Chapter 3 Tess
Tess was hugging Kal like a teddy bear and it was strange how perfectly normal that felt.
He was running his fingers through her cropped hair as she kissed his chest. Now she rolled away and leaned on her elbow, rubbing her legs together under the sheets.
The Council’s decision had been disappointing if unsurprising.
Kal tried to impress upon her how much progress had been made in terms of human and Vampyren relations on the ride home.
“They wouldn’t have bothered offering up standards for creches before,” Kal said now. “They barely thought of humans as sentient. They’d completely dehumanized you.”
She appreciated that he said “they” and not “we” but it didn’t make her feel much better.
“Well, it’s not changing fast enough,” she muttered.
“I’m guessing that means we’re storming that creche,” Kal said, fidgeting with Tess’s earlobe.
“Hell yes, it does,” Tess said. “You with me?”
“Of course, I am.”
“Good,” Tess said. “We move tomorrow.”
At that, Kal sat up in bed and gaped at her. Tess was quick on her feet. He’d realized that much. But a mission like this needed to be planned and people mobilized. A hundred things could go wrong. But she only gazed back at him steadily and suddenly he felt very stupid.
“You’ve planned it all already,” he said.
“You were out fighting the Lucian.” She climbed on top of him, sitting right down on his groin and he groaned, arching up into her.
She was naked, and he marveled at all her creamy skin.
He gripped her thighs, and she leaned down to kiss him.
Her breasts brushed against his chest, teasing him.
He was getting hard again. “I had to do something to pass the time without you. Oh yeah, and the resistance has a new name.”
“Oh yeah?” He mumbled against her mouth. “What’s that?”
“Free the Children,” she whispered, before kissing him deeply.
* * *
Tess wokebefore Kal and by the time he was stirring, she had showered and dressed for the day.
She was planning on it being a very big day.
There were just a few details she needed to iron out.
But considering she was used to flying by the seat of her pants and working with, if she was lucky, a few random but well-intentioned unskilled people, she wasn’t too worried about the haphazard nature of this particular mission.
If nothing else, Urbana had more resources than she was used to.
She had access to weapons and tech via what was now called Free the Children.
She also knew Loren would help out where he could if she asked him, as long as it didn’t mean endangering his position on the Council. She planned on asking him.
Loren was trying to affect change from the inside out.
She could understand it on some level. But it grated at her and she found herself biting her tongue, wanting to rage against the measly bit of “compromise” the Council had offered.
It was as good as nothing and she was supposed to just accept that “progress was slow.” That sort of thinking was not exactly her nature.
Tess stuffed her feet into her boots and scrawled a note that said “meet me in the cafeteria by eight.” The Lucian battle, she knew, had taken a lot out of Kal.
He wouldn’t even tell her what he’d seen fighting them but he’d mentioned that three men had died and he’d ripped a Lucian’s heart out.
That was all that he’d say and his eyes had been far away.
She didn’t want to push him too hard if she didn’t have to.
That was another good reason to plan this herself. It had worked out okay on other missions.
Tess marched down the hall and rubbed her still sleepy eyes as she pounded on Crystal’s door.
She needed coffee before she could go on any mission.
Good coffee was nearly extinct nowadays, but doubling the strength of weak coffee did the job well enough.
The cafeteria usually had coffee ready about this time.
She told most of Free the Children to meet her in the cafeteria before breakfast was served at nine.
She pounded on Crystal’s door again, impatient to get to the cafeteria before all that precious caffeine was gone.
“Crystal!” Tess hollered, pounding on the door again. “Mark!”
Crystal answered the door, her typically long, dark ponytail falling around her shoulders. She narrowed her sleepy eyes at Tess and said, “Can I help you?”
“Aren’t you doing the liberation today?” Tess said, frowning. “You said you’d join—
“Yes yes,” she said, yawning. “I’ll be done in a sec.”
“And Mark?” Tess said. “We need Mark.”
“Mark is naked,” Crystal said, shrugging. “He’ll be right down.”
“Okay, well chop chop,” Tess said. “This is serious shit.”
Tess hurried down the stairs and even in a jacket, the chill morning was brisk.
She rubbed her arms as she jogged across the quad to the cafeteria.
She checked her watch; a cheap thing she’d found in a bombed-out junk shop.
So far, it had kept perfect time, and she hadn’t needed to replace the battery yet.
It was five minutes to eight. Winter was starting to feel more like spring and she saw tiny white flowers blooming along the frosty grass.
That was something nice to see; green, lush grass.
The lawns at Urbana had been watered by the snow.
She found herself feeling a little hopeful at the sight of things growing.
Tess pushed open the cafeteria’s double doors.
There were already a few Free the Children people sitting at one of the long tables and they nodded good morning to her.
She was about to go scrounge up some coffee when Mara, a human woman who Tess was convinced must have been a bodybuilder before the invasion, hopped up from her chair and handed her a steaming paper cup of coffee.
“Creamer and sweetener, right?” Mara said.
Her voice was deceptively soft for how tall and muscular she was.
She probably could have passed for a Vampyren woman if she wanted, except that her dark hair was short.
Tess inwardly took note of that. It was good to pick up on your advantages and assets even if you didn’t know what you’d use them for yet.
Free the Children was ragtag but strong, she thought.
They’d done well rescuing some humans out of feeding tanks using some guerilla warfare techniques that kept the Council guessing.
They were a good sized group, but they were quick and they moved around a lot, never staying in one placetoolong.
Though she knew some people like Kal slipped in and out of working with them.
“What time are we leaving?” Mara said, taking a seat on a long bench again.
“Ten on the dot,” Tess said. “Just need to go over this plan one more time. It’s a little involved. But I’ve found a dark site where we’ll take the children and we’ll be getting to work stocking it with supplies and making sure it’s staffed after the mission. It’ll be some work.”
“We’re ready,” Mara said, and the others nodded in agreement. Tess’s ears perked up as others trickled through the door and waved hello before going straight to the coffee station in the corner.
Tess had worked with groups before. She’d fallen into leadership roles just as she’d fall into freeing kids.
But she was intimidated to find herself the head of a full fledged resistance cell like this one.
She’d been surprised to find that they didn’t have a real leader.
They always made decisions collectively.
She hadn’t wanted to step on toes but it had been their idea to designate her as the head of the cell and all of Free the Children now.
Mara glanced at the others as they sat around now, sipping their coffee, still waking up.
She looked like she was waiting for permission to say something and Tess braced herself.
“We just want you to know,” Mara said slowly, “we’re fully behind you.
The reason we wanted to change our name and have you lead us is, a lot of us feel that taking care of the kids should absolutely be the first priority of human liberation and for, if it’s possible, a truce with the Vampyren.
Because as much as we’d like to kick their asses right back to Vampyr or kill em’ all, it’s not happening.
They’re here and they’re not going anywhere and we have a lot of kids who are half Vampyr.
But they’re also half-human. We feel like you understand what the future will look like better than anyone.
That’s why we appointed you. We thought we should let you know.
” Mara nodded curtly following her little speech, and the others nodded in agreement and muttered their approval.
“Thank you,” Tess said, sipping her coffee.
“I appreciate that.” She figured the less said the better.
The remarks had overwhelmed her, but she didn’t want to get soppy about it.
Better to keep things business-like. Crystal arrived, and she looked like her usual wry self and once she had some coffee in her, she started chatting with everyone.
Mark arrived late and his gaze stuck to Crystal like glue as he sat down in back.
He adored her, Tess could tell. It suddenly occurred to Tess that if things with Kal became long-term, Crystal would sort of be like her sister-in-law and Kal would be her brother-in-law.
Not that anyone was bothering with marriage these days.
But she found she liked the idea of that.
If they could come out of this thing with some sense of family and connection, that would be alright.
Once everyone was assembled and seemingly awake, Tess took a breath and began going over the plan again. Their plot was a bit of a caper but it would take the Vampyren guards who kept watch outside the creche by surprise and it would get them away from their post.