Chapter 2 Kal
After the first wave of invasion, when Kal had arrived on earth with his brother, he’d actually been optimistic.
He’d never seen proper war before so he hadn’t known what to expect.
But he’d heard a lot about how soft and weak humans were; they wasted their time on creative pursuits, and were strange and illogical.
It wouldn’t be difficult to conquer them.
All this Kal had taken as code for meaning that humans were interesting and different and had values that most Vampyren didn’t understand.
He’d had no idea. Humans were such individuals.
They were all so… different. Or it had seemed that way.
He felt a kind of kinship, as a Vampyren who always felt like an outsider.
His saving grace was that his brother was similar, if less quirky.
But they always understood each other at least.
Kal hadn’t thought twice when he had the chance to desert his unit.
He had tattoos on his body that stood for loyalty and honor to his men and to the Vampyren people.
They meant nothing to him. All that was the old life and this new world meant a new life.
He left and never looked back. He started dressing like a human.
If he cut his braid and maybe found contacts to hide the flecks of glowing gold in his dark eyes, he might have been able to pass for human.
But he hadn’t wanted to lie or pretend. That wasn’t what the new world was about from his point of view.
He stumbled into the resistance and found new purpose.
But doing recon on the creche with Tess, who had been whispered about and spoken of in hushed and admiring tones by so many among the resistance, was the biggest mission he’d been given so far.
That wasn’t saying much. It hadn’t seemed like a difficult mission at the time.
It was more difficult than he expected, just like the war had been.
It wasn’t difficult to get inside the creche.
The matrons and even the other Vampyren had taken one look at him in his unit uniform with the stern look on his face and the sword at his belt and let him and Tess in without a thought.
They had the Council and military leadership’s instability on their side.
Things were always disorganized but they had to obey no matter what.
So a Vampyren suddenly showing up and insisting on a surprise inspection of the creche for the Council didn’t sound particularly unusual.
No, the difficult part was staying composed when they saw the condition of the place and how the children were treated.
They were thin and malnourished, that much was obvious.
There were eight to a room that should have housedmaybethree children and some of them had outgrown their beds and cribs which would likely stunt them.
They never saw children playing, and that was the eeriest part.
They were all too quiet, the matrons and guards obviously ruling with iron fists.
Kal heard plenty of crying but he never heard laughing or the buzz of children talking or having any fun.
The place was worse than a prison. But according to the standards of the Council, there was nothing wrong with it.
The most shocking thing that Kal saw, at least to his mind, was a toddler attacking another toddler.
The older children were human. They were supposedly all orphaned from the war, though he had to think some of them had been taken from their parents for whatever the leadership eventually decided to use them for.
But the babies and toddlers were all half-Vampyren; children of the breeders.
That meant they drank blood, theyneededblood, and they were apparently not getting enough of it.
Or anyway, he had to assume that was why he saw a two-year-old attack another two-year-old in one of the nurseries as he’d hovered there in the doorway.
The kid was still a baby and he’d bared his tiny teeth and tackled his companion, growling viciously, and drawing blood as the child screamed before a matron forced them apart.
There was something chilling about the incident, but the matron didn’t look surprised.
“Does that happen often?” Kal had asked her.
“Sure, it does,” the matron said dryly. “Not enough blood to go around and the little bloodsuckers don’t know any better.”
The whole thing made Kal realize that humans weren’t any better than Vampyren, if he’d ever suspected they might be. They were just as capable of atrocity.
On the ride home, Tess stared out her window, facing away from Kal.
She didn’t speak and Kal felt like he had to or he might implode.
It was late by then and the roads were pitch black this time of night.
Most street lights were out. Kal had to drive slow and trust the headlights, hoping they didn’t meet up with some surprise.
“I wasn’t prepared for that,” he said quietly, as they drove along the highway back to Urbana. “I don’t know what I was expecting… It wasn’t that.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Tess whispered, rubbing her teary eyes. “That’s the thing. I’ve seen worse.”
When they returned to Urbana, Kal hesitated before getting out and Tess did too. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and glanced over at her, wondering if she was as loath to be alone right now as he was.
“I’m staying in a dorm across campus,” he said quietly. “With some others in the resistance. Far enough from the breeders. Do you want to—
“My dorm is mostly empty,” Tess said flatly. “Let’s go to my place.”
“Alright,” Kal said.
It was hard not to assume that something might happen between them.
He felt a kind of energy between them already that was both comforting, and a real turn on.
He even liked her short hair. Vampyren women never wore their hair short, and the men didn’t either.
But Tess’s short hair framed her pretty face; its heart shape and her full lips.
Until they investigated the creche, he had a hard time not thinking about fucking her and biting on those plush, pink lips.
Kal followed Tess through the dark into the big, brick building that had formerly been a college dormitory.
He’d heard something about that. This had once been a bustling university, a place of learning.
There were tons of them around in America.
They had universities on Vampyr but they were pretty utilitarian.
You learned a lot of military stuff and you were given a trade.
If you were somewhere in the royal line, you might get a chance at scholarship.
There wasn’t much room for the humanities on Vampyr.
But humans were always making and studying art, reading, making movies, and stupid TV shows.
Humans had a teeming universe of distraction, some of which Kal found absolutely fascinating.
He tried to imagine the college full of bright-eyed young people going about their day and worrying about exams. But the thought only depressed him.
“Crystal’s got the big dorm down the hall,” Tess explained as they climbed the stairs. “I’ve got the other big one. We kind of have run of the place. But the electricity doesn’t always hold up. Good thing it’s warm.”
It was hard not to think about all those kids crowded into their tiny rooms as he followed Tess to her room.
She cast him a nervous smile when she unlocked it and let him inside.
The place was pretty big and there was a comfy looking bed in one corner, but it was otherwise very spare, besides some toiletries and food items on a plastic crate against the wall and some folded clothes on the floor.
“Someday I hope to have a chair,” Tess said. “But at least I got a nice bed. I don’t know how they swung that.”
“It’s not bad,” Kal said, shrugging. His own dorm had a smaller bed but more furniture. He thought it luxurious considering. After he deserted his unit he’d spent some time sleeping in cardboard boxes under freeways.
“I’m not one to complain,” Tess muttered. But he knew without her saying so, that she meant she had no cause to complain after seeing how the children in creches were treated. “Do you want a drink?”
“Sure,” Kal said, but the thought made him smile to himself.
Vampyrens didn’t really have alcohol. They had a kind of mead they drank on special occasions but it didn’t make them drunk.
Human alcoholic drinks had been a revelation.
He thought they were fun, if dangerous. But there was something pleasing about the way Tess casually poured something brown from a bottle into two plastic cups.
“Crystal gave me this bottle of whiskey,” she said. “Said I’d need it. I think she was right.”
Tess handed him a cup and bumped hers up against his, which he’d learned a while back was some kind of tradition. He took a sip of the whiskey and coughed as it burned going down. Tess laughed and nudged him.
“Hope you can hold your liquor,” she said.
“I doubt it,” he murmured. He eyed her up and down as he drank. He was about a foot taller than her but that only served his imagination. He could so easily pick her up and carry her around, brace her up against a wall. She’d be light as a feather to him.
Tess was wearing a shirt over a tank top and now she took the overshirt off, ever so casually, as if she just happened to be warm.
Her tank top accentuated the curve of her breasts.
She was a little more voluptuous up close than he’d thought.
He glanced away, imagining that human women must be really sick of Vampyren men lusting after them.