Now she lived in this alien white world where snow fell instead of rain, and where it didn’t sink into the ground but sat on top, piling higher and higher every day that it fell, blowing into strange dips like the sand dunes she’d seen once. In her whole life, she’d only left the city once, although at the Confinement, she’d lived on the outskirts. But once, she’d gotten transported to another area to work on a cotton field for a few months with a big group from the Confinement.
Out the window of the train, she’d seen the city go by, millions and millions of apartments that looked exactly the same and then lots of big houses that looked like they could fit as many people as an apartment building. She’d thought of all those Superiors living there who wanted to suck her blood, and it made her skin crowd in on itself. Then she’d seen the sand dunes, the forever of beautiful swells with no houses and no Superiors, just sand the color of her hair.
And now, the second time she’d left the city she’d always called home, she’d come in a closed container and missed all the sights along the way. But this was her home now, this place where buildings didn’t fill the land—she could see lots of space out the window with no buildings at all. The land didn’t roll and dip like the empty sand, but jutted upwards like the earth gods had pounded their fists at it from below, breaking it into peaks and leaving gashes along the bottoms of the mountains.
She’d spend her whole life here with her Master and her one friend, her mate. She would be the good little slave Master wanted. She’d probably never see that other place again, her family, her wreck of a house in the Confinement, her repeat feeders. She had been so rude to that Superior who had treated her good—at least sometimes—who seemed to care if she got hurt. Maybe if she’d been a good little sap for him, he would have bought her instead. But she hadn’t, and Master had already bought her, so no use thinking about it now. If she behaved as she should, maybe Master would treat her better, too. Now she didn’t have any other options—she couldn’t change how she’d acted before. She had a new home to make, and the past was a place she’d never go again, full of people she’d never see again.
15
In the morning, Sally woke, still dog-tired, and stumbled into the kitchen to get her tea. She’d had to stand guard half the night.
“Nothing happen the rest of the night?” she asked.
“No,” Mama said. “Now that it’s light, we should be pretty near safe.”
After breakfast, Sally went out to the shed to check on the bloodsucker and see if anybody still sat guard. Her uncle sprawled in the rocking chair, passed out cold. The bloodsucker lay on the floor with his back to the small window. The hair she’d thought looked real soft and feathery when it came out of its hood was matted with blood and stuck to the floor. She had a little twinge of pity for the man. But he weren’t a man, was he? He was a thing. A gross, bloodsucking monster. He might even be the same one that killed Angela. Maybe he’d come back for Sally, colored his hair dark as a disguise. Angela had said hers was real nice looking.
Sally went on back to the house.
“You coming out for the viewing tonight?” Pappy asked, a big grin on his face.
“I reckon I got to.”
He clapped her on the back. “You’ll get into the spirit of it. First one’s the hardest. I know my girls is squeamish about bloody stuff, but you get used to it. And you can’t miss the killing part.”
“All right, Pappy. How come Mama don’t have to go?”
“She been to enough to make up her mind objectively, that’s how come. You go see five or six of ‘em get killed, and you can make up your own mind.”
“All right then. We need to do anything to get ready?”
“Why don’t you go round to the neighbors with your uncle, just in case there’s another one lurking around. We got reason to believe there is.”
“Why’s that?”
“We went through them two backpacks you done found, and one of them is full of girl clothes. There was some canned food in there, too. We think they was gonna try and entice us out with food. Might have something to drug or poison us in it. The important thing is, the female one must’ve got away. So y’all be on the lookout and be real careful. She’s probably madder’n hell we got her mate. Probably be coming after us come dark tonight.”
Later, Sally went with her uncle to all the other houses. Sally got to tell the story of catching the bloodsucker, and that just about made up for having to spend time with her uncle. She just knew her brother would be steaming mad that she got to tell everyone, while he had to stay home with Pappy, getting ready for the night’s festivities. It would eat him up to let her take all the glory for finding the sucker. But she’d been the one who wanted to follow the tracks. It seemed only fair she got to tell the story.
Every single one of the neighboring families promised to come right at sundown. They didn’t want to miss the thing waking up. All the neighbors excepting one had caught a bloodsucker at least once. The Henson family had caught four, but only on account of catching two at a time. They had five boys under thirty at home, all of them mean as snakes and dumb as rocks. But they were sure good at sharpening stakes, and using them, too, from what Sally heard. One of them had even staked another family’s bloodsucker first. That was just plain bad manners.
As one of the capturers, Sally would get to stake her bloodsucker first. She weren’t too sure she wanted to. She’d thought the sucker would be vicious and wild. Instead, it was just pathetic. It hadn’t fought at all. It only begged for its life and then got the crap beat out of it. Well, not literally. Bloodsuckers didn’t take craps, did they? If they did, the shed would smell pretty nasty come this evening.
When Sally and Tom got back from their neighboring, everyone was busy. Mama and Sissy had started up cooking for the guests that night, and Pappy was out in the shed constructing some sort of getup to strap the bloodsucker to. Sally found Larry lying on the couch.
“What you doing in here? Just being lazy like usual?” she asked.
“Shut your trap, I’m injured.”
“You don’t look injured to me. I bet soon as it’s time to do something fun, you’ll be just fine.”
“You go on and think that. I’m not even gonna tell you what happened.”
“What happened?”
“Fine, I’ll tell you. What happened is that while you was off gossiping with Tom, Pappy and I had to unwrap the bloodsucker to get his weapons, and he got me fore’s I could get outta the way.”
“What? No way. You look fine.” Here Sally had thought she was having all the fun while her brother moped around, and it turned out he’d had the real adventure. Gol-darn it. That always happened. Larry always had to do her one better.
“Well, I ain’t.”
“So what happened? He get you with a knife? He have a fancy gun in there with him?”
“No, you moron, I’d’ve been dead if he had one of those. We had to string him up to get his clothes off, and he kinda kicked out, hit me right here in the ribs. Pappy said they’s surely broken.”
“I’ll be danged.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. It was so…just, wow. You really missed out.”
“I hate you for that.”
“Hell, I’d trade a few broken ribs for getting to see a bloodsucker strung up. We done put a chain around its neck and just hoisted it up over the bars on the cage until he was hanging from it. Then he started to gurgling and thrashing all around, and that’s when his foot got me. I stayed up there to help Pappy, course, but I was in a whole lotta pain, so we just cut the clothes right off him ‘stead of taking them off proper. He didn’t have no weapons at all, just a pocket knife. Not even a good one.”
“Huh. Did you get him down or is he still strung up out there?”
“Sorry, sis, you missed it. He was swinging around so much we had to take him down so as Pappy could have some space to build the platform thingamajig.”
“Where’s the bloodsucker?”
> “I reckon he’s sleeping again. I say next time we string him up from his feet like a bat. You know iffen you don’t chain them they can turn into bats and escape.”
“I know.”
“Ah, don’t be so sad. There’ll be lots more fun tonight. And if you really wanna see something now, Pappy cut him up a few times trying to get the clothes off. You can probably still see them cuts. You know, he don’t heal up near as fast as we thought. I thought it’d just close right back up, but he was still bleeding when I left near half an hour after Pappy got the knife in the sucker.”
Sally weren’t too eager to see the bloody creature, so she stayed in the house until evening. It came early this time of year. Pretty soon the sun sank, and the neighbors started crowding around the kitchen and gathering outside talking. They all had stakes.
After most of them had tromped through the house in their snowy boots, leaving wet spots all over the floor, they moved on out towards the shed kind of slow-like. None of them wanted to go right in. Finally one of them mean Henson boys opened the door.
“It’s up,” he shouted back to the crowd. Sally came down off the porch. Her neighbors parted to let her through, some of them congratulating her or wishing her luck or patting her back as she passed. One of the elders’ sons gave her a small smile and a nod of encouragement. She felt a little better then. Herman was handsome in the way a man should be, blonde and muscular and built like a ton of bricks, not haunted-eyed and soft-haired like the bloodsucker.
Sally went into the shed. Larry was already in there, along with Tom and Pappy. They’d chained the bloodsucker up so he leaned on a sort of shoddy table her Pappy had built that afternoon. The thing held one elbow in his other hand and just looked at them with these ancient-looking eyes. Sally felt kinda sorry for the thing. It looked just about ready to give up. It wore a pair of underpants, the kind that looked like shorts, and its body looked much thinner than Sally would’ve thought. She thought bloodsuckers were all real strong, but this one didn’t look strong. He was smaller than her brother, her Pappy, and most all the men outside the shed.
When the bloodsucker looked at her, 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,” Pappy 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,” Pappy said, drawing a big circle around the thing’s stomach with an ink pen. “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.” When he gestured to the stack, Sally turned to it, remembering how many evenings she’d sat around whittling up stakes for that pile.
“All right, first we gotta ask it some questions,” Larry said, stepping forward. Like Sally had predicted, he looked fine now. “Like, how’d you find us?”
“I was passing through. I did not 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.
“All right, 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 companion?”
The thing hesitated and looked around. “Yes. My…girl.”
“Yeah, I think we got that. Where’s she at?”
“I do not know.”
“We done looked through your bags. We know she was with you. Where’d she go?”
“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 taking you?”
The bloodsucker kept right on denying it until Sally just wished he’d say yes so as the men would stop sticking it. It looked like a pincushion by the time 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.
16
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. Once, he’d been staked while capturing a human. At the time, he’d thought 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 Pappy’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. “Kill me.”
“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 ceremonies 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 overcame him as a rush of blood poured 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, and 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.
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