“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 without speaking. 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 scent of fear.
She covered her face with one hand and made a choking sound, and after a moment, Draven pulled her to him. An odd sensation swept over him, pity and something else, something akin to helplessness but not quite so profound. He lifted her and carried her to the boulder, and there he sat with her folded in his arms. For a time, 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 had calmed. 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, everything was 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 brainless 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 ran his hand over her hair and down her back with strong even strokes until her tears ceased. He did not 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 how it appeared.
“So you are sad?” he said, almost to himself.
Cali nodded and dried her eyes, her fresh burst of tears briefer than the previous one. “It’s silly, 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 don’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 be well behaved 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 mattered little. Perhaps she had feelings, but he could not let them influence his decision. Once he bought her, she would grow accustomed to life with him. Saps were quite adaptable. They could get used to just about anything.
Draven grimaced, remembering the human prostitute he had trapped the night Ander had escaped. Nina had gotten used to something so terrible it seemed no one could grow accustomed to it. But saps could. He hoped Cali wouldn’t hate his living arrangement that much. Though he could have informed her of his plan so she could prepare herself, he did not yet reveal it. He would not tell anyone until he could make it a reality. It might still be some 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 sat in silence, watching 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 as they conversed.
“Yeah, me too,” she said. “But thanks. 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 to marry?”
“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 wish to stay in the barracks? I’d hardly call the houses here livable.”
Cali pulled up one sleeve and showed him a rash of red welts, 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 wish to help you, but there are too many bites.”
“It’s okay. They don’t hurt that much.”
“I know how much they hurt.”
“How would you know?”
Draven looked at her face, full of defiant suspicion, and he shrugged and looked away. “I only imagined.”
Cali held his gaze a moment longer before turning to look out over the garden. “What should I do, Master?”
“You are asking about the scars, or the house?”
“All of it.”
“I would like you to refuse this man.”
“You would?” She drew back a bit and studied Draven. “Why?”
After a moment, he answered with a candidness he would rarely have used with a Superior woman. “I do not like 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.”
His senses went on alert and he straightened. First he heard them, and then he savored them, even through the fog. He turned and watched them, shadowy figures barely discernible through the white clotted air. Three sapiens. Cali squinted in their direction. She couldn’t hear as he could, but she could see them in the growing light. For a long moment, neither she nor Draven moved.
Draven’s body had tensed to spring as if by instinct, but he remained seated as the saps began to scramble up the fence. 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 could move, Cali’s warm hand closed over his forearm. He looked at her in surprise. He’d momentarily forgotten her. She pressed her lips into a tight line and her eyes widened as she 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 had become automatic to capture fleeing saps. 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 trailed 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. He could not sit by and allow three humans to escape, right under his watchful eyes.
Could he?
“Let them go,” Cali said again, her voice pleading. She prostrated herself on the ground before him, touching her forehead to his feet and clutching his ankles. “Please, Master Superior,” she said into the dirt. “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 chin as she spoke.
The third human had gained the fence top, but for a moment, Draven could not tear his eyes from Cali. More than anything, he longed to sink his teeth into that pure skin. 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 throat and heard the rush of sap under the delicate skin. But his thoughts raced ahead to the tin canister at home, and how much his stash would increase if he caught these saps, how much sooner he could bring Cali home and have that tender bite of her neck any time he wished.
He swept Cali aside with his arm, sending her tumbling. Once he’d decided to act, the rush of pursuit had come on stronger than he’d expected, and he knocked Cali further than intended. She crumpled to the ground, but he did not stop to inspect her for injury. The third sap disappeared over the wall the moment Draven leapt forward, covering the distance in seconds.
Draven had never scaled a wall before. When he hit the wall with his feet, he almost fell, but his weight balanced and he found purchase for his fingers in the tiny crevices between bricks. He moved without thinking, scaled the wall with no discernible effort. Only later would he think back and marvel at his own ability.
Having made no plan for traversing the wall, he did not know what to do next when he succeeded. He simply sprung, the thrill of power coursing through him, leapt the razor wire and dropped onto the pavement outside the Confinement wall.
This side of the Confinement faced only back alleys, no parking lots. Morning gave the escapees a head start while Superiors slept. They had a whole day to flee the city. It lay unguarded and open before them. They hadn’t counted on a Superior sitting in the garden hidden by fog so late in the morning. They hadn’t counted on a Superior following them over the fence.
Draven had lost sight of them in the fog, which hung thick over everything. But when he stopped, he could hear them. He sprinted in their direction and quickly 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.
With the sap held under one arm, Draven stood still, trying to sense the third runaway over the distraction of the one he now restrained. Ignoring the thunder of his captive’s heartbeat and the stench of ammonia that came from the boy who, in his panic, had urinated. Draven scanned one way and another, and caught sight of a building through a rend in the fog. He could not hear the third sap’s heartbeat or see her through the fog. But when a small breeze twisted around him, he caught her scent. The boy continued struggling, and though Draven found it difficult to move with such an unwieldy burden under his arm, 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 scent overlying that of the sapien and her fear if not for the boy’s flailing limbs and terrified sobbing. But he didn’t.
He plowed through the fog, sensing her nearness. He heard her breathing too fast, ragged and terrified. She had hidden, and when he made out the garbage collecting bin against the wall, he sensed victory as he circled it. The woman, crouched between the bin and the building, rose out of the fog at him, panicked and hateful and surging with adrenaline, and sunk a thick wooden shard into his abdomen.
31
Draven had experienced pain before, plenty of it. But it had been a very long time since he’d felt this kind of pain—blinding, senseless, consuming. A scream tore from his throat, so animalistic it startled him and he swallowed it before it reached its conclusion. The abruptness with which he cut off the scream brought back a bit of sense, and he was still quick even in such pain. He caught the sap when she turned to run.
Though the pain nearly drove him mad, his single-minded pursuit never wavered. He still gripped the male under his arm, and now 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 withdrew and sucked in a breath. It came out ragged, a wet, horrid sound accompanying his horrible pain. He forced himself to cease the instinctive act and draw breath no longer.
The sun had found its way from behind the blanket of clouds, creating a blinding brightness as it reflected off the fog. As Draven dragged the sapien to her feet, he stumbled and almost fell, but he managed to right 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.
He returned to the location of the first capture, but the male no longer lay where he’d left it. He gave up on that one. If only he could reach the front of the building…
Hands full and instincts dulled with pain, Draven failed to notice the obstacle before him until he tripped over it. He fell on the bound sapien who had struggled a short distance across the pavement with its arms still encased in the fabric of its restraints. The sap’s teeth tore at Draven’s trousers, trying to bite through the linen fabric. Draven kicked out, and the sapien uttered a grunt of pain. Sap streamed from the male’s mouth with several pieces of tooth. Though the sharp scent of sap pierced Draven’s strained nerves, he lay still, skin aching, eyes burning, pain throbbing where the wooden shard protruded from his lung. He longed to yank it free, but he needed all his strength, and removing the weapon would release a rush of blood and weaken him further.
As he lay on the pavement, Draven thought of Cali, how she would never be his, how he would 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. Still clutching the wrist of the boy—barely more than a sapling, less even than Cali’s years—Draven 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 the unconscious female. He could barely stand under the mere weight of two sapiens.
The trek to the doors of the Confinement office seemed to stretch over several hours. The adult male struggled, flopping about on Draven’s shoulder every few minutes. Draven had to stop often and momentarily release the young one so he could keep the bound one from falling. Though he expected the sapling to run, it didn’t. After the second time the adult male struggled, he let it fall from his shoulder to the pavement, where it howled and scrambled in a circle on its side. When it stilled, Draven looked at the boy.
“If you run I will kill you.”
“O-okay, Master. I won’t—I didn’t want to—they made me, my Lord Master.”
“W
alk beside me like a good little sap. I will tell the Confinement that you cooperated and that you shouldn’t go to the blood bank. Do you understand me, little one?” He looked into the sapien’s eyes and it nodded.
“Yes, sir, Master. Yes, Master. Thank you, Lord Master.”
“Now come,” Draven said, lifting the bound male’s body onto his shoulder again. Though he could prevent the sapien from falling, it 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 did not cry out. He heaved the sapien onto the ground, and it howled in pain. He dragged it the rest of the way by its foot, which proved an easier and faster method of transport.
He gained the doors and struggled with them before he remembered he must use his ID card as well as his ID prints, so he scanned both while the bound prisoner lay moaning on the ground and the boy stood wide-eyed and frozen beside him. Draven pocketed his card, dragged open the door and pushed it back with his foot while he heaved the female through, then gestured for the young one to enter. Every cell in Draven’s body had turned to liquid fire. He caught the last escapee’s foot and dragged him through the doors before they fell shut. The sound of the doors closing echoed through the empty entrance room.
Draven stumbled over the female’s body. He fell slowly, his eyes filling with black spots, his lungs filling with the blood that tried to escape the confines of his body. Excruciating pain obliterated all thought 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.
32
“Draven. You’re awake.” Byron’s voice cut through Draven’s mind and he became alert in an instant.
Blood Moon: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Vampire Novel (The Superiors Book 1) Page 18
