The Vampyren Invaders Bundle

Chapter 1

Cassi

Some things never changed. Even after a Vampyren invasion.

Like for example, Cassi thought: That damned Axl Bent was on television again. Why was it the instant the power came on and the second the television stations could broadcast, the first thing that showed up was an ad?

An ad with a traitor in it.

That wasn't what she was supposed to think, Cassi considered.

She'd stopped between the living room and the hallway that led to the back bedroom, a basket of sopping wet laundry in her hands.

She was supposed to think the same thing she had been supposed to think before everything went to hell and Axl became the Voice of the Next Generation, namely Ohh, Axl Bent!

Thing was, Axl Bent wasn't even the voice of her generation.

Axl was an aging film star by the time the invasion happened, the Vampyren came, and the bombs started falling.

One of those household names, the stand-in shorthand for "good looking.

" She hadn't even really thought so, even then.

He had penetrating blue eyes, she'd give him that, and he was an excellent actor, having won her over in a science fiction movie about time travel and extinction.

"You're living it now, Axl, baby," she muttered at the television.

The laundry was getting heavier and would drip out of the cracked plastic basket in another minute.

Still, she stood rooted to the spot, watching and wondering what the Vampyren had done to corrupt whatever morals the actor might have had.

She had never been the star struck type, but she remembered reading somewhere that Axl had once walked into a small community-based convenience store, apparently spotted a collection tin for a child fighting some expensive malignancy and made arrangements to have all the kid's medical bills covered. Just like that.

Those days were over. For everybody. Axl Bent, who had probably allowed that act of kindness to slip out to media, was now actively campaigning for the "New Normal," life under the overlords.

The Vampyren had come, he seemed to say.

They've killed a shitload of people during the war and they're still killing now that mankind is properly beaten down.

Don't worry, be happy! It's the new normal!

A new normal that encompassed vampires in the shadows, forced blood donations, martial law by somebody else's military, public executions and executions meant to teach people random lessons, and executions because a Vampyren who was royalty or leader status got hungry.

Axl Bent had scintillating blue eyes and toast colored hair that always looked tousled, which was sexy, she supposed, if you figured he'd just gotten up from a quick tryst rather than suspecting he just didn't own a comb.

But his cheeks reminded her of a squirrel hoarding nuts, which didn't scream manly jawline to her, it screamed small furry rodent.

And now it marked him as a traitor, actively campaigning for the enemy.

The ads ran all the time. It felt like television was nothing but ads anymore.

Always had been, really, but the funny thing was that the watchdog government organizations were still out there, theoretically watchdogging things like how long advertisement breaks were and how long the ads themselves were.

Cassi wondered at the sanity of such considerations in a world where the Vampyren had come and the only "control" humans had over anything was given to them by their new lords and masters.

Nasty jolt for the planet, really. Earth had learned all at once that vampires were anything but the stuff of legends and that they weren't alone in the galaxy.

They'd actually known the latter for a short period of time, before finding out about the blood sucking thing.

There'd been academics writing research papers and books speculating wildly on what the aliens were like, when the aliens settled all the discussions by appearing in their midst and proving they had superior fire power and technology and just plain brute strength.

From their beweaponed battle cruisers they could pick out a floor of a building or most times a specific speeding vehicle and disintegrate it in a fiery show of power.

They could surgically cut away a section of metro area and leave melted rubble in their wake.

Or they could drop their bombs, the same as the humans always had in warfare, and leave smoking rubble of asphalt and steel, twisted, smoking buildings and twisted, smoking humans.

Provisional governments claimed various victories when the Vampyren stopped their attacks on the cities, but they stopped because they needed cattle.

They stopped because they needed humans for snacks. For sustenance, sport and sex. Anyone who thought differently was deluded or lying.

Like Axl Bent with his squirrel cheeks and his earnest public service announcements about the New World Government and Next Generations and making our way into the new world and, for that matter, making the next world.

Lying, or deluded. Or broken or blackmailed.

There were so many ways to control humans.

Take hostage someone they loved. Threaten them with physical violence.

Be their only source of clean water and food.

Control the utilities that served their hospitals.

Force their celebrities and heroes to publicly sign on with your cause.

Offer the slightest snippet of control back to them.

Your own provisional government. Your own community liaisons.

Put a city government back in power and they'd go back to business as usual, as if the appearance of normalcy really was normalcy.

They'd start doing things that were really important to survival, Cassi thought, like ticketing motorcycles for not being up to date with registration.

Complain that such details should be the least of anyone's concerns and they'd point out that rules were important in the rebuilding of civilization.

They were, Cassi supposed, but registering her bike paled in comparison to not having her throat torn out and her blood drained by a Vampyren who just happened to have a properly registered motorcycle.

The prov govs didn't mean shit, but those people put into "power" wanted to believe they did. Whether they started with the idea that from where they'd been placed, they could make things some version of better.

Or whether they never bothered lying to themselves and just liked not spending eighteen hours a day looking for food, fuel or freedom.

The ad had long since ended when Cassi came back to herself.

The Vampyren didn't have to treat everyone the same.

Because that was what humans always wanted to express.

Individuality. That individuality offered up their own control right in its very being.

Some people fought for their loved ones.

Others fought only for themselves. Still others capitulated for the same reasons.

And Cassi kept going out of rage. They took her mother, her father, her on again, off again boyfriend Jayce, and left her a house that had been bombed out in one corner and burnt in another, enough that no one fought her for it but not enough left of it to make it home anymore.

The invaders left Cassi her best friend Brecca, her motorcycle, her job at the bar located just off of Fairfax, because bars were a big business now the Vampyren had come.

They hadn't yet come for her to drag her into a breeding program. She hadn't been assaulted by human or alien. Which left her physical sanctity.

And that rage. Maybe she just hadn't had the fight beaten out of her yet.

Good.

"I'm going to get my mother back, you son of a bitch," she told the afterimage of Axl that seemed to remain, ghosted, on the television screen. "Why don't you fight for whoever they're using to control you?" Or maybe only his stunt double could do all his fancy martial arts moves from the films.

She continued down the hall to the back bedroom which was newly remodeled by Vampyren weapons to be open to the air and the best place to hang the laundry she'd washed in the kitchen sink with water trucked in from the pool in the backyard.

When she went back up the hall, there were Vampyren males locked in sport combat on the screen.

Seriously, if she was only going to get an hour or two of electricity a day, couldn't they show a comedy now and then?

Want to control a human? she thought. Give us something to do with our minds, something outside the never-ending fear.

Still, she paused before poking the button to turn off the set. Batteries were too valuable to waste on a remote, so she stood right in front of it, touching the black frame, looking into the depths.

The males on the screen were locked in combat more real than anything the Terrans had ever shown before the invasion happened.

Vampyren men sometimes killed each other in their shows of sport and prowess.

If they were humans, she'd be looking at the Axl type, the most beautiful, the most muscled, the huge and showy alpha sorts who got the ratings.

With Vampyrens? They were all that way. An entire fucking race of conquerors who stood six and seven feet with thick dark hair down their backs and dark complexions, gold eyes, square jaws, full lips, and muscles that made their movements hypnotic.

They were beautiful. Sexually desirable, physically perfect, strong, deadly. They gave off some kind of pheromone that made them irresistible to some human women.

Cassi hated every one of them.

Cassi turned off the television and checked her phone. It rarely made calls anymore, and never made calls that weren't monitored, but it told her it was time to get ready for work and pretty much nothing more. She didn't need to know much more than that.