Page 18 of Before We Burn

It didn’t matter regardless. We have another mission, and this one is bigger. The vampire we caught in the gas station was more than helpful. She sang like a song bird in exchange for her life. Supposedly, there is an academy far up north where we wouldn’t think to look. It was cold, drab, and fucking far from society.

We sent a few old drones to scope it out. It was all the normal stuff, including communities formed after the war. It was suspicious if anyone lived alone. Most houses had anywhere from four to ten people. Vampires—from what humans understood—couldn’t tolerate being in the same space for very long without a clear leader. The witches said it usually was an older vampire—someone with more experience and power to keep the younger ones in line.

The witches were helpful, mostly because they had to be. The Premier Leader's order was to kill any witches who don’t follow protocol. They are enslaved to the government, owned like they aren’t people. I’m growing tired of it; most of the witches I’ve come to know have never hurt a fly. We were taught in basic that it was a necessary evil, that without the witches we wouldn’t stand a chance against the vampires.

I hate that now, but when I first joined, I thought it all made sense—that witches are a threat to national security, their capabilities ranging from apothecary to reincarnation. But now that I’m older and can use my better judgement, I see they were really never a threat, and it is starting to bother me.

I walk into our armory, grabbing the things other people wouldn’t think about. Handwarmers are first on my list, because the temperature in Credence is almost always in the negatives. Before the war, this would’ve been called something else, just like the rest of the world. But with war and people who want nothing more than to maintain power, things are lost, and most of that was our history.

After I finish gathering my odds and ends, I meet Benny in our interrogation room where he’s with one of our strongest witches, Hera. She’s an older witch; you can see the lines in her face from every time she smiled or frowned. She’s kind, even though her situation isn’t the greatest.

Most of us respect her, but the few who don’t make it…hard for her here. Those of us who care about her try to stop it, reporting it to Major Hendrix and demanding those who find pleasure in her torture be punished. Nothing ever happened, though. Witches aren’t people here, and human rights were for humans in their eyes.

So we took it into our own hands. Anytime we saw Hera with a mark on her, we would find out who did it and do what they did to her ten-fold.

I slide into one of the chairs as Hera leans over bullets, her lips moving in a hushed tone, creating the UV aspect of them. Humans have come a long way in our technology and development, but after the war, everything halted. All our previous knowledge seemed to disappear, and we had to essentially start over. We won the war but lost in so many other ways.

Some people were able to create big inventions, like a holograph phone, but others were smaller—mostly reimagined cell phones. But there was never enough funding to make them popular. The radios had gone silent, and the world lost communication with each other. The only means of contacting people is through the holograph phones that operate on a witch's magic, which is unreliable. The magic is too unstable, and the more people who try to use them, the less they work.

Everyone hates the idea of going back to using radios and regular phones. They think they’re too easily traceable, that the vampires and witches would be able to track them down. They are all fools. Vampires can track you down regardless of what you use. They just need to want to.

Hera looks up at me, her spell done and the bullets now emitting a blue light like no other. I find it oddly comforting in a dark way.

“You look less handsome than yesterday. What happened?” Hera’s sweet voice breaks through my thoughts, bringing me back to the cold cement cell. Her chains drag against the floor as she shifts uncomfortably.

I look at Benny, sighing heavily. “We can’t take those off her?”

He shakes his head sadly. He knows better than I do that the consequences of not following protocol are less than favorable.

“Stop trying to change the subject, Everett. What happened?” she asks again, and this time I feel the weight of her words.

I shrug. “What didn’t happen?” I look at Benny, who looks just as exhausted as I feel. Hera’s eyes bounce between us, continuing like that until we provide her an answer.

“They fucking sent us into a trap,” Benny spit out, like it was molten lava burning on his tongue.

Hera’s eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Explain.”

I knew this would happen, and this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell her. As much as we love her, she is very much a motherly figure. She will try to fight this battle as if it is her own, and I can’t have that.

I slide my chair closer, taking her porcelain hand into my deep brown one. Her hands are small and fragile—the type of hands you know have seen hard work but were still cared for with so much love.

“Hera, no offense,” I speak softly. I need her to understand that some things need to be forgotten. Moved on from. “We are soldiers; we follow orders and figure things out as they’re thrown at us. This is one of those things. We know our bosses are assholes, so don’t worry about it. This isn’t something you can fix. We just gotta figure it out.”

The room goes silent while Benny paces behind me. He doesn’t like what I said, and I don’t care. No one is watching us right now, and if they are, I'll deal with that later. This military is fucked in so many ways.

“Do you know how vampires were created?” Hera asks, gently. I shake my head and she smiles at me. It’s warm and inviting, making me wish we were in a different time.

“Vampires were created to protect witches at first. We had been discovered, and so many of us were dying. A witch we do not speak of decided to dabble in the dark depths of our craft, finding a way to bring her sister back from the dead.” She takes a deep breath, tears forming in her eyes as she drifts into a memory.

“When she was successful, she was met with something much darker. Something filled with hunger and restlessness. The beast retained none of its memories, but still the resurrected witch was grateful to the one who brought her back. They had a long, prosperous relationship until the sister began to grow old. She didn’t want to die. So her sister turned her.”

Hera’s eyes are distant and full of hurt. “Vampires were our allies. But jealousy will lead you to do crazy things.” A tear falls, and she quickly wipes it away. “A war started over the witch we do not speak of and her sister that would last for another thousand years until we established a treaty with their direct descendent. So every two-hundred years, a child is sacrificed to the vampires as a show of good faith to avoid a war. That line has now since passed, and all of their living descendants have been killed.”

The room falls into silence. I had never heard that lore before. The idea that the witches created the vampires made it somehow worse.

“Was it worth it?” Benny asks, before I can form a coherent sentence.

Hera looks at him, a subtle grin on her face. “I would protect my sisters by any means necessary. It’s not much different from what you boys are doing here. Hunting witches you don’t want to hunt, killing vampires who don’t even want to kill anymore.” Her attention locks on me as she continues, “We are always progressing, mutating. Learning ways to better ourselves—even if we are monsters.”