Chapter 7
Mark
As peaceful as Mark considered himself to be, he never felt rage like he did at that moment, wanting to defend his mate and their unborn child.
He could pretend all he wanted that it was in response to the slaughter itself and that would certainly have been reason enough to go against Drake, wherever he was hiding, but that would have been a lie.
Crystal said she couldn’t smoke her cigarettes now and handed him her secret stash of smokes when he left the ruins of the creche, the bodies now cleared away to be buried.
So Mark took a minute to smoke as his unit packed up their Humvee.
They were to report to the council. Loren was ordered to report there too.
Mark had radioed news of the slaughter himself…
and that Drake was responsible. A rogue Vampyren unit was the last thing anyone needed.
He wasn’t looking forward to how the council might react on top of everything else and he lit himself a cigarette as night turned to dawn.
“Markole.” There Loren was now, coming up beside him and Mark raised his eyebrows as he took a drag from the cigarette, absently flicking the lighter. The things might have been meaningless, addicted, and hazardous. But they sure felt relaxing when life was awful.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Mark said.
“I just wanted to stop by,” he said darkly. “Take a look at… Ugh, Christ.”
Mark almost laughed at that. He’d heard other Vampyrens picking up those little slang terms. That one seemed like the oddest. Some Terran prophet that they all liked to mention at the worst times. It was a strange habit of the humans, he mused.
“Has your human mate softened you?” Mark said idly, fidgeting with his smoke. “You’re supposed to have a stronger stomach than that.”
“I’m no softer than you are,” Loren said, his voice pitching up a little.
That made Mark chuckle around his cigarette. That was another thing about humans he’d picked up. He’d seen his men picking it up too. They laughed a lot. They laughed even when things weren’t funny or when they were completely miserable.
“That’s not saying much according to most,” Mark said under his breath.
“It was Drake, yes?” Loren said. “His unit’s gone wrong.”
“Yes. The Council wants to see both of us about this,” Mark said thoughtfully. “I’ll ride with you.”
* * *
The Council’s newest headquarters were a couple of miles downtown in a gray cement building with an impressive basement for keeping prisoners.
Mark rode in the back of an armored vehicle with Loren driven by one of his men.
He felt exhausted down to his bones and he ignored it but his stomach rumbled and he felt the thirst for blood in the back of his throat.
The feeding tanks were distributing the blood in plastic packs these days.
Whether it was for efficiency or to sate blood lust in the interest of working toward a truce with the humans, Mark wasn’t sure.
But it had been a while since he’d eaten and he hadn’t fed from a live human since the first sweep of invasion.
It was giving him a headache now, and he rubbed his temples.
“You’re stupid,” Loren declared, and pulled a packet of blood from his jacket, tossing it over. “You don’t want to kill, you need to keep yourself fed.”
Mark sighed in relief and nodded his thanks. He sank his fangs into the two perforated marks at the top of the pack and drank his fill, feeling better every moment until he drained the bag and sat back as the truck clipped along bumps and ruts in the streets.
“Let’s say, in an ideal world,” Mark said, still licking his teeth, “we can co-exist peacefully with humans—"
Loren was already laughing and Mark ignored him.
“How would we organize feeding tanks then?” Mark said, squinting at nothing. “If say, we outlawed live feeding? If we just let them give us blood. They can always make more of it.”
“Incentivize it,” Loren said, with one of those human shrugs.
“Offer benefits. Pay them. It could work. Sometimes humans lose too much blood? So they need one of those blood packs to make it up so they don’t die.
So humans would donate blood or sell it.
According to blood type. Did you know the bloods had types?
It’s a whole thing. I wonder if the types taste different. I haven’t really noticed.”
“Hmm.” Mark rubbed his chin and the truck pulled to a stop, the driver sticking his head in the back to announce their arrival at the council headquarters.
“I enjoy discussing these things with you, Loren,” Mark said.
He climbed out of the truck, following after him, and wiped the blood from his lips.
“You’re realistic and optimistic at the same time. ”
“I don’t know if realistic is the word I’d use,” Loren admitted.
The street was pleasant and tree-lined, even if the squat and sprawling building had a foreboding air to it.
The sun beat down and Mark grimaced, pulling his leather vest away from his skin.
One of these days, he thought, he was going to cave and start wearing those cooler human clothes, military service be damned.
The humidity was just too brutal. The Council’s headquarters was well guarded and Mark expected heavy security, but he was still surprised when he was asked for his original ID from back home followed by several questions about his business with the Council and his lineage.
But he played along anyhow and was finally let in through two heavy sets of double doors.
He had spoken to the Council a couple of times before but never at this headquarters.
Loren, however, seemed to know exactly what he was doing so Mark followed his lead.
The Council room felt surreal. It was huge and consisted of a massive circular table around which a dozen Council members sat.
They were the region’s leadership and led alongside the Vampyren military leadership based outside the city.
They all had maps and notes in front of them and glasses full of blood that they absently sipped from as they spoke among themselves.
The room was eerily lit so that they were all a little in shadow, a guard for each member at the ready and posted on the periphery of the cream and red room.
“Loren,” one member said. Mark knew who some of them were. This one’s name was Fylst, he was pretty sure. He came from high up in the royal line from Mark’s recollection. “And...Markole. Yes. Report to us. This attack from Drake’s unit on that creche?”
Mark stood up straight and falling into the routine of old-fashioned obedience and submission to Vampyren leadership, he clasped his hands in front of him, waiting for Loren to say his piece before he gave his own report.
He spared nothing… with the sizeable exception of mentioning Crystal at all.
He had no idea of what the Council knew.
But he imagined that Loren hadn’t mentioned anything about her.
He wasn’t going to tell them he had a “special human friend” and he certainly wasn’t going to mention she was pregnant.
The Council didn’t ask about her and he relaxed marginally.
“There’s a human and Vampyren resistance,” another Council member said when they were done speaking.
He was the biggest and oldest of all of them.
He was also the least ranked in terms of old Vampyren royalty.
Yet he was well respected. His name was Reyka and his long braid was almost entirely grey but he was still strong enough to give any good Vampyren a run for their money.
Mark just blinked at him and felt he’d lost the thread but Reyka wasn’t finished.
“You look confused,” Reyka said wryly. “It is understandable. I am saying there is a resistance force that began with humans and now has Vampyrens within it, fighting their own kind. Side by side with the humans.”
Even Mark was surprised by how hopeful that made him. But the Council didn’t exactly seem thrilled about it.
“Things are changing,” Reyka continued. “The… individualism of humans has infected our kind. But we have always been susceptible to that. Before the age of royals, we functioned as free thinkers. It’s in our blood to choose our own path, as it were. But this… must be quelled.”
Mark was accustomed to remaining silent unless asked a question but perhaps it was that human individualism infecting him that made him ask, “Sir? Are you saying Drake’s unit has joined this resistance?”
“No,” Reyka said. “Obviously not. But that resistance is a symptom of our lack of control and so are Drake’s actions. Attacking the creche is…”
“He should be executed,” Fylst said. “He’s broken with our most sacred traditions. Slaughtering Vampyren children—"
“Half breeds,” another Council member said, and everyone else gawked at him in disbelief.
“That hardly matters,” Reyka said, bristling. He raised his dark eyebrows, looking now to Loren and Mark. “Markole. We think we may know where Drake’s unit is hiding out. You’ll take your team and investigate but do not attack.”
“Why?” Mark snapped, against even his own better judgment.
“Because that’s the order,” Reyka said, sneering a little. That put Mark back on his heels and he huffed, fair as it was.
Mark might have been considered “soft” by Vampyren standards but to chase after Drake without the permission to kill him after what he had attempted to do Crystal twice now and what he had done to the children… It was just too galling. He wanted to rip Drake limb from limb.
“Calm down,” Loren said, once they were let go from the Council and sent away. Mark only then realized he was growling more than he was breathing, clenching and unclenching his fists as they made their way back to the truck. “You’ll get your chance.”
“Twenty-three children, Loren,” Mark said darkly. “Many of them were infants. What is the Council thinking?”