Bloodbreeders: Seeking Others by Robin Renee Ray

knees. “I give not only my word as the leader of the River Clan people, but I give you the life and loyalty of their families as well. To have one of your kind, standing for us against the ones who wish to take our homes is worth all the blood that runs in my veins.”
    “Please, get up.”
    “Take it, it is yours.”
    “Get up!” 
    “I beg you. The others have taken our children and killed our pregnant wives, removing their un…” Then he grasped my waist.
    I knew now where Cortez found the baby that he had placed in the wooden chest, and my heart fell. I gripped his shoulders and lifted the two hundred plus man to his feet with ease. “I will do it with pleasure.” His body began to quiver and his eyes filled to the brim, dangerously close to spilling onto his cheeks.
    “My Lilly was taken a month ago. She was seven months on. She is my oldest daughter.”
    “Mine as well. Beth were only nine when she be taken last year.”
    “And me Bobby too! She were also with child,” yet another one said.
    My head was spinning as my face showed the red stains that was the obvious emotion pouring from my eyes. I heard all the stories that the five men had to tell. They had lived on this river since the time their father’s fathers had come to this land. In the last fifty or so years, more and more of their weakest started coming up missing. It wasn’t until a woman was found gutted and her unborn child gone, that the suspicion became more of a fact that it was the one who had made their home not thirty miles from the place they had always called, The River Clan’s land. Jamous, the first man to speak, told us that he ventured to take a closer look and wandered as close as he dared one night, several years back. It was then that he found out that those who lived in the place that was being worked on around the clock came to life after the sun had set.
    For several days, he said he lived in the bush watching their every move, until the night he saw the large man for the second time, who he thought might be the owner of the estate, or that was what he claimed it had become. He told us that he watched as three young girls were brought up in front of the man while he stood on the steps, looking them over like they were some sort of livestock, which shook me to the core.  The next thing he said I believe chilled each of us new breeders to the bone. He said the man reached out, grabbing one of the girls and tore her throat out with his teeth, then threw her to the side like a bone you would toss to a dog.
    “If you can’t bring better stock then I’ll pay someone else.” Jamous’s eyes grew as he spoke what the man had said.
    Jamous’s face was stark white when he froze after speaking the last statement, and we all knew why. We had seen very much the same thing for ourselves. He went on to say that he moved at the sight of the girl’s body being tossed to the side and then after, thought one of the strange men was looking in his direction. He said he never returned and had since kept his people in after the setting of the sun.
    “I was one of his slaves. His name is Cortez, and you’re right, he did and will continue to take from you until he is stopped, or you have nothing left to take. He killed my mother with me watching, because I wouldn’t freely let him touch me. It was my punishment. He took me back to my home, the one his men had taken me from the previous summer, and he cut her up right before my eyes. I’m very ashamed to have to say this, but if I don’t it’s going to kill me,” Tammy divulged with a shaky voice.
    “Tammy, you don’t have to do this now,” I said wiping the tears off her face.
    “Yes, Renee, I do,” she replied grabbing my hand.
    “I laid with him as his lover and wife for the next thirty five years, to save my own life. So many times I wanted to run, get away, but I knew he would find me and do worse to me than what he did to my mother. I’m a coward and I stood back and