The Superiors

by Lena Hillbrand

  “Oh, excu-use me.” One of the girls tipped Cali’s cup of water across her tray of food. “Oops,” the girl said, laughing.

  Cali sighed and righted her cup. Water-logged cornbread. Again.

  “Why don’t you just have your boyfriend help you clean that up,” the oldest girl said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Uh huh. I seen him hanging around, all big-eyed and wanting-like.”

  “Oh, no. I heard she got a whole other kind of boyfriend. That true, Cali?”

  Cali looked at her food. What was keeping her sisters?

  “Yeah, Mona says you got a bloodsucker boyfriend. She says she saw you wearing his shirt last week. Said you was out kissing in the garden.”

  “Oooh yeah. Cali got a bloodsucker boyfriend. Ain’t that something else. He been around courting you this week?”

  “Just leave me alone, okay? I’m not trying to bother anybody.”

  “You hear that Ruth? She ain’t trying to bother nobody. Ain’t that just cute?”

  Two of Cali’s sisters joined her, and Ruth and her friends moved off, laughing and looking back as they walked away.

  “What was that all about?” Zinnia asked.

  “Nothing,” Cali said, spooning her beans on top of the wet cornbread. “The usual.”

  “Were they talking about your bloodsucker?” Poppy asked.

  “He’s not mine. And no, they were just talking about one of the other ones.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “One of them made me go out to the garden, and he gave me his shirt because I was cold. So they’re saying he’s my boyfriend.”

  “Ewww,” Zinnia said, laughing. “That’s so gross.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Poppy said. “If I couldn’t have a real boyfriend, I’d probably look at a bloodsucker. Some of them are cute, when they’re not smiling.”

  “Poppy!” Cali said, trying to hold back a laugh. “That’s just wrong.”

  “Hey, you wouldn’t know. Boys are great. I heard that Jonathan was asking after you.”

  “I’m not looking for a boyfriend, or to get married, okay? I just want to do the garden and try not to get bit too much.”

  “But you hafta have babies.”

  “Why? There’s no rule about it.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here,” Poppy said, leaning across the table. “Everyone knows they like the women with the most babies. They get treated the best. And then they get out, they’re free out there somewhere having their own gardens and never once ever getting bit.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve been out there for three years, and I’ve never seen a free homo-sapien yet. The only thing free is the bloodsuckers.”

  “Don’t tell her that, Cali,” Zinnia said. “We’ll get out, Poppy. Cali don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Cali stabbed at her food, knowing she had to eat but not feeling like it anymore. “What took you so long? Where’s Gwen?”

  “Gwen’s with Mama. She’s real sick today.”

  “More than yesterday?”

  “Yeah, she’s real bad. She can’t even get up to eat.”

  “Can we bring her some food?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna try.”

  “I’ll go and see her now. I’m done, and Gwen can come eat.”

  “Okay, good. You think you can ask one of your loyal followers to make sure she gets seen at the clinic?”

  “I don’t have followers. They just like to drink my blood. It’s not like we’re friends.”

  “Okay, whatever you say. But I haven’t been bit for months. I just thought you could ask one of them. What about that one who comes in every night? I heard one of the girls said he looked real big-stuff.”

  “He’s mean, and I don’t think we even speak his language. He never says anything, and my arms are aching every minute of the day from him biting me. Want to get some followers, Poppy? You can have them.”

  “Gee, you don’t have to get all mad. I was just saying. I thought maybe you were important now that you’d been in the restaurants.”

  “I don’t want to be important. I just want to be in the garden and for the stupid biters and the stupid girls in here to leave me alone. I’m going to see Mama. And if you want to be important to a Superior, why don’t you let me have your spot in the house and you can sleep in the barracks?”

  Cali walked off, since none of her sisters had an answer for that. They didn’t understand. They got bit once in a while, if they happened to be out or if a Superior had extra time to wander and liked the smell of one of them. Otherwise they only had to go to the regular blood-draw every day. Her sisters were the lucky ones. They hadn’t been bitten every night for years, lots of times every night, and they didn’t quite understand how awful it was to have ‘loyal followers.’ Cali didn’t want followers. She just wanted her stupid arms to stop hurting.

  Chapter Thirty

  When he went to see her again, Cali lay limp and slumped away from him, and Draven had to pull her from her bunk. He dragged her out, and she stood while he wrapped his shirt around her shoulders. She looked at the floor, and at first he thought her only tired.

  “Is something wrong?” Draven asked. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you sick?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Then let us go and walk outside.” He started to leave but she didn’t move. He turned back and took her arm and pulled, and Cali came with him, hanging back. He checked her out, and they stepped out into the blue dawn. A fog hung low over the grounds, and when they walked into the garden it was like walking on clouds. When Draven looked down, he could hardly see their feet.

  Neither he nor Cali spoke. He’d never ventured so far into the garden, and he had to follow Cali to make sure he wasn’t stepping on the plants. He saw a large boulder at the end of a row and stopped. Daylight would come soon, and he wanted to eat first.

  “Let us sit here, little pet.”

  Cali didn’t answer, and she didn’t stop. Her insolence was dangerous. She needed to learn, and someone else might teach her a harsher lesson than he would. He strode up behind her and caught her arm and spun her around. But the words he had intended stopped in his mouth.

  “What is this?” he asked, relaxing his grip on her arm. “Why do you weep?”

  She shook her head and turned away a bit, and he stood and didn’t know what to do. He had soothed many saps when he had worked with them. He had seen many cry from fear and pain. But he didn’t see that Cali was in pain, and she didn’t have the smell of fear.

  She covered her face with one hand and made a choking sound, and he pulled her to him. It was a strange feeling he had, pity and something else. Something like helplessness, but not quite so profound. He lifted her and brought her to the boulder, and there he sat with her folded in his arms. For a while her quiet sobs made the only sound in the garden muffled by fog. Draven held onto her, wanting to eat but not wanting to draw from her while she wept.

  When she quieted, she wiped her face on the sleeve of the shirt she wore, his shirt. She had that strange look about her again, that look of embarrassment. Draven reached out and wiped a tear with his index finger and held it out towards Cali’s face.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I—it was stupid of me. Go ahead.” She pulled up the sleeve of the shirt and presented her arm.

  “I will draw, and then you will explain yourself,” Draven said, and he pulled her wrist up to his mouth and closed his teeth around it. He ate slowly, stroking her leg until she had stopped trembling from her tears. When he finished, she looked calmer. He also felt very much calmed and relaxed and drowsy after filling himself with the wonder of her sap.

  “Now tell me, my jaani. Are you in pain?”

  “No.” Cali pulled the sleeves of his shirt down over her hands and balled the
cuffs in her fists. “I just thought…when I was here before, it was really good. I was pretty happy, and I thought it would be the same when I came back, but now…the other girls tease me and worse, and they’re awful to me. And there’s this stupid boy, he wants to be mated with me, and—.” Cali’s voice caught and she began to weep again. “My mother died. She got sick and we tried to get them to take her to the clinic, and when they did it was too late and she died. And everything is just so…so…ugly.”

  Draven petted her hair and her back with strong even strokes until she stopped crying. He didn’t know what to make of this. Cali seemed smarter than most saps, but he still had trouble believing she had emotions like sadness at her loss. But that was exactly what it looked like.

  “So you are sad?” he said, almost to himself.

  Cali nodded and dried her eyes, her fresh burst of tears much shorter than the previous one. “It’s stupid, I know. I haven’t even seen her for three years, and now I’ve only been back here for a few months, and I shouldn’t have as much right to cry as my sisters. I just thought…I thought when I came back everything would be good. And it’s not.”

  “I see.” Draven wondered if she would behave when he bought her. Perhaps she would be unhappy, would run away and try to return to the Confinement. She seemed attached to her family, and they lived here. But it didn’t matter. She might have feelings, but he wanted to bring her home, so he would. She would get used to it. One good thing about saps—they were adaptable. They could get used to just about anything.

  Draven thought of the human prostitute he had trapped the night Ander had gotten away, and he grimaced. Nina had gotten used to something so awful it seemed no one could grow accustomed to it. But saps could. He hoped Cali wouldn’t hate his living arrangement that much, but he didn’t want to tell her his plan yet. He didn’t want to tell anyone until he could make it a reality. It might still be several years until he had saved enough to bring Cali home.

  When Cali had dried her face again, she looked as usual except for the redness around the eyes. They watched the warm fog melting in the garden. Draven squinted a bit in the increasing light, but the fog kept the morning from becoming too bright. He liked it for this reason. He could stay out later when the sun wasn’t blinding him on the way home.

  “I am sorry that your mother has died,” Draven said, twisting a clump of Cali’s hair between his fingers. He worked his way through a tangled knot in the back of her hair.

  “Yeah, me too. But thanks. Anyway, now I don’t know...I can go live in her place with my sisters, since there’s room for me now. There’s that, at least. And this boy wants to marry me, I think, or take me as a mate, anyway. I guess I should go, now that my mama is gone. He has his own little house and it wouldn’t be so crowded. My sister has a kid, and the other one’s having another baby, and there’s not a lot of room there anyway.”

  “You are marrying?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I should.”

  “You have said you are against this practice.”

  “I know. But it just makes more sense. There’s four people in my mama’s house, and five if I move in there, and more with the baby. And this boy has a house all to himself, and it’s almost as big as the one my sisters have.”

  “Why do you not want to stay in the barracks? I’d hardly call the houses here livable.”

  Cali pulled up her other sleeve and showed him a rash of red marks, unhealed bites and scars with pebbles under them from the bites that had been left open and healed. “Maybe he will come less.”

  “Merde. Does he come every night?”

  “Yeah. Once every day.”

  “How long has it been since I’ve come?”

  “I don’t know. A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

  “This frustrates me. I want to help you, but there are too many bites.”

  “It’s fine. They don’t hurt that much.”

  “I know how much they hurt.”

  “How would you know?”

  Draven looked at her face, anger and suspicion in it, and he shrugged and looked away. “I just guessed.”

  Cali looked at him a moment longer and then turned and looked out over the garden. “What should I do, Master?”

  “You are asking me about the scars, or the house?”

  “All of it.”

  “I would like you to refuse this man.”

  “You would?” She looked at Draven. “Why?”

  “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.

  “I have to stop them,” he said, removing Cali’s hand. “You know that I have to. It’s our law.”

  “They’ll die, Master. They’ll go to the blood bank, and they never come back. That’s what happens when people run away.”

  “Then they shouldn’t run away.”

  “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.