Chapter 7 #4
He marched down the front walk, keeping an eye out for danger as the men closed the door after him.
There were a few humans on the street, just loitering or lying around as if asking to be drained by Vampyren passersby, but they didn’t even look in his direction.
Sometimes it was if the humans were just giving up.
Some of them were anyway. Then you had those folk who joined the resistance, as if delighted to face certain death. A bevy of contradictions, he thought.
Mark’s source had told him that Crystal’s roommates lived in a cottage-style condo with an A on the door.
He walked through the front lobby and heard cheesy instrumental music playing from somewhere as he wandered into the courtyard beyond around which there were little cottages in a circle around a garden and a stone fountain.
Mark found the cottage with an A on the door.
There was a welcome mat on the ground. It seemed like the strangest thing he had seen all day.
Humans knocked. On Vampyr, you announced your presence to a servant who relayed the message. Humans knocked and sometimes they pushed buttons that buzzed. Mark didn’t see a button, so he clenched his fist and rapped his knuckles on the door.
“Who is it!” A high female voice said.
“I’m a friend of Crystal’s,” Mark said through the door.
The door opened an inch and rock music blasted from inside.
It was very different from the cheesy music Mark had heard in the front lobby.
The girl squinted at him. She had blonde hair in two braids on top of her head and she wore purple glitter on her face, her blue eyes big as she looked him up and down.
“You’re a friend of Crystal?” She said. “Are you sure?”
He wasn’t sure what him saying yes would prove, but he nodded and tried to look genuine. “Yes. I met her in the breeding pit where she was taken—"
“What did you do to her?” She said thickly.
“Nothing,” Mark said, fixing her with a firm stare. “I’ve never hurt her. I promise you. She wanted me to find you. That’s all. Can I…”
The girl disappeared from behind the door which shut in his face and he heard some enthusiastic mumbling before it opened again on a human male who looked the type to hide from Vampyren rather than fight but he was trying to look tough, Mark surmised and held a small hammer in one hand.
“You can come in,” the boy said. “But you better watch your ass!”
Nina and Jet, Mark discovered, weren’t quite as helpless as they appeared.
They had their front hall booby-trapped so that if he stepped beyond it, the floor would shock him.
It seemed like the kind of tech that shouldn’t be available to them but apparently they were good with computers and Jet was also good with engineering.
Good for them, he supposed. They asked Mark so many questions, he was starting to get annoyed, and edgy to get back to Crystal before he had to report to the Council in the morning.
That was before Jet said, “Have you guys found that rogue unit yet?” He looked at Mark with wide and haunted eyes. “They’re slaughtering everybody they see. They were around The Loop the other night. We hid in the bathtub. Thought they’d come for us.”
“We… have found them,” Mark said warily. “I was ordered not to take them down yet. And he had too many men.”
“Well, you should take them down!” Nina said quickly.
Mark was still relegated to the front hall and the two of them were snuggled on a loveseat, crates of goods and stacks of boxes surrounding them.
They kept smoking from a big glass pipe that billowed plumes of something that made Mark’s head spin around a little.
“They’re attacking creches, you know! Where the babies are? And Crystal!”
“Yes,” Mark said. “I’ve… heard something about that. Listen, you can come see Crystal.” He took a paper out of his pocket on which he’d written the address and a crude map of how to find her breeding pit. “But be careful. You two might have the right idea. Better to stay around here.”
He was about to leave when Nina piped up, “He’s not done, you know.”
Mark spun on his boot heel and tipped his head. “Excuse me?”
“Attacking the creches and breedings pits and everything,” Nina said, before exhaling a plume of smoke.
“Friend of ours we trade with ran into that unit. They were gonna drain him but he got away. He said he heard them talking about how they were going to attack another place. A big breeding farm up in Urbana. It’s got the most—"
“The most children,” Mark said tightly. “The highest rate of birth among these human women is at that creche. The women there are always pregnant.”
“The leader of their unit believes draining children and um...the unborn...gives him strength,” Nina said.
Fuck.
“Thank you,” Mark said. “For all that. I’ll tell Crystal you said hello. She really misses you.”
“We miss her too,” Nina said.
Mark nodded at the two of them and made his way out, and with the thought of an impending attack on the Urbana creche, he found himself running back to the truck.