by Seth Eden
* * *
It took longer to load up the truck than it would if she knew how to work the battery-operated forklifts but killing herself wouldn't help anybody and she could imagine running one right off the dock. Three hours after she started she was ready to try opening the bay doors and driving out. The warehouse was adjacent to The Strip, in the shadow of the high rise casino hotels it provided with all the amazing foods she was leaving behind in favor of canned beans and cured meats and water, water, water.
* * *
The Alien Vampire Diet -She'd write it as a bestseller if they all survived the invasion.
* * *
Stephanie slid behind the wheel of the truck and started it for the second time – she hadn't wanted to load it up only to find the battery had gone dead – then looked at the bay door. There was a green button right next to the loading zone for each truck – just lean out and hit it.
* * *
She could try it. Unlikely it would work but stranger things happened and the power did keep coming on and going off again. Pulling the door up by the chains would be slow and painful.
* * *
With the truck idling, she powered down the window and leaned out and slapped the hell out of the green button.
* * *
Nothing happened.
* * *
"Would've been too good to be true."
* * *
She left the truck running, the door open, and made her way to the bay doors. The chains confused her briefly before she chose one, grabbed hold of it, and started to tug. The door shuddered and looked like it was trying to close itself harder.
* * *
She always grabbed the wrong cord for venetian blinds, too.
* * *
She grabbed the other chain, gave it a good hard yank, and was rewarded with the metal door rolling up a couple feet. Good. It took muscle, but not more than she had.
* * *
She gave it three more yanks, staring up at the roller where the door was wrapping.
* * *
When she looked back down again, it was into the face of the Vampyren standing watching her.
* * *
Holding an enormous gun.
* * *
Which was trained unerringly on her.
* * *
She fought. In the weeks since the invasion, she and every other sane inhabitant of the planet learned to fight. She was armed, she was angry, and she had teeth and nails and a knife and a gun.
* * *
But she was five foot five inches and he was about eight feet tall. She had all new and untried muscle.
* * *
And he was made up of nothing but muscle.
* * *
"I don't want to hurt you."
* * *
She'd forgotten how their voices could resonate. Everyone said the Vampyren put off some kind of chemical signature, the same way bugs did, or animals when it was time to mate. Everyone said that was why politicians caved and went back to their jobs working for the invaders, and that's why women went with them for sex and men went with them apparently to their dooms.
* * *
It didn't work on everyone and it only worked in close contact.
* * *
But it worked.
* * *
She fought anyway. His voice didn't matter. It was – god, it was sexy and full of honey and lust and promises no one had fulfilled for her in months even before the invasion.
* * *
But –
* * *
But they very likely killed your brother, or they will.
* * *
So she fought.
* * *
"I don't want to hurt you," he said the second time when he got tired of her shooting him at point blank range. She still wasn't very good and the gun was a .38 revolver. It left burn marks on his torso and did nothing else.
* * *
"But I will."
* * *
That was when he backhanded her and knocked her to her knees. Her head was still ringing when she tried to shake it off but he was already tying her hands in front of her using a cord from one of the boxes of food she was taking with her.
* * *
Had been taking with her.
* * *
What about my Dad? He'll be all alone.
* * *
What about Davy?
The vampire taking her was huge, his shoulders broad and his arms showing out of the short sleeved uniform were striated and built like a bodybuilder's.
* * *
He came by all that muscle naturally and he could use it, too. Her split lip and throbbing head proved that.
* * *
He left the truck idling behind them, just waiting for someone to come and profit from all her hard work.
* * *
It took her halfway to their destination to stop being angry and start being afraid.
4
The girl fought like a Vampyren. Once that had been a major compliment among his kind but this whole planet was made up of surprisingly angry and courageous peoples. In the long run it wouldn't do them any good, but Dray admired their tenacity. They fought for their lives and they fought for each other's lives.
The thought gave him pause and he looked at her in the back of his Jeep. They'd adopted the fuel burning vehicles humans used. They were mostly too small but were more efficient than trying to adapt their own maglev sleds to Earth's gravity.
She sat hunched in the backseat, tears on her face.
Humans fought for each other and before he'd taken her from the building where he'd found her she had loaded an entire truck with food.
"The people you were taking that to." He said it as a question but didn't finish the question, waiting for her to look at him.
Sullen, gray blue eyes met his in the rearview. When he didn't go on she finally said, "Yeah?"
There would be time to teach her respect.
"Will they die without it?"
"What do you care?" But he heard the pain in her voice.
"I don't. You do. But they can be cared for."
She laughed, bitterly. "By being taken to a tank farm?"
"It's better than being drained."
He saw her bite her lip. "I'm not telling you anything."
"Fine." He slammed the vehicle forward, watching as she hit her head on the seat when he slammed on the brakes.
She'd learn. They either learned or they died or they went into a harem or they were sent to breeding, or to a tank farm, or sometimes, to positions within the guard, working with the Vampyren.
There was a reason for the breeding. After centuries of fighting from planet to planet with the denizens of that world and with the Lucians when they followed, there weren't as many Vampyren as the populations they overtook believed.
He knew his place and his purpose. He knew that having successfully bred a full Vampyren set of male twins, he could have any female he wanted.
He knew he could teach her to respect him.
But looking back at her, the auburn curls, the blue eyes, the puffy lip he'd given her and the way she glared at him in the mirror, he hated the idea of breaking her.
Vampyren when they chose a mate, chose equals. He was in a new world, where they could maybe forge new rules.
Maybe there was room for more than just breaking and owning.
5
Las Vegas provided as many rooms for soldiers and administrators and all versions of Vampyren as they could want. Skyscraper hotel casinos offered them views and comfort and utilities that worked but the desert and heat-loving aliens didn't use the air conditioning.
* * *
Stephanie felt like she was going to bake when he dragged her from the initial intake meeting where some official wearing the vampire equivalent of military rank approved Dray Fierro's war prize: her.
* * *
Humans used to do that too, if she could believe what she'd read in Homer's Iliad. Tha
t didn't make it any better.
* * *
Then he took her up in a working elevator to the eighteenth floor or something where the heat was so intense it made her feel woozy.
* * *
"What is happening to you?" he asked as he pulled her from the elevator. He picked her up, not unkindly but somehow like he might carry a load of laundry.
* * *
"It's too hot." Her breath was coming in little pants.
* * *
He seemed nonplussed by that, but carried her into the suite that was clearly his and took her directly to the bathroom, running a tepid bath as if he understood she'd go into shock if he dumped her straight into cold water.
* * *
"That will help." He stood back and crossed his arms.
Stephanie looked longingly at the cool water, then angrily back at him. "You think I'm getting in there with you watching?"
* * *
He actually smirked at that. So they could mimic human expressions. Dandy.
* * *
"What is it you think is going to happen between us? Do you think I brought you here just to be kind?"
* * *
The question made her instantly furious. "Kind? What would you bastards know about kindness? You've come down here and slaughtered us, then you take everything that's ours and break up families and I was looking for my brother and my father needs the food – " Never mind her father was probably out scavenging even now, there was nothing wrong with him, just he was her family and that wasn't the point – "And – " And never mind she hadn't meant to tell him anything.
* * *
"You can take your clothes off and get in the bath now."
* * *
"Fuck you!"
* * *
"Eventually. The other possibility is I can tear them off you and punish you for your behavior."
* * *
The anger crackled through her.
* * *
Along with something else. Something she didn't want to admit to herself. Something that made her wet between the legs at the thought of him touching her. At the thought of him undressing her, touching her, tasting her, maybe punishing her, it sounded intriguing –
* * *
And her mind the whole time was screaming like there was a watcher in the back of it, an overmind with the intelligence to know there would be nothing erotic about a punishment from such creatures, that she might not even survive it, that she was in a completely untenable situation and that he was –
* * *
--using pheromones on her or hypnosis or whatever it was the aliens did that turned people to putty in their hands. Across the world where there was Internet access there were tales of human idiots who were sexualizing the Vampyren, they were so beautiful, so sexy, so amazing, so cool.
* * *
Stephanie found those people to be idiots who shouldn't even be mourned when they were shoved out of the gene pool and fucked and eaten for lunch.
* * *
If this was pheromones she was damn well going to fight them.
* * *
In the next second, whatever he was doing, he stopped. The compulsion dropped away from her like something physical that had been shoving her.
* * *
Her mind was her own again, as were the hormones racing through her body and the blood moving too quickly, the pulse racing. The want growing.
* * *
She stared at him, aghast.
* * *
He looked as startled as she did.
* * *
Very slowly he backed away until he stood framed in the doorway to the luxurious bathroom suite.
* * *
"What did you say about your male relative?"
His voice was calm and paced but she was still angry. She sounded sullen as any teenager when she answered. "Which one?"
* * *
He stumbled a little over the word, but indicated he meant her brother.
* * *
"He's missing," she said and when he didn't interrupt her, she told him about Davy – David – going to join up with a leftover band of military to try and fight the threat the Vampyren brought. She didn't shout or cry or beg or blame. She just told him and he just listened and nodded.
* * *
Stephanie might have demanded some kind of response after she'd told him everything but in that next instant the heat was too much, too cloying, and she couldn't stand it, she stripped off her pants and stepped into the water. Just the chill of it on her lower legs was enough to help. Her body heat started to drop.
* * *
The other heat didn't. His eyes were on her now, taking in every curve, every new muscle. But instead of entering the room, instead of taking her or forcing her, he said, "Some of your young like that, those who are trained, are taken in to work with us. If you stay with me, I'll let you try to find him."
* * *
She bit her lip. What she wanted to demand was What's in it for me? But he'd already told her. What she honestly wanted to know was, what was in it for him to even make such an offer?
* * *
When she asked, he turned away, as if hiding a weakness. "You know where we are and you've seen too much of how we are. If I didn't keep you, they'd kill you or throw you into the worst of the harems."
* * *
She swallowed hard, determined not to show fear. "If I stay, how will I find my brother?"
* * *
"We have networks. We have communications." He gave her a haughty look. "We are, of course, more advanced than you. Thinking down to your level is taxing."
* * *
Did the Vampyren have humor? But he seemed serious so she waited until he gave her his deal: Stay with him, search through proper channels for her brother, and act as a liaison between humans and Vampyren.
* * *
He called it liaison.
* * *
Her family would call it being a traitor.
* * *
She called it making the best of a bad situation.
* * *
And if the truth were to be told – not that she ever would – she wanted to learn more about the Vampyren.
* * *
Or one in particular.
6
It was the only solution that didn't involve killing her. It wouldn't be popular with his commanders or with any of the non-military Vampyren.
* * *
So he'd have to be careful and explore whatever the new world had engendered inside him.
* * *
For now, if she had to be dispatched, be believed he was distant enough to do the job himself.
* * *
But if he had to dispatch her, it would have to be soon. He thought she was already becoming more important to him than could be allowed.
* * *
More important to him than could be allowed … if anybody ever found out.
* * *
He'd be careful. They wouldn't find out.
* * *
For now, the desert heat that felt like home to him still seemed to be damaging her. She was shivering in the bath where she stood, the water not even up to her knees. Shivering from heat, not cold, and too stubborn or too sick to move any farther.
* * *
So he'd do it for her, and worry later about why he was invested in her wellbeing at all.
7
When he came close to her, the desire to touch him was almost overwhelming. But the heat felt like it was strangling her and despite the dry heat of the desert, her body was putting out enough sweat that everything felt wet and cloying. It was hard to breathe and when he came close to her, her breathing became that much more labored.
* * *
He said he wasn't going to hurt her. Stephanie absolutely didn't believe him. But actions speak louder than words, even between races alien to each other.
* * *
