The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series

by Lena Hillbrand

  Through the darkness, she glimpsed her Superior, wet as he had been in the rainstorm, his soft hair plastered to his forehead, his clothes streaming water. She thought she imagined it, but then his voice drifted into what remained of her consciousness, smooth and deep as the darkness around them.

  “Hello, Byron,” he said. “So we meet again.”

  Byron stopped walking, his grip loosening the littlest bit, and Cali knew she wasn’t dreaming.

  “It would seem so,” Byron said.

  “I believe you have something that belongs to me.” Draven stepped closer, his hands in his pockets. He looked awfully unconcerned about Cali’s well-being.

  Byron laughed, a horrible sound that made Cali shudder. Flashes swam before her eyes—a boy who glowed and blood everywhere and Draven.

  “No,” Byron said. “I have something that belongs to me.” He shook Cali as if to emphasize his point.

  “It seems she’d rather not go with you,” Draven said.

  “Do you think that concerns me? Do you think we’ll each stand here with a piece of bacon, call her like a dog, and see who she comes to?” Draven didn’t say anything, but Byron laughed again. “You don’t even know what that means, do you? You see, you’ll never get away, no matter how many times you run, because you’re not smart enough. You’ll never be as smart as a Second. You’re nothing, Draven. A petty criminal, canaille. No one will miss you.”

  “Are you planning to leave me for dead like the last time our paths crossed?”

  “Oh, no,” Byron said. “I made that mistake once. This time, I’m not going to leave you for dead. I’m going to leave you dead. You’re a murderer. It’s my job to bring you in. When they say dead or alive, they’re giving me the choice. I like to keep things neat. Or have you forgotten?”

  “How could I forget?” Draven said. “You taught me to kill. I’ll not soon forget that lesson.”

  “You think you’ll kill me? For this sap? I could snap her neck as easy as snapping my fingers.”

  “But you won’t. You already would have if you meant to.”

  “I’m glad one of us is so confident,” Byron said, backing away another step. “What is she to me now that you’ve damaged her so grotesquely? I’ve replaced her already.”

  “Then what matter, if I were to have her?”

  “You’re a despicable, deplorable man who does horrifying things to helpless animals,” Byron said, still in retreat. “Did you think I’d stand by and let you indulge in your bestiality because you were once a friend? All the more reason I won’t tolerate it.”

  Cali tried to maintain the same tension in her body while her hand moved slowly, slowly towards one of the stakes in her pants.

  “And what is it you think I’ve done?” Draven asked. “You think we’re lovers?”

  “Lovers?” Byron asked, snorting into Cali’s hair. “Lovers? Is that how you delude yourself? Are you one of those men who convinces yourself it’s consensual? I didn’t take you for the shiniest piece of trash in the dump, but I thought you had more brains than that. I’d almost prefer that you tortured her intentionally for the power trip. At least then you’d only be cruel, instead of cruel and brainless.”

  Draven advanced a step as Byron retreated. This wasn’t much of a battle of Superiors. Cali had expected violence and blood and screaming, like when the trackers attacked. But these two seemed more inclined to have a little chat while she dangled from Byron’s arm, scarcely able to draw a breath. Her hand closed over the blunt end of a stake, but she didn’t think she could pull it without drawing attention.

  As Draven closed the distance between them in increments, Byron took his right hand from around Cali’s middle to find his gun. He kept his left hand on her mouth, holding her body in front of him like a shield while he loosed his weapon.

  Cali found her moment.

  Byron’s attention was diverted. As his hand shifted on her mouth, the tension of his fingers being pressed together collapsed and one finger slipped between her teeth. She clamped her teeth on his knuckle. Byron cursed and shifted her weight, but she’d already yanked the stake from her waistband.

  She rammed it behind her with all her force.

  The sharpened point tore into the fabric of his pants and sank into his flesh before coming to an abrupt stop when it met bone. She’d thrust the stake as hard as she could, where she could. It wasn’t a mortal blow, but it was painful enough for Byron to let out a tortured cry and fling Cali from him. She went flying, twisting through the air before falling to the ground, stunned, still clutching the bloody stake in her fist.

  The grass and mud had likely saved her life. While she fought to suck in a breath and gather herself, she heard a metallic ping. Draven cried out, and both Superiors crashed to the ground, making very un-Superior noises, grunting and straining.

  Cali pushed herself upright, trying to make out who was winning, but in the dark, she could only tell that two people struggled on the ground. Draven leapt at her before she realized he’d broken free. He scooped her up and ran. She clutched his shoulders, trying to hold tight so he wouldn’t have to support her weight, which bounced awkwardly against him. The pinging sound came again, and Draven swore and leapt aside. Cali tightened her grasp further.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked, her voice coming in uneven bursts.

  “He’s shooting at us,” Draven said.

  The next moment, Cali knew firsthand. The noise came again, and in seemingly the same moment, a fireball lodged itself in her calf. A scream tore from her throat. When she turned to look back, she couldn’t see anything but darkness. They couldn’t hide. There was nothing but open space around them.

  Draven grunted, and the force of a bullet hitting its target rippled through his body. He sucked in a breath and froze.

  “Go,” Cali whispered, yanking at his neck. After a bit of urging, he stumbled forward again, not slowing until they came to an incline. With Cali clinging to him, he scrambled down the slope. At the bottom, he pushed her into a flat, metal boat.

  “Where did you find this?” she asked through clenched teeth. Stopping herself from screaming again took great effort.

  “While you were sleeping,” Draven said in a strange, nasal voice. “I didn’t think he’d come so soon.”

  “I was calling you,” Cali said, wincing and sucking in air when she touched her leg. She wanted to fix it, to see what was wrong, but when she tried to feel the wound, pain overwhelmed her.

  “Yes,” Draven said. He pushed the boat into the water and heaved himself over the edge. The boat rocked wildly. “He’ll be here in a moment. Let us cross.”

  The current washed the boat down the river faster than it could move towards the opposite bank. Draven paddled furiously with a flimsy oar that didn’t do much.

  “Maybe he’s too hurt to follow us,” Cali said. “Maybe he’s dead.”

  “I smell him. He’s here.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Reach the opposite shore before he does. He’ll lose our trail if we get far enough ahead so he doesn’t see us leave the water.”

  A shot ricocheted off the water. The second one pierced the metal side of the boat. Water began spewing in. Cali covered the hole with her palm and turned to Draven.

  He had stopped paddling.

  “What’s wrong?” Cali asked.

  “I… I’m fine.” But he didn’t paddle.

  “Did you get hit?”

  “I don’t think…I don’t know. I can’t…it’s so strange…”

  The shots were further off now. Cali couldn’t see either bank of the river, just the shape of a tree on the far side against the blue-black sky.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to get out of here. The boat’s sinking.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Cali asked, snatching the paddle. “Get out of the way. How do you do this, anyway?”

  “Just pull, like this,” Draven said, showing her. His arms
looked functional enough.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Cali asked, yanking the paddle through the water. “First you run off while I’m sleeping. You couldn’t have told me before you left me in the middle of nowhere in the dark? How was I supposed to know Byron would hear me?”

  “I didn’t wish to awaken you. You need sleep, and you looked peaceful.”

  “It sure was peaceful waking up freezing cold and alone without you or the backpack. I thought you’d left me out there to die. And you know what was even more peaceful? When it turned out I wasn’t alone, because Byron was right behind me.”

  “I’m…sorry.” His voice still sounded nasal, which annoyed Cali more. She held onto her anger to distract her from the pain in her leg and to keep her strength. The river seemed endless, and they flowed down and down and didn’t seem to move towards the far bank at all.

  “Well, you should be sorry,” she said. “Here I thought I couldn’t do anything. But I was having my face ripped in half and being smothered at the same time, and you just stood there having a chat like he’s your friend. Then I have to stab him and bite him while you don’t do anything. Now I’m shot in the leg, and I have to get us across this river because you apparently can’t, though your arms look good and fine to me.”

  “I don’t know what happened…”

  “That’s convenient,” Cali muttered, throwing her weight back and forward with the oar. When they had almost reached the opposite shore, Draven leapt from the boat. Water began rushing in the hole again. At least he’d had the good sense to plug it while she paddled. He waded through the icy water, pulling the boat after him, and scrambled up the rocky bank. Finally, they had reached the forested area he had promised.

  “I’m sorry.” He panted like he’d exerted himself pulling the boat in. She looked at him good for the first time, but in the darkness, she couldn’t see his expression. “I shouldn’t have left you like that,” he said. “I wanted to bring you food. I found this river instead, and I wanted to surprise you…”

  “Well, that’s all very nice, but someone is still after us with a gun so I think you can skip the apology for now.”

  “I wanted you to know. If I die...”

  “Good, good, fine. If you die, I know you’re sorry. I’ll probably be dead, too, so it won’t matter much, but I heard you.”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “Holy sap-crap, you’re useless tonight,” Cali said. “Yes, I forgive you. Now let’s get away from here quick.”

  “I needed you to know.”

  “I think you’re badgering me,” she said. He didn’t answer, just carried the boat along through the scrubby trees. After a minute, Cali wondered if he was laughing at her and she said, “Did I use it right?”

  “Perfectly.” After a bit, he said, “I’ve never heard you swear before.”

  “That’s a swear? Badgering?”

  “No, you swear when you’re…in danger.”

  “I can’t walk with this souldamned thing in my leg.” With both of them limping and clumsy, they hadn’t made it far. The pain was throbbing, stabbing into her like a knife every time she took a step, even if she didn’t put weight on that leg. She would have given anything in the entire world just to sit down and scream the pain away.

  “We should stop,” Draven said.

  “What about Byron?”

  “He’s injured, so I don’t imagine he’ll make more progress than we will. Unless he swims, he can’t cross the river for a long ways. In his condition, he may not be able to fight the current.”

  “What if he does?”

  “I’ll keep watch. I won’t leave you alone again.”

  Again he’d known her thoughts exactly, but she said, “I wasn’t worried about that.”

  “I only thought to let you know.”

  They stopped in the sparse trees, and Draven set the metal boat down and climbed into it. Cali lurched over the side. Draven steadied her and drew her down onto his lap. Without asking, he lifted her hair off her shoulders and held it twisted in a knot at the back of her head while he drew from her shoulder. She didn’t fight him, even though she’d done most of the work, and if anyone deserved to eat, she did. But then he let up and whispered, “Thank you,” into her ear, his breath cold and weak.

  He shifted her around, sucked in a quick breath, and set her in the bottom of the boat before raising her leg and resting it on the edge. Now that they’d stopped moving, there was nothing to think about but the pain that knifed into her with unforgiving constancy.

  “Do not move,” he said before stepping from the boat. A flicker of panic tickled her stomach at the thought of him leaving, but she could hear him rustling and crashing around nearby. He came back and worked at something beside the boat while Cali sank into a haze of pain. With a suddenness that brought her wide awake again, all was quiet. She sat up, but the pain in her leg drowned out everything, so she lay back, comforted to have seen Draven beside the boat, studying something on the ground.

  Soon after, a burst of light flickered beside the boat, and even the faint warmth of the first flames seemed great in the cold night. Cali’s breath plumed up from her mouth. Draven’s breath made no clouds. When he climbed into the boat and knelt at her knees, she saw that he’d stopped his breathing, and she realized the reason for the nasal quality of his voice.

  He set one of her feet on each edge of the boat on either side of him. The bullet had sunk into the back of her calf, so he had to duck down to get under the leg. He pulled the sleep sack from the backpack, and Cali lay on it, grateful to be away from the cold metal and not caring if she got the bedding damp. As Draven instructed, she turned on her side and let him push up her pant leg. She’d thought the pain was bad before, but when he probed into the hole with his finger, she convulsed with pain, her whole body drawing up and fighting blindly against him.

  Her foot slammed into his face, but he plucked it away and ducked the next kick. This time, two fingers wormed into the sticky warmth of her wound. It felt as if shards of ice were stabbing again and again, spreading open the hole wider than it was possible to stretch.

  Her mind sank from it, the searing, immediate pain following her down. She was only semi-conscious when he drew the thing from her flesh, scalding and bloody, steaming in the cold night. Draven held her leg to his mouth and licked her wound. The relief was immense and immediate, the only relief she’d had. His cold, familiar tongue stroked her skin with a rhythmic lapping, lingering on the rim of the bullet hole, the tip flicking inside to probe softly at the edges, swirling over her spastic muscle as it trembled with tenderness.

  She watched, detached, while his dark head bobbed up and down, his hair waving in the slight breeze, curling away from his face that stayed lowered, slippery tongue cleaning the open skin, his dangerous mouth now healing instead of hurting her. And still she lay, eyes glazed, when he had finished and began licking off the cylindrical rod of a bullet, about the size and shape of a finger. He licked his fingers, too, sticky with her blood, almost daintily, circling the base of each one with his tongue after drawing them from his mouth.

  She sank further from consciousness, only vaguely aware that he’d zipped the mummy bag around her, and that the fire had sprung up higher, and that she was warm. She drifted, woke while Draven was repeating the procedure he’d done on her to remove a bullet from himself. The next time she woke, six bullets in total lay in the bottom of the boat with her.

  CHAPTER tWENTY-Five

  Draven needed sleep, so much so that he could hardly walk or stand. But they must stay ahead of Byron, who would make better time by car than they would on foot. Though he’d been gravely injured, Draven had been unable to finish him before Byron shot him. He remembered the gun well. Byron had shot him with a paralyzer gun before. He did not care to repeat the experience. This time, none of the bullets had found his head.

  His wounds would heal quickly enough, especially if he found food for Cali and could draw from her. That morning,
he did so, though it was not much to her liking. She was not too proud to eat something distasteful—after a few complaints that frogs and songbirds were not food—if it would keep her from starving.

  “Do you feel better, my pet?” he asked when she had finished.

  “Some. Thanks.”

  “If we make it through spring, things will start ripening, and we’ll have more food than you can eat,” Draven said. “I will put berries on your lips each morning to wake you.”

  “That would be oddball,” Cali said, scraping at the bottom of her pan.

  It was difficult not to give himself away. He’d never had to hide it before, the desire for a woman. Sometimes they rejected him, yes, but nothing was forbidden in Superior matches. What passed between them was only their concern. This was different. He wanted her, and she didn’t want him, and yet he felt that he must have her, he could bear it no longer. At the same time, he knew he should never have her, could never, without harming her. If only there was a way…

  But there was no way between a Superior and a sapien.

  Perhaps if another war broke out… It was bound to happen one day. Young sapiens would go through an evolution, as all Superiors had, to gain their strength and enhanced senses. If Cali were still of the the prime age for fighting, she’d be changed. Then, perhaps, they could be together. If she grew to feel something in return, if she wanted him then in a way she didn’t now. She was young, would be of the age for evolution for the next ten years. There was still time.

  After eating, Cali returned to the boat, where Draven examined her leg wound. “It’s healing well,” he said, nodding his approval at the job he’d done. He had been thorough, not only for her sake but for his own. He was starving, too, and it had been no odious task to lick the warm sap from her skin. He’d only wanted to draw more, knowing it was sick to want this when she was in such pain, to think of hurting her further while he healed her wound. To think of piercing her skin so near the gaping wound was savage, and yet, all he could think of as he had cleaned her. He’d had to resist the urge to push his tongue into the hole, to suck at it.