by Seth Eden
Finally, he had a feeling. It was a feeling of impending danger so strong that he was breathless with it and he an urge to grab Tess and head for the hills. It was not cowardice but protectiveness. He’d never avoided battle before because of fear for his life. That was not why he deserted his unit. But now everything had changed. He contained himself. Everyone here had somebody to protect. They needed to fight for each other. No matter the cost. He breathed hard and Tess looked at him funny.
“What is it?” She whispered.
“They’re coming,” he said softly.
“How do you know?” She looked fearful, and he kissed her softly.
“I just know.” He had a helm on to protect the back of his head and now he flipped the visor down and reached over to flip her visor down too. That was when they heard the distant rumble of the Humvees.
The military was on its way with all its men.
“Wow,” Tess whispered. “Later we can talk about your psychic premonitions.”
“It was just a feeling,” Kal murmured.
There were explosions and Kal turned around and peeked over the ledge. He could see for a few blocks around. Some of the planted explosives had taken out a few transports and men were jumping out and scattering.
“Now?” His man on the HQ roof with one of the bazookas looked to Kal and Kal looked across the roof to Loren at his corner. Loren gave him a hand signal and Kal turned back to the bazooka.
“Wait until they’re closer,” Kal said. “
Some trucks approached, a couple more vehicles were hit and Kal signaled to his bazooka man when two soft vehicles came crawling down the street. Vampyren military, he realized, really didn’t know what they were doing with this type of warfare. They’d taken the humans down via sheer force in numbers and with big old bombs from the sky. But on the ground, person-to-person battle was something else entirely. The bazooka man shot at the unarmed vehicles first, and Kal heard Tess yelp beside him when the bazooka blew one of the Hummers upside down while knocking another one up against a building. The Hummer exploded and men poured out of it.
“Loose!” Kal shouted. All the men with crossbows drew their arrows and shot down at the Vampyren men on the ground. The Vampyren military was using guns which surprised Kal. He had to think they were low on more traditional man to man Vampyren weaponry. Vampyren were not used to guns but the humans in the resistance were. Wooden arrows were effective, and that’s what the Kal and the other Vampyren resistance fighters were using, along with their blades. Some of the humans had been nearly impossible to separate from their bullets. He hoped they had good aim.
Kal fell into the rhythm of the fight and shot down at the invading army below as everyone else shot from their little hiding places along roofs or in windows. The enemy had quickly sorted out that HQ was the base of operations and he saw men coming around, likely hoping to break into the Council building. They would find more surprises there. He wondered if they’d gone to Urbana and met with Mara’s booby traps. He was pretty sure they had. The force didn’t seem quite as big as he imagined.
He motioned to two other men and pointed to the door to the stairs. A good number of those fighters were going to get through and Kal would be there to meet them.
He had never considered the idea that he was going to be up against his own kind. There was even the slight chance he would see men he’d fought alongside. But he couldn’t think about that now.
“You stay here,” he said to Tess, walking backward on the gravelly roof; there was chaos everywhere already. There was a feeling of Armageddon in the air. He hadn’t felt like that before. He supposed the humans had. “Just keep shooting. You have a blade?”
Tess showed him the short sword she’d strapped in a sheath to her hip and said, “What if they get up to the roof?” Tess wasn’t used to this kind of battle, but she had been so determined to fight in it.
He gave her a long look and said, “They won’t, baby. I’ll make sure of it.” He gave her a firm kiss, stroking her cheek softly even as a Humvee exploded below, and then took off for the stairs.
9
Tess
Tess was alone. It hadn’t started out that way and now she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know a thing about warfare. She went along with whatever Kal told her too. So she stayed on the roof and tried to make herself useful while ducking the occasional shots that came her way when somebody managed to notice the small women on the roof shooting down at them. There had been snipers and archers all along the roof’s edge and Tess found a rhythm in carefully taking out whoever she could on the ground, waiting until they were close. She didn’t always shoot to kill. She followed the person-to-person fights and was sometimes able to disable an enemy enough so whoever was on them could get in their shot. More than one fighter on their side looked up at her perched there on the roof, and tossed her a salute.
Ash fell like snow on the roof from one of the fires on the field of battle. There were several buildings going up in flames. Chicago was pretty bombed-out, though not as much as New York. It would be a little worse now.
She bided her time. She was careful. She had a backpack full of ammo for the gun Mara had taught her to use. She thought it was important to know her place and do as much good as she could realistically manage. They seemed to be winning, she thought, but it was hard to tell. She got distracted looking down on the ground whenever she saw someone from their side get killed or hit. Just one casualty felt like a punch to the gut. It felt like she saw a lot of casualties, though no one she knew. She kept an eye out for Kal too, figuring she could cover him if he needed her. But she never saw him from her lookout and figured he might still be in the Council building.
She spent a long time there as the battle wore on and then finally crawled away from the ledge to stand up and stretch, only to notice she was the only one left. That seemed rude somehow. She felt like somebody should have warned her they were leaving her alone. Tess reloaded her gun, grabbed the backpack, and ran to the stairs, crouching low just in case of any flying bullets from higher buildings. Inside, she pressed up against the door and caught her breath. She hadn’t realized how much she’d become used to the constant roar of the fires, guns, explosions, and vehicles thundering around, and the chaos of shouts and screams. Silence somehow sounded louder.
Tess took a breath and made her way downstairs, her heart thudding in her chest and her ears perked up for any danger coming from below. Her plan was to get to the ground and stay small, sticking to the shadows, and take out as many enemy Vampyren as she could.
She reached the ground floor and saw no one. Kal drove everyone off and anyone coming down from the roof had gone out to the street, she supposed. Still, she stayed careful and quiet and pressed up against walls, peeking around corners of corridors before she moved. She heard explosions from far away, distant shouting. But things had gone quiet there.
Tess pressed up against a marble wall and closed her eyes. She despised how afraid she was. She’d done plenty of dangerous things. She’d traveled long-distance trapped in a wooden crate hiding from checkpoints, looking for women to put in creches or on-the-run resistance members. She’d headed up several liberations of children from armed guards. She hated that one battle was terrifying her to this degree. But it made her appreciate the trained warriors among them. She wondered if Kal was okay and immediately dismissed the thought. She couldn’t worry about him now. She’d lose her mind. Tess patted her stomach and opened her eyes, dashing to a side door and outside before she could second guess herself. She refused transport to a safe house. She insisted on joining the fight. She couldn’t back out now.
Things seemed eerie outside. She heard an explosion far away, and the muted roar of fire but she didn’t hear anyone and it creeped her out a little. The fighting had likely spread out, but it was hard not to wonder if they had all just killed each other, their numbers ending up evenly matched in the end. Tess ran to a pillar in a courtyard between the Council HQ and the next
office building over. She hid behind it and scanned around seeing no one excepting a stray dog running across a street, seemingly unaware of the chaos around him.
Tess stayed hidden, frozen to her spot, and eventually, she saw an enemy Vampyren casually strolling out of a building across the street. She breathed slowly, watching him look around for threats, waiting for him to get close enough. She swallowed, aimed, and just as he’d spotted her leaning out from behind the pillar, she shot him, catching him in the thigh. He was wearing armor. She hadn’t expected to be able to shoot him dead but now she ran before she could allow herself to think. He had a blade but she couldn’t see a gun. Or perhaps the Vampyren had run out of ammunition quickly, not knowing what they were doing with guns. Tess stuck her gun in her waistband and drew her blade.
The strangest part was how easy it was to kill him. He had fallen to the ground, his thigh gushing blood. He shouted for back-up but nobody was coming. When he saw her run at him, he drew his blade, but realizing he was doomed, he tried to crawl away. Tess wasted no time. She didn’t even think about it. She just ran up to him and slit his throat with one swipe of her blade. He gaped at her in surprise and fell back, his throat spraying blood so dramatically that it hardly seemed real. It was her first battle kill. She wanted it to be only one. She wanted this to be over so she could be eating tacos with Kal at one of those pop-ups, sipping horchata, and dreaming about their future.
Tess wiped her blade on his vest as he gurgled into his death and turned around, marching away without looking back. But inwardly, she was shaking, adrenaline coursing through her. That was doubtless why she didn’t see the second Vampyren behind her who now grabbed her and picked her up off the ground without a word. Tess screamed, and the man snorted a laugh. She cried out at the sensation of a sharp blade at her neck and shut her eyes, tears welling up, as she waited for her inevitable death. She grabbed her stomach, grieving for her baby with Kal and everything that could have been, but the enemy wasn’t killing her. Instead, he was carrying her away back into the Council HQ building.
It didn’t take Tess long to sort out the enemy’s intentions, and she clawed at the immoveable muscular arms that held her impossibly tight. She’d dropped her own blade when he’d grabbed her and he was holding her too tightly for her to reach for her gun. Even now he felt around and found the weapon, waving it in front of her before laughing and throwing it far away.
“I’m going to get something out of this battle,” he said, panting as he carried her into the dark corridor she’d just come from. “Nothing like some human whore. I’ll fuck you to death, how’s that?” He was cackling and somehow it struck her that his laugh didn’t sound evil. He just sounded very casual about the whole thing as he shoved her to the ground and climbed on top of her.
Tess kicked, scratched, and hit. It was doing nothing. He was even taller than Kal and far too strong. He covered her mouth and she felt fear, white and hot, in her veins. The soldier smelled like death and blood and body odor and he was so drenched with sweat it was dampening her own clothes. She shut her eyes, waiting for the pain when the awful weight of the man disappeared all at once. Tess scrambled away, at least mindful enough to get out of the way without waiting. She began to run down the corridor when she heard Kal’s voice.
“Tess!” His call echoed in the marble hallway and she stopped, turning around, wild-eyed and still shaking with adrenaline. Kal stood over the body of the already dead enemy Vampyren and would-be rapist. Blood was gushing from his throat. His head was nearly off his neck, Kal had cut almost all the way through it. Now he stood, watching her quietly as if they weren’t in the middle of a war. Tess was still catching her breath, trembling from the terror from the attack, but there was no one else around. There was only Kal standing in the corridor with blood all over him. But he was alive and did not look badly hurt. She ran to him and he stepped around the Vampyren body, marching toward her. She jumped and his strong, reliable arms came around her, picking her up. She wrapped her legs around him and tears slid down her cheeks.
Is it over? She thought. Please be over.
She had not seen the thick of it but it had seemed so awful, perched up on that roof for so long, watching people fall and bleed in the street, not knowing who was winning, or how long it would last.
“It’s over,” Kal whispered in her ear, his arms squeezing her so tight, she ached. “It’s over. We’re okay. We won. We’re just cleaning up now. That’s all. This asshole knew it was over and he wanted whatever he could get out of a failure. Now it’s over for him too.”
She gasped and began to sob into his shoulder. She blamed her reaction on the hormones of pregnancy though she knew better than that. For a long time, Kal just stood there with Tess wrapped around him as she cried on his shoulder. She sniffed and pulled away, and he smiled against her cheek. His whole handsomely chiseled face was caked with dried blood, his hair up in that bun he favored now. He still looked beautiful to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He pecked a kiss to her lips. “I got you. We’re okay now. Let’s go get some tacos.”
10
Kal
Kal had fought well, he thought. At least, Mark had told him as much. He discovered that he didn’t much like the field of battle when it was for the right reasons any more than he liked it when it was for the wrong reasons. War just plain sucked, to use a term Tess had taught him. For a long stretch of time he simply moved from fight to fight, from building to building, his every sense heightened as he picked up the scent of enemies and caught some movement from the corner of his eye. He had become a kind of automaton which, in his opinion, was the best you could hope for. He didn’t think, he just ran and cut men down and showed no mercy.
More than one enemy tried to guilt him out of his kill.
“You’re a traitor,” they said. “You’ve become just like these rat humans and now you turn against your own people? Disgusting.” Kal wasn’t sure what his reaction would have been to that in the course of a regular conversation but in the course of the battle, the insult didn’t even penetrate and he struck with his blade, the pink mist of blood spatter coloring the pale gray pavement.
There had been some close calls. He’d been caught unawares a few times and saved by Mark or Alek or even some human who gave him a nod that seemed to say they were all brothers in arms now. Then eventually, Mark had tracked him down. He’d been looking for somebody to kill and kept only seeing his own side no matter where he went and the bodies of dead enemy Vampyren littering the streets. He’d been so in the zone mentally that it had not occurred to him that the fight was all over now and that there were only a few enemies left to take down. Mark found him and gave him the good news, that the military leadership was all dead and that everyone left on the other side was surrendering without argument or just offing themselves because they were unable to face the dishonor of loss. Kal quickly made his way back to the HQ from a half a mile away, taking down anyone left that gave him trouble.
When Kal had seen that beast attacking Tess, he felt a rage like he’d never felt in his life. He had no thought in his head, just the primal urge that came from somewhere deep inside him. He’d pulled the man off Tess like he was brushing off a fly and stuck his blade through his throat. He found it more disrespectful to leave it messy. He had not made a clean cut. All the better. He let the body hit the floor and only unclenched when he saw Tess on her feet looking alive and unhurt.
Now he had his arm around her as they walked with several others to one of the buses they’d and which someone had brought back from their parking spots. Everyone looked shell-shocked and tired. It was hard not to panic a little, searching out every familiar face. He felt better when he saw Mark and Crystal safe, sitting on the ground and carefully tending to each other’s wounds. Danton had a bad injury to his leg and was limping to one of the buses, with his arm around Alek. Mindy and Cassie took a while to get back, but they were safe too. He was nervous about Loren who had b
ecome the de facto leader of this new government they had been defending. Everyone else seemed to have returned. They were drinking bottled water and checking on each other. They were all starving but nobody felt like eating. When Keira returned alone, Kal started to worry.
“Do you think he made it?” Tess said. They sat in a too-small leather seat on a school bus. Tess leaned heavily against him and he absently stroked her hair. He just wanted to get back to whatever was left of Urbana and see about a shower and bed even if it wasn’t his own or Tess’s. He hoped the place wasn’t destroyed.
“I don’t know,” Kal said. “But if he didn’t, I hope you’re ready to run the world.”
Tess only snorted at that but Kal raised his eyebrows, turning a serious gaze on her. “I’m absolutely serious. I don’t know what form the government would take but he should make you his… I don’t know what you humans would call it…”
“Vice President?” Tess said, frowning now and looking deep in thought.
“Yes,” Kal said. “Exactly. Or whatever the closest advisor is.”
“Chief of Staff maybe,” Tess said, and she smiled. “Vice President doesn’t do much actually. Well, I wouldn’t turn it down, I guess. As long as I could fix the creche system.”
“I think you can do whatever you want,” Kal said, kissing her cheek. He heard some rumbles outside and looked out the window, sighing in relief. There was Loren, limping down the road full of shrapnel and dead Vampyrens. He looked a little worse for wear but he was walking. He collapsed when he was near enough for a couple of guys to help him along and they helped him to sit on an overturned bucket and the resident doctor ran over to look at his injuries. Keira appeared and crouched next to him, giving him a lengthy kiss as he was seen to.
