by Seth Eden
The Council room felt surreal. It was huge and consisted of a massive circular table around which a dozen Council members sat. They were the region’s leadership and led alongside the Vampyren military leadership based outside the city. They all had maps and notes in front of them and glasses full of blood that they absently sipped from as they spoke among themselves. The room was eerily lit so that they were all a little in shadow, a guard for each member at the ready and posted on the periphery of the cream and red room.
“Loren,” one member said. Mark knew who some of them were. This one’s name was Fylst, he was pretty sure. He came from high up in the royal line from Mark’s recollection. “And...Markole. Yes. Report to us. This attack from Drake’s unit on that creche?”
Mark stood up straight and falling into the routine of old-fashioned obedience and submission to Vampyren leadership, he clasped his hands in front of him, waiting for Loren to say his piece before he gave his own report. He spared nothing… with the sizeable exception of mentioning Crystal at all. He had no idea of what the Council knew. But he imagined that Loren hadn’t mentioned anything about her. He wasn’t going to tell them he had a “special human friend” and he certainly wasn’t going to mention she was pregnant.
The Council didn’t ask about her and he relaxed marginally.
“There’s a human and Vampyren resistance,” another Council member said when they were done speaking. He was the biggest and oldest of all of them. He was also the least ranked in terms of old Vampyren royalty. Yet he was well respected. His name was Reyka and his long braid was almost entirely grey but he was still strong enough to give any good Vampyren a run for their money.
Mark just blinked at him and felt he’d lost the thread but Reyka wasn’t finished.
“You look confused,” Reyka said wryly. “It is understandable. I am saying there is a resistance force that began with humans and now has Vampyrens within it, fighting their own kind. Side by side with the humans.”
Even Mark was surprised by how hopeful that made him. But the Council didn’t exactly seem thrilled about it.
“Things are changing,” Reyka continued. “The… individualism of humans has infected our kind. But we have always been susceptible to that. Before the age of royals, we functioned as free thinkers. It’s in our blood to choose our own path, as it were. But this… must be quelled.”
Mark was accustomed to remaining silent unless asked a question but perhaps it was that human individualism infecting him that made him ask, “Sir? Are you saying Drake’s unit has joined this resistance?”
“No,” Reyka said. “Obviously not. But that resistance is a symptom of our lack of control and so are Drake’s actions. Attacking the creche is…”
“He should be executed,” Fylst said. “He’s broken with our most sacred traditions. Slaughtering Vampyren children—"
“Half breeds,” another Council member said, and everyone else gawked at him in disbelief.
“That hardly matters,” Reyka said, bristling. He raised his dark eyebrows, looking now to Loren and Mark. “Markole. We think we may know where Drake’s unit is hiding out. You’ll take your team and investigate but do not attack.”
“Why?” Mark snapped, against even his own better judgment.
“Because that’s the order,” Reyka said, sneering a little. That put Mark back on his heels and he huffed, fair as it was.
Mark might have been considered “soft” by Vampyren standards but to chase after Drake without the permission to kill him after what he had attempted to do Crystal twice now and what he had done to the children… It was just too galling. He wanted to rip Drake limb from limb.
“Calm down,” Loren said, once they were let go from the Council and sent away. Mark only then realized he was growling more than he was breathing, clenching and unclenching his fists as they made their way back to the truck. “You’ll get your chance.”
“Twenty-three children, Loren,” Mark said darkly. “Many of them were infants. What is the Council thinking?”
“Honestly, I believe they’re thinking that if Drake’s unit is capable of that, who knows what else they’re capable of,” Loren said, as he climbed back into the truck outside. Mark climbed in after him and sighed, sitting down on the metal bench in back, resting his arms on his knees. “It’s not a bad idea to investigate and make a plan. We don’t know what we might uncover. And usually you’re the reasonable type. That girl has gone to your head.”
“She’s pregnant,” Mark said, fixing Loren with a stare. “She just told me.”
Loren’s mouth dropped open and he blinked for a moment before he nodded once as if in full acknowledgement of why Mark might be more riled up than usual. “Understood.”
They drove to Mark’s base where his unit of twenty men were camping out in one of the many abandoned apartment buildings around town. Loren went back to his own unit, responsible mainly for patrols. Mark worked quickly, devising a plan to stake out the location the Council had given him where Drake might be hiding out. It was in an upper-class suburban neighborhood in an area called Winnetka. He sounded out the word, letting it trip over his tongue. It was such a light word. It didn’t sound like the kind of place Drake would be hiding. Perhaps that was what made it a good spot.
“But we don’t attack?” One of the men said. That was Morn. They were packing up a van for their travels. The plan was to send in one wired man who would pretend to join Drake’s unit, having enough of the “civil” actions of the Vampyren military leadership. Morn volunteered. He was a young one. But Mark liked to give the young ones opportunities. They had to jump in and learn eventually anyway.
“No,” Mark said. “The Council says we do not attack.”
Morn snorted at that and shook his head. “Orders are orders,” Mark mumbled, climbing into a van. But attack or no, they were still bringing enough weapons to take down two of Drake’s units just in case. You never knew.
“Everybody eat,” Mark said, as they rode out to Winnetka. He had a cooler full of blood packs and everyone took one, dutifully if joylessly sucking them dry, though the men did seem more sated when they were done. That was another way that Mark supposed he was different from most Vampyren. Many would say it was good to fight hungry. It gave you a kind of intense desperation and bloodthirstiness. Mark thought it was better to fight strong, well fed, and smart, without that nagging, irrational hunger making you act stupid. His men seemed to agree with him. So perhaps he was onto something.
In Winnetka, their vehicle slowly cruised the streets, seeking out the coordinates they’d been given, though they planned to park far enough away to avoid attracting attention. The eeriest thing about the neighborhood was how empty and untouched it was. The people who had lived there had obviously been humans of substantial means. They were all gone now or they were skillfully and silently hiding in the depths of their spacious mansions and more likely than not, they were starving.
“Do you know,” Morn said, kneeling on the floor of the van to peek out of a tinted window, “that some humans have pools of water behind their houses?”
“For drinking?” Another of the men said idly.
“No!” Morn said. He grinned, as if proud of his acquired knowledge. “No, they just jump in and… move around in the pool. They swim.”
“Why would you swim in water unless you’d fallen in?” The other one said.
“They like water,” Mark said with a snort. He was six years older than the youngest man in his unit. But sometimes it felt like more. “They like a lot of things we don’t even know about. Like dancing.”
“We dance,” Morn said, sounding almost offended.
“We writhe,” Mark muttered. “And only at certain events. Human dancing is different. They have rhythm.”
“Rhythm,” Morn said as if trying out the word. “Hmm.”
“Everyone quiet,” Mark said, as the van slowed.
They were a few blocks away from the stately mansion where Drake and his men were h
iding out. They had shuttered windows on the back door of the van and Mark pressed a button to open them, looking out down the block to the house where a few Vampyren guards were milling around, as if waiting for something.
Drake hadn’t killed everyone he’d found at the creche. A few women he’d taken with him for him and his men. With a little less luck, Crystal could have been one of them. It was all Mark could think about now.
Morn was in disguise, stripped of his unit’s armor and dirtied up a bit. He looked properly disheveled, like a man on-the-run. It would hopefully be enough to fool Drake and get them some information on his next move. The fire in Mark’s blood called him to go on the offensive.
Orders are orders, he thought. It did not seem nearly as convincing as it used to.
The van was out of sight of the mansion and Morn jumped out, tossing them a careless little salute that he definitely picked up from some humans. It made Mark shake his head. He had a fondness for all his men. They weren’t exactly close, but he liked them. They followed his lead, for the most part. That meant they weren’t nearly as brutal and bloodthirsty as others.
“We have eyes and ears?” Mark said, sitting back against the wall of the van and drawing his knees up. He clenched his fists, feeling a kind of satisfaction in the ache of his fingers, he held them so tightly.
Jarek was his tech man, and he flipped on a monitor that showed a live feed from a tiny camera Morn was wearing, fixed to the deep V of his vest.
“Can you hear me?” Morn said.
“Eyes and ears are good,” Jarek said. “We hear you, Morn.”
The monitor’s feed was crisp and clear and the sound was pretty good, only occasionally muffled by a gust of wind and that would be gone too if Morn actually managed to get inside. Mark glanced out the van doors and saw Morn became a distant figure as he approached the guards and van’s driver pulled away, driving up another couple of streets just in case they could be spotted.
“What’s your business?” One of the guards said when Morn stopped in front of him.
The mic crackled. The guard was staring blankly, unblinking on the monitor.
“I’ve abandoned my unit,” Morn said simply. “I want to talk to Drake. Join up with your squad.”
“Do you?” The guard said. Mark couldn’t even tell what his attitude was. He spoke in a blank monotone. There was a chance they were all on drugs. Mark heard about some units getting cranked up on human narcotics. The stimulants made them fight even more brutally. But Mark had already seen what drugs could do to humans. He didn’t want to find out they did the same thing to Vampyren. This guard looked pretty dead-eyed and gaunt too. It was something to report to the Council anyway.
“Yes,” Morn said. “I heard what your unit did at that creche off The Loop. That’s what we should all be doing. No mercy. That is the natural state of Vampyren. I tire of the leadership’s weak attempt to exist alongside humans. We’ve become too soft on them. Now they think they can live with us instead of for us. We should enslave them.”
The guard looked Morn up and down and nodded back at the mansion. “Come with me.”
The mansion was in good shape and even the landscaping was tidy. The lawn was dead, having gone without watering for a couple of years. The flowers had all died too, but they were neatly wilting in terra cotta pots and some succulent plants were still green along the cobblestone walkway. No bombs hit this neighborhood during the invasion. The family who lived there was probably dead inside if Drake had found them. More likely they’d fled somewhere along time ago.
“Look at that place,” one of the men muttered, watching the monitor.
The mansion was pristine inside as Morn was led through a marble-floored foyer, past a wide staircase, and through the somewhat gaudily decorated front hall. Mark had become used to the human sense of design. They liked a lot of light, air, and bright colors. Darker colors, smaller spaces, more clutter were considered “quirky” by human standards. It was odd that the more money a human had, the more empty their space appeared. It was as if they all wanted to show off how little they needed and how much space they had to put it in.
The guard led Morn all the way to the back and through two wide open glass doors to a backyard and patio where Drake sat like some kind of emperor on a giant, white leather chair that had been dragged out from the inside. The yard had one of those swimming pools but nobody was inside it, except for one very bloated human, a male corpse that had clearly been drained and was now floating facedown among heaps of drifting, empty blood packs.
Mark breathed in as Morn turned slightly, and the camera saw three girls from the creche looking beaten bloody and only half-conscious. They were chained together and sitting on the cement by the pool, the other men of Drake’s unit standing or sitting around, and apparently waiting for Drake’s next order. One of the men sat down near a chained up girl and casually sank his teeth into her neck, his arms wrapping around her scantily clad body.
“Don’t drain her,” Drake said offhandedly. “We’re keeping those three alive for amusement.”
“Stay here,” the guard said to Morn. Morn did a casual little 360, showing them the whole view of the place. There was a pile of bodies in one corner behind him, near the backdoors of the house. There was blood everywhere. That was about it. Mark breathed deep, his desire to save those girls like a horrible itch he wanted to scratch.
The guard went up to speak quietly in Drake’s ear as he lazily eyed Morn. He was clearly fancying himself as some nihilistic new Vampyren king. Mark had heard about incidents like this back on Vampyr. But they were supposed to be better than this now. They thought themselves better than humans.
They were kidding themselves, he thought.
“You want to join me,” Drake said, with the same flat affect the guard had used. He had the air of someone who had already so debauched himself he couldn’t feel anymore. Mark suspected he was guilty of other crimes just as great as his attack on the creche. All kinds of things went down without the Council knowing about them. They had been right about one thing; Drake was a symptom of a system that was failing rapidly. “What will you do for me? Other than provide me with another mouth to feed. You look a bit like a runt.”
“My prowess makes up for my size,” Morn said easily. He turned a little. Mark thought he was looking at the girls.
Mark had taught them too well. They cared too much perhaps.
“Don’t get distracted,” Mark muttered now, wishing Morn could hear him.
“You like what you see?” Drake drawled.
“Yes. They’re from the breeding pit?” Morn said. “I haven’t been in ages.”
“Take one,” Drake said. “Whichever one you want. But don’t unchain her. Take her now.”
“Shit,” Mark said, the human word jumping from his mouth without a thought.
Morn was hesitating. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have before he’d served under Mark. He would have raped one of those girls without a thought. He wouldn’t have even considered it wrong.
Now he hesitated. Yet Mark found himself kind of proud that he was hesitating.
“Is this so I’ll prove myself?” Morn said, with a snort. He was trying to turn things on Drake, but his tone was already giving him away. “I don’t need to prove myself to you. But if you don’t mind, I could use a drink.”
“He’s trying to negotiate,” Mark muttered. “He’ll see through it.”
“Who sent you?” Drake said on the monitor. “The Council, of course. But what unit?”
“I told you,” Morn said, even as he made his way over to the girls. “I left my unit.”
“No,” Mark said. It was as if he could already see the future. “No…”
“Of course, you did,” Drake said.
Morn had been about to take one of the girls to feed on but it was too late for that now as Drake took a great serrated blade from his belt and smoothly reached around from behind him and slit his throat, the blood gushing in great torr
ents. From the perspective of the camera, a blade had just appeared in front of his face and blood now spurted all over the lens. But he didn’t stop there and sawed his way through. The men in the van groaned and Mark closed his eyes, not particularly wanting to see the sight of Morn getting his head sawed off from his point of view, even as his screams echoed in the van. Morn’s body fell to the ground, the camera catching the leering faces of Drake’s unit, a flash of the sky, and a splash of blood.
Fuck.
Mark moved fast, leaning over to thump his hand on the back of the driver’s seat. “Go! Drive! Now!”
With a squeal of its tires, the van pulled away and peeled off down the street, away from Drake and his men and Morn’s head on the monitor now rolling across the pavement and into one of those mysterious human swimming pools.
Well, this was going to be fun to report to the Council.
“Where are we, Markole?”
The van was parked in front of a big condo in The Loop. It had taken a little time, but he’d managed to track down Crystal’s roommates even though they’d moved a block over to a bigger building. It wasn’t unit business but given the day he’d had, he figured he would treat himself to doing something for Crystal about now.
“It won’t take long,” he said grimly.
It hadn’t been an hour yet and all he could see behind his eyes was the gush of that bright red blood arcing in a fountain from Morn’s neck; that crimson red against the cerulean sky as his body had toppled over, his screams high and piercing. What a stupid misadventure. Morn had been young and eager to head into danger on Mark’s orders. Now he was dead.
He wished for a moment he could be harder like other Vampyren. Maybe then he would care less that one of his men had died.
Mark jumped out of the van and left the door open, taking off his leather vest so he was only wearing his black, cotton undershirt. Someday, he thought idly, this war might be over. No more heavy leather uniforms that stuck to your sweaty skin. What a day that would be.
