Chapter 13 Tess
“Adiplomatic mission?” Tess said flatly.
She was half-heartedly packing a duffel that one of the other Free the Children people had loaned her.
She had originally come to Urbana with nothing and so had no bags of her own.
Now she slowly folded a t-shirt and tossed it in the bag as Kal bustled around, throwing his stuff into a backpack and seeming rattled. “I’m not a diplomat.”
“Sure, you are,” Kal said, shrugging. “As much as anyone else. You’re instrumental in creating this new government, this new… world. Whatever it is. If anyone should talk to them, it’s you.”
“But…” Tess stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “I’m pregnant.”
“It’s not going to be dangerous.” Kal dropped the pair of jeans he was folding and came over to her, cradling her face in his hands.
She rubbed her swollen stomach. She was six months along and only had a somewhat swollen appearance, even if Kal had noticed and marveled at the slight change.
People kept touching her belly when she was out and about on campus and telling her she didn’t look pregnant (she didn’t care for that at all).
“It’s not that, just…” She grunted and rubbed her eyes. “I’m just whining. I feel like nesting and I’ve been on-the-run before. Travel isn’t exactly exciting to me. Sometimes I do feel gross too. Heartburn and ugh…” She made a face and Kal kissed the tip of her nose.
“If you really don’t want to go, I will tell Loren you won’t,” Kal said.
Tess stood on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth, a long, sure kiss as if she were drawing comfort from out of his body. “No,” she murmured. “Iaminstrumental. It’s important that I go. But you have to rub my feet.”
“I’ll always rub your feet.” He pecked her lips again and took the t-shirt she was holding. “Let me pack for you. Sit down. Go down to the cafeteria, why don’t you? I heard something about homemade applesauce. All the humans are raving about it.”
“You don’t know what to pack,” Tess said warily.
“I’ll do my best,” Kal said, winking. “Go, go.”
* * *
Tess hadn’t even thoughtabout how they would actually be traveling to Los Angeles.
She’d traversed the country here and there and had become used to long-distance drives and really, anything was better than being stuffed inside a wooden crate.
But she had not been in an airplane in a very long time and she had never flown in asmallairplane, especially over a long distance.
But there was apparently a talented pilot and a supply of fuel and more than one plane on hand now, courtesy of Loren and his new government.
Now she stood on an expanse of pavement on a long-abandoned stretch of runway behind O’Hare which was half-bombed to kingdom come.
Loren was going on the trip and he was taking Kiera along.
Mark and Crystal were going as were Cassie and Danton, and Alek and Mindy.
It felt something like a couples retreat to Tess, or at least that’s how she was trying to think of it.
But that plane.
“It’s so small,” she said, her voice pitching up slightly.
The plane was a charter jet. It had belonged to some movie star or something in the days gone by. Now it was going to carry the eight of them all the way to Los Angeles. Tess’s stomach flipped over at the thought, but she tried not to betray her fear.
“I’ve flown a lot,” the pilot said. “I’ve become quite used to these human aircraft.
” His name was Dayle and he was Vampyren.
Tess didn’t like that at all. How would a Vampyren know how to fly a plane properly for such a long distance?
She made her concerns known and been told all about Dayle’s pilot credits.
Loren didn’t know him very well but his flying skills were solid.
Vampyren had aircrafts too, didn’t she know?
The principles were just the same. He’d flown this exact plane plenty of times for long stretches.
Would Kal or Loren ever put her in danger? Of course, not!
She remained skeptical.
Everyone else was climbing up the short staircase and into the plane. Tess rubbed her stomach, eyeing the plane nervously. Kal stood on the first step and held out his hand.
“I’ll rub your feet?” He said, wiggling his eyebrows. He had his backpack and her duffle. Everyone was waiting for them. Tess heaved a sigh and took his hand, climbing up after him.
The plane itself was luxurious. Now she wondered who it belonged to.
Whoever it was, had clearly been loaded.
Sometimes Tess sat around wondering what had become of the public figures of the world.
Many were dead, some were hiding out probably going unrecognized while scraping by like everyone else.
But she heard rumors that many had escaped to remote locations where the Vampyren threat had never reached.
She imagined desert islands full of movie stars and CEOs and politicians all arguing over their speared fish.
All the seats on the plane were big and cushy and upholstered in baby-soft leather. Tess took a seat and chirped in surprise when she accidentally touched a button and the seat reclined.
“Oh… That’s nice.” She had been having dull lower back pain so constantly in the last month that she hardly noticed it anymore but now she felt more comfortable than she had since getting pregnant, the pressure taken off her lower back as she reclined.
Kal handed her a tumbler of ice water and sat across from her, smirking as he grabbed her feet and removed her shoes.
“We’ll be in Los Angeles in no time,” Kal said. “Just relax.”
* * *
The first fewhours of the flight passed smoothly and Tess was able to relax just fine.
Kal rubbed her feet and then Crystal passed out plastic tubs of chicken pasta salad she’d packed for the flight as well as blood packs for the guys.
Tess ate and chatted with the girls. It all felt very domestic.
She even pretended she was one of those rich ladies, the kind of person who would be taking a charter jet in the days before the invasion.
She pretended she really was going on some fancy couple’s retreat with her friends and not on a serious mission to convince humans and Vampyrens they should stop brutalizing each other.
They were close to Los Angeles when things started to go wrong. They were so very close.
It started when she noticed that Mark kept checking his watch and wincing. Kal noticed too and said, “What is it?”
“We were scheduled to land a while ago,” Mark said. Now that Tess looked outside, she saw how dark it was. The sun had long set. They were supposed to land and get an escort to their lodging in downtown Los Angeles. “But the pilot hasn’t said anything.”
Tess glanced at Loren, in his seat by the window.
But he was snoozing. She couldn’t blame him.
He’d organized the whole thing and was probably worn out from his duties in the Council.
But now she felt nervous that something was wrong.
She sat back in her seat and took a long drink of water.
Kal picked up on her tension and reached over to squeeze her knee.
“Let’s just check on the pilot,” Kal said. He was trying too hard to sound calm. She could hear the tightness in his voice. But she only smiled at him.
“I’ll go with you,” Mark said.
The two brothers got up and headed to the cockpit. Tess took yet another deep breath and sat back in her seat, Crystal shot her a reassuring smile even as the plane hit a bad bit of turbulence and shook around so violently that Tess yelped in surprise, holding her stomach protectively.
“Crystal,” Tess said, tears pricking her eyes. Crystal grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“We’ll be okay, sweetie,” Crystal said.
But then she heard shouting from the cockpit and her heart skipped a beat.
“You’re traitors!” The pilot was shouting. “I’m taking this plane down! I’m taking this plane down with all you traitors in itandyour human whores!”
The plane dipped and then began to plunge.
“No.” It was the only word Tess managed. She was too afraid to scream. But Loren was awake now and dashing to the cockpit along with the other guys and Cassie, who looked fit to murder.
“It was a set-up,” Cassie said as she ran by Tess who felt frozen to her seat. “It was a fucking set up!”
The men were taking down the pilot as the plane dove in a death spiral towards the ground.
Tess opened her mouth and screamed bloody murder.
“Fuck!” Mark was shouting. “Oh shit…”
Tess shut her eyes as she gripped the arms of her seat with white knuckles.
She was going to die, she thought. She hated that she had no profound thought about it.
There was only a desperate fear and her heart was pounding so loud it was painful.
She felt something on her face and opened her eyes again.
Crystal was fixing a breathing mask over her nose and mouth, fixing the strap behind her head.
She heard a thump as if a body had hit the floor and then more scrambling and shouting.
They were going to crash. They were going to crash and die…
“Okay, okay, okay,” somebody was saying. Danton, she thought. He sounded far too calm.
But suddenly the plane was evening out. Tess’s stomach lurched as the nose pointed up again and then more evenly descended toward the ground.
“I gotta land!” Danton was saying. “There’s not enough fuel to get to L.A.! Son of a bitch never planned for us to get there! He was gonna crash us along the coast!”
Cassie said, “I think we’re somewhere around Orange County. Can you land?”
She was pretty sure she heard Danton say, “Notwell.”
“Oh fuck everything,” Tess murmured into her mask.