What was that supposed to mean? What could be going on in a flower-processing plant that a grown man wished he didn’t know about? Or was he running his mouth the way some people did?
She tried again to doze but the words kept bouncing around the inside of her skull until she gave in. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. Dillon and Rollie were just disappearing through a door lugging another of the large blossom vats. The driver was nowhere in sight.
What was going on in there that she shouldn’t see? Dillon and Rollie didn’t seem bothered. Why didn’t they want her in there? Because she was a girl, and girls are weak?
Well, we’ll see about that, she thought, striding across the lawn.
She walked to the door and stepped inside to find herself in an empty, dead-end hallway. A door to her left was labeled “SATING” and the one straight ahead said, “COATING.” Dillon had mentioned those terms earlier but she’d had other things on her mind. What did they mean?
And where was he, anyway? She found herself increasingly drawn to him. She liked his smile. She liked the fact that people could still smile in an awful world like this. And he obviously cared for her, else why risk Ergel’s wrath just to get her a break from the sangreflor fields?
The SATING door was nearest. She pushed it open and was greeted by a cloud of cool mist, rolling out into the hallway. She stepped through into the corner of a foggy, dimly lit space. All this humidity had to have something to do with the blossoms. Dillon had said they needed moisture to stay fresh.
Waving her hands to part the mists, she carefully stepped forward to see what was going on. The door clicked closed softly behind her. That was when she heard the sound. A soft mewling, like kittens. She paused, then pushed forward. Something took shape in the mist ahead. A form, stretched out on some sort of low cot. A vaguely human shape, but somehow odd. It seemed knobby, as if covered with bumps.
The mist thinned briefly and suddenly Emma realized what lay before her.
Jamming a hand into her mouth to stifle a scream, she backed up a step, then turned and stumbled away toward the corner where she’d entered. She reached for the door handle but couldn’t find it. After frantically running her hands all over the surface she realized it didn’t have a handle on this side. No one in here was supposed to leave here, at least not by this door.
Another scream built in her but she choked it down. She knew, just knew she wasn’t supposed to be here, and if she screamed, people – well, lycans – would come running and then everyone would know, and that couldn’t be good. Because then Dillon would get in trouble for bringing her here and she might even end up like that man she’d seen on the cot.
16
Emma ran her hands over the door again. This… this SATING room must have an exit. She simply had to find it.
But that meant returning to the main area and that man on the cot. She didn’t know if she could do that.
No. She had to do it. Her only other option was to crouch here in the corner by the door until someone found her.
Steeling herself, Emma eased forward in a crouch and moved back into the open area, vowing to keep her eyes straight ahead. The mist had thinned a little and she came to a quick rigid stop as she noticed more cots – lots of them stretching down length of the building to her left and right, and every one of them occupied by someone who looked like they were in terrible distress…
Against her will, her gaze drifted rightward, toward the first man she had seen. He lay there as him before, on his back, clad only in some sort of diaper, with his arms and legs strapped to the cot, staring blankly at the ceiling and making those strange mewling noises. Still stuck to his skin were a hundred or more sangreflor blossoms. She gasped at the change in them. A few moments ago, when she’d first seen him, they’d been a faint pink. Now they’d all turned a ruby color… crimson…
Blood red.
She noticed now that his palms lay open, facing the ceiling, and they were bare, like hers.
He was human.
“Time for rounds,” said a woman’s voice from the far end of the space. “Come on, Dorrie. Get off yer arse and do yer job.”
Emma froze in panic for a few heartbeats, then ducked to her right. She found herself next to a woman on a cot. She too was dressed only in a diaper and she too was covered with pink sangreflor blossoms. As Emma crouched beside the cot, two women, one blonde, one brunette, wearing hair nets and white smocks that were stained red here and there, approached the man she’d seen. They stood over him, one on either side. Each carried a lidless box, twelve inches or so on a side.
“This one looks done,” said the blonde.
They began peeling the ruby sangeflor blossoms off the man’s skin and gently placing them in the boxes. Emma noticed the hair on their palms – lycans. The man twitched and made that mindless mewling noise every time one was removed. Was he drugged? Had to be.
When he’d been stripped of the blossoms, the lycans walked away. Emma waited a bit. Were they coming back? When they didn’t, she rose from her hiding place, but had to duck back when they abruptly reappeared.
This time they carried a different sort of container. Through the mist, Emma watched with stomach-twisting revulsion as they resumed their places on either side of the poor man and began attaching fresh sangreflor blossoms – all lily white.
When he was again festooned with the blood-sucking flowers, they turned and moved in Emma’s direction.
Oh, no, they’d see her!
She looked around for a place to hide but could find nothing. Rows of cots in an open space. Where could she–?
Emma dropped flat on the floor and slid beneath the woman’s cot. She lay ramrod straight and held her breath. Two pairs of bootied feet appeared on either side of her.
“This one ain’t ripe yet,” said the voice she recognized as the blonde.
“Takin’ her own sweet time, she is. You know what that means.”
“Yeah. This’ll be her last go-round.”
They moved away to the neighboring cot where they stood over another man. He had blossoms all over him too, but they were as white as his alabaster skin. He wasn’t moving or mewling. Emma didn’t think he was breathing.
“This one’s done,” said the blonde. “Sucked dry, he is.”
The brunette lifted his wrist, then nodded. “Yer right. No pulse. Let’s see if we can salvage the blossoms.”
As they began pulling off the white sangreflors, the brunette yelled, “Charlie! Joe! Replacement!”
A moment later, two men appeared carrying a middle-age woman on a stretcherlike cot. She was making those mewling noises as she struggled against the straps that held her down.
What’s wrong with these people? Emma thought. I’d be screaming at the top of my lungs!
The men dropped her cot onto the floor, then waited while the blonde and brunette finished removing the flowers. Then they moved the dead man’s cot from the platform and replaced it with the live woman.
“When’s the carvery truck due?” one of the men said.
Carvery?
“Not till tomorrow,” the blonde replied.
“We’ll stick him in the cooler then.”
They carried the dead man off as the women began attaching sangreflors onto the newcomer.
The casual, matter-of-fact way everything was done sickened Emma. They were treating these poor people as if they were less than human.
Wait. They weren’t being treated as less than human – they were being treated as less than lycan. Because as Amelia had indicated, humans were little more than food here.
The thought jolted her.
Exerting all her will to keep from hurling – oh, man, was she glad Ryan wasn’t here – she turned her head away until they were finished.
“Break time,” said the blonde.
They moved off. Emma was now pretty sure she knew what “sating” meant: The sangreflor blossoms were brought here to drink their fill from these captured human… dri
nk until their thirst was sated. Now she knew what her unclear vision, her feeling of urgent trouble, had been trying to tell her. But the truth of it had been so bizarre, so unthinkable, that until she saw the reality of it, she’d had no way to make sense of it.
Everything was upside down here. At home, humans were kings of the hill, rulers of the planet. Here they were just part of the food chain.
Waiting until she was pretty sure she was alone in the sating room, she slipped out from under the woman’s cot and began unclasping her restraints.
She bent over her and whispered, “I’ll get you out of here. We can free all the others and sneak out.”
She saw herself leading them to the truck, commandeering it, and driving them all away to…
…to where?
She didn’t know. She’d figure that out later. First thing to do was free them from their restraints.
“Let’s go, but be quiet.”
The woman looked at her as if she was speaking Martian and made only those creepy, mewling-whining noises. Her eyes were strangely glazed, her features slack.
“I said, I’ll help you get out of here. Come on.”
Although the straps were loosened, the woman didn’t move.
“Come on!” Emma said, tugging on her arm.
But no understanding lit the woman’s eyes. She simply lay there and made those noises. Some kind of drug. Had to be.
She moved to the newcomer’s cot but she only stared at Emma and made the same noises.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?”
Still no sign that she understood. What was it with these people? They seemed half brain-dead.
Okay, if they couldn’t or wouldn’t help her, she’d have to go it alone.
She crept down the center aisle between the rows of cots laden with numbed up people serving as food for these horrible blossoms until they’d been bled dry. And when they died from blood loss, what then? Off to the “carvery.” She didn’t know for sure what that might be, but she could guess: a meat-packing plant.
Memories of the oddly familiar cuts of meat in the village butcher shop returned to her, smacking her in the gut with truth of what she was struggling not to accept.
And what about the flowers? Once they’d finished “sating” themselves on human blood, what happened to them? Dillon’s words from this morning came back to her.
They’re sated, coated, then shipped off to the NF, where people pay dearly for them.
Okay, she now knew what “sating” was, but coated with what? And where on Earth – or on Nocturnia, rather – was “the NF”?
As if in answer to the first part of her question, the mist parted for a second and she saw a door marked COATING. Well, she might be entering another circle of hell, but no way was she staying in the sating room a moment longer than she had to.
This door had a lever handle. She pushed it down and eased it open an inch. The muffled sound of a steam engine mixed with the click-clack of machinery. Some sort of factory room. A familiar heavy scent filled the air. More people – lycans – milling around, dumping containers of the crimson, blood-filled sangreflors onto a conveyor belt where they fitted into little slots. The belt ran them through a chocolate waterfall, then down again to where they were dumped onto a large table.
Chocolate.
Her stomach roiled. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to eat it again.
Half a dozen men and women stood around the table and hand-wrapped each of the blood-filled, chocolate-coated sangreflors in gold foil, then packed them twelve each into gold boxes. Emma gasped when she recognized the name.
Midnight Delights.
These were the chocolate goodies the vampire couple had been gobbling down in that candy shop. She remembered the red liquid dripping from the corner of the woman’s mouth, how Emma had thought it was cherry juice and how she’d hungered for one.
Her gorge rose… had to get away from here.
She eased the door open a little wider and saw another marked EXIT off to her right. Throwing caution to the wind, she burst into the dipping room and ran for it. She ignored the cries of alarm and calls to stop as she pulled it open and ran into the hall. Down the hall she saw a partially open door, offering a tantalizing glimpse of sunshine before it closed.
She dashed for it as two lycans emerged from the dipping room in pursuit.
“Stop!” one of them cried but Emma ignored him.
Had to get out of here. She hit the door and burst into the sunny outdoors. Not breaking stride as she ran for the truck. Dillon stood by the rear bumper, staring at her.
“What were you doing in there?” he cried.
The two lycans emerged then, but Dillon waved them off.
“It’s all right,” he called. “She’s from the farm. She’s with us.”
“Then keep her with you,” one of them snarled, “or we’ll be reporting you to Master Simon!”
“You were supposed to be resting,” Dillon said as soon as the lycans went back inside.
Emma couldn’t speak. The images had followed her from the warehouse. Neither the fresh air nor the bright, clean sunlight could burn away the horrors she’d just seen. The visions were seared into her brain.
17
“Are you okay?”
Dillon’s arm remained across Emma’s shoulders, giving her both comfort and support as they bounced along in the truck. It felt good, quelling her urge to scream.
They huddled in the shade of the tarp as the truck headed back to the farm. Rollie leaned against the far side of the bed, staring at nothing. Emma welcomed a cooling breeze that fanned her flushed cheeks as they rode.
“No, not really. That was… horrible… they kill people in there! They suck them dry!” Emma’s words choked off as she tried to stop the images of the pale bodies on the cots.
“Try to be calm.”
Forcing herself to take easier, more measured breaths, Emma felt her heart gradually slow. She couldn’t let another wave of nausea overtake her; she had to be strong. For Ryan as much as herself. But she couldn’t shake the nightmarish visions.
“Why would they do something like that? Why?”
“It’s a business,” he said.
“A business?”
“Something happens to blood when it’s drawn off by the flowers.”
“What do you mean?”
“The flowers change human blood into a kind of liqueur – the Nossies really seem to–”
“Nossies? Those people working there?”
For an instant his expression took on an are-you-serious? look, then changed to sympathy. “No, sorry. Those are everyday lycans. Nossies are Nosferatans, from the Nosferatu Federation.”
Nosferatu…she knew that word.
“Vampires?”
“They prefer ‘Nosferatans,’ but yes, they’re vampires. Back to the flowers: they’re native to this continent and nowhere else. Years and years ago somebody in Lycanthum discovered their effect on blood and came up with the idea of making them into a kind of candy. The vampires go crazy for chocolate-covered sangreflors.”
Emma flashed back again to the scene in the candy shop and the thin red line at the corner of the woman’s mouth. She couldn’t help it. The horrible image clung to her like the hungry mouths of the blossoms.
“But they’re killing people! To make… candy?”
Dillon looked at her for a moment, then away out across the landscape, as if he were searching for something. Finally, he looked at her again.
“Humans are nothing here. ‘Human’ is just another word for slave or… cattle. It’s something you have to get used to.”
“I’ll never get used to that. What a heartless world.”
“Not completely heartless. There are people here–”
“There! You said people. Humans are people.”
He shook his head. “No. Not here. Nocturnians are people here. Humans are, well, humans. Non-people. Non-persons…”
The words almost
stuck in Emma’s throat. “Cattle or slaves.”
“You’re learning. But as I was saying, I’ve heard of groups of people here who want humans treated better, that they shouldn’t be slaves or cattle.”
Emma couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Don’t tell me: the Nocturnian equivalent of PETA.”
“Peeta?”
“An animal rights group back where I come from.”
Dillon nodded. “Interesting. There’s something like that going on here. They call it ‘NETH’ – Nocturnians for the Ethical Treatment of Humans.”
She stared at him. “You’re joking, right?”
“You think it’s funny?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. It just sounds ridiculous.”
“Unfortunately, most Nocturnians agree.”
As they rode on in silence, Emma noticed that Rollie had dozed off. She stole a closer look at Dillon. His blond hair was bleached a lighter shade by the sun, and his skin was deeply tanned. He had a lean, wiry body, and sleekly muscled arms – probably from doing fieldwork. She’d never seen a surfer in real life, but she imagined this was how one would look up close.
“Everybody seems to know you.”
The question seemed to surprise him. “Well, they should. They’ve seen enough of me around here.”
“Really?”
“Pretty much raised here.”
“You weren’t brought across?”
He shook his head. “They breed humans here just like cattle, trying to bring out certain characteristics – you know, like stamina, strong backs, anything that’ll make a good worker.”
“Like you?”
He shrugged.
Do they breed for good looks too? she wondered but didn’t dare ask.
“What about your folks?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember them.”
“What?”
“We’re raised in group homes until we’re old enough to work.”
“That’s awful!”
“Could be worse. Others…” His voice trailed off.
“Others what?”
“Others are bred for food. You just saw a bunch of them.”
Definitely Not Kansas (Nocturnia Book 1) Page 11