Chapter 1 Tess
It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic, Tess thought for possibly the hundredth time.
The wooden crate had holes for breathing but that wasn’t saying much.
She could hardly move a muscle. The truck jostled her and her box slid a little, knocking into another wooden crate.
That crate did not have anyone in it, as far as Tess knew.
It was likely full of rice or beans or maybe one of those barrels of ice and fish.
The fishing industry was picking up again on the coasts.
The truck went over a bump in the road and Tess hit her head on the top of the crate, wincing.
Tess had not intended to become a fugitive.
But the law had become stupid and brutal and given way to atrocity after atrocity.
Unlike a lot of humans, she didn’t care who was committing the atrocities, she just cared that they were being done, and against children to boot.
It didn’t matter to her if the perpetrators were human or Vampyren or fucking elephants. They were assholes.
The first time Tess freed children from one of the Vampyren’s creches, it had been by accident.
The children had been let out of their compound for some outside time.
Because of her, she supposed, some creches had wised up and now children got less outside time.
But that day, she’d just been walking by and saw the kids, all underfed and filthy, playing on the expanse of pavement that was a sorry excuse for a playground.
They were locked in from the outside by a gate with a simple latch.
But the nearest guard was ten yards away and had turned his head to talk to another guard.
They weren’t paying attention. No matter how secure you thought you were, no matter how many locks and guards you put on any person or location or item, given enough time, somebody was bound to get lazy.
Tess saw the children through the bars of the gate.
She’d been on foot, having fled a dangerous neighborhood where she had to bust out the pepper spray on her own kind one too many times.
It had been a shock in the beginning, when the Vampyren had begun to breed with human women (by force) in order to reproduce, even the offspring would only be half Vampyr.
But when they began taking older children orphaned from the war to keep them in creches for future “use,” somehow that shook Tess up even more.
They were harvesting humanity however they could.
Some children would be feeders, the girls would be breeders…
She supposed they might have other ideas for future “use” as well.
The Vampyren were brutal in their utilitarian view of humans but to involve children in it...
What struck her about the kids that day was how quiet they were even when they were playing.
They were outside and they were small. They should have been laughing and shrieking.
They weren’t. It was as if they’d been muted.
She’d looked through the bars and saw one particularly skinny kid who wasn’t playing like the others.
His clothes were gray with dirt and Tess could smell him from ten feet away.
That was all it took. She hadn’t thought about it.
She just walked up to the gate and unlatched it, silently swinging the gate open.
The kid looked straight at her and she’d held a finger to her lips and nodded at the road.
Some of the kids had been caught again but twelve escaped that day, fleeing into the shadows before the matrons or the guards could catch them.
That was the first time Tess had freed children. Now it was her favorite pastime. You could almost have called it her religion.
Two hundred freed kids later, she was hiding inside a wooden crate, a supply truck, smuggling her from Cleveland to Chicago.
It was the most uncomfortable trip of her life, and that included a road trip she’d taken with her brothers and sisters from Columbus to the Grand Canyon when she was ten, all of them piled into a station wagon.
Tess was the oldest of six. She knew that two of her sisters were dead and one brother was probably dead.
The other three were lost to the abyss of the new Vampyren order, maybe getting bled on the daily or just getting by somewhere.
She’d given up looking for them, it only served to keep breaking her heart.
Now her life’s work was freeing kids. Because that was what she had always done since she’d been eight-years-old.
She looked after the young ones. Why stop now?
“ Ow.” She’d bumped her head against the crate and she hissed in pain. Somehow she had managed not to completely lose her mind on this seemingly endless ride. But if it went on for much longer, she suspected she might not hold on.
Even as that thought crossed her mind, the truck was slowing to a stop.
“Oh, yes please,” Tess murmured. She shut her eyes and prayed.
She really didn’t believe in any higher power in particular, so there was no telling where she thought her prayers were going.
She felt the all too familiar rumble of the truck’s engine stop and she closed her eyes, just breathing and hoping.
She hadn’t eaten in a day and she had a little bottle of water that she could drink from albeit while hunched down very awkwardly.
But she’d had to pee two hours ago, so she hadn’t sipped any water in a long time.
Her knees hurt from kneeling for so long before she’d changed positions and sat sideways with her head turned at an awkward angle.
She heard the doors to the truck blow open.
It could be another checkpoint, she thought.
There had been several checkpoints on the drive and those were only the official ones.
The truck had also been stopped a few times by Vampyrens and humans intending to loot the merchandise until they realized it was just fish.
Luckily, nobody demanded the driver bust open her crate.
He’d hidden her well. The driver was a member of the resistance.
Tess thought he should be sainted… even if he was responsible for her continued discomfort.
“We’re here,” the driver said gruffly as Tess heard him climb up into the truck’s cab.
Tess wasn’t one to cry, but she nearly did now when she heard him hammering a crowbar into the seam of the crate before he broke it open from the top and bottom, the wooden slats falling apart around her. “C’mon, lemme help ya out.”
The driver took her gently by her arms and Tess grunted as she crawled out onto the bed of the truck’s cab, her aching muscles protesting as they finally changed position.
She half rolled and half crawled out of the truck and stumbled to her feet, sighing in relief, wobbly on her legs.
She smiled wearily at the driver. He was an older guy with a big bushy beard and he was very matter-of-fact about the work he did for the resistance as if it were all just a job.
“There’s a bathroom in this warehouse,” he said, leading her through the open double doors of a big abandoned building that sat in the middle of seemingly nowhere.
Tess had never been to Chicago, but this didn’t look like what she’d pictured, the warehouse surrounded by empty land, a long shuttered gas station the nearest building several blocks away.
“They left some food and water for you too. Your ride to Urbana will be here in a couple of hours probably.”
“Okay,” Tess said, her voice raspy. “Thank you.”
“Thanks for all the work you do,” the driver said with a curt nod, and he shook her hand. “I’ll see ya in the next life, huh?”
“See ya,” Tess said, nodding.
The truck was gone inside a minute and that was that.
It was strange to have spent so long with a person and to say goodbye so casually.
Not that the two of them had exactly been chatty on the road.
Now Tess took a deep breath and spent a few minutes just stretching and walking around, rolling her neck and thanking her lucky stars she hadn’t cramped up too badly.
She found the bathroom and that relief was nearly transcendent.
The warehouse was big and dimly lit and empty.
It was cold outside, but winter was thawing into spring.
Tess found the food and water she’d been left.
The energy bar was chalky and tasted like chemicals and cardboard, but Tess ate it happily and guzzled some water.
She never sat down, having been still too long, instead she paced the place and muttered to herself in an endless and insignificant dialogue.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but it didn’t seem like too long before a black SUV was pulling up in front of the warehouse.
Tess found a shadow to hide in, just in case it wasn’t her ride but some nefarious person.
She had been given a codeword to use with her ride, to ensure she didn’t get in a car with the wrong person
The driver was supposed to mention wildflowers blooming. That was a strange thing for anyone to mention, so it would make them obvious. Tess couldn’t see a flower of any kind growing anywhere.
Tess stayed back. She was of average height and a little wiry in build.
She’d cut her black hair into a short pixie cut for the sake of convenience.
She had more fight in her than anyone liked to give her credit for, even when they were on her side, but when she saw the Vampyren man get out of the SUV she breathed in, nerves making her heart race.
She knew that there were Vampyrens in the resistance now. But she had not expected this.
“Tess Ford?” The Vampyren’s voice echoed in the warehouse.