An hour later, the soldiers filed into a meeting room. The table had been removed, and chairs circled the perimeter of the space. I scanned the ceiling and found six cameras mounted on the walls. Bryce had mentioned that the activities were to be “monitored” (which Captain Finley had hastily corrected to “studied”) from the surveillance room.
I glanced over and caught my brother assessing the camera as well.
"Like fish in a bowl," he said softly, as if he didn’t want to be heard.
"Comforting," I mumbled, trying to dismiss my uneasiness with the setup as crankiness from fatigue. I knew they needed to gather evidence, but I felt like an animal at the zoo.
Once our team had taken seats together in a row, filling half of the chairs, the vampires were escorted in, surrounded by Captain Clemmins and a handful of Bureau guards.
"Welcome, everyone." Clemmins mustered up an enthusiastic face. "You’re going to do a series of engagement practices. Getting to know and understand each other better, if you will." He turned around and noticed that some of the vampires had clustered near the doorway, unsure of where to go. "Please, come and sit." He showed them to the other half of the chair circle.
I smiled at Dorian. He didn't seem to notice. Bravi and Sike sat beside each other, and Kane, naturally, entered the room last. Halla was absent, I guessed due to the pretty bad leg injury she’d acquired when their clan was attacked in the Immortal Plane; or perhaps she was helping to supervise the children. Discomfort lined the vampires’ faces.
"I need human-vampire pairs." Captain Clemmins cleared his throat. "Link up with the person directly across from you."
I looked across at my partner—Rhome. His hands rested on his thighs and he gazed at his feet, as if meditating. He'd tied his black hair back, and with it put up like this, I noticed streaks of gray at his temples for the first time. As if he could tell that I was looking at him, he caught my gaze. I smiled. He nodded in acknowledgement.
"Ask your partner a question, then answer one of theirs, until the exercise ends. I have the list of questions here”—Clemmins rustled a sheaf of papers in his hand—“so no need to worry about thinking of questions. Just follow my lead. Pull your seats closer to your partners, now."
Chair legs screeched. I noticed my brother sliding his chair toward Kane, who refused to move his. That was going to be a fun time.
Rhome and I met in the middle and took our seats. He tried to maintain a smile, but his eyes were strained.
"Is Detra okay?" I whispered. My stomach still churned over thoughts of the little girl.
"She was very scared and confused, but she's calmer now," he replied softly.
"This first question should be asked by the human partner to their vampire partner. Question one: What is your favorite thing to do?" Clemmins read from his paper, his voice completely flat. "Begin."
I took a deep breath. "Well, Rhome, what is your favorite thing to do?" I grinned, knowing he must find this as odd as I did. I’d never been to one, but I imagined this was just like an awkward college orientation.
Rhome blinked, his gaze dropping to his knees again. "Before we were forced from our home, I loved taking my children up into the mountains. I taught them how to speak with creatures that way."
"Speak with creatures?" I squinted, unsure whether he was pulling my leg.
"Redbills, in this case," he clarified gently.
"You can actually speak with them?"
"It's not always speech you hear,” he said. “Often it's like forming a thought, and right before you open your mouth, you 'send' it to the one you want to hear it. Like you visualize the words already in the creature's head." His forehead creased. "That probably doesn't make sense."
"It's strange to imagine, but I think I understand," I assured him, filing away the information that the vampires’ relationship with redbills was more intimate than I'd realized. When Dorian had pulled me out of the church window, he’d growled right before the redbill appeared—it seemed they had two modes of communication.
At that, Rhome cracked a genuine smile through his obvious weariness. "Detra was exceptionally quick to learn," he continued, as if encouraged. "She made friends with the redbill hatchlings very quickly. Always wanted to visit them."
I set my chin on my palm, imagining the little girl playing with a gaggle of man-eating storks.
Rhome cleared his throat and looked directly in my eyes for the first time. "I wanted to apologize," he whispered. "For not keeping closer watch on Detra last night."
"It wasn't your fault. She was doing what she's biologically designed to do," I said. "I'm just glad everyone's okay."
"There's something else," he said, his voice low, so I had to lean closer to hear him. "When I first met you, I was terrified for my family’s safety. Keeping you hostage to ensure that we weren’t attacked seemed like a plausible idea. I'm sorry I considered it without looking for other options first."
That was something I'd never imagined hearing. I breathed out, just a little shakily. "Apology accepted. I think it was understandable in your circumstances. But… you didn’t harm me in the end. So, thank you, too.” I nodded to him, trying to show him my sincerity.
"The vampire should now ask their human partner the same question," Clemmins called from the other side of the room.
"What do you enjoy?" Rhome asked quietly, his eyes still focused on me. He folded his hands in his lap.
I hadn't thought of my own answer yet, still caught off guard by the seriousness of our previous conversation. "You know," I said, glancing at the ceiling, "this may be boring, but I love going to the gym."
"Going to the 'gym'?" Rhome asked.
I considered my next words. "Going to a building with equipment that helps you exercise. I enjoy working out my thoughts while running as hard as I can on the treadmill. A good sweat is like therapy for me."
He still looked confused. "You physically exert yourself for fun?"
That probably sounded insane to someone who was constantly running for his life.
"I guess that is a little weird from a different perspective." I stifled a laugh. "Uh, I also like playing board games. Like chess."
"Board games," he echoed, rolling the words around on his tongue, as though trying to figure them out.
I felt a flash of surprise. Vampires spent a decent amount of time on Earth before humans drove them out, and I realized I’d assumed a lot about their knowledge of my kind. "Have you ever played chess?"
"No, I haven't," he said earnestly. That was one thing I was learning to appreciate about Rhome: he seemed sincere, regardless of the situation he was in.
"It’s a strategy game,” I told him. “It’s very old, and we—I mean, humans—have been studying it for centuries, but it’s still one of the best games there is. If you want, I'm sure I can find a board around here and teach you."
Rhome let out a quiet breath, thought for a moment, and then nodded in agreement.
I looked around. Rhome and I sat closer to each other than most of the others. Many of the pairs were silent, including Zach and Kane. Dorian and Roxy didn’t exactly look chummy, either. I imagined for a second what it would've been like to starve in a cell under constant supervision, especially so far from anything familiar. With all that in mind, Rhome was handling himself more than gracefully.
I was thankful that Louise and Kreya were speaking more than the others. Louise’s soft matter-of-factness mirrored Kreya’s. Grayson and the quiet, dark-haired female vampire named Laini struggled to maintain eye contact during their short exchanges, and Grayson’s focus on shooting glances at Louise didn’t help, either.
"Next question," Clemmins announced. I wondered if he cared that not everybody seemed to be handling the exercise very well. I also wondered if he found this whole thing as strange as we did. "Humans, ask your partner whom they admire most."
I posed the question to Rhome.
"My mother," he replied without hesitation. "She is the fiercest of protectors
. I try to be the same for my children."
My insides warmed a little. Apparently even grown male vampires could be momma's boys.
When it was my turn to answer, my response came easily, too. "Uncle Alan. He keeps his cool in every situation and is dedicated to the Bureau."
Rhome's eyes clouded for a moment. "I see," he said, his smile faltering.
"I admire the hell out of Teddy Roosevelt," I overheard Zach say. "You know, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kane stare at him blankly. I had to cover my grin with a hand.
Perhaps thankfully, at that point, Clemmins rallied everyone's attention and told us to switch partners.
I ended up with Sike. "You’re Sike," I said, as I pulled my chair next to him.
"And you're Lyra. And now we have a chance to meet properly without arguments or security guards staring at us." A blinding smile warmed his voice and face.
"Humans, ask your vampire partners one place they'd like to visit someday," Clemmins ordered. I did.
Sike crossed one of his ankles over a wiry thigh, his dark brown eyes thoughtful as he leaned back. "My grandpa told me about a place where humans give money to walk around and eat food, and ride on machines that go up and down. And people dress in animal costumes, like mice and ducks."
I blinked a few times. "Are you talking about Disneyland?"
"Yeah! That was it. I just found it fascinating—dressing up like another animal for fun—and paying currency to see it. It makes no sense." He smiled, scratching his sandy brown curls.
I laughed. "Well, it's a real thing. And I guess it is kind of weird."
“And, yeah, at some point I’d like to go home. But everybody gets homesick, right?” he said lightheartedly, though his eyes lost their amusement.
My chest tightened and I nodded. "I can understand that."
Louise suddenly leaned into our conversation. "By home you mean the Immortal Plane, right?" she asked Sike under her breath. "What other things live in the Immortal Plane?" Louise was usually not this assertive unless provoked—and something sparkled in her eyes as she spoke to him.
Sike gazed at Louise with a small smile but returned his eyes to me without responding, lacing his fingers in his lap. A very polite—if not slightly cocky—wordless “no.”
At the head of the room, Clemmins advised the pairs to reverse the question.
“This is like interspecies speed dating,” Roxy muttered from a few seats to my side. That caused a laugh to explode out of Grayson, and he clapped a hand to his mouth to muffle it.
"Where do you want to visit?" Sike asked, with genuine interest.
"I've always wanted to visit the Amazon rainforest," I said, trying to smooth things over. "There's sadly not much of it left, but there are so many different kinds of animals in one place. It's an amazing ecosystem." I caught Dorian looking at me from the corner of his eye a few feet away, and I smiled, thinking back to our conversation in his cave room about vampires’ place in the universe.
“Wow. That’s a part of Earth I’ve never been to, either. Sounds fascinating,” Sike said thoughtfully.
Beside us, Sarah asked Dorian about the Immortal Plane, too. "Why did you have to leave the Immortal Plane?" she murmured, her hushed voice thrumming with curious excitement. I couldn’t hear Dorian’s response, but I saw his face turn to stone. Sarah didn’t seem to notice his discomfort, because she continued asking for more details, whether she received them or not. She’d been painfully inquisitive during briefs when she first joined the Bureau, but Bryce had quickly put a stop to that.
Apparently, I was doing a better job of hiding my biting curiosity than my teammates that morning. The others didn’t know as well as I did that the vampires were discreet about their homeland. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen the Immortal Plane with my own eyes, my curiosity would consume me, too. It’s not every day you hear about another plane of existence.
Clemmins rustled his papers again, as if that would somehow relieve the room’s awkward mood. "New activity. Humans, find the vampire closest to you whom you haven't spoken with yet."
“It was a pleasure getting to know you a bit more, Lyra,” Sike said, that beaming smile unfading. “Do humans do this when saying goodbye, too?” he asked, extending his hand toward me for a shake.
“Yeah,” I replied, giving his hand a firm grip and a few hearty shakes. “Thanks for chatting.”
My new partner would be Bravi. When I looked at her, she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. I made my way over to her.
"Hey." I offered a little wave.
She raised her eyebrows under her short black hair. All right, then.
"Everyone paired? Good." Clemmins heaved himself into a chair and adjusted the handgun on his waist. "This next activity is simple. Humans, you will make basic hand gestures and body movements. Vampires, you will copy everything your partner does. Got it?"
"Yes, Captain," a few soldiers replied, their voices weaker than normal. Even without looking too hard, I could see a rustle of murmurs and looks passing around the room.
"This is a little weird," I said sheepishly.
Bravi raised her eyebrows again and nodded. "You gonna start?"
I looked down at my hands and decided on a series of movements. I placed my palms together like a prayer. She followed. I raised my right hand to the ceiling and splayed my fingers. She didn't miss a beat.
As I continued moving, extending my arms and even raising my feet here and there, she never paused or delayed. It was like she already knew what I was going to do—like looking in a mirror. What shook me a little was that, unlike Rhome and Sike, Bravi never once broke eye contact. At all. I wasn’t sure she even blinked.
"You're really good at this," I said, masking my nervousness.
"It isn't exactly hard." She scoffed. "You move so damn slowly."
"Ah." I pursed my lips, hoping the remaining time would pass quickly. So far, this exercise confused me, but I assumed the purpose would become clear. I glanced at a camera directly behind Bravi’s head, still uncomfortable with being watched.
"Switch it up." Clemmins waved a hand. "Vampires make gestures and humans emulate." Then I got it, and the rest of the exercise supported my suspicion.
Bravi began immediately. Her movements were fluid, effortless. I'd seen a few tai chi tutorials in my combat training, and she could've put the demonstrators to shame. I held her eyes just as she had mine, but I couldn't keep up. I couldn’t close the constant delay between us, no matter how hard I focused. She kept her face still, but her vibrant green eyes laughed at me.
The scientists were testing the difference between our reflexes, but how did they plan to use that information?
"Good, moving on." Captain Clemmins opened a new manila folder.
This time, Clemmins had the entire room count off in threes. The vampires seemed confused by the practice but caught on quickly. I got paired with my brother and Dorian.
"Howdy," Zach said as Dorian joined us.
"Hello." Dorian's voice sounded like sandpaper. Apparently, he’d worked out the last exercise, too. Between that and the intrusive questions, I guessed he was finding his plan more painful in practice than in theory.
I eyed him. "Nice to see you, too."
Dorian made a clear effort to shake off his mood, rolling his shoulders back and offering us a thin smile.
"Listen to the questions I pose and discuss how you feel about them amongst yourselves," Captain Clemmins ordered.
Dutifully, the three of us found empty chairs and pulled them together.
"First question. What is the most important thing about being alive?" Clemmins asked.
"Oh, that’s easy," Zach said. “Always being right.”
Dorian stared at him, unamused.
"I'm kidding.” Zach returned his expression. I winced internally. Humorless was Zach’s least favorite kind of person. “My real answer is doing what one feels is right. Sticking to one’s convictions, and so
on. Yada yada. What about you, Lyra?” He turned a questioning gaze on me.
"I'd say, uh… helping others," I replied with a shrug. That answer came to me pretty easily, given it was what I’d basically dedicated my life to doing.
I glanced at Dorian. He remained quiet, eyes watchful. If I were in his position, I would probably act the same, gathering as much information as I could before deciding how to act. But that wasn’t the point of an icebreaker.
I cracked a grin, hoping to thaw him out. "You're so talkative today."
"The most important thing about being alive is seeking the truth and acting on it,” he replied after a pause. He gave me a searching look. Vampires probably didn’t do icebreakers.
Zach and I sat in thought for a moment, and I decided to play a little further into this game. Dorian clearly needed loosening up.
Sure, what he said was important, but was it the most important?
"I would think you’d agree with that idea, Lyra," Dorian continued before I could voice my thoughts. He met my eyes. He was trying.
"I mean… as long as it helps people." I smiled at him, but I was not budging on my answer. I thought Zach’s answer was important, too.
"Eh, some are lost causes, though," Zach said. "Like that Kane guy. Who shoved a stick up his butt?"
Dorian narrowed his eyes on my brother. "Kane has reasons for being the way he is. I may not agree with him all the time, but he is justified in disliking this situation."
I glanced at Zach. He had raised an eyebrow.
Dorian set his hands on his knees and let out a slow breath. "Imagine if vampires slaughtered your father in front of your eyes and then forced you to open up to them on a video recording in between locking you in a cell. Oh, and they wouldn't let you eat for six weeks."
Zach nodded and sighed softly. "Yeah, I get that. It’s not ideal."
Dorian wet his lips. "Yes, his behavior isn't always helpful. I agree with you there. But his attitude is understandable."
Zach nodded, taking that in for a moment. Just when I thought we were going to move on to something else, he looked Dorian in the eye again.
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