by Seth Eden
She didn't have to fake it this time. "What do you think I thought it meant? One of you – " she stumbled over the word people and decided against it – "Fucking vampires starts chasing me and – "
She didn't get any farther because he backhanded her across the face. She tasted blood in her mouth and swallowed convulsively, afraid he'd smell it and come after her. Both hands went up over her face. Was Michael listening? Had anyone followed her? Had they pinpointed where she was yet?
The whole idea of getting caught had seemed to stupid for a while. The Vampyren weren't hiding. They were the victors. The winners don't hide.
Except, this was hidden. Like the tank farms, like the breeding harems, like this school that showed no evidence from the outside of having anything to do with the invaders.
There were a lot of them there. She'd seen ranks of soldiers training in the courtyard as they walked past bulletproof glass. With schools across the country under siege before the invaders ever set foot on the planet, they were probably in one of the safest places yet.
The only safer would be a prison or Air Force One, she thought.
Face aching, she kept her hands over her cheekbones as if she could keep her jaw from exploding. Angry now, she stood, and when he whirled on her, she leaned toward him, all but daring her questioner to hit her again. Whoever he was, he was lower level, low rank in whatever their chain of command was. Otherwise, he'd never have gotten stuck with her.
The violence scared her. Being hit. If she let it stop her, she'd sink down into whatever they wanted and never get up again.
She had a boyfriend she wanted vengeance for, a mother she wanted to find, and she needed somehow to get back to Brecca and make sure she was all right.
So she stood and faced him, staring down the impulse that had clearly risen in him to hit her again. She was young, beautiful and human, and as far as he knew, viable. She was a commodity and she was desperate enough to gamble on him being too far down in the hierarchy to risk hurting her.
Or risk hurting her too badly.
"Nobody likes you here. You have to realize that."
"It doesn't matter," he said, and instead of hitting her, he sat back down behind the desk and indicated she should take her seat again.
Grudgingly she did.
"Let's start over. You were out at night." He didn't make it a question but any human not brain dead would understand it was.
"I have a job at a bar. I missed several nights. Their logical response is to put anyone who's AWOL onto graveyard." That was true, and so was it true that since the aliens came, bars stayed open pretty much round the clock.
He gave her a long look, then stood and circled her, apparently looking at her tattoo. Cassi managed not to roll her eyes. The Vampyrens didn't mark themselves that she'd seen. Apparently for this one, her tattoo meant she might actually be something like a bartender.
In the new world order, they'd created by fucking up the old one, bartender was highly respected Everyone needed a drink in vampire land.
"And you ran because?"
Oh, hell, they were back to the loop. "Dude," she said and caught the fleeting look of surprise on his face. "I ran because I was chased. Try to imagine the absolute worst thing that you can. Something that you, a Vamp, are actually afraid of."
There was a flicker of dislike cross his face at the casual term for his race, but he nodded as if accepting the fact that there were things that could frighten the Vampyren.
And Cassi stored that one away in her mind, pretty sure the mic got it too. Now all they had to determine was whether something that scared the space vampires was something humans could use or something so much worse they didn't stand a chance.
"You were headed to the bar." He made it a statement.
"I was headed to the bar. The End of the World." He gave her a look and she said, "That's the name of it. I was heading to Fairfax, late for work, and suddenly there's a motorcycle chasing me and then a Jeep." She shuddered and it wasn't pretend. Please let them be monitoring. Please let them have heard. Because the vamps hadn't taken her that far. The drive had been short. The streets still familiar. If the resistance wanted to hit a cell of vamps, she'd found them.
She wanted them to get her out, first.
"The bar is?" he asked and she gave him the address and sat back, expecting he'd check up on it.
He didn't. Abruptly he seemed to have had enough. He waved a hand and she stood, instantly, ready to leave. She'd go to the bar, she'd spend a couple days there, she'd get the information out if she could and wait until it was safe to go back if she couldn't.
How does this help me find Mom?
But leaving. That's what mattered. Being released.
She started to say thank you, not even ashamed of how relieved she felt, only trying not to run on her trembling legs.
He turned and looked at her and he looked almost amused at the same time the door behind her opened and the Vampyren soldier who had brought her there.
Her head whipped around again and she stared at the commander. Maybe this was just her escort, just seeing her back to the street. Even the Vampyren had some rules. The people they took, usually there was some reason for it, at least now they'd been on Earth for a year.
He didn't even bother to look at her.
"Take her to the pool," he said.
Her heart stuttered. For an instant she thought they meant to drown her. Then common sense reestablished itself. They'd use her, not drown her, and so the pool might be –
Breeding?
She started to shake and when the one who'd brought her took her arm, she started to thrash, getting in several blows to his face before he caught her flailing arms and subdued her.
"Sir?"
Because the commander had gone back to whatever he'd been doing before they came along and disrupted his night.
He glanced up, clearly impatient. Cassi felt her bruised cheekbone start to throb again. Her teeth were gritting together.
"I've put in a request while you were questioning her."
The commander just waited, not interested, not angry, just waiting.
"It's been approved."
That caused him to bark as short, harsh laugh. "For breeding? This one? You might as well try your luck at one of ours." He looked between them, as if amused at what she was facing and as close as he was going to get to concerned for one of his men.
Then he shrugged. "Good luck with it."
And he looked back down at his work.
Her guard dragged her through the door which slammed behind them.
14
DANTON
He hadn't made a request.
T here hadn't been time.
Which the commander should have known if he'd bothered to think about it.
Danton was willing to risk it on the grounds that he wouldn't think about it. He just didn't care that much. Besides, on his own planet, he was a prince. Here he might be part of the military – all royals served, however briefly – but he could still force them to obey if he had to.
N ow there was time to put in the request.
T o lie about the fact that she was in questioning while he stashed her somewhere safe. His quarters. Tiny and not good if she made noise.
He thought he could convince her not to. Just long enough for him to bravado his way through it.
He dragged her by the arm, wondering what in the name of all the planets of hell he was doing.
15
CASSI
She expected – almost anything. To be taken to the breeding pool. To be taken to a tank farm.
To be drained then and there.
She didn't expect him to drag her down a hallway, to wait when she balked until she mastered herself.
When she struggled to get free of him, she didn't expect that he'd wait, almost patiently, almost as if she were amusing him, and then gather her back from the door she'd thrown herself at and hold her when her frustration and fear drove her to a storm of
tears.
She did not expect to be held with anything other than force and malevolent intent.
Standing there with her heart pounding loud enough she knew he could hear it, her mouth full of blood she knew he could scent, she thought for certain she was dead.
She'd never see Brec or her mother again. Never go outside, never smell the salt air, never be free.
Never see what was going to happen with the Vampyren on Earth, whether or not the humans would tame the invaders or be crushed under their feet.
She wasn't ready. All her muscles tensed, one last fight or flight, one last attempt to free herself and get somewhere – safe.
There was no safe anymore.
She went limp in his arms. She could feel the surprise radiate through him, the way he stilled as she swayed and let her weight lean against him.
Without warning he bent slightly and gathered her into his arms, carrying her.
Too much. Too strange. She started to fight again, hissing and clawing at his face until he released her, letting her fall several feet to the hard linoleum floor, then leaned down and hauled her up by the front of her tank top until her booted feet hovered several inches off the floor.
"I'm not going to hurt you." Every word had a space between it, said through ground teeth. His teeth were sharp, fangs. It was hard to believe him.
But she stilled. He hadn't hurt her when he brought her here.
"What about the others?" She watched him. He was every bit as beautiful as the rest of his damned race. Maybe a little more so, though that might only be because he hadn't hurt her yet.
She remembered the quirk of his mouth from earlier though. As if she'd amused him. Remembered it, and saw it again now as he lowered her carefully down to the floor, keeping a hand on her shirt front, the material knotted hard enough her breasts stood out against the tightened cloth.
"Then you'd be better off being nice to me, wouldn't you?"
She sputtered and couldn't answer. Another surprise: He chuckled at that.
His room was a single, though she thought in the past it had been a single broom closet in the school. The confines were almost enough he couldn't move in it, what with the dresser he'd wedged in there and his collection of boots. Something about that fascinated her in the minutes she had between him leaving her there and locking her in and returning to let himself back in.
There were images that moved, little things like a GIF that flashed free of anything across the top of the dresser. No people – no vampires – in any of them. They were all images of landscapes, with creatures she didn't know bounding across them and all the landscapes were desert. There was only one she thought she recognized, because it looked like the Mojave or maybe the desert outside las Vegas and the creatures dashing across it were a number of startled jackrabbits. She squinted, not wanting to see what happened to them, but there was no bloody ending, the rabbits simply hopped out of the frame in one direction and back in from the beginning.
She stood staring at the displays, thinking. There was nothing to base any kind of conclusion on. That he hadn't hurt her so far might only be that it had not been expedient to do so.
The rabbits, though, that conjured up more questions and ideas. There was no reasons to have the displays except as keepsakes or memories, things he cared about.
The aliens were humanoid. Looking like the biggest and most beautiful humans but still, they didn't have scales or horns or fur or two heads.
That alone was confusing for the race they had dominated and devastated. Past what they were, however, no one questioned. They were blood drinkers. They were killers who had enslaved a planet and killed Cassi's boyfriend and taken her mother. They were hateful warriors humans referred to in one breath by description – vampires, or aliens, or vamps – or Vampyren.
Not even the most fair minded or liberal human had suggested they might be individuals. They moved together. Executed together. Hunted together. Played at their bloody and murderous sports together, raped and plundered together, forced children on women and ripped those children from them, tore families apart and gave their own versions of laughter.
She had never thought to wonder if every one of them lived to conquer or bought in to the overwhelming story of the Vampyren.
In the next instant she cursed herself for a fool. She was alone in his room, and undoubtedly, they wouldn't waste time bugging each other. Maybe the room wasn't his and maybe this was a test, but she had to at least try.
She spoke low to the empty air in the room, saying fast where she was and who she was, forgetting in her rush that she had been given code words to use, they were stupid anyway, Bella for Bella Lugosi and even the damned space vampires would know that one.
She gave her most likely address, three times, then who she was and what she was doing and last, unwillingly, because she wanted out, she said that she was as yet unharmed.
Then the key was in the lock and he was in the doorway and she standing just inside the room, watching him enter and wondering if now, when they came, if they came, the rebels would find her white and bloodless corpse.
He moved first, holding out the sealed bottle of water, and a protein bar, still wrapped, and one nearly perfect apple.
She sat on the end of his bed to eat, while he crouched nearby, seemingly comfortable. She ate the protein bar first, washed it down with water, reflecting that the things didn't taste any better just because they were hard to come by anymore. When she picked up the apple she saw his eyes following her movement and hesitated.
"Do you have a knife?"
He looked surprised. "A knife?"
She waved the apple and it wasn't her imagination – his eyes followed it. "I'm getting full and I wouldn't want to waste food. I'd like to cut the apple in half."
He raised his chin, as if what she did with what he'd given her was of no concern to him, and cut the apple in half for her, clearly not trusting her with the knife he carried on his hip.
She wouldn't have either. She wasn't clumsy but a knife that size begged for disaster to happen when used to cut an apple in half.
He had no problem with it and he sheathed the knife and held the apple halves out to her. She took them both, then offered him one of them, watching the surprise on his face and wondering if anyone, even one person, had done anything nice since he'd arrived.
Wondering again if they could be individuals.
If she stood a chance of surviving.
It started slow. It started so unnoticeably that Cassi didn't even realize anything was happening. She still sat on the end of his bed, and he now sat on the folding chair where his other uniforms had been stacked.
The room surprised her. It made sense the Vampyren version of a military would have quarters that were more or less like bivouac, or whatever the indoor equivalent was, but this wasn't what she expected. Turning a school into a camp.
Somewhere on the grounds there would be a breeding pool and somewhere else a place for the females to couple with the males unless what she'd heard was true and the males only had sex with them and never bred. Somewhere near there'd be a tank farm and that would be worth finding. So far from the information that escaped and ran between outposts of humans most of the tank farms were hidden. They sounded like they'd be huge concerns, taking up a hospital's worth of room, but apparently the humans were contained in units barely bigger than a coffin. All they had to do was eat and produce new blood and get tapped for it.
She wasn't a vegetarian. Cassi liked steak and considered herself addicted to both pepperoni on her pizza and to beef jerky.
But she didn't abuse the cows she ate, and she had eaten organic until the aliens came and her life changed and her meals became catch as catch can.
Did that make her more humane than the Vampyren? It could be proven that humans thought and reasoned and were sentient, at least most of them, and obviously the space vampires knew it.
And still they acted like one human was perhaps an individual but the whol
e of them were simply there for the taking, unimportant, nothing that had to be treated humanely. Humans were useful, not much more, and It was more important to keep them in line than to treat them with any respect.
How then, the change she'd seen in this one Vampyren? How to explain she thought she'd seen something unique in his eyes when he watched her. His mouth when she amused him.
Cassi frowned down at the sliver of apple she was finishing. How did she know for sure she had amused him? Because suddenly that felt definite.
It was hot in the room, she thought, and tugged at her shirt which seemed to be sticking against her flesh, molding itself to her breasts. Tugging it free, she looked around the room and found her eyes riveted to the Vampyren.
He sat so still, so quiet, she'd all but forgotten about him. Impossible, of course. She couldn't forget someone who had the ability to kill her by snapping her in half, by draining her, by biting her, by –
Licking her, maybe, as his fangs grazed her skin, as his hands –
Gods, what are you thinking?
Because that was fucking crazy. That was –
Pheromones, you know they have pheromones, you know everyone says they work on humans, you know …
How beautiful he was. Like The Rock. Or that guy in the fish movie, the one with all the tattoos. Were those real? Or just part of the suit he must have worn and if it was a suit, were the muscles also just sculpted into plastic? They wouldn't be on this guy, he looked like he was a good seven and a half feet tall more than two feet taller than her, with those arms, so muscled, and the chest, so thick…
When had he taken off his shirt?
God, he was glorious. That chest. So broad and defined, with striations in the muscle. Most guys couldn't get that if they worked for a year solid.
Most guys who would even try were dead now.
That was a sad and sobering thought. Surely now she'd find her head was back on her shoulders and responding to her again, that she could think clearly.
My name is Cassi King. I am twenty-four years old. I was twenty-three when these space junk assholes came and took my planet. They killed my boyfriend. They took my mother. And I don't know if Brec is all right and –