Chapter 18
Danton
The theater was packed. The fights, if they'd been real and not imaginary, sounded like they would have been good ones. Danton found he had the stomach for them this evening, maybe because of the slaughter at the last one.
He wanted to get some of his own back. He wanted to feel in control again. He wanted to be the same Danton Trask that had come to this world.
It was weird being at an event without Lan. They usually went together, bloodlust and violence soaring at the same time. They hunted and fought well together.
But the Vampyren around him were more than enough to raise his fighting spirit. They were teammates, males he'd protect if something happened, who would in turn protect him.
They carried laser rifles. They carried human hand guns. They carried wicked knives with serrated blades.
And they waited and watched for the women.
The attack came midway into the third match. By then the men who didn't know what the evening was about were sated or drunk, depending on their constitutions and how thoroughly they'd imbibed the blood of the first humans to fall in the games.
The military men drank none of it, holding out, theoretically, for the more intense games with the stronger, more virile men whose matches would end the evening's entertainment.
One minute it was pandemonium in the theater, even the ones meant to be watching getting into the entertainment.
They were on their feet, screaming, roaring for the kill as a Vampyren circled and blooded his opponent, easily dodging the human's blows and using a sharp edged cudgel to break bones and blood the man.
The theater started to smell of metal and salt, the smell of blood permeating the air.
From the back of the theater, there came sounds that didn't fit. Not music, canned tonight because there wasn't time to arrange for a band, and it wasn't vendors. It was out of place.
They'd slipped up. Despite the numerous attacks in metro areas across the country, tonight one of the women had moved too fast, not waiting for the others around the ring.
In an instant the soldiers were up, sealing the entrances and exits, shouting orders to each other, every other one of them seeming to ask the same question Danton had: What if the other women weren't inside yet?
They didn't hit the same way each time, they didn't even hit the games each time.
What if they were outside, waiting for a signal?
But there were patrols there, too, and the women were all around them, in the audience, on the stairs, with the vendors, behind the stage.
It was fast, it was bloody, it was over in a matter of minutes, but only a few of the women died.
"Massive!" the soldier beside Danton shouted.
Another slammed Danton on the back and he himself high fived a number of the men in his unit, the same congratulatory movements humans made only slightly mocking.
They'd taken down a cell and this might mean across the country they could find other cells.
The women could be questioned, tortured if necessary, and then thrown into breeding cells.
Such women with such spirit could be useful.
Their children would be Vampyren. They'd have places of honor once they were properly turned.
Or they'd be slaughtered in the pits. Or turned to the games. Or given to the tank farm. He didn't care and it wasn't up to him. All he wanted to do was get back to where Cassi waited in his quarters.
Alone with Lan.
But he stayed for the cleaning up, overseeing the males as they tied and escorted the women, and so it was he saw the one woman, her head high and defiant, as she was led to the waiting vehicles.
Her hair was long and a curious and unpleasant shade of purple.
For a second, Danton stared, wondering, and then he remembered. The day he and Lan had seen the pikes rammed into the city sidewalk, adorned with heads on the Los Angeles street. The day he'd first spotted Cassi, her behavior unafraid and defiant.
Riding away on the bike, the star on her shoulder marking her.
The girl on the back of the bike holding on tight.
The hair coming out from under that girl's helmet a strange shade of purple.
It was morning before he got back to his quarters, finding Lan asleep and Cassi sitting wakeful in his one chair.
He'd waited all night to get back to her.
Now he didn't know what he was going to tell her. The women they'd taken were being turned over for breeding. If they weren't viable, they'd be put in the tank farms.
Or outright killed in the games.
Or just drained.
That was her friend. What was he going to tell her?