“Yes, sir. If anything was done to her, it happened before I removed her.”
“The doctor will be able to tell us more. I hope for both our sakes that you’re telling the truth. If you’re not, I’ve never been so wrong about a friend. But because you are a friend, I’m willing to overlook this matter entirely if the clinic confirms what you told me. I do believe you’re more soft-hearted than need be regarding sapiens, but I would let this one time go by unpunished. Lesson learned, right, inspector?”
“Yes, Enforcer, sir. Thank you. It will not happen again.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Now, I would understand your actions as your friend, because I understand how your mind works, Draven, and I’ve looked at your record and know your feelings about sapiens. But if you are lying…if I find that you have been dishonest in your account, I will make sure you face the maximum penalty for all charges. Because you were my friend. Do we understand each other on this matter as well?”
“Of course, sir.” Draven had befriended a member of the higher Order, and now he would pay for it. He hoped desperately that the doctor who examined Cali proved as competent as the Enforcer trusted, and that nothing untoward had happened to her before he’d taken her, nothing that he could be blamed for.
What had he been thinking? Life had been moving along as always, calm and comfortable, before he’d committed an act so colossally humanoid—risking his own livelihood, fines, even jail time—to save a sap. It almost amused him when he thought about it. For so little, he had risked everything.
For just a few sips of sap, he had risked his job, his friendship, and his reputation. Was he really that primitive, that he would risk everything to eat? But that wasn’t exactly it. He hadn’t taken risks to feed himself. He had taken risks to get exactly what he wanted, to eat the very best, something better than he’d had before. It seemed petty and superficial when he thought about it. But if he thought honestly about it, he hadn’t taken her just for the taste of her sap. It had been a bit about her.
21
Draven visited Cali again a few days later. He had met with Byron once since their dinner, but the Enforcer maintained a reserved air. He had yet to hear from the sapien clinic regarding Cali, and Draven could only hope that once he had, their relationship would resume as it had. Since his friend Anton had moved to Belarus, he hadn’t had much opportunity to enjoy the company of others. Too often he found himself preferring solitude to the strain of engaging in social affairs.
Though he enjoyed socializing when he went out, he often found the preparation tiresome. Oftentimes it required more energy than it was worth. Going to the Confinement, that was easy. He didn’t have to get dressed up, to impress anyone, to make an effort to come across in a certain way. And of course he always knew what to expect, and that he’d get what he wanted, at the Confinement. He could just throw on a pair of linen pants and a t-shirt and go. So that’s what he did.
He didn’t know Cali’s bunk number, or even her barracks number. He could have asked, but it might arouse suspicion if he inquired after the sap he’d brought in. So he took a tour through the Confinement. He had finished his shift at Estrella’s, and he had a few hours before he’d need sleep. He welcomed the cool breeze, enjoyed his first visit to the city’s outskirts since he’d brought Cali there.
Upon spotting an attendant, he inquired where he might find the new arrivals. Following the girl’s directions, he walked through the last three buildings, barracks with bunks stacked five high. So many scents, so many flavors to choose from. The hallway between the bunks allowed just enough space for two people to walk side by side with shoulder’s touching. A few Superiors drew from sapiens along the hallway. Here, saps had much less frequent use than at the restaurants. He liked that he’d played a role in Cali’s arrival at the Confinement, although he knew she would have ended up here anyway—if she hadn’t died before the raid on Sap Heaven.
He made his way along the hallway, passing another Superior or two on his way. He did not extract Cali’s scent from the first set of barracks, so he entered the next building after scanning his papers at the door. Each long building had only two attendants, one at each end. So although a sap would be used less often than in a restaurant, their visits wouldn’t receive the close monitoring of bouncers. No two tables per bouncer rule here—the Confinement operated on more of an honor system.
Draven found Cali in the last building, about halfway down. She had rolled herself into a ball in her bunk and pressed against the cinderblock wall with her back to the aisle. She lay as far from the hands and eyes of browsing Superiors as she could get. He smiled a bit, wondering if she used the tactic to avoid being chosen. If he hadn’t known her scent so well, he would have ignored her and taken an arm or leg that spilled from a bunk or lay near the edge. When he’d eaten there before, he’d let the saps sleep if they could while he ate.
He had to bend down and stretch his arm half the length of the bunk to reach Cali. Her feet were drawn up, and he caught them both in one hand and pulled them to him. Cali pushed her foot at him, stretching her leg into reach so he could draw from it. He noted the scattered pebbles under the skin behind her knee and shook his head.
“Cali. It is I.”
She did not speak, but pointed her toes and pushed them into his palm. He looked at her small foot cupped in his hands and then at her shoulders, still hunched and hiding her face. After a moment, he grasped both her feet and pulled. She slid down the bed, her shift riding up until it caught under her arms. Her eyes flew open.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, his nostrils flaring at the unexpected flood of scent rolling off her.
She struggled to free her legs from him and sit up, tugging at her shift while she did so. When she’d righted her clothing, she managed to sit, though she had to bend nearly double to avoid the bunk above hers. She clamped her knees together, causing her feet to splay outwards at an odd angle. “I’m not bleeding,” she said, tucking her hands under her thighs.
“You’re having your cycle, then. You’re ready for mating.”
Blood had risen in her cheeks, and the heat coming off her increased. “Have I embarrassed you?” he asked, though he didn’t quite believe it.
“No,” she said, lifting her chin and meeting his eyes with a marked air of defiance. “Why should I be embarrassed? Everyone has a cycle.”
“Indeed. I’m glad I haven’t made you uncomfortable.”
“You haven’t.”
“Good. I thought it was odd of a human to have that look about her. Do you know what embarrassment is?”
“Of course I know.”
“You do?”
“I’m not brainless.” Just quite bold tonight. Which amounted to the same thing, really, when addressing a Superior.
“Of course you’re not,” he said, letting his fingertips trace a vein along her forearm. “I would like to draw from your arm.”
“Are you asking my permission?”
“No. Did you expect me to?” he asked with a little smirk.
“No,” Cali said. “But I want you to.”
“You want me to ask your permission to draw from you?”
“Yeah.”
He balked at the notion, but something in it pleased him. He took her hand. “All right. May I draw from your arm?” he asked, a smile dancing across his lips.
“Yes.” She thrust her arm at him, and when he looked at her, she smiled in triumph. For a moment, he wanted to be angry at her impudence, but he found himself smiling instead. She was hardly more than a child. It didn’t hurt him to indulge her, and if it made the process more tolerable for her, he could hardly object. And for reasons he did not stop to ponder, the subversive nature of their power reversal thrilled him.
Keeping his eyes on hers, he began massaging her upper arm. When he could feel the sap pulsing hard against his thumb, he bent over her arm and took what he needed. Upon finished, he closed her neatly and stood. Then, to emphasize the absurdity of their exchang
e, he smiled again and said, “Merci. Thank you.”
Surprise crossed her face, and she looked down at her bare legs. “Thank you for asking me.”
“I will let you sleep now, my jaani.” He patted her knee.
“That’s okay. It’s morning and I won’t be able to fall asleep again.”
“I see.”
She pulled at the hem of her shift and glanced up at him, a darting, shy sort of look. “Can I show you something?”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” Cali slipped from the bed, her bare feet hitting the floor almost silently. Draven followed, not sure if he should. Things didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t say exactly how.
Cali stopped at the end of the hallway and ducked into the human facilities, emerging a few minutes later in the daytime attire provided by the Confinement. It was much the same as the shift she wore at night, if a bit whiter and not as tattered.
“I will walk outside with this homo-sapien?” Draven asked the attendant.
The attendant shrugged. “I won’t be here much longer. Got to get home to bed. Have you eaten already?”
“Yes.”
“You sign?”
“Yes. How do you know when I bring her back?”
“I don’t. Cameras are on. Nobody’s leaving here with a sap. What you want to do outside, anyway?”
“Look at the grounds.”
The man shrugged again. “Sure. Whatever you say, mister. You go on, now. She’ll be accounted for.” He slid open the steel doors to the outside and stood aside as they passed.
“What is this, Cali?” Draven asked when they’d gone out into the blue morning. “What have you to show me?”
“Where are you from?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where are you from? You don’t talk like anyone here.”
“I am from…a place on the border between Belarus and Orient. I have lived several places since.”
“Is it really true that you’re all hundreds of years old? That you guys never die? I mean, that you can’t die?”
“Ah…Indeed.”
“So you’ll live forever.”
Draven knew there were cameras, and he knew he shouldn’t answer her question truthfully even if she couldn’t understand. And he was beginning to doubt her brainlessness.
“Yes. We’re immortal. Only humankind dies.”
“And animals.”
“Yes, they die as well.”
“Plants die, too.”
“Indeed.”
“So…you’re more like a rock than a human?”
He chuckled. “No, and yes. It is true that I will never die of old age, or perish from some small infection as your kind will. But do I not look more like a living being than a stone? Do stones walk about and draw life and energy from their food, and hold conversations?”
“I guess not.” Cali opened a wire gate, and they entered a garden that stretched far in front of them.
“So I look and feel as a human, but I am forever, like a stone.”
“And you’re cold, like a stone. Most things are warm.”
“Snakes are cold.”
“I hate snakes.”
“I do as well. Have you seen one?” he asked, glancing around.
“Once, when I was a kid. It bit someone in the garden. He died.”
“Humans die from all manner of things.”
They stood looking over the rows of plants in the cerulean light that rose from the east. Cali’s white shift glowed against the shadowy backdrop. In the distance, lights atop the perimeter fences glittered, but here in the faintly lit garden, Cali stood out as if she emitted her own luminosity.
“This is our garden.”
“I see that.”
“I can help in the garden now. I work outside all day. There’s so much to do, but I’d take a hundred lashings to stay here over going back to the restaurant.” Cali shuddered. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“For getting me out before I died. For…not killing me when you could have. And for bringing me here instead of keeping me.”
“Then you’re happy here?”
“Yeah.” She bent to pick at a weed, and then found more while she squatted on the dry earth.
“There is a man, an Enforcer, who’s responsible for closing your restaurant,” Draven said. “You should thank him. If he hadn’t done that, I’d have had to return you.”
“Well, maybe you can thank him for me.”
“I will convey your gratitude.” Draven crouched opposite Cali to watch her weeding. “Do you know which plants to leave?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Why should you?” Cali asked, pushing a plant back and forth to check the base. She picked a bug off and crushed it with her bare heel. “You can’t eat this stuff, right?”
“That’s right.” He had once, but thinking of it now only made him remember that time, the time when he had been one of them. A sap.
“What would happen if you did? Would you get sick?”
“Yes.”
“Really? I didn’t know you could get sick.”
“Our bodies don’t absorb enough energy from anything except human sap. If I ate your food, or animal sap, I could live for a while, but I’d get weak and it would taste dreadful. Like if you ate only grass.”
“I don’t eat grass. I’m not a goat.”
“And I don’t eat vegetables. I’m not a sap. But I could, just as you could eat grass. But you’d need other nutrients to survive, as do we.”
“I guess that makes sense.” When she moved down the row, he followed. “Well, I just wanted you to see the garden,” she said. “This is where I spend my time now. I’m helping everyone eat. It’s…I love it.”
“You were helping people eat before.”
“Yeah, but only Superiors. Now I can help my people, too. I’m…productive. I’m doing something good.”
“I see.” He stood and pushed his hands into his pockets. He had nearly begun helping her weed. “I am told you were to see a doctor when you arrived, someone who examined you?”
Cali’s face remained bowed over her work, but her hands ceased their movement. “Yeah.”
“This is unpleasant for you?”
“He…examined me. Thoroughly.”
Draven watched the hair rise on her arms. He didn’t know what had come over her, why she grew frightened. Saps visited doctors often to receive remedies and for routine exams to monitor their health. It shouldn’t have bothered her after so many years.
“And why does this distress you? Did he hurt you in some way?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, it did hurt. I didn’t like it. He did a bad thing to me.”
“Oh?” When she didn’t answer he asked, “What thing?”
“He…touched me.”
“Inappropriately?”
“To examine me, I guess. That’s what my sister said they do after you have a baby. But I didn’t have a baby, so he shouldn’t examine my…down-there.”
“And what did he say after? Did he confirm that I didn’t do anything untoward?”
“He didn’t say anything. He wrote on his pad thing, and talked to the other Superior, but not in my language.”
“I see.”
She began pulling weeds again. “Do you know other languages?”
“Of course. I know them all.”
“All of them?”
“Not every dialect, but yes. I know all six official languages, and my first language, though that’s dead now.”
“How can a language die?”
He shrugged. “Only official languages are recognized, so no one speaks the others.”
“Which one do you know best?”
“The official language of Belarus. It is called European.”
“What’s mine called?”
“American.”
“What are the others?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“That’s the last one. Will you tell me?”
“Do you plan to speak them one day?”
“I guess not.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t you ever wanted to know something that didn’t mean anything to you?”
Draven regarded her inquisitive face. Though she did not lack intellect, neither did she seem too intelligent regarding risk. Certainly she was insubordinate. But something in her reminded him of his human self, an association that at once unsettled yet drew him in.
“Yes,” he said after a pause. “Have you found family here?”
Cali stilled again. After several moments, she said, “Yes. I’m going to live in one of their houses when they can make room for me.”
“And where is this? I would like to …visit you.” He surprised himself with the truth of this statement. He enjoyed not only taking sap from her, but also talking with her—more than he would like to admit, and much more than he ought. After all, he could talk to one of his own people any time he liked.
But he enjoyed Cali’s company. When they conversed, he learned things about sapiens he had long ago forgotten. He liked that she didn’t cower from him as other saps did. Though he found her flippant and reckless, that made her manner all the more refreshing. Unlike others he’d encountered, she never acted complacent and dull, or cowed and hopeless, or sullen and hateful. She was bright and interesting and lively, and he enjoyed that life in her. She wasn’t like anyone he knew, human or Superior. She fascinated him.
22
When Man with Soft Hair left, people started coming out to the gardens. Cali was still settling into the new routine, the joys of being productive and giving back to someone in a way other than having her veins sucked on. She didn’t know the schedule yet, but she was learning it. And she sometimes had entire nights of peaceful, if cramped, sleep in her bunk. Sometimes not a single Superior chose her. But that didn’t happen often. Besides Man with Soft Hair, another of her regulars, Man Who Hurried, had followed her.
Blood Moon: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Vampire Novel (The Superiors Book 1) Page 13