Chapter 20
Cassi
If she had expected the women in the breeding pools to have given up, she'd have been dead wrong, but word of the attacks had reached her.
She knew they were happening. She knew they were ongoing. And she knew they were perpetrated largely by women. She didn't expect to find a lot of women who had given up or were just marking time.
What she did expect, given the insanity of the bunker the high school had turned into, was confusion.
She thought the women would be milling around, maybe gathering in small groups to make plans, but given they were in a huge holding cell in the basement the Vampyren dug out beneath the school, she expected a kind of women's prison atmosphere from bad B movies.
Instead, she found militaristic precision, women training through their days, stopping for scheduled breaks when their captors brought them food or cleaning supplies, stopping on a dime when the sound of booted feet signaled one or more of them was being pulled out for breeding.
They were training in boxing, in mixed martial arts, in Taekwon-Do and Aikido, in self-defense techniques which were generally fast, deadly and easy to learn.
They worked out, doing resistance training with anything they could press into service, doing plank and abdominal work, and running round and round their cell, gaining endurance.
In between, they exchanged information.
"School is definitely in session," Brecca told her, giving her a warm hug. She looked the worse for wear but her hair, the half-faded purple, was still vibrant enough it had attracted Danton's attention and brought the two girls back together.
"Rumor was you were with the Vampires." There was no judgment in Brecca's voice, only wonder.
"I was with one vamp. His name's Danton Trask," she said, loudly enough to be overheard, curious if he had done what he'd done with her with anyone else.
No one responded except to gather round her, so she told them everything that had happened and they exchanged stories until the evening dinner was brought.
She asked about Michael once, carefully, describing him without using his name.
No one in the pool had seen a man matching his description.
That could mean anything — that he was free, that he was dead, that he'd never been brought here.
She filed it away with the other things she couldn't afford to feel right now.
By which time she knew everything about the women and a little about the attacks the teams of women were doing.
And whatever she knew, anyone listening in at the resistance knew, because there was no reason to expect the mic′s weren't working.
They'd become sore, though. All the sex and touching she hadn't expected had brought them up near the surface of her skin in her wrists.
The last thing she learned was that the lot of them were running out of time.
The commander, the one who had questioned Cassi and was as low on the totem pole as she'd imagined, had determined he would be the one to stop the attacks by cells of women on Vampyren wherever they gathered.
Another attack had just gone wrong, half the women running free, and the commander found out about it long before he was expected to.
"They're going to either move us all to a tank farm, if they think they can get us there, or they're going to drain us all in a free-for-all party," Bev said, pacing. She was older, graying, perpetually angry. Probably the best person to stay around.
Even Brecca seemed changed. She'd gone through the training with the resistance and never told Cassi and now she was part of a cell that had killed a number of Vampyren.
A new and improved Brecca.
"So how do we find out which it is?" one of the women asked, and others chimed in with questions until the basement rang with sound. There were close to a hundred women, well fed and angry.
If Bev hadn't seen the possibilities, Cassi would have.
"We can hold our own," Brecca said fiercely.
No one agreed or disagreed. They were trained but they were all new. All except Brecca, because the women who had gone on the attack runs weren't the ones in the pool – the Vampyren didn't want to mate with women warriors without knowing.
The discussion that ranged through the pool was like an old-fashioned game of telephone, where people pass a message on from one to the next, though with more accuracy, Cassi hoped.
Because they kept up a level of chatter, keeping the room from falling silent, but while they planned, they settled in small groups, then passed the information to the next group, nearly silently, until it made its way through the entire room.
They needed to overpower the guards. They needed to understand the percentage of them that could be lost to the weapons the vampires carried.
They needed to get free into the school.
Free the women who had orchestrated the attacks.
Find weapons if they could manage it.
And then run.