Once It Gets Dark

I stood in front of my door, cursing myself as I searched my bag for the keys. The sun was about to set, and since Hamburg had fallen, it was really not a good idea for a woman to be outside after dark.

Cold sweat formed on my forehead as my fingers rummaged through all the clutter I had been schlepping around with me. Damn it! Could I have left them inside? Could I have really been that stupid? Should I call my friend Julia to see if I could spend the night at her place? Should I call a locksmith? Should I—?

I let out a shaky sigh of relief when I heard the jangling of metal from deep inside my tote. I fished out my keys and was about to unlock the front door of the apartment building when I froze—there was a presence right behind me.

“Be silent and open the door, human,” a raspy male voice whispered into my ear.

He had appeared out of nowhere, but now he was so close that I could feel the warmth of his body against my back. Before I was able to scream or turn around, a big hand covered my mouth. He was pressed against my back now, trapping me between his body and the painted wood of the entryway, the leather armor of his uniform digging into my shoulders. I knew he was wearing a uniform because that is what all Veril soldiers wore, and I knew he was a Veril soldier because they were the reason I should not have been outside once it got dark.

“You smell so good, human.” His breath was hot against my neck, his lips brushing my ear as he spoke, “If you do not open the door this instant, I will have you right here on your doorstep.”

I was paralyzed with fear, but at the same time—to my horror—I felt myself reacting to him, to his voice and his strong body so close to mine. For a moment, I gave in, relaxing against him, losing myself in his scent.

“You smell good, too,” I whispered.

Why had I said that? Was I out of my mind? At university, I’d heard my fellow students speculate about the Veril’s ability to twist human minds and bend them to their will. Was he doing that to me right now?

For the briefest moment, I felt him tense against me, but then his strong muscles relaxed, and he laughed softly, his breath tickling my skin. Apparently he had been as surprised by my reaction as I had.

“I am glad that you think so.” I thought I heard amusement ringing in his voice, but did the Veril even have that—humor? “Now open, before the last bit of my self-restraint runs out.”

And I did. My hands were shaking as I turned the damned keys in the lock—if only I had found them a little bit earlier—and he pushed against the door.

I had no choice. Nobody was going to come to my aid, even though the street, lined with little bars and restaurants, was still bustling with people… mostly men, of course.

Even in the unlikely case that somebody did want to help, my assailant was within his perfectly good rights to capture me, and only a fool would dare to pick a fight with a Kirtim Shenk warrior.

After the massacre of Hamburg and our country’s forced capitulation by the Veril, we’d feared the worst: occupation by their troops, the loss of all our territory, or even total annihilation as punishment for our sins. But the Veril had been more lenient with us than we deserved.

All they had demanded were three things: The first one was the permanent right to keep their army stationed here while my country was demilitarized completely—a safety measure, they said, so we would not be able to attack them again. Secondly, the city of Hamburg—which had already been conquered—would remain Veril property and stay under the rule of General Tsul Vo’ren. The Butcher of Hamburg, as my people called him behind closed doors. He had been in command of the decisive battle—of the massacre—that made us realize the sheer superiority of our enemy and led to our immediate surrender.

The territorial requests the Veril had made of my country were small; we had been dreading much, much worse. After all, it had been us who started the war, and we had seen in Hamburg just how grossly we had underestimated the Veril’s power and dark magic.

The Counsel of Twelve, the leaders of the Veril nation, promised peace and autonomy with no more deaths—if we met one final condition. They had no need for more land or power, as their territories were vast and bountiful, free from our dimension’s spatial constraints. But there was one thing they did not have: women.

Apparently, no girls had been born in decades, and even though their race lived longer than humans, they were facing the end of their kind.

When our governments met, Suchil Tem, Head Counsellor of the Twelve, had stated their third and final condition: Veril soldiers would have the right to procreate with any unmarried woman of their choosing, and twelve young women were to be given as wives to the most important Veril officials.

Since he’d had no choice, and maybe also because he wasn’t an unmarried woman himself, our chancellor, Kanzler Alexander Höcker, had agreed. The peace treaty was signed, and our rights were signed away with it.

Cool air engulfed me as the Veril maneuvered me forwards, pushing me over the threshold and into the building, my body taut against his. I lived in a typical city house with two apartment units on each floor, and the old stone walls and high ceilings provided excellent insulation from the humid summer heat outside.

His fingers were firmly closed around my wrist, and I felt the threat of his inhuman strength as he pulled me tighter against him and whispered, “Show me where you live.”

Instead of responding, I tried to yank my arm free but didn’t manage to move his hand in the slightest. In response, he tightened his grasp, making me inhale in pain.

His voice had a menacing tone as he spoke into my ear again, “I am much stronger than you, and I am much faster than you, human. You cannot run from me, and you most definitely cannot fight me. Do not be a fool and make this harder than it has to be. Now, again, tell me where you live.”

“Second floor,” I said, gritting my teeth in pain, “Please, you’re hurting me.”

“Go!” He used his body to push me roughly towards the elevator but loosened his hold on my wrist a little bit.

All I could hear was his breathing behind me and the wild beating of my own heart while we waited for what felt like an eternity.

My house was equipped with what had to be the world’s slowest elevator, a relic from the 1980s. When it finally arrived, I pressed my eyes shut. I knew it was childish, but I didn’t think I could bear the sight of his monstrous form in the lift’s mirror. With a metallic scraping, the door slid closed behind me, and when he spoke to me again, he didn’t whisper anymore. His voice was hoarse, and even though it had a tint of the otherworldly timbre of Veril speech, I was surprised at how good his English was.

Our occupiers mostly used English when they communicated with us. It seemed they had no particular interest in making us learn Veril, or maybe they just didn’t think that we were smart enough for it. But they also refused to speak German, surely out of spite for us. But of course, why should the conqueror have to learn the language of the conquered?

It was probably only a matter of time until more of us would know how to speak the Veril tongue—considering that the capitulation had only been five months ago—but for now, English was the lingua franca between our nations. The Veril usually spoke a very broken version of it—not him, though.

“Are you afraid to see the face of the man who will father your child, mishtz’in?”

Anger rose in my stomach. He was mocking me, as if what he was going to do to me was not humiliation enough.

“Fuck you, you demon prick!” I hissed through gritted teeth, and the resulting tension I felt from his body told me that I had pissed him off.

“If you speak to me like that again, you will regret it. Now open your eyes, human,” he snarled into my ear.

I pressed my eyes closed even harder. Not out of anger anymore, but because now I was truly terrified. His strong fingers gripped my long, dark brown hair, roughly pulling my head back against him.

“Look. At. Me.”

My cheek was pressed against his; it was such a close, intimate position, and I caught his scent again. Why did he smell so good? It must be some kind of evil magic. I really didn’t want to anger him even more, so I forced myself to look at the monster in the mirror.

But he wasn’t—he was strange and inhuman, but no monster. Like all Veril, his skin was a dark shade of olive green. His stature was that of a tall human man with the build of a warrior. His size made me almost look small and fragile in front of him, even though I was considered relatively tall for a woman in my country, standing at 174 centimeters.

He was wearing the typical uniform of Veril soldiers, made out of rough, dark-gray fabric overlaid with a piece of sturdy leather chest armor. Its engraved plates were strapped in place with metal buckles around his broad shoulders, sides, and back. This strange combination of modern efficiency and otherworldly terror gave the elven fighter an eerie appearance.

Around his left arm, he wore a red band with golden markings—geometrical lines and triangles that were different from anything I had seen any Veril wear before. Maybe it was some kind of badge showing his rank?

Having grown up in a country that hadn’t had a war in its own territory for almost one hundred years, I was pretty clueless about military insignia. It was a topic that had always seemed completely irrelevant to me—until today. But I didn’t need to be an expert in weaponry to see that he was armed to his sharp teeth. A belt around his waist carried a gun, several knives, and something that I could not quite make out from my position, but looked like the hilt of a sword.

He lifted his head, and I inhaled sharply when our gazes met in the mirror. His irises were the color of molten gold. The pupils were more elongated than those of humans, and the outer corners of his eyes tilted slightly upwards. He had noble features, high cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. His black hair was short but slightly longer on top and neatly trimmed at the sides, leaving the pointy tips of his ears uncovered and making his otherworldly strangeness so much more evident. He looked like a dark elf or a beautiful demon lord. A long scar ran over the whole left side of his face, from his eyebrow almost down to his jaw. He did not seem much older than my twenty-three years, but I had no idea how to tell a Veril’s age. For all I knew, he could be a hundred years old.

He was still pulling my head back, his fingers tangled into my hair and his mouth terribly close to mine as he spoke, “That was not so difficult, was it now, little human?”

I shivered, unable to process the terrible thought that soon I would be carrying this creature’s baby.

“I guess at least my child will be beautiful,” I whispered.

Why did I keep saying my intrusive thoughts out loud? What was wrong with me? His eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Mishtz’in,” he said again, his voice dangerously low.

That word! It was the first Veril loanword to enter our language and one of the few I knew, besides some basics I had picked up here and there. It was, of course, an insult. People used it as a demeaning term for a woman who had fulfilled the Treaty—a euphemism for being violated by a Veril. I always thought that it was particularly revolting to call the victims names instead of treating them with compassion, let alone gratitude, for saving the entire nation from much worse treatment by the occupying forces.

Did it have the same meaning in its language of origin, and was he calling me something akin to a whore? And if he was… why did I care? Of all the things he was going to do to me—kidnapping me at this very instance, for example—being called names should be the very least of my concerns. But still, for some reason, it annoyed me to no end.

“You…,” I started angrily, but before I could finish, he had pulled my head back further and roughly closed my mouth with his lips.

The kiss was forceful, yet his lips were surprisingly soft. For some reason, the press of his hard body against mine, his strong hands in my hair, and his firm grasp on my wrist felt incredibly good. So good, in fact, that my knees were getting weak and my head was starting to spin.

Don’t open your mouth, I thought frantically, remembering the stories about Veril venom that supposedly turned you into some mindless sex slave. I had always dismissed those as rumors, but with the way he was making me feel right now, I was starting to have doubts.

With a ping, the elevator came to a halt, breaking up our kiss. I gasped for air and stumbled a little, still dizzy, as he maneuvered me out onto the second floor, his hand still around my wrist.