The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (37 page)

“Who do you give the babies to?”

“The elders, course.”

“What do they do with them?”

“How would I know that? I look like an elder to you? All I knows is they take them, and then I reckon a time later they bring them back. I mean, Herman was born out here, and he come back.”

“Anyone else?”

“I don’t rightly know. For all I knows, they sacrifice them to the gods or something. Can we just get back to the kissing and nasty stuff?” Larry didn’t wait for an answer, just pushed
Cali
down and climbed on her and started trying to pull her jumpsuit down. For the first time, she was glad for the difficulty of the wool suit. Larry started working it down over her shoulders. She thought of the breeder, and she kicked at him and wished with all her strength she had never run away. She started to pray, and then she remembered she had promised the gods she would never run away again. Now she had. So this must be her punishment.

She squeezed her eyes closed and prayed with all her might that it wouldn’t hurt too bad, and then she felt Larry’s hot, dry hands on her waist, and she kicked at him and prayed harder. And just like the gods heard her prayer, Larry was gone. He didn’t climb off, or roll off, he was just gone. She felt the rush of air that pulled away from her body with him, like he’d been stolen by a gust of wind or eaten by a hungry god.

Chapter 52

The smells hung strong and delicious in the building when Draven and Angel found their way inside. Rows of doors lined both sides of the long hallway, a few with numbers above them and old white signs with black letters falling from them. The two men followed the scent of sap to the source, but the humans had barred the door of the room from inside. Angel found an unmarked door that led first to a set of stairs and then into a dark second story that smelled of rust and mold and decaying building.

The building was so dark that Draven couldn’t see well, but Angel did not seem to share Draven’s limitation. Strange metal contraptions that had somehow escaped salvage clustered near each small window that looked into a darkened room below. Some had brown plastic scrolls threaded through them, and behind one of these ancient machines they found the small window from which the scent of sapien wafted up. Upon finding the warm smell of food once more, Draven thought of Sally and his promise not to harm her family. He had not promised not to harm anyone else, though.

Angel looked through the window before drawing back, his hand over his silent heart. He looked at Draven, and even in the darkness of the place, Draven could see Angel’s distress. The wetness of the boy’s tears had a scent both unsettling and familiar.

“A human violates my love,” Angel said.

Draven strained to see through the darkness into the room below. After a moment, he found the pair Angel had indicated raised from the floor. Rather, the male had raised himself over the female. Draven could not see the human woman, though he knew Angel had. After he looked for a moment, he made out the hands of the other human, the one who lay struggling beneath the man.

“I will bring you her,” Draven said. “And then you will let me go in peace.” He had to struggle to work his small frame through the even smaller window. As he dropped down into the room filled with humans armed to kill him, he thought of his own stupidity. And yet he did this task willingly, and for a boy he had only just met. Though the boy appeared fragile, Draven knew he was powerful nonetheless. And he wanted to please Angel, that he might benefit from his service. Draven had checked his backpack and knew he had no papers and no money for a set of replacements, and he wondered if Angel wasn’t the sort to reward loyalty with money.

He pulled the man off the girl, holding his breath against the smell of sap and sweat and human filth and the awful stench that surrounded them, the odor of the bulbs on Sally’s door. With one hand he closed the man’s mouth while holding the body tight against him with the other. Both his hands functioned perfectly now. The man made a sound of surprise and began to struggle, but a sapien would never overpower a Superior, not even a weakened one. The man hit Draven’s ribs with an elbow on the exact spot in which Draven had sustained the stake wound, causing Draven to suck in a breath of pain. His lungs filled with the man’s unmistakable scent.

“Larry?”

Larry made a sound, louder but still muffled, while Draven kept his hand on the man as a muzzle. He had smelled something else, faint but wonderful among all the awful smells. Ignoring the distracting familiarity of the fragrance of sap around him, he wrested Larry to the floor and knelt over him. He sensed the moment Angel dropped to the floor behind him.

“Don’t you know how to treat a woman, even if she is only a sapien woman?” Draven asked. Larry continued to make muffled noises when Draven shook the man’s head. “I would break your face with my bare hands if it weren’t for your sister,” he said. “And I wish she could see what kind of man you are and let me do it.”

Larry went still, and Draven thought he must have realized who had landed on him. If Larry was capable of such a deduction. When Draven released his face, Larry said, “Don’t you say nothing about my sister.”

Larry could have screamed and woken the others, but he defended his sister first, and Draven had to respect him a bit for that. He covered Larry’s mouth again, not sure how long it would take the sap to realize he could have a dozen humans on Draven in a moment if he screamed.

“You don’t deserve your sister,” Draven said. “She’s a better man than you’ll ever be. You’re too much of a brute to realize what sort of person she is. And I shall say what I like, since I’m quite certain I love her more than you ever will.” Larry began shaking his head back and forth wildly and thrashing under Draven. “What is it,” Draven asked. “You do not like me saying I love your sister?”

A sapien a few meters away rolled over and gave a frustrated sigh. “Would y’all shut up?” the sapien said. “You wanna fight over a girl, save it for morning.”

Larry shook his head back and forth and made a noise high with anger, but he could not expel the sound from his throat. Draven laughed softly. He leaned close to Larry’s face and whispered, “That’s alright, Larry, she knows I love her. I told her, just before I sucked her.”

The sound in Larry’s throat rose to a muffled scream of rage, and several saps began moving in the room. Draven located Angel a few paces off, holding the girl he loved. She lay limp in his arms, draped backwards over his arm, and whatever he was doing to her was the most frightening thing Draven had ever seen. Angel moved slightly, and her hair swayed, and Draven caught her scent and knew.

He leapt from Larry, and in a moment he had launched himself at Angel, not thinking of what he did until he’d done it.

Angel, his love, and Draven tumbled to the floor together.

Larry screamed, “Bloodsuckers! Bloodsuckers!”

The sapiens around them began rising, scrambling about in a frantic, terrified way in the dark room, shouting orders. Chaos rolled through the room with the stink of fear. Then the door exploded inward, and everyone began screaming.

Chapter 53

Draven had fallen to the floor with
Cali
and Angel when the three Superiors from the road burst through the door. Now he crawled towards
Cali
. Larry had pulled her jumpsuit off her top half, so Draven used the empty sleeve to pull her unconscious body under him. Then he pushed his way along on the floor while the others stumbled and toppled over each other. He hoped none of them would fall on him with their stakes, but he knew the chances of one falling at the precise angle to pierce his heart were slim. He’d been staked before in other places, and he knew he’d live.

He slid one arm under
Cali
, and, keeping his head down, crawled towards the bottom of the room. The floor, smooth and slick between the craters where chunks of flooring had come up, slanted at an angle. The rough edges of the craters cut into Draven’s knees through the velvety red cloth that had been spread over the floor. As he slid along the floor, the cloth twisted under his hands and knees and the feet of the others, and several humans stumbled into each other and fell.

Upon reaching the bottom of the room, Draven found a thick cloth curtain that would have reached from his hip to the floor if he stood. He pushed it aside, climbed through a set of crossed iron bars, and pulled
Cali
under. As soon as he’d settled himself, a screaming human careened towards his hiding spot. Before the human crashed into the curtain, the screaming ceased abruptly and she fell outside the curtain, very near. The smell of sap rushed into the space within. The human continued moaning, the sound muffling the other sounds in the room.

By lifting the edge of the curtain a bit, Draven could make out the form of the injured human. Blood coursed from her body. The enticing aroma of fresh sap invaded Draven’s hiding spot, taunting him. She was so close. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the sap under the curtain and covered her mouth. Thick, sticky liquid spilled into his lap. He touched her abdomen and found a cut crossing her body from one side to the other. When he pressed his fingers to it, they slid into her entrails, still warm and pulsing softly. The girl shrieked, expelling a wet rush into his palm. Placing his hands tightly on either side of her skull, he closed his eyes, took a breath and twisted hard.

She stopped screaming and went limp in his arms.

Ignoring the muffled snapping sounds that echoed in his muscles, Draven held the body only a moment before he sank his teeth into the vein in her neck. He drew what he could from her, all the sap that had not been wasted. He tried not to think of the killing, tried only to think that her heart beat slower and slower and he needed to eat. She would have died anyhow, so he might as well use what he could of her life before it spilled onto the floor. But knowing did little to assuage his guilt. Killing an animal out of mercy was still killing it, and a sick feeling crept into his gut when he thought of it. He withdrew his teeth and pressed his face to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. For a few moments, he squeezed his eyes shut and let himself breathe the smell of her sap. When the sickness passed, he finished her.

He slid her body back under the curtain and crawled to Cali’s side. She lay as he’d left her, her heart still beating. Placing his hand over her heart, he could sense her warmth and the slow quietness of sap moving under her skin. Her warm, delicious scent greeted him, combined with the smell of the other woman’s sap on him, the smell of the bulb’s disguising juices on Cali, and the sour odor of human sweat and dirt on her. But touching her skin again, feeling her heartbeat, knowing she lived… He had found her so unexpectedly, like a blessing for helping Angel. A strange peace descended in the hidden corner of the room filled with clamor and terror.

“Cali?” he whispered, brushing a few strands of hair from her face.

She didn’t move. But she lived. He rested his head on her chest and listened to that wondrous organ working inside her. Never before had he been so close to that most miraculous, live-giving part of a human, with only her skin and bones between his ear and her heart. A thrill passed through him at the thought of what he was doing, touching a sap in such a way that he never would dare to ask for if she’d been awake. He would never again have the chance to touch a sap in such an intimate manner, so near her pulsating core. He wished he could push his face inside her and touch it with his mouth, taste the origin of her life.

At last he had found his human, brimming with life. If he could take her from there without the humans killing him, or Angel killing her, he’d not need more. He knew he was a coward for avoiding the fight, but he had nothing to fight for. His fight was over, and he had won. Now he only wanted to leave with his victory.

How perfectly everything had turned out. He had come to this place and almost left. But he’d run into Angel by chance, and agreed to Angel’s request for reasons he didn’t quite understand. But when he’d entered the room, he’d found Cali, as if she’d been sent there to lure him in. That thought stopped him for a moment, but he didn’t believe it. Angel had no reason to lure him here. No one did, except Sally’s family. If they had somehow discovered him missing…

But they had no way to know that before they went back. Only Tom could know, and he didn’t have any way to communicate with the others. It made no sense, unless Sally had betrayed him. And why not just kill him? Why go to all the trouble of letting him go if they only wished to lure him back? Did they want him to serve them, to come back like the beaten dog he had spoken of to Sally?

When he thought of the day he’d compared Cali to a dog, he realized he had never told any of the vigilante humans her name, not even Sally. The only person who might bring Cali here was Byron.

As soon as the thought flickered in Draven’s mind, the knowledge clicked into place. His old friend had no way of knowing Draven’s whereabouts unless he had somehow tracked him. But whether or not he knew Draven’s location, Byron had come to meet him. That was the familiar Superior smell Draven had scented earlier, the scent that reminded him of home and comfort. Because Byron was his friend. And when he saw what Draven had gone through at the hands of those humans, when he saw the lengths Draven had gone to in finding Cali, he’d sell her.