Chomp

Not for the first time this week, I woke up before my alarm.

Rolling over, I glanced at the glaring red digital display of the clock on the bedside table; almost four o’clock. Darius was still motionless beside me, his body radiating much-needed heat from under the covers.

Sighing, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got to my feet. The sky was still dark and it didn’t provide any hint of light through the window to help me navigate our apartment. My toe immediately found the doorframe; I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to prevent waking him up. Instead, eyes watering, I shuffled my way into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

I wasn’t sure why I even bothered.

Neither of us had bothered going grocery shopping in the past week because work had been crazy. The Organization had been abuzz with so many new things all in preparation for a more fatal blow. I pulled out the orange juice that only seemed to have a dribble left in it, not even bothering with a glass.

Most likely, I’d grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to work—the kind loaded with bacon, eggs, and god only knew how much salt. I’d need every bit of energy I had for today.

I was excited—or so, that’s what the strange feeling in my stomach indicated. Butterflies, my dad used to call them. But I never really did understand why someone would compare the feeling to bugs in their stomach, or how the comparison even came about.

Then again, scientists were often curious people.

Darius wiped Team F’s directives off the whiteboard with the side of his hand before jotting down a new set of details. “The hive Team G will be targeting,” he said, back turned to the room, “Is fairly small, but that does not mean you should let your guards down.”

He scribbled the words ‘14 basic’ and ’2 unknown’ on the board in the blue marker. I frowned. With how detail-oriented and thorough he was, it was unusual for him to even have anything remotely close to unknown. “Our intel hasn’t been able to confirm how often this happens, but there are two unknowns that have seldom been spotted around the hive.”

But enough for him to have picked up on it and feel the need to warn us. He and I caught one another’s gaze briefly before I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Sir,” I said, standing. The word still felt foreign on my tongue. “I understand that the two are unknowns, but that can’t be all we know of them.”

“That is why they’re called unknowns…” a voice came from the back.

I ignored the couple of snickers that broke out behind me. Instead, I cleared my throat and continued. “I just mean… There has to have been something to tip us off that they’re unknowns. A lot of the suckers we come across aren’t on the registry or anything, but they’re still not tagged as that.”

That silenced the bastards.

Darius’ eyes twinkled, though he didn’t smile. He couldn’t. “That’s a fair question. Unfortunately, the higher-ups believe that type of information is beyond our need,” he said as placidly as he could, though the bitterness managed to seep through. “I assure you—all of you—that once any more information is released about these unknowns, you’ll be notified. Nothing withheld on my end, and that’s a promise.”

There were a few whoops of encouragement, and I smiled. Having a soldier in charge was the best thing that we could have hoped for. “Any other questions?” he asked, surveying the room.

By the end of the session, I had the details down pat. Location: 1872 Chesapeake Lane, a large stone manor with a well-kept yard. Targets: fourteen, potentially sixteen—god, I hoped it was sixteen. Team: Yvonne, Torrey, and Manx. And, as per usual, we were required to leave the house vampire-free.

The vibrations of the jeep hummed inside of me as I leafed through the fourteen profiles of the vampires there. My shoulders sagged further and further as I realized they didn’t seem to look all that intimidating. They looked mainly like run-of-the-mill family types, the mouse-like prey that vampires pounced on easily.

“You said it was 1872?” Manx asked in his deep tone, turning his head back to glance at us in the back from the driver’s seat. It was the only seat that could bear the full breadth of his shoulders. He had stopped alongside the curb and killed the engine, waiting for a reply.

All of us looked out at the property. “Wow. Whoever owned it before was probably fucking loaded,” Yvonne commented, observing the building. She had a point; not only was the house enormous and made of thick, grey stone, but the property expanded farther back than what we could see. All of which was in the great NYC; must have been plastic surgeons or something.

“Shame a sucker stole it,” Manx growled, opening the door and getting out. The jeep swung back, compensating for the loss of such a weight. As a human tank, it was a wonder how Manx managed to move at all. “Just nothing they won’t steal, is there?”

We all joined him outside the car, meeting at the back and gathering stuff from the trunk.

“Nope,” I replied dully. “So, according to the blueprints, there are three entrances. Front door to the East, back to the West, and a side entrance on the North. The prints from the city are a little unclear, but it also looks like there might be an exit via some sort of cellar as well. Anyone want to call dibs?”

“Front door, please!” Yvonne chirped, attaching one of four rounds to her belt. Between those and her two handguns, it was a wonder her pants stayed up. “I like to make a grand entrance, y’know?”

Typical.

Torrey nodded, agreeing with her as he always did. “I’ll take the back door, then. We can probably all meet up in the centre once the entire place has been cleared.”

“Manx?” I asked.

He ducked to avoid hitting his head off the open trunk as he pulled out two scimitars. He slammed the trunk, frightening a few birds that had been perched on the hydro pole near us. “The cellar,” he answered. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him I still needed something from the trunk.

“A fantastic choice, Manxy,” Yvonne giggled. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled his lips into a malformed smile with her two forefingers. The result was scary to say the least. “If they think they’re fucked with us, they’re going to piss themselves when they see you!”

She giggled, Manx rolled his eyes, and I detected a faint haze of jealously steaming off Torrey. I smiled. “Sounds like a plan, then.”

Yvonne planted a kiss on Manx’s ebony skin before letting go. “Ready?” she asked us, her bright green eyes eager as usual. “Let’s hit those fuckers with everything we’ve got!”

With that, she bounced away, followed by Manx’s heavy steps and Torrey’s stalky saunter. Slowly, I turned back to the trunk and popped it open to grab my own weapon.

The handle was a hard, perfectly molded Kevlar and the blade looked as though it had never seen a day in the field. The light danced off of the gleaming edge of the scythe whenever I swung it. One would have thought that it would have been the perfect weapon for the battlefield, but truth be told, I would have traded this piece of junk my old scythe any day.

I sighed deeply, pushing aside the woe; that weapon was long gone, and so were the memories and people associated with it.

Finally, I shut the trunk and headed after my associates.

The back, front, and cellar doors had all been covered by them, so it left the side entrance to me. I hadn’t paid much attention to what the room’s purpose was, but as I twisted the stiff doorknob and pulled the door open, it became clear; I had to squeeze my butt past a washing machine that had been pulled from the wall.

Cursing my large hips, I managed through the limited space the door provided. “What kind of mansion has such a tiny room, anyway?” I cursed under my breath. If the rest of the house was as suspiciously tight as this room was, my scythe would prove to be useless.

Not that it really mattered, I supposed.

I made my way out of the laundry room into what looked like a servant’s quarters, including a small powder room and cleaning room. Ducking behind walls, I cleared all of them, making sure they were void of any sign of vampires. Neither had even a spec of dust out of place.

Sullenly, I walked into the entrance hall.

“What, brought out the big scythe for nothing?” I looked up at the mezzanine to see Yvonne perched on the ornate railings, a large grin plastered across her face. “It’s a shame. I like seeing you in action!”

I shrugged. “Guess I drew the shortest stick. How were things for you? I didn’t hear any shots.”

“Then that answers that, doesn’t it?” she whined, scooting herself along the railing to the part that descended with the stairs. She slid down it playfully, uttering a high-pitched ‘wee’ as she did.

When she reached the bottom, she swung her leg back over to stand with the other. “Here I was thinking something like this would be fun. Maybe Torrey or Manxy got some action?” she asked, pouting her lips.

I had been teamed up with her several times before; though she was a competent soldier, it was still difficult to get used to her annoying, bubbly tone. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Nope,” Torrey said, emerging from somewhere to my left. He had taken the back door, though it looked like he might have cleared the whole main floor. “Not a peep.”

“Maaaaaaanxy?” Yvonne cooed, placing a hand near her mouth to amplify the sound. As if she needed it. “Any fun, Manxy?”

There were a few seconds of silence from the cellar. The three of us exchanged a brief glance before heading down there. Yvonne was the first to make it down there, whipping and bending around the corner like a lithe cat.

Torrey and I pulled up beside one another, reaching the cellar floor in tandem. Yvonne had stopped to come shoulder to shoulder with Manx, her pistols both drawn and aimed forward. As I trotted over to them, I caught a glimpse of what they were staring at.

The eight children squinting up at us couldn’t have been more than six years old—visually speaking, anyway. They huddled together, most sitting, casting an arm over their eyes due to the light pouring in from the door.

“Those monsters…” Manx boomed, pointing a scimitar at the children. They all flinched and squeaked, trying to make themselves smaller. “They blooded children!”

Torrey unsheathed his rapier calmly. “That may be so,” he said, his voice placid and measured. “But they’re nothing but monsters themselves now. I’ll take the two on the right.”

Manx nodded furiously. “And I’ve got dibs on the ones on the left!” Yvonne announced. “Sorry babes—you lose my sympathy when you lose your humanity.”

“Please!” one of them whimpered. He was thin and rather frail looking, though it might have just been the rags he was wearing. He shifted from his butt to his knees and bowed forward. “W-W-We didn’t do anything wrong; we just--”

He didn’t have time to finish. In the blink of an eye, Torrey’s rapier had sliced clean through his neck, sending the child-monster’s head rolling across the dirt floor toward the rest of the children. Blood sprayed from his severed jugular, dying the dirt and everything surrounding the headless body thick crimson. It was the catalyst for all the chaos; unsurprisingly, they shrieked, and got to their feet, trying to scurry around and escape like rats.

As my teammates disposed of the vermin, I stood there motionless.

“Useless, more like!” Manx snarled. “She just—”

“That’s enough, Mister Jäger. We’re soldiers, not children, thank you,” Darius interrupted, raising a hand lazily to quiet my associate. Where Manx couldn’t possibly hide what he was feeling—livid, after my fiancé put him in his place—Darius’ face was quite unreadable.

His dark blue eyes swirled around with something, but it was impossible to tell what. “I’m sure Miss Randt had her reasons,” he replied calmly to Manx, placing a firm, comforting hand on the larger man’s bicep. He then turned to me. “Well?”

I stood in silence, feeling the burning gaze of both of them as I neglected to answer right away. “They were… just kids,” I finally whispered. Immediately, I knew how silly it sounded.

“Mister Jäger, would you please excuse us?” Darius asked suddenly.

If I was shocked by his reaction, Manx looked like he might keel over. “Excuse me?” he sputtered incredulously, swinging one of his massive hands in the air.

“I could have sworn you heard me quite well. I asked for you to excuse us so that we could have a word.”

The smile Darius wore was a warning one, something that both Manx and I knew very well. It was the look that made you decide to swallow your words, because there was no sense arguing. Manx turned on his heel, grumbling as he threw the door open and slammed it behind him.

“Always such a hot-tempered character,” Darius murmured, his eyes fixated on the door that still shook from my associate’s exit. “But he does have a point.”

“I know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

I nodded. “They’re vampires, and we kill vampires,” I regurgitated dully. “But they didn’t get to choose—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter!” I forced angrily. My blood boiled, thinking about it. The youngest child in that room looked as though she had only recently learned to walk. In what world did that seem right? “Even if they didn’t get to choose to be turned, how could you expect babies to off themselves, or to know that that’s the right thing to do?”

Darius’ lip curled. “We don’t,” he replied shortly. His answers were always short and to the point when he was angry. “Which is why we send people like you to do the job. If you can’t be an effective soldier, I need to know right now.”

“Effective soldier? Is that really what this is about?” I snarled. “You know I could beat the shit out of almost any soldier in our organization. I hardly think—”

“I didn’t ask whether or not you were a good fighter. Effective soldiers do what is expected of them without question. We both know this.”

I whipped my head away from him, grinding my teeth. His hard-headedness was admirable in certain circumstances, but certainly not this one.

“I am an effective soldier,” I spat finally.

He smiled briefly before nodding and clapping me on the shoulder. “It might not always be glorious, but it’s what we have to do for the betterment of everyone. We all know this,” he said softly, pushing a wayward hair from my face and tucking it behind my ear. He only used that tone when we were alone; I missed it. “That being said, I’d like you to take a day tomorrow. Get your mind off things. Copy, soldier?”

I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice. “Yes, sir.”