by Seth Eden
That was supposed to sound like the future was a gaily wrapped gift instead of a threat. Or a curse. She said as lightly as she could, "So you don't know."
His response was to rough up her skull with his knuckles. Typical brother.
"Okay," she said. "I'm better. Stop doing that. Seriously, Will. Let's grab the goods and go have some blow-out veggies for dinner. I can't believe I'm saying that, didn't she find any cheesecake? Or chocolate?"
But she broke off at the same time Will jerked away from her, the two of them automatically going into ready stances.
Diane was the first through the door, with Stu close behind her, the two of them already talking fast as they came through. They were panicked, moving fast but holding it together so far, but with the fear they radiated, they were going to start making mistakes.
"We have to go," Stu said, his voice as definite as if he were their parents.
"I don't know how they – " Diane started and her husband nudged her hard enough to throw her off balance and stop her words instantly. Her teeth clicked together.
Kiera was certain she'd been about to say found us and at once she started forward into Diane's face. "What have you done?"
"Nothing." Instantly defensive, her florid coloring going red. "We didn't – you asked us – we've helped out!"
Will moved fast to Stu, grabbing the front of his shirt. "Did you two bring those fucks down on us? You were asked. When we took you in! We asked if you had any problems with the fucking vampires or if you were just scared and on the run – "
"Dude, let go! We were trying! Diane was pregnant, we thought – "
"Pregnant!" Kate had come in from the garage at the sound of voice raised. Now she turned fast toward the older woman, dropping the trash bag of canned goods she'd been holding. Kate was pre-med – so pre-med she was still in high school and might never get to medical school, but she did her research. "Are you – " As if Diane had just somehow become pregnant and therefore a new liability. And a responsibility. More than she had been. And Kate's, at that.
"Kate!" Will snapped.
He still held Stu's shirt and the instant he was distracted, Stu brought up a fist and swung, the blow straight forward, not a wild roundhouse blow but a sharp pistoning thrust from someone who knew what he was doing.
Will was better. He dodged the blow without bothering to block or let go, and instead of going for the face, he buried his fist in the other man's gut, instantly retracting his fist once he had landed the blow.
Stu made a sound and sat.
"They're all around us," Kiera said. Her voice broke as she stared out the kitchen window. There were tears behind her eyes and in her throat. If they hadn't taken the couple in, if she'd trusted them enough to tell them about scent Jjust in case they were being chased – "Is there a door we can go out? A basement? An attic? Look!" Because Diane and Stu were just standing there while her brother and sister and best friends and her brother's friends were all pressing forward, the entire raiding party were already in motion and searching for a way out.
She had to get back to the house. Her father didn't really need a U-joint. It was just the only thing Kiera could give him: A fixed sink.
Kate's greens would do him as much good. He'd never get these either if they couldn't get out of here.
Panicked, she forced herself to double check the window in front of her. Pointless. Completely pointless. Because the locked and dead bolted door opened as easily as if unlocked and through it stepped some of the most beautiful men she'd ever seen.
Loren
They'd found a cache of humans. Loren swore silently to himself. Minor royalty, he had freedoms the others in the hunting party didn't share, but he couldn't be seen as weak. Not with his brother there, even farther from the throne than Loren himself was. Not with all of the others all around him.
But an entire group of them, stupid and defenseless and frightened. Young, mostly. The ones they'd run down, the ones whose scent one of the hunting party had recognized, they were expendable. They'd killed a Vampyren in a sneak attack with pipe bombs and nails, and their bravery would be commended before they were ritually drained to the point of death, then beheaded.
There could be no mercy. The planet belonged to the Vampyren and they needed to take everything of value from it before the Lucian sent enough force to make their threat reality. That meant breeding the women to increase their numbers even as they fled with the babies. It meant eating enough to be stronger than the wolves when they came.
Lucian. Fucking scavengers. They followed on the heels of the Vampyren, taking planets the Vampyren first conquered. They had formidable strength and an abiding hatred for the vampires.
This was his party, though. His party no matter how Sav nipped at his command. They'd do things Loren's way and none would be harmed.
Even the assassins, because Loren was too far down in rank to handle it himself and besides, their execution needed to be witnessed by everyone on Earth. No human could be allowed to kill a Vampyren. He didn't mind killing the older humans. Their blood would be nourishing, but not like younger blood. They were reaching the age when they would first start to break down, though the woman – he thought she might be breedable. It would be worth slaughtering her mate and keeping her to make up for the loss of the Vampyren they'd killed.
His heart raced. He'd been the one to sense them, one of the few to make it back from that doomed hunting party, the one taken out by the bomb. Now to have the opportunity to punish those responsible.
He took a stilling breath, collecting himself, and stepped into the house, taking in the number of males and females, where he sensed the warmth of blood and the beat of human hearts.
Then his gaze fell on the girl.
She was beautiful. Tall and sleek, with muscles like a female of his own kind. Her long, glossy hair was the color of dirt after a rain. The fury on her face, the way her hands tightened and knuckles whitened around the wrench she held. She wouldn't stand a chance against even the smallest of the aliens but he liked that she'd try.
Her scent matched that of the much taller male beside her. Litter mates, then, or born in different pregnancies, but related. There was another scent to her blood. He sniffed, shook his head, aware of Sav and the others waiting on him, but he scented –
"It's not them," Pedita said. He was smaller than the others, a head shorter than Loren's eight feet, but sharp. His beard was full, his eyes avid, his skin what the humans called olive. Physically beautiful, but then, all vampyren were.
"What do you mean?" He scented the air again and smelled corruption.
Perdita shook his head. "Someone close to – " he sniffed again and pointed to three of the assembled humans. Three males, one of them the killer, and four females, one of them the breeder. Perdita closed his eyes briefly, then opened them with the nictitating lids in place, protecting himself. "Those three," he said, pointing to the girl Loren had already observed and the brother, and a third girl who stood with her hands up in front of her, frozen in place. "Someone they're close to is ill."
Loren took another breath and this time understood. A blood disease. Interesting. Once they secured this group, they'd follow the scent, find the sick relative and take him to the labs. Occasionally Vampyren stock became corrupted. Understanding how to prevent such illnesses of food – blood – would be worth it and guarantee the human their life.
As long as the human cooperated.
Sav moved past him in a blur, impatient and raging. He'd been the other survivor of the doomed hunting party and now he grabbed the male and yanked him down to his knees, pushing the man's head back at an extreme angle. His fangs snapped down into place.
Loren was at his side before he could move any father. "You'd answer to command for that. You know what they'd extract. This is bigger than your revenge." In fact, Sav didn't have the right to even desire such revenge.
He didn't bother saying that. His brother had a savage temper and the winter and the da
rkness were making him feral.
It made Loren exhausted.
He turned to Perdita. "Use who you need to get them secured. Those two, they're the ones we were chasing." Because not everyone in the party could sense that. Those who hadn't been on the fateful mission had no idea. "That girl – she's mine. Secure her and keep her safe."
The humans reacted instantly. An explosion of movement as the male sibling came for Loren as if he stood a chance of doing damage with his bare hands. The girl, the one he wanted, put down the piece of plumbing she held, gingerly, as if it were somehow important, and brought up the wrench, advancing. The other girl reached for her, shouting, the same as the other females shouted and the other males moved and the couple they had been pursuing began to scream.
Loren hated scenes like this. Fate was fate and when it became evident how it was to play out, railing against it was obscene.
"Take them."
She ran at him then, avoiding Perdita because he'd gone for her sister, heading for the wrong girl, avoiding Sav because he went instantly for the largest male, hoping no doubt for a confrontation that would allow him to tear a human apart.
Avoiding the others because she was fast and lean and angry and didn't care about herself in that moment, only cared about those with her.
Jericho rounded on her, going after her because she was going after Loren, the leader. He held up a hand to stop him, pointed at one of the other girls who had started to run.
He turned back in time to stop the wrench that was coming down fast at him. He had her wrists in his hands then, clutched together, her spitting, hissing, hopelessly outnumbered attack stopped in its tracks.
She started to cry but where Loren hated their tears, hated the weakness they implied, he found hers to be tears of sheer fury. Without knowing quite why he did it, he pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest.
Kiera
Whatever was happening, everything had just escalated from bad to a level of bad she never knew existed.
The most beautiful man she'd ever seen had pulled her against him, holding her and stroking her hair while all around her, her friends, her brother and sister, everyone in the raiding party was screaming.
Kiera struggled, got herself partially free, enough to see that the only ones being actively harmed were Diane and Stu. Hard to feel much about that, she tried to think; they lead these assholes to us.
But the next instant the horror crashed over her again. Whatever else they were, Diane and Stuart were human.
She twisted in the grip of the vampire holding her. He whispered something, like he meant to calm her, and simultaneously she smelled blood on his breath and something sweet, something that made her racing pulse try to calm itself.
Something that made her want to reach out to him, to stroke his chest, to touch him in ways she'd only ever touched –
NO!
This was pheromones. She'd heard about this, the Vampyren trick, the way they could lure humans, male and female, seeming like the most attractive, most desirable beings in the world.
Despite having already been struggling, she took him by surprise, twisted the way she'd been taught by her little brother before she went off to college. Twisted, stomped, and that shouldn't have worked, why wouldn't the invaders wear some kind of steel toed boots or some other protective form of footwear?
But he visibly shuddered when she brought her foot down on his instep and she followed it with a straight shot to his crotch. It missed, but the rebound of her fist allowed her an uppercut. She caught his mouth, driving one of his own rereleased fangs into his lip. Dark, unnatural blood spurted. Kiera screamed, lurched away from him, and almost made it.
But there were others in the room and they'd already subdued her brother, who lay in a heap, looking winded but otherwise unharmed, and Katie, who knelt, tears pouring down her face. Kiera wouldn't expect her to fight. Katie valued all life. She was terrified of having to make a decision to kill in order to survive.
Another look around and she saw Will's friends on their faces, Vampyren leaning over them, one of them holding Dweeb Dave's head back at an awkward angle as Dave lay on his stomach, hands trussed behind him.
The traitors, the idiots, Diane and Stu were tied and down and she thought they were out. There was a thin trickle of blood from Stu's mouth and a vampire near him, sniffing, breathing heavily.
"Stop!"
That was the one who had held her. His voice sent a ripple through her and everything in her wanted to obey, to suck up the scent of flowers or whatever it was, to lay down and hope for the best, the best being that he would hold her again, would stroke her hair and –
"It's. Not. Real!" Kiera shouted and threw the wrench. Until it flew from her hand, she didn't even know she still held it.
He shouted as it caught him over one eye, gestured at the others. "Hold her! Don't hurt her! Run a scan. Is she viable?"
Kiera threw herself against the hands grabbing her arms but she might as well have been fighting solid iron. She didn't even have an inch of room to maneuver. Had everything she'd just accomplished only been because he wanted to see how far she could get?
She wouldn't let herself think that.
She stood panting, glaring, her chest heaving as one of the vampyren came closer, a handheld device out toward her. He lowered it to her belly and Kiera, repulsed, twisted and fought, spitting and hissing.
"Breeding stock," the one with the machine said.
Kiera spat on him.
He instantly moved in, one hand raised to strike her.
The one who had held her was behind him in an instant, a wicked looking blade held against her would-be attacker's throat. "Do it, and I'll gut you."
"You know what would happen to you, brother."
"I don't care. We respect strength, or are you too weak to remember that? So weak you can only attack a human female?"
The one who had come for her still stood with his arm only partially lowered, glaring at her. To his brother, then, she guessed, he said, "Which one can I have?"
"You're not entitled to any of them." His voice was cold and should have been final, but the other repeated himself this time adding, "I was wounded in the attack by these creatures."
One foot nudged Diane, who moaned. "I have been promised."
The one who had held her took a long breath, looking at Kiera, then looking past her. when his gaze fell on William she almost broke from the hold of the Vampyren holding her. He nodded, ever so slightly, to himself, not to the other vampires, and his gaze went past William. Past Katie. Past Amanda and Sarra.
To poor, dumb Dave.
"Take them out," the leader said.
"Please!" It burst from her.
His eyes met hers and she felt that shiver again. "There is only so much I can do," he said. There was no anger in his voice.
There was no mercy in it, either.
She was handcuffed and led with the others, the girls first, William and then Kevin next, and finally Diane and Stu, dragged unresisting.
Behind them all, Dave began to scream.
Loren
Daily, Sav grew more dangerous.
In part, Loren knew, that was because his own beliefs were out of keeping with who he was and how he was supposed to feel. Or not feel. They weren't here to adapt or protect. They were on Earth to conquer and take. Everything else was bonus and that included finding suitable human females to use as breeding stock.
Watching as the prisoners were loaded into the vans, he could hear Sav's victim screaming, the screams now starting to die down and fade. He'd be dead soon.
That was Vampyren. That was blood sport and feeding. But the unmitigated savagery of the winter was wearing on him. Whatever the humans thought, whatever they saw, there were Vampyren back on their home planet who raised blood animals without terror or pain, who slaughtered as best they could without causing additional harm.
Every race had its warriors. The Vampyren simply had more and they
were the invaders as Earth people called them, the ones who moved between the stars, conquering and taking what they needed, using wormhole technology to take their prizes home before heading out again. It was an ever-expanding population, no matter how vicious the female Vampyren were. They needed blood, they needed the space of new worlds.
When they'd come to Earth, though, most of them had admired the resilience of the humans. They fought back. They gathered in small cells and made ineffectual strikes, but he thought they were learning. He'd told this to the commanders and been punished for his insolence. The whip marks had yet to fade from his back and the commanders were now as mad as the majority of the Vampyren with the cold and early dark of winter.
He wouldn't warn them again.
Loren Vassilynt was seventeenth in line for the throne on his home planet. Occasionally he considered the fates that would have to befall every other vampire in line for the throne before he could seize power and it amused him.
It amused him, usually, to consider how his ambitious, savage brother Sav raged when he believed himself out of earshot at the line of succession that put him eighteenth, behind Loren.
Other times it made Loren consider
He'd angered Sav. Not that doing so was difficult, especially given how conditions on Earth were. Sav had always been fond of creature comforts. Military service was required of all Vampyren, 10 years of it, a nothing in their long lives unless they were killed while serving But with the Lucian as enemies turning up on every habitable planet the Vampyren found and then trying to, and usually succeeding in wresting control of those countries, military service was necessary.
Exploration and conquest were necessary.
Taking the planet. Necessary. They needed it. They needed girls like the one he'd so recently and confusingly been holding.
And he'd made Sav angry. Now there'd be a battle and the girl would be the prize. From trying to keep her safe, he'd put her at risk.
