by Seth Eden
She didn’t know how long she was trapped in there. It was long enough that the last of the afternoon heat beating down on the metal locker baked her so that sweat was saturating her body. She would die in here. That much was certain. She just hoped she passed out from a lack of oxygen before the heat killed her. But time passed by in insufferable minutes. She found herself screaming herself hoarse when she thought she heard a noise outside, not even aware she was doing it.
By the time she heard footsteps outside, she was too hysterical to think coherently. She worked herself up into a frenzy, feeling Drake’s hands on her, his rough palms shoving her head against the brick wall.
She passed out as the doors opened.
3
Crystal
“Wakey wakey!” Someone was yelling and banging a spoon against a glass of water, or at least that’s what it sounded like as Crystal stirred to consciousness. Her bed didn’t feel right. She turned over under the covers that also felt wrong, and frowned. The cot she was sleeping in wasn’t terribly uncomfortable but it also wasn’t right. It didn’t have that one little lump that always hit her shoulder. Plus, the cool morning breeze wasn’t coming in through the open window like it did when she woke up early enough. “Girl, I swear to God…” Somebody was shaking her shoulder, and she groaned and then all at once the memory of what had happened came flooding back.
He had dragged her along the ground and thrown her against that brick wall and he had been about to…
And then she had been trapped for hours, baking in the hot sun like a roast chicken.
Crystal sat up screaming, her eyes wide, not quite seeing the room she was in, though it was definitely not hers. She heard people yelling and then a hand was clamping over her mouth, holding her fast. She sobbed and squirmed and somebody sighed heavily.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, Jesus…”
The woman sitting next to her and holding a hand over her mouth looked older. She looked like an old teacher of Crystal’s from her childhood. Mrs. Shelton, sixth grade. She looked strikingly like her except that Mrs. Shelton would be much older now and probably dead. But the likeness somehow made Crystal calm down a little.
“Okay?” The woman said and took a breath before slowly removing her hand. “You’re safe, alright?”
I fucking doubt that Crystal thought as she looked around the room. She wasn’t in any of the makeshift hospitals she knew from the neighborhood and she wasn’t at home.
No, she was in a room crowded with two rows of small beds. Two girls around her own age were watching her with suspicious eyes from their beds. They were both scantily clad and painting their nails.
Oh fuck no, Crystal thought, the epiphany just beginning to dawn. She’d known it was a possibility. She was young and in her prime. It was impossible not to recognize the likelihood.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” she mumbled.
“Oh, they will soon enough,” one of the girls muttered. There were posters taped to the walls; heartthrobs from a few years ago as if time had stopped before the invasion, which she supposed it had. The girl who had spoken smirked from under a picture of a shirtless Chris Hemsworth. “You’re in it now, bitch.”
“You’re gonna be just fine,” the older woman said. “My name is Gail.”
“This is a fucking breeding pit,” Crystal spat.
“Ding ding ding,” the mouthy girl said. “Alex, tell her what she’s won.”
The other girl, Alex, Crystal supposed said, “Our dear new creche whore is today taking home a beat-up vag—"
“Ooh!” The mouthy girl said.
“Probably a split lip,” Alex went on. “And most likely, a lifetime of trauma—"
“Will you two shut up already?” Gail finally snapped. “Jesus. I’m trying to ease her in here, Sasha.”
Sasha blew on her newly painted peach nails and raised a jaded eyebrow as her expression darkened. “There is no easing her in,” Sasha said, as she got to her feet. She was wearing a tiny little black nightgown that barely covered her ass, her bright red hair falling in a cascade of curls. Her bare shoulders and her exposed back were bruised as if someone had clutched her much too tightly. “The sooner she finds out what she’s in for, the better. Or she won’t survive.”
With that, Sasha was on her way and that left Alex who didn’t look quite as beaten down by life as Sasha. Alex shook her bottle of nail polish and blinked at Crystal.
“Don’t worry too much,” Alex said lightly. “Sasha just had a bad night.”
“Yeah?” Crystal said, only relaxing slightly. “How many of those do you guys have around here?”
“You don’t want to know,” Alex said with a snort.
“Okay,” Gail said, rolling her eyes. She nodded at Crystal. “Are you hungry? You must be hung—"
“I’m not hungry,” Crystal said, practically hissing. “I want to go home. I have roommates. I have a place. You can’t just keep me here—"
“M?” Gail said, and now she affected a little smirk just like Sasha had. Crystal was already sick of that smirk. “I am not keeping you here, my dear. They are. The Vampyren need human women to breed with. You know that as well as I do.”
“What a laugh,” Crystal said. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about these supposed breeding farms. They need women to rape is what you mean.”
“It’s not as bad as it was,” she said stiffly. “They can be… well behaved. A lot of them.”
Crystal doubted that. Sasha hadn’t seemed like somebody who was particularly comfortable with her circumstances. “I want a smoke,” Crystal grumbled. “I want a drink.”
“I can get you both those things,” Gail said smoothly, getting to her feet.
“You can?” Crystal stood, tentative. She was still wearing her black tank top and cutoffs though she felt sticky and disgusting in them now. She wanted her things. She wanted her apartment and her stock of items to trade. She had built a collection. She had a life. And they had come along and stolen it from her.
Then there were Jet and Nina. They’d be lost without her and worse, they’d be so worried.
“I want to contact my friends,” Crystal said. She had looked out the window and seen the city below. She was across town from Hyde Park. But Chicago was only so large. “They need to know I’m okay.”
“Impossible,” Gail said casually, leading her out of the large white room and down a glass corridor to another office stocked with cans of food, toiletries, and other essentials. She grabbed a plastic bag and took an airplane bottle of tequila from it and said, “If anyone asks, a friendly vamp gave you these.” She winked and took a pack of Marlboros from a massive stash behind a loose panel in the wall. “And don’t get greedy. I keep track of inventory. That’s all the cigarettes we’ve got forever and you’re not the only one who smokes.”
Gail took a cigarette out for herself before handing Crystal the pack and the lighter. Crystal had a stupid urge to say “thank you” and quelled it, seeing as this woman was still an enabler of the Vamps who had kidnapped her and were forcing her into sexual servitude. She wasn’t about to say “thank you” for that.
“I was doing okay,” she said bitterly. She uncapped her bottle first and downed it, closing her eyes for a moment, savoring the burn in her throat before she lit her cigarette and took a merciful drag. “I was doing fine. I was almost happy. Living with my friends, trading… This is bullshit.”
“I’m aware,” Gail muttered. “You think I’m happy about this? Nobody is happy about this, girl. What did you do before?”
“Nothing,” Crystal muttered. “I was doing fine.”
“You liked it,” Gail said. “The invasion’s been good to you?”
“I mean no,” Crystal said, sucking on her smoke. “Most of the people I cared about died. But I never knew what I was here for before the invasion. It was after that I found out what I was good at. Found some…”
“Purpose,” Gail supplied.
“Whatever.”
“You’re going
to need a patron,” Gail said, leaving the room and not waiting for Crystal to follow, though she did anyway, pocketing her cigarettes and lighter. The breeding farm, the brothel was, like Dr. Jack’s hospital, a couple of floors in an office building that were renovated. “That’s how things have changed here. You need to find a Vampyren who will claim you and protect you. So you don’t just get passed around. Hopefully, you find a kind one.”
A kind Vampyren. She knew they existed just as kind humans did. But were they so easy to find?
“Yeah?” Crystal said. The front lobby was decked out with a couple of couches and a coffee table where Sasha and another girl were hanging out and talking quietly. Crystal stood back and spoke under her breath so Sasha wouldn’t hear, ashing on the drab blue carpeting. “Sasha didn’t make it sound quite so nice?”
“That’s because Sasha just lost her patron,” Gail said softly. “He was one of the okay ones. Got killed fighting the Lucian out west. She had a bad night with some other Vamp from his unit. Didn’t go well.”
“Ah…” Crystal nodded. “Ya know, I’ve heard about the Lucian. I didn’t think they were real.”
“Oh, they’re real,” Gail said. “I’ve heard enough, seen enough. I don’t know the details but what I’ve heard is they sent down scouts. They’re sending down more all the time. They land in the deserts where it’s empty. But when they start invading… It’s gonna get ugly.”
“Oh, it’s going to get ugly, is it?” Crystal said with a snort. “I can’t fucking wait.”
Crystal was trying to enjoy her cigarette and get her head around this involuntary new life (during which she’d need to plot an inevitable escape) when Gail said, “You should meet Keira. She’s coming here for Sasha too. Might be able to help you.”
“With what?”
“Finding a decent protector,” Gail said, shrugging. “I mean she has a Vamp boyfriend. He’s decent. He’s royalty too. He might know somebody who doesn’t completely suck. Hoping he’s got someone for Sasha. She’s first in line.”
“Oh goody, goody gumdrops,” Crystal muttered.
The rest of the day passed in a surreal haze for Crystal but, on the bright side, no Vampyren came to have their way with her. Instead, she was cleaned up, primped, and given the proper clothes to wear. Rose, one of the other matrons, did manicures and hair and when she sat down to do Crystals nails, she couldn’t seem to keep the judgmental glare off her face.
“Have you been clawing through cement or something, young lady?” Rose said, rubbing cuticle oil into Crystal's nails.
“Yeah, sorry,” Crystal said wryly. “I was just living life in the apocalyptic hellscape of the earth after an alien invasion. I forgot I’d need to have nice nails for my auspicious career as a whore.”
Rose rapt her on the mouth for that one. It was sudden and sharp and it rang Crystal’s head like a bell. “You don’t use that word!” Rose said. She had grey-blonde hair in a carefully sculpted old-fashioned flip. If she put on a skirt suit she could have been some politician’s wife. In the old days, anyway. “You use that word, you only feel bad about yourself.”
“Alright,” Rose muttered, her mouth smarting. At least it was a distraction.
By the evening, her legs and pubic area were freshly shaved and trimmed, she was lotioned, prettied up, and trussed into a skimpy nighty. She felt naked and her feet hurt in the heels they’d given her.
“This is gross,” she muttered, sitting huddled on the couch with a five-year-old fashion magazine.
“You’ll get used to it,” Gail said, offhandedly.
“Hope not.”
There was the sense that Vampyren could arrive at any time and Crystal’s heart thudded with anxiety just thinking about it. She also couldn’t stop worrying about Nina and Jet, wondering if they were safe. She thought she would pass out from worry. When a Vampyren walked through the door, accompanied by a young human woman in normal clothing, Crystal was on alert. The striking couple went and talked to Sasha in the corner first and Crystal had to assume this was the infamous Keira. She sat, tensed up on her couch, hoping they would save her from the prospect of someone like Drake, or even Drake himself showing up to claim her.
Other Vampyren arrived and Crystal’s heart pounded. She hopped up from her seat on the couch and hid in a backroom, not waiting to see what they were like although she could already feel the effects of their pheromones, even from another room. She shut her eyes, lying back in bed, resisting the urge to run out and preen for one of them against her own will.
That Drake asshole definitely hadn’t used pheromones to make her willing. Which could only mean he hadn’t wanted her to be willing, and that made him exponentially more terrifying.
She made herself sit up in bed, her hands pressed to the neatly made up blankets. She closed her eyes and breathed. She just needed them to leave. She felt dizzy with want, the pheromones arousing her. It wasn’t fair.
“Crystal?” The voice was firm and Crystal opened her eyes to see that girl, Keira, walking into the room, followed by a Vamp wearing some combination of Vampyren robes and human clothes that looked sort of weird and sort of chic at the same time. The vamp shut the door behind him and Crystal was a little relieved of the effect of the pheromones.
All I had to do was close the door? Idiot.
“Yep.” She raised her hand. “That’s me.”
“You’re new here,” Keira said, nodding. “Gail said you might need my help. I’m Keira. This is Loren.” There were awkward handshakes. Crystal had never met a Vamp who shook hands before.
It felt odd.
“I was in a breeding farm myself once,” Keira said, sitting beside her. “Just across town. It’s not fun to get used to it.”
“I get that impression,” Crystal muttered.
“I’ve heard you’re sort of snarky,” Keira said, but she smiled as if perhaps that wasn’t a huge problem. “Anyway, I’m sorry you’ve ended up here.”
“I am not snarky,” Crystal said. “I have a personality unlike several people in this place I could name.”
“You used to trade? Before this?”
“Used to,” Crystal muttered sadly. “Yeah, I used to as in yesterday. I’d just taken a bunch of meds to some doctors around town. At least I was able to do that. I’m the best trader in Chicago for fuck’s sake. What will they do for meds now?”
The Vamp was standing back, giving the two women room, and now he finally spoke. He was crossing his arms, regarding her quietly. “We should introduce her to Mark,” he said in a low voice. “Sasha wouldn’t get along with him. She’s too… hard-edged.”
“I’m sorry,” Crystal said with a snort. “Did you say one of the girls is too hard-edged for a Vampyren?”
“He’s not like the rest of us,” Loren said.
“He’s not like the rest of them,” Keira said, raising her eyebrows. “Some of them. But the two of you are not so different, really.”
“If he’s not an asshole, that would be ideal,” Crystal said dryly. “There was this Vamp—"
Loren frowned at her and she sighed. “There was this Vampyren, Drake, he caught me alone before I was brought me here. He… tried to rape me. And I think he deliberately didn’t use pheromones—"
“Because he wanted it to hurt,” Keira whispered. “Okay yeah, you need a protector and I vote Mark. He’s a good man. If that Drake comes back for you, you’re gonna need somebody standing up for you. And trust me, he will come back for you.”
“I can get him over here…” Loren tapped his chin and squinted, gaging, Crystal supposed. “I can get him over here… in an hour. He said he really doesn’t want any part of a breeding farm. He doesn’t approve of them. But if I tell him it’s to protect a human woman, I might be able to change his mind.”
“You’re sure he’s…” Crystal shrugged her shoulders. “Nice?”
“Yeah,” Keira said, smiling kindly. “He’s the nicest Vampyren I’ve met.”
“Hey,” Loren said, but he
was smiling.
“It’s true.” She winked at him and Crystal inwardly reeled. She had a better attitude about Vampyren than most, even given everything. But she had never seen a real functioning human and Vamp couple. It was like watching a cat and dog get married.
“Never heard of a Vampyren named Mark,” Crystal murmured, stroking her chin. “What’s next? Steve the Vampyren?”
It sounded… okay. If Crystal was anything, she was pragmatic. There was no getting out of the creche system any time soon. If she could make it at least bearable with a Vamp who wasn’t going to rape and beat her. Well, she’d take it.
4
Mark
What nobody, not even most Vampyren men understood about Vampyren women was that they too just wanted to be loved. It was the harsh brutality of Vampyren life that made them yet more brutal than their men. Mark always thought they were wrongly dismissed. Vampyren women often killed their mates and ate their young after a combination of being treated badly and when a syndrome that came from the pregnancy which they could not control overwhelmed them. Since living on earth, Mark had learned it was something similar to postpartum depression for human women. How to solve that during an invasion though? Mark had no idea. But it explained how he had been able to have a mate back on Vampyren. Though they had never gotten around to bearing children. They had tried. It was difficult to breed at the best of times. But he had loved her and she had loved him. They watched the brutality of those around them with some bafflement.
But now his mate, Calinda, was dead. She died in the first sweep of the invasion. Mark mourned her and now he thought of her when he saw Vampyren women on the battlefield, all of them seeming more brutal even than the men. Calinda had been brutal too, but she saved it for those who deserved it. She had never been brutal with him and he was brutal with her. Why would you be violent with those you loved? He had never understood it.