The Superiors (10 page)

Cali laughed, and it caught him so off guard that he laughed too. Hearing a sap laugh, even a small laugh like hers, disconcerted him. She stopped laughing abruptly when he laughed, and they looked at each other for a moment and then both of them turned away at the same time.

“You’re quite weak,” Draven said, still not looking at her. “You should sleep.”

“I’m awfully thirsty.”

“I will bring you water.” He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts before he went into the bathroom and brought her back the can of water. She drank it all and another, and when she finished, she lay curled on the rug next to his bed. He got back into bed, shorts still on. When he had heard her laugh, she seemed almost like a person. It seemed less like having his dog on the rug beside the bed and more like having a person there, a person who would notice his nakedness.

He woke again in the evening. He rose and showered. By the time he got done, his teeth throbbed with hunger. The light had faded from the sky. Cali smiled when he came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. He watched her watching him for a moment, but he couldn’t tell what she thought. Then he shook his head at the absurd idea. He didn’t care what a sap thought of him.

Cali sat at the table eating peaches from one of the cans with her fingers. The peaches smelled nice. “I couldn’t find a spoon,” she said. Her smell drew him near, but the dirty restaurant smell that clung to her tainted the tempting aroma of her sap, and he didn’t want her as much as usual.

“Why don’t you clean up,” he said, turning and going into his bedroom. Her smells lingered in it, mostly the smells clinging to the outside of her, but he detected a hint of her sap scent. He tried to focus on that as he dressed. When he came out he heard the shower running, and he waited for her, his impatience mounting. He never ate breakfast at home, and the prospect excited him.

After a few minutes he went into the bathroom and pulled back the door to the shower. Cali cried out in surprise and shrank back, covering herself. It surprised him, what a sap looked like naked. Her breasts looked just like any of the Superiors’ he had seen. Of course they did—Superiors evolved from humans. He sometimes forgot he used to be a sap, too.

“Close the door,” Cali said, her voice shrill.

He’d been so surprised that he’d stood staring, watching the water course down the white slope of her breasts and over the pink, upturned nipples. Then he’d noticed what he was doing and looked at the showerhead instead of her breasts. Only after he’d closed the door did he realize he’d taken an order from a sap. He opened the door again, just to make sure she knew her place. When she saw his determined expression, her eyes filled with fear.

“Get out,” he said. “I want you before I leave for work.”

She paused and came towards him, still hugging herself. He handed her his towel and turned away while she wrapped it around herself. When he turned back and pulled her to him, her body trembled all over.

“Aspen,” he said. After a second she looked up and met his eyes. “I’m a Superior and you’re a human. All I want from you is food. You understand, yes?”

They stood in the small, steamy room looking at each other until she nodded and dropped her gaze. Her pale shoulders were warm and beaded with water from the shower, and her hair was brown when wet. He took it in his hand and bent her head back to reveal her long white neck. Her vein pulsed softly under the skin and he put his mouth on her throat and his teeth entered her skin. He sucked at her gently, and the smell and taste of her rushed into him. He hadn’t realized just how badly he’d wanted her all the time he’d been gone. Now that he had her here with no one to answer to, he wanted to keep going, to bite her all over and suck her dry as a husk.

He might have, if she hadn’t let out a moan and slumped against him. He withdrew and gathered her into his arms, startled. What had he done? She had already been overdrawn and weak, too weak to feed from. He carried her into his bedroom, his thoughts racing. What if he’d killed her? He hadn’t meant to harm her, but he had. He laid her on his bed without thought, and listened to her heartbeat for a few minutes to convince himself that she wouldn’t die.

Looking her over, he noticing the unclosed wounds sprouting all over her arms. She would have many of the pebble-like scars under her skin when they healed. He ran his hands behind her knees and found more already formed in the soft flesh. He looked at the mark he’d made on her neck and put his tongue on it again to make sure it closed, since he’d been distracted when he pulled out.

When her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him, he realized he’d put her in his bed. But what would it hurt? He liked the smell of her anyhow, and he’d be gone all night while she perfumed his bed with her tantalizing scent. And she looked quite pale. It couldn’t hurt her to sleep in a soft bed.

She crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “I’m cold.”

“Indeed. I see that.” Draven stood and pulled the blanket over her. He had no idea if it provided accurate warmth for a sapien, but he had only one blanket. He didn’t know why he still used it—he didn’t need it and it did nothing useful. He just liked the feeling of comfort, perhaps a remnant from his days as a sap that he had retained without awareness.

“Thank you,” Cali said from the bed. Her eyes closed and she sounded half asleep already. “And thank you for not killing me or…doing other stuff to me.”

“If you wake while I’m gone, are you going to run away?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I know your smell quite well, and I will find you wherever you go. But I won’t be as soft-hearted if you make trouble for me by running away.”

Draven laughed to himself. She was the most wonderful thing he’d ever felt in his life. Filling himself with her sap, her life. No wonder he wanted all of her, didn’t want to stop. If his bed felt anything like that to her, she could have it.

“You may stay here while I’m gone,” he said. “Two cans of food are on the table. I will bring you more when I come home, before I bring you back.”

Her eyes flew open. “No! You can’t bring me back there. It hurts so bad. Please don’t make me go back.” She started crying, fear rolling off her, tainting the wonderful bouquet of her natural smell.

“I would rather keep you all for myself, believe me. But I can’t buy you. I will see if I can rent you for another night or two.”

Draven left then, wondering again how he got himself into such a mess. Even if he wasn’t mistreating her or hurting her, he shouldn’t have her at all. That evening he reset his ration card with a small amount of guilt. It seemed fair though, since he had traded his own rations for her food, that he got to feed off her. And he had paid enough for her that he’d better get something out of it. He didn’t want anything else from her. Her bodily functions had odors he didn’t like, and her body’s strange combination of familiar and foreign aspects reminded him of pictures he’d seen of cavemen. He didn’t know how long he could keep her or what things she needed besides a toilet and food. He didn’t remember needing anything else when he’d been a sap.

Chapter Fourteen

Draven worked at Estrella’s that night, and after only half a shift he remembered why he hated the job and had quit his other bouncing jobs. He had to watch people eat and eat and eat all night, and even if he was full, it made him want more.

After his shift, he ate from one of the saps at his tables and stayed to visit with Byron. Byron selected backgammon from the menu on the table top and they began playing, but thoughts of Cali distracted Draven. He wanted to go home and check on his illegal boarder, see if she’d run away or made noise to call attention to his apartment. Or if she had died.

That thought nagged at the corners of his mind. He could get in trouble for any number of reasons if anyone found out, and he didn’t know if Lira would keep quiet. She might come and check to see that he’d returned the sapien. And although he didn’t think a human could figure out how to open the door, he didn’t want to take the chance. Cali didn’t seem very stupid. He could track her if she ran, but if she had died, he would have trouble explaining to the authorities why he’d had her at all.

He wanted to hint at it to Byron, to ask a hypothetical question, but he held his tongue. The last thing he needed was to arouse an Enforcer’s suspicion. His fidgeting brought Byron’s attention after a while anyway.

Draven almost told Byron she had left, but paranoia about having her in his apartment made him hesitate. If he just agreed, Byron would ask no further questions. “Yes, it is nice.”

“Which one?” Byron asked, rolling the dice.

“Her,” Draven said, pointing to the sap he’d drawn from tonight and once before when Cali’s rations had already been used. The sap was ordinary in every way.

“This is a nice place. They usually keep the saps on the menu for a while, don’t they?”

“I don’t know. I have not been coming for long.”

“Do you have somewhere to go after this? You seem anxious.” Byron studied Draven more closely. Of course an Enforcer would notice something amiss. That was his job.

Draven slipped around to the front, but the hostess had already gone. He went out to his car and saw her leaning on her electric scooter, smoking a long cigarette. He stopped, surprised, and watched her for a minute before approaching. How she could afford something so expensive on a hostess salary puzzled him, but he found he liked her better for it.

She looked at him and then smiled, seeming to soften when she did. Her cheeks rose when she smiled, and he very much liked the shiny pinkness of them. “Maybe you find out sometime.”

“I’d like to. I’m not working three nights from now. I have an appointment in the last hours, but I would like to see you before that if I may.”

“You may.”

“What time shall I meet you then?”

After arranging the meeting, Draven got in his car and drove away into the darkest hour. He had to call Sap Heaven while he drove, and he kept one eye on the road, not wanting to get into any trouble tonight. The face that appeared on his screen blurred so he could hardly tell if it was male or female, but after a few seconds he recognized the boy from the night before.

Draven hung up and pulled into the apartment complex. He went up the stairs quickly. He looked around, hoping he wouldn’t see any of his neighbors, but he ran into one in the hallway. “Hey Draven,” the neighbor greeted him with a smile. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How was your trip?”

“Quite well, thank you. Anything new with you?” Draven glanced at his door while the neighbor talked. He wanted to listen for signs of life behind the door, but he couldn’t hear with the man talking about his job and his new partner.

Finally the neighbor finished talking and they parted. After waiting until the man had pushed open the door to the stairs and gone down, Draven looked both ways in the hall and listened. He heard nothing. He couldn’t hear a heartbeat or breathing—just silence. He checked the hall again, in case Cali lay in wait to run when he opened the door, and then he put his hand to the panel, slid the door open, stepped through and slid it closed in one motion. When he stood listening, he thought he heard Cali, faintly, or perhaps he imagined it.

He checked the kitchen and found the bag with the five sapien food cans in it, all empty. It smelled rancid. He cursed himself for having forgotten to bring her more food. He didn’t know saps ate so much. Five cans seemed like a lot. A glance around the living area told him what he already knew—she wasn’t there. He would have smelled her more, noticed her obvious heartbeat. After checking the bathroom, he went to the bedroom. She had to be inside. The other rooms had an open enough layout that he would have sensed her immediately. Only the bedroom had soundproof, light-tight walls. He turned the knob and opened the door.