The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (21 page)

“That’s true. Will you come and bring me more to eat if your family hunts more animals? I need to be strong for the escape, and I’m still quite weak.”

“Really? I brought you all them packages of food.”

“My body was severely damaged, and it used that energy for healing. I can overpower a human, but I’m not strong like I should be.”

Sally put her arm through the bars. “I’m strong,” she said. “You can eat right here.”

“Sally…”

“Go on and do it afore I change my mind. Pretty soon I’m gonna be a bloodsucker too, so I best get used to seeing how it’s done. Besides, I’ll be strong at the start, right?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then. I can’t have you getting all weak on me when we need to escape.”

Draven put his teeth in her arm and drank before she could change her mind. It was the best food he’d had in some time. When her flow began to ebb, he closed the vein, turned her arm and closed properly the two other marks he’d left open on the previous occasion. Strength surged through him almost immediately, along with a sharpness of mind. He made certain he hadn’t left any other scars.

Sally didn’t complain about the pain, just as she hadn’t complained about the pain of the scars before he’d pulled the pebbles from under her skin to remedy them. He never liked to leave a bite open, but he hadn’t been in his right mind the last two times he’d drawn from her. He’d been so desperate and upset that he hadn’t thought of it until later, when he lay healing himself.

When Sally left that night, Draven thought of what she’d said about
Cali
. Sally said that he loved
Cali
, which was obviously impossible. But he did love little things about her—her scent and taste, the life that emanated from her, the spark of defiance in her, the way she didn’t bow and scrape, the way she laughed. But loving a homo-sapien in the way Sally meant was simply wrong. He couldn’t explain the pull she had over him. He only knew that he had to have her, now more than ever.

She had become a totem to him, the thing he lived for, the reason to keep going. Anything could have taken that shape in his mind, but he had been focused on her when the vigilante humans captured him. Anything could have become the object of his focus for escape—it could have just as easily been a job or a person or an inanimate object. It just happened to be
Cali
. A coincidence, nothing more. There was no deeper meaning.

Chapter 32

Byron sat at his desk looking over his notes. Of the ten missing persons in fifty years, only two had gone missing the first twenty of those years. The next thirty years had seen eight missing persons. And when he looked for people who had registered to leave
Princeton
and never arrived in their intended city, he found six more. That made sixteen total, fourteen in thirty years. He traced the six who hadn’t registered in their intended destination cities and found only one as having updated his record since he left
Princeton
. He’d gone to
South America
and registered there instead of his original destination. That left thirteen missing persons.

Byron sent the information to his three partners. Caleb volunteered to talk to the neighbors and coworkers of the men who had disappeared. Byron set to work looking at the records for missing sapiens. These were much more complicated, because many owners didn’t update anything about their livestock after they made the purchase. Most only entered purchase or birth dates, and sold or death dates. Some entered other important details on the ones they had listed for sale, such as number of live births and dates for these events, major illnesses and temperaments.

Byron sighed and rubbed his face. His own saps were nothing but a headache. He pulled up the record for the female. When he’d bought her, they’d warned him that she was temperamental and willful. He thought he’d done a good job with her, but a few weeks ago she’d become outright defiant. He shook his head remembering her nerve. Some saps needed to be taught a lesson from time to time to remind them of their place.

Byron touched the box labeled “other information” on his screen and entered, “responds to force.” Then he checked the male’s record. Under the information heading, he found that Shelton had no known offspring, not surprising since keeping track of a male’s offspring usually proved impossible. Shelton’s previous owner had labeled him adaptable, highly cooperative, well-trained and a good servant. So what was the problem?

It must be the female. Byron had seen her stubborn side. Maybe she refused to let the male impregnate her. In the week since he’d taken their clothes, he hadn’t heard a single sound from their room. Shouldn’t they make some sort of noise when they rutted?

Byron rose from his desk, impatient with his work that went nowhere and his saps which did nothing. He went into the hallway and down to the separate room at the end. When he unlocked the door and went through, he found his saps sleeping, covered by their ragged blanket. He switched on the light.

“Get up,” he said, and pulled the blanket from the bed. A horrid greasy stench wafted from their bodies on the mattress. Both saps blinked at him stupidly. “Go on, I said get up.”

The female sat up first, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them immediately. She gave him a sleepy, sullen look. The male propped himself up on his elbows and squinted at Byron.

“Alright, why haven’t you bred her yet?” Byron asked, nodding towards the female.

“I…uh…I did,” the male said.

“All the time,” said the female.

“Obviously you aren’t doing it right. Let me see you how you do it.”

“Ex…excuse me?” the female said. Now she looked awake, all right.

“Give me a demonstration, so I can see what you’re doing wrong.”

“Uh, sir, Master, I don’t think…” the male said, before he ran out of words.

“Go on, I’m working here. I don’t have all night. Get on with it.”

The two saps mumbled and whispered among themselves, the male trying to convince the female. When Byron grew impatient with it, he broke in. “If you can’t do it, I can give you my assistance, like last time,” he told the female.

She looked scared, but slowly she uncurled herself and got into the sapien mating position. The male got behind her, and they both looked at him as though for confirmation. “So go on and do it,” he said.

The male moved around a little, but after a few minutes, he said, “Master, sir, please. I really can’t…when I’m nervous. With you standing there, I’m too…I can’t get the feeling right.”

“You two are the biggest waste of money I ever saw,” Byron said, turning away. He went to the door and then turned back. “If you can’t make me a baby, I’ll bring in a breeder, and then we’ll see which one of you is defective.”

“Master, please, sir, this one is my mate. You don’t need to get a breeder,” the male said.

“Obviously I do,” Byron said before he left the room. Stupid saps caused nothing but trouble. Maybe he’d give up on the whole idea of selling the offspring. The adults made enough of a nuisance of themselves without screaming saplings running around. If one of his saps was infertile, he’d have to sell it if he wanted to raise saplings. Hopefully it was the male. The female tasted delicious, despite her obvious deficiencies. He’d have to remember to update the file for whichever sap was infertile.

He went back to the case and looked through all the reports of missing or escaped sapiens. It was easiest to look through the insurance claims, since Superiors could collect a payment if a sap went missing for a year. But not everyone filed papers, and not all Superiors wanted to pay the extra insurance fee on top of the already expensive purchase price of a sap. Byron went back fifty years like he had for the missing persons.

A few missing saps in the first twenty years, just like the people. But in the last five years, sixteen saps had been reported missing, an astronomical number. Saps hardly ever ran, and most that did came back on their own or got caught within a night and never reported missing. Most saps didn’t have the mental or physical capacity to escape from their owners and Catchers.

Caleb checked out the owners that Byron hadn’t gotten to and found that six saps had been returned and not entered in the system. Byron found six unrecovered runaways in the insurance files. The other four hadn’t had insurance, and hadn’t shown up, either. Ten saps in five years. He looked back further, through the last thirty years. Thirty insured saps in the twenty-five year gap had escaped. Altogether the files listed forty saps in thirty years.

Byron shook his head in amazement and scrolled through the list, looking at the names of the saps. Towards the top, two years ago, Herman Kidd was listed. Like many Superiors, Meyer gave his saps his own last name.

Byron thought about calling the child mogul, but he didn’t have a good reason just yet. But he’d think of one. He typed in ‘Meyer Kidd’ on the search screen and checked the registration records. Meyer always registered when he traveled. Byron scrolled through the record. Meyer traveled a lot, mostly between Moines and
Texas
. It looked like Meyer spent five months in
Texas
in the fall, with a trip to Moines in the middle. He spent three months in
Princeton
every year during the winter, and the other four months in Moines. Byron found a few trips abroad, spaced out at about one trip every three years. Nothing suspicious for a business man.

He’d had almost stopped scrolling when he noticed the name
Princeton
had dropped off the screen. He scrolled back up slowly and found the first entry for
Princeton
. Thirty-three years ago. Byron sat looking at the screen for a minute. He flipped back to the screen with the names of the missing saps. It seemed like a big coincidence.

Byron scrolled through the sapien list to the bottom. He expanded the search to thirty-three years and two more saps appeared on his list. The first missing sap’s name was Shawna Lowe. The second sap went missing thirty-one years ago. His name was Tom Kidd.

Chapter 33

Cali
turned off the light after her master left, but she couldn’t sleep. She was cold all over, and she couldn’t get warm. She wanted to cry but her eyes stayed dry. After a while she got up and went to take a shower. The water got cold after two minutes, but she didn’t care. She stayed in for a long time, scrubbing herself over and over, but she couldn’t wash away the dirty feeling.

She and Shelly shared a threadbare towel, and now she wrapped it around her lower half to cover as much as she could. Then she went back to the bed, climbed in and pulled the blankets over herself. She lay watching the pattern the bars made on the ceiling, how the light between the bars shifted when a car passed, and listening to the traffic on the road outside the building. Somewhere she heard a faint scream cut short before it should have ended. Though she listened for her master, she didn’t hear any sound from his apartment.

She found herself thinking about her home, missing it with the full weight of allowance. Usually she wouldn’t let herself think about it, but tonight she would think about anything except what had happened earlier.

She missed her sisters, especially Poppy, who had always been so bursting with life and laughter, always liking different boys and running around trying to get their attentions and having them stay over in the crowded bed. Cali missed her other sisters, too, and the babies, even the ones who cried. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have one. She’d liked taking care of them when she’d gotten sick and her sisters had to go out and work.

Thinking about getting sick that time made her think about the Superior who had taken her to the clinic, the one she’d called Man with Soft Hair. She still had his picture, but she never looked at it, and she couldn’t remember what he looked like in real life. He’d told her his name, but she couldn’t remember it now. Something weird and sinister sounding, like demon or devil. Devlon? Devon?

She didn’t care what his name sounded like, or even what it was. She’d been mad at him and told him not to come back, though now she couldn’t remember why. But he’d done what she asked, and he’d stayed away for a long time. She didn’t know any other Superior who’d ever done anything she asked. That one had let her get away with a lot. Even when she thought she’d get in big trouble, sometimes she liked to push and see how far she could take it. Once, she’d told him to ask permission before he bit her, and she’d thought he’d slap her at least, but he’d actually done it. Then he’d thanked her afterwards.

She tried to imagine Master ever thanking her for anything, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t even thank her when she finally had a baby for him to sell. She didn’t think Man with Soft Hair would have made her have babies if he’d bought her. One time he’d said something about not liking them. And he’d never leave her with bumpy sore spots all over her arms where he bit her. He had always closed up, sometimes too well. And he’d come to the hospital after she’d almost died and given her a caramel. She’d had one before when she was younger. But Master would never buy her a treat like that.

She smiled thinking about the incredible taste of the candy, the way it sat on her tongue for what seemed like hours, releasing its sweet buttery taste into her mouth.