The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series (6 page)

CHAPTER eleven

When Cali woke, her Superior was in the bed with her, holding her in a comforting—and very human—way. Her mate had held her that way after Master beat her. It seemed strange that a bloodsucking Superior could hold someone in such a tender way. For a while, Cali lay without moving. She liked the feeling of his body around hers. Her body heat had warmed him until he was only slightly cooler than she, and for once, his lack of warmth didn’t bother her.

Although Draven often comforted her when he ate, being held without being hurt was different. Not that she minded so much when he bit her—only when he took out the beads left from unclosed bites. That hurt a lot. When he drew from her without pulling on the old bites, she almost liked it. No, not almost.
Sometimes.
She sometimes liked it, lost herself in the movement of his hands and his mouth that made her feel all shivery and alive and funny, but in a good way.

She turned slowly so as not to wake him. His arm lay heavy and limp across her hip, and his leg was thrown over her legs, but with a little maneuvering, she turned to face him. She lay her hand on his chest, bare and silent and still. She pressed harder, but nothing. He had no heartbeat, no breath. At first, she had been scared when she had seen him sleeping, had thought he’d died. But he’d said he only breathed out of habit, that he didn’t need to. When he slept, the habit slipped away. Cali didn’t understand how breathing could be only a habit. Either he needed it or he didn’t. But he always woke up, so she had stopped worrying, although he looked so very dead that it still alarmed her sometimes.

Cali wondered if he’d been successful in his trip, if he’d found a woman, if he’d mated. Draven called it sex, so she wasn’t sure if it was different for Superiors, but it was probably the same. It all seemed so easy for him, like just another thing he needed, like food or sleep. To humans, too, especially at the Confinement. There, it was a part of life like eating and sleeping and fighting and death. But to her, it was something big and scary. Probably because every time she’d done it, it had been something she’d been forced to endure. It never came naturally.

All those human men had scared her so much, and now she lay in bed with a Superior—the scariest thing there was—and she felt comfortable and safe. And curious. She moved her hand down his still, flat chest and stomach. She knew what a man looked like naked, even what Draven looked like. But she’d never seen one up close, not when she wasn’t scared and trying to get away. Not when she’d had time to pay attention.

When she scooted away, Draven’s arm flopped into the warm space she’d left between them. She found the flashlight on the little table beside the bed and scooted back to him, moving slowly and holding her breath. Keeping the flashlight beam under her hand, she snuck a stealthy look at his face. The light needed winding, so the beam shone only weakly. She tried to remember how loud the winding mechanism was, then decided she didn’t want a strong beam. A bright light might wake him.

Carefully, she lifted his arm and laid it across her hip. Then she checked his face again. It remained still as death. To slow her pounding heart, she took a slow, quiet breath. Then she pointed the flashlight down between them. But after a few seconds, she switched it off. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t. She already felt bad for thinking about it. How would she feel if she found out Draven was shining a flashlight down her underpants while she slept?

What if he had?

She pressed her fingertips against his stomach again. His skin was smooth and slightly warm from hers. A small fringe of fine, dark hairs rimmed his bellybutton and led down to the band of his shorts, all of them growing in one direction, lying flat against his stomach, pointing like an arrow for her to follow. She switched the light back on, aimed it down and slowly, slowly, holding her breath while she did it, she worked her finger under the elastic band at the top of his undershorts. Adrenaline bloomed in her chest, and she took another slow breath and glanced at his still face. Then she aimed the flashlight down again and pulled.

Moving the beam a little, she inspected what she found.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Cali jerked back, letting out a yelp of surprise and releasing the elastic. It snapped back against his stomach, the sound deafening in her ears, drowning out the pittering of her heart. She had a brief moment to wonder if he’d kill her, and then even that was drowned in absolute terror. She struggled against the blankets, but his hand closed over her empty hand, the one not holding the flashlight.

“Shhhh,” he said, his voice warm and gentle. “It’s alright. I won’t hurt you. Calm down, little rabbit.”

“I didn’t—,” she began, then broke off. She wanted to say she didn’t see anything, but he had to know that wasn’t true. How long had he been awake? Only at the end, or the whole time? “I wasn’t—,” she tried again, then stopped. Wasn’t
what?
Doing what he thought she was? That’s exactly what she’d been doing.

“It’s alright,” he said, still holding her hand. “Don’t be afraid. You can look if you want. You can touch it,” he said, moving her hand slowly towards him as he spoke.

Cali lay there, wanting to pull away and not wanting to, so nervous she could hardly swallow. Her heart was still skittering all over the place. Draven pulled her hand against him, pressing it against his shorts. “See, it’s nothing to be frightened of,” he said, moving her hand as he spoke. “It’s simply another part of my body, like any other. Completely indifferent. See? Look at me. Are you frightened?”

Cali gripped the flashlight in her other hand, but she didn’t dare to move it, to draw his attention. She held perfectly still, watching her hand move. When he released it, she didn’t pull away. She was both captivated by what her hand felt and scared he’d change his mind. And he was right. It wasn’t so scary. But not like anything else, either—soft and warm and squiggly. And then…

“Is that supposed to happen?” she asked, drawing her hand away. She looked at him, startled, as a huge smile spread across his face.

His dark eyes shone. “Perhaps indifferent wasn’t completely accurate.”

Cali rolled away from him, kicking at the blankets, angry and confused. He was laughing at her for not knowing. She’d thought he was being understanding, but he’d been pulling a trick on her.

She scrambled out of the bed and glared at him. “Why’d you do that?”

He pushed himself up, leaning back on his palms with his legs stretched out in front of him. Cali jerked her eyes away from the tented area where they met. “Me?” he asked. “If you wanted to look at my penis, you could have asked. I only wear shorts to bed out of respect for you.”

“And next you’re going to tell me to turn around and let you lie on my back, and that we’re just keeping warm? Do you think I’m stupid? I know what that is.” She drew back and threw the flashlight as hard as she possibly could, straight at his smiling face. He caught it without even looking.

“Do you think I took advantage of your innocence?” he asked, looking a bit curious, but he still had that triumphant sort of smile on his face.

“Of course I think that,” Cali said, “because you did!”

“Perhaps you took advantage of me,” he said. “You seemed quite interested when I awakened.”

“What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of pervert?”

His smile vanished so quickly it was like it had never been there. Even his eyes lost their amused shine. He looked so stunned, so stung, that she almost felt bad for what she’d said. He was right. This was her fault. But she was too humiliated to back down.

“I’m sorry,” he said, slipping from the bed in that graceful way of his, and that made her hate him a little more, that she’d stumbled from the sheets and he just slid out like water through a streambed. He came towards her with his hands held out, palms toward her in a gesture of peace, but when he had almost reached her, she stepped back. “I meant no harm,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to upset you, and you’re right about what I am. I’m sorry…something is wrong with me…say you’ll forgive me.”

Cali took another step back, more scared of him now than when he was harsh to her.

“Please,” he said, and he went down on his knees in front of her and gripped her hand and kissed it.

“Stop,” she said. “Get up. You can’t do that to a sapien. Stop.”

“Forgive me.” He kept his head bent, her hand held in both of his.

She looked around, wishing she hadn’t thrown the flashlight. “Holy sap crap, I forgive you, now get up. It’s not right for you to act like that to me.”

He stood slowly and pulled her against his chest. Seeing him on his knees was awful and shocking, worse than when Byron had made her bend and kiss his feet and promise obedience. “I’ll never do anything like that again,” he said. “I swear to you, Cali. I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” she said, struggling in his embrace. He always said there was something wrong with him, and she wondered if that’s what had gotten to him. Was he dying? He didn’t eat much, and even after he’d cleaned up and bathed, his skin had a greyer look than when she’d known him back home. He said he was okay, but maybe… If he was dying, she felt even worse about saying that to him, asking what was wrong with him.

“Are you alright?” he asked, letting her go.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” Cali said, looking behind him at the flashlight on the bed. “I didn’t… hurt your feelings, did I?”

He smiled, but he didn’t look happy like before. “Of course not.”

“And you’re not mad at me?”

He smiled and touched her shoulder. “How could I be angry with you?”

“I…you know. I violated your privacy?”

“I’m not a very private sort.”

Cali snorted. Maybe that was true for a Superior, but she’d never met a human half as private as Draven.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said. “You’ve a human mate, and I’m just like a human man in that way. Everything they have and everything they do, that’s what I do. Only better.”

“Okay, well, I’ve got to go to the outhouse.” Cali snatched the flashlight and fled, hiding her burning face on her way out of the bedroom. Apparently Draven didn’t realize that she’d wanted to know because she didn’t really know about any man, human or otherwise.

True, she had a little experience with mating, but nothing she’d wanted. Nothing that let her explore and find out how everything worked. Her experiences were all filled with humiliation and frustration and failure, when she and her uninterested mate tried to make a baby for their master, or humiliation and fury and pain the few times her master had given up on her mate and brought in a breeder to do the job. She’d never touched a man’s down-there before. She’d been expected to be obedient and hold still while they tried to impregnate her.

Now she’d touched one, at least through a pair of shorts. And she’d gotten to look, for a few seconds. Though different, it had been as humiliating as her previous experiences.

Since they’d arrived at the house, she hadn’t gone outside except to use the outhouse. When she escaped the bedroom, she made her way there out of habit, though she didn’t really need to go. After she emerged, she looked into the mud hut in the backyard. Everything inside was clean and neat, and the door still worked. Back inside the stone house, she opened the cabinets and took out an armload of food and carried it out. She found some wool blankets in the closet with the human food, and she carried them out and spread them on the mattress. It was cold and bare in the house, but it was a house meant for her. She wasn’t a Superior, and she had no business sleeping in one’s bed.

She found a ragged sapien shift in the closet with the other supplies. She pulled it over her head, deciding at the last minute to keep the shiny underwear set she’d found in the drawer and had worn since then. After returning to the sapien house, she set out some of the things. The day was grey and cold, and soon she was shivering so much that she had to go back into the stone house and put on the Superior pants and sweater she’d been wearing over the Superior underwear. She’d keep this one outfit that she’d already worn. It was too cold in winter for just a summer shift, though she could wear it when summer came.

She stood outside her sapien house looking at the Superior house, whose stones reminded her of the mountains, grey and glittery. On the back porch of the house sat two potted plants, now dead for winter. The house was almost the color of the sky. Even the air seemed grey. She turned and went back inside her new brown house. It wasn’t much, but it was her own. And she felt right in it, like she had done the right thing, like she belonged.

Draven looked in that evening, eyes widening when he saw her in the dim house on her straw pallet. She had nothing much to do in the winter.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“I wanted to be. There’s a sapien house, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t stay in it.”

“Cali…I am sorry.”

“I know,” she said, trying not to let anything show in her voice. “But it’s near the outhouse, and I don’t have to worry about locking myself out when I go out, and besides, I like having a place that’s mine.”