by Seth Eden
Crystal sat all the way up and shook herself, expecting to see some Vampyren soldier on his way to rape either Sasha or Alex or both of them, but there was only the darkness of the quiet room and the moonlight through the window. The girls yanked her to her feet and now she heard a loud thundering sound from the floor below and something like screams… maybe. It sounded like a dying cat. It was eerie and frightening.
Crystal said, “Who—"
“It doesn’t matter, asshole!” Sasha hissed. “We have a hiding place! C’mon!”
“Wait!” Crystal whispered, and before they could drag her away, she grabbed the backpack full of supplies she had stashed under her bed for this sort of situation.
The hiding place was a vent above the bathroom which was blessedly on their end of the floor and just through two doors and down a short hallway. They were barefoot and scantily clad and Crystal grit her teeth, wishing at least for her boots, one of the few items she owned that were actually hers.
Climbing into the vent was a pain in the ass, but like the backpack, this had been planned out ahead of time between Alex and Sasha. The two of them were friends, and it wasn’t surprising that they had an emergency plan. It was surprising that they’d included Crystal in their emergency plan.
There was a loud thud down the hall and then something that sounded like gunshots just as Sasha climbed up on the sink and yanked the vent covering off the ceiling. Crystal would have thought it was screwed in. She was pretty sure they’d loosened it a long time ago. Alex climbed up Sasha gave her a boost, using her hands as a step and then she boosted Crystal up into the vent. It was awkward and Crystal almost fell. She about killed herself, but finally she was up through the vent, in the duct, her butt in Alex’s face. She peered down at Sasha who tossed her the backpack.
“How are you getting up here?” Crystal said.
“Well, scoot back, dumbass,” Sasha said.
Crystal told Alex to move back and shimmed their way down the duct a bit, and she heard Sasha take a breath. Hands appeared at the vent’s opening and Sasha grunted and groaned as she pulled herself up inside.
“Goddamn,” Crystal muttered. “This isn’t the first time you’ve done that.”
“Nope,” Sasha said.
She’d brought the vent covering with her and now she fixed it back over its hole, fixing clips to it that turned into the vent so it would appear sealed shut as usual, just in case. Crystal was suitably impressed.
“Why did you bring me?” Crystal said. It didn’t seem right. There were a couple dozen other girls in the breeding pit plus the matrons. What about them? What about the children down in the creche on the floors below?
Who even was attacking?
“You know shit,” Sasha whispered. “You’re the girl to go to. Valuable. Now shut the fuck—"
She was cut off by howls of pain from the other side of the wall. There were thumps and screams and shouting. Then it sounded like somebody was throwing dumbbells around. More screaming. She heard male Vampyren voices thundering from all around down below them, but they were still on the other side of the wall.
“Why would they attack the breeding pit and the creche?” Crystal whispered, even as she knew she should be quiet. “It’s for them?”
“Maybe it’s humans?” Alex murmured.
Sasha said, “Nah, they wouldn’t...”
The door to the bathroom burst open below and the three girls froze, not moving a muscle. But Crystal could just barely see past Sasha’s hand, down through the grate. It was a Vampyren and he was searching the stalls of the bathroom. He didn’t look up, and he pushed open the door to the hall again.
“Nobody in here,” he said.
“Is there another bathroom?” The second voice was familiar to Crystal, and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “The girl has long, straight black hair, big eyes—"
“Drake, we can’t find her.”
“Well, try harder!”
“Fuck,” Crystal whispered. She shut her eyes and felt tears of tension well up behind them. She shut her mouth, even more afraid now to make the slightest peep.
Fuck fuck…
Then the bathroom door swung closed, and they were gone. She crouched there in the duct, shaking like a leaf. Her stomach hurt and her head throbbed. Drake, she figured, wasn’t here just for her. That would have been insane. But he was here partly for her.
Now he was slaughtering everyone in the building.
She couldn’t breathe.
“Why,” she whispered. “Why… why…?”
“Shut up,” Sasha hissed. She swatted Crystal’s shoulder. “Shut up.”
“Why would he… This is their system,” Crystal said, beginning to get a little hysterical. “Why would they do that? What about the children? Are they killing the children? But they’re Vampyren children? Why—"
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. It was dark in the duct. Crystal couldn’t see Sasha’s face but her voice was thick. “We can’t help them. We stay here. We wait it out. See who’s left.”
Waiting it out took longer than Crystal would have hoped. Drake and his men seemed to take their time. Or at least, Crystal didn’t know what else could be making that racket, and they weren’t about to find out. They made themselves as comfortable as they could in the ducts and even though nobody seemed remotely interested in the bathroom anymore, they weren’t about to take that risk. Instead, they scooched down far enough in the ducts so they weren’t on top of each other. There was just enough room to sit on their sides. They had snacks in the backpack and some water. That was helpful, since it was hours before they dared to leave. The worst part of the entire experience was Crystal’s urgent need to pee and with the knowledge that a toilet was right there below her.
Once things were dead quiet, it was still another hour before Sasha let her out. Crystal felt she was about to explode and at this point was almost beyond caring if she got killed or not, if she could just be allowed to empty her bladder first.
“Oh my God,” she sighed, as she finally exited a stall and stretched her legs. “That felt good.”
“Great,” Sasha said flatly. “Enjoy it. Because I’m pretty sure everyone is dead out there.”
Crystal shouldered her backpack and braced herself.
It turned out to be as bad as they had thought and that was just on their floor. People were missing and the occasionally optimistic side of Crystal decided that they’d found hiding places of their own, though more likely they were dead somewhere else or had been taken by Drake and his men. But the breeding pit was still littered with bodies. Crystal bit down hard on her tongue to the point of nearly drawing blood as she breathed through her nose and they walked through what was left of their “home” such as it was.
Gail was pale as a ghost, her mouth hanging open, as she lay askew on a couch in the lobby, blood still oozing from where a chunk of flesh had been taken from her neck. Everyone dead that they found had been drained. Drake even killed the Vampyren men who had been there to take advantage of the breeding pit that night. Which meant Drake had turned against his own kind too. That was what was so strange about it to Crystal. The intrigue of it almost staved off the pain of seeing people she’d spent so much time with over the last few weeks now murdered. But Gail did get to her and Crystal sat down beside her, feeling a wave of dizziness.
“Aren’t you pregnant?” Alex said, patting her back awkwardly.
“Maybe you shouldn’t…”
“Shouldn’t what? See dead bodies.” Crystal had the hysterical urge to laugh. “If this kid can’t handle some dead bodies when it’s still in my belly, it’s not going to survive once it’s out.”
“You sound like me,” Sasha said, turning on her heel to look at her askance. “Yikes.”
“What do we do now?” Crystal said, rubbing her eyes. “We should check the floors below, right? And look for survivors?”
“One of the matrons would have called our region’s vamp unit,” Sasha said
. Crystal reached over and gently closed Gail’s open eyes before getting to her feet again, her stomach lurching suddenly at the scent of all that blood, although she was able to contain the nausea. “Someone should be here or else they’re on their way. But we should send out another call for help. Maybe they didn’t get the chance.”
“Nobody even had time to run,” Crystal whispered. “But us.”
They managed to find four survivors, other girls who had found places to hide. But when it came down to it, Crystal wouldn’t leave the floor to go look at the kid’s sections downstairs.
“No,” she said softly, shaking her head. She found an empty private room and huddled there on the bed, hugging her knees. “I can’t.”
Their regional unit would be Mark’s unit, she thought. Mark would be going. She’d stay right here until Mark showed up. Except that even with the door closed, the stench of blood wouldn’t go away.
Crystal closed her eyes and plugged her nose and somehow she fell asleep like that until she found herself shaken awake yet again.
“Crystal.” This time it was Mark, and Crystal stirred awake and threw her arms around his neck. She burst into tears and hated herself for it, but she blamed the hormones.
Yes, certainly it’s hormones and not the mass slaughter that just happened right under my nose.
Mark sighed, and he twisted around to pull her into his lap as he sat down on the bed, holding her close. Even a Vampyren man as gentle as Mark wasn’t used to expressions of emotions like this, Crystal thought. But he was handling it well enough, softly murmuring words of comfort in her ear as she sobbed on his shoulder. She let herself cry for about two minutes before she willed herself to pull it together and sat up straight, wiping her tears, swallowing her despair.
“Okay,” she said, mostly to herself. She smiled tightly at Mark and ran her fingers through his long dark hair, coming loose from the braid down his back. He wasn’t hurt or bleeding. He only looked a little dirty. “Mark,” Crystal said, clutching his shoulders. “It was Drake. It was the one who attacked me, who Keira and Loren found you to protect me from. It was Drake. I don’t think he did this just to get to me but he was looking for me.”
Crystal saw a flash of some darkness in Mark’s eyes then. It was the kind of darkness she’d only seen in other men, both human and Vampyren alike, Drake being one of them. She could practically feel possessiveness radiating from him as he tightened his embrace.
“I’ll kill him,” Mark said flatly, meeting her gaze. “I will find him and I will kill him. Not just for you. Partly… for you. But for what he did here. His unit has obviously gone rogue. To slaughter a creche like this, never mind a breeding pit…” Mark shook his head, rubbing his eyes, and he suddenly looked very tired. “It’s unheard of. It goes against all of our ideals, our… instincts. He’s a… what do you call it? A mad dog.”
“He looks like one,” Crystal muttered.
Mark pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll find some place safe for you. Somewhere secure.”
“Not just me.” She patted her stomach and considered whether it was right to tell him. She searched his dark eyes and there beneath the sorrow and rage, she saw the same adoration she had seen the last time they’d made love. It would give him something to fight for, she thought.
If nothing else, it would give him hope.
“The other survivors too,” Mark said, nodding. “Of course.”
“No… Well, yes but…” She laughed at herself and he kissed her cheek, looking rather adorably confused. “I mean...it’s not just me. It’s…” She rubbed her stomach again and raised her eyebrows. “I’m pregnant, Mark.”
Crystal heard him breathe in and it felt like a sweet breeze when he kissed her cheek again and moved down to her mouth. “Crystal…”
“You’re happy about it,” she said, and immediately felt a little stupid. Of course, he would be happy about it. The Vampyrens wanted to reproduce.
But now Mark tipped her chin up and his mouth curved up, tentative. “Are you happy about it?”
“Oh, I’m terrified!” She said, but her tone was dry and it made him laugh. “But… I’m happy it’s yours. If anyone should be a father, I think it’s you. I think you’ll be good at parenting.”
“We’ll be great it,” he whispered in her ear.
That made her smile, but she remembered what Gail had said about raising children outside the creche system. It didn’t seem likely they’d be allowed to raise their own child. Now with the promise of new life coming out of this horrific slaughter, she felt angry that anyone would try to take her child from her and her mate.
My mate, she thought with a sense of pride as he kissed her once again. My Vampyren mate.
7
Mark
As peaceful as Mark considered himself to be, he never felt rage like he did at that moment, wanting to defend his mate and their unborn child. He could pretend all he wanted that it was in response to the slaughter itself and that would certainly have been reason enough to go against Drake, wherever he was hiding, but that would have been a lie.
Crystal said she couldn’t smoke her cigarettes now and handed him her secret stash of smokes when he left the ruins of the creche, the bodies now cleared away to be buried. So Drake took a minute to smoke as his unit packed up their Humvee. They were to report to the council. Loren was ordered to report there too. Mark had radioed news of the slaughter himself… and that Drake was responsible. A rogue Vampyren unit was the last thing anyone needed. He wasn’t looking forward to how the council might react on top of everything else and he lit himself a cigarette as night turned to dawn.
“Markole.” There Loren was now, coming up beside him and Mark raised his eyebrows as he took a drag from the cigarette, absently flicking the lighter. The things might have been meaningless, addicted, and hazardous. But they sure felt relaxing when life was awful.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Mark said.
“I just wanted to stop by,” he said darkly. “Take a look at… Ugh, Christ.”
Mark almost laughed at that. He’d heard other Vampyrens picking up those little slang terms. That one seemed like the oddest. Some Terran prophet that they all liked to mention at the worst times. It was a strange habit of the humans, he mused.
“Has your human mate softened you?” Mark said idly, fidgeting with his smoke. “You’re supposed to have a stronger stomach than that.”
“I’m no softer than you are,” Loren said, his voice pitching up a little.
That made Mark chuckle around his cigarette. That was another thing about humans he’d picked up. He’d seen his men picking it up too. They laughed a lot. They laughed even when things weren’t funny or when they were completely miserable.
“That’s not saying much according to most,” Mark said under his breath.
“It was Drake, yes?” Loren said. “His unit’s gone wrong.”
“Yes. The Council wants to see both of us about this,” Mark said thoughtfully. “I’ll ride with you.”
The Council’s newest headquarters were a couple of miles downtown in a gray cement building with an impressive basement for keeping prisoners. Mark rode in the back of an armored vehicle with Loren driven by one of his men. He felt exhausted down to his bones and he ignored it but his stomach rumbled and he felt the thirst for blood in the back of his throat. The feeding tanks were distributing the blood in plastic packs these days. Whether it was for efficiency or to sate blood lust in the interest of working toward a truce with the humans, Mark wasn’t sure. But it had been a while since he’d eaten and he hadn’t fed from a live human since the first sweep of invasion.
It was giving him a headache now, and he rubbed his temples.
“You’re stupid,” Loren declared, and pulled a packet of blood from his jacket, tossing it over. “You don’t want to kill, you need to keep yourself fed.”
Mark sighed in relief and nodded his thanks. He sank his fangs into the two perforated marks at the top of
the pack and drank his fill, feeling better every moment until he drained the bag and sat back as the truck clipped along bumps and ruts in the streets.
“Let’s say, in an ideal world,” Mark said, still licking his teeth, “we can co-exist peacefully with humans—"
Loren was already laughing and Mark ignored him.
“How would we organize feeding tanks then?” Mark said, squinting at nothing. “If say, we outlawed live feeding? If we just let them give us blood. They can always make more of it.”
“Incentivize it,” Loren said, with one of those human shrugs. “Offer benefits. Pay them. It could work. Sometimes humans lose too much blood? So they need one of those blood packs to make it up so they don’t die. So humans would donate blood or sell it. According to blood type. Did you know the bloods had types? It’s a whole thing. I wonder if the types taste different. I haven’t really noticed.”
“Hmm.” Mark rubbed his chin and the truck pulled to a stop, the driver sticking his head in the back to announce their arrival at the council headquarters. “I enjoy discussing these things with you, Loren,” Mark said. He climbed out of the truck, following after him, and wiped the blood from his lips. “You’re realistic and optimistic at the same time.”
“I don’t know if realistic is the word I’d use,” Loren admitted.
The street was pleasant and tree-lined, even if the squat and sprawling building had a foreboding air to it. The sun beat down and Mark grimaced, pulling his leather vest away from his skin. One of these days, he thought, he was going to cave and start wearing those cooler human clothes, military service be damned. The humidity was just too brutal. The Council’s headquarters was well guarded and Mark expected heavy security, but he was still surprised when he was asked for his original ID from back home followed by several questions about his business with the Council and his lineage. But he played along anyhow and was finally let in through two heavy sets of double doors. He had spoken to the Council a couple of times before but never at this headquarters. Loren, however, seemed to know exactly what he was doing so Mark followed his lead.