The Renegades (The Superiors) (18 page)

Chapter 31

It
took the trackers twenty days to find Draven and his captives, nineteen days
longer than he expected. Every moment since he’d stolen a Second’s livestock,
he had watched for the trackers, awaiting their arrival. He had absolute faith
in trackers’ abilities. He had been one. And he’d never failed.

That
night, before the trackers found them, had been a long, cold one. A thin layer
of crystallized snowflakes covered the needles on the trees around them and
those blanketing the ground underfoot. Higher in the mountains, a thicker layer
of snow had fallen, whitening the visible ridges and peaks. Pellets of frozen
snow slashed the travelers’ faces, and an icy wind cut through their clothing
and burned their exposed skin. Cali walked beside Draven, head ducked to shield
her face from the punishing gusts, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders over
her coat. Neither spoke.

The
child, who had become increasingly ill-tempered over the past few nights, now
dangled limply from the pack, staring at Draven’s chest with unfocused eyes.
The incessant crying had ceased, at least temporarily, and for that Draven
could not complain. Instead, the boy passed a silent night, with occasional
bouts of fussing, wrapped in as many layers as he would tolerate. For perhaps a
week now, the sapling had eaten only dried milk, and Draven had noticed his
heartbeat growing sluggish, although he had said nothing of it to Cali.

Draven
had nearly given up walking for the night, deciding instead to give Leo and
Cali, and himself if he were honest, some reprieve from the scouring wind.
Since he did not favor camping in the open, he searched for semi-sheltered
alcoves along the faces of boulders and cliffs. They had followed the creek
whenever possible since the day they’d found it, when Draven had killed the
deer. The bank had grown too steep for Cali that night, so they’d strayed a bit
from the water’s course and walked in the woods nearby, staying close enough
that Draven could return to the water whenever Cali’s bags needed filling.

As
Draven came away from yet another set of boulders without finding a suitable
camping spot, something in the woods gave him pause. Some measured sound
alerted his senses, distinguishable in its deliberate quality, foreign among
the sighing sounds of the pines, the wind in the branches that alternately
whispered and wailed, never steady or cautious, as this sound had been.

Draven
spun towards Cali. “Superiors,” he whispered, knowing they would hear him, but
having no effective silent means to communicate with Cali. He knew they had
only moments before the trackers would set upon them. Tearing the blanket from
Cali’s stiff fingers, he fumbled for the handle of the knife she kept tucked in
the waistband of her trousers. His fingers closed around it just as the first
trace of Superior scent reached his nostrils. He yanked the knife free and
thrust it into her hand.

Snatching
the long, crude knife from him, she held it close, her knuckles white as she
gripped the handle. Her breathing quickened and her heart raced, but she did
not speak through her stiff, bluish lips. Still, her eyes shifted in a panicked
way that reminded him of the deer he’d killed, and for a moment, he feared she
would bolt. “It will work,” he assured her as he bent to scoop her into his
arms. “Use it.”

He
leapt into a nearby tree, barely giving Cali time to catch her balance before
he shoved Leo into her arms and dropped to the ground once more. Snatching the
backpack and bag he’d deposited there, he straightened, propelling himself into
the tree in the same movement. He caught the branch and swung up to join his
humans on the limb. After verifying that the Superiors hadn’t yet reached his
side of the creek, he removed the pack and fastened it to a branch above them.
Then he knelt beside Cali and waited.

The
trackers had not followed their exact trail, but had come upon them
nonetheless, and had likely followed them for some time before Draven heard
them. Now, incredibly, they seemed to be overshooting their target. Draven
crouched next to Cali, answering her questioning look with the smallest shake
of his head. Lips tight, breath halted, Draven waited, casting his senses in
search of the trackers that had so certainly spotted them, and just as
certainly, passed them by.

For
several long minutes, Draven remained motionless, straining to catch a trace of
scent or the measured beat of footfalls. Just as he’d begun to believe he’d
imagined it, that he’d lost his mind entirely, the scent swelled around them,
so potent he couldn’t imagine how Cali remained unaware. They’d found a
crossing and doubled back, upwind of him now, coming within thirty meters of
the tree where Draven had stashed his captives. They fell in closer, and closer
still, until Draven could see them drawing nearer every moment, though he could
do nothing to prevent their approach. They passed beneath the branch where he
and Cali and the child huddled motionless, frozen by cold and fear.

“Hey,
Lathan,” one of the trackers said quietly. “The trail stops.”

Draven
glanced at Cali, who stared back wild-eyed with terror, and he knew he could not
call on her to participate in what he intended. Though he’d rather do almost
anything than kill again, he could think of no preferable alternative. If he
did not kill the trackers, they would capture both him and Cali. Once back in
Princeton, he’d face a trial and certainly be executed for his crimes. And
Cali…as terrible a fate awaited her, even if Byron spared her life.

Although
Draven had not had time to remove it before the trackers approached, the steel
chain that had once bound him in the grave now rested in the bottom of his
pack. If he could retrieve it, and if he could subdue the trackers somehow
while he did so, perhaps he could bind the men instead of killing them. But if
Draven left these men bound in steel to survive the elements until new trackers
arrived, they’d never give up the search for him until they’d exacted revenge.
And he’d lose the chain, itself a priceless—if renegade—weapon.

“Where
are they?” asked the second tracker from further off. The shrieking wind
threatened to drown his words before they reached their audience.

If
Draven killed these two, Superior society would never see him as anything more
than a traitor to his race, a wanted man, and a dangerous criminal.
Kill-on-sight status. No trial, no jail time.

The
two men returned, tracking backwards until they stood directly beneath the
three fugitives. “You’d think they disappeared right here. The trail just
ends,” one said. “But listen…”

Draven
knew what they heard. He could mask Cali’s scent, the wind could whip away his own
scent and obscure the sound of her and the child breathing. But the throb of
her heart expanding and contracting deep inside her, squeezing hot blood
through her body, could be neither disguised nor mistaken. It seemed now more
pronounced than ever before, hammering so violently that Draven imagined he
could feel it sending out a shockwave with each pulse, as if the air itself
were charged with her electric heat that throbbed against him in the raw
darkness. Nothing could subdue her lurid heat, his constant exultation and
torment, and now, their downfall.

“I
don’t think they disappeared,” the second tracker said slowly. As they began to
raise their eyes, Leo emitted a gurgling squeal and shook his fists and legs as
if in the clutches of some mad anticipation.

One
of the trackers met Draven’s eyes a split second before Draven launched himself
from the branch. He fell upon the man, and together they tumbled to the ground.
Although unarmed, Draven knew how to kill a man without a weapon if he could
gain the exact angle and summon the strength. The tracker had eaten more than
once every few days, though. He’d eaten his five rations per day, as any normal
person would, for the past twenty days, while Draven had nearly gone into
starvation mode.

The
tracker wrestled Draven to the ground and pushed a weapon, a gun like the one
Byron had once used to paralyze him, against his head. Since when had trackers
been issued Deactivators? When Draven had been a tracker, he’d never even heard
of that weapon.

This
man did not aim with Byron’s precision, though. Perhaps it wouldn’t paralyze
Draven. Perhaps the steel spike would pierce a different area of his brain, and
render him speechless, or take his memories or his vision. Or perhaps it would make
him lose his mind altogether.

While
still locked in the grip of the tracker, Draven heard bodies hit the ground.
Leo began to howl in such earnest that the spaces between cries seemed to stretch
towards eternity while he caught his breath. Draven could not afford to look
away from his own fight, though. Thus far, he’d only managed to hold off his
attacker by continually struggling, though he knew the shot would come any
moment.

Suddenly
the man pinning him screamed, the most anguished sound Draven had ever heard,
and leapt from him. Draven sprang to his feet. The tracker, scream still
tearing from his lips, flew at his companion and dragged his body from Cali.
Draven leapt at his back, but the tracker threw his arm out, flinging Draven
backwards into the woods.

Draven
slammed into a tree. A branch broke under the force of his flying body, the
jagged wood tearing into his flesh. He yanked free and slipped to the ground,
the roar of pain deafening inside his head. Paralyzed by the shock of pain, he
knelt for a moment, intensely aware of his vulnerability in the time it took
him to recover. Forcing the pain from the forefront of his awareness, he
scrambled to his feet, still struggling to shine his mind.

The
tracker with the gun sprawled across Cali, still uttering that hideous scream. Draven
dove at him and wrenched him from Cali. The man fell backwards, choking, a
handle protruding from his middle. An almost uncontrollable blaze of hunger
flared inside Draven when he savored Cali’s sap, freshly spilled and steaming
in the cold night.

Draven
lunged for the dagger at the same moment the man’s hand closed around it.
Before Draven could wrest it from him, the man drew it from himself, and the unmistakable
scent of Superior blood wafted from him, clinging to the man and the dagger and
the chill air. He jabbed the dagger at Draven, but Draven saw the blow coming
and avoided all but the blade’s tip. The aspen point pierced the muscles
between his ribs and his hipbone. Before the pain could register, Draven
snatched the man’s extended wrist and twisted. A slight hesitation indicated when
the ligaments reached the end of their range. They gave way with a sickening
grinding sensation that traveled up the length of Draven’s arm and lodged in
his shoulder. The dagger clattered to the stony ground between them.

The
tracker shrieked and sank his teeth into Draven’s forearm. Unable to twist
away, Draven sank to the ground and swiped at the dagger. After several
attempts, he gained purchase on the handle. He clubbed the man’s head with the
blunt end of the dagger, but the tracker’s teeth only clenched tighter. Only
after several ineffective blows did Draven realize the man had not bitten him
out of rage, but to draw from him in a very messy and painful manner. With
dawning horror, Draven felt the pull of his blood flowing from him, the
measurable weakness setting in with each drag. Though the dagger felt unwieldy
in his left hand, he lifted it high and took a moment to aim carefully despite
his mounting panic. Bringing it down in an arc, he buried it in the man with
every bit of his remaining strength.

He
had only to strike once.

Chapter 32

For
a long time, Cali’s Superior rocked her on his lap, licking at her scalp wound
and moaning low in his throat. An urgency tugged at the edges of her mind but
never made itself completely known. What did she need to do? Something,
something important. But what? Every time she turned her mind to the nagging
question, it darted from her reach.

Her
head throbbed, not just on the surface but deep down in the very core. Draven’s
cold tongue slid along her wound over and over, soothing the broken skin but
doing nothing for the deeper ache. Soon she began drifting away to the unthinking
place she’d been when Draven came to her.

She
hadn’t known which of the Superiors survived when he pulled her onto his lap.
Even when the distant, half-formed thought that he would finish her off entered
her mind, her body refused to react. But then his hands had arranged her with
care on his lap, and one arm had gone around her middle, the other clearing her
hair from the wound, and she’d known it was him. The others would have killed
her before eating, or made her suffer while they fed. They wouldn’t have
handled her in Draven’s now familiar way, commanding yet undeniably comforting.

She
let herself relax between his legs while she focused on the coldness of his
mouth on her hot scalp. For once it felt good—her head was on fire.

With
no choice but to trust him, she closed her eyes and drifted off. She came to
herself with a start some time later. The movement sent a volley of pain
crashing through her head. She lay back, groping at the warm weight on her belly.
Leo. Leo lay on her, alive. The urgency of last night flickered through her
mind. That’s what she’d been trying to remember. When the Superior had yanked
her out of the tree, she’d dropped Leo. She’d wanted to check on him, but she’d
had to kill the Superior first, and…

Had
she killed him?

She
couldn’t seem to focus her thoughts. It had all happened so fast, and in the
dark so she couldn’t see. At first, she’d thought she killed him, but he’d come
at her again, and she’d stabbed him again, and he’d hit her with something… And
Draven had pulled him off her, at least she thought he had. Maybe he really did
mean to protect her. He must, if he’d let her kill one of his people, a
Superior
,
and not killed her for it. It didn’t seem possible that he could betray his entire
race for her, just one human. But he’d given her the dagger, aspen for Aspen,
and told her to use it, and she had, and he hadn’t killed her. He’d licked her
to sleep, had healed her, even after she’d killed one of his own people.

In
a sudden panic, she scanned the nearby woods with her eyes, not wanting to sit
upright and wake Leo. Had he left her? What if another Superior had followed
the trackers and killed him? But no…if another Superior had killed Draven, he
would have taken Cali, too. After a full minute of searching, she spotted
Draven. He sat on a boulder near the river, his knees pulled up and his arms
around them. His head rested on his knees.

For
a second she felt a surge of pity for him, which was silly, of course. She
couldn’t pity someone better than her, a Superior of all people. Why pity one
of them? They had the world. As long as he didn’t die, she had nothing to worry
about, and though he didn’t move, he looked plenty alive.

She
lay back and touched Leo, grateful that Draven had covered her and the baby
with the blanket. He hated Leo. He could have left Leo out to die and told Cali
that he’d died from the fall. She couldn’t have argued.

Wrapping
her arms around the baby, she noticed, not for the first time, how ragged his
breath sounded. She wished again she’d had the sense to listen to Draven, to
leave the baby with Shelly. He would have been better off. Now she couldn’t say
if she expected him to live until…

She
couldn’t even complete the thought. Until what? She didn’t know where they were
going. She didn’t even think Draven knew. He was supposed to be smart, and she
had to admit he knew a lot about survival, and even more about human survival
than she did. But did he know anything else?

Would
they keep running, just barely surviving, forever? Sooner or later, their luck
would run out. What if one of them got hurt? If she got hurt, even badly, now she
knew for certain that he’d take care of her. But what if something happened to him?
Or what if she got sick, or infected from a cut? She shuddered at the memory of
the infection that had almost killed her. She couldn’t live like this forever,
always running from something and never to anything. Never with a goal or
destination in mind, never with an end in sight. To run endlessly until
exhaustion finally broke her…

Cali
slept.

When
she woke again, the sun blazed in the sky, cold and white as frost. The second
she sat up, Leo began to scream. With each agonized wail, the noise pounded a
wedge of pain further into the center of Cali’s brain. She held him loosely,
not offering much comfort. She wished he’d stop his mouth so her head wouldn’t
split in two. After a quick scan of the area, she found Draven standing on the
gravel bank near the edge of the water. He’d cleared away some of the
surrounding limbs to make an open area and made a huge fire in it. He stood
beside it, wearing the hat and sunshades he wore every day.

One
leg of his jeans was stained dark with blood, and one side of his shirt, too. When
he turned to get more branches to add to the fire, she saw that blood covered
most of the front of him. Her blood? His? As she watched him work, she thought
he looked up at her, but with the strange mask covering his face, she couldn’t
tell.

Leo
screamed and screamed. Cali tried in earnest to comfort him but failed. Hoping
he was just hungry, she looked around for the backpack, but she couldn’t find
it. Maybe Draven had taken it with him. But when she looked for it down near
the fire, she didn’t see it there, either.

She
tried bouncing the baby, but he only cried harder. The last thing she wanted to
deal with on top of her own pain was Leo’s inconsolable howling. She struggled
to her feet and staggered back and forth in the crunchy leaves, holding Leo to
her chest. Draven must have worked awfully hard while she slept. Several areas
had been scraped bare of leaves and rocks and branches, leaving the dark soil
beneath exposed. She wondered if Draven had buried the bodies under those
spots. The thought turned her stomach, and she avoided walking over those
places.

Leo
screamed on and on, until Cali gave up comforting him and let herself collapse
onto a rock, lightheaded. How much blood had Draven taken from her? Her legs
wobbled and threatened to collapse when she walked, and she had trouble
concentrating on more than one thought at a time. Even those slipped from her
mind, and she couldn’t seem to retrieve them once they’d passed.

While
Cali rested, Leo wore himself out crying before he gave up and fell asleep
again. Finally Draven got done with whatever he was doing down near the fire
and trudged up the slope, soaking wet and dripping all over. Cali could not
believe anyone, even a Superior, would bathe in water so cold it had ice at the
edges, no matter how filthy he was. But Draven obviously had. His wet clothes,
still blood-stained, clung to his lean body. His pants were brown now, and red
splotches stained his shirt, now torn in several places.

He
dropped the backpack with a thud next to Cali. “Feed yourself,” he said.

“When
are we leaving again?” Cali asked, discovering a new pain in her jaw when she
spoke.

“I’ve
a place we can rest a few days.”

A
few days. The words sounded like heaven in Cali’s ears. She watched Draven shuffle
slowly back down the hill, walking like a very old man might. How he’d managed
to get so much done, moving as slow as he did, she couldn’t imagine. She looked
at the bare spots on the ground again. Had he really dug two graves while she
slept? And at that pace, too...it didn’t seem possible. Besides that, he’d
killed one or two Superiors last night, and saved her life, and then scouted
out a place to stay, lit a fire, and buried bodies. All that without having to
eat or sleep.

Maybe
he didn’t plan as well as she’d expected. Still, he was determined and tough.
She had to give him that. Funny, too, because he didn’t look at all
intimidating for a Superior. He was so mild and insignificant. But he was
obviously stronger and more capable than even the strongest human—and far from
harmless.

But
she thought he might be sick. Once, he’d given her Leo and stumbled off into
the trees, and she’d seen him bending over, holding onto a tree trunk for support,
a black string trailing from his mouth to the ground. After that, she’d seen
him a few times bending to release the strings that puddled before him, black
stains in the white snow.

Pushing
the thought away, Cali opened the bag and found some dried meat Draven had
packed for her. She ate it slowly, favoring the side of her jaw that didn’t
hurt, watching Draven tend his fire and thinking how powerful Superiors were
compared to her, and how hopeless her chance of survival compared to his.

When
he’d finished adding fuel to his fire, he plodded back up the hill with the
same slow steps, and seated himself on a small log near one of the possible
gravesites. He leaned forward like he might topple into the dirt with
exhaustion, but instead, he rested his forehead in his palm and sat still for
so long Cali wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“Are
you okay?” she asked.

“No,”
he said quietly. “You?”

“My
head hurts awfully bad, but other than that, I think I’m okay,” Cali said. “What
happened last night?”

“Do
you not remember?” he asked, lifting his head. He looked like some kind of
giant insect with his shades protruding from his masked face.

“Well,
I remember some of it… I remember getting up in the tree, but I couldn’t see or
hear anything. Then I heard them walking in the leaves, and you jumped on one
of them, and one of them jumped on me, and I dropped Leo…” Cali paused and
looked at the baby.

“What
more?”

She
swallowed hard, which made the backs of her eyes ache. “A little… The tracker
grabbed me and jumped back on the ground, and I stabbed him…I thought I killed
him, but then he jumped on me again and was screaming like…” She broke off and
shuddered. “My lord and master, like nothing I’ve ever heard. I stabbed him
again, and he hit my head…maybe on a rock? And I think you pulled him off me,
or he fell off…? And then I don’t remember anything until you started licking
the blood off me, and I think I fell asleep…”

“Then
you remember all.”

“I
do? Oh. Okay.” She tucked the blanket around Leo’s chin. “Did I kill one?”

Draven
hesitated. She wished she could see his face, his eyes. But he was just a bug
face studying her when she couldn’t study him back. “No,” he said after a long
pause. He sat upright and squared his shoulders. “No, I killed them both.”

“Oh.”
Cali fussed with Leo again, wrapped in the blanket at her feet. “I wish I could
do something to help for once.”

“You
imagine you’d like to have killed someone?”

She
shrugged. “I guess. You always do everything, and you don’t even eat or sleep,
and I just sit here doing nothing and getting us in trouble. I guess I thought
when I had the knife I could help defend us. I even held on and didn’t let go
of it when I stabbed him, just like you said…”

“You
did help, Cali. More than you can imagine.”

“Really?
Or are you just saying that to be nice?”

“We
would have died if not for your bravery.”

She
looked up at him hopefully. “Really?”

“Yes.”
She thought he’d stop at that, but he looked at her face and then sighed and
continued, speaking as if explaining were a huge burden. “If you had not
injured the tracker, I would not have been able to take advantage of his
surprise and overpower him. You saved us both.”

“Oh,”
she said, still not sure if she believed it. How could she, a measly little
human, have saved him? “Did he get you at all?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

“Only
a bit. I’ll heal.” He got to his feet and bent slowly to retrieve the backpack.
“It is nearby. If you can bring Leo…if not, I’ll return for him.”

“Sure,
of course I can,” Cali said. She gathered Leo in a bundle and followed Draven,
trying not to put too much meaning in the fact that he’d just asked her to
carry something for the first time ever. If he couldn’t even carry a backpack
and a baby… But maybe he’d only asked her so she’d feel better, like she was
contributing, after what she’d said. That must be it. He was being nice, so she
wouldn’t feel like a burden who never did anything useful in return.

When
they got to the place he’d found for them to stay, though, she started worrying
again. If he couldn’t find anything better than that, he must have felt awfully
bad. The place was nothing but a narrow gap between two rocks. The back end was
narrow enough that she could have squeezed through it sideways had he not
blocked the opening with an unfamiliar pack, similar to Draven’s but smaller. A
tarp she’d never seen covered the top of the space like a roof.

“Is
this where the trackers were staying?” she asked.

“No.
I must tend the fire, and then I’ll return to you. Will you be alright here
alone?”

“Well,
of course. But why don’t you let me do it? You can rest and I’ll tend the fire
for a while. I know you haven’t slept.”

“No,”
he said quickly. “Rest here. I’ll return before too long. If you need me, call
out. I will hear you.”

He
stooped and ducked out of the shelter, and Cali heard the leaves crunching
under his feet as he walked away. Though she couldn’t see the spot where they’d
spent the night before, if she leaned to the right and pressed her cheek
against the wall of the shelter, she could just see the fire, between the
boulder where Draven had sat that morning and a big tree. For a while, she sat
watching, waiting to see what important things he had to do. But all he did was
dump a tarp full of leaves and sticks and pine needles into the fire.