The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (12 page)

The bloodsucker looked at her, and she forgot and met its eyes again. It was just plain instinct. The thing looked so dang much like a person she reacted like if a human looked at her. But she still didn’t feel hypnotized. Maybe it had to try to hypnotize. That made more sense. It was too distracted now. Its eyes were flitting all over the place. It looked all panicked, like a deer after it got shot and knowed it was gonna die when you walked up to kill it, but it was still alive right then. This bloodsucker was in that same situation, so it made sense it looked that same way.

“Look, we got some ground rules here,” Daddy said. “We ain’t gonna kill it tonight, so y’all be careful with your stakes. We’re gonna have a meeting here in two days to decide how to kill it.”

“Burn it!” one of them Henson boys yelled.

“Chop its head off!” another one called.

“Well, we’ll all get a vote then. So here’s what we’re gonna do tonight. We just wanna keep our weapons away from this here area,” Daddy said, drawing a big circle around the thing’s stomach. “And outside this circle,” he said, drawing on the thing’s chest. “And away from its mouth,” he said, pointing to the mouth. “I ain’t gonna get my fingers bit off, so y’all just remember that and don’t stick him there.”

The crowd tittered a little and moved tighter together to see better.

“One last thing,” Tom said. “They heal up right quick, so iffen you stick a stake in it, you gotta leave it in there so it won’t just get better right away. I think that might hurt them, but I heard they don’t feel no pain, so I don’t know. But I’m guessing. If you need more stakes, we got plenty,” he said, gesturing to the stack. Sally looked at it, remembering how many evenings she’d sat around whittling up stakes for that pile. 

“Alright, first we gotta ask it some questions,” Larry said, stepping forward. Like Sally thought, he looked fine now. “Like, how’d you find us?”

“I was passing through the area. I didn’t know anyone lived here,” the man—no, it was a creature, Sally reminded herself—said.

“I have to say, I ain’t real satisfied with that answer,” Larry said. “You cooperate, or you’s gonna get stuck. Got that?”

“Got what?”

“We’re gonna stick you iffen you lie to us. I think this one’s dumber than any of them yet,” Larry said to the crowd. They laughed and strained forward. Sally got jostled over beside the cage. The creature looked at her again, and she could’ve sworn she saw a pleading look in its eyes. She looked away.

“Alright, well, why don’t you tell us where you was headed?”

“I was looking for a…a girl.”

“A girl? Your…whatever you call her. Your lady friend?”

The thing hesitated and looked around. “Yes. My…girl.”

“Yeah, I think we got that. Where’s she at?”

“I don’t know.”

“We found your stuff and looked through it. We know she was with you. Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. I do not know what—.” The thing stopped speaking and made the most awful noise, a choking sort of squawk. Larry had stuck it with a stake, right in the side.

“Where’s your companion?” Larry called over the noise of the crowd. “Tell us where she is. Is she coming back to get you? She gonna get us back for getting you?”

The bloodsucker kept right on denying it until Sally just wished he’d say yes so the men would stop sticking it. It had started to look like a pincushion. She turned away and pushed through the door. She stood next to the porch breathing in the cold air until her lungs ached. Seeing a bloodsucker up close and hearing it tell where it came from had interested her. But she didn’t want no part in the butchery going on in the shed.

She could still hear the wet slupping sound of the stakes going into the thing’s body. The crowd kept egging on her brother and father and each other. As Sally walked to the house, the man started screaming. It just weren’t possible a thing that felt no pain could scream like that.

Chapter 19

Draven opened one eye. He didn’t know if he still had the other, but if he did, it hadn’t begun cooperating yet. His gaze from his good eye roved the darkness of the shed. The noises had gone, but the pain stayed. He’d thought when he’d gotten staked once while capturing a human that nothing could be more painful. He’d been a fool.

This pain knew neither beginning nor end, top nor bottom. It was a pain of infinite depth and breadth and space. It consumed everything, everywhere.

In his years as a
Superior
, Draven had seen many things. But nothing like this night. He had reflected on mortality and immortality, glad he’d been granted the latter, although at times he’d thought life had more meaning when finite. Now he knew that the inability to die was the greatest curse upon his race.

His eye moved in the direction of the chair where he sensed a human form. One of
them
. He made an attempt at speech, but only expelled a wet rush of breath, so excruciating that he stopped it before completion. He waited for some time before he tried to speak again. A sodden, phlegmatic whisper tore from his throat. Again he waited, and the shape moved, shifting closer.

“You saying something?” the woman asked. It was the younger woman he’d seen that first night, the one who had brought him to the shed.

“Kill me,” Draven repeated, his voice wetter and stronger this time. His mouth emitted a small stream of blood when he spoke. He closed his one eye.

“You want me to kill you?” Sally asked.

“I beg you to.”

When she didn’t respond, he opened his eye and rolled it towards her. She sat in the chair, leaning towards him. After a moment, she rose and set her book in the chair. “My daddy’s gonna kill me for this,” she said, coming around the cage and unlocking the door. She came inside and stood before him. “You gonna hypnotize me into letting you go?”

“No.” His voice faded to a raspy whisper of blood. He summoned the last strength he could find to use his voice. He closed his eye. “Do it now.”

“I can’t kill you,” she said, sounding very matter-of-fact. “But don’t worry, they’ll get you in a couple days. They’s all about their meetings and what-not. Nobody can’t decide nothing without the whole community’s support. But I hate seeing anything suffering, and I don’t care what-all they said, I can see clear as day you’re suffering right now.”

Listening to her exhausted Draven. He didn’t move.

“You dead already?” she asked, leaning closer. Her smell enveloped him, and he had an instinctual urge to strike, to draw her healing sap into him and let it restore his broken body. He moved his head a fraction of an inch. Pain shot through him.

“Kill…me.”

“Nope. Can’t do it. What I’m gonna do is take out some of these here stakes, though. I’ll just say I was afeared you’d bleed to death. Can you bleed to death?”

“No,” he whispered, sinking back in defeat.

“Huh. Well, ain’t you lucky. But maybe lucky ain’t the right word seeing as how you’re nearly dead. Wait, no, you’re already dead. I guess you’s almost dead again.” She put her hand on the stake in his neck and yanked. Lightheadedness nearly overcame him as a rush of blood came out of the wound.

“Holy mother of Judah,” Sally said.

Draven sucked in a quick breath, but that proved a bad idea. As much blood as air filled his lungs. When Sally put her hand on another stake he started to scream, but she covered his mouth.

Although he would have liked to lose consciousness, that was not possible for him. He had weakened so much, and with every bit of blood he lost, he needed more strength to recover. Only one thing replenished Superior strength, and it pressed against his lips like a gift. His teeth clamped down on her fingers.

“Holy mother,” she said, jerking back. He released her, realizing only dimly what he’d done. “Cripers, I should’ve known not to help you out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Don’t stop. I did not mean…I…reacted to the pain…”

“I know, that was stupid of me. Like trying to get a dog out of a trap. Now you listen here. You get those fangs near me again and I’ll put every one of these stakes right back where they was. Got that?”

“Yes,” Draven whispered. He didn’t know if she heard, but she continued speaking.

“Now, you can’t scream, neither. You scream and my Daddy’ll be here in two seconds, and he ain’t gonna let me help you none. If it’s already been done, he won’t do nothing, but if he saw it, he’d make me stop.” Sally yanked out another stake. She did it fast, efficiently. Draven wondered how many Superiors had died here. How many had gone through this. How many stakes this sapien had removed.

“You know,” she said, as if she were having a conversation with someone who hadn’t suffered such outrages at the hands of her people, “I didn’t figure that’s what a bite from one of you suckers would feel like. I figured you’d take out a whole chunk or something. Glad you didn’t bite me real good, then. Hey, that don’t mean I’m gonna turn into a bloodsucker, do it? Wait, course it don’t. Lots of people get bit and don’t turn into bloodsuckers. I can’t believe I got bit. I wish I could tell Larry. That’d beat his dumb story about you kicking him on accident.”

“I…apologize.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I stuck my hand in your mouth just about. What was I expecting to happen?” When Draven didn’t speak, she went on. “So, if you can’t bleed to death, what would happen if we just kept sticking you until all your blood drained out?”

“I’d be…quite…hungry.”

Sally laughed. Well, he had to give it to her that she found humor in something so awful. But then, she’d gotten a pinprick in her finger. He had a few dozen wooden stakes in him.

“So if you was real hungry, would you kill us all? Suck us all dry? That’s what Mama says.”

“No.”

“You really never killed nobody before?”

“Not…a human.”

“What, you killed one of your own kind but not one of us?”

“Yes.”

“Well I’ll be. I don’t even know if I believe all that. Why’d you kill someone?”

“He…tried…to kill me.”

“I reckon you got a right to defend yourself. That’s all we’s doing, too, you know.”

Draven found her with his one functioning eye. “This…was not…self defense.”

“I reckon. They get carried away is all. I mean, all I want is to live in peace and all. They’s the one’s all gung-ho about killing y’all. I don’t care one way or another, as long as you don’t try biting me. I ain’t never had nothing against y’all til y’all killed my sister.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Was it you killed her?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Well, your stakes is all out now. I don’t reckon you heal up as fast as they said you would. You’re supposed to be all superior, ain’t you?”

“Stronger…faster…smarter.”

“Then how come I’m in here doctoring your wounds, and you’re chained up and can’t move? Just saying.”

“Are you…bleeding?”

“What? I don’t think so, but I sure enough got some of yours on me.”

“I smell…your blood.”

“What in the dickens you talking about?”

“Your fingers.”

“Oh, shoot. Yeah, I done forgot all about them, really. I told you, I don’t think you really bit me. I mean, I hardly feel it.”

“You will.”

“I will? You mean it hurts worse later?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I swear if you weren’t gonna die in two days anyway, I’d…I don’t know what. Stake you, I guess.”

“Let me…close it?”

“What you talking about?”

“Your bite,” Draven said, wondering why he wasted his strength talking to the very human who had placed him in this situation. But she had shown him a kindness, and he had bitten her in return. At least he could offer to heal it.

“And how you planning on doing that?”

“Put it…in my mouth.”

Sally looked at Draven and then threw back her head and laughed. “And you think you’re smarter than me? I ain’t that dumb. You must be pretty dang stupid to think I’d fall for that one. Shoo-ey. At least now I know for sure I ain’t hypnotized.”

“It will hurt…later.”

“Yeah, well, I think I’ll take my chances. I ain’t about to lose two fingers on account of being stupid.”

“I won’t. Promise.”

“Yeah okay. I’ll believe that the day I turn into a bloodsucker myself. Now I’m just gonna get outta here before you do hypnotize me.”

Draven watched through his half open eye as Sally went to the door and slid it open, then closed the steel bars behind her. She settled back in the chair and looked at herself.

“I can’t believe I done ruined my clothes for you. Maybe I were hypnotized. Sheesh.”

“Sally,” Draven said, his voice not sounding quite so wet, but still raspy.

“What? Wait, how you know my name?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, you better thank me. I sure hope my daddy don’t get a hair in his brain to come out here checking on you and see me all bloody. He’s like to kill you afore he even sees I’m alive. By golly, I think I am stupid sometimes…”

Sally continued speaking, but Draven had stopped listening. He drifted up and up and up on a rising crescendo of pain that shut out everything. For a moment, he became dimly aware of her voice again, and then it was swallowed along with everything else. He knew only pain that never ended but grew outwards until he could not contain it. It stretched him further and further until he thought he would explode, and still it forced itself upon him from within, pushing outwards to more and deeper pain.

Chapter 20

Cali
and Shelly went into their master’s rooms only when he was home, and only if he needed something done. It didn’t happen often. He came two or three times a night to their room and gave them each a cup, bit them and left. He returned a few minutes later to collect his offering. Much to her amazement,
Cali
learned that Shelly didn’t have a single scar from an unclosed bite when they met. His previous owner had taken good care of him.

Byron didn’t care for them that well, but he didn’t mistreat them, either. He mostly left them alone, aside from his thrice-daily feedings. The pebbles under
Cali
’s skin ached. Shelly rubbed at his arms from time to time, too, and she knew he was hurting. She tried to care for him as well as she could, but neither of them had the nerve to dig the little pellets from under their skin.
Cali
suggested they do it to each other, but Shelly couldn’t stand the thought, much less the pain of the act itself.

They spent every minute of every day together. They bickered and irritated each other, primped each other and made each other laugh, ate together and cooked together and slept together. In a matter of weeks, Shelly was the best friend Cali had ever had. She grew to love him deeply in a very short time. They talked about everything they could think of, and they speculated about the future, and they washed their clothes in the shower and took turns asking their master for more soap.

They became as two people become when they see no one else. They shared secrets. They pointed out the window bars at people on the street and made up stories about them when their own stories ran low. They looked at other saps and tried to catch glimpses of a boy they both found attractive.

They did not try baby-making.

Sometimes Cali made a small advance that Shelly met with indifference, but she didn’t persist. She remembered her promise about being good. But she didn’t want babies, and Shelly didn’t seem very interested in them, either. Cali had grown more interested in Shelly than a baby. He was good to her, and more than anything else, he was there. But they still didn’t try to make babies.

Cali emerged from the bathroom one day and found Shelly leaning against the counter, holding a little white square of paper. She stopped and looked at him, a little knot of guilt starting to form in her stomach.

“Girl, what is this?” Shelly asked, waving the paper like a tiny fan.

“What? I don’t know.”

“Uh huh. Sure you don’t. And you said you never been in love.”

“I haven’t,” she said. She came forward and plucked the picture from his fingers. It had bent to a curved shape after a while in her underwear, and the picture had worn off the edges, leaving the corners rounded and rubbed white.

“Then who are those two adorable boys?” Shelly asked. “Don’t you hold out on me.”

“They’re not anyone,” Cali said. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to tell him. But he kept looking at her so long that she had to. He told her everything. “They’re not anyone I know, I mean,” she said. “I stole this, see, and I didn’t have anywhere to put it, so I had to keep it…well, in my underwear.”

“You keep a picture of two cute boys in your drawers, and you expect me to believe you’re not in love?”

“I’m not,” she insisted. “I only put it there because I didn’t have anywhere else to keep it where someone wouldn’t find it. And as soon as I stopped keeping it on me, see what happened? You found it.”

“Seems to me you’re doing a whole lot of not answering right now.”

She sighed. “Okay, okay. I stole it from one of them. You know, a Superior.”

“Wait, wait, that’s a Superior?” Shelly took the picture and looked at it. Cali had forgotten that of course he didn’t know—he’d never met the man in the picture, the Man with Soft Hair. And no one could tell a human from a Superior in a picture. Not unless they smiled, and the two Superiors in the picture looked awfully serious. When Cali looked at it, she had a hard time imagining Draven smiling, or laughing, although she’d seen him do both in real life. It seemed like such a long time ago, a different life, when she’d known him.

“Yeah,” Cali said. “I stole it from a Superior back home so I could ask someone about it. But that’s just part of everything back there, you know? All that stuff I’ll never see again, part of my old life.”

“Looks like you brought a good piece of it with you.” Shelly looked way too interested in the picture.

“Give me that,” Cali said, laughing in embarrassment. “It’s not like I even knew him. I just wanted to know what it was used for, so I stole it so I could ask someone, and because…I don’t know. I wanted to do something bad. I don’t even know why I kept it.” It seemed silly now, what she’d done, risking punishment for that silly paper with no purpose she could find.