Dior worked his way up the floors. There were four hospital levels, each dealing with a different type of illness and staffed by humans with medical backgrounds. None knew the location of the healer.
The next three floors held supplies for the hospital, and Dior spent some time helping to carry heavy items up the staircase and gathering information.
The next floor the hospital staff used for sleeping and breaks, but the floor above, someone lived in. In a small square of an office tucked into a corner wall, there were two makeshift beds, along with basic supplies.
The next flight of stairs opened onto the roof. Dior almost turned to return inside when he heard a woman’s voice.
He walked around the squat square that held the entrance to the stairwell, and a found a young woman washing clothing in a tub, using the roof-top water-tank for her water supply.
Items she had washed were laid out flat in the sunlight to dry.
A pretty thing, Dior observed as she saw him and froze. Her striking green eyes were beautifully expressive, shifting from contentment to fear within a heartbeat. He knew those eyes, he thought.
“Who are you?” She asked, dropping the item she held into the water with a splash.
“I am Dior,” Dior held his hands out to show that they were empty.
A blade came against Dior’s throat. “Why are you here?” The man behind him growled. The protective Charon, Dior deducted.
“I mean no harm,” the gargoyle could disarm his attacker, but decided it would only exacerbate the situation. “I was just curious. Seeking the healer that everyone speaks of.”
The girl walked up to him. She wore a singlet top and a skirt that were soaked through from her watery labour, her skin pebbling in the breeze and her nipples standing against the fabric.
A fragile looking woman, Dior thought, not vivid enough for what he considered beauty – a daisy flower where his eye was normally caught by roses – but there was something about her that had him fascinated, his heart picking up its beat within his chest.
“He is Other,” she said, her eyes on his intense and searching. “Not vampire, not wolf. Green back light to his eyes.”
The man behind him did not speak, letting the woman direct the interaction.
“You are a witch,” Dior replied without breaking the connection between their gazes. There was no Other in her eyes. Her pupils dilated, and colour pinked her cheeks.
“No, I am not a witch,” she told him drifting closer. “Though my father was a warlock. I have seen you before,” she frowned slightly as if trying to place him in her memory.
He had seen her before, too. Twice. Once scattering vitamins like seeds as she ran through the debris of a battle, and once hiding in the undergrowth at the side of a railway line just as Elior’s convoy arrived in the city.
“I am certain I would recall you if so,” he replied. Not a lie, he told himself.
“Hmm,” she tilted her head. “Why do you seek the healer?”
“Information and understanding,” he tried to see the man who held the blade against his throat. A big man, but, from the angle of his arm, not as tall as himself. A bodyguard for the delicate woman, or her mate? Be careful of Charon, the woman had told him earlier in the day, he is protective.
“What information and understanding?” She asked.
“What is it that you seek to do here?” Dior asked her. She smelt wonderful, he thought as the breeze carried her scent towards him. Like springtime flowers warmed by the sun. He could feel himself grow hard as he imagined peeling the wet top away from her breasts and warming her nipples with his tongue.
“Help,” she replied with simple belief in the word. “I seek to help the people here.”
There was a scream from the markets below them, and she whirled to investigate its cause. Charon shoved him to the side and ran to the edge of the wall.
“Vampires,” Charon said to her. An incredibly handsome man, Dior thought, tall and well built with a head of curled dark hair that would rival Etienne’s. Together they made a striking pair, leaning over the edge of the building to watch what took place below.
“They are searching for you,” Dior realized. “Why are they searching for you?”
“Time to go,” Charon told the healer urgently, loosening a rope tied to the roof. She ran to him without hesitation, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. He gripped the rope and jumped from the roof.
Dior leaned over the edge and watched the man land on a window ledge on the opposite side, his hear racing. It was vital that he did not lose sight of her, he thought.
Charon lifted the window, and the woman slid inside before he followed, and closed the window behind him.
In the alleyway below, a force vampires kicked in the door to the building.
Dior took a step back and ran, jumping off the building and landing with cat-like grace on the same window-sill. He lifted it and angled himself inside. The room was empty, the floorboards exposed as if whoever had stripped it had been determined to take anything of use from it.
He opened the door into a narrow hallway. He could smell cabbage cooking and hear a baby crying. Someone was swearing, and someone else was f-king, the strike of a bedhead against the wall unmistakable.
The cabbage covered the scent of the woman and man, but the hallway led to a stairwell, and looking down, past the person sleeping on the landing in a pile of blankets, he could see them several flights of stairs down.
He followed them down to the ground floor. They paused by the door, looking out into the alleyway strung with laundry, and then walked out casually.
Dior fell into step several meters behind them.
“Damn it,” he realized belatedly the reason for his preoccupation with this green-eyed woman. “Shit.” He wouldn’t know for sure unless Etienne and Blaise shared his reaction, however. He needed to get the healer away from her guardian, and back to his building.
Charon moved like a predator, Dior observed, weaving his way through the crowds of the market with confidence and grace – not a human, but some type of Other.
Dior saw Etienne amongst the crowd, and further down, Blaise, his partners either tracking him, or their own investigations having brought them to the market. They fell in around the man and the woman, keeping just enough apart to be unnoticed, but never letting them leave their sights.
As they passed out of the market and into open air, Etienne broke off, taking a fire escape to the roof, and shifting into his gargoyle form in order to track from the sky.
There was a blur and suddenly the woman was gone, stolen from under Charon’s hand. The dark-haired man roared his rage and began to pursue, shoving his way through the pedestrian traffic, only to come to a snarling stand-still in the centre of the street, looking around to find no sign of what had stolen the healer from him.
Dior knew. He had seen that type of blurred movement before. There were only six creatures that he knew that could move like that.
Blaise came to his side. “So…”
“We are going to the vampire stronghold.”
“Why?” Blaise wondered.
“The girl is our mate.”
Blaise’s eyebrows lifted. “That is quite a statement.”
They watched the dark-haired man stalk back into the market.
“We had best rescue her from the vampires, then,” Blaise observed. “Before he does.”
They waited for Etienne to join them, the griffin gargoyle returning to the rooftop to change clothing before taking the fire-escape down to the ground.
“Nate,” he told them as he joined them. “He was very angry with the girl.”
“Our mate,” Blaise told him. “According to Dior.”
“I scented her,” Dior murmured his explanation watching as the vampire force that had invaded the hospital return through the market. They brought no prisoners. “She smells like spring.”
“Spring, hm? Why did Nate steal her from the other man?” Etienne wondered.
“A very good question,” Dior replied. “She is a healer. There is a hospital co-op set up in a building off the market. She heals the injured and ill there, and in return, they bring excess food supplies. Some come for aid, as well. From what I was able to determine, the people of our city are starving.”
“The vampires have resources coming in constantly to support the city,” Etienne frowned.
“They are not distributing it, and they have stripped the warehouses and supermarkets,” Dior told them. “Or so these people believe.”
“We need to speak with Elior,” Etienne pointed out. “As much as I dislike vampires, we need to hear his side.”
“Agreed.” Dior began to work his way through the streets, to where the vampires controlled entry. They passed through the guarded barricades without challenge and headed towards the building that they knew Elior was using as his residence.
At the door to the building, they were stopped and searched by vampire soldiers, and their arrival radioed ahead. They passed through a foyer busy with vampires in uniform, into an elevator, and Etienne selected the top floor.
“Why would vampires not distribute food to the population of this city?” Blaise ruminated as the elevator rose.
“A good question,” Dior agreed. “And one that we will ask Elior.”
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out to be greeted by more armed soldiers. After a swift search, they were passed into the suite which Elior occupied with his mates.
Jacinta opened the door for them. The chamber was empty, but from the smell and the state of the bed, seen through the open bedroom doors, and the closed bathroom door, Elior and his mates were at home.
“He is just finishing,” the blonde vampire’s lips curled a little in a sneer.
The bathroom door opened and Elior walked out, still buttoning his shirt. He closed the door behind him, on the noise of the shower and his mates’ conversation. Jacinta helped him on with his waistcoat.
“Dior, Etienne, and Blaise,” Elior’s smile was tight as the blonde vampire handed him his tie. “How may I help you?”
“Why are the people of this city starving?” Dior asked.
A muscle in the corner of Elior’s jaw clenched. “There are limited resources. With the attacks from the other realm, food production has fallen to below survival rate.”
“So, you are letting people starve,” Dior inhaled deeply. “Why not redirect resources into food production?”
“Guarding fields and cattle from attack from the sky is proving exceptionally difficult. The manpower required to do so is considerable. We, quite simply, do not have the facilities to do it on the required scale.” Elior shrugged on his jacket. “Vampires need blood and people need food in order to produce it. Their death is our death. Don’t think that I do this lightly, Dior.”
“You are hoarding food.”
“Yes,” Elior agreed. “We are conserving resources, being selective as to who is fed, and who is not.”
“That is unacceptable, Elior.”
“If we were to open the resources we have, distribute them to everyone in this city, we have sufficient to feed everyone for one month, Dior. One month. After which, they return to starving, and we in turn begin to starve. By conserving resources, we can keep a number of humans and Others alive for one year, which in turn keeps us fed for that time period.”
Elior leaned against the window frame. “I find no joy in this Dior. A call needed to be made, and I made it, but I am exploring other options, continuously.
“We are using werewolf packs to guard cattle herds, we have warlocks and witches shielding fields of produce, and we have mer fishing for us. But the fact remains that whilst humans and Others hide from the winged attackers, they are not producing food, and unless food is produced, we do not have the ability to replace food consumed.
“In every city around the world, my armies are collecting all the stored food that they can – everything canned, preserved, or frozen, and everything that can be. We are operating factories to convert what raw food we have been able to gather into canned produce. We are collecting vitamins and supplements. Because,” he turned from the window. “This battle is only the beginning of the fight for our lives.”
“I understand,” Dior regarded the vampire. “But it does not make it right.”
“Very well, Dior, take the decision out of my hands. You decide who starves now, and who starves later,” Elior’s eyes flashed red with his Other. “Because that is what this comes down to. Do we starve the harems of my soldiers in order to feed the children of this city, so that this world has no army to fight for it? Do we feed the sick and the elderly now, knowing that they will be the first to die when deprivation comes later, or do we keep the young fit and healthy so that when this is over, we have a labour force to produce more food?
“If you think you can make a better decision, then do, Dior, because I will tell you,” the vampire ran his hand through his hair. “I am getting tired of making the hard choices.”
“We will think on the problem,” Dior glanced at Etienne. “Before we speak to you again.”
“I would appreciate it,” the tension left Elior’s posture, and the weariness returned to his eyes as the red Other fled the grey. “I am not uncaring of the plight of those of the city, or of the world, Dior.”
“I see that, Elior,” Dior did. “There is another matter.”
“Yes?” Elior sighed heavily. Jacinta brought him a bag of blood from the mini-refrigerator built into the cabinetry.
“Nate stole our mate.”
“Nate stole your mate,” Elior’s astonishment was almost comical. He looked at Jacinta blankly.
“Nate retrieved his doggy,” she murmured, a vocalization that would have been inaudible to humans.
“Ah,” Elior sucked on the blood thoughtfully. “The girl’s blood has healing properties for vampires, Dior.”
“She is a healer.”
“Yes. But my scientists can make her blood into pills which can be distributed amongst my men and used for first aid.”
“She is our mate.”
“Perhaps we can come to a mutually agreeable arrangement,” Elior considered him. “Nate finds the girl tiresome. We could surrender her into your keeping, in return for a weekly blood draw so that we can manufacture the pills which will save my men’s lives.”