The Renegades (The Superiors)

by Lena Hillbrand

  “Wait, no, that’s not…” She started to say that wasn’t it, that she liked boys, just not naked ones or ones who wanted to mate with her. But she stopped her words, because if he thought that, maybe he’d never try to make her do anything with a man. So she said, a few beats too late, “…funny.”

  Draven shook his head and went back to trying to get the wet log to burn. The other wood lay drying around the fire, some of it with items of clothing hanging on it. A light rain had started outside. Cali huddled behind Leo, shivering.

  “Come closer to the fire,” Draven said. “You should warm yourself.”

  Cali paused, then slowly scooted to sit beside Leo, pulling her feet in close and wrapping her arms around her knees again. Draven watched her from across the fire. When she’d settled herself, he edged around the fire and sat beside her, so close she could feel the cold glow of his skin. She started to scoot away, but he slid his icy hand over her forearm.

  “Look at me,” he said softly. She didn’t want to, but when he said things in that warm, insistent voice, she couldn’t help herself. She looked at him, the light flickering over his face and making strange shadows in his eyes. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said. “I’m not your master, and I’m not Byron, and I’ll not hurt you.” She wanted to look away, but her eyes wouldn’t move from his face. He smiled and said, “With or without my clothes on.”

  Her face warmed at his words, and this time she dropped her gaze. When she glanced back at Draven, he was again watching her with that fearsome intensity. “What?” she asked, leaning away.

  “Nothing,” he said, still not moving. “Only I’ve said I would never hurt you, and that was a lie.”

  Cali shrank back. “What does that mean?”

  After a long pause, Draven shifted and cleared his throat. The longer he wouldn’t look at her, the tighter her stomach knotted. He could always stare her down. He was never ashamed or embarrassed or uncertain. It seemed wrong to see him squirming, unable to look a sap in the eye.

  “What?” she asked when she couldn’t bear his silent discomfort any longer. “How are you going to hurt me? Or…why? If not…not how I think?”

  “It’s only…you have…” Again he paused for an agonizingly long time. Finally he met her eye. “I have to cut you.”

  “What? No…” Cali said, shaking her head as she backed further from him. “Why do you have to cut me?”

  “So they can’t find us.” Draven looked more determined now, scary determined. And now she had nowhere to run except straight into a freezing cold lake.

  “But you said they could smell my blood if I cut myself on a stick.”

  “This is different,” he said. “I’m sorry. But it has to be done.”

  “Why? So I won’t run away?” She remembered Master saying he’d chop off her leg so she couldn’t run away. Surely Draven couldn’t plan to do that.

  “I would rather do almost anything,” he said.

  “Then do something else. Whatever you can, please? I’ve been branded, and it hurts so bad you wouldn’t believe…”

  “It’s not for that,” he said. “It’s not for me to keep you. It’s so they can’t find you. Not easily, anyhow.” Cali opened her mouth to protest, but Draven stood. “Come along, don’t beg. It only makes it harder. Go and soak your hindmark in the lake for a bit to numb your skin.”

  Cali stood reluctantly, trudged to the entrance of the cave and lowered herself into the water. The cold shocked her, but she stayed in a few minutes, until her body ached deep into her bones from it. When she could bear it no longer, she called out to Draven, who came and lifted her from the water, holding her under her arms the way she might lift Leo from his bath. Though she usually didn’t like Superiors to see her without clothes, the pain of the cold, along with her fear, made a little thing like her nakedness seem silly.

  Draven set her on the blanket next to Leo. “Lie on your stomach,” he said softly.

  “I—I don’t want to do that.”

  “I’ll be quick about it,” he said. His jaw was set, but he spoke in the gentlest voice. If he’d been mean about it, she could have turned her fear into anger. That was harder to do when his eyes were brimming with sorrow and regret. “Try not to scream and awaken your child. There now, that’s a good girl.”

  Cali lay stiff on her stomach, her knees clenched together so hard her bones hurt. Draven had said he didn’t want her that way, but now he tugged at the band of her wet underwear, rolling it down. She knew girls were supposed to get on all fours for breeding, but she also knew that even if they didn’t, men could do it anyway.

  “No—no,” Cali said, her voice muffled in the blanket as she began to panic. She tried to roll away, but Draven pressed his palm on the small of her back and suddenly she went limp, her legs useless and numb. Before she could register what he did, he’d sliced into her, a blade sliding through the skin of her hindmark. She bit down on her lip and muffled a cry. The cut didn’t last more than a second. But then it felt like he was tearing her skin off, peeling it back. She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her teeth and fought back some combination of sob and shriek.

  The heel of his hand kept pressing, pressing, on that one spot that made her feel helpless and paralyzed, and his fingers shredded her skin until she couldn’t bear it any longer, and she drew in a ragged breath that came out as a sob. “Mon dieu,” Draven muttered, and then he withdrew his fingers and crouched over her. While she tried to catch her breath, he leaned down and his hair brushed against her back, and with horror, she realized he was eating from her wound. She let out a strangled sound of protest, but she couldn’t twist away. That one hand of his, in that one spot, had trapped her whole body.

  He lifted his mouth from her and murmured some consoling words, “It’s nearly over, my jaani, you did so well, another moment…” Again his mouth found her, and she jerked at the flare of pain, but when his cold tongue slipped inside the slit he’d made, her body grasped at that fleeting relief from agony, however mild. It did ease the pain for a moment, and her breath slowed while he explored her injury with his tongue, cleaned the blood from the surrounding skin, and continued to cleanse her wound until he seemed satisfied. Cali had stopped struggling, and she lay motionless, stunned by what had just happened.

  His hands left her, and he left her, and then he returned and laid a bandage on her wound, smoothing it on with the gentlest fingers. He remained awake, sitting beside her, shifting now and then, but she didn’t turn her face towards him. After a time, the lull of him moving about the cave, feeding the fire, tending their clothes, sitting beside her and petting her and murmuring things like, “It’s all over, my little pet…so sorry…never hurt you again…sleep, my jaani…” pulled her into a dreamless sleep.

  She woke some time later to find the fire had turned to coals. Draven sat watching her, and as soon as she rolled over and sat up, he said, “I must eat.”

  “Oh. Of course,” she said, her voice high from sleep. For a moment, she couldn’t seem to piece together how she’d ended up here, on a stone floor with Leo beside her and a throbbing ache in one flank.

  “Now.”

  “Yeah,” she mumbled. “Sorry. I forgot. You didn’t eat all day?”

  “I had a bit earlier. But you needed strength.”

  “Why didn’t you take more? I was already cut. You could have eaten.”

  “I hoped you’d offer.”

  She tried to blink clouds of sleep from her mind. “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I forgot what this was. I didn’t want to make you feed me, but isn’t that why I got you? My mind must be in disarray from staying out all day. You’re not going to offer because you don’t like me. You’re not Sally.” He dropped from the log where he sat to his knees on the floor, took her hand, almost roughly, bowed his head and drove his teeth into a vein on the inner side of her forearm. After the initial needle of pain when he broke the skin, it didn’t hurt too awfully bad. Each time he pul
led with his tongue, a dart of pain surged and then ebbed again when he released suction a little. As he drew, his dark head bobbed, and a cool rush of air brushed her skin each time he breathed. When he finished, he closed the bite and flung her arm away before quickly crossing to the other side of the fire. He sat staring into the embers with a fierce frown on his face for a long time.

  Cali rested her cheek on her knees and stared into the pit. After a while, she drifted off. She jerked awake some time later when she felt his hands, hot now, on her bare back.

  “Come, my little jaani,” he said softly. “Lie down. You’ll fall into the fire.”

  He pulled her back from the fire pit, and the cold found her immediately, snaked around her warm body and stole her heat. Draven urged her sideways onto the blanket, now dry and hot, and loosened her bandage to check her cut. She stifled a cry when he leaned down to touch it with his cold tongue. After he had run his tongue over it, he sat back and covered her with the blanket. She curled into herself, trying to ignore the throbbing in her hip. A minute later, Draven opened the blanket, and she didn’t have time to be scared of his intentions before he put the naked baby in her arms and wrapped the blanket around them both. As she held Leo and buried her nose in his hair, she wondered how she would ever be able to escape before Draven hurt him, too.

  Chapter 24

  Although exhaustion dragged at him, Draven could not sleep so early in the night. He sat listening for sounds of approach, thinking of this ridiculous thing he had done. Stealing Cali and the baby, likely only to get them—and himself—killed. And for what purpose? To stop the seepage from his wounded pride?

  He had wanted Cali in his old home, where he could care for her properly and she could enliven his dull, routine life. He hadn’t wanted her as a runaway, in constant fear of endangering her, forced to cut her open just to prevent trackers from honing in on them in a matter of hours. It was one thing to live outside society, to scrape a living from the fringes of a town, always staying just out of sight and off target boards. This was different. Now someone would hunt him for the rest of his life, or until he turned himself in. And he didn’t want to do that.

  He’d enjoyed living outside the system, unencumbered by societal restraints, discovering the amazing power of his body that had stayed hidden from him for a hundred years. Somehow, he had never known the strength or abilities he possessed, and he’d wanted to explore this new aspect of his existence. He hadn’t expected to have to care for two sapiens, one of them a baby whose inevitable death would fall on Draven’s shoulders.

  That Cali would understand that bothered him as well, though he tried not to examine too closely why Cali’s comfort and contentment suddenly concerned him. In reality, it mattered little if she liked or trusted him. He had his human. His only concern should be ensuring she stayed alive and out of Byron’s hands. Whether she wanted him to wear clothing or not, if she despised and feared him for hurting her, were matters of no consequence.

  And yet, he had risked his life to retrieve her baby—no, not her baby, someone else’s baby—simply because she wanted him to, even though he couldn’t understand her attachment. She’d wanted to escape Byron’s so she wouldn’t have to bear children, and yet she’d been willing to risk their lives for a child. But she was only an ignorant sap. That explained her choices. She thought like a sap because she was a sap. And he, a Superior who knew better, had taken orders from her, had done as she bid him and risked all their lives in the process. He must be going mad.

  Perhaps living so long without contact with fellow Superiors had loosened his grasp on reality. Or perhaps the torture he’d undergone at the hands of Sally’s people had warped his mind. Or Byron’s gun could have damaged his brain. Since then, he’d not had enough contact with others to know if he’d relate to them normally. He couldn’t remember the last real conversation he’d had with a Superior.

  From this moment on, however, he vowed not to concern himself with his human’s impulsive desires. Nor would he ask her permission to eat, or do as she bid him. He would steel himself for what had to be done, no matter how loathsome the task, as he had when he’d removed her locator chip. If she thought him cruel, what matter? She could return to Byron if she imagined Draven treated her badly. He’d seen the swarm of bites Byron had left open on her arms. He knew the pain well by now. It was not unbearable.

  He circled the fire, lifted the blanket and slipped beneath it. He’d forgotten her state of undress, and seeing her so bare startled him for a moment. But what matter, she was only a sap. A very warm sap. Although that warmth had once disgusted him, now, in the cold, he enjoyed it nearly as much as drawing from her. He fitted his body around hers and drew her heat, instead of sap, into himself. Slipping two fingers into his mouth, he wet them with saliva and dabbed it onto the hot, swollen skin surrounding Cali’s cut. When he slid his arm over her and drew her to him, she awakened and began to struggle, but he tightened his grip to still her. After a few moments, her movements ceased, but her body lay rigid and trembling against him.

  “Relax,” he whispered into her ear. He pulled her hair back from her neck, slid gently into the vein and let her life flow into him.

  Her skin rose with a chill against his, hoarding the warmth that he took so greedily. He pulled hard on her neck until she whimpered before he released her skin and licked clean the marks his teeth had left. But he didn’t release her body. A long sigh of contentment escaped his lips. Finally, he had secured his long-coveted prize. At last, he had what for so long he had desired, what for so long had seemed beyond reach. He relaxed behind her and slept.

  He awakened when the baby cried, but fell back into sleep immediately. From the chill in the cave, he knew the fire had died and that Cali had slipped from his arms. The brightness in the cave and the burning in his skin told him daytime had arrived. He pulled the blanket over his head and curled under it to shield himself from the light, and then he slept again.

  The baby’s squeals awakened him again some time later. Draven sat up and groped for his shades. He found them and slipped them on so he could see Cali and her baby clearly. Cali had dressed them both, and now she sat feeding Leo from a packet of freeze-dried food. Nearby, the ashes lay cold on the floor.

  Draven rose and felt for dampness in each item of clothing before he knelt and lit the fire again.

  “Aren’t we leaving?” Cali asked.

  “Not today. I imagine we’ll travel at night for a few days. This place is well-hidden, and if we light the fire in daytime only, perhaps we’ll stay that way.”

  “What do we do here?”

  “Recover.” Draven knelt and retrieved the small treat he’d bought her at the store. He pushed it into her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, and before she could respond, he stepped to the entrance of the cave and dove into the water. His sunshades came loose, but he pulled them down around his neck and swam. Without a burden in his arms, and without clothing except a pair of undershorts, he could swim far and fast, and he didn’t have to come up for air.

  This time he swam to the lake’s far shore and found some deadwood that had lain for quite some time. Yesterday’s rain had soaked everything, but the wood would dry after a short time beside the fire. He carried it back to the cave and spent the remainder of the day transporting wood and stones and a few live branches back to the cave. By evening, all he’d collected crowded into the cave.

  As daylight dulled to evening, Draven went out once more. He left his shades and shorts, disregarding Cali’s preference. He dove into the water, slicing into the icy blackness, and sank down and down. Far below the surface, where water almost obscured light, he moved forward, cold and tired but finding an absolute peace in the cloudy depths, an indifference to the rest of the world that calmed him to the very core.

  Sliding through the water, close to the bottom, he followed the edge of the lake as it curved towards the shallows. He’d almost reached the spot where he’d taken Cali and then the baby into the water when
suddenly he came face to face with a person.

  He pushed back and kicked hard until he broke the surface and sucked in a welcome breath of air. Suddenly the cold clasped him tightly. He paused, not wanting to dive down again, but at the same time, compelled to. For a few moments, he waited on the surface, breathing in and out and nothing else. Then he pushed his head beneath the surface and began to glide back towards the body. Draven had seen a dead man before, just after he killed him. But this man had been dead much longer.

  Upon reaching the bottom, Draven floated before the skeleton. The clothing it had died wearing still hung from the skeleton’s frame, fluttering lazily in the icy water. He’d died in denim trousers and a red shirt. He lay on the bottom, almost undisturbed except for the removal of flesh by fish and underwater creatures. From the exposed teeth, Draven could tell the man had been Superior.

  He bent to untie the rope from the skeleton’s waist, and as he loosened the knot, his knuckles bumped the body and the bones shifted. When he’d undone the knot, he pulled at the rope, which fed out a meter or so before pulling taut. He looked from the rope to the surface and back. Holding to his resolve, he gripped the rope and swam towards the source. The rope, almost as thick as his thumb, might prove useful in all manner of scenarios, despite a length where a creature had gnawed halfway through. Draven followed the rope through the murky, dark water for about six meters before reaching the end. It had been secured to a submerged car. Like the man, only the car’s skeleton remained.

  After untying the rope, Draven gathered it in his arms and swam to the surface. Throughout the day, he’d spent many hours in the icy water, crossing the lake time and again to supply the cave. By now he’d grown quite cold, and therefore moved more slowly than usual. The cave seemed a long way off from where he surfaced. Willing his stiff limbs to move, he began to make his way towards the entrance in the cliff face. At last, he reached the cave and pulled himself up and in.