Chapter 2
The females instantly started screaming. The sound set Alek's teeth on edge. Back on their planet there was a reptile that screamed when caught out by sunlight, or when something dragged it out of its rocky den, and it sounded like human females.
He'd killed more than one of them because of it. There were rules in place. No wasting food. Kill a human, make it worthwhile.
It was always worthwhile, Alek had argued. Humans were like the many legged spyders back on their own planet. There was a momentary pang at dispatching them but they were revolting and there was nothing else to do about them.
Human women weren't revolting. Just upsetting. They could bear Vampyren young, though, which was good. It was much safer to breed a human woman than a Vampyren female who ninety percent of the time finished mating by eating her mate. Eating him while he was alive and screaming.
Human women could be mated with human males, increasing the food supply for the day when more of the Vampyren would come to Earth.
They tasted good. They could be bred, chased down for sport, or fucked until they passed out.
The human women could be mated by Vampyren men, as well, producing more Vampyren children for the day their fellows came from the stars.
It wasn't just human women and their tendency to scream that was a problem.
It was the men that were the problem even if they didn't scream.
Most of them. Though whatever was going on in the place they'd just burst into, Alek and his team, it looked unhealthy and the men there likely to scream.
The men were soft and overweight, and none of them were making any move to shield the women or to rush the raiding party.
"They're whores," Pan said. He stood beside his brother, laughing. "The humans are having a sex party."
Alek didn't find it amusing. "From the smell of it, they have been for a while. Find whoever lived here and pitch them off the terrace. That ought to get them all listening."
Pan nodded. He was good at that kind of thing. Brutal, unrelenting, unafraid, and even bigger than Alek, standing well over eight feet by human measurements.
By Vampyren measurements it just meant he hit his head a lot when he walked through doorways and fewer of the humans argued with him, even before he killed them by draining their blood or tearing them limb from limb and occasionally eating the extremities.
Alek rubbed his hands together. He was cold, tired of the end of year weather even in what humans considered a hot desert. He was hungry. He was already sick of Earth. He wanted a new challenge. He wanted sex. He wanted something to eat. And he wanted–
Her.
"Mark her," he told his assistant, and strode past the throng near the entrance, deep into the heart of the End of the World party.
"No one owns this unit," Pan said. He stood beside Alek, bouncing on his toes. His long black hair was braided out of his way. He looked every bit the Vampyren warrior with his thick beard and tribal tattoos.
Beside him, Alek looked like what he was. The older brother, who would probably think things through a little before he struck. He sported stubble across a strong jaw. His hair he'd sliced to shoulder length when they reached the planet: He found braids got in his way.
He was on his way to the top. He already had rank within the raiding militia sent to colonize this city. By the time they were done here, he intended that Las Vegas, Nevada would be his. Sin City the humans called it and as he understood the concept, it meant excess.
Excess was good. Excess meant there were more than two million people in the city.
A few could be spared. His men needed to burn off energy.
That meant sex and sport and feeding, blooding the population.
That would both give them something to do and keep the humans in check.
Fear was an admirable deterrent. Then too, his women needed to fuck something so they'd be less fearsome.
Vampyren women were inventive in bed, lithe and flexible and fearless, but if they tumbled over into mating mode, their partner could end up dead.
Human mates could be spared and the offspring were useful for keeping up the pantries. All of them needed to eat.
Standing beside Pan with his fists on his hips, he watched as the soldier Pan had ordered separated the girl and dragged her back toward one of the bedrooms. Her voice cut like a knife through his temples and she struggled hard enough to delay two Vampyren soldiers from moving her.
Alek pinched the bridge of his nose. "Is she being harmed?" He'd specifically said for her to not be.
"She's reaching for the other girl," Pan said unexpectedly, pointing to where a blond girl in a green dress tried valiantly to get to the war prize he'd selected.
"Let them go together," he said, rubbing his temples. "It hardly matters."
Pan did nothing more than raise his chin at the guards, who instantly stood aside, letting the two women rush together and cling to each other, before they were taken by the biceps and steered stumbling out of the room on the stilts they wore.
Vampyren women wore boots like every Vampyren male. Special occasions they were more beautiful boots. Why did human females insist on hobbling themselves before someone did it to them? Their shoes were laughable.
Then he got a glimpse of the girl he'd chosen being slammed into the bedroom and saw her legs in the improbable shoes, and thought maybe he understood it after all.
He shook his head and looked at the humans remaining in the room. They moved constantly, passing into the unit next door and being moved back by Alek's men who had gone through to stop them escaping.
There was nowhere to escape. Crawl into a hallway and a guard would consider it a snack.
Get out into the city and they'd find that while they were so clearly holed up in this place, things had changed.
There was a system of tattoos in place now, marking what humans were allowed to do.
Categorization at a glance. At checkpoints Vampyren could determine if the human had a job, had offspring to protect, had an assignment on an ongoing basis that benefited their new masters, or could be considered food, and whether or not in that instance they had to be kept alive.
"Listen to me."
If anything, the noise inside the condominium increased for the first few seconds after he spoke.
Alek refused to raise his voice. "Listen to me, or you're all going to die."
The noise dropped. The last few speakers were frantically shushed by those who didn't want to be heard talking with them. Or at all.
"You'll want to be quiet," he said, and even their restive shifting stopped.
Alek paced.
"You'll want to be attentive."
Their eyes watched him. One or two of the women traced his lines of power, from shoulders to arms, from chest to trim, flat waist and the heavy abdominals women found so desirable.
Human women were silly and weak and frivolous. Good for the uses he'd already considered.
The one he'd chosen, she was beautiful, the most beautiful in the room and therefore the best and because he was commander here, the best was his due. She'd be no more intelligent than the others at this event. But her aesthetics pleased him.
Pleasing him meant she and her friend could live longer than might otherwise be expected.
The others here might not be so lucky. The men could be taken to a tank farm, hooked up to equipment and subject to daily bleeds.
It wasn't the worst that could happen to them.
They were cared for, illnesses were corrected, they were fed and sheltered and could sleep when they wanted to.
It wasn't much of a life, strapped into a chair most of the hours of the day and only let up to move around because it was better for the blood.
It beat being eaten and left dead on the street.
If any of the men proved to have enough spark, enough intelligence, they might be conscripted into the battle forces.
The enemy was coming and there were fewer Vampyren to meet it than the humans knew.
Men who voluntarily joined with the militia were better treated.
They had more food, better quarters, less beatings.
They even occasionally got to try their luck with a Vampyren female.
Even those who didn't live through the experience had an experience before they stopped living.
The group of women would be broken up by age, though he didn't think any of them present was past breeding age.
By beauty, then, with some of them taken for the amusement of the men, others for food, others for breeding.
There were enough of them, he might even arrange a hunt, letting the girl loose in the city for sport.
And the girl he'd spotted, the one with the long, long legs made shapelier by the stupid shoes, she'd be his.
Alek gave a short series of commands and started back toward the bedroom door, behind which she surely waited.