Chapter 15
Cassi
She expected – almost anything. To be taken to the breeding pool. To be taken to a tank farm.
To be drained then and there.
She didn't expect him to drag her down a hallway, to wait when she balked until she mastered herself.
When she struggled to get free of him, she didn't expect that he'd wait, almost patiently, almost as if she were amusing him, and then gather her back from the door she'd thrown herself at and hold her when her frustration and fear drove her to a storm of tears.
She did not expect to be held with anything other than force and malevolent intent.
Standing there with her heart pounding loud enough she knew he could hear it, her mouth full of blood she knew he could scent, she thought for certain she was dead.
She'd never see Brec or her mother again. Never go outside, never smell the salt air, never be free.
Never see what was going to happen with the Vampyren on Earth, whether or not the humans would tame the invaders or be crushed under their feet.
She wasn't ready. All her muscles tensed, one last fight or flight, one last attempt to free herself and get somewhere – safe.
There was no safe anymore.
She went limp in his arms. She could feel the surprise radiate through him, the way he stilled as she swayed and let her weight lean against him.
Without warning he bent slightly and gathered her into his arms, carrying her.
Too much. Too strange. She started to fight again, hissing and clawing at his face until he released her, letting her fall several feet to the hard linoleum floor, then leaned down and hauled her up by the front of her tank top until her booted feet hovered several inches off the floor.
"I'm not going to hurt you." Every word had a space between it, said through ground teeth. His teeth were sharp, fangs. It was hard to believe him.
But she stilled. He hadn't hurt her when he brought her here.
"What about the others?" She watched him. He was every bit as beautiful as the rest of his damned race. Maybe a little more so, though that might only be because he hadn't hurt her yet.
She remembered the quirk of his mouth from earlier though. As if she'd amused him. Remembered it, and saw it again now as he lowered her carefully down to the floor, keeping a hand on her shirt front, the material knotted hard enough her breasts stood out against the tightened cloth.
"Then you'd be better off being nice to me, wouldn't you?"
She sputtered and couldn't answer. Another surprise: He chuckled at that.
His room was a single, though she thought in the past it had been a single broom closet in the school.
The space was so tight he could barely move in it, what with the dresser he'd wedged in there and his collection of boots.
Something about that fascinated her in the minutes she had between him leaving her there and locking her in and returning to let himself back in.
There were images that moved, little things like a GIF that flashed free of anything across the top of the dresser.
No people – no vampires – in any of them.
They were all images of landscapes, with creatures she didn't know bounding across them and all the landscapes were desert.
There was only one she thought she recognized, because it looked like the Mojave or maybe the desert outside Las Vegas and the creatures dashing across it were a number of startled jackrabbits.
She squinted, not wanting to see what happened to them, but there was no bloody ending, the rabbits simply hopped out of the frame in one direction and back in from the beginning.
She stood staring at the displays, thinking. There was nothing to base any kind of conclusion on. That he hadn't hurt her so far might only be that it had not been expedient to do so.
The rabbits, though, that conjured up more questions and ideas. There was no reason to have the displays except as keepsakes or memories, things he cared about.
The aliens were humanoid. Looking like the biggest and most beautiful humans but still, they didn't have scales or horns or fur or two heads.
That alone was confusing for the race they had dominated and devastated.
Past what they were, however, no one questioned.
They were blood drinkers. They were killers who had enslaved a planet and killed Cassi's boyfriend and taken her mother.
They were hateful warriors humans referred to in one breath by description – vampires, or aliens, or vamps – or Vampyren.
Not even the most fair minded or liberal human had suggested they might be individuals.
They moved together. Executed together. Hunted together.
Played at their bloody and murderous sports together, raped and plundered together, forced children on women and ripped those children from them, tore families apart and gave their own versions of laughter.
She had never thought to wonder if every one of them lived to conquer or bought in to the overwhelming story of the Vampyren.
In the next instant she cursed herself for a fool. She was alone in his room, and undoubtedly, they wouldn't waste time bugging each other. Maybe the room wasn't his and maybe this was a test, but she had to at least try.
She spoke low to the empty air in the room, saying fast where she was and who she was, forgetting in her rush that she had been given code words to use, they were stupid anyway, Bella for Bela Lugosi and even the damned space vampires would know that one.
She gave her most likely address, three times, then who she was and what she was doing and last, unwillingly, because she wanted out, she said that she was as yet unharmed.
Then the key was in the lock and he was in the doorway and she standing just inside the room, watching him enter and wondering if now, when they came, if they came, the rebels would find her white and bloodless corpse.
He moved first, holding out the sealed bottle of water, and a protein bar, still wrapped, and one nearly perfect apple.
She sat on the end of his bed to eat, while he crouched nearby, seemingly comfortable.
She ate the protein bar first, washed it down with water, reflecting that the things didn't taste any better just because they were hard to come by anymore.
When she picked up the apple she saw his eyes following her movement and hesitated.
"Do you have a knife?"
He looked surprised. "A knife?"
She waved the apple and it wasn't her imagination – his eyes followed it. "I'm getting full and I wouldn't want to waste food. I'd like to cut it in half."
He raised his chin, as if what she did with what he'd given her was of no concern to him, and sliced it for her, clearly not trusting her with the knife he carried on his hip.
She wouldn't have either. She wasn't clumsy but a knife that size begged for disaster to happen when used to cut an apple in half.
He had no problem with it and he sheathed the knife and held the apple halves out to her. She took them, then offered one back, watching the surprise on his face and wondering if anyone, even one person, had done anything nice since he'd arrived.
Wondering again if they could be individuals.
If she stood a chance of surviving.
It started slow. It started so unnoticeably that Cassi didn't even realize anything was happening. She still sat on the end of his bed, and he now sat on the folding chair where his other uniforms had been stacked.
The room surprised her. It made sense the Vampyren version of a military would have quarters that were more or less like bivouac, or whatever the indoor equivalent was, but this wasn't what she expected. Turning a school into a camp.
Somewhere on the grounds there would be a breeding pool and somewhere else a place for the females to couple with the males unless what she'd heard was true and the males only had sex with them and never bred.
Somewhere near there'd be a tank farm and that would be worth finding.
So far from the information that escaped and ran between outposts of humans most of the tank farms were hidden.
They sounded like they'd be huge concerns, taking up a hospital's worth of room, but apparently the humans were contained in units barely bigger than a coffin.
All they had to do was eat and produce new blood and get tapped for it.
She wasn't a vegetarian. Cassi liked steak and considered herself addicted to both pepperoni on her pizza and to beef jerky.
But she didn't abuse the cows she ate, and she had eaten organic until the aliens came and her life changed and her meals became catch as catch can.
Did that make her more humane than the Vampyren? It could be proven that humans thought and reasoned and were sentient, at least most of them, and obviously the space vampires knew it.
And still they acted like one human was perhaps an individual but the whole of them were simply there for the taking, unimportant, nothing that had to be treated humanely. Humans were useful, not much more, and it was more important to keep them in line than to treat them with any respect.
How then, the change she'd seen in this one Vampyren? How to explain she thought she'd seen something unique in his eyes when he watched her. His mouth when she amused him.
Cassi frowned down at the sliver of apple she was finishing. How did she know for sure she had amused him? Because suddenly that felt definite.
It was hot in the room, she thought, and tugged at her shirt which seemed to be sticking against her flesh, molding itself to her breasts. Tugging it free, she looked around the room and found her eyes riveted to the Vampyren.
He sat so still, so quiet, she'd all but forgotten about him. Impossible, of course. She couldn't forget someone who had the ability to kill her by snapping her in half, by draining her, by biting her, by –
Licking her, maybe, as his fangs grazed her skin, as his hands –
Gods, what are you thinking?
Because that was fucking crazy. That was –
Pheromones, you know they have pheromones, you know everyone says they work on humans, you know …