Drawn

by David Alan Jones

  “Find a lane and get ready,” Torres said. “Your orders are simple. Draw speed and win.”

  Her two assistants jogged to the end of the track while the group sorted itself out on the lanes.

  “Sergeant?” Leslie said.

  “What, Phelps?”

  “I don’t know how to draw.”

  “You get it, or you don’t, Phelps.”

  Satterfield bumped Anna’s shoulder as everyone jockeyed for position. “Stay out of my lane, Carver.”

  “Ignore her,” Leslie whispered.

  Anna nodded.

  Leslie gave Anna a mischievous grin. “You know, I’m on the track team at school.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Don’t feel bad if you end up watching my ass.”

  “I’ll try to keep up,” Anna said, giving in to a smile of her own.

  “Get ready!” Torres shouted. She had procured a stainless-steel clipboard and a starter pistol from the cart. She held the gun aloft. “Set.”

  Anna tensed. Would she be able to draw speed? How would Torres react if Anna failed because her family had nothing left to borrow?

  The gun banged. Leslie surged to the front of the pack with a thin, dark-haired incubus. He looked about Leslie’s age, maybe nineteen. The two ran with the artless grace of youth, fleet and beautiful.

  And slow.

  Within five steps, Anna caught and passed them. Speed had always been her most natural draw. She reveled in its power, pleased that it should come so easily at her call. Whatever had befallen her family, they were at least well enough to act as her votaries.

  Unfortunately, Satterfield also had a good draw on speed. She, and a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, matched Anna stride-for-stride. Their turnover rate doubled and then tripled, shoes slapping the asphalt with a sound like tiny thunderclaps.

  Anna poured on the speed, pushing herself to still greater effort. The wind lashing at her tracksuit sounded like gunfire. Lungs and legs burning, she pulled ahead of the others as they neared the finish line.

  Then her speed slackened. Not all at once, else she would have lost control, but quickly. The others rushed past her, Satterfield in the lead.

  Anna crossed the finish line and plunged into the track’s foam pad in third place. The rest of the field, Leslie and her young running mate at the fore, arrived several seconds later moving slow enough to stop on their own without the pad.

  “Lose your concentration?” panted the older man who had taken second place after Satterfield. He had a friendly smile. “You had me beat till you slowed.”

  “Lost my draw,” Anna said.

  “That sucks, ‘cause you’re fast.” He held out a hand. “Garret Timmons.”

  “Anna Carver.”

  “Not bad, people,” Sergeant Torres said. “About what I expected.”

  Anna spun in surprise. It seemed Torres had a powerful draw on speed as well.

  Torres wasn’t looking at Anna, but the way she wasn’t looking made Anna’s stomach tighten. She hadn’t missed Anna’s slowdown at the finish line.

  “Satterfield, Timmons, and Carver,” Torres said, “you’re all clearly able to draw speed.” She made a notation on her clipboard. “Phelps, Hanks, and Moss, you’re fast, but not draw fast. The rest of you are so out of shape you might as well be round. We’ll fix that.”

  Leslie looked disappointed. Moss, the young man who had run beside her, shrugged. Hanks, a thin but hale-looking woman with gray in her otherwise black hair, nodded.

  “Everyone fallout back to Links.” Torres hooked a thumb at the exit. “We’re testing dexterity next.”

  The recruits started for the door.

  “Not you, Carver,” Torres said.

  Anna inwardly groaned. What now? She barely fended off a frown to keep her face impassive.

  Garret gave her a concerned look. “Have fun.”

  Leslie acted as though she would stay, but Anna waved her off. Moss and she left together.

  With the others gone, the building fell silent. For the first time since Matt Snow had shot her with that damned tranq gun, Anna felt almost free. And something else, something even more revelatory, occurred to her.

  “You’re not charming me,” Anna said in a low voice. “No one’s charming me.”

  “I’m dropping my Sergeant Torres face for five minutes. We need to talk.”

  Anna smelled a trap. “Sergeant, I didn’t lose on purpose. My votaries gave out.”

  “I thought for sure you were going to crash and burn when your speed started to fail,” Torres said with a nod.

  “You believe me?”

  “I was already reaching for my radio to call the medic station when you drew dexterity and righted yourself.”

  “I—what?”

  “You don’t know you’re a sime,” Torres said, marveling.

  A sime? Anna hadn’t even known what that meant until this morning. They sounded like mythical creatures, something out of a comic book like vampires and unicorns. “Respectfully, Sergeant, I think you’re mistaken. I lost my draw on speed and I slowed. I’ll admit it was tough to keep my balance, but I didn’t draw dexterity with speed. I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Only a sime can run as fast as you, Carver. Without added dexterity, you would run slightly faster than an Olympian. But you, Satterfield, and Timmons were pushing seventy. If you hadn’t been drawing dexterity the entire time, we’d be cleaning scraps of you off the track right now. Snow told me you had to be a sime.”

  “He did?” Anna felt a stupid flush of pleasure at hearing Matt had talked about her and immediately chided herself for it. What was she, thirteen? She couldn’t have a crush on the guy who had delivered her to succubus boot camp against her will.

  “He said he had a hell of a time catching you, and he’s one of the Order’s best takers. He thinks you’ve got amazing natural talent, and I agree.”

  Anna glanced at her draw sergeant. In the few hours they had known one another, Anna had developed an intense dislike for the woman, but this new side of her was, if not pleasant, at least agreeable.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I don’t have much draw on discernment,” Torres said. “Just a twinkle, as my grandmother used to say. But it doesn’t take much to tell you’re not onboard with the Order. And you’re fairly resistant to charm. Those two things make you a flight risk.”

  Anna said nothing.

  Torres grinned. “I’m going to say something I don’t want to say, Carver, so listen carefully. Simes like you are valuable. We need you. But here’s the rub: you need us just as much. More really. I don’t think you get that.”

  “May I speak freely, Sergeant?”

  Torres nodded.

  “I’m not here to serve you or your Order. I’m here because one of your people kidnapped me. I don’t care about your secret war. It has nothing to do with me.”

  Torres watched Anna for a long moment, her brown eyes intense. “I get it. Believe it or not, until a few years ago, I was just like you, Carver. My family hid our secret—hid it from everyone, even ourselves. My grandmother tried to keep her children from realizing they were different. When none of her daughters could draw, she assumed the power had died out in our line. Then I came along. I was nine when I started excelling at sports. I broke every track and field record at school—elementary, middle, and high. That includes the ones set by boys. I had my life planned. I would go to the Olympics and win gold in every event I cared to enter, and then spend the rest of my life on Wheaties boxes.

  “Then the men in suits showed up. They told my parents I had committed internet fraud, of all things. They tried to take me away. My parents freaked; they were afraid of government types—Hispanic people haven’t always had the best relationship with U.S. law enforcement. They didn’t want to hand me over, but as far as they knew, I had broken the law. I ran.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen.” Torres’s eyes took on a faraway look as if
she could draw sight into the past.

  “What happened?” Anna asked.

  Torres shrugged. “I became a slinker. ‘Course I didn’t know that word back then. I’m a sime like you. That made stealing an easy career move. I spent several months moving from city-to-city in Texas, lost, alone, and scared to death. Then one day I made the mistake of ditching out of a diner in Waco. A sheriff’s deputy chased me. Turned out he was fast too—faster than me. He caught me and had my story inside five minutes. I was so lonely, so surprised to meet someone like me, I told him everything.”

  “He was with the Order?”

  “Yeah, lucky break. He could have just as easily been part of the Indrawn Breath.” She glanced at Anna. “But you don’t see the difference, do you?”

  “One oppressive regime is like any other when you’re at the bottom.”

  Torres grunted, then shrugged as if to drop the subject. “Any idea why your speed failed during the test?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “Same thing happened when you tried to charm me this morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you got? Ten, maybe eleven, votaries. Am I right?”

  “Four I know of—my parents, a brother, and a sister. Maybe one or two friends I made on the road, but I doubt it. I’ve always kept to myself. Things are safer that way.”

  A look of surprise creased Torres’s face. “Four? You nearly outcharmed me with just four votaries? Damn.”

  Anna shrugged.

  “Were they all captured by the Breathers?” Torres asked.

  “I don’t know. I think maybe, yes.”

  “I’m about to tell you something—something I’m not supposed to tell you, by-the-by. If, after you hear it, you still want to run, I’ll drive you out the gate, give you some lunch money, and wave goodbye.”

  Anna studied Torres’s eyes. The draw sergeant looked sincere. “Okay.”

  “We’ve seen this happening with a lot of the recruits. Like you, they don’t usually have many votaries. And the ones they do have seem to fatigue easier than they should, leaving our people in the lurch. It’s like they’re being drawn from by someone else, someone who’s running them dry.”

  “How’s that possible? I doubt my family feels close to the people who kidnapped them unless they’re being charmed into it. But that kind of thing doesn’t last, right?”

  “It’s not supposed to. You can charm somebody into liking you, but eventually, it fails. No one can force that sort of link for more than a day or so. Even if you’re charming the person into liking you, the draw you get from them weakens and eventually dies because the bond isn’t real. Whatever Society’s doing to create these links, it’s making them last.”

  “So, how’s this supposed to make me feel like staying? I need to get my family away from these people.”

  “Think, Carver. You’ve got a better chance of finding your family as part of the Order than by going it alone.”

  “Running and doing pull-ups isn’t finding my family.”

  “And you think being on your own out there will be any better? Where are you going to search, Carver? How about FBI headquarters? CIA? NSA? Because we’re talking about Society here—succubi with their fingers all in the U.S. Government. And say you do find them, what then? Do you seriously think you can just save them like that?” Torres snapped her fingers.

  “What’s the alternative? Stay here, getting shit on every day, and wait for the Order to find them? Are they even looking? I’d be better off alone.”

  Torres rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. The alternative is learning how to draw—mastering it—and then helping the Order find not just your family, but everyone they’ve taken. Haven’t you noticed how many mass shootings we’ve had in this country lately? Outbreaks of viruses we thought were beat? Not to mention plain old disappearances. They’re all on the rise, Carver. You and your family aren’t alone in this. Most of your fellow recruits have lost people too.”

  Anna stared at the track. “How long has this been going on?”

  “At least five years,” Torres said. “That I know of. Probably longer.”

  “What did you call these people who tried to kidnap me?”

  “The Indrawn Breath. You know, like the old wives’ tale about succubi stealing a person’s breath while they sleep.”

  “So, if these Indrawn Breath people—”

  “Breathers.”

  “—Breathers have found some way to charm people into becoming votaries, then why stop at stealing just succubi?”

  “They’re not. We’ve seen them take whole families, though they’re careful about that sort of thing. They prefer succubi, but it seems like they’ll take what they can get.” Torres peered at Anna, understanding making her eyebrows rise. “You got family who can’t draw?”

  “My brother, Troy.” Anna’s throat tightened on his name.

  Torres nodded but kept silent.

  Anna looked at the rec center’s main door. An unreasonable feeling of claustrophobia passed over her. “I don’t like this military stuff. And the charm you’re using on us—it’s not right.”

  That brought a smile to Torres’s face. “I hated the military part at first, but it grows on ya. As for the charm? Tough. Deal with it.”

  Anna wanted to run. That had been her first instinct her entire life—a natural inclination her father had cultivated in her. Fighting it went against her entire upbringing. And yet, Torres’s arguments made sense, especially the part about taking on the government. Anna wouldn’t stand a chance. Not without draw training. And she wasn’t likely to find that outside Camp Den’s walls. If she wanted to free her family, she needed the Order.

  For now, anyway.

  “I’ll stay,” Anna said.

  “Good. Maybe you’re not a total idiot after all.”

  Anna grinned. They headed for the exit together.

  “I’m going to be Draw Sergeant Torres when we leave here. You understand that, right?

  “Yes.”

  “Sergeant Torres isn’t your friend, Carver. In fact, she doesn’t particularly like you.”

  “Feeling’s mutual, Sergeant.”

  Torres smiled as they emerged into sunlight.

  6

  Drawing from Strength

  Three weeks later, Anna sat in the middle row of an extended van, her forehead pressed against the side window, watching an unbroken corridor of Georgia forest slip past. Recruits—twelve in all—crowded the seats with three draw sergeants along for the charm, Sergeant Torres at the wheel.

  Joy.

  Two more vans, likewise crewed, followed behind this one.

  “No sleeping, Carver,” Satterfield said from the front seat.

  “I’m not sleeping, Satterfield. I’m enjoying all this freedom.”

  “I wish we could stop at McDonald’s.” Leslie, who sat next to Anna, bumped her arm.

  “God,” said Moss from the seat behind them. “I haven’t had a fry in weeks. That crap they serve in the mess does not count.”

  The thin incubus had attached himself to Leslie’s hip after their near synchronous trial run on the first day of training. Since then, Moss took every chance he got to sit near Leslie. Though Anna found him strange, Leslie liked the guy. Maybe she was starved for social interaction. They all were. Or perhaps she liked super nerds. Some women did.

  Torres turned onto a narrow drive fronted by a wide, well-manicured lawn. A wooden sign at the corner read: Elmwood Retirement Village.

  “Are we on some kind of goodwill tour, Sergeant?” Anna asked.

  “Something like that,” Torres said.

  “Oh, this should be fun,” Leslie said. “I love talking to the elderly.”

  Anna didn’t share Leslie’s enthusiasm. Her grandparents had died in a car wreck before she was born. She had never spent much time with anyone older than her dad, who was now in his mid-fifties. It sounded boring, but it beat scrubbing floors and toilets, her usual Sunday routine of the la
st three weeks.

  Elmwood was a long, brick building with a covered porch. Scads of senior citizens sat chatting on lawn chairs or scooters in its shade.

  Sergeant Torres and her male counterpart, Sergeant Jenkins, got the platoon gathered on the front steps in front of the main building. Anna expected a rousing speech about honoring the old folks, but all Torres said was, “Follow me, people.”

  They entered a waiting area where the nurse on duty buzzed them through a steel security door a hand span thick, three sliding bolts big around as Anna’s forearm nestled inside the frame.

  “Tell me that’s not odd.” Moss eyed the bolts with one eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah,” Leslie agreed. “They must really want to protect their clientele.”

  Elmwood reminded Anna of an elementary school with its shiny white floors and wooden doorframes. Yellowed military portraits, old covers of TIME magazine, and autographed photos of stars spanning every age of Hollywood festooned the main hall. A glossy print of Greta Garbo hung beside one of some svelte, shirtless guy Anna didn’t recognize.

  “Ooh, Liam Hemsworth,” Leslie said. “He’s hot.”

  Moss made a dismissive noise.

  Torres ushered the group into a small cafeteria. “I’ll make this quick. The residents of Elmwood are succubi and incubi. All of them served Society in one capacity or another throughout their working lives. Many have volunteered to act as votaries for you lot. Your mission today is to meet as many of these volunteers as possible. They will decide if you’re worthy of drawing from them. If so, you will be allowed to interact with them weekly for the next month.”

  Anna shook her head. Leave it to the Order to make finding friends a military operation.

  Sergeant Jenkins opened the cafeteria doors opposite the platoon. Dozens of old people, mostly couples, filed into the room, smiling. Anna swallowed, frozen like the proverbial deer in the proverbial headlights. Just what she needed, social interaction with people so removed from her generation they probably thought computers a fad destined to die out.