Bought by the Vampyren

by Seth Eden

  The days without anything happening were lulling her. To her surprise and dismay, her predominant feeling during the day was a vague sexual yearning for Alek to return and a more acute fear that Pan would. She'd seen the way he looked at her back at the condo party and, almost worse, had seen the way he looked at his brother. There was competition there, and it looked like the angry kind, the way false girlfriends would fight each other for things they might not even want: they just wanted them because the other had them.

  That scared her, all the more because she'd seen them look at Candy too, though Alek hadn't been back for either of them.

  She knew because Candy had stopped pretending to go back to her own bed. They shared the California king sized bed night after night, the comfort of having someone there in the night too great to give up.

  Even if Mindy wondered if Alek would return if she was alone.

  And wondered if she was a traitor for wanting him to.

  "What is today?" Candy wondered before they went back into their room.

  "The tenth day, I think," Mindy said vaguely. She didn't bother trying to figure out the day of the week, and she was only guessing that it was September by the sharp angle the sun lit across the desert streets of Las Vegas. They watched the news routinely, but in between they forgot such basics.

  Those didn't seem to matter. Every day was a tension of wondering what the invaders would choose to do to or with them. And whether they ever would.

  The longer they went without seeing the aliens, the more that edginess grew.

  She and Candy stopped beside the window where Shauna had taken them on their first day. It wasn't the only fresh air they got. There were terraces on some of the rooms and the girls would head up and sunbathe there. A few of the harem residents who'd been there longer were receiving Vampyren lovers at twilight and sometimes they'd share information. It wasn't comforting but informative. The Vampyren were having sex with some of them, but not regularly, and no one was breeding.

  "It's like they're waiting for something," Shauna said and Gina and Jennifer agreed with her, which worried Mindy.

  But once back in the suite she shared with Candy, they compared notes on food and addictions and on what they'd be doing if they were free and if, wonderfully, the aliens had never come. They'd been best friends before the invasion but they were closer now.

  "Being removed from cigarettes is the best cold turkey ever," Candy declared as she poured a tumbler of water from the filter on the refrigerator. She didn't hold still much, anymore, and lifted heavier weighs during their enforced spa time than Mindy could.

  "Maybe for you. I got tired of listening to you chew walls." She grinned at her friend and Candy tossed her head.

  "Oh, please. You were snoring every night as I paced. Except for that one night."

  Mindy looked up sharply from where she'd been contemplating the polish on her nails. "What night?"

  "What night?" Candy mocked. "Oh, please. Gimme a break. You know very well what night." When Mindy didn't respond, Candy said, "The night Alek raped you. Or was it rape."

  Mindy's heart leaped into her throat for no reason she could quite voice except that she heard again Shauna on that first day saying she didn't think the suites were bugged but maybe they should watch what they said.

  Candy was still speaking when Mindy, afraid to even hold a finger to her lips because she didn't know exactly what tech the Vamps had and whether or not she could be seen, crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around her friend and her mouth over Candy's.

  Candy went completely still. Mindy hadn't closed her eyes, so she could see the surprise there, Candy's eyes wide open and startled.

  Right before Candy kissed her back. Her lips tasted like sugar, the pink gloss she favored from the extensive palette of makeup they were given and encouraged to always wear. Her mouth was soft, giving, nothing like a man's and even less like the one Vampyren who had kissed Mindy. Her tongue slipped into Mindy's mouth and Mindy, surprised, met it with her own.

  The embrace threatened to turn into something else when they both pulled apart, breathing hard.

  "Well," Candy said. "That's new." She touched a trembling hand to her face, her thumb brushing her lower lip.

  Mindy nodded, feeling like her world had been turned inside out. "I just thought you should – " she waved her hands around like she was demented or chasing away a bee – or trying to make a point about possible surveillance without saying it. "Know."

  And Candy, slowly, nodded, not looking hurt at the obvious subterfuge that had been going on, but a bit nonplussed, nodded. "I do. Now."

  About the time Mindy wondered if she'd just fucked up the best friendship she'd ever had, Candy winked.

  Minutes later they'd changed to bikinis and headed up to one of the sunning terraces to catch some afternoon rays. It was safe there. The Vampyren liked their women with color in their skin, perhaps because they had very little of it themselves, and they avoided direct sunlight. For at least the length of their sun tanning session they'd be assured only the company of other women.

  Coming back down into their suite, Mindy finished what they'd both started to say as they'd left the conference room.

  "It's not what I was expecting but it's safe. We have food, water, somewhere to live, clothes and no one is hurting us."

  "No Larry from Duluth," Candy summed up.

  They looked at each other. There was no way out of the hotel, because there were human and Vampyren guards and the doors were all locked, but it still felt like they had free will when they said it together:

  "Might as well stay."

  9

  But life can change on a dime.

  The decision was made. It wasn't much of a decision. Okay, we'll stay for a while lacks some punch, she admitted to herself, if the alternative is: You can't leave anyway. Which wasn't really an alternative.

  It made them both feel better to believe – or pretend to believe – that they were there by choice.

  Another couple weeks went by and the harsh desert sunsets, light slanting long and still late, the shadows heavy dark black from the buildings along the strip, showed that September was advancing. Probably they had crossed the equinox and entered the last week of the month.

  They learned who they could be friendly with, like Sarah and Taylor who had also come from the condo party, and who they should be wary of, like Shauna, who was as changeable as her Georgia accent, and a thin, aging woman named Cindie Gee, whose extreme anorexic thinness would suggest to anyone human that she couldn't possibly bear children, though maybe the Vampyren liked the heroin chic look and kept her around for the sex. She was a sharp eyed girl who missed nothing, cozied up to the others as friends, and turned them in if it looked like it would benefit her in any way.

  They worked out in the mornings, ate hearty if boring breakfasts, approved of their own muscle and weight, sunbathed on the roof of the casino, and were unbothered by the Vampyren.

  Though not completely. Though none of the males were coming to them, more than once on their way through the casino to the health spa under the watchful gaze of their trainers-slash-coaches-slash-jailors, Mindy had seen Pan from a distance and shivered as his gaze crossed her. Maybe Vampyren shared females on their planet. Or maybe Alek had somehow slipped the night he came to her. Maybe he was supposed to kill her that night or back in the condo and not doing so had set brother against brother.

  Maybe it had nothing to do with her, Candy had suggested, echoing Mindy's own thoughts. Maybe it was something between the vampire brothers.

  And maybe it was. Whatever it was, when she saw Pan it made her nervous, uncomfortable in a skin-crawling kind of way. And like it or not, admit it to herself or not, she missed Alek. She could have imagined that there was any kind of bond between them. She was invested in finding one back then when her terror was so much more new and so much stronger, but she thought there had been something. He had used her in the way of the Vampyren, he had st
opped her from touching herself when she sought her own pleasure.

  But in the end he had let her take the lead, and he had followed. And right before their orgasms, he had waited for her to catch up, to find a way to touch herself that didn't violate whatever that cultural more or ethos was, and to come as hard as he had.

  That wasn't her imagination.

  She told herself that time after time and she waited, night after night.

  It was a relief that Pan didn't come. But it was sad that Alek didn't.

  Even if she didn't want to admit it to herself.

  But life can change on a dime.

  On their way in and out of the spa and in and out of the dining hall where once employees of the casino had eaten, they saw more and more troop movements. There were soldiers on the premises where once there had been none. The harem had been held out of sight of the rank and file Vampyren, the class system every bit as obvious in their society.

  Now the soldiers were everywhere, massing, clearly waiting for something, and staring at the girls as they passed by. Mindy began to fear they'd be given out as some kind of motivational gift but since she wasn't the only one to think it, somebody else said it, and the human coaches were swift in their disavowal of the idea.

  It was still disconcerting to have them around.

  They'd grown complacent, maybe. It was like being in jail. Most of the day's decisions were taken out of their hands. They were clearly waiting for something, marking time, but she had no idea for what. She and Candy became relaxed enough to take to their own rooms at night, though they left their doors open and a light on in the sitting area.

  So she heard the instant something happened to Candy that night. She heard her wake because Mindy herself wasn't asleep yet. She'd been turning over in her mind what the escalation of Vampyren activity might mean. There were rumors there was another race, even more bloodthirsty and cruel than the space vampires, and that they were on their way to Earth, but it was information she tried hard not to acknowledge to herself and not to believe.

  The activity swirling around them felt like preparations for war, if there'd been such a thing possible. Maybe the humans were rising up and maybe they were massing. Since they'd come to Caesars no information came in at all except the local television news and they weren't going to leak information about the resistance. They were a necessary service, because getting news of what was happening to other humans even in the same city and especially in other states and countries kept the humans from rebelling. Just this bad and no worse the motto seemed to be. We can stand this, take that, but don't push us any further.

  Or we'll cry? She wondered. Because truly the governments had been toppled and the humans left to run them were the ones the Vampyren could control. Running them at all was a sop to the humans: Look, it's business as usual. Nothing to fear here; worry on rather than Nothing to see.

  It worked by large. Certainly there had been only a limited number of uprisings.

  So if it wasn't war with the humans maybe it was the other space-faring tribe? She hated he idea there were more aliens out there. Before the vampires came Mindy had spent very little time wondering if there was life on any other planet. Now that it had come, she did spend time wondering if there was even more life out there, if it was possible that it could be even worse, and how they could avoid letting them come here, also.

  That night, Mindy heard Candy come awake with a cry. Her feet hit the floor seconds later but she lost precious time to the sheets wrapped around her.

  Candy let out another cry, this one sounding pained, and then, even as Mindy raced toward her room, Candy shouted. Her voice was full of rage and disgust and the effort of whatever she'd just done echoed through it.

  One short shout of victory from Candy as Mindy sprinted across the suite, cursing the size of a hotel room that the super rich had needed.

  She reached the doorway into Candy's room at the moment Candy's victory shout turned to a scream of pain.

  "Stop it!" Mindy shouted. She grabbed the doorframe and shoved her way inside, already starting to shake in terror. For Candy. For herself.

  Inside Candy's room stood Pan, naked to the waist, his pale skin highlighting the black braid that snaked over his shoulder and down his back.

  He held Candy in a grip that said he'd meant to rape her, to take whatever he wanted, and that she had fought back.

  The knife was still lodged between his ribs.

  If he'd been human, he'd have fallen, and he'd still be losing blood. If he had been human, he might have died from the wound.

  He was Vampyren and he was enraged.

  "Candy?" She didn't look at the vampire. He was unimportant to her. Somehow she had protection. She believed that.

  "Run," Candy panted. She was hurt, but not beyond saving. She wasn't even bleeding. Or breathing. Likely he'd slugged her in the stomach. She could come back from that.

  "This does not concern you."

  "She's my friend!" Mindy shouted, and turned, meaning to run for help. Meaning to run until someone caught her because humans only ran when assigned the task or exercise of running, and Alek would come and they'd be safe.

  "You are only under his protection," Pan said. His expression dismissed her like Mindy might dismiss one of the curious flying beetles that sometimes showed up in her apartment. They were unwelcome but they weren't something she bothered to kill as long as there were only a few.

  "Mindy, don't." It cost Candy to get those words out.

  Maybe that's why Mindy stopped. Or maybe because she suspected Pan's problem with Alek was enough that killing her friend might bring him pleasure or cause some kind of payback in Pan's mind.

  She didn't know if Vampyren suffered mental illness like humans but if so, Pan seemed a likely candidate and Candy's life literally hung between them.

  She backed to the wall, away from the door, refusing to take her eyes off Candy's.

  Candy, panting now, inclined her head even as the vampire grabbed her by the neck, hauling her back to her feet and marching her past Mindy.

  Candy didn't fight back. She could barely walk. But she kept her eyes on Mindy and she mouthed Stay alive as she was brought forward and then, just before she was marched past, Stay strong.

  Mindy, shocked and horrified, fighting herself to make sure she held back because it was necessary, not because she was afraid, screamed the instant Candy was torn through the doorway. She cried her friend's name and sank to her hands and knees, rocking forward, feeling like she had when her parents died. Like the world had just turned inside out.

  Like she'd been a fool to think she could be safe, could ever keep anything safe.

  Like she'd just been paid back for something she never did, for something she'd never even believed.

  She'd never believed she was totally safe.

  But she'd also never believed something like this would happen.

  "Candy."

  Three days passed before one of the Vampyren women drove Gina and Jennifer in through Mindy's doorway and said, "Get her up. Get her dressed. Get her down to the gym or so help me, I will kill her, protection or not."

  Three days during which she'd not eaten and only drank water from the tap when she got up to pee. Her body ached and she smelled, the bed smelled, the suite was thick with unwashed human and despair.

  She got up before either of the girls reached her, swaying on her feet, and when they brought her clothes, she put them on, dutifully not noticing the crowd as she stripped and dressed. She stumbled down to the gym with the Vampyren bitch behind her, driving her, and stood still while the soldier delivered her to the human coaches. She waited for demands like she be punished or driven until she dropped but the only thing the coach was told was that she be worked out as hard as any of the other and given nothing to eat until the rest ate after the workout.

  "What the hell are you trying to prove?" Shauna demanded as they ran their laps.

  Four days ago Mindy had been getting used to t
his. Now she'd lost ground again and her breath burned in her chest.

  She answered anyway. "They took Candy. The one Vampyren, the one who was decent to us back at the condo?" That was as close as she was willing to come to identifying Alek. Not by name or rank and certainly not by their one time together.

  "He did it?" Shauna seemed shocked.

  "No. His brother. The one who was with him that day. I think he was going to rape her and she stabbed him."

  "Good for her," Jennifer said and Shauna turned angrily and shushed her instantly. Such things were punishable.

  Even shushing her Shauna clearly agreed. "Is she --?" She broke off. There was no kind way to ask if Candy was dead.

  And Mindy didn't think she was. There was nothing she could put her finger on but the fact that Pan hadn't come back to gloat, that made her think Candy was still somewhere. Maybe hurt. Probably scared. But alive.

  She passed out more than once during the laps and during the weights and during the flexibility part of the workout which was little more than thinly disguised exercises designed to make them flexible enough to please the male vampires who liked the female’s flexibility but didn't like their tendency to bite and keep biting until there was nothing left.

  At the end of the workout, having survived, she faced the idea of going back to her empty suite and balked. No one knew what had happened to Candy or where she was. No one was bringing her back.

  There was no one to talk to.

  And she, Mindy, was doing nothing.

  She'd never expected when she was growing up that she'd become an escort, a some-times sex worker and not be married to a rich and attractive man and working part time and producing a family. That had seemed like a modest and wonderful dream and something she could have.

  Life changes on a dime.

  But the things she'd also never expected in her life? To be a coward. To want to hide rather than act. To have spent three days after her best friend's disappearance staying in her bed, unmoving.

  Time to do something.

  She very much doubted the Vampyren sat around talking about what they'd done with their human captives, female or not, but they were the only ones who knew what had happened to Candy. If anyone did. If Pan hadn't simply raped her and killed her.