The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series (10 page)

She was dizzy and weak and cold and tired. She might fall asleep or float away… But he was pulling her leg toward him, holding onto her knee painfully hard. She thought she made some sound of protest, but she was so tired she wasn’t sure it passed her lips. His other hand pulled at her hair, and she pulled his in return…His hand released her knee and moved up and stroked the inside of her thigh. Automatically, her knees fell open for him. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t meant anything. It just seemed too great an effort to stop him, and she couldn’t remember why she had wanted to.

She didn’t want to anymore. His mouth had cast a spell on her, and her skin trembled with cold but something else, too, a terrifying, careening anticipation. For a second he met it, frozen fingers fluttering over the cotton barrier, seeking her warmth. She thought she said something, or made some sound, but she didn’t hear it. He jerked back though, pushing her leg back against the other one, breathing hard against her face. His breath smelled like blood.

In her mind the words echoed far away,
now, now
, but she didn’t know if she’d said or only thought them.

“What are you doing?” Draven asked, still clenching his fist in her hair.

“I didn’t…you’re hurting me.” The room spun slowly, and she only knew for sure she’d uttered the words this time because he released his hold, pulling his hand away like he’d suddenly realized it was covered in snakes instead of hair. “Cali…” he said slowly. “What you do to me…” But he didn’t finish the sentence. He sat up, swung his legs off the side of the bed, jumped up and left the room.

Cali lay there shivering, and soon, warm air began blowing into the room, and she slept. She heard him move about in the room, felt him lift her and scoot under, and she lay on his lap, her head on his chest, and slept. She woke and he was holding a rectangle with a glowing screen.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Reading.”

“Reading…what?”

“A book,” he said. “Take sleep, my
jaani
. You’re with me now. I’m sorry I took too much. You’ll be alright. I’ll take care of you.”

Cali wanted to point out the hypocrisy, to demand something of him, but she couldn’t think of what. Maybe he’d planned it this way so she’d come back to him. But he didn’t seem to want anything more from her than he’d taken. When she woke again, he held a spoon to her mouth, fed her too fast from a bowl of too-cold soup. But she was warm now, under the blanket, warm and safe despite what he’d done. The next time, he brought her water and vitamins, and she took them without question and slept again.

Later, she woke to find him combing her hair, and again, she woke while he slept. She slipped away to the outhouse, her legs shaky and her head swimming and dizzy. She sank to the ground outside and waited for the dizziness to subside before she made it to the outhouse, on her second try. She was so tired she didn’t know if she could make it back, but while she waited to decide, Draven came and carried her back to the bedroom, groping his way through the light like a blind man. She felt only relief when he laid her in the bed, none of the fear she knew she should feel.

CHAPTER nineteen

Draven hated what he’d done, his inability to control himself. More than that, he hated the sense of guilty contentment he’d had while Cali rested in the house after he overdrew her. She didn’t say much, but sometimes he looked down from his reading and found her eyes open, her head resting in his lap while he stroked her hair absently and learned everything he could about the area around Moines.

Afraid the house’s owner would return and find Cali defenseless, he didn’t leave to find more food until she regained her strength. He stayed close a few days longer, watching her. He was afraid for her, afraid of what he wanted from her and what it would do to her. And in her delirium, she’d yielded. If she could stay inaccessible, separate as she’d been in the hut, he could control himself. Oh, but that moment when she’d urged him to go on…

He didn’t know how he’d stopped himself. It didn’t seem possible that in his moment of frenzied fumbling he had resisted the urge to tear through her underthings like a man possessed and put his fingers into her.

In a kind of torment, he waited for her to go back to the mud hut in the backyard. She’d been back in the house with him a week before she spoke of returning. She agreed to take a few more clothes this time, and Draven helped her carry them out, though he wanted nothing more than to beg her to stay. That was impossible, ridiculous now. Still, as he watched her appraising the house for anything else she might need, he wondered if they would go back to being strangers and neighbors instead of—what? What had they been before that? They had only shared the tent out of necessity. If she’d had the choice, she would have slept in a separate tent.

That didn’t stop him from standing in the doorway watching her pack, rubbing absently at the wrist that had given him that panicky, metallic ringing, the one that had gone soon after Cali had. It didn’t stop him from thinking about the warm weight of her hair when he’d sat on the bed running his fingers through it for hours as he read. His teeth throbbed with hunger for her, more than the simple hunger for her sap.

It was an ache for more, to trace the veins in her throat down, across her clavicle and her warm chest, the small pink knots of her nipples, the scooped out area between her ribs, the way they framed her like two arms. Two arms that held her body contained, the falling away at her waist like the crook of elbows, then the rise of her hipbones, like forearms, and the drawing together at the pelvic bone like two cupped hands, presenting the tangle of ripened fruit like an offering to gods. He ached to kiss it all, to sit behind her and be the arms that contained her body, to lift the living weight of her hair and kiss the baby-fine hairs that glowed along the nape of her neck, catching the light and reflecting it back like gold.

Draven drew himself away from the door to Cali’s hut, drew into himself this longing, this want that ached constantly in him even after the gnawing pain inside his head ceased. He returned to the house and brought Cali one of the backpacks, showed her how to use the tarp under her damp mat so more water wouldn’t soak into it. He left her with the backpack containing the mummy bags so she wouldn’t have to light the fires to warm herself, and he made sure she had the wooden knife before he departed.

He didn’t leave the house again for several days, until his hunger mounted to a dangerous level, drew his mind from important things and made him reckless. He needed nourishment, especially as he’d begun to worry about the homeowner returning now that spring had arrived. When they moved on, he would need strength, and he couldn’t trust himself to count rations if he grew hungrier than his current state. He hadn’t eaten since he’d overdrawn Cali, almost two weeks before. While in the house, he’d found several indications that the owner would be back in spring, though he could not find a clue with an exact date. Soon, they would have to move on, so he began to make preparations.

After drawing from a sapien in a neighboring backyard who had accepted Draven’s visits in the docile manner of especially brainless saps, he went in search of food for Cali. He wanted both to stock up on food before their departure and to keep her well fed. When he remembered her emaciated body upon their arrival in Moines, he was reminded of the sapiens in the basement, starving and rotting on their mats. But as long as she remained healthy, he would draw from her to make certain he wouldn’t lose control again. She could give him a few rations a day without it costing her much.

He crossed two neighborhoods, using the fences to move, savoring only ordinary scents. He pilfered two cans of food from a sapien hut and a handful of freeze-dried food packets before he began his journey back. He didn’t dare stay out all night anymore.

If Superiors saw him, they would report him, so he never took a direct route back. A car sat parked in the driveway of the house directly past the stone one he occupied, so he skirted to the other side of the street before crossing back and slipping into the shadow beside their house. He moved along the fence to the back, where no one could see him from the street or the neighboring backyards.

He was scanning the neighborhood so intently that he nearly forgot to look up, nearly missed the man on the fence. When he sensed him, he froze. Thoughts of Cali careened through his mind. For a moment, he imagined Byron had found him. But the man’s stature was much different from Byron’s, smaller and straighter, as he sat perched atop the fence, legs crossed at the knees, hands resting in lap.

“Well, hello there,” the man said. “We meet at last.” His voice was strange, not high like a woman’s, but not a man’s, either. Draven couldn’t make out his facial features—the lights in the neighborhood shone behind him and illuminated a silhouette only.

“Are you an incubus?” Draven asked. The thought only came to him as he said it. The man was not a sapien, but it wasn’t exactly a man, either. It was something
other
. Draven’s only other encounter with an other was with an incubus.

The man laughed, high and childlike. “An incubus? What a strange thought. I’ve never met one. Are you an incubus?”

“No.”

“Your file said you were suspected as one.”

“What are you, then?”

The man dropped from the fence before Draven, and he could see the face now, the small figure, the impeccable clothing and hair. “I’m a person, of course.”

Not a man. A boy.

“I’m Meyer Kidd. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, extending a hand so white it seemed to glow against the darkness.

“You’re here to kill me?”

The boy laughed. “Kill you? No. I’ve been looking forward to making your acquaintance for some time now.”

“That’s impossible. I only met your employee a month ago.”

“Ah, but you’re quite famous,” Meyer said, smiling. “I’ve known about you for much longer.”

“Are you an Enforcer?”

“Good god, no. No, I’m just a fellow who knows plenty. I’ve been watching you for a while now.”

“What do you want?”

“I suppose I want to help you. I’ve your papers.” Meyer tossed a bundle at Draven’s feet. Draven paused, not sure if this was some sort of trap, if he’d bend to retrieve the papers and this child would knife him. He knelt, keeping his eyes on the boy, and stood with the papers in hand. His papers. His real, original papers, the cards rubbed slick near the edges, worn almost through to the silver and copper inner workings where his thumb settled most often. Not replacements.

“Where did you get these?” he asked. Last he’d known, Sally’s family had them. A twinge of sadness tugged at him at the realization of what this meant.

Meyer shrugged, his suit jacket moving up and down stiffly, as if he were a robot and not a person at all. “I have my ways. I know lots of people and lots of things. I can get anything I want, with very little effort, if you must know.”

“Did Eva send you?”

“Send me?” Meyer asked, laughing again. “No one sends me. I send others.”

“Did you send Eva to me?” Draven asked, stalling for time. His mind frantically called out to Cali, hoping she was inside the big house, sleeping, and that she didn’t awaken and emerge to use the outhouse.

“I didn’t send her,” Meyer said. “Ah, well. It all worked out splendidly, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, nothing, I suppose. It’s all really nothing in the end, isn’t it? I mean to say, in the absence of death, what meaning is there in life?”

“We can live. Perhaps help others.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s quite the thing of it. I couldn’t agree more. So I am here to help you as you helped those sapiens of Eva’s.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, but I’m sure you do,” Meyer said with a smile.

“I’m afraid you must have the wrong man. It was nice to make your acquaintance. You seem a thoughtful man.”

“A man? Is that what you think I am?”

“Aren’t you? You said you were.”

“No, I said I was a person. Let me tell you that I think you’re quite a fascinating fellow yourself. You’ve given me much opportunity for thought.”

“As I said, you’ve the wrong man.”

“Nonsense. You hold proof in your hands. Of course you’re the right man. Let me ask you this, Draven, what do you think of me so far?”

Draven kept his face neutral, although he was a little startled when the boy used his name. But of course Eva would have revealed that, and he had Draven’s papers. Still, did the boy know of him before that? Had he tracked the papers after Eva told him about Draven or before?

“I haven’t yet decided,” he said after a pause.

Meyer laughed. “I like that. You aren’t as daft as I’d been led to believe.”

“Eva told you I was daft?”

“Oh, lots of people. It seems to be a common description in your file.”

“Yes, that.”

“Yes,” Meyer said. “Where are you from, Draven? Your accent is quite familiar.”

“Not unlike yours, I imagine.”

“Muddier, I’d say.”

“If you’re so well acquainted with my file, certainly you know where I’m from.”

“It seems to have slipped my mind. Belarus by way of India or Pakistan, from your accent.”

“I don’t know these places you speak of.”

“Oh, right. You’re a Third, how could you?”

“How can I help you?” Draven asked.

“You let Eva’s saps escape. Isn’t that true?”

“I don’t know what you speak of.”

“Yes, you do. She told me. They told her.”

“I see. Then she caught them.”

“Some of them. It seems they were happy enough at the shelter. There were thirty-four of them, as you know. Twenty went back to the shelter and stood by the door until someone came to put them away.”

“And the others?”

Meyer counted off on his fingers, a gesture Draven had seen Eva use the first night they met. “Four died of exposure or previous ailments. Seven were picked up and taken to a clinic. Three didn’t make it far before Eva’s group found them and took them back to the shelter.”

“The shelter. That’s what you call that place?”

“It’s Eva’s term.”

“And do you eat there?”

“Me? Why would I eat there? I have as many saps as I can manage at my disposal wherever I go. That’s for charity.”

“Charity? That’s what she calls it? Let me ask you, sir, have you ever been to this ‘shelter’?”

Meyer smiled. “Not as such, no.”

“And do you know that the humans inside are nearly starved to death, drained to within an inch of their lives, exposed to cold and filth with no way to counter the elements?”

“I saw the ones at the clinic, as it happens, so I know enough. But I didn’t before. But really, that’s not my concern. I run my charities, and they run theirs. I’m more in the business of helping Superiors who have fallen between the cracks.”

“I see. And you don’t care that your employees torture humans illegally? That doesn’t look good for your company when it comes out, does it?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No,” Draven said quickly. “I only meant, when the clinic leaks it.”

“Oh, they don’t know where the saps came from. And I don’t condone this behavior. I’m just not one of your human rights fanatics. Are you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure. Can I ask you a question?”

“I would love to stay and chat,” Draven said. “But I’m afraid I should be going in for the day.”

“Daylight is hours away,” Meyer said with a dismissive wave. “Besides, I don’t really think you want to go back in that house.”

“Why not?” Draven asked, glancing at the fence. All he wanted was to return to the safe normalcy of his stolen life, to the freedom of anonymity.

“Well, because Byron’s inside, of course.”

Cali.

Draven almost said her name aloud, the word forced from his mouth by panic and anguish. But if Byron was inside, he already had Cali. There was no use committing suicide.