Chapter 5
Crystal
“Why don’t we just get everybody protectors?” Crystal said. She was eating with Kiera. The two of them were sitting cross-legged on top of the big, fancy mahogany conference table in what used to be a conference room.
Crystal had managed to make friends with Kiera over the past two days.
She was grateful to her and Loren, even if she hated that there was any need to be grateful.
Mark had left, the duties of his position of unit commander calling.
But he’d promised to find her roommates (in secret) and return as soon as he could.
She found herself at odds and ends without him. She had not felt so beholden to anyone and she did not appreciate feeling dependence at all.
“Some of the women claim they don’t want them,” Kiera said. “Say it’s patronizing or something.”
“Their funeral, I guess,” Crystal muttered. “What about Sasha?”
“We got her somebody.”
Crystal nodded at that. Now that she was beginning to settle into the creche life, she found herself trying to think of ways it could be improved.
She had a notebook where she jotted down every trading contact she could remember.
Two floors below where the women stayed, the children of the creche were kept.
It functioned as an orphanage. Crystal thought the way the children of the Vampyren were raised was weird at best, abusive at worse, and definitely unnatural.
The purpose was ostensibly to breed for greater numbers.
It was intended to be a volume business.
That meant the mothers didn’t raise the children themselves (which fairly often they didn’t want to anyway).
The children’s areas of creches were also notoriously secretive. It was purported to be a matter of safety for their sake. But it struck Crystal as suspicious. The Vampyren had been, in war, notoriously ruthless and brutal. She somehow doubted that life was peachy for their half-human offspring.
“Do you think there’s a chance I could get out of here?” Crystal said quietly.
Sometimes she daydreamed about going back to her apartment with Mark and introducing him to her roommates. They would like him, she decided. They would like him if she assured them he was good. At the same time, she couldn’t imagine getting out if the other girls couldn’t get out too.
Sometimes she cursed her own sense of ethics.
“I don’t know,” Kiera admitted, frowning at her sandwich. “The Council controls the creches and the breeding farms. They make a big stink about letting anyone out. We might be able to plot an escape for you but—"
“It’s not fair,” Crystal murmured. “If the others can’t go too.”
“Well…” Kiera shook her head. “That’s a non-starter. The Council isn’t negotiating on the existence of the creches or breeding pits any time soon. They view it as a necessity. Population growth and all that.”
“Bunch of bullshit,” Crystal said, with her mouth half-full.
“Don’t have to tell me,” Kiera said.
“Kiera, do you think Drake still wants to find me?” Crystal could hardly speak his name but she pretended to be nonchalant. “Probably not, right? I mean… I’m just some girl. It’s not like I’m important.”
Yet there were nights when she dreamed he was after her again.
He was too strong and too big. He could do whatever he wanted with her.
One night she dreamed of being with Mark.
He had been so gentle and sweet, more gentle even than most of the human men Crystal had been with in her life.
He was warm and his body molded to hers perfectly.
Then, when she looked at him, his pretty face became Drake’s: grim, angry, sharp.
Suddenly he was larger and broader and stronger and he was shoving her face against the wall and holding it there.
He was telling her she was worth nothing but what he could take from her whenever he liked.
She could do nothing about it but scream, and it was those screams he wanted to hear.
It was her fear that he fed off. More precious than her blood.
“I hope not,” Kiera said, but she didn’t sound certain. Nobody was and a couple of the more jaded girls like Sasha seemed annoyed that Crystal had been affected by the attack at all.
He didn’t even rape you, Sasha had said. But Sasha didn’t fool Crystal so much anymore. Now she just seemed sad. She was someone who wanted to throw her rage at anyone who was near enough to take it. Crystal could understand that.
On the other hand, sometimes she wanted to pull on Sasha’s hair until she screamed because Sasha was, on occasion, a raging bitch. The thought of it all made her edgy, and she craved a cigarette.
“Have you heard about the human police force that started up?” Crystal said.
She still had another half of a sandwich to eat and she had to practically force it down her throat.
The chicken was too pink, the lettuce too wilted, the cheese too rubbery.
It was disgusting. On the other hand, it was food.
She had been told she should not be too slim in the creche.
They weren’t supposed to be couture models around here, they were supposed to look fertile (even if she did have a protector).
That meant wide hips and a sense of health and vitality.
Then give us better food. Crystal had this thought about ten times a day. But she fought through the urge to gag on the stuff and kept eating.
“I’ve heard,” Kiera said. “They haven’t come up against the Vamps yet. Which is interesting. Seems like they’re mainly enforcing some kind of law within the population.”
“I don’t know what good that’s supposed to do,” Crystal said derisively. “I mean we have no courts to enforce the laws so the cops are really just vigilantes anyway.”
“It might be useful later,” Kiera said thoughtfully. “I mean inevitably humans and Vampyren are going to have to learn to live together. They can’t breed with Vampyren women, they have to breed with us so they’re dependent on us.”
“I think they could actually breed with Vampyren women,” Crystal said. “My theory is, they’ve fucked over their women so hard they don’t quite know how anymore.”
“Heh. Now they’re fucking us over,” Kiera said wryly. “Sooner or later the assholes have got to learn.”
“Yeah, well our men haven’t since the beginning of life on fucking earth,” Crystal muttered. “Do you really think we’ll reach some kind of peaceful coexistence status quo? Doesn’t seem likely.”
“I mean...we can try to fight back,” Kiera said, “but we really have no shot. Plus, the Lucian are coming. We’re just too dependent on each other. If the Vampyren leave? The Lucian will still come. They’ll kick our asses. We need the Vampyren for our survival now.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Crystal said.
“Exactly.”
* * *
“We need supplies,” Crystal said, crossing her arms and attempting to look fierce.
She was talking to Gail, the matron, who did not look very impressed.
It had been easier to talk to other traders to make deals than it was to talk to anyone from the creche.
Other traders spoke to her as if she were an equal because they knew their business enough to realize that Crystal knew everyone and could get just about anything possible, and sometimes even things that weren’t possible.
But matrons didn’t know anything about the trading network and matrons outranked breeders in the creche.
So even now Gail, who was one of the friendlier matrons, just eyed Crystal warily, as if she might be up to no good.
But Crystal wasn’t. She was, in fact, up to plenty of good if she could manage it. Although she heartily believed in the “by any means necessary approach” to good works.
“We have plenty of supplies,” Gail said, which was just typical.
Gail might have been friendly, but she rarely had the patience to hear about any complaints or problems but that was probably because the girls so often complained about things like a lack of good nail polish colors or that there was nothing good to read in the place.
The complaints were thought of as silly and frivolous.
Crystal did not agree. She still remembered the aching void of emptiness right after the invasion when she’d been struggling day by day just to survive, how important small things were.
Good nail polish colors might not mean anything to Gail, but to some of the girls, it was all they had.
“Really?” Crystal said, raising an eyebrow. “So if Mel comes and says she has a yeast infection just like Tricia does, what’re you telling her?”
“She can wait for the next doctor visit—"
“Oh my God,” Crystal said, clapping her hands to her face.
“That’s only once a month! And you don’t need a doctor for that!
They just need some cream around! Also fucking chapstick, Cortizone cream, antibiotic ointment, over-the-counter painkillers for the love of God and good Christ the menstrual product situation in here—"
“We’re doing the best we can!” Gail all but exploded.
“I know you are,” Crystal said firmly. “But I can do much better than your best. If you’d let me. I can get my hands on all this stuff.”
“That’s not your job,” Gail muttered.
“What is my job?” Crystal said, having a sudden and intense urge to burst out laughing.
“I belong to Mark. I like belonging to Mark. But that’s it.
The rest of the time, I’m just stuck here.
I’m a prisoner. At least let me help make this place less miserable.
You need a whole bunch of shit that I could get if you’d just let me. ”
Gail pursed her lips and Crystal shut her mouth. She bounced on the ball of her feet and chewed on her thumbnail, waiting for some response from Gail. She thought she might lose her mind if she didn’t have something worthwhile to occupy it with soon.