Chapter 10
Word came down midday. There was a runner loose in the city, a human who had escaped Vampyren control.
Most of the time that would be fine. Humans had limited opportunities available to them since their new lords and masters had come.
Most of them kept their heads down in the city areas and went to work when that work still existed.
Their economy was taking a beating and inflation was more rampant than it had been in several generations.
There were no shortages of food, but being able to afford it was becoming a problem for a lot of people.
Then too, getting to the job took ingenuity and sincere application of will.
Public transportation was down, deliveries of fuel or charging stations for private vehicles were breaking down, wrecks on interstates were often left rather than being cleaned up, and jobs were closing before workers got there.
It was enough to keep the average human busy worrying and out of the way and those who might have been a problem, the politicians and so-called leaders, they were given things to worry on like their infants were given pacifiers to cut teeth on.
Most of them probably realized even if they didn't admit it to themselves that the level of power they had was minor, but they were happy enough denying what was happening all around them to take it.
Only there were some things that couldn't be ignored.
Like the plans for planet wide games that would involve a lot of the humans who could no longer procreate and who didn't contribute much, those whose blood was tainted with drugs the Vampyren didn't want to ingest secondhand, those who hurt others the Vampyren were the only ones with the authority to hurt.
From prisons. From nursing homes. From senior neighborhoods.
Those people were going to be turned into arenas planet wide for the enjoyment of those Vampyren ready to pledge themselves to the hunting down of the Lucian if and when – or now that, no one was sure – they came.
It would be one gigantic party for those brave enough to battle the Lucian and if their planning ended up with only a few arenas and only a handful of parties, so what?
The Vampyren in the other locations could make their own fun.
The planning was enjoyable because the Vampyren, having overtaken the planet and not yet ferreted out their enemies, were growing restive and bored.
It was nowhere near time to leave the planet yet.
The humans didn't know it – most of the Vampyren who weren't leaders or military didn't know it – but their forces on Earth weren't as strong or numerous as they should be.
Killing off a certain number of humans who refused to be conscripted into military when needed?
That would add to the fun. Already there were games across cities, nights that the invaders went out together wearing their finest, toting slaves and blood donors with them if they had them, buying them at concession stands if they didn't.
It was a society and one that needed some shaking up. It wouldn't do to get comfortable.
There was a runner loose in the city. He'd hidden in one of the Command Towers in the Las Vegas City Hall where leaders of the invasion force had met.
Where generals and other high ranking officers had met.
He had hidden where he was privy to secrets he shouldn't know and he had been discovered by accident, so surprising the human cleaning woman that she had jumped back and failed to raise the alarm immediately.
At least that was the explanation she gave in the moments before she was drained and killed.
Alek's team had been on hand. He'd been working with his unit, going over strategies for going out into the wastes of desert between parts of Nevada and parts of California that were metro.
They were heading into the wastes, which they loved, and the forests, which they didn't, searching out the Lucian because enough of the high command believed they were already on Earth.
And they were going to root out the rebellion that was brewing in those areas, the small towns like one actually named Independence, where rebellion was fomenting and humans were gathering outside the metro areas.
They were harder to track that way and from all reports, many of them that lived out there had done so even before their planet was invaded because they couldn't be tracked there.
They were crazy and well supplied and they had weapons and attitudes, they weren't coming in when ordered and they were willing to fight.
Silencing them would be a side errand. Alek felt certain of that.
But news of the runner. Every one of his men sparked to life, blood lust rose, eyes bright, breathing changing to fill their lungs with the heavy oxygen of the planet. They could run for hours and they could search in the artificial lights of the city.
A runner was good sport.
"Your team thinks it has a chance?" Braydon, across the table from him, slapping his chest and declaring his 12 Vampyren unit the best by far.
His boast was met instantly by Stanton, taller even than Pan and more violent by half but general hooting filled the air and it was Pan himself who said, "No Vampyren huge as you could possibly sneak upon a frightened human!"
Which led to more calling and jibes and the two Vampyren going up back to back with someone measuring them off and proclaiming, yes! Yes! Stanton was the tallest and therefore the less likely to –
And Alek, interrupting in the general noise, "Just like to point out that I am shorter than my esteemed brother – " and really they hadn't gotten along since the day he'd discovered Mindy in the bedroom at that condo but for once they were back to back, measured against each other and of course Pan was taller, Pan had always been taller.
"Weaponed hunt?" That from Jory, a slight youth, still putting on his battle muscles, and he was shouted down with no ill intent, just, wait till you're older young one and realize how stupid that sounds, as if any of us need, weapons would be wasted, run him down–
"Run him down! Run him down! Run him down!"
The chant still reverberating in his ears, Alek ran from the conference room, joined the others bounding down the stairs alongside everyone else in the building, stripped off all but the shorts he wore under the uniform to convince the humans until it was too late that of course the Vampyren were just like them and of course it was safe to come closer, come closer –
Come closer!
The hunt was on. He sprang into the street, sniffing, letting his vampire senses seek out the blood. The man could be anywhere. That was the challenge. For him and his unit to be the ones to corner him.
To stop him.
To punish him.
To make him pay.
He scented. He ran. He laughed, mostly naked as the sun went down over Las Vegas and the change settled over the invaders, the one that came with full dark.
The one that turned them from savage masters.
To unstoppable unbridled killing machines.
Night closed over the city. Even with the artificial lights, kept on in areas where Vampyren wanted them, the strange hormonal and mental shifts happened.
He felt it as he loped through the city streets, chasing the blood signature. There were two units on the man, who had hooked up with others. They were running as a scared knot, the signature of their fear easier to track when they were moving in what they thought was "Safety in numbers."
The two units of seventeen men total would have them locked down in no time.
They cornered the runners in an abandoned business that had sold souvenirs and t-shirts on The Strip. Some thirty humans, their signature of heartbeats called out to the hunters.
"Lock the doors," Jayren said. The other leader, he glanced at Alek. This wasn't a challenge. Just what he thought was the best way to keep the humans from running any farther.
The joint unit moved out, around the building, two men stopping at each door until they were all locked down from the outside and then the scouts came back so they entered, seventeen strong, from the one door they locked behind them.
At first glance the warehouse and its office looked damp and clean and empty. Cleared out by the people who had owned the business, maybe before the invasion.
Didn't matter.
Vampires could hear the blood rushing in a human's veins if the human was panicked enough and those in the group were. His eyes met Jayren's and at the same time, they both signaled up.
The humans were hiding in the loft space above the warehouse floor.
There were only two staircases leading up, metal and at opposite sides of the warehouse. The two leaders signaled their teams. The lowest ranking vamps stayed on the ground, waiting by the doors the humans might run for.
If they got the chance.
They shouldn't. They'd hear their death coming for them on the metal stairs leading to the lofts but by then it would be too late. Alek and Jayren would go up at the same time.
Their men would follow.
There were almost two humans for every one of them.
This would slake his thirst.
The screaming started when he and his unit ascended to the top floor of the warehouse.
It continued as they cornered the humans in a tiny office meant for overseeing the other humans who would have worked in the business.
It culminated in catching them before they could hit the stairs, throwing down a few who were less interesting, to be caught and killed by the lower ranks guarding the doors.
Alek himself took on a bodybuilder, a man only about a foot shorter than he was, tall and thick but blond and sandy golden where Alek was dusky dark with stark blue black hair.
His chosen prize tried to run and Alek, hungry now and angry at the lack of honor – the man was clearly running from a woman who was his to protect – caught him by the hair and threw him down.
It would have been easy to snap his neck.
It would have been simple to drain him in a few quick minutes.
But the nighttime bloodlust was on him. He bit into the man, into his throat, a nonlethal bite, only to hear him scream.
He bit through the man's shoulder. He dislocated his jaw. He tore his limbs off and reveled in the spray of blood for only a second before he staunched it with his mouth and finally allowed himself to feed.
He drank, and drank, and drank.