The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Byron pulled his car to the side of the road once the sun began sending its cold rays into the wet morning. He would have rather stayed in a hotel somewhere, but according to his NGP, he was miles from the nearest city. He didn’t know Draven’s destination, but it sure as hell wasn’t anywhere inviting. Nothing ahead, behind, right or left but flat, dull fields that hadn’t come alive yet. Farmland, lying in wait for spring. Further south, farmers would be starting to plow, but here, he was surrounded by dismal boredom. He’d hardly been able to stay awake that night. Just before dawn, he’d come alongside Draven’s path, but he wanted to stay on the road, as it was nearly morning. He’d driven fifty miles ahead before stopping for the day.

He didn’t like sleeping in his car, especially on the side of the road, but he couldn’t bear sun-blindness or the accompanying headaches that would set in if he stayed awake longer. Draven wouldn’t get this far, even if he traveled a few more hours, and he’d probably stay far from the road. But Byron wasn’t taking chances. He couldn’t risk sleeping in a tent, being caught with no protection other than a layer of light-proof fabric.

Despite his inferior accommodations, he settled in without the bitterness that had plagued him for months. Everything that had happened since he left Merida had been shitty, rotten luck. He’d finally caught a break. He had almost missed it. When Milton had told him he couldn’t track Draven anymore, he’d stopped. Milton had turned off the tracking mechanism, and that was the end of it.

But the night after he’d left Draven’s sex hovel, Byron had gone into Draven’s private government file. No one had reported anything in Moines except for one man who’d seen Draven climbing over the fence of the stone house. Byron had already used that information to find the house. He’d been ready to close Draven’s file when something caught his eye. He’d scrolled to the bottom of the file out of habit, not even looking at it. And there, in the bottom right corner, was a tiny flag that made Byron stop and look again. “Tracer: Activated 15/3.”

Byron had blinked at the words like he’d never seen them before, trying to understand. Nothing in Draven’s file was pressing, nothing had changed. Other than the investigators finding the baby’s carcass and some old fire pits, nothing new had been added to the file. Certainly nothing that warranted his tracer being activated again. Byron opened the link and found only that Milton had activated the tracer. In the space for a reason, he hadn’t entered anything. For no reason at all, Milton had activated the tracer two days before.

Byron had already pulled up Milton’s contact on his screen before he changed his mind. He cancelled the call and sat looking at the panel on his dash. Maybe he didn’t want to bring Milton’s attention to it. After all, Milton was a stickler for the Law, and Byron couldn’t risk Milton turning off the tracer again. He had gotten a lucky break at last. Draven’s case was in Princeton’s district, so Milton was in charge of entering all new information on the case. Maybe he’d been entering information that the trackers sent back and activated it by mistake. It seemed farfetched, but Byron could think of no other explanation.

Now it had been two nights and here he was, waiting for Draven to walk right into his trap. Draven would continue south, and when Byron woke, Draven would be nearly on his taillights. Then the fun would begin.

CHAPTER tWENTY-THREE

While Draven readied himself for day travel, Cali went to do her business. During the night, dew had settled on the grass, leaving everything wet and cold. Though Cali was shivering, she made no complaint. Among her many attributes was her complacency in the face of discomfort. As a sap, her life had held one discomfort after another. Not all saps accepted suffering so placidly, but by the time they reached Cali’s years, most knew that complaining did not improve the situation.

“There are small mountains ahead,” Draven said when Cali returned. “If we reach them, we will be less exposed.”

“I don’t see mountains anywhere ahead.”

“We’ve not reached them yet. But not so many people live there. They are not only mountains, but ones with trees.”

“Are we close?”

“I imagine we’ll make it in the next few days.”

Neither of them spoke the silent “if” at the end of the sentence.

“How far do we have to walk today?” Cali asked.

“It’s difficult to know precisely where we are, since the land has no features here. No lakes, no mountains, no rivers.”

“Well, I’m ready to walk. Thanks for carrying me so long.”

“It is easier that way.”

They walked through the endless fields of wet grass. Every few miles, they came upon a fence, climbed it and continued walking. They could cover only half the distance they did at night. But Draven was grateful for Cali’s willingness to walk four or five hours a day without complaint, so he did not mention her pace. After all, she was only a human.

A few hours after the sun rose, it disappeared behind a bank of clouds that roiled up from the west. The wind blew steady and cold, whipping Cali’s hair out in angry tendrils. The clouds advanced unceasingly until the whole sky writhed with them, and teeth-rattling thunder crashed every few minutes. They did not stop walking as they watched the storm’s approach. Cali didn’t speak, but she moved closer to him each time a burst of thunder made the earth tremble beneath their feet. Soon their arms touched, and Draven took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She glanced at him and smiled, looking embarrassed, but she did not withdraw her hand.

Whenever a new crack of thunder split the sky, she startled, even when lightning preceded it by only a few seconds. She tightened her grip for a moment and then release it again each time. Draven studied her with fascination and affection. Such a strange fear. But that was the sapien way—frightened of everything, because everything could harm them.

After some time, fat drops of rain began to fall from the swollen belly of clouds bulging over them. Cali glanced at the sky and drew her shoulders in. “Should we stop under that tree?” she asked. Draven looked at the lone tree in the endless expanse of farmland.

“That’s the worst place we could stop.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the first thing lightning would strike. We’re the second thing.”

“Should we get down low? There’s lots of ditches around.”

“They’ll fill with water soon enough.”

He pulled Cali close to him, and they continued walking as rain came down in torrents, punishing the earth and grass and travelers. Cali kept her head tucked against the wind and rain, but Draven didn’t mind so much. The wind felt nice, and the rain washed him clean again. The storm also blocked the sun, and daylight wasn’t too terrible in such gloomy conditions.

They’d lost the tarp and tent, and he had nothing to keep Cali dry, though. He knew she would suffer by losing so much body heat. “I could get out the pan and you could wear it on your head,” Draven suggested, smiling at Cali.

“What? Why? Is my hair getting wet?” she said, touching her head. Draven looked at her wide, amazed eyes and laughed, and then she laughed, and he drew her closer.

Suddenly lightning blazed across the sky, and from behind them, a loud crack was followed by a ripping noise. They turned to see the tree Cali had pointed out, now blackened and smoldering and splintered into several sections, one of them hanging down strangely like an arm torn from the body and only held on by skin.

Cali gripped his hand more tightly, but she did not speak. On they walked, towards the mountains they could not see, the forest they could not see, the safety they could only imagine. Neither mentioned the tree, or Byron, or the hunger that crept quietly forward, tugging at their strength. They had lost the comfort their moment of humor had afforded. Drenched and bedraggled, they slogged through the grass until water squeezed between their toes at every step and their wet clothes clung to them and made movement even more difficult. Mud crept up their legs as the ground became saturated and the dirt loosened. Each step splashed their legs until they were filthy as well as soaked.

The fear and thrill of the storm died away with the rain, until only the thunder remained, a distant rumbling in the east as the storm moved on.

Though the backpack remained dry, as it was waterproof, Draven didn’t see the use in donning dry clothes once the storm had passed. Neither he nor Cali had a second pair of shoes. Stopping to sleep didn’t appeal to them, and the ground was too wet to start a fire, even if they’d had wood to burn, which they didn’t. Draven had no warmth of his own to share with Cali, and he worried for her. But he could think of nothing to do for her.

Cali had slept a good part of the night on Draven’s back, but he hadn’t taken sleep in days. Every ounce of energy had been drained from his body. If he ate, he’d be stronger, but he didn’t want to weaken Cali without feeding her. When he was certain the storm had passed, he retrieved his sweater from the pack and handed it to Cali. She turned away and changed quickly while he watched the muscles in her slender back twist and slide under her skin. When she turned back and handed him her wet clothes, he couldn’t meet her eyes.

He shouldn’t have looked, shouldn’t have watched her undress. But he had, and now a hot surge of electricity rose in him, and with it, self-disgust. She was only a sap, he told himself again, but he’d said it so many times that it had become meaningless.

“Why are you staring at me?” Cali asked, startling him out of his reverie.

“I’m not staring.”

“Yes, you are. You’re staring and frowning.”

“I’m not frowning.”

“Okay, well, it looked like staring and frowning to me. Did I do something wrong?”

“Of course not.”

“I didn’t ask for your sweater. You can have it back if you’re cold.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Then what is it?”

“Stop asking,” he said, tying her shirt to the bottom of the pack.

“Well, if you didn’t want me to ask, you shouldn’t frown at me. I hate it when people are mad at me. Especially when they won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“Stop being such a woman.”

“What else am I supposed to be?”

“Never mind. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Look, when a man says nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong. Stop badgering me.”

“I can’t, because I don’t know what that word means.” Cali looked at him, her chin rising. His irritation melted away, and he laughed and caught a drop of water that had collected on the tip of her pointy chin, warm from its path across her skin. The gesture made him want to tip her face up, step close, and match her mouth with his own.

Cali shook her head. “You’re so oddball. I don’t even know what’s funny.”

“That’s why it is funny.”

“So you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m only laughing because…you delight me.”

“I delight you? How?”

Draven shouldered the pack once more. “You do. That’s all.”

“You know what? You’re really bad at answering questions.”

“Perhaps you ask too many.”

Draven spotted a tree a ways off through the field and went to retrieve some of its branches. He tucked some into the backpack so that they stood up behind him like crooked trees, and while they walked, he shaved the ends of the sticks into crude points. He gave Cali a handful of them, all of different thicknesses and angled strangely.

“I know these aren’t much compared to the one Meyer took,” he told Cali. “But they’ll do the job well enough. We might need them.” Again, neither of them mentioned the danger they both knew followed them.

“Thank you,” Cali said, tucking the sticks around the waistband of her trousers. “I’m sorry I lost the good one. It was so pretty and nice.”

Draven chuckled. “You’re a dark little thing, you know that? I’d hardly call a blood-stained knife that was used to murder two people pretty or nice.”

“That makes me bright, not dark. And it’s not murder if you’re doing it so you can live.”

“Murder is murder. The cause matters not.”

“I think it does. If you were just a mean murderer I wouldn’t like you, but you’re actually pretty nice.”

That word again. Here he thought she was lovely and beautiful and enchanting, and she thought he was nice.

“I must stop before long,” he said. “When we find a hiding place. I can’t go on without eating or resting my eyes. I will draw from you, and I’ll find you some food tonight. I promise.”

For another hour they walked, unable to secure the slightest hint of shelter. Their conversation lagged, and Cali’s step grew slower as she dragged her feet, stumbled more, stared off for long periods with a calculating look on her face. He wondered if she was thinking about eating. He was.

They finally spotted a twisted tree and stopped to rest. Draven took a ration before falling into sleep, still holding her. When he woke, he found her sleeping, curled up against him for protection or the illusion of warmth. His body held heat only as well as any other solid object, but he shielded her from the wind. The sky had remained overcast after the rain, and darkness came early. Draven sensed their time running short, like a scent on the wind, a premonition of danger on the air.

Byron would find them soon.