by Seth Eden
That was assuming Gail would let her. But she wanted to be able to point to specific potential trades.
“Crys?” Alex appeared in the doorway and Crystal spun around on one heel, still shimmying to the Spice Girls. “Your boyfriend’s here.”
Crystal froze, and her heart suddenly began to pound. Since she was doing administrative work, she’d been allowed to change into shorts and a tank top, yet now she suddenly felt too dressed down for Mark’s arrival. Her long and lustrous ponytail hung down her back, but it was not glossy and curled at the end as it had been the last time Mark had seen her.
“Oh!” Crystal found a hand mirror. She was wearing lipstick and only because she had been playing with shades along with Alex earlier. But she was wearing no other makeup and looked hopelessly dowdy by the standards she’d already become used to. It was still somewhat of a shock to feel that way, having rolled out of bed into a pair of boots every day for the last two years. Yet she couldn’t help that feeling of wanting to look cute for a boy… even a boy with fangs.
“You look fine,” Alex said laughing, still hovering there in the doorway. “He looks like he’s dying to see you. I don’t think he’s going to care that you’re not all primped like the others.”
“Pssht. I wish I was though.” She straightened her a shirt a little and swallowed.
She entertained the fear that Mark’s interest would disappear. Perhaps she had only been some human novelty; a nice roll in the hay before he found some other girl in the breeding pit. That’s how most Vampyren seemed to operate. That was how most men seemed to operate in Crystal’s experience. Mark was different than most. Crystal had seen that quickly, and she had no reason to doubt him. But that didn’t mean he would be into her long-term. That seemed like too much to hope for. Which was, in itself, a very strange feeling.
“Okay, I’m coming,” Crystal mumbled. She set her clipboard with its careful inventory on a shelf and went out to meet Mark. She could sense him before she saw him and the sudden epiphany of that sensation made her dizzy for a moment.
Mark looked even better than he had before. She wasn’t sure how that was possible. He had become so much more beautiful in her memory, she thought. She found herself smitten. Although if anyone was going to be smitten by a Vampyren she supposed she was a decent candidate, having always had a pragmatic and even-handed view of them. They were conquerors and colonizers, sure. But being a mercenary herself, she kind of understood that impulse.
Besides, you couldn’t fight the enemy if you didn’t understand them. But now Crystal understood her way right into Mark’s bed and she wasn’t even sorry.
“Crys,” Mark said in a soft little whisper that Crystal felt on the shell of her ear already even as he looked at her across the lobby. He wasn’t wearing his armor or the basic stuff he’d been wearing under it last time. Now he wore tight black pants that looked leathery and form-fitting and a sleeveless vest with buckles and straps, his pecs peeking out of the deep V. His pleasing biceps flexed but didn’t bulge like the cartoonish arms she’d seen on other men. They were somehow even more appealing as they glistened with sweat. The corner of his rosy mouth turned up when he saw her and his big, dark eyes that he lined with charcoal to repel the sun roved over her.
“Hello,” Crystal said, swaying a little.
Shit, Crystal thought. I missed him but I didn’t know I missed him quite this much.
Surely, he had done something even if he hadn’t used pheromones. What else could explain this sudden attachment she felt after such a short time? She found herself moving and suddenly they were both in the middle of the lobby, pressed together and kissing heatedly as if he’d been gone for a year and not five measly days. Mark picked her up off the floor and carried her bridal style to a private bedroom used for rendezvous. Crystal hated those rooms, but she hated voyeurism more and she wasn’t about to argue when Mark was kissing her like that and kicking the door closed.
“All I’ve thought about is you,” Mark whispered, laying her down on the bed and crouching over her. The private room was much nicer than the big ones the girls shared. The bed was queen-sized and fixed with a goose down comforter in an attractive grey duvet cover. The girls shared the room and nobody lived in it, which seemed like a terrible waste to Crystal who sighed happily, stretching her arms out, her bare legs sliding open, the fabric silky and soft on her skin.
“Really?” She said. “All you thought of? How did you fight then?” She smiled up at him and pretended her heart wasn’t racing as he looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes.
“I barely did fight,” he murmured, kissing the tip of her nose and nipping at her bottom lip. “I could have been killed very easily.”
“Oh, that would have been so sad,” Crystal said, fascinated with the Vampyren’s ability to flirt, especially since he seemed a little stiff, though by far the most gentlemanly she’d yet met. “I mean not for me, I don’t care.”
“No?” He smiled down at her and for the first time since they’d met, he looked cocky. “You wouldn’t care at all, huh?”
“Not a lick,” Crystal said. Mark smiled at that tapped the tip of her nose with his finger and she was about to laugh at him but then he was tracing his finger down to her lip, pressing ever so gently even as he rocked his swelling cock against her, making her gasp softly. He pulled down her lip, and she tried to bite his finger but just as quickly he pulled away. “Mark…”
“Would you care?” He said, in a deceptively teasing tone. He wanted her to care, she thought. It mattered to him. He cupped her breast through tank top and squeezed it gently before ducking his head and yanking the shirt and bra down so he could suckle her there, his fangs softly grazing. “Would you?”
“I would,” she said, truly feeling it in her heart. He’d bewitched her somehow, she was sure. Maybe he hadn’t intended to, but it was definitely his fault. “I would, I swear.”
He covered her nipple with his mouth, shamelessly licking and sucking. She squealed, wrapping her legs around him. When he finally entered her, it was somehow even better than the first time. It wasn’t the unexpected passion taking them over, now it was two souls in a union. She found tears sliding down her face as he stared down at her, his mouth gaping open as he pounded into her again and again because she’d begged him to. He reached down to finger her clit and she cried out, trembling from the pleasure of it, as she danced on the precipice of bliss and then plunged right off of it.
“Mark...Markole…” At the sound of her saying his real name, he growled into her neck, freezing for a moment and then growing somehow impossibly big inside her. She shook like a leaf just before he finally pulsed his orgasm, crying out as he thrust in yet deeper.
“Crystal,” he murmured into her skin. “Crystal, my love…”
My love, she thought. How many women got that from a Vampyren?
When they lay together, side by side, atop the duvet, she threw a leg over him. She kissed his shoulder. It was horribly hot even in the “good” room but she didn’t care. She’d cling to him for as long as she was allowed.
“Human women are different,” Mark murmured, absently tracing his finger along her back.
“I should think so,” Crystal said. “Not to be prejudiced. But it does seem that way.”
“Vampyren women can be soft. Sort of. Mostly they’re hard like us,” Mark said thoughtfully. “But human women can be soft and hard at the same time somehow. It’s fascinating.”
“Not sure what you mean,” Crystal said, chuckling. “But I believe you.”
They would have to get up soon enough. They would eat and then Mark would probably need to get back to his unit. Then it would happen all over again. Mark would come visit for a night only to leave. Everything felt so temporary, like some stopgap. At the end of the stopgap, what was there? Either death or a future. But what was the future?
“What do you think the future will be like?” Crystal said. She felt silly asking questions like that. It was easier to prete
nd to be apathetic. But she’d never been great at it. She could make jokes and trick people into thinking she didn’t care as much as she did. They were never fooled for long.
“The future?” Mark said.
The room was already too warm. The breeding pit had pretty consistent electricity but the old air conditioner rarely worked. Sometimes it brought to mind a Southern flophouse from an old movie where the prostitutes were slicked with sweat and walking around in lacy little rompers, sipping low budget mint juleps. She’d never actually seen a movie like that, but she had a clear mental image of it.
“I mean something has to change, right?” She hated how plaintive she sounded. She hated that tears were welling up in her eyes. Somehow getting close to someone made everything better and harder all at the same time. “We can’t always be at war. And if the Lucian come, that will change things. So, truce? Coexistence? Everybody just kills each other?”
“I’m hoping for coexistence,” Mark said, sounding all too casual about it. “Truce, I suppose. I don’t know if it’s possible, Crystal if I’m going to be absolutely honest. But if it is, I want to be there with you when the dust settles.”
Crystal sat up a little, shifting to lean on her elbow and look in his eyes. “As in, have a life together?”
“That’s right.”
It wasn’t surprising that he would say so and yet she had an urge to laugh. “You, me, and a white picket fence. Sure.” She kissed his chin. He was an odd duck among the Vampyren alright. It was pretty endearing.
“What’s a white picket fence?” Mark said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Crystal said, and she kissed him again.
“You need something?” Crystal asked, leaning in the doorway of her dorm, as she liked to call it. There was something perverse about calling that room she shared with the other girls a dormitory. It implied schooling and camaraderie and a normal life for a young woman. It was blasphemous, alright.
Alex was lying on her side with cramps and she rubbed her stomach and grimaced at Crystal. “Is there something like a hot water bottle? That’s what I used to use. I miss that.”
“Did you take Ibuprofen?” Crystal said. “I just got some in.”
“I took one,” Alex murmured. “I’m saving the second. We always run out.”
“Take the second,” Crystal said firmly. “I have a regular supplier now. We have rice and cloth bags. That kind of functions like a hot water bottle if you microwave it? And I’ll get you some tea.”
“Thanks, Crys.”
“Yeah, sure.”
It had been like that for a while. The matrons had been both pleased in surprised to see how easily and efficiently Crystal slipped into her new role as a kind of quartermaster. But more than procuring the supplies she also distributed them and kept track of inventory.
Now she went to find one of the little cloth baggies that the matrons had sewn for a thousand different uses. They didn’t have zippers, they closed with a drawstring. She would just have to make sure it was knotted up tight so the rice wouldn’t fall out. A Ziploc wouldn’t work. It would just melt in the microwave.
Crystal found one of the small barrels of rice and scooped some into a bag. She knotted it and headed to the break room where she found Gail, drinking coffee and reading a Cosmopolitan from six years ago. The break room was only called that because it had clearly been the break room for the office that used to populate the floor. It had a fridge and a microwave that everyone used, but only the matrons hung out in there most of the time. The room had a weird feeling, to Crystal’s mind, as if at any moment someone would ask her to work on a spreadsheet. It was too normal for what the floor had become. But now she tossed the bag in the microwave and zapped it for two minutes.
“Oh my God, that’s so much better.” Alex sighed in relief when she slipped the warm bag under her shirt and Crystal nodded. There was something satisfying about making someone feel better if only for a moment. Maybe it was because the world was so fucked up now; any respite was an accomplishment. “Do you get cramps?”
“Oh!” Crystal said. “Yeah, sometimes. But I haven’t in a…” She frowned, doing the math in her head, counting back to her last period and her cheeks burned, her pulse racing as she realized just how late she was. It was the entire purpose of the creche and yet, it really didn’t feel like good news. “Oh hell.”
“What is it?” Alex said sleepily.
“Think I’m preggers.”
“Oh wow,” Alex mumbled. “Well go find Gail—"
“Yeah, yeah,” Crystal mumbled. “I know.”
The pregnancy tests weren’t like regular supplies. They were kept in stock at all times and brought in regularly directly from the council. Food was sometimes a problem as were tampons but there was never a shortage of pregnancy tests. They were considered something close to sacred. That was why the matrons controlled their distribution personally. That way, if anyone was pregnant, they knew about it first. Getting caught with a test from outside was considered a major offense. It meant you were trying to hide something. The women weren’t trusted not to “take care of” a pregnancy on their own somehow if they found themselves in the family way via Vampyren.
Crystal heaved a sigh and absently rubbed her stomach. She had the considerable advantage of actually liking the father of her potential child. That wasn’t nothing. She only knew of a few other women who had that advantage, Keira being one of them.
But that wasn’t the only factor. Crystal’s fingertips tingled at the idea of being pregnant. The theory was one thing, reality was another.
“Gail.” Crystal leaned in another doorway, chagrined. Gail looked up from her little spot by the window that looked out on the nightscape of Chicago. It looked a lot different now than it had a few years ago. Many buildings were completely gone and most didn’t light up anymore. But it still looked like a city at least, just with fewer twinkling lights and more occasional bursts of explosion from some battle somewhere.
“Yeah?” Gail was wearing her little old lady bifocals that she kept on a chain around her neck. Now they sat on her nose and she put down her magazine. “Crys?”
“I need a test,” Crystal said.
“Oh!” Crystal nodded. “That’s good.”
“Is it though?”
“Yes,” Gail said, getting up from her seat. She came around and passed Crystal who followed her back out into the gray carpeted floor with its ripped out cubicles where couches sat irregularly with women lounging or curling up to a few visiting Vampyren soldiers (nobody looked too vicious today so that was something). “The council always likes to hear about pregnancies. You know there’s a big breeding pit outside town in Urbana. The university campus. They hold the record on Vampyren pregnancies. Girls getting knocked up left and right. Must be something in the water. Council loves them. Anyway. Mark’s a good one.”
“Yeah, he is,” Crystal said. She rolled her eyes yet she couldn’t help but smile as she followed Gail to her private room where she kept her tests under lock and key.
Still, she knew what had happened to the children of Vampyren. There wouldn’t be any white picket fence like she’d joked about. The creche would take the child and raise it in a kind of orphanage. At the moment, Crystal didn’t have any particular thought about that. But she would eventually… wouldn’t she?
Crystal waited outside Gail’s door as she fetched the test. It was a little like waiting for somebody to use an ATM as you politely looked away, making a point of not watching. Gail came back out with a little pink box but she didn’t immediately hand it over.
“Let’s go get you some water,” Gail said. “When you have to pee, we’ll do it together.”
“Right.” She scratched her head, suddenly feel a little itchy and wishing she had something more important to do to get out of this whole thing. “Hypothetically, if I wanted to raise my possible Vampyren offspring with my Vampyren boyfriend instead of giving them up to the creche, how would that go over?”
> Gail only gave her a withering stare. “Not well.”
An hour later, Crystal was holding a little white stick with a plus sign that meant a little half-alien vampire baby was most definitely on its way.
“Congratulations!” Gail shrieked. They were crowded in one of the bathrooms together. There were toiletries scattered all along the counter and behind the sinks, and the stalls still had doors though the girls had painted graffiti all over the nice green and white tiles on the walls. Gail threw her arms around Crystal, squeezing her in a nearly suffocating hug and Crystal shut her eyes, willing herself not to cry.
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
“Thanks,” she murmured.
She wasn’t sure really as she clutched the little white stick in her hand and stared blankly at that plus sign. All she really knew was she wanted Mark.
6
Crystal
“Crystal!” Sasha’s whisper hissed in Crystal’s ear. But she only turned over, groaning in protest, burrowing under her covers.
She had been dreaming that things were just like they used to be. Except that Mark was still there, and she was still friends with Nina and Jet and they all lived together in a duplex and it was all very Friends-like. She was trying to get back to the dream. It didn’t completely make sense. Mark was wearing zebra stripe pajamas which seemed unlike him, and he was making hummus out of some paperback books. But it was still domestic and pleasant and seemed to have its own dream logic. Crystal kept her eyes shut and clung to the dream but the smoke alarm in the duplex was going off and she couldn’t figure out how to shut it off.
“Crystal!”
“Go away, Nina…”
“Dumbass!” Sasha slapped her hard and Crystal jerked awake into the grimness of reality. Both Alex and Sasha were kneeling by her bed and yanking her hard by the arm. The other girls were not in bed. They were probably banging Vampyrens in the private rooms, Crystal figured. “We’re being attacked!”
