by Seth Eden
"Doesn't matter!" The speaker was on his feet, all eight foot something of him, rippling muscle under the vest he wore, black hair plaited, but he was older, she thought. Vampyren lived for centuries, that's what lore said, and one of the reasons they crushed out other lives so easily. They overbreed their planets and then they'd go looking to take more. They liked to breed and then had the problems of the older generations not even slowing down, let alone dying off as the younger ones grew.
This guy – she wondered how many centuries old he was.
He'd had enough time to thoroughly develop his hatefulness. He moved at her then, caught her chin in his hand, and yanked her head around so she faced the other Vampyren at the table. "It won't matter what Alek Tybolt wants."
He had known the name. She'd gotten stuck in the middle of a power grab and all because she wanted information. He thrust her away from him.
"Because we're sending his unit to clean out the North."
There were arguments then, most of them in Vampyren, but enough of them in the version of English they used that she understood.
They were sending Alek's unit into their own suicide mission. Without warning. They were, basically, sending them to be slaughtered and if they took out some of the Lucian before that happened, so much the better.
She backed toward the door. As long as she'd been here, she'd never seen more than the conference rooms, the harem floors, the spa and the roof. She had no idea where Alek quartered. Every time they'd been together had been in her suite.
But she had to find him.
The males at the table were close to coming to blows. They were shouting and arguing policy, warfare, and what the team sent to clean out part of the city needed to know.
If she could get to Alek, he could mobilize his team against these Vampyren. Against his own kind, yes, but there was no other choice.
She backed up another two feet.
And collided with the serving tray.
A roomful of Vampyren elders turned and looked at her and now they were united. Their faces, as one, spelled their decision.
She turned to run.
She didn't even make it to the door.
14
She wasn't in her room.
She wasn't in the harem with any of the girls, none of whom admitted to having seen her.
He breached the suites of the Vampyren females. They didn't have her.
She wasn't working her position with the leaders. They said they didn't know where she was.
He didn't believe them.
Something was wrong. Something was coming that his men weren't being told. The other units weren't relaying information. He'd never had cause before to approach the council or the elders or the leaders when he hadn't been called.
They weren't as good at subterfuge as they thought.
When he found Pan, Pan told him to trust the leaders. And then he smiled, showing too much fang.
They were brothers. But something had changed since they came to Earth. On their home planet there'd been no chance that either of them would ascend to any seat of actual power for another century or two. They were young, both of them, twins who had killed their mother during birth.
Here, though, they found themselves on a planet that was still in flux. Power was being taken from the humans still and it was harder than the Vampyren had expected. Resources were stretched thin and all the thinner because the last planet they'd colonized was still in flat out rebellion. So here Alek and Pan stood a chance of moving up in rank and doing so fast. Alek had received the rank he now had before Pan. That was all. The only thing that had changed. And now his brother was his enemy.
Pan wasn't stupid, but he was arrogant and that made him careless. He assumed Alek didn't know that some decision had been made that would effect Alek and probably his men.
That was the only thing working to Alek's only advantage.
He played it. His brother wasn't part of the council of elders, the council of war. But he had ways of finding things out. Now Alek asked as supplicant.
"What have you heard?"
Pan's smile was wide. "You know I'm not on the council, brother. You'd be asked before me, with your rank."
Every second was time he should be searching for her, not dealing with Pan.
"But you have friends in high places. You have ways of accessing secrets I never will." Every word was an act and an effort.
Pan knew something. Alek could see it in the smug look of his face. It wasn't until they heard footsteps, someone coming their way, Pan's moment of smug triumph almost over that he said it, fast and low, and let slip too much.
"The Lucian are here. You said you thought they were and you were right. They're here and they're planning their attack from the city towers."
That meant the city government was dead. It meant the Lucian held a building the Vampyren hadn't taken. It meant they had access to the weapons the humans stockpiled there. They had their own, of course. But there was a disadvantage.
But an advantage in knowing.
For an instant he forgot the subterfuge, too shocked to carry it out. "Surely they mean to attack! Counter measures before!"
In that instant of honesty, he saw the truth written across his brother's face. "They're gathering information yet. They've sent a spy."
He didn't allow himself to even close his eyes. To even take a breath. He only waited.
"She's someone you know."
"Candy?" Because that would explain where she'd been taken.
"Candy?" As if he couldn't quite place the name. "No. I believe it was Mindy."
Alek didn't react. He'd already seen it coming. "And the attack? The counter?"
Pan shook his head. Nothing planned. The council was saying nothing yet. He didn't know.
That tipped his hand. The leaders would never wait. That meant Pan was lying. There was only one reason Alek could think that Pan would lie.
Everything in him wanted to run. He wanted to get to his men and get them ready. They were loyal to their own kind, but they were a team, honed in battles they'd fought together. They were loyal to their actual kind first. They were loyal to each other.
Slow. He couldn't just run. He couldn't tip his own hand. "What do you think?"
Pan stopped, caught unawares. He looked vulnerable in that instant, as if pleased and surprised that Alek would ask what he thought. The emotion was so honest it caught Alek by surprise and made him wonder if he had abandoned his brother in his own way, despite knowing he hadn't.
When Pan spoke again, the Earth Pan hadn't returned yet. There was an honesty in his words.
"That we should do?" Again, the honesty in his voice. As if the question had taken him out of himself and his battle for dominance with his brother. "I think the entire force should attack. I think the Vampyren should go to war."
Entire force. If he'd needed confirmation of what they intended, he had it. Had Pan intentionally tipped him off? He threw a sidelong look at his brother, but couldn't tell. Pan looked as arrogant and angry as ever.
He took his leave, then, said he'd be heading to get food and went in the direction of the dining rooms, hoping Pan wouldn't follow him.
He didn't. Of course he didn't. Even Pan would have a hard time holding the charade that much longer. Already he was slipping back into the Earth version of Pan.
Alek got out of sight before he ran.
His men were training in the weight room. There were a few conscripts, some of the human businessmen they'd taken from the party.
"You. Humans. Out."
They left without question and without hesitation. The weights would never do them as much good as it did the invaders. They could never hope to be an actual force.
They were grateful as they left.
That left him with his second, Kev, and with the other ten men in his unit. Who waited, fists tight, faces tighter. They'd fallen out of favor by advancing too far on their own when first in the metro area. They'd lost ground because of Pan, as well,
because of his anger and greed and his battle with Alek. That was Alek's fault and he wouldn't let his men pay for his own family problems.
He looked at them each in turn and saw explaining would be simple. Every one of them had been waiting for something like this, probably since before the incident with the runners.
The hard part would be when they figured out how to go in and fight the Lucian before the threat of losing face brought the other Vampyren into the fold.
The hard part for Alek would be explaining just why it was imperative they retrieve the girl from the harem, the spy the council had sent in, without admitting to them the real reason.
That he cared about her.
15
When she woke, it was to nightmare.
She'd been taken while unconscious and left somewhere. Just before the world went black that's what the old Vampyren had proposed: Leave her somewhere on the street near where the Lucian were said to be. There'd been talk that the wolves couldn't leave her there without losing face.
There'd also been the talk about her having already been fucked by the Vampyren. As if that made this all right.
She knew they didn't care about her. She had thought they'd care about their property.
The wire was a burn under her skin, subcutaneous except where the head of it popped up near her elbow. She wanted to rip it out of her and run out of the place she found herself.
Only the fact that she might send back information that would somehow get to Alek and help him keep her there.
That, and she was a prisoner.
"Come."
The summons came early the next morning after a confused night of shrieks and cries from inside the city hall. She hadn't slept more than an hour and that over the hours all put together.
The Lucian who had been sent for her was tall and slender, sandy haired with a silvery white cast to his skin. He wasn't huge and muscled like the Vampyren, but there was something about the wiry muscles and the calm air of deadliness that made her think he would be every bit as fearsome as the vampires.
"Where are you taking me?"
It was her first and only stand. The backhand seemed to come out of nowhere. She hadn't even seen him move. And the strength she'd theorized was right there. Her head whipped to the side, her body followed and she fell, hard, one hand to her face, the other upraised as if she could possibly stave off anymore attacks.
"You do not speak."
Probably not. Her mouth was already puffing up.
At least it would prevent her from being required to call them whatever version of "sir" the Lucian would probably expect.
"Who sent you?"
The Lucian demanding answers paced like a wolf in a cage the entire time he shouted questions at her.
The aliens were every bit as angry and dangerous as the Vampyren. They shouted and intimidated and she'd been hit more than once and if given her choice, she thought she might actually opt to go back to the condo party with Larry from Duluth.
Not that the party existed anymore. Or that Larry did, either, probably.
"I told you," she said, because lying wouldn't work and surely somewhere someone on the other end of the wire was listening. "I was in a harem and the Vampyren pulled me out and then I was here. I don't remember anything." And she flew back away from the swing he took at her, stumbling as she got close to the wall. They were stories up, because that was the best and the best was what conquerors took, but this part of City Hall wasn't twenty stories of glass and steel, it was only five.
She could clearly see the men and equipment massing there on the street.
She could see the guns. She could see the numbers.
She said it fast, before she could become too afraid, spat out a question about what they were going to do with all the troops massing in the street on the northwest side of the building and didn't they know the vampires had already taken the city and what was the point of what they were doing with all those guns and the one thing that looked like a bomb?
The loudest of the Lucians reacted first. "Search her!" He didn't wait to see what they'd find, but strode from the room.
She wanted to shout another warning, but anyone listening to the wire could already determine what they'd heard.
Instead she held her breath as the males swooped in on her. She expected within an instant she'd be stripped and searched and then probably raped and killed.
But instead they delivered her to the females, who poked at her indifferently. They were more interested in the males who had been there. When they finished, she still wore the wire.
She was still alive.
16
Alek was in the room when the transmissions started. The wire wasn't feeding to the council. They had other things to do. Instead, it came through to command at Alek's level and no one thought to send him and his team away because the council hadn't bothered to find out who was working with the techies.
So Alek heard it all. He and his team, they were warned now. They knew what to expect, whether Pan had meant to do that or not.
When the feed from Mindy's wire activated, the techies, a mix of vampires and humans because it made more sense that way, instantly snapped to attention. They didn't care about the politics going on between factions of Vampyren.
They cared about staying alive. They cared about ferreting out the Lucian and destroying them.
No one paid attention to what soldiers were in the room. Even the other unit commanders didn't care. In the field they'd have to rely on each other and Alek's track record was proven. They had his back.
Mindy's voice came through loud and clear, along with the crack of the strike that finally silenced her.
"What are you doing with all that? Are you attacking? From the northwest? Oh, my god, is that a bomb?"
She'd started on something else when someone silenced her.
Alek was halfway across the room to where the equipment broadcast her voice loud and clear when the snap of sound made her break off with a yelp.
And then there was nothing more from her.
"No!"
That should have been enough to cause even the tech vamps and humans to take note, but several of his men said it at the same time even if they were just shouting against the lack of intel.
They needed that information feed. And they wanted to get back the girl who had given it to them.
Long minutes passed, then the confusion on the other end of the wire reduced enough they could hear individual voices again.
"Put her in a cell."
Alek breathed out hard. Even the Lucian wouldn't lock up a body. Would they? They sometimes ate their dead. Did they eat the dead of other races?
He told himself to shut up. He couldn't help her if all he did was panic. That wasn't his way. That wasn't the way of the Vampyren.
He turned away and started commanding his men to suit up and grab their weapons.
In the war storage lockers there was confusion. Two dozen Vampyren changing into battle armor, taking up weapons, laughing and talking and joking between themselves. Two units that fought together. Two units with warnings the leaders didn't know they had.
Pan found them there. He strode into the weapons storage gleaming with armor, carrying a ceremonial spear and wearing guns strapped over his chest and back.
Alek instantly un-holstered both side arms and strode across the distance between them. "Don't try to stop us."
They stood fuming at each other, huge males surrounded by humans who looked likely to run.
Then the orders erupted from the wire again, about preparing for the attack. About getting the weapons ready. Getting the men ready.
Being ready for dawn.
It was only nightfall.
They weren't coming until morning.
His attention was half on the feed from the wire, only half on his brother, when Pan reached out and grabbed Alex by the beard, forcing his head around.
This is it. This is where one of us dies.
> This is where I lose my brother.
His hand twitched on his gun belt. His fingers closed around the butt of the gun.
Slowly, Pan drew him closer, a hand buried in the shirt Alek hadn't yet covered in armor.
Alek reached for his gun. Throughout the weapons storage, Vampyren squared off, face to face, the two sides forming. Everyone seemed to have lost someone in the unspoken hostilities that had already been running through the whole of their assembled numbers.
Pan said clearly, "We're going with you."
Alek stopped moving, certain he'd heard wrong. "You're – "
"This is the fight of all Vampyren. This is our battle, not just yours. The leaders are wrong to try and single you out. Your command is valid. You are Vampyren. You are my brother.
"We stand with you."
Human conveyances. Tanks and Hummers and pickup trucks whose ex-owners had never expected their American made tough trucks to transport aliens.
They chanted battle cries. They indulged in bloodlust. They waited for nightfall. They listened to the feed until it was cut out by the clang of a cell door and knew that Mindy had been moved and now left alone.
Before they shut down the feed, Alek heard her groan and knew she lived.
They took the trucks and tanks and Hummers. They took weapons. The took fangs. They took height and reach and viciousness.
Alek took two more battle teams with him: his brother's new allegiance.
And the hope that he'd arrive in time to rescue the woman he thought he loved.
Rather than avenge her.
Nightfall brought the change. Always on this planet.
They arrived at the city offices raging and ravenous. They arrived the vampires of Earth legend, deadly and unrestrained.
They took the Lucian by surprise. The moon was only halfway. Whatever effect it might have on the Lucian on this planet, it didn't tonight.
"Go!" Pan said when Alek hesitated on the edge of the battle. His men were pouring out of vehicles, swarming across the grounds to meet the Lucian.
One long look at his brother to judge if it was safe to leave his men.
