Cali dreaded the procedure even more so than Draven did. While he had only to suffer the unpleasant taste, she bore the intense pain that came with tearing the beads from where they had grown into her flesh and skin and forcing them through the pinprick puncture his teeth made. Despite the pain, she never asked him to stop. He continued until Cali’s breathing became ragged and he could no longer bear her agonized moaning.
“Do you want me to go on?” he would ask. Though she always said yes, he never withdrew more than five or six at a time.
More than her suffering, he worried about taking too much sap. Already she grew weaker with no help from him. He grew weaker, too, and resisting the offering that lay beside him grew more difficult each night. The week she bled provided the worst torment. Though her fluids differed from sap, they were similar enough to call out to his ravenous thirst every moment he lay inside the tent with her.
That week, he spent most nights outside, moving restlessly through the city, unwilling to return without food or fuel. Three nights in a row he returned with food, and on the fourth, he stole a small sack of fire biscuits from a store and nearly ran into an Enforcer as he hurried out. He had just gained the roof when he heard the commotion below and knew the store’s clerk had alerted the Enforcer. Still, no one had seen him ascend the building, and he managed to leap from the building to another, where he remained the rest of the night. By morning, the search had ceased and he could make his way back to the endlot and make a fire to thaw his immobile fingers.
After settling Cali by the wisp of fire given off by a single fire biscuit, he drew from her arm, sucking out the beads and swallowing the tainted sap before spitting the clean, hard pellets into his palm. As he worked, he thought of the nights when he had lain beside her and pressed his mouth to her warm, pulsing throat.
“Where are you getting all this food?” she asked when he had finished the nightly extraction and seated himself beside her.
“From other sapiens.”
“You’re stealing their food?” Cali asked, looking up from the half-eaten jar of corn she held.
“Yes.”
“But they might be starving.”
“Unlikely.”
“But how do you know? I mean, I know how hard it is to grow all this stuff, and pick it and can it. And that’s just to have barely enough for the dry season.”
“Would you have me watch you starve?”
“No, but maybe you could take something from…I don’t know, a store or something.”
Draven shook his head. “It’s too risky. I was nearly caught tonight. I cannot take that risk again.”
“Well, you have to try. I can’t eat this, knowing someone else might starve because of me. Bring it back.” She pushed the bag of food towards him.
“What do you think will happen to you if I am arrested?” he asked.
“I don’t care,” she said. “You have to find some other way. I can’t steal food from my own people, and hurt them, so I can stay here and eat.”
“Would you go find your own food?” Draven asked. “Or would you lie here waiting for my return until you grew too weak to move? Would you rather starve, or risk the chance that someone goes hungry a few nights?”
Instead of answering, Cali finished the corn in the can. When she’d scraped the last kernels from the sides of the can with her finger, she looked into it and sighed. “There has to be another way,” she said.
“There is,” Draven said. “I can turn you in, and you’ll be sent back to your rightful owner, and you’ll have as much food as you need, and no one will go hungry because of it.”
She drew herself inwards and shifted closer to the fire. “No. Not that.”
“Promise me… if I am ever gone for more than one night and the following day, you will find someone to take you to the Confinement. You will be cared for there.”
“What are you going to do? You better not be planning something so I’ll have to go back. You know I won’t go.”
“If I am caught, I want to know you’ll be alright.”
“I’ll be okay.”
He took her hands in his and captured her gaze. “Promise me.”
“I do, I promise. But don’t try to steal from a store, okay?”
“I thought you wanted it.”
“Don’t be smug,” she said, pushing her shoulder against his. She retracted one of her hands but left the other in his. “I don’t want you to. I just…I hate the thought of those people being hungry if their masters wouldn’t get them more food or something. But I hate the thought of losing—I’d rather they go hungry than not have you here.”
“To protect you.”
“Well, of course. I don’t want to go back. And I don’t think I’d do very well by myself.”
He had the sudden urge to kiss her, to kiss her hand and then her arm and then her throat and put his teeth into her and suck. He dropped her hand.
She sandwiched her hands between her knees and glanced at Draven and away again, as if she guessed his thoughts.
“So, shall I…read to you?” he asked, twisting around to crawl into the tent. The slippery sleep sack scooted under him.
“Sure, ah, maybe the little book today?” Cali said from the mouth of the tent. Draven had lit the fire half a meter from the tent so they could sit in the opening while they warmed themselves.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “Why don’t you finish eating while I read, and I will eat before taking sleep.”
“Do you think…” Cali started, and then shook her head. “Never mind.”
“What is it?”
“Do you think people—I mean humans—will ever write or read again?”
He let out a little laugh. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Well? Do you think they could or not?”
He paused, thinking of Sally, of himself. “I don’t imagine so. We’ve tried to breed homo-sapiens with lower intelligence. Many of them, of you, I mean, are hardly bright enough to feed themselves, let alone read.”
“Am I brainless?”
“Of course you’re not.”
“Would you still think of me…the same, if I was?”
Draven retrieved the book and slid into the cold sleep sack. Once cold, it did nothing to warm him. “I don’t guess I would,” he said. “You’re strange and…you fascinate me.”
Thinking of her appeal made his teeth sing with urgency, made the inside of his mouth draw in as if he could still salivate, made him want her again. He may have had food for the last several days, but that did nothing to quench his thirst for her. Perhaps nothing could.
He longed to roll in her until her scent saturated him to his very bones, to lie full on her and put his teeth to her throat and let the natural weight push down on them until he could feel her skin stretching taut under the points of his teeth, the tiny dimples in her skin puckering inward until the pressure broke the skin and he pierced her, penetrating into the wet, warm flow of her life.
“You look hungry,” Cali said, drawing into herself a bit. She pulled back from him at the mention of it. If only she knew how much he wanted, how much it would take to satisfy him. He’d never known how much he could eat until he’d eaten from the dead, the night he’d lost Cali to Byron the second time. He’d never known how much he could want until he had Cali in front of him every moment. The constant craving wore at him. The substance of his addiction lay within reach, taunting, waiting for his first sign of weakness, ready for him to let go, to give in. How he wanted to, needed to.
But only for sustenance, he reminded himself. He needed more because he had lost more strength, missed more meals than ever before. Since evolving to a Superior, he’d thought he only needed five rations a day, that it kept him strong and healthy and normal. But he could eat much, much more than that, and he could grow stronger than he’d ever imagined. He knew that now.
Had a lack of food kept him weakened into submission all these years? Or something else, some witlessness in him to never
question it? Those five rations, his menial jobs, his pathetic apartment had kept him in his place. He’d be grateful to have them again. But now he knew too much to go back, as Cali did. Now he knew that if he ate until he was satisfied and kept eating, he’d gain strength beyond possibility, be able to leap across buildings effortlessly and scale walls in seconds. Now he knew that the government, made up entirely of Second Order Superiors, kept him and all his Third brethren in this state of need, this weakened state of basic survival where they thought of little else.
And why not? When people thought only of food, they were less likely to cause dissention, discontent, unrest. The government kept Thirds in ignorance, like sapiens. Seconds told them to be grateful for their meager handouts. They made Thirds think that was the only way, that food shortage allowed each person only a few rations per day. And how would Thirds learn otherwise? They could not break the laws without dire consequences. They owned no livestock, so they wouldn’t know that Seconds ate much more than they did. They knew Seconds were stronger, but they didn’t know why. They were told they would get stronger with age. But Cali was right. They were little more than slaves.
Draven had broken free of the system, and now he was…what? A runaway slave, relentlessly pursued, hiding in an endlot. Because he was dangerous, an outlaw and a traitor. He knew too much, had done too much, had seen and learned and questioned too much and gotten too close. He’d killed another slave, two more, whom the Superiors in command had great use for. Slave hunters. Still hunted, Draven ran onwards, clutching the only thing he’d gained in betraying his people. Now that he’d achieved some measure of freedom, it didn’t look much better than slavery—fragile and frightening and dangerous and tenuous. But it was freedom nonetheless.
Chapter 45
Cali woke with a start and sat up. Something scratched at the tent, shrieking against the material. But when she turned towards the door, she could see nothing but a blackness so deep it surrounded her eyeballs, pushing in on them from every side. She slowed her breath to the most silent stream she could manage to push between her lips, stiff with cold. She didn’t dare reach over to feel Draven’s spot. Her sleep sack might rustle. What if someone—some thing—came while he was gone? Moving as slowly as possible, she found the handle of the aspen stake Draven had made. Its cold, solid presence in her palm settled her a bit. Ignoring the ache in her knuckles at the force of her grip, she steadied it in front of her chest. She would have one moment to strike, blind and desperate, before the thing overpowered her.
Her breath caught when the zipper began to slide down in slow jerks. This was no animal. With each rasping pull, she thought she’d scream. Her heart hammered so hard she had to force herself to stay still, not to turn and scramble blindly into the wall of the tent, claw her way out and run, run, run.
The door fell open, and a blast of cold air circled the inside of the tent, licking at the warmth of Cali’s skin, sucking it away like Draven did her blood. Was it him? She tried to find her voice, but her throat had tightened until she couldn’t swallow or speak.
If she stabbed Draven…
She didn’t dare do it. Not without making sure. She did not move, not when she felt his cold hand like ice brush her cheek, not when the tent closed and the silhouette disappeared with the vague light that hinted at his figure, cast black against a larger blackness. Still, she could feel someone inside the tent with her, pressing into the space she shared only with Draven.
A strange smell, foreign and familiar at once, had come in with him. She heard the movements of cloth, of him moving and rearranging. It had to be Draven. It had to. Who else would come into her tent, their tent? Anyone else, another Superior, would have smelled her or heard her, and they’d do something or say something. So it had to be her Superior.
“Is it you?” she whispered, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
“Se moi,” Draven said, his voice muffled in the sleep sack next to her.
She dropped the wooden knife to the floor. “Oh my lords. You scared the hair off me. Why didn’t you turn on a light or say something? I thought you were…I thought…” She paused to catch her breath, stifling what could have been laughter or a sob. “What’s that smell?”
“Dog.”
“Dog?” she asked, making sure she’d heard him right through his mouthful of bedding. “Why do you smell like a dog?”
“They attacked.”
“Dogs attacked you? Did they get you bad? Are you okay?”
“Not…yet.”
Cali fumbled in the dark for her flashlight and switched it on. She wished she hadn’t. His legs didn’t look so much like a dog had bitten them as that a dog had eaten them. Chunks of them, anyway.
“Holy lord and master…” She covered her mouth with her hand and tried to quell the queasiness that lurched into her stomach. His blood looked black in the dim light, blood that covered his pants and shoes and part of his shirt, that filled the ragged holes torn away from the fabric of his pants, pooling in glistening tar pits on the backs of his legs. He lay on his stomach, propped up on his elbows with his face hanging down into the sleep sack.
“What happened?” she asked when she’d recovered enough voice for a whisper.
“I was out. They caught me from behind.”
“Oh my lord and master…what should I do?”
“Is it as dreadful as it feels?”
“I hope it doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.”
He turned his face towards her but kept his head down so he was looking at her almost upside down. His eyes were the same shiny black as his blood, pools of unfathomable darkness and depth. And pain.
“What should I do?” she asked again.
“Don’t waste it.”
“Waste what?”
“The blood, don’t waste it. Eat it.”
Cali tried to hide her disgust. “I can’t eat it,” she said, her throat threatening to revisit what she’d eaten last. “That’s…like…that’s not what humans eat. Remember?”
“What if I can’t get food for you, for a while…”
“But it’s…I can’t. Isn’t it…wrong or something?”
“You’ve eaten meat before. It’s not so different.”
“But that’s an animal, and it’s not still alive.”
“It is only blood, but it will give you some strength. Though it is perhaps not pleasant for you, it is sustenance.”
She regarded his legs again, those ragged holes with their shredded skin and oozing muscle exposed. “Will it make me sick?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Collect it before it spills. I’ve already lost....”
“Okay, okay, I will,” Cali said, but she wasn’t at all sure. She knew how much Superiors liked drinking blood, but the thought of it repulsed her. Still, if it would give her the same energy as food… If she didn’t think about it, just licked it off, what would it matter if she liked it or not? He’d taken enough of her blood. Why not take a little back?
She leaned down, placed her hands on either side of the worst wound, squeezed her eyes shut and put her lips to his flesh. The smell of blood hit her a moment before her lips touched him, strong and metallic and salty, and her gorge turned over in her throat. She might have still done it if she hadn’t felt the icy cold of it, slimy and still and dead as the old woman she’d found one day at the Confinement when she’d forgotten to strip her bed and gone back to get her sheets before the laundry overseer penalized her. The sleeping building had been empty, everyone out working. She’d seen the feet, splayed out with the toes pointing in opposite directions. She’d called out, then reached out to shake the woman’s ankle.
Draven was that cold, colder, like thick icy dead flesh. Her mouth touched inside him, inside his skin, on the broken, exposed muscle. She pulled back and started to wipe her mouth, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her down beside him, flipping her over so quickly it took a moment to register what had happened. She looked up
at him, that same mixture of nervousness and excitement flitting through her she got every time he drew from her without healing Byron’s bites. When he did that, it hurt too much. But when he just fed, she’d started to almost enjoy it. Some unnamable quality had entered into it, something at once generous and kind, and also scary and thrilling, so she would wait, anticipating and wary both, when he came to her.
But now he only looked at her a moment and then pushed his open mouth down on hers, his cold, wet tongue wiping away the blood she couldn’t bring herself to drink. He held her hair with one hand, pulling too hard, running his tongue over her lips and the surrounding area. He pulled back, relaxed his grip her hair, and the glimmer of his eyes, so warm she could almost forget the coldness of his tongue, captivated her.
“Is it in your mouth?” he asked.
“No,” she said, not sure her voice had come out at all or only a breath. Her heart had started beating very hard.
“I would take it from your tongue,” he said, his face still close. She could feel the whisper of his breath across her wet lips.
He released her all at once and scooted away, twisting to reach one of their foldable cups. He pressed it into her hand and nodded his head back. “If you can’t eat it then I will. Collect what you can in that.”
Something about his request nauseated her. Not the blood itself that slid sluggishly down the side of the cup and smelled so acrid, but the thought of him drinking it. Of course, he drank her blood all the time, but drinking his own blood seemed different, like something too taboo to have a name, something between cannibalism and incest.
The Renegades (The Superiors) Page 32