by Seth Eden
Tess saw Crystal hesitantly raise her hand she smirked to herself. “Uh, I’m sorry,” Crystal said. “I don’t totally follow. Why is the kid breaking into the creche just to run out again?”
“Right,” Tess said. “I was getting to that. He’s going to break in, look like he belongs there, and then look like he’s escaping. The idea is that he’ll be distracting the guards, making them give chase. He’ll get them far enough from the creche so the rest of us will have the opportunity to break in and liberate the children. We will also have a small group nearby waiting to ambush the guards once Patrick leads them to the site, about five blocks from the creche.”
“Huh!” Crystal said, nodding. “I like it.”
The rest of the plan was pretty straightforward, though it relied on corralling a bunch of children into a large cargo truck, and that included a couple of dozen babies and toddlers. They had car seats strapped to the floor of the truck and some people would be carrying the babies. They were going to have to be careful. Tess had already given everyone a talk on child safety. It was a bit like training a bunch of rookie babysitters.
Tess went over the weapons, the routes to the creche, and to the underground sight she’d found where they’d be taking the absconded children. That part of the plan broke her heart a little bit. The dorms at Urbana would have been a perfect place to take the kids, but they could hardly hide them right next to one of the brothels Vampyren soldiers frequented. Stashing Free the Children there was one thing; they could pass for squatters easily enough if they were discovered, and the campus was large enough. Most soldiers weren’t going to to go poking around the other dorms once they’d gotten their fix. But hiding children was another matter entirely. Instead, Tess was taking them to an abandoned school on the fringes of town. She’d sent out one of her people to scout the site and trusted their assessment. It was clean and a little remote but not too far from town, and there was plenty of room there. They’d just convert the classrooms into bedrooms and nurseries. A few people were already supplying the place. Tess asked them to try and make the place look “cheerful.” It was a start anyway. Since she was there resident all-star trader, Crystal was going there to supervise the work instead of going along on the mission.
“Mara, Lou, and Sajir will be in charge of taking the matrons hostage,” Tess explained. “Now we will be offering them the chance to provide the Vampyren kids with blood once we have them in custody. In exchange, we don’t keep them as prisoners until we can abandon them about five hundred miles out when we get the chance.”
“Might be a stupid question,” Crystal piped up, “but why can’t we kill the matrons? They sound like assholes?”
“We will if we have to,” Tess said curtly. She didn’t much like killing anyone. But sometimes there was no other choice. “It’s a quarter to nine now. Be ready to leave at ten from the dorm parking lot.”
Everyone dispersed just as the breeder women started to arrive for their breakfast and then it was just another day. About half of the breeders, Tess suspected, weren’t at all fooled. They knew there was a resistance on campus and some of them were supportive. The ones who weren’t seemed apathetic about the whole thing but unlikely to talk. The matrons at Urbana however, Tess wasn’t sure about. They always looked like they suspected some funny business but weren’t sure what. It would be best to get them on their side. But she figured she’d worry about that after this mission.
She heaved a sigh and got to her feet, heading off to get a tray. Breakfasts at Urbana weren’t bad. The eggs were powdered, but she’d become used to them and there was vegan bacon and usually potatoes. She had just gotten in line when two trunk-like arms wrapped around her from behind and she smirked, her breath quickening as she turned her head and saw Kal. He kissed her hotly, and she rubbed his arms, basking in his embrace.
“Did you even make the meeting?” She said.
“Yeah!” Kal said, sounding mildly offended as he lifted her off the ground a little and kissed her neck. “Got here with Mark. I just sat in back.”
“You should be more punctual,” she murmured, but when his fangs grazed the soft skin of her neck only for him to plant a soft kiss there, she sighed, half forgetting what she’d been saying.
“I had to talk to Mark about something,” Kal said, swaying with her as they inched up the cafeteria line.
“About what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he murmured. He pulled away and gave her a funny sort of wistful look that she didn’t like at all. It was the kind of look you gave people when you might not see them again and she narrowed her eyes.
“Kal,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” he insisted, shaking his head. “We can talk about it later. I promise, it’s not a big deal and you have enough to think about.”
Tess was not convinced, but she had to agree that she had plenty on her plate already. The two of them ate their fill and Tess sat sandwiched between Kal and Crystal at a table, only half listening to them talk about this and that, as she got increasingly riled up for the mission. It was planned out well, she thought. But it would still be the biggest project she’d ever accomplished and people were counting on her. It felt as if it were her best chance to prove herself to the people who had chosen her to be a leader.
Finally, it was ten and everyone was on schedule which she took as the first of, hopefully, many good signs. The Free the Children people loaded up their vehicles and Crystal took the SUV. They were all looking for her go ahead, and she gave them a curt nod before climbing into the passenger seat of one of the big cargo vans that would be transporting most of the kids. It would be tight and they’d be relying somewhat on the willingness of the children to follow them. Sometimes kids flipped out and didn’t trust you even as you were trying to help them. That was tricky.
Tess was edgy on the way but she focused on driving and breathed deeply. She had the best people for the job. At some point, you just had to trust that. It was like any other kind of work really.
They parked a few blocks away and not too close to each other so they wouldn’t be noticed. The creche was in an urban area but it wasn’t densely populated these days. The group of eight that would be ambushing the duped guards took off to their location. They were mostly human, but they were well armed and they had experience fighting Vampyren. That left the rest of them and Patrick gave a Tess a curt nod before heading off to single-handedly break into the creche. She’d gone over those details with Patrick already. The kid was eighteen and already a talented cat burglar. He’d been a street kid before a creche caught him breaking into rich folks’ houses even when they were locked up tight. He could pick locks and shimmy into tiny places. He knew what he was doing and Tess wasn’t worried about him.
“Okay, everybody,” said, grabbing a baby carrier that she strapped around her shoulders. “The most important thing to remember is to be careful with your weapons. Do not trust your reflexes. We’re here to save kids not kill them by accident.”
With that last word of advice, Tess went with Kal and two others to get out of their way before coming back around to the back of the creche. Each group had walkie talkies so they’d know when to strike and Tess checked her frequencies for the millionth time before the four of them took cover at a bus stop close by so they could move in as soon as they were given a green light.
Tess had chosen Mara and a punk looking guy with a black mohawk named Saul for her group. Mara and Saul leaned against the bus stop but their casual posture was belied by their intense gaze and their tapping feet as they waited to bolt into action.
“I’ll tell ya,” Saul said, chewing on his lip. He was wearing a Dead Kennedys shirt that looked about thirty years old. “This isn’t what I thought I’d doing when I joined the resistance. Rescuing babies? Thought I’d be takin’ out vamps left and right.” He nodded at Kal who only look at him blankly and said, “No offense.”
Kal only shrugged and it surprised Tess how she bristled on his
behalf. She leaned into him, deliberately brushing the back of his hand with her fingers in a gesture of support. “That was the goal...a year ago,” Tess said, shrugging. “Vampyren are too integrated now. Whether we like it or not.”
“We do assimilate pretty well, actually,” Kal said. Mara and Saul gaped at him in disbelief and he said, “Really, we do. We just have to stop fucking killing everyone first. Stop dehumanizing people. The leadership will come around. We’ll build something new. It’s inevitable.”
“Boy, you don’t sound like a vamp,” Mara said wryly. “Don’t look like one either. Except for the braid.”
“I hear that a lot,” Kal said. He didn’t look at all offended. She supposed he understood the plight of humans. And anyway, with the threat of the Lucian on the horizon, the Vampyren were at risk of being subjegated just as the humans had been. They couldn’t be too excited about that prospect. Maybe it gave them perspective. Not that you could always wait for people to get perspective. At least, kids shouldn’t have to, by Tess’s reckoning.
The walkie talkie finally crackled and Mark spoke through it. “Patrick’s got the guards almost to the ambush sight. Go go!”
“Copy that!” Tess said into the walkie, and stuck it in her back pocket. “Let’s move.”
4
Kal
Kal expected the liberation of the creche to be much more chaotic than Tess predicted. He hadn’t wanted to argue with her, not least because he respected her authority as the de facto leader of Free the Children. He had also expected the mission to be successful, just messier than Tess’s plan suggested. About this, he’d been wrong in the end.
Patrick managed to lure six guards right into an ambush. Meanwhile there were still two guards left, and they were neatly disposed of. That left the matrons to deal with. The creche compound was sprawling. It had a maze of hallways that could be a little confusing, especially as you tried to herd older children around and chase down fleeing adults, their footsteps and shouts of alarm echoing in the linoleum corridors where walls were painted with rainbows and butterflies as if it were a wonderful place for children to live.
He should’ve expected that Tess knew what she was doing with matrons. She’d dealt with them before. Only one gave them trouble, attempting to stab Kal with a giant knife she apparently kept in her apron (which made him wonder). He grabbed her, spun her around so her back was to him and dug his fingers carefully into the pressure points under her ear until she went still. The others whose responsibility it was to take the matrons had chloroform. But Kal thought his method was neater and now he hauled the matron over his shoulder and made his way to the cargo vans.
The children were the most surprising part. They were why Kal had assumed things would get messy. Carrying babies and toddler out was easy enough but older children might not understand they were being helped. He should’ve realized that Tess had experience. She knew that older kids were more adept than Kal gave them credit for. They knew immediately that Tess’s people were resistance, and they didn’t flip out or fight their liberators. Instead they helped with the smaller children and the infants. To an untrained eye, once the quick bout of fighting was over, it looked as if a creche was just relocating as Kal, Mark, and a couple other Vampyren on the resistance side led a quiet bunch of children in a well behaved line to the vans.
It was all over in less than half an hour and with no witnesses, it would not be immediately reported to the Council leadership. By noon, Tess was ushering the children into the school building on the other side of town and Crystal and the staff greeted them with juice and cookies and showed them to their beds. The babies they took to their cribs and checked to see if they needed to be changed or fed. Every kid was going to get a medical exam, courtesy of a couple doctors working with Free the Children. Kal watched it all go down like clockwork, hands shoved in his pockets as he leaned against a chalkboard. He watched Tess console an eight-year-old boy who appeared to be crying from happiness. When she was done, she came up to Kal and fixed him with a grave expression.
“That went well,” she said. But she was frowning. He chuckled and nudged her.
“Yes, you look very happy about it,” he said lightly.
“I’m always tense with missions,” she said sighing, and she leaned against him, clasping his hand in both of hers. “And I was worried about our blood supply but we have a really good stock and Crystal's got a solid source. So that’s good. We’ll be alright on food and we’ve got a nurse who’s going to be living here full-time with the kids and—"
“Tess,” Kal said in her ear. “You did it. Nobody on our side died. It went very smoothly. Take pride in that for a second.”
“Right,” she said, sighing. She turned around in his arms and kissed him, long and sweet. “Thank you… I still have to deal with the matrons though. I’m accepting one to work here voluntarily but she’s undergoing fresh training. I don’t believe anyone who worked in that creche knew what they were doing with children. But this one doesn’t seem so terrible. She’ll be heavily supervised. The second we’re just holding to bleed for a while but she was an abusive bitch to the kids anyway, and—"
“Tess.” He gave her a long look, and she started to open her mouth and he kissed her, ending the conversation. “Just give yourself a minute,” he whispered.
He was eager to give both of them a minute or two to relax, possibly even all night. He couldn’t be sure yet, but he’d spoken to Mark about a part of the plan he felt Tess hadn’t taken into consideration. But he didn’t want to bring it up now and ruin her moment of victory. They might still have plenty of time before the raided creche was discovered by the Council. Or they might only have a few hours.
They stayed around at the school until late that night, setting up and making sure everything was squared away for the kids to ensure they were calm and felt cared for. Kal watch Tess run around like her hair was on fire and he had to practically force her to sit down and eat at about eleven that night.
It was two in the morning when they finally made their way home. He drove the SUV and Tess snoozed in the passenger seat. Mara, Crystal, and Mark sprawled in the back and the other resistance vehicles followed them back to Urbana. They left one van for the school site to use, so everyone was packed in tight.
They were still about ten minutes out from Urbana when Kal looked in the rearview mirror to meet the eyes of his brother.
“What are you thinking?” He said.
“I couldn’t say,” Mark said, shrugging. “Loren said it could be hours, or it could be tomorrow morning. Not much longer.”
“Hmm.” Kal tapped his thumb on the steering wheel.
Everyone else was asleep and Mark cleared his throat, leaning forward into the front seat to speak to Kal. “I’ll tell you something, I didn’t want to tell Tess, because I’m not sure. But I think one of the guards got away. At the ambush.”
Kal raised an eyebrow and looked at his brother before returning his gaze to the pitch black road. He hated driving in this kind of darkness without any street lights around. He couldn’t help but imagine one of those creepy pale Lucian coming out of nowhere. It seemed like something they would do.
“Well…” Kal glanced at Tess and swallowed. He wasn’t looking forward to upsetting her. “Maybe he just took off. Hell, after the first few months of invasion there wasn’t much incentive to remain loyal to your post or even your unit. Maybe he left.”
“Or he went straight to the Council,” Mark said darkly.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Kal muttered.
It turned out, they didn’t have to wait long. Their car was the first to arrive back at Urbana and he knew there was something wrong immediately. It wasn’t so much the black armored Humvees in the lot right next to the breeders’ dorm. Vampyren men were likely to be there in the middle of the night, having sex with the women there. It was something about the way they were parked; the headlights were on and there were a couple soldiers waiting there in lot, as if o
n the lookout.
“We’re fucked,” Kal murmured.
“Okay,” Mark said. “Then it’s time to face the music.”
Tess’s plan had been great. The only drawback was that the Council’s wouldn’t first suspect the squatters quietly living in the dorm across campus as the child-liberators; it would be the mothers of the half-Vampyren babies who populated the creche. It had happened before. Breeders flipped out when their babies were taken away from them. There had been reports of mothers murdered trying to break into creches to get their children back.
Mark had spoken to Kal about it that morning. They’d thought they would have more time to prevent the innocent breeders being pinned with the crime. Now Kal’s stomach turned. They should have evacuated the place. They should have planned for it. They should have…
Tess stirred awake as Kal parked the SUV and she smiled at him. But when she saw his expression she sat straight up as the others shuffled out of the backseat, under the impression that they could just go to bed now.
Kal avoided Tess’s gaze and hopped out of the car. He glanced back at Mark who nodded at them and the two brothers started jogging toward the breeders’ dorm to everyone else’s confusion. But he didn’t miss Tess’s look of alarm and she ran after him. Crystal was just getting out one of the vans and when she saw Kal and Mark running off, she took off after them, following Tess.
The two Vampyren soldiers in the lot were ignoring them. They already had their prisoners.
“Where are you going!” Tess said. It was almost three in the morning now. The night was eerie and dark with only the moonlight shining on the cobblestone path to the dormitory. There were lights all over campus for safety but they didn’t stay lit. Electricity was too valuable now. It gave the place the feel of a graveyard so late at night except now when Kal’s ears perked up as he heard a commotion coming from the dorms.
