Chapter 4
Danton
Humans used the outdoor amphitheater for musical performances and plays.
The tree-shaded area fit into a natural bowl and at night it was high enough above the sea level city to see stars.
Musicians famously performed to sold out audiences and sang to the "tree people" who would climb into the trees beyond the official arena and listen along.
The combatants provided entertainment and refreshments all at once.
The music had largely changed to the sound of screaming.
Though before the games there were performances from popular cultural icons, usually terrified, often in another competition. That stopped early on. Kill off too many pop icons and the groundswell of rebellion started. It was too tiring to have to subdue an already conquered race.
And that, Danton thought, was part of the problem with his restlessness. The humans were easy to conquer, with their short attention spans and desire to pretend everything was getting back to normal if they could just ignore the warriors stalking among them.
They couldn't. They weren't being allowed to forget.
Those that did either entered the games or came as special guests.
He thought again of the girl on the motorcycle, slim figure. Rigid middle finger. It was hard not to like the way they continued to fight back when all hope was gone.
Lan leaned in close, handing off a box of popcorn and a beer. There were benefits to the planet.
"Tonight's a treat."
"Females?"
"No, the usual males, but these were actually trained to fight but not real fights. They're wrestlers, but it was all like their dramas: all fake."
Of late the games had sickened Danton slightly.
It wasn't just the extreme waste of food.
Some Vampyren liked that, it was sexually deviant and socially unacceptable to watch blood spilled on the floorboards and in the streets, but there was an illicit thrill.
Like knowing they had enough they could waste it.
But the games, bloody and horrifying, he didn't understand. When they'd come to the planet and overthrown it, that should have been enough. The games should be more fair. The humans should be better matched against Vampyren they stood some sort of chance against.
Watching them torn limb from limb was repugnant. Vampyren should be better than that. Torturing food lent a spicy flavor to it, but otherwise?
Stop it. If anyone finds out what you're thinking, you'll be up there.
And besides, watching fake warriors finding themselves competing against real warriors sounded like fun.
The lights went down around the seats and up on the stage and the first of the humans were released to discover the orchestra pit changed to nothing but pikes and the doors backstage only opened outward anymore.
They'd run out under the lights, look desperately to all sides, and panic before discovering there really was nothing else to do but fight.
He put the popcorn down on the floor behind his booted feet. He had no appetite.
Below them, the first of the fake warriors stepped out to the insane level of noise the crowd was making the screaming and stamping of feet and the hysterical screams of women torn from their mates and forced to watch.
The stench of popcorn suddenly turned his stomach.
The music screamed to a crescendo. Whatever group had been forced to perform had just thrown down their instruments and bolted. They'd be rounded back up. Good musicians were becoming scarce.
Lan noticed it first, tensing beside Danton. "What's happening?"
Seconds later the rest of the crowd seemed to ripple with recognition. On the stage, the faux warriors strutted and postured, waiting for the Vampyren to come up to them.
They weren't cowering or screaming or trying to run. They held their weapons as if they could actually do something with them.
He looked at Lan, who shook his head, but where Danton expected him to shrug, he stood instead, looking worriedly at the stage.
Danton looked behind them, up the steps leading out of the bowl.
The theater was crowded the same as it always was, a section of prisoners in chains who could at any minute be dragged onto the stage or drained of all blood, and their handlers, the invited VIPs and those Vampyren who paid for better seats.
Crowded. Always popular, the games. They led to satiating sex and violence in the intermissions, the tents in the back full of willing camp followers who thought they cemented their place in the new world by offering up their bodies. They didn't understand it wasn't choice.
He didn't understand what was happening.
Until the first of the women stepped onto the stage.
A howl went up from the crowd, the male Vamps already hot, their bodies swelling with the blood they'd consumed, their erections straining, their blood lust and fight lust high.
Now onto the stage stepped half-dressed human females, stiletto heels, jean shorts cut so high their asses were exposed, like jean gee-strings, Danton thought, and there was something wrong with that.
In the lights on the stage, their naked breasts shined with oil, with colorings to highlight nipples, with elegant swirls and colorings of offerings the way Vampyren women painted themselves when offering sex but not mating.
"Wait, look," Lan started, but the prickling at the back of his neck made Danton turn the other way to look, back at the steps again that led to the seats.
There were more women there. Massive numbers and already the Vampyren and their human guests and prisoners were starting to react, coming to their feet, voices shouting in the night. The noise made talking impossible. He slugged Lan on the shoulder, gestured at the women even as he drew his weapon.
The women coming down the stairs carried human weapons, altered semi-automatic rifles held at the ready and on the stage, the warriors who hadn't been properly afraid had been joined by the topless women and from nowhere there were weapons, coming down from the tops of the stage, from the curtains and the lights, dropping into outstretched hands.
The shooting was already starting. There was limited damage human weapons could do. What they could inflict, they were doing.
He shouted and brought his weapons around to bear.
And found himself falling.