The Superiors (33 page)

The men moved on, scanning and alert, wooden short-swords in their hands. Draven stopped even his breathing and strained with every sense he had, casting out as far as he could, but he could not find a trace of another being. They crept silently onward until Byron put up a hand. He stood looking at the screen of his pod.

“I don’t see anything,” Draven said, and then all at once he caught the sound, the scent of Ander, and the flash from the corner of his eye, and before he had turned completely, the man Ander rose up out of the sand and drew a dagger across Byron’s throat.

Blood dribbled from the Enforcer’s throat, but Draven had only a moment to notice before he faced Ander on his own. Byron’s body crumpled, and Ander let it fall to the sand. In the moment when he released the body, Draven sprang at him. The wooden blade drove into Ander, tore his shirt and sank into his flesh. But even as the knife entered the man’s body, Draven knew he had not dealt a fatal blow. Ander had turned while Draven leapt through the air, and Draven hadn’t had time to correct his aim. The knife went into Ander’s side and the man screamed. Byron hadn’t made a sound.

Draven had the advantage of striking first, but Ander was stronger, and he swung his dagger at Draven with incredible force. Draven blocked it with his wooden one, and the two men stabbed at each other, Ander using only one arm and holding the other close to his side. He dove forward, thrusting his dagger at Draven, and when Draven blocked the blow with his own, the force of the collision sent a cracking sound into the stillness of the desert around them. In the peaceful silence of the night, the two men struggled.

It wasn’t until the next time the daggers met that Draven realized with a sinking heart the source of the cracking sound. His wooden sword, his beautiful, gleaming knife, had split. A few more clashes and the thing gave way and he held only a splintered stump. Ander stopped, stepped back from Draven, and laughed.

“Now I have you, little yes-man,” Ander said. “Did you really think I’d let a measly Third Order prick be the end of me? You’re a flea on my side, nothing more.”

Draven knew the incredible pain of a wood-inflicted wound, and he had to admire the bravery of his enemy. He had brought three weak saps around a building after his injury and received praise for it. This man could kill another Superior with one arm after sustaining a similar wound.

Ander dove at Draven, and Draven held up what remained of his weapon, but Ander soon stripped him of even that. Ander slashed at Draven, slicing the wooden handle from his hand and opening his arm from wrist to elbow with one strike of his steel dagger. Then Ander fell on him. Draven was no match for the sheer strength of the older man, wounded or no.

Ander sunk his long dagger into Draven, and for a moment Draven thought through the blinding pain that the man had missed. He’d sunk the dagger into the soft flesh on the inside of the shoulder, pinning Draven to the sand. But Draven soon saw that it was no accident. The man Ander did not miss when he aimed. He sat and pulled another steel dagger from his belt and sank it into Draven’s other side, pinning him to the wet sand, both his arms incapacitated and almost separated from his body. Draven screamed then, but he hardly heard the sound.

“I will enjoy this next part,” Ander said, leering down at Draven. Then the large man leaned down and sank his teeth into Draven’s neck.

The life began draining from Draven. In the desert brightness, he watched the snake tattoos slithering across Ander’s skull. He wondered in his delirium if homo-sapiens felt that way when Superiors drew from them. Had Cali felt this when he bit her neck? Surely it hadn’t hurt this much. She could not have borne the pain without screaming. He could not.

He didn’t know how long Ander took life from him. The pain stretched in all directions like the desert, and a terror that knew no beginning or end or boundaries. He couldn’t remember a time before the horror or imagine one after it. He knew only the panic of his life being sucked away and of being pinned, helpless, while it happened.

And then he saw a shadow rise up behind Ander. He only saw it before Ander sensed it because the man was feeding and not paying attention, because the man, in his arrogance, thought he had killed one man already.

Byron had no weapon, but he had his body, and he flung it upon Ander. Ander sat up, his blood-streaked face a mask of pain and fury, and let out an animal roar before turning on his attacker. Draven could see, even while pinned to the earth, that Byron’s injury still very much incapacitated him, and that Ander enjoyed the same advantage that he had with Draven. Ander would gain even more strength after tonight. After feeding from two of his own kind, he’d gain almost as much strength as a member of the First Order.

Draven registered his brief moment of freedom and saw that only the steel blades held him to the sand and not the strength and weight of Ander. He wrenched against the restraints, felt his flesh rip and the flood of pain burning him clean. He gave himself only a second to recover, then threw himself up against the hilts of the daggers, and came free. He reached out and found the hilt of his own weapon, the splintered wooden handle. He struggled to stand without much use in either arm, but when he saw Ander holding Byron, and the way Byron lay limp in Ander’s arms, he gave up on standing and crawled across the sand on his knees.

Ander deposited the limp body of Byron into the sand. Draven could see his friend’s head lolling back, half separated from the body. His glance flitted from his friend to his enemy, and a blind rage encompassed him. This man preyed on humans, and that was bad enough. But now he had killed and cannibalized Draven’s friend and mentor, and would do the same to Draven.

But again the man’s arrogance played against him. He had assumed Draven lacked the strength or will after being drained for so long, after having lost so much blood and being in so much pain. He had turned to finish off Byron, thinking his prisoner would remain pinned to the sand when he turned back. Instead, Draven knelt behind him.

Ander didn’t even stop to deliver a blow this time. He opened his bloodstained mouth in a roar of rage, meaning to latch onto Draven again. But when the gaping mouth came towards him, sharp teeth dripping blood, Draven drove the splintered end of his dagger into the opening.

Ander’s scream of fury mixed with disbelief and pain this time, and he fell back, clawing at the protruding wooden instrument. Draven held tight to the hilt and jerked it back from Ander’s mouth, afraid the man would retrieve it and turn it against him. He drew out the wood, slick with blood, the sharp splinters mimicking Ander’s teeth only moments before. He drove the hilt into the man’s chest. Before Ander could recover from the blow, Draven yanked it out and buried it in the man’s neck, then his throat, his mouth, and his chest again and again.

He used every bit of strength he had, only vaguely aware of the nuisance of the two steel daggers keeping him from his usual range of movement. He didn’t feel the pain anymore, only the endless drive that had replaced it. He held onto that, knowing that when the pain returned, it would paralyze him. Only after Ander had lain still for several minutes did Draven’s blows begin to ebb, and he plunged the splintered wood into the gaping, bloody cavern that had been Ander’s chest before rolling away and surrendering to his own pain again.

Draven lay in the sand for a long time, breathing again, breathing in the cool night air that became cold and then frigid. He didn’t move anything except his lungs. Pain seared through his chest. A movement caught his eye, and if it had been Ander, Draven would not have had strength to fight again, not even for one more breath.

“No, but you were once a lowly creature like them. And now you are better, and you take the advantage you are given. Now Ander isn’t one of us, because he’s dead. So I take the advantage, because I want to live. See how much stronger I am now than you? Come and take back what he has taken from you.”

Draven tried to think of an argument, but his mind clouded and pain throbbed through his shoulders. He reached up with both hands and clutched the hilt of one of the steel blades and rested. When he had summoned every bit of energy he could, he tugged on the dagger until it slid from his flesh. He lay on the ground and let dry sobs wrack his body. Then he pulled the other dagger out in the same manner, and the blood ran from the openings where the swords had been. The blood trickled away and in the same slow way he lost himself and slept, the last thoughts flowing away with the trickle of blood filtering down into the desert sand.

Chapter Forty-Six

Draven woke with a hunger he hadn’t known possible. He found his pack in the tent with him, tore it open, and ripped the seal off a bag of powdered sap and poured the contents into his dry mouth, and then another packet, and then another. After five packets, he unzipped his tent and stumbled out.

Byron sat nearby. He’d found a supply of wood somewhere and built a fire against the chill of the night. A pile of twisted dry branches lay behind him.

“Ah, my friend, you rise again. Bring your pack and come sit by the fire.”

Draven obeyed and sat on his pack across the fire from Byron. His friend looked as he always had, healthy and strong and noble. “How long have I slept?” Draven asked.

“Three days and three nights.”

“I need water.”

“Yes, here,” Byron said, handing Draven a bottle of water. “While you slept I scouted the area. I found water about a night’s walk from here.”

“You left me sleeping out here alone?”

Byron laughed. “Nothing is out here that can harm you now, soldier. You have disposed of the enemy.”

Draven hadn’t forgotten the night of his injury, but he started at the reminder. “I killed a man,” he said, trying to make himself believe by saying it aloud.

“Yes. You killed Ander. That was our assignment. You have more than fulfilled your obligation. Without your courage, we would both be dead.”

“My courage? Your neck was slit and you took him from me when he was draining me like a sap.” Draven touched his neck where Ander had left a gaping hole. He’d taken a chunk of flesh from Draven that hadn’t grown back yet.

“There was that. But you stayed alive until then, and you killed him while I lay in the sand doing nothing.”

“Yes. I did that.”

“Yes, you did. And don’t ever say you’re like a sap. You’re a courageous, brave soldier. Not one of those sniveling, repulsive little brutes. Here, I have a bottle of wine. Let us celebrate. I’ve been saving it for this night.”

“Thank you, no. Now that I have water, I believe I’ll just mix up some sap. If I’d known you had wine I would have drunk it days ago. We were parched.”

Draven retrieved two more packets of sap, wondering if his bottomless hunger would ever fade. He didn’t feel like celebrating. He had killed a man. He didn’t like knowing he had done this thing even to a man like Ander. And in such a horrible, savage manner. He always tried to avoid hurting saps, didn’t like to see animals suffer. And yet he had brutally stabbed a man to death with a splintered piece of wood.

After mixing the packets in a bottle of water, Draven emerged from his tent and sat. Byron drank the wine and Draven drank two bottles of reconstituted sap. After a while Byron threw a piece of wood on the fire. Draven felt drained even after three days of sleep, but also relieved. He had finished the task he’d set out to accomplish, even if he didn’t like to think of the manner in which he’d done it. He would receive his payment—a lot of payment. He would buy Cali, and they would get a place that accommodated livestock. He would buy her caramels whenever she wanted them, and he would draw from the most delectable source he’d ever imagined. Just thinking about it made his teeth throb fiercely.