by Melody Raven
“Frustrating! What does that even mean?”
“I, um, I think I met their leader?”
“You think.”
Tela winced. Dani was way too excited, and Tela was rapidly sobering and really needed Dani to turn the volume down a little bit. “John just described him as his boss. But the way everyone acted around him, he was obviously a big deal. His name’s Mikel.”
“Holy shit. Was he scary? Did he want to eat you?”
Tela let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t think he’s in any danger of running out of blood,” she said, remembering the women who had surrounded him all night. “I think he liked me a little too much.”
Dani’s eyes immediately widened. “O.M.G. Forget John—you can bag yourself a vampire prince!”
Tela snorted. “I’ll stick with John, thank you very much.”
Dani crossed her arms in front of herself. “So you admit that you like him?”
“There was also a very interesting man there named Travis, by the way,” said Tela, changing the subject.
There was a beat before Dani seemed to pick up on what Tela meant. “Travis, Travis? No. It’s a common name. Kind of....”
“Oh no. It’s the Travis. He made sure to mention my plucky younger sister.”
Dani fell back into the couch. “How did he get in? He’s outside of the wall.”
“Well, apparently, for this fancy shindig, they let some select humans into the wall. It’s like we’re a fucking zoo,” she muttered, still annoyed that some people were allowed to come and go while she was stuck here.
“What did he say? Did he try to talk to you about his plan?”
“Oh no. There were so many vampires around. Privacy wasn’t exactly a thing. But....” Tela reached into her purse, just big enough for her keys and lipstick, and pulled out the little piece of paper he’d slipped her. “But he passed this on to me.”
“What does it say?”
Tela looked down at the folded piece of white paper in her hand as she turned it over. “I don’t know. This is my first chance to take a look.” Part of her didn’t want to open it. If she didn’t acknowledge Travis’s offer of help, she wouldn’t be in the position of refusing him.
“Well....”
As much as she wanted to throw out the little slip of paper, now that she’d told Dani, she knew she didn’t have a choice. Maybe that was why she told her sister in the first place. To give her some sort of accountability. Based off the tiny scrap in her hand, she knew there wouldn’t be a lot of information passed. But she still had a bad feeling about it.
She unfolded the paper and read the few words on it quickly before handing it off to Dani, who read it out loud.
“We need to talk. Tomorrow at noon. Dixon’s on Fifth.” Dani looked up at Tela and she could see her sister’s mind racing. “So he wants to meet in the daylight. Doesn’t want to talk over CB. This must be the game plan. This is the real deal.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tela moved out of the living room and into the kitchen. “I’m not going.”
“What?” yelled Dani from behind her.
“Nothing’s changed. I told you I didn’t want to get involved in this and I don’t. Nothing Travis says tomorrow is going to convince me otherwise.” She reached up into the cabinet to pull out a glass for water, as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
“That’s not why you don’t want to go,” said Dani confidently.
“Oh really. Then what do you think the problem is then?”
“You don’t want to hear them out because you’re scared that they will actually convince you to do something.”
“Yes! Of course I don’t want to be convinced. I can’t put my ass on the line. I can’t risk leaving you alone out here. I promised Dad I’d take care of you, and I’m not going to stop.”
“You don’t want to make a difference? You don’t want to have your name in the history books as a hero of the vampire invasion?”
“You wanna know who gets their names in the history books? Dead people. People who sacrificed themselves for a cause. And I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be one of those martyrs who are memorialized. I’d rather be alive and forgotten than remembered and dead. If that makes me a coward, so be it. But it also makes me human.”
“A cowardly human.”
Fantastic. Now both Dani and John were pissed at her. “Fine. This cowardly human is going to bed.” Then, like the adult role model she was trying to be, she slammed her bedroom door shut behind her.
She had made a tactical error. The thought occurred to her in the middle of the night as she was struggling to let her body drift into unconsciousness. But late in the night, she’d realized how she’d gone wrong, and it hit her like a punch to the face.
Dani had the address. There was no way she’d be able to keep her sister from going to that meeting. Unless she tied up her sister and physically forced her to stay in, this wasn’t going to work out.
Shit. Normally Dani had free rein during the daylight. She was basically an adult, and if she and Tela stayed in all day, they’d go stir-crazy.
Shit.
After finally resigning herself to her fate, sleep hadn’t come any easier. Between being uneasy about what bullshit Travis was going to tell her, she kept on replaying what had happened between her and John.
It shouldn’t upset her. He was a vampire, for fuck’s sake. He was part of an invading army. So she hurt his feelings? Well, he hurt her life. It wasn’t as if they had any possibility of a real relationship anyway. He would just have to get used to the idea that they weren’t friends.
Acquaintances at best. They weren’t going to date. They weren’t going to fall in love and live happily ever after. They were on opposing sides of a war, no matter how much they tried to pretend they weren’t. For a split stupid second, she tried to convince herself that sleeping with him wouldn’t be a terrible idea.
And the image of the betrayal on his face as she’d said those things to him haunted her. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt that easily. He should be emotionless. A monster. Everything would be so much easier if he were a monster.
Like Mikel. He was scary as hell, but he fit squarely into that monster category she needed him to fit in. Bad man. She didn’t want to associate with bad men. Easy.
Nothing was easy with John. Someday, she’d have to convince herself that he was a bad man too. Her life might depend on it.
John got home late. It was right before sunrise when he finally stepped through the door. He wasn’t tired, though. He just wanted to go back to Tela and tell her what he really thought.
How he knew she did feel something for him and it was obvious that she was in denial. Alcohol or not, she was crazy if she thought he was imagining all of this, and he wanted nothing more than to prove to her just how wrong she was.
But she was safely in her apartment now. He’d hidden in the shadows and made sure she made it inside undisturbed. Even if he went there and somehow avoided the sunlight, she would never let him in. She was so hell-bent on protecting herself from him, and he couldn’t even fault her for that. If anything, if she wasn’t concerned about her safety around him, he’d think her daft.
He slammed the door shut behind him and the wall rattled. He probably broke something, but he didn’t look to see what. That was low on his list of problems right now.
He stalked toward the refrigerator, to where the bottles of blood were stored. It was a sore substitute for the warm decadence of Tela’s, but he needed something to take the edge off.
He twisted off the cap and took a deep gulp before he felt it. He wasn’t alone.
But he didn’t panic. As soon as he picked up on the scent of the intruder, he recognized it. “What are you doing here, Dante?”
“You’re getting rusty,” he pointed out. “I could’ve killed you five times over.”
“You could’ve tried.” John turned around to face down the other vampire. “I assume this isn’t a pleasure visit.�
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“How did your date go?” asked Dante.
The speed in which he brought up Tela just put John on edge even more.
“It wasn’t a date. It can’t be a date when one person is paying the other,” he said, echoing Tela’s own words.
Dante nodded but seemed skeptical. “Good. I don’t want you getting distracted.”
John took a deep drink of the cold blood that was doing nothing for him. “Why are you really here?”
“You’re in my unit. You’re my responsibility.”
“But you’re in my apartment right before sunrise. You’re panicking, and I want to know why.”
He was expressionless. Dante could keep—what did the humans call it?—a poker face better than anyone he knew. John wouldn’t be surprised if he just walked out right then and there without answering any of John’s questions. As his superior, Dante didn’t owe him any answers. John had assumed they were on good terms before this, but their conversation tonight had proved otherwise.
“I never wanted you on my team,” he finally said.
Well, fuck. “Did I do something to piss you off?”
Dante shook his head. “You’re... difficult. All of the other members under me are willing and able to do whatever is needed, but you’re different. You’re angry. You’re stronger. You do what you’re told, but your loyalty is questionable at best.”
“I’ve been loyal to you. A hundred percent.”
“And I’m loyal to Mikel. A hundred percent.”
So that was what Dante was after. A pledge of loyalty to Mikel. “I’ve made my allegiances very clear.”
“Mikel is especially interested in your woman. What will you do if he asks for her?”
He could feel the change as his fangs extended and his eyes were taken over by black, making his vision red.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dante with a resigned tone. “You need to be prepared for him to test you.”
John took a deep gulp and forced himself to regain control. “Why would he test me? I’ve done nothing to indicate that I’m working against the royals.”
“You’ll always be a slave to him. He’s never going to fully trust you, and it’s becoming more and more apparent that the humans aren’t going to relent. He’s preparing for the second wave, and he’s not going to want traitors around him.”
“I’m being punished even though I’ve done nothing wrong?”
“We take orders from him,” reminded Dante somberly.
“I take orders from you. You take orders from him. Why are you so loyal?”
“He’s the royal representative on Earth. I don’t need any other reason than that.”
“Then I’m loyal to him too.”
Dante obviously didn’t believe John. Fair, because it was a lie. Dante was right to be skeptical. Not that he was going to admit it.
“I was raised with Mikel,” said Dante in an uncharacteristic admission. “He’s like a brother to me.”
Well, that explained how Dante got his post. But it didn’t help John at all. “Family is important. At least that’s what I understand from hearing about it,” he said as a not-so-subtle reminder that he didn’t have family.
“You might not know it, but Mikel sacrificed a lot to get us here. Not everyone was in agreement that invasion was the right tactic.”
“And from what I heard, Mikel wasn’t in favor of freeing the slaves to help either.”
“That’s just a rumor.”
“Like I said. It’s what I heard.”
“I don’t want to have to question where your motives lie,” said Dante finally.
“Have I ever given you any reason to question me?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “No. You’ve been especially easy to manage because of your few ties to anything else.”
“Luckily for you, Tela thinks the Vopura have destroyed everything she loves. So if you’re worried about me running off with her, you can rest easy. She doesn’t even like me.”
Dante nodded, a mixture of unease and relief on his face now. “I don’t want you to be miserable,” he pointed out.
“You want me to be isolated so I’m easier to control. It’s a good leadership strategy. I understand.”
“If you start to question things, I want you to come to me first,” said Dante.
“Of course. You’re my superior.”
“I want to be your friend,” said Dante. The words were awkward and forced, a sign of just how unlikely they were to ever be true friends.
John didn’t have any words of comfort to give him. He had already pledged his loyalty. There was nothing he could say that would make Dante feel better.
He was worried he and Tela would run off together, but he should know just how unlikely that was. Even if John wanted to help Tela get out of town, he couldn’t bring down the wall. Only those most loyal to Mikel knew how to lower the barrier long enough to get even a few humans through. And if he got out with Tela, what kind of life would that be?
Vopura were officially public enemy number one. There would be no life for her with him, and there would be no life for him on the other side.
So Dante could rest easy. John wasn’t going anywhere.
“I can’t believe you changed your mind!” said Dani for the tenth time, each one scraping at Tela’s soul a little bit.
She also couldn’t believe she changed her mind. In fact, she still wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Scratch that. She was absolutely sure it wasn’t a good idea.
With no internet, she couldn’t look at a map to find out where this Dixon’s was, but Dani’s friend Tiffany seemed to recall it being north of them by a few blocks.
So they were going together to a strange place and going to meet strangers who were probably going to ask her to do something stupid. And to make it even worse, Dani would probably agree to anything, no questions asked.
“Remember, I’ve agreed to listen. That doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything else.”
“It’s a step in the right direction. And we’re finally going to be able to meet the resistance face-to-face. I could actually help for once. If we want to stand any chance of getting out of this alive, we all need to be part of the resistance, you know. The only reason the vampires got the jump on us in the first place is because we were so divided. That won’t happen next time.”
“Good grief. Next time? You know you’re too young to be a soldier in this little army, right?”
“My birthday is in a few months. And I’m sure seventeen is plenty old enough in times of crisis. And if this isn’t a crisis, what is?”
Dani had a point, and that made it all that much worse. It was so hard to repeatedly play it safe when she lived with someone who was so determined to risk her life to help others.
And all Dani wanted was to help. She wanted it so bad, it colored everything she did and every decision she made. Every time Tela said no, she felt more and more as if she were siding with the vampires over the humans.
But she wasn’t siding with vampires or humans. She was siding with a single human. Dani. And it wasn’t as though she were a huge coward. After all, she’d become a blood donor. That wasn’t nothing. She’d put her life on the line and legitimately almost died to save her sister.
So no. She wasn’t going to consider herself a coward. Maybe she wasn’t as brave or ballsy as Dani wanted her to be, but she wasn’t rocking herself back and forth in a closet either.
“I think I see it!” Dani ran forward.
Sometimes the girl acted so much like a child, and sometimes she showed a maturity beyond her years.
If she weren’t expressly looking for the hardware store, she never would’ve seen it. Tela was never one for home repairs. Especially considering Dad had been so handy. She’d never really needed to fix anything. Add to the fact that this wasn’t exactly a chain, she understood why she’d never recognize it.
After the invasion, hardware stores were one of the first things to be looted. There were
a lot of items that could easily be turned into weapons and tools to fortify homes and apartments.
The windows had long since been broken, and the empty shelves inside were a sad reminder of what her society had come to. But the light streaming in from outside didn’t make the place feel less ominous. There were still plenty of shadows for things to hide in.
“It’s not too late to turn back,” she said to Dani, knowing full well that her warning would fall on deaf ears.
“Come on,” said Dani, shocking no one. “We came this far.”
“Fine. But I’m gonna go in first.”
Dani rolled her eyes. “That’s ridiculous. We’re a team, remember?”
“We are most definitely not a team. We have a guardian-and-charge relationship. That means I go in first. If you’re not happy with that, I’d like to remind you that I didn’t want to come here in the first place, and you should take what you can get.”
“All right. But you can’t baby me forever.”
“Maybe not, but I have at least a few more months. Stay here,” she warned.
She stepped inside. Oddly enough, the door was still locked, so she needed to step over the ledge where the window used to be to get in. She took a few steps in, the broken glass crunching beneath her feet. She really should’ve brought a weapon of some sort. Granted, that would imply she had a weapon of some sort. Her dad had a gun, but he took it with him on his trips, which meant the gun was with him on the other side of the wall right now. She knew well enough that guns weren’t enough to kill a vampire. Not unless you had some automatic one firing off thousands of rounds a minute. Decapitation would work. And fire and sunlight, which were kind of the same thing for vampires. She was also pretty sure that if you destroyed the heart, like really destroyed it, that would do the trick. But that would require more than just a little wooden stake. More like a whole tree trunk.
But she wasn’t looking for weapons against a vampire right now. In the daylight, humans were their own separate threat.
She bent down and picked up a two-foot-long section of pipe and tested the weight in her hands. It wasn’t that threatening, but it could do some damage in a pinch. If nothing else, it sure felt better to have something in her hands.
