The Superiors (24 page)

“I do not want to think of you belonging to someone else, even in the human way. The same as I don’t like to think of someone else drawing from you. I would like you to myself always, if this were possible.”

Something alerted his senses and he sat straighter. He could hear them first, and then he smelled them, even through the fog. He turned and watched them, shadowy figures barely discernible through the white clotted air. Three sapiens. Cali looked where he did, squinting. She couldn’t hear like he could, but she could see them in the growing light. Neither she nor Draven moved for a long moment.

His body tensed to spring as if by instinct. They began to go over the fence, boosting one up first and reaching down for the others. They had created garments with much better protection and coverage than the shifts issued by the Confinement, but he could not mistake their humanity. They looked clumsy and heavy as they attempted to scale the wall.

Draven readied himself for the capture, but before he moved, Cali’s warm hand closed over his forearm. He looked at her in surprise. She pressed her lips into a tight line and her eyes widened, and she looked up at him and shook her head. She looked afraid. Afraid of what he’d do, or perhaps afraid the others would blame her if she was with him when he caught the escapees. He’d worked as a Catcher so many times that it seemed automatic to bring them back. He couldn’t comprehend another option.

“Please don’t.” Cali looked from him to the wall, where one of the saps had disappeared. The second one straddled the wall and held a rope of cloth down for the last one to ascend. “Don’t,” Cali said again, grabbing Draven’s arm with the strength of desperation. “Just let them go. What does it matter to you? It’s not hurting you. Please.”

He shook off her hand and watched the third sap struggling to pull himself onto the wall. Draven couldn’t just sit there and let three humans escape, right under his watchful eyes. Could he?

“Let them go,” Cali said again, her voice pleading. She prostrated herself on the ground, touching her forehead to his feet in a way he found pathetic and heartbreaking. Seeing her beg like that irritated him. “Please, Master Superior. At least they have a chance this way. Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll—I’ll refuse the man who wants to marry me. Here, you can drink from me more. Here, take me instead,” she said, standing and pulling her hair back and raising her head, leaving her throat exposed.

Draven looked at her and he wanted to put his teeth to that pure skin, and he looked at the wall where the third human had succeeded in scrambling up. Perhaps she was right. What did it matter to him? He didn’t eat from those humans. It didn’t affect him personally if they escaped.

Yet…he was bound by law. He looked at Cali, filled with desire when he saw her exposed skin and heard the rush of sap under the delicate skin of her throat. Then he thought of his tin at home and how much his stash would increase if he caught them, how much sooner he could bring her home and have that tender bite of her neck any time he wanted.

He swept Cali aside with his arm, and she went tumbling. The rush of pursuit had come on stronger than he’d expected, and he knocked her further than he wanted. She crumpled to the ground, but he didn’t stop to check on her. The third sap disappeared over the wall at the same moment that he leapt forward, covering the distance in seconds.

Draven had never scaled a wall before. He had leapt and cleared a wall once, but not one this high. When he did it, he didn’t even think. Only later would he think back and marvel at his own ability. He hit the wall with his feet and almost fell, but his weight balanced and he found purchase for his fingers in the tiny crevices between bricks. He scampered up the wall with the ease of a mouse, and just as quickly he went over.

Having not planned how to get over, he didn’t know what to do next when he succeeded. He had just sprung, the thrill of power coursing through him. He leapt over the razor wire onto the pavement outside the Confinement. The sapiens had researched the best place to make the escape, or they had just made a lucky guess. This side of the Confinement had only back alleys, no parking lots. And morning gave them a good head start while Superiors slept. They had a whole day to get out of the city. It lay unguarded and open before them.

But they hadn’t bet on a Superior sitting in the garden hidden by fog so late in the morning. They hadn’t bet on a Superior following them over the fence.

Draven couldn’t see them now. The fog hung thick over everything. But when he stopped, he could hear them, and he sprinted in that direction and overtook one of them. He came out of the fog at the sapien, and the man screamed as Draven leapt on him and trapped his arms. The sap struggled and kicked while Draven tied him with his own escape rope. When he’d secured the sap, Draven left him on the ground and sprang after the other two. He caught the second one and subdued him without much difficulty. A human could never fight off a Superior with strength alone.

When he had the sap under one arm, Draven stood still, trying to sense the third runaway over the sound of the one he restrained in his arms. He ignored the sound of his captive’s thunderous heartbeat and the smell of ammonia that came from the boy who had urinated on himself in his panic. Draven scanned one way and another, and saw a building through a rend in the fog that quickly closed. He couldn’t hear the third sap’s heartbeat or see her through the fog. But he smelled her when a small breeze twisted around him, and he followed the scent. The boy struggled, and Draven found it difficult to move with such an unwieldy burden under his arm, but he had nothing to tie the sap. So he sought the female with one arm occupied.

He might have seen her sooner if not for the fog and the stillness. He might have noticed the strange smell on top of the fear and the smell of sapien. But he didn’t.

He came through the fog, sensing her nearness. He heard her breathing too fast, ragged and terrified. He thought she had hidden, and he saw a garbage collecting box behind a building and moved around it. The woman rose out of the fog at him, panicked and angry and surging with adrenaline, and sunk a thick wooden shard into his abdomen.

Chapter Thirty-One

Draven had felt pain before, plenty of it. But it had been a very long time since he’d felt that kind of pain—blinding, senseless, consuming. The scream that came from his throat sounded so animalistic that it stopped him short, bringing back a bit of sense. The sapien who had stabbed him looked startled, but Draven was fast even in such pain. He caught her when she turned to run.

Though he’d gone nearly mad with pain, his single-minded pursuit never wavered. He still gripped the male under his arm. He fell upon the female, dragging her to the ground, and buried his teeth in her, drawing her life into himself. When he felt her flow slacken and her body go limp, he stopped and breathed. His breath came out ragged, a horrible sound accompanying the horrible pain. He forced himself to stop the instinctive act and dragged the woman to her feet.

The fog had cleared a bit, and the sun found its way from behind the blanket of clouds. He could hardly see through the blinding brightness of the sun on the fog. He stumbled and almost fell but righted himself with his two burdens. He’d grown dizzy, and a weakening exhaustion pulled at him as he made his way blindly towards the bound male.

Draven made it to the spot he had left the other male, but it wasn’t there. He gave up on that one. If he could just make it around the side of the fence to the front of the building…

He tripped, his hands full and his instincts dulled with pain. He fell on the bound sapien who had been struggling along the ground with its arms still encased in the fabric of its restraints. Draven felt the bound sap’s teeth tearing at his pants, trying to bite him through the linen fabric. He kicked out and the sapien uttered a grunt of pain. Draven smelled the sharp scent of sap as it came out the male’s mouth in a stream with several pieces of tooth. Then he lay still, his skin aching, his eyes burning, and the constant pain throbbing where the wooden shard still protruded from his lung. He wanted to yank it out, but he needed all his strength, and removing the weapon would let out a rush of blood and weaken him.

As he lay on the ground Draven thought of Cali, and how he might die there, alone outside the wall of the Confinement, and how the humans who had killed him would rise and free their companion and escape, and all of it would come to nothing. The thought bred a dull rage in his clouded mind, and he let out a sound that was somewhere close to a roar as he forced himself to his feet. He held the scared sap by the wrist—barely more than a sapling, perhaps Cali’s age—and hefted the weight of the bound and bleeding male onto his shoulder. He transferred the sapling’s wrist to his other hand and bent to gather up the unconscious female. He could barely stand under the mere weight of two sapiens.

The walk to the doors of the Confinement seemed to last hours. The bound male struggled, flopping about on Draven’s shoulder every few minutes. Draven had to stop then and momentarily release the young one so he could keep the bound one from falling. He thought the sapling might run, but it didn’t. After the second time the adult male struggled, he let it fall from his shoulder onto the concrete, and the sap yelled and scrambled around in a circle on its side. When it stilled, Draven looked at the boy.

“If you run I will kill you.”

“O-okay. I won’t—I didn’t want to go—they made me.”

“I want you to walk just here beside me like a good little sap. I will make sure to tell the Confinement that you cooperated and that you shouldn’t go to the blood bank. Do you understand me, little one?” He looked right into the sapien’s eyes and it nodded.

“Yes, sir, Master. Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”

“Now come,” Draven said, lifting the bound male’s body onto his shoulder again. He could keep the sapien from falling, but the thing flailed wildly, twisting its body until it knocked against the wooden instrument protruding from Draven’s abdomen. Draven bit the inside of his cheek and his mouth filled with his own blood, but he didn’t cry out again. He dropped the sapien on the ground and it yelled again, and he dragged it the rest of the way by its foot, which proved a much easier and faster method.

He made it to the doors and struggled with them before he remembered he had to use his ID card as well as his ID prints, so he scanned both while the bound prisoner lay on the ground moaning and the boy stood wide-eyed and frozen beside him. Draven pocketed his card and pulled open the door, pushed it back with his foot while he heaved the female through, and gestured for the young one to enter. Everything in Draven’s body had turned to liquid fire. He got hold of the last escapee’s foot and dragged him through the doors before he let them slam shut. The sound of the door closing echoed around the empty entrance room.

Draven stumbled over the female’s body, and his eyes filled with black spots, and he fell slowly, his lungs filling with the blood that tried to escape the confines of his body. His cry of pain echoed through the empty chamber. Excruciating pain filled him when he fell on the wooden spike and it drove through the back of his body and caught in the fabric of his shirt. For some absurd reason, he remembered just then that he’d left his outer shirt on Cali, and then his awareness drew further away and for a long while he knew nothing more than pain.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Draven. You’re awake.” Byron’s voice cut through his mind and Draven became alert in an instant.

He struggled to sit but lay back quickly after the attempt almost took his breath away. He’d never felt that kind of pain, ever. It almost felt sharper than when he’d been stabbed, now that the wound was deeper and the fog of pain had cleared away with the fog of the morning.

“No, I told one…the young one…” Draven had trouble thinking, articulating, through the pain. He’d had accidents before, cut himself, fallen. Nothing had ever hurt like this. “Can I have some morphine?”

“Yes, of course,” Byron said, pushing away from the bed and letting his rolling chair move to the door. He stuck his head out the doorway and called to a doctor. After the shot, Draven lay back and tried to comprehend the pain inside him.