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

by Lena Hillbrand

  He jerked up her frock, but she began fighting before he’d even gotten it around her waist. He rolled off her. “Good. You’ve got more sense than I imagined.”

  “I don’t have any sense at all,” she said petulantly. “That’s not what I want. I want you. But you don’t have to be mean about it, like you want to hurt me. You could just say you didn’t want me.”

  Draven sighed, turned his back, and slipped out of his clothes and into the bed, where he turned his face to the wall. After a bit, Cali switched off her flashlight and climbed into bed behind him. The bed squealed as she moved about to make herself comfortable.

  When he heard her crying, he worked his way towards her, cautious of her drunken unpredictability. The frock felt slippery beneath his hand as he found her hip and patted it. “Do not cry, my jaani,” he whispered. “Please don’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said through her tears. “You’re so nice sometimes, and sometimes you’re just mean.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  “Why don’t you believe me? You won’t even try. Maybe you would like it. I’m all you have, too.”

  “I know, little pet. Come.” She rolled into his arms and pressed her face to his chest. Gradually she calmed, but her warm tears slid from her cheek onto his arm long after her sobbing ceased.

  “You’re going to hate me now, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Of course I won’t.”

  “I’m sorry I acted like that,” she said. “But I’ll still want what I want. I know what I’m saying.”

  “Of course you do, my jaani.”

  “Can we at least try? Just once. We don’t have to do it again if we don’t like it.”

  “Perhaps, just once,” he agreed, stroking her tangled hair. He kissed her eyelids, delicate and wet with tears. When her fumbling fingers found him ready under the blankets, he drew a sharp breath. He could see it all happening so smoothly. He would kiss her mouth and draw it open, touch her and draw her legs open and move inside her.

  Just once, to rid himself of the intensity of his perversion, that awful, blinding desire. Then he could control it.

  He pulled her hand away.

  “Not now,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

  “It feels so good.” Her warm breath swept across his face, her heartbeat coming slow and hard, surrounding them with its pulsing rhythm.

  “Not like this.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. If she had insisted for another moment, he might have done it. But she’d relented.

  The alcohol made him feel a bit dizzy now, fuzzy around the edges, warm inside and sick. When he pulled Cali against him, she pressed herself into his arms and aimed a kiss that, in the dark, landed on his chin.

  “I love you,” she said. “I mean it.”

  “Good day, my pet.”

  “Goodnight.”

  CHAPTER forty-one

  Cali woke needing to relieve herself, but she lay in bed for a while before moving. Her head felt thick and her body tired. She thought over that morning, all they’d said and done. When she turned and patted the bed beside her, she found it empty. Seeing her act foolish and crazy with drink had probably disgusted or offended Draven.

  She couldn’t find the flashlight, so she stumbled towards the ladder, bumping into a shelf and knocking a tin can to the floor. The clattering noise still echoed in the chamber when the door in the ceiling groaned and lifted. Cali followed the light and climbed the ladder to find Draven standing outside. She staggered away and did her business behind a pile of rubble. When she stood, her stomach lurched, and she bent and vomited in the pile of broken cement pieces.

  She trudged back towards the shelter, stopping next to Draven, who stood with hands in pockets, staring off across the grey concrete and twisted trees of their surroundings. “Rough evening?” he asked, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

  “Why?”

  “I heard you being sick.”

  “Oh.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Well, I’m sorry.”

  He looked awfully surprised by her apology. “For what?”

  “You know why,” she said. “For the way I acted last night.”

  “I warned you it would make you foolish.”

  She hugged herself tighter, biting her lip to hold back her hurt. She’d wanted him to say she hadn’t acted stupid. But of course she had. She took a deep breath. “Well, you were right. And I’m sorry about it.”

  “I said some foolish things as well. Let us forget them all, shall we?”

  “Yes.” She relaxed her grip on herself, then smiled and added, “We shall.”

  They watched the light fade from the purple sky. Frogs and birds sang in the spring evening, and everything felt peaceful and hopeful.

  “I would like to eat,” Draven said at last, turning to her. “Then I will hunt.” He took her face in his hands and released a little laughing breath with no sound, then shook his head, turned her face and leaned down to find her throat with his mouth. She held onto him while his hands caressed her back, bare shoulders, and shoulder blades, her neck and arms and chest. It made her feel lightheaded again, like when she’d been drunk. Finally, he pulled out and began licking her with his cold tongue, which made her shiver in the cool evening.

  She’d said things that morning, drunken things, but she’d meant them. He’d said they could forget, but she didn’t know if she could. He probably could. He could do anything.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away. “You’re shivering. I can’t help myself when it comes to you.”

  “Oh,” Cali said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Good. I thought…after last night, you might not…like me as much.”

  “Even more,” he said, sliding his fingers into her hair. His eyes bore into hers with that same burning intensity they’d gotten when he named the feeling between them. When he said that word, desire, in his silkily melting voice, a hot tremor ran through her and lodged itself between her thighs. Now he had that same look, so hungry, even though he’d just eaten.

  She turned her face away, her heart hammering suddenly. She wanted him to want her, but maybe not quite so much.

  He stepped back and dropped his hands. “Don’t close the door unless you hear someone coming,” he said. “I don’t want you trapped down there if something happens to me.”

  “But what if it’s you?” she asked. “I don’t want to lock you out.”

  “I’ll call to you when I come.”

  This became their routine for the next week. He’d hunt while she waited in the shelter, and when he called, she’d rush up the ladder, excited to see what he’d brought her—curling green sprouts, smooth red stalks that were sweet but fibrous, sour leaves and pods of sorrel, delicate greenbrier tendrils, white and purple violets, wild mint that left her mouth tingling. Sometimes he brought mushrooms—round white ones, flat brown ones, and tall ones with holes in their formation that reminded her of sections of corncob, stripped of kernels. If he caught a small animal, he’d light a fire and cook it, and they’d sit talking and absorbing the flames’ warmth.

  When they’d both eaten, they’d settle into the bunker, and he’d read to her, sometimes from the book, and other times, from labels on the remaining packages on the shelves. He struggled with the unfamiliar words humans had used, and Cali laughed at their funny sounds and enjoyed that almost as much as the book. While he read, she’d lie on his arm, and he’d play in her hair. While she slept, he spent most of his time rooting through the shelter, looking for things they could take with them when they left.

  Cali wanted to stay forever. She loved the cozy little hole in the ground, and she loved Draven in it, how playful he’d get sometimes, tickling her while he read until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She didn’t like how cold and damp it was inside, but if she sat by the fire outside, and stayed under the blankets inside, she could keep herself warm enough. One ni
ght, she discovered that Draven wasn’t always cold, but absorbed the temperature around him. He’d been near the fire, and when he slid into bed, his skin was hot against hers. He spread the mummy bag on top of the chewed blanket to keep their heat through the night. No light or water came into the shelter, even when it rained that night and they lay nestled tightly in the bed, listening to the thunder rumble and the rain roar, far away and muffled by the heavy roof and the thinner door.

  Cali tightened her arms around Draven and thought of their first day in the shelter, of his kisses on her eyelids, soft and loving, and of the other time he’d kissed her. Not the first time, which had been as clumsy and unwelcome as all her kisses before, but when he’d kissed her so gentle she wasn’t sure he’d kissed her or only breathed on her. She wanted to kiss him again, to know if he kissed like that always.

  On the seventh evening, Draven said that they should move on. Together they packed the backpack and two cloth bags he’d found and filled with supplies—rope, socks, sheets, a knife, bullets, a spoon, a pan with a lid, and a few books. But once their bags were packed, Cali convinced him to stay with much begging and poor reasoning.

  When she begged, and said the right things to him, she could get him to do almost anything. First she’d ask, then pout, make promises, tell him she loved him, and pout a little more. If she asked the right way, he’d probably climb into the hole and let her lock him down there. If he said no to something, she tried to figure out where she’d made mistakes and why he’d refused her. But that night, he finally relented and agreed to stay. They spent the seventh night as they had all the others, reading and eating and talking together. When morning came, they took sleep together, Draven curled around Cali in her triumph.

  “But we’re leaving in the evening,” he said, giving her a little squeeze and burying his face in her hair.

  “Of course we are,” she said, arching her back and pushing into his lap. The rigid thing down there pushed back for a second, but then he drew away. She liked to play this teasing game with him. She wanted more, but she was scared, too, so she didn’t press him like she had when she’d drunk the whiskey. Now she only went as far as he’d let her, and when he pulled away, she stopped. But if he didn’t pull away one night, she’d be ready.

  CHAPTER forty-two

  Byron could not believe his luck. He’d caught up at just the right moment, when there was nowhere to hide. Nowhere safe, anyway. Why anyone would choose to come to this godforsaken place was beyond him. At first, they’d paralleled a highway, but now, they’d settled in a blank, wasted space so worthless that Superiors had never bothered to farm the land or build a city. There was nothing. Nothing except this outlaw, the bane of his existence, the needle in his eye.

  A few days before, he’d run onto the human road system from hundreds of years back. He’d stopped the car when the road ruptured, the asphalt torn beyond use, trees looming on either side. Since then, he’d been walking. He tried not to see the trees as threats, but that was like trying to keep his cool while walking in front of a firing squad. After a day, he started worrying that, distracted by fear, he’d lose his edge and Draven would spot him first. He could not equate the man he had once mentored with the depraved bloodbagger he now hunted.

  As he entered the abandoned city, he kept his pod always in hand, ready to react to Draven’s slightest movement. He’d learned that all over again when he’d hunted Ander in the desert. He’d been so busy looking at the location on his screen that he hadn’t seen the man until he was upon him. Draven had saved him that time, or so he had thought. But for all he knew, Draven and Ander had been chums from the start. He wouldn’t doubt it—they were two of a kind.

  Watching his screen and his surroundings at once, he went straight for the spot on that marked Draven’s location. He’d silenced his pod so Draven wouldn’t hear him, but it alerted him with a slight vibration when he came within shooting range. His hand went to his gun, but after a second’s hesitation, he drew back. He’d used the gun on Draven twice now, and Draven was still alive. This time, he wouldn’t try to paralyze him. He’d save the gun for a criminal he intended to bring back alive.

  Byron removed his dagger from its sheath and searched his surroundings. This was eerily similar to when he’d caught Ander. Again, he stood on the very spot where his prey should be. But Draven wasn’t there, and he could see nothing but piles of rubble and ratty little weeds trying to survive in a concrete wasteland. Draven could not have buried himself in sand, as Ander had. If he was under Byron, he’d encased himself in concrete.

  He had been there, though. Byron could see that well enough. The sickening stench of human excrement and vomit lingered, and black circles dotted the pavement where they’d built fires. Rather than hiding, they’d lit them in plain view. Somehow, their recklessness both infuriated and pleased Byron—a sick self-satisfaction at having been right about their utter brainlessness. He smiled without awareness, a feral grin fixed on his face as he crept forward, casting his senses.

  When he’d circled the area, he returned to the spot where Draven should have been. The marker on his pod was flashing green. According to the tracer, he was all but standing on the man. A sinking feeling began in his gut. The tracer was activated. No one had turned it off. Draven must have discovered it and removed it.

  That, or he’d hidden himself in the pile of concrete blocks beside Byron. Byron surveyed the pile thoughtfully. Draven could have seen or heard or scented Byron’s approach and hidden, but even a cowardly Third would have made his move by now, using what little advantage he could get. Byron smashed into the pile, kicking over the stacks of blocks in every direction, hurling them until he was covered in dust and could see clearly that no one hid within the disintegrating trash heap.

  But something had caught his attention. He leapt the remaining blocks and landed silently, crouched and ready. Even while most of him had been smashing apart the pile, lost in fury, his brain had noted the differing quality of sound in this spot. Working silently now, he lifted away the blocks he’d thrown there. And there, like a gift, wrapped and waiting, lay a door.

  Byron dropped his pod into his pocket and gripped his dagger. With his free hand, he grasped the handle of the door, iron bonded into cement, and pulled. Although heavy, the door opened easily enough—but it let out a horrible, metallic scream as it did so. Byron froze, dagger at the ready. When nothing happened, he descended the ladder. They’d left it for him as if they expected the company, and the unmistakable rhythm of a sapien heartbeat welcomed him to their home.

  For a moment, he considered whether they were smart enough to set a trap for him. He didn’t think they were. Inside, the place was rank with the stink of dirt, mold, and all manner of awfulness, including Superior-sapien coupling. Byron held his breath and fought his reflex to gag. He hadn’t savored anything so utterly putrescent since he’d found an incubus’s harem of dead humans. Draven had managed an equal stench with only one.

  Byron edged away from the door, towards the far end of the room. His eyes strained for shapes in the dark. Because of his age, he could see in the dark better than Draven, just as Draven could stand sunlight better. But he needed a bit of light, even just starlight, to bounce reflections off the objects in the room. Tonight, the stars were safely hidden above the clouds, and after a dozen steps into the underground pit, no light whatsoever penetrated the darkness.

  With reluctance, Byron took a small breath to guide him. Evil odors clung to their scents, drowning and diverting him as he crept through the aisles. Draven had found the perfect lair, just the sort of place for a man to torture his victim, indulge his perversions with his sex slave, and leave her decimated body without concern for discovery. He had probably hung chains from the ceiling and the walls of the dungeon, collected strange devices whose torturous intent would be mysterious to Byron. Only someone sick enough to use them would be able to surmise their intended purpose. Draven would know how to employ each to cause maximum suffering.
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  Byron cast his senses before him, to where he could hear his sapien breathing, along with the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. She slept alone on the bed. She was rightfully, lawfully his, and now he’d have her at last. After the last time, Draven should know better than to leave her unguarded, ready for the taking. Byron never made the same mistake twice.

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and retrieved his pod. Keeping his fingers wrapped around the device to subdue the light, he held it in front of him. The sapien slept in the bed, like a person, tucked under blankets, her head on a pillow. Not on a mat on the floor, but in a bed. He smothered his disgust. He would take her back, and he’d show her the proper place for her to sleep, the proper treatment of a Superior towards a sapien. Not some mixture of horror and privilege, as she now endured.

  He sensed movement before he heard it, the current of air, of someone falling. Spinning away from the bed, he thrust the dagger upwards. Neatly as that, he’d impaled his enemy. Draven had dropped as if from the sky, the way cottonmouth snakes were said to fall from trees into boats moving down a river below. When Draven saw the dagger protruding from his middle, he looked shocked by the turn of events.

  Byron laughed. “Did you think you’d surprise me? You should know, my friend, I cannot be surprised.”

  Draven’s only weapon was a silver chain, which he had cast over Byron when he dropped down like a spider on what he’d no doubt assumed would be unsuspecting prey. Only a young fool, a Third, would be so cocky as think he could outwit a stronger, smarter, faster Superior with such ease.

  For the moment, Draven was stunned senseless, his brain unable command his body over the roar of pain. Byron knew. He’d been injured many times. He’d lived through a war.

  When Byron grew bored of waiting for a response, he twisted the dagger. The younger man emitted a wet, rasping groan. “You thought you had the cunning to outsmart me, did you?” Byron asked. “You didn’t think you’d get caught. And how does it feel, knowing you’ll meet your death as nothing, that you’ve always been nothing and will never be more?”