Dissension 1

by Katie Salidas

Mira breathed a sigh of relief hearing the footsteps of the soldier going up the wooden steps.

  “One minute.” The soldier said. His footsteps halted on the stairs. “What is that light?”

  Mira’s heart stopped. She rushed to snuff out the candle.

  “I have many lights down here. I need clear vision when I work,” Curtis said.

  “No. There was a crack in the wall and light behind it,” the soldier said.

  “These old places aren’t built as well as your housing. I’m sure it was just sunlight on the outside of the wall, or maybe even the home next door’s light.”

  “Out of my way.” The soldier’s footsteps came heavy down the stairs again.

  “You ready for a fight?” Mira whispered to Lucian. “We’re about to have company.

  “Ready as I can be.” Lucian stood.

  “Stay a few feet behind me. It sounds like there’s only one. I’ll drag him in here and take care of him. If there are others, though, we might have a problem.”

  The sound of metal scraping against concrete told Mira the soldier had found the door. “Open this now.”

  Mira waited with bated breath. She didn’t like having to kill, but this one was forcing the issue, and she needed the blood.

  The soldier yanked the door open, but before he could utter a word Mira had him by the throat. She sank her fangs in deep and drank her fill. Hot, fresh, human blood. Such a delicacy. Mira had not savored that sweet nectar of life in ages. She gulped greedily, oblivious to the revulsion of those around her.

  Nothing existed for that moment, just her and the soldier, his beating heart music to her ears. It pumped hard and fast – hot blood flooding into her waiting mouth.

  Every ache, every pain erased. The heat from his fresh blood infused her body, restoring her strength and filling her with new vigor.

  She barely heard the sounds of more footsteps coming down the stairs. The small click and charge-up sound of the UV torch should have immediately registered on her, but it wasn’t until the full blast of white-hot light caught her straight in the face that she dropped her quarry.

  Hands up to shield her eyes, Mira shrank back against the wall.

  “Lucian Stavros, you are under arrest by order of the Magistrate,” a new soldier called out. Mira couldn’t see. The soldier kept the UV torch on full blast aimed right at her face. “Slave 8254-A, you are to be eliminated on sight.”

  “Thanks for the warning, but how do you expect to do all that?” Mira laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t see him, but by the sound of it, there was only one person in the room. He had to be armed, but he was concentrating on keeping that torch on her face, which meant he couldn’t grab for any other weapons. If she could just get past the pain, she’d be able take him.

  “Silence, slave. You’ll remain here until backup has arrived.”

  “You really think you’ll live long enough to see your precious backup?” Shielding herself as best she could, Mira took a step forward.

  “I said stay where you are!” The soldier held firm to his UV torch, but the warble in his voice told Mira she was correct. He was alone, and she could take him.

  Mira’s skin blistered under the harsh light. Small bits of skin flaked off, stinging and smelling of singed flesh. She’d dealt with this before, in the lightbox; knew this pain well. All she had to do was fight past it and she could have him by the throat.

  “Lucian, are you up and moving?” Mira asked.

  “Right here.”

  “Does the soldier have any weapons on you?”

  “He has a small gun aimed at my chest, yes, and the torch in his other hand.”

  “Get behind me.”

  She felt the small breeze of his movement behind her. Hoping she’d be cover enough, she lunged forward blindly. A shot went off. Hot metal seared its way through her body, but that pain was minimal compared to the blistering heat of the UV torch. She met it dead on, flailing her arms to try to knock it out of the way. Her body collided with the soft yet taut flesh of a younger man. She hoped he was the soldier. They toppled down to the ground together. Baring her fangs, she sank them into the first bit of naked flesh she could find.

  The soldier wailed with pain and struggled to get out from her grasp.

  Mira locked on to him with all her might, wrapping her arms and legs around his body and rolling around on the floor with him, all the while keeping her teeth firmly entrenched in his hot flesh.

  She gorged herself on more blood than she’d had in the last thirty years, savoring her gluttony. There would be no telling when she’d be able to enjoy such a bountiful feast again, and given her wounds, she needed the healing blood to keep her at full strength.

  When she rose, Mira met the uneasy stares of Curtis, Lucian, and the obviously upset wife.

  “Sarah, honey. Why don’t you run back upstairs and get us some towels and things to clean this mess up, okay?” Curtis was visibly shaken, but still managed to meet Mira’s eyes as he spoke to her. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. My wounds will heal fast. Are you and Lucian unharmed?”

  Lucian knelt down beside Mira. Blood bloomed across his shirt, flowing out from the tip of his shoulder. “I’m okay. Just a scratch, I think.”

  “We better take a peek at it. Just in case.” Mira turned to Curtis. “Have your wife get some first aid supplies.”

  “I’ll see what we have,” Curtis said, and headed back up the stairs.

  “Hurry. We don’t have much time. And if he did call for backup, they’ll be here in moments.”

  “We have another problem too. The sun is still up.” Lucian said.

  “That’s only a problem for me. You all can get out at any time,” Mira said.

  “No. We have to stick together.”

  “Not if separating keeps us alive.”

  “I won’t hear of it. Separate, we are vulnerable. Together, we can use each other’s resources to survive.”

  “Well, my resources are limited when daylight is involved, and as much as I would love to sit here and drink my fill, I can’t keep killing soldiers all day. Think of my girlish figure.”

  “Did you actually attempt to be funny in your own snarky little way?” Lucian let out a snort of laughter.

  “It happens occasionally.”

  Curtis returned with a small first aid kit. “We don’t have much here. Hope some of it is useful.”

  Mira opened the small metal container. It had little more than a few bandages and a half-empty bottle of alcohol. “We’ll just have to make do.”

  Lucian pulled off his shirt, wincing with pain where the fabric ripped at his skin.

  “Looks bloody, but I don’t think the bullet is in your shoulder.”

  “Just a scratch, then?”

  “I’ll need to clean it to be sure.” Without hesitation, she dumped the bottle of alcohol onto his wound.

  Lucian let out a howl of pain. Mira quickly silenced him with her hand across his mouth. “You want to alert the whole city?”

  Panting with pain, Lucian replied, “Sorry, I wasn’t prepared…”

  “Just shut up.” She inspected the wound. It bled like it would never stop, but she didn’t see any type of fragments embedded inside.

  “I’m not a warrior like you,” Lucian said apologetically.

  “I know.” Mira had lived a life of pain. It was hard for her to understand that others might not have the same tolerance. “I’m going to give you more blood. I need you to heal quickly, okay?”

  The expression on Lucian’s face was one of deep revulsion, but he did not speak a word in protest. He took a deep breath, and when she offered her cut wrist again, he took it without hesitation.

  Mira smiled inwardly, watching him feed from her arm. He might not be a warrior, but he certainly was a survivor. A do-whatever-it-takes kind of guy. That she could appreciate.

  Sarah came down the stairs with a bucket of sanitizer water and towels. “I couldn’t find any plastic bags
to wrap them...” Her words cut off when she caught sight of Lucian feeding from Mira. “What the hell?”

  “He was injured. This will help him heal fast,” Mira explained simply. There was no time for making nice about it.

  “Stop that this instant. Do you want to become like her?” she chided Lucian.

  “Sarah, honey…” Curtis said.

  “No. It’s bad enough she got us into this mess. Now she’s trying to change him.”

  “I assure you, that is not the case.” Mira started to defend herself, but decided it was not worth her time. If a person hated her, there was nothing she could really do to stop them. Humans were often too short-sighted as it was.

  “I want to be rid of you… the sooner the better.” Her contempt was obvious, yet other than her words, she made no further attempt to push the matter.

  “Me too,” Mira agreed.

  Sarah huffed and went to work cleaning

  Lucian pulled away from Mira’s offered wrist. He gagged and spat up some of the blood he’d drunk.

  “Hold still,” Mira ordered. “I need to make sure it’s working.”

  She inspected the wound. The bleeding, thankfully, had slowed to a trickle. He’d heal soon enough, but that still left them with a problem. How were they going to get out together… and alive?

  “Strip them down,” Lucian said, indicating the fallen soldiers.

  Mira arched an eyebrow suspiciously.

  “Their uniforms are Kevlar. That will provide us with some additional protection we might need.”

  Smart idea. Mira nodded and went to work removing the clothes from the soldier she had just killed. His communicator bracer began to beep when she tried to unfasten it. “Sanders. Report,” came a voice through the communicator’s small speaker.

  Mira looked to Lucian and attempted with only her eyes to ask him what to do. Her first instinct was to smash it, but she’d never been allowed close to any kind of modern technology and wasn’t sure if it might be useful in some way.

  The communicator beeped again. “Sanders, do you copy?”

  Curtis stepped up and grabbed the dead soldier’s arm, ripping the communicator off. He fiddled with the buttons on the communicator, but by the anxious look on his face, was not getting the result he wanted. Finally, after the third time the person on the other side called for Sanders, Curtis pulled a sharp tool from his workbench and stabbed at it a few times. Strange screeches and electric pops finally ended the communication.

  “What did you do that for?” Mira asked.

  “Assuming it had a tracking beacon, I’d say we bought ourselves a little time,” Curtis responded.

  “Right. Good thinking. How much longer until sunset?” Mira asked.

  “Little more than an hour, I’d say.” Curtis tossed his tool back on the workbench.

  “Tracking beacon or not, they’ll know the last location of that soldier before he went missing. I doubt we bought ourselves any additional time.” Lucian’s tone was somber. “Don’t forget the other one. We’ll need to disable his com-link as well.”

  “Aye,” Curtis said, retrieving his tool, and headed over to the other dead soldier. “Then we’ll have to leave sooner rather than later.”

  “Mira, how long can you be in sunlight?” Lucian asked.

  “Direct light? Not long. Even if the light wasn’t touching my skin, it would still affect my vision. Too much light is blinding.”

  “What about sunshields or lenses? That soldier might have had a helmet. Sarah, can you run out and check if they had a transport?”

  Sarah looked up from her scrubbing and sneered at Mira, as if it were her fault she could not handle the sun. “Anything to be away from that.” If glares could kill, Mira would have been six feet under by now.

  Mira did her best to ignore Sarah. “A helmet with a sunshade might help in indirect light; not sure how much, though. It really depends on how much light it filters out.”

  “Well, it’s better than nothing,” Lucian said. “Curtis, do you have transport or a vehicle of any kind?”

  “Sorry, sir, I’m not affluent enough to own anything like that.”

  “Do you have any friends who would let you borrow one?” Lucian asked.

  “Not on short notice.”

  “On foot, through a city guarded by hundreds of soldiers looking to kill us. Sounds like a great time.” Mira’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Don’t forget with a blind vampire too,” Lucian added.

  “That’s the spirit.” Hopeless as their situation was, Mira had to appreciate Lucian’s attempt at a joke.

  “No transport outside or nearby,” Sarah called from the top of the stairs.

  “That makes things difficult,” Lucian sighed.

  “Yeah, and no helmet either,” Mira said.

  “We’ll just have to make do. Curtis, you have any sunglasses?” Lucian asked.

  Curtis finished stripping down the soldier and tossed the clothes in a heap in front of Lucian. “I’m sure I can scrounge up a pair.”

  “Good. Please hurry,” Lucian said. “Mira, you’ll probably fit in the smaller uniform.” He nudged the pile of heavy clothes toward her. “The boots will be big. Just try to make them work for now. We need to look as much of the part as we can.”

  “You have a plan beyond impersonating a soldier?”

  “No. That’s pretty much it. We just need to blend in for an hour or so until sunset. We can better do that in uniform, patrolling the streets, than running like a pair of fugitives, right?”

  “Hide in plain sight, sure. It’s simple enough it might just work.” Mira was impressed, but skeptical. “But what do we do with the bodies? We can’t leave them here. Curtis and Sarah will be implicated.”

  “They’ll have to come with us. We’ll escort them around under the guise of taking them back to central command.”

  Mira wanted to argue against bringing the other humans along. The longer they stayed together, the more danger they would be in. But she saw no other way around it. There was no time to properly dispose of the bodies, and two dead soldiers in their home, no matter the reason why, would be a death sentence for this couple.

  Mira finished pulling on the soldier’s uniform. It hung loosely on her shoulders and was baggy throughout. She hoped no one would pay too close attention, because she was obviously not a soldier.

  Sarah came downstairs. “Here. Let me help with your hair.” She grabbed some oil from Curtis’s work bench and used it to slick back Mira’s short dark hair. “This will make you look more like a man.”

  Surprised at the gesture, Mira’s voice caught in her throat as she tried to thank the perplexing woman.

  “Save your thanks,” Sarah said with all the spite and vitriol she’d shown earlier. “I’m doing this as much for myself as I am for you.”

  That was more of what she expected. “I appreciate the honesty.” Mira truly did. She understood the human’s revulsion at her species, but the fact that she was not letting blind hatred color her actions earned some respect.

  Sarah finished with Mira’s hair and handed her a pair of large-lens sun glasses. “It’s the best we’ve got here.”

  “It’ll have to do.”

  Dressed and ready, Lucian cautiously opened the door and looked outside. In the distance sirens had started. The other soldiers were on their way.

  Lucian looked back. “I’ll take Sarah, you take Curtis,” he said to Mira. “Make it look like you’re taking them in for questioning. Like this.” He grabbed hold of Sarah’s upper arm and tugged her forward. “Walk slowly and keep your head down, okay?”

  Sarah nodded.

  Mira reached out cautiously to Curtis, more for his comfort than her own apprehension. He may have seemed comfortable around her, but it was wholly another thing to be in the clutches of a predator. “Why don’t you take the lead? I’ll be a bit blind, so you’ll have to guide me.”

  Looking as if he were steeling his courage, Curtis nodded and held out
his arm for Mira to hold.

  “Let’s move out,” Lucian ordered. He held his gun in one hand, pointed toward Sarah, and guided her forward with his other hand around her arm.

  Mira winced as she followed through the door. Even though the cloud cover was in her favor, the light filtering though her sunglasses from the overcast sky was still annoyingly bright. She paused at the threshold and took a breath, looking down to the ground to try to allow her eyes to adjust and focus.

  “Are you going to be able to do this?” Curtis asked, sounding surprisingly concerned.

  “I always do what I must to survive. It is the way of my people.”

  “Vampires?”

  “Gladiators.” She let the weight of the word sink in. “This light is harsh, but a full blast from a UV torch is a bit more powerful.”

  “Enough talk, let’s move,” Lucian called back from the street.

  Mira didn’t want to admit it, but there was something about the way he sounded, when giving orders, that really connected with her. “Go.” She nodded stiffly and let Curtis set their pace.

  Sirens were closer now. A block away, if Mira’s guess was right. Unable to really see where they were going and what was around, Mira tried to recall what she’d seen on their run the previous night. “We need to find a way off the main roads. What’s behind these rowhouses?”

  “There’s an alleyway for trash collection and utilities,” Curtis responded.

  “Utilities… what about sewer?”

  “Nowhere to access the tunnels back there, if that’s what you’re after. You’d be better off finding a street hatch.”

  “If we can get off high traffic roads and locate one, we might just have a way out,” Mira said.

  A large armored vehicle pulled up alongside of the road, its siren blaring.

  “You there,” a soldier called out from the passenger window. “What are you doing?”

  Lucian stepped forward pulling Sarah roughly with him and pulled his sidearm. He pressed the gun to Sarah’s side. “Caught these two escaping from a house about a block over.”

  The soldier pulled up an address on his dash-mounted screen. “2857 Stonebend?”

  “That’s the one. But I wouldn’t get too close. This one here rigged some kind of EMP.” Lucian lifted his arm, showing off his non-functioning bracer. “Knocked out our com-links. Couldn’t radio in. We’re going to take these two in to command.”