The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series (20 page)

CHAPTER thirty-six

They had to squeeze sideways through a crevice about six human lengths to go further into the cave. Cali gripped her flashlight, wanting to shine it at both the floor and the ceiling so she wouldn’t miss a single thing. Draven reluctantly agreed to let her lead the way, though he stayed so close his hand brushed hers as they edged through.

“If I could split myself in two,” he said, “I’d put one of myself in front of you and one behind, so I could protect you on both sides.”

“You’re the nicest person I ever met,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice like ice.

“Did I offend you?” She’d wanted to say something nice, like he’d said to her. But she always messed up without knowing how, broke some secret Superior code of manners.

“No,” he said.

“Are you mad at me again?”

Though he denied it, she could tell, as she could always tell, when he was upset.

As they continued, the cave’s slippery entrance fell behind, and they had to walk in a crouched position through a lower part. When they came to an opening and could stand upright again, Cali shone the flashlight towards the ceiling. Hanging cones of orange stone pointed down at them, little black pods clinging to them.

“Wow,” she breathed.

“Direct your light away from the bats,” Draven said. “You could awaken them.”

“What are bats?”

“Flying animals.”

“Like birds?”

“Indeed.”

“Do they bite?” Cali asked, sweeping the beam towards the floor.

“They’re shy,” he said. “They’ll not hurt us. Most of them are out, I imagine. They’re nocturnal, like us.”

“What’s knock-urnal?”

“It means they are most active at night.”

“Oh. Like Superiors. I thought you meant like us, me and you.”

“You and I are not alike. When I say
us
, I mean Superiors.” He turned and started forwards again without waiting for an answer.

Cali trailed behind, taking in all the strange, new sights in the cave. As she moved forward, she shone the light on the dirt floor, the boulders and turns in the cave, and the changing patterns and colors in the stone ceiling. She wondered if it would collapse if she touched it, if the whole cave could come down and crush them.

“How far are we going?” she asked, hurrying to catch up to Draven.

“Would you like to stop? Are you frightened?”

“No, of course not. I just wondered.”

“Very well then. We’ll stop at the end.”

The end turned out to be awfully far. They ducked under low places, even crawling once, squeezed through narrow spaces, climbed over boulders, and descended a dusty slope further into the earth.

“This would be a great place to hide,” she said. “If we got rid of my scent around the opening, no one would come all this way in. Would they?”

“Perhaps not,” Draven said. “Or perhaps it would provide him an ideal trap. He could wait at the entrance if he didn’t want to enter.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that. That’s bad.”

“Others have been here,” Draven said, stopping to look at slash marks on a large boulder.

“When? What others?” Cali shone the beam ahead. “Are they still in here?”

“No,” Draven said, studying the lines grouped together with cross-lines. “I think sapiens from long ago left these. Perhaps from the time before Superior rule.”

“What does it say?”

“These are names,” Draven said, running his fingers over the markings above the lines. “Here’s a date. Each mark is likely one more day.”

“What does it mean?”

“Perhaps they were fugitives who used this place to hide.”

“I wonder why they left,” Cali said as they made their way around the marked boulder.

Draven stopped so abruptly that Cali bumped into him. “They didn’t.”

She shone the light around him and found herself staring into the faces of the last fugitives to find the cave.

CHAPTER thirty-seven

Draven surveyed the group of humans, two small and two larger. A family. He didn’t notice Cali’s response, as she remained behind him, until she grasped his shirt. When he turned, he found her staring, mouth agape, skin ashen.

“Cali,” he said, blocking her from the view. “Do not be frightened. They’re dead and cannot harm you.”

She shook her head, backed away a step, and stumbled. “We have to get out of here,” she said, her voice breathy. “We have to get out.”

“Alright. We can go.” He took her arm and marched her away, though she looked over her shoulder every few seconds, casting the beam of her light back as if she expected them to pursue her.

“What if…” she muttered. “The frogs…I knew it. I knew something bad was going to happen.”

“They’re only bones,” he assured her. “We could remove them and stay here ourselves.”

“No!” Cali said, almost shouting. She jerked free of his grasp and stumbled against the boulder where the humans had left their mark. Three hundred and fourteen marks. If he was correct, they’d lived here nearly a year. If Byron didn’t find them, he and Cali could survive much longer.

But Byron would find them.

And yet… Draven was beginning to hope. Nearly a month had passed since their encounter. Perhaps they’d mortally wounded him without realizing it. Otherwise, he’d have found them by now. He was a better tracker than Draven. His sense of smell was incredibly keen, so that even if they had used the garlic every day, which they hadn’t, he could perhaps still have found Cali by now.

“What frightens you so?” he asked Cali as she raced towards the cave’s entrance.

“They’re…they’re not prepared,” she said.

“Prepared for what?”

“For…you know. The afterwards.”

“Do you want to remove them? We can bury them, or…whatever you do with your dead.”

“No,” she panted. “We can’t disturb them. They’ll wake up.”

“They won’t awaken,” he said. “But we’ll leave them, if you like.”

“They might. Their spirits are still there.”

“I see.” Understanding dawned. She was concerned with a spiritual matter, a superstition, not a tangible threat.

“We need to get our stuff and get out as fast as we can. We could have woken them and…”

“Yes? And?”

“You think this is funny?” She whirled and shone the light into his face.

He managed not to smile. “Of course I don’t. I see that you’re frightened. What’s amusing in that?”

She narrowed her eyes, but after a moment, the urge to flee apparently triumphed her desire to fight with him. She turned and stalked away. “It’s not funny,” she called back. “You’re a Superior, so probably nothing would happen to you. But I can’t be in here if they break free. They’ll be angry that we disturbed them, or they’ll want...me.”

“Oh?”

“They don’t have bodies anymore,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“Of course.”

At last, they squeezed back through the crevice that led into the mouth of the cave. Cali cast a final glance over her shoulder with a shiver, and then breathed a sigh.

Draven handed her the knife and nodded at the cave’s opening. “Go. I’ll cover our tracks.”

She hesitated. “Just…be careful, okay? Please? I know you think it’s funny, but…”

“I will.”

Cali scrambled over the lip of the cave and out into the woods beyond. Draven shook his head as he went about covering the coals and moving the wood away from the fire ring. It seemed a shame to lose their camping spot because of a silly fear, but Cali was truly frightened. Perhaps if he blocked off the crevice, they could stay another day. If they killed Byron, perhaps they wouldn’t have to leave at all. In winter, they could stay hidden in the warmer interior of the cave, where they could make their home.

When he’d made sure nothing of use remained in the cave, he stepped into the night. Thunder sounded across the valleys, and the trees rattled their bare, ghostly fingers. Cali sat beside the stream, peering at the sky’s faint light reflecting in the water.

“It will rain soon,” he said.

“How do you know?” she asked. “Maybe it’s just thunder.”

“No.”

“Maybe it is.”

“It’s not.”

“What, now you can predict weather?”

“I can savor it.”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “We’ve walked in the rain before.”

“Come, we’ll only stay until it stops.”

“I can’t go back in there.”

“I’ll block the opening to the rest of the cave. You will not be harmed. I will protect you. You know this.”

She nodded slowly. “I know you’d try.”

“They…the spirits…I am stronger,” he said. It seemed as logical as her fear. “If they come, I will sense them and keep them from you. I promise my life I’ll protect you.”

She glanced towards the mountaintop, beyond which they could hear the roar of the rain’s approach. He swept her into his arms, skimmed up the bank to the mouth of the cave, and entered. Cali stood hugging herself while Draven rekindled the fire, moving the stones aside from the coals they’d left. Then he went out into the rain and found a large log, which he stood on its end in the crevice. He piled smaller branches around it and lit them, and after a time, the crevice’s opening was filled with flame.

“Thank you,” Cali said. Her shoulders slumped, and she sank down next to their cooking fire.

“Thank you for staying,” he said. “It is difficult to keep you warm when your clothing is soaked.”

“I know,” she said. “And it’s harder to walk. I just… Well, sorry I got scared like that.”

“No apologies necessary,” he said, seating himself beside her.

“I thought you didn’t believe me. I thought you were laughing at me.”

“At times, I forget what it’s like…being human. You remind me.”

She leaned her head on his wet shoulder. “Thank you for saying that. And thank you for believing me.”

“Do you want to tell me about them?”

“We shouldn’t talk about them. They might hear.”

“Can I ask one thing? If a spirit enters your body, where does your spirit go?”

“It stays here, of course,” she said, as if the answer was obvious. “Where else would it go?”

“To the afterward, as you call it?”

“I tried to prepare myself, in case. If I die, though…will you make sure?”

“Of course.” He took her hand and squeezed. After a moment, he asked, “How?”

“You have to look at yourself in the water. I mean, you have to make me. And if I’m already dead, you put my face over water, so my spirit can see its reflection. And then it knows to go where the wide water carries it to the afterwards.”

“I can do that.”

Cali hugged his arm closer and snuggled against him. Her scent was not quite so intoxicating with the garlic in her.

“Should we bring water to the…to them?” Draven asked. “Would that set them free?”

“I don’t know. If they didn’t get us first, maybe.”

“I’ll do it,” he said.

She pulled away and studied him a moment. “Why would you do that? You don’t even believe it.”

He held her gaze. “You do.”

She rested her forehead on his shoulder, hiding her face from his view, her fingers biting into his arm. After a moment, she lifted her head, kissed his shoulder, and leaned closer still. “Be careful,” she whispered, pronouncing each word distinctly. Her lips grazed his earlobe, and her warm breath sent an erotic charge through him. He knew she must be thinking very different thoughts, but her eyes looked huge and liquid with desire.

His desire, he reminded himself. He was projecting his desire onto her. She was only frightened.

He took her face in his hands and brushed his lips over hers. Then he stood, retrieved their pan, and stepped into the rain once more. He filled the pan with water from the stream, now swelling with new rain. Back inside the cave, he had to knock aside the flaming log. It crashed to the floor in a shower of sparks and smoke. The rocks where it had stood scorched his skin, and his hands were black and smoldering when he’d pushed through. Ignoring the pain, he continued, careful not to spill the water.

As silly as the task made him feel, and as fanciful as Cali’s story sounded, for all he knew, it held some truth. He’d never experienced death as a sapien, so he couldn’t say with absolute certainty that her ideas were ludicrous. When he’d evolved, his human life had turned to Superior life. When Superiors died, their souls vanished. He did not know what happened to human souls when their bodies died.

He reached the human family much more quickly without Cali. As he held the pan of water before each skeletal face, he felt more ridiculous still. One of the frames, previously leaning against the cave’s wall, toppled when he turned the skull towards the water. As it crumbled to the floor, a few bones scattered, and Draven had a moment of relief that he’d left Cali at the entrance. Knocking over a body was likely not the best way to send the spirit away happy.

Draven smiled to himself. He’d begun thinking as if he believed this sapien superstition.

He righted the remains as best he could before holding the pan before the skull. The skull smiled back, reflected in the water. “Have a lovely trip down the river,” Draven muttered.

He set the head atop of the body, whispered a farewell, and started back. He was unsure about the water, as neither he nor Cali had covered that detail before he left her, so he carried it with him. If the spirits had gone into it, surely she would want it removed from the cave. She had spoken of a river to the afterwards, so perhaps she meant to return it to the stream.

When he edged into the cave’s opening, holding the pan of water before him, the log that had blocked the crevice was still blazing. Cali smiled at him and leapt to her feet, and he thought the whole thing had been worth it, no matter how ridiculous.

“Did you do it?” she asked. “For all of them?”

“Yes,” he said. “What do I do with the water?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said, her eyes going wide. “I never did that part. I only saw other people do it and take the water away.”

“If I release them into the stream, perhaps they’ll reach the river.”

“Okay,” Cali agreed. “That sounds good.”

Draven stepped into the thunderous downpour once more. After dumping the water unceremoniously into the stream, he glanced back at the cave, but Cali didn’t seem upset. He knelt and rinsed the pan, as if the spirits might linger, cursing himself for the lengths to which he’d gone to appease Cali.

“You’re soaking,” she said when he stepped into the cave. “I’m sorry I made you do that.”

“You didn’t.” He turned from her as he peeled off his shirt. He had grown so accustomed to regarding her wishes that he no longer noticed he was doing so. Turning his back while undressing had become automatic, just as wearing undershorts to bed had.

He pulled his clothing from the backpack and slid into them. When he turned, Cali was watching him. He gave her a questioning look, and she shifted and rubbed her feet in the loose sand on the floor. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “I wanted to say thank you, again, for doing that.”

“Don’t think of it.”

Despite his dismissive tone, she didn’t seem done thinking of it. Her eyes were like hands on him, moving over his body, caressing and desirous.

Shaking his head as if to shine his mind of the idea, he turned and laid his clothes to dry. Those were the thoughts of a madman. A sapien would never want something so painful and dangerous. He shouldn’t, either—shouldn’t have this perversion that ate away at him like a cancer.

Perhaps if he did something about it, perhaps if he lay with her just once, the thrill would vanish. Wanting the impossible thing, like freedom, was the appeal. He only wanted the forbidden fantasy. Once he’d had her, he would see that the reality wasn’t what he wanted, and she’d be out of danger.

But that one time, that would be the danger. And it would have to be only one time.