people.”
“I do high five people!” Kal said, laughing. He trotted down the stairs and catching the sight of his brother grinning at him, he felt light for once. He felt like maybe things would work out even if there was still the specter of the remaining Vampyren military and the Lucian to worry about.
“Nice hair, by the way,” Mark said, raising a thick, dark eyebrow.
“Thank you.”
Down in the cafeteria, they found their respective mates and waiting for them with blood packets. He would have thought it might be strange for Tess to casually sip her coffee and eat her powdered eggs while her boyfriend drank blood, but she seemed used to it at this point. He supposed she’d been dealing with Vampyren long enough to acclimate to their habits just as he’d assimilated to human life.
“Hello dear,” Crystal said wryly to Mark, who sat down and kissed her on the cheek.
Tess winked at Kal and said, “Hello, dear.”
It all felt very domestic. Or at least domestic by human standards. Tess had a small double-take when she saw Kal’s hair and her eyebrows shot up. “I like it.” She kissed him full on the mouth. “I like it a lot.”
“Thanks.” He punctured his blood packet with one fang and drank his fill as Tess continued pounding away
on a laptop. Internet, on rare occasions, actually worked. But generally, people just used laptops as word processors. Tess’s laptop looked beaten up and the screen was cracked but it seemed to be working. She was making a spreadsheet. “Kid stuff?”
“Some mothers want their kids back,” Tess muttered. “Some don’t. Which is fair. I have the roster of children we liberated, I’m trying to make a list of who wants who.”
“What about the older human kids?” Kal said.
“We have records for some of them,” she said, sighing. “If we think their parents are alive and can be found, we’ll try to organize reunions. Otherwise it will be a new and improved creche system. More like a human orphanage. Just not the monstrous thing it was before. They didn’t even have schooling. We’ll have to get really good people for training.” Tess frowned at her laptop screen, completely focused and Kal nodded and smirked at his brother.
Things were going to be lonely for a while. But it was just another reason why he admired Tess.
When Mara came bursting through the double doors, running at full speed to Tess’s table, Kal felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Something bad had happened. Well, that half a day of good feelings had been fun, at least. Mara looked pale and when she reached the table she was so out of breath, she clutched her chest.
“Loren,” Mara said, leaning over to brace her hands on her knees.
“Is he okay?” Tess said with some alarm.
“Yes, I… He called the phone in our dorm. Mahn is dead.”
Everyone exchanged glances of resignation yet Kal noticed that nobody seemed anymore surprised than he was. They’d killed the Council members who had voted against them in cold blood. This was always going to be a fight. Now another war was about to begin. Kal just hoped it wouldn’t take too long. It wouldn’t be ideal for the Lucian to invade, only to find an empty world because everyone had killed each other.
“How?” Mark said, gritting his teeth.
“They made a display out of it,” Mara said. “Ripped his throat open and drained him, left him on the steps in front of the headquarters. Loren thinks it was military leadership.”
Tess said, “Okay… When we say military leadership, what exactly do we mean?”
Mark scratched his head and said, “Three generals, a dozen or so commanders, and their units, some lieutenants. Forces included. At this point, I don’t think there are more than a thousand you’d have to fight to unseat them. Everyone else is spread out over the country defending the humans we’ve colonized. If we move fast, they can’t call men to back them up and if they did, they’d be leaving too much undefended. We just might have them by the throat.”
“We need more information,” Kal said darkly. “What we need is a spy on the inside…”
“Loren might know somebody,” Mark said. “We need to talk to him—"
“No!” That was Keira, piping up suddenly. Kal hadn’t even noticed she was back at Urbana but now she stood up from the table, her eyes red. “Loren sent me here because he thinks things are too dangerous around the Council. because he knows the military leadership is going to strike back. He’s already in enough danger! Find another way! I… I…” She shook her head and finally burst into tears and Crystal up jumped to comfort her.
Kal had a feeling they were going to Loren for help, whether or not Keira thought it wise. This was just too important. Everyone tensed up as if waiting for Keira to change her mind. She wiped her eyes and took a second as if summing up her strength.
“Call him,” she whispered to Mark, and then turned and ran out of the cafeteria.
Tess looked like she wanted to follow them but she stayed where she was, likely more determined than ever to organize things for the children. It couldn’t have been easy for Crystal either, Kal thought. She had a baby with Mark. Now they had yet another battle on the horizon and after that, there would be the Lucian to contend with. Kal couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a kid mixed up in all this. Even as he thought it, he realized that Crystal’s baby was his nephew. He felt his heart swell at the thought, but it saddened him at the same time. The kid hadn’t asked to be born into any of this. None of them had.
Mark went to the landline phone in the dorm and Kal followed him, casting Tess a somewhat apologetic look. She only shrugged at him and he turned on his heel.
Loren, they discovered, did have a line on a commander who worked under the generals. He had been flirting with deserting and joining Free the Children too, it turned out. He agreed to gather whatever information he could, though getting it back to Loren would be a bit tricky.
To Kal’s mind, this stuff was harder than battle. Battles were upfront, if dangerous. This sneaking around stuff was subtle and when you got found out, they killed you silently or sometimes you just disappeared. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. All this was worked out over the course of a few phone calls in the span of an hour. It had all seemed like a big emergency. Yet all they could do now was wait.
Waiting should have been more fun. Kal decided it really should be more fun by necessity. Everyone was tense all afternoon, even the breeder women who now had nothing to do but fight with everyone else. Tess was busy with her work and Kal had some time on his own, when he wasn’t strategizing with Mark for whatever battle faced them. He went looking for Crystal at lunch. She had stuck close to Keira all day, and the two were poking at plates of spaghetti together.
“Crystal,” Kal said, sitting down beside her. “I have a job for you. Since you’re the… designated supply person.”
Crystal cast him a wary look and waved her hand “Proceed.”
“We need… an event,” Kal said. He had an idea of what he thought they should do but he didn’t quite have the language.
“An event…”
“An event to… socialize,” he said slowly. “Before we fight. We could just have alcoholic drinks and perhaps play music? And talk? Just have fun, I suppose. Before things get serious.”
“Holy shit,” Crystal muttered. “Do parties not exist on Vampyr?”
“Not really,” Kal muttered. “There are formal events after battles or ceremonial rituals. But they’re fairly staid.”
“Okay,” Crystal said, chuckling. “Yeah, you’re right. We need a nice morale booster. I believe we have a decent shot at taking down the military leadership even if… we’re still outnumbered and they have better weapons. But maybe if we reminded ourselves why we’re fighting in the first place, we’d fight better.”
“Exactly,” Kal said.
“I’ll put it together,” Crystal said, patting him on the shoulder. “No worries. We can have this shindig tomorrow night unless we have to skip off to battle first. I’ll start telling people. Good idea, Kal.”
“Alright,” Kal said with a determined nod. “Tomorrow night, we party.”
7
Tess
Reuniting the human children of the creche, according to the research Tess had done so far, was not going to happen quickly. It had taken her hours of tedious combing through the records couriered over from the new Council to finally accept that she just wouldn’t be able to organize happy endings for all the kids who had been forcibly removed from their parents. The Vampyren had, in some cases, simply stolen them away. Sometimes this was due to confusing orders and scrapped plans. The Council would decide it needed strong, healthy older kids to “save for later” or train for some task and then those plans would fall through. Some were found out on their own, having been lost, and now causing too much trouble. Whatever the reason, not all of them were orphans but their parents had, in most cases, been lost to the obscurity of their chaotic world. They would be very difficult to find again with the country only occasionally able to communicate via internet. All the social media companies had long since collapsed and shuttered. It was going to be like hunting for needles in haystacks.
She would need a real staff for that project, Tess decided. She wrote out a memo for it, intending to request
that from the Council later as part of the new creche infrastructure. Now she was working on disassembling the other creches in the region and finding their human mothers (all of that was on paper, thankfully) and sorting out who would go where. She had already heard from people in the resistance who were eager to adopt the half-Vampyren babies not wanted by their mothers. A woman from Free the Children named Jaime who had a Vampyren boyfriend thought it too sad that the children should languish when they might find new homes. That was an entirely new angle that hadn’t occurred to her before. Though the adoptive parents would have to be carefully screened in such cases. Writing up a memo and a report on that was another project and it was all keeping Tess very busy. Besides that, she had a lot of inventory requests to go over, with Crystal who seemed a little distracted by some “special project” she was doing for Kal. There was also the matter of blood for the babies. No matter how much they had on supply, she was always worried about obtaining more. Working on incentives for the harvesting of blood was going to be another huge project to untangle with the Council, she supposed.
At some point, Tess, tapping away at her laptop and lost in an abyss of spreadsheets and data, abruptly stopped and yawned. Forced to pause for five seconds, she realized she was alone in the cafeteria. She’d come down there to work while eating and then she’d forgotten to eat. The cafeteria was also the one spot where wifi actually functioned a good portion of the time, at least over the past few days. She suspected that had something to do with Loren being on the council. Humans with good wifi and cell reception were a lot more dangerous than humans without it. But it was now a utility, and it was becoming more available. That was something.