by Seth Eden
Cassi thought that theory was wrong and cocked up anyway because of course there was a limited number. There was a finite number of humans, too, but they'd done a good job of screwing up the planet before the aliens arrived and the aliens had done a good job of screwing up the humans in their year on Earth.
There hadn't been any more questions. Not what will you bring to the canning process, or even a question of what she'd bring to the rebellion once the tomato talk got old.
He'd asked her if she could just walk out the back door and not look back and as long as she had her best friend with her, she could.
He hadn't asked her if she had anything worth living and fighting for, other than Brec. She did.
Would she put anyone else at risk to rescue her mother? No.
Would she put herself at risk to do so?
Definitely.
Halfway across the city: bright flashes first. Muzzle reports second. The guns barked in the quiet city. Gunshots echoed in the steel canyon of city streets.
Close. Someone targeted them. Cassi almost dumped the bike, slewed from one street to the next. Behind her, Brecca tensed, a split second's indecision before she reacted in time to Cassi's lean.
They slid along the street at an impossible angle. Something buzzed over Cassi's shoulder, carrying off a tiny strip of leather jacket.
She felt the heat but the bullet itself was just a buzz of insect tearing past.
They were upright again, speeding away.
Heart pounding, she thought of the Vampyren, tall, impossibly sexy, impossibly violent and terrifying. Of her mother, dragged from the remains of the house because she could be of use.
Of the look the Vampyren had given Cassi that day. Something had deemed her unworthy.
Three more months. Indecisions. Too afraid to go after her mother.
Guilt made her gun the bike.
What would she bring the rebellion?
Not much. A motorcycle. Two willing workers. Rage. Her own agenda. She could fight, but what did a first degree black belt have to offer against an eight foot tall Vampyren?
The directions sent them out of Hollywood and into the canyons. Specific directions. Specific canyons.
"Cassi!"
Brecca's warning came too late.
The shots had chased them into a different corridor of streets, so lined with broken buildings and burned, wrecked cars she followed a tunnel.
That led her straight to a checkpoint.
Lights. Guns. Tall, imposing figures. Human, but the militaristic stances were undeniable.
She blinked, long and slow, letting the bike power down until she straddled the thing, engine just rumbling, and the first of the humans at the checkpoint reached over and twisted the bike off.
It died between her legs.
I'm sorry, everybody.
"Papers."
She didn't have any, of course. Humans moving outside their jurisdiction carried papers, like hastily created in-country passports.
"I'm just going to the Holocaust Museum." It seemed a grim enough destination and it was only a matter of blocks. There weren't usually checkpoints inside the city, were there? Los Angeles was completely under alien control.
"You need papers."
Wasn't it? These were human guards. Most of them were under alien control too, but…
But was she crazy? Or had the guard reacted, just the tiniest bit, when she'd named her destination.
"Get off the bike."
She took her hands from the grips, holding them up carefully while Brecca climbed off behind her. She followed.
The guns remained trained on them. Four hastily conscripted soldiers, all human, which meant somewhere there had to be a vamp contingency watching. If this was important, if this checkpoint mattered to anyone, there'd be a vamp on it.
But scanning the blown up street around them, she didn't see where anyone could be watching.
Just humans.
Young. Her age, early twenties. No commanding officer.
Their uniforms didn't fit right. They were too big and made up of parts.
Cassi turned her attention back to the soldier who had ordered her off the bike. Shock of blond hair. Acne.
Fear in his eyes.
They might not be the resistance, but she'd just found somebody.
6
DANTON
Danton tried to rise. The fall had dumped him onto the concrete floor behind the seats. As far as he could tell, Lan was on top of him, and every other person in the theater on top of them. Breathing was hard.
He needed to get to his feet. He needed to respond. The noise was astounding. Screaming and the echoing reports of shots.
They'd been on Earth for more than one of their years. There'd been more than enough time to become accustomed to the sound of primitive weapons. Their firearms popped. Whatever they sounded like in popular entertainment, in reality unless they were too close to the shooter, the sound was a pop.
In the incredible acoustics of the Greek Theatre the sounds were deafening.
The shooting. The screaming. The sounds of humans shrieking and the Vampyren roaring.
He needed to be on his feet. He needed to be fighting. His own roar built up inside him. He flexed and pushed, starting to rise.
A hand pushed him down.
He fought, snarling, trying to see light past the bodies covering him.
The hand moved on his arm, familiar tattoo of fingers.
Lan.
Relief flooded him. Lan was his brother in arms, his best friend. But Lan was keeping him down? That was not their way.
Then the shooting started again, another volley, mixed finally with Vampyren laser rifles and he understood if Lan hadn't kept him down he'd have been caught between the two.
Vampyren weapons were surgical in their strikes. They rarely missed because they focused with the same light they destroyed with. But they were also one of the weapons that could easily kill a vampire.
He stayed down.
The sounds were confused. The acoustics were meant to fill the bowl with sound. The shooting came from everywhere.
But he thought the laser weapons were coming from everywhere also.
Had the women gotten hold of Vampyren laser rifles?
Possible. Vampyren men in the outer guards, the scuttlebutt enlisted men along for the muscle didn't get sex regularly like royalty and officers who were desired in the breeding programs.
If a woman offered them sex, they'd take it. If a woman offered sex to a working guard and he lost his weapon, they'd go to any lengths to avoid reporting it.
The shooting had stopped again.
This time it stayed stopped.
This time he stayed down without Lan's hand urging him to. The women would be walking through the rows of chairs taking out those who were still alive, collecting any of the human guests who were shaking, shuddering, crying, desperate to be "rescued" from the Vampyren overlords.
The games were massively brutal, bloodshed and food, entertainment and gluttony. Human captives brought to experience them were judged on their reactions. The Vampyren had need of those humans who could face the carnage and, whether because of their own makeup or because of their own need to pretend and survive, come through it without flinching. Because there was a need of humans who could lead their own kind as the Vampyrens went about their own work – collecting breeding females, fucking them for food or for reproduction, forcing them with mates to produce humans offspring for food sources and mating with them themselves to create more Vampyren.
There simply weren't enough on Earth to take care of everything without humans who didn't flinch at the games.
Those who did, they became part of the games.
Those who didn't, they were groomed. Bred with the Vampyren females to produce more of their own that way as well as with human women.
And eventually put in charge, once they were more Vampyren than human.
The biggest secret the vampires had w
as their numbers. Or the lack of them. Because of the females and their propensity to kill and consume their mates, breeding with Vampyren females was dangerous and rare.
There weren't as many Vampyren as the humans thought.
That was the secret they all kept.
And now human women had just decimated more of their numbers.
He had to rise.
This time Lan's hand didn't stop him. Danton's hearts began to pound and he threw off the bodies on top of him, digging through them once he was upright to find his brother.
Lan was unconscious.
But he was breathing.
Danton took a long breath himself and looked out over the theater. It was a sea of blood, of victims rising and a wall of bodies where warriors had rushed the women and been dropped in their tracks.
He pulled Lan free of the bodies and got him seated on a chair, free of limbs and clothes and hair that could make it harder for him.
Then he sat beside him and let the shuddering take him. In a minute he'd get up and join with the other warriors already on their feet. They'd put together a plan, compare notes, add any information they had.
Just for a second, though, he needed some uncharacteristic breathing space. This world was strange. He hated it here. He'd actively campaigned for the colonization mission.
Now he wished he'd never set foot off his own planet. Something had changed since coming here.
Something that could get him killed if he didn't get a handle on it.
Soon.
7
CASSI
P lain white van with no windows in the back and the ghostly remnants of some business name on the side. Cassi and Brecca were handcuffed to what looked like racks that might have transported pastries in a nicer time.
Or wedding cakes. Times like those especially she remembered Jayce. He thought they had a future. She'd thought that was sweet. But wrong.
He hadn't deserved what happened to him. First whiff of rebellion and he'd gone. They'd fought about it their last night together, Jayce insisting she come with and Cassi insisting the so-called rebels might be well intentioned but it was too soon and they were too new and somebody was going to get killed.
It turned out to be Jayce, spectacularly publically.
Maybe that's part of why it had taken her months to go after her mother. Even now she wasn't sure she was going about it the right way. Joining the rebels was a means to an end for her, not a way to save the planet.
She didn't think the planet was going to be saved by cells of enthusiastic do-it-yourself rebels. She was willing to be wrong, though.
"You okay?" Brecca asked.
Cassi shifted her glance from middle of nowhere to Brecca and sighed. "Yeah." Before she could ask, You? Brecca went on.
"Oh, good. Because I'm not. If I'd know this was your idea, I'd have stayed in the bar."
Her voice was flat and attempting hostile.
Cassi had known her too long. "No, you wouldn't have."
Brecca glared and gave up. "No, I wouldn't have." A pause and then, since nobody had pounded on the back of the van from the cab, "Where do you suppose we're going?"
"Not the Holocaust Museum."
"Not our stated destination? Shocking."
Cassi smiled. Neither of them had been hurt. The bike was following the van, ridden by somebody from the checkpoint, she could tell by the special engine miss that probably had something to do with the carburetor or the spark plugs. She hadn't had time to check it out.
She missed the days when she didn't know about such things.
Before either of them said anything else the van stopped, the doors opened, and they were un-cuffed from the pastry racks, and led inside through the back loading area of some business.
Four people walked them in. The one in front held the flashlight. The two on either side of them held firearms, just automatic handguns, Cassi noticed. The one behind them was the one with the semi-automatic.
The one behind them was also female.
She was the one to address them once they got inside. "Wait. It'll be a couple minutes." She looked at them curiously, tilting her head to one side. She wore a big, full afro, a black tank top under a tactical vest, and black cargo pants. Her muscles were badass and her expression wasn't welcoming.
Neither was the gun.
For the first time Cassi wondered if this was a bad move for more than just the fact that her values didn't totally align with the rebels.
Next second it didn't matter anymore because she and Brec were led inside what seemed like the admin office for a boutique.
First thing Cassi noticed was the man she'd put down in the warehouse. Her heart started pounding until the woman behind the desk, big, blonde and pushing sixty, grinned and said. "That one? That little thing?" and the man Cassi had put on the ground growled, "She got the drop on me."
What she wanted to do was go back home. But there was no home. And because of that, Cassi made a split second decision not to be the doormat she'd felt like since Jayce was taken out.
She crossed to one of the chairs in front of the desk without waiting for invite and sat. "Got the drop on you?" she said to her attacker. "You were behind me with your arm on my neck and I still put you on the ground." She said the last of that to the woman behind the desk, who started to smile.
They were mostly women, Debra told them. Whether or not any of the names she and Brecca were given were real made no difference.
What did matter was what they learned in short order, some of it through information they were given. Some through observation.
Some because they had to be told something before they were sent out to prove themselves.
Though she didn't know why. Because what they were being asked to do sounded like nothing anybody would ever come back from.
But it also sounded like she might be able to get to her mom that way.
Debra didn't pace and after laughing at Jack, she didn't laugh about anything else. She'd lost her husband and three grown sons to the Vampyren and she wasn't amused by much. She'd almost lost her life, she told them, revealing an ugly scar on her neck where one of the vamps had grabbed her and tried to drain her. She was long past breeding age, which made her less than nothing to the alien overlords.
She'd killed the vampire before he could drain her and something inside her had sparked. There were cells of rebellion all over the US, especially in rural areas where the Vampyren weren't interested in going and people could move more freely, plus the conditions were so much worse.
People were starving in the rural areas.
People there were also mad enough to pick up guns and fight back. But with all systems down from cell towers to utilities, coming together to plan coordinated attacks on the city-dwelling vamps was difficult. It was hard to get into the metro areas, too, from the outside.
"What's the point of the checkpoints?" Brecca had asked and they were told there were a limited number of areas held by the humans, at least in LA. Those areas were defended to the death if necessary and they were working to widen them, fighting back a little every day.
What Cassi observed was the lack of men. She'd seen them in the bar, every night, but they were the beta males who didn't fight, the ones who hunkered down like the governments and decided to act like everything was normal until the day it was again.
The rebellion was being led by women.
Really, really angry women.
"You were brought here because of Jack," Debra said and Jack grunted like the memory wasn't a good one. "You handled yourself. We can use that."
Which made Cassi swallow and shoot an involuntary glance at Brecca, who must have had the same feeling of not taking so much lying down anymore.
"What about me?" she asked. Because Brecca was a runner and a dancer but she was not a martial artist.
"We'll find something for you," Debra said, and the look Brecca and Cassi shared said neither were relieved by the statement.
8
<
br /> DANTON
"T he rebellion is being led by the women of this planet!"
T he roar that greeted the commander's pronouncement rocked the bleachers in the building the Vampyren had taken. Danton knew it had once been a school.
T hey'd remodeled it. Dug a basement. Put in cages. Housed the human males that still sparked with danger in the dungeon, dropped food and water bottles once a day and let them fight for them. Separated any that looked likely to collaborate. Took them separately and threw them into the cages with the fertile females.
T here was always a need for new food stuffs.
"T he planet is proving to be more to put down than expected."
He stood by Lan, smoldering with rage. There were days Danton felt the call of his tribe as strongly as any of the others around him. At dawn he had risen and run for miles in the unfamiliar wet air of the Earth city. Even after a year his body craved the desert where he'd come from. The salt air burned and the moisture in it made breathing difficult, so he ran off the weakness, then finished with a crushing bout of weight training and abdominal work, then showered in the coldest water he could stand.
He did not want to be thrown into the breeding program. Not with the human females to produce more of the Vampyren.
He couldn't have told anyone why. Vampyren wouldn't ask anyway. They'd simply execute him if he refused. So better to keep his arousal at bay.
The beast was awake in him. He craved blood, violence, to hunt and kill and subdue the stupid beings on the planet. He was here to conquer. All his doubts had gone by the wayside.
M aybe it was the events at the games the night before.
M aybe a reawakening of his warrior spirit.
M aybe it would pass. For now, he roared his fury alongside Lan, his wounds from the attack at the theater freshly healed, and his brothers, Jayden, Tamel, Kev, the others in his unit.
He was ready for patrol. He was ready to find splinter movements of humans and crush their spirit, throw them in to tank farms to harvest their blood. They only existed on the planet now to make conquest and colonization possible for the Vampyren. This was their world now.
