The Renegades (The Superiors) (4 page)

Bracing
himself against the side of the bin, he strained against the lock until it gave
way and he could throw back the lid. The stench of rotting vegetable matter
greeted him. Sapien scraps. He held his breath for a moment before he thought
better of it. If he intended to own a sapien, he’d have to tolerate the odors
that came with them. Placing a hand on the lip of the bin, he cleared the edge
easily and dropped inside. His feet sank into the soft layer of trash within. A
rat squealed and retreated to a corner, eyeing him but not giving up its
territory.

“Hello,”
Draven said softly. The creature watched as he tore open a bag and shook the
contents around his feet. “I don’t want your food. I’ll leave your things and
you leave mine. We’ll make the most of what we find.” He tore open each of the
bags, shaking them into the bin while watching for anything useful. The rat
watched as well, chewing on a scrap even a sapien wouldn’t eat.

When
Draven climbed out, his denim trousers were dirty again, but he had a pair of
sunshades with a missing strap. He slipped them into his pocket and moved away
into the night, leaving the rat to the spoils of his labors.

Chapter 10

Byron
sat at his desk in Milton’s office trying to get something done. The office
didn’t have enough space for all the desks and Enforcers who had to work there,
and it was always crowded with local Enforcers who came in to talk about their
cases or hear about Milton’s. Getting anything done seemed at the bottom of
everyone else’s list.

Byron
scrolled through the list of missing persons for maybe the hundredth time. He
kept thinking he must have missed something, there had to be something. Where
was it? Why couldn’t he see it?

He
had to think about Angel, and Meyer, and Herman, and maybe Draven, too. But he
couldn’t find the connection, no matter how he looked at the four. Who was
running the whole thing—Meyer or Angel? Not Draven or Herman, obviously. Maybe
Draven had gone crazy, gotten sucked under Angel’s spell. Lord knew he wasn’t
too gifted in the brains department. Courageous and impulsive, yes. Brave in
the humanoid sort of way. Strategic and intelligent—not among Draven’s
characteristics.

Byron
tapped his stylus on the desk and stared at the screen in front of him. He went
back to his theory that Meyer had started raising saps somewhere out in the
woods. Maybe feeding on them with Angel so the two of them could become more
powerful. But for what purpose?

Meyer
already had more wealth than he could possibly spend in the next thousand
years, so he could buy all the saps he wanted. And he didn’t seem the greedy
sort—he ran a charity for pathetic, homeless Thirds. And Angel didn’t want to
be seen, let alone take over any sort of government. He’d somehow escaped even
after Byron had shot him with his Deactivator, and no one had seen or heard
from him since.

Byron
himself, along with Milton and a team of Enforcers from town, had searched the
ghost town. Nothing. No link to Meyer, no evidence of any kind. Plenty of
evidence of Angel, but it didn’t help them trace him once he’d fled. And unlike
Thirds, Angel didn’t have anything to trace—no pod, no pin. He’d left a
basement with six dead girls lain with flowers and love notes, and a decrepit
movie theater full of drained sapiens, but no clue to how he’d escaped or where
he’d gone.

In
hindsight, it was a shame that Byron had killed those saps and left them. He
should have drawn them to death. But they’d armed themselves well, and he
hadn’t been thinking about eating when they’d ambushed him. Instead of gaining
strength and having a good meal, Byron had left them dead. Unfortunately, Angel
and that little worm Draven, both supposedly paralyzed, had somehow survived to
feast on the dead and gain all that strength that should have been Byron’s.

Draven,
who turned up his nose at pure Superior blood, wasn’t too good to drink a dead
sap’s.

Byron
threw down his stylus and rose from his desk. He needed to stretch his legs, shine
his mind. He went outside and smoked a cigarette. The air chilled him. Not even
October and already the nights had a bite to them. Not like back home, where he
never had to worry about the discomfort of cold.

He
needed to check his Deactivator again. He’d checked it after both men he’d shot
had fled. But the gun showed no sign of defect or damage. He knew what he
needed to do. He needed to test it on a real person, not just look at the parts
and run it through a diagnostics machine. But firing it could get
him
fired if he didn’t play his hand right. He couldn’t just go shoot a Third on
the street, as tempting as the idea was. He couldn’t even shoot a prisoner or a
criminal unless the perpetrator resisted arrest. Fortunately for him, Superiors
had retained much of their instinct for self-preservation and pain-avoidance.
He could think of a few ways to make a man resist arrest.

Byron
crushed out his cigarette and went inside to wait for a call. Some worthless
Third would slip up and break a minor law soon enough, and Byron would put him
to good use for once in his miserable life.

Chapter 11

Draven
returned often to Cali. He couldn’t help himself and he didn’t try. She fed him
nearly every night, and although he wondered why she allowed him this
privilege, he did not ask. When she denied him, he did not take offense or
argue or press her for more. Instead, he spoke with her while she fiddled with
her garden.

Sometimes
her mate entered the garden, looked at Draven and shook his head, but he rarely
spoke to him. His activity in the garden appeared more purposeful than Cali’s. Sometimes, too, the baby came outside, at first shying away from Draven before
coming to know, and largely ignore, him. Draven ignored the child in return. He
called upon Cali for one reason, and while there, he did not concern himself
with anything beyond avoiding Byron and earning Cali’s trust.

Some
nights, Cali spoke with Draven and fed him, while other nights she went about
her tasks as if she did not notice him watching her. He had a strange fascination
with her, but he avoided finding a reason for his particular interest. She
would be his soon enough. He needed to understand sapiens better, know their
habits and manners before he owned one. When he thought on it, he knew very
little about the upkeep and care of saps. He studied her because she let him,
and he studied the others in her small family because they didn’t seem to mind
as long as he did not harm them.

Draven
wondered if Cali’s mate knew that she fed him, and if he objected. He must think
it strange that she voluntarily gave her sap to a Superior other than her
master. But if her mate disapproved, he kept it to himself, and if he and Cali
disagreed over it, Cali never let Draven know. Draven watched the male sapien,
and though he didn’t imagine him as the proper mate for Cali, he didn’t seem a
bad sort. He appeared to care for Cali, and Draven approved of the match for
this reason alone.

If
her mate treated her well, her master made up for it. Cali remained on her
chain, and she wore bruises from his abuses that did not disappear but simply
rotated across her face and arms. Draven watched her array of bruises, the
faint and the fresh and the ones between, coloring her skin like rainbows. He
knew Byron’s disgust for saps, but his violence against Cali seemed excessive.
Still, Draven could do nothing. He could not report animal cruelty. According
to the database, he wasn’t a resident or a visitor of Princeton. He wasn’t a
legal, registered Superior, or even officially an Illegal.

He
had dropped from the system as countless others had. One day he had registered
leaving a city for vacation, but he had never arrived. He had simply vanished.
No, not vanished, exactly, but entered limbo. According to the system, he was
traveling and would be perpetually traveling until someone noticed his absence.
That could take years. After all, who would register him as missing? His
closest friend had been Byron, and he didn’t imagine Byron would search for him
anytime soon.

Worried
that Byron would discover him with Cali, he kept careful watch of the Second’s
coming and going. He wondered where Byron thought he had gone, if Byron thought
of him at all. Certainly Byron knew that Draven had not been recovered with the
other bodies the night of the massacre. Had Byron searched for him, sent out a
bulletin? Was Draven a wanted man? And for what crimes? Although Draven
recognized this as paranoia, he let himself indulge it. After being held
captive by Sally’s family, he wanted nothing less than to spend more time as a
prisoner. He’d risk living as a traitor and fugitive rather than learn of his
status from a jail cell.

When
he finished his visit to Cali’s garden each night, Draven collected things. He
came to know the streets and alleys, the effective hiding places, the rewarding
trash bins and those that smelled rank and those that held only garbage.
Sometimes he found small treasures—an ancient copy of a book missing its cover
and half the pages, a stained pair of trousers that fit with a few alterations,
a harmonica, a pair of worn-out shoes with stained but salvageable laces. These
things and many others he took back to the car lot.

After
his home was repurposed for scraps, he moved deeper into the lot, into a Rosso
that had retained its parts and shape when the engine failed. A crash had
disfigured the hood and silenced the motor, but the shell of the car remained
intact. Instead of a diamond layout, the old model had bench seats of
luxurious, supple leather. The blinders remained in place to prevent the inside
of the car from sustaining sun damage until the lot sold it for parts. The
inside of the Rosso could hold Draven and most of his collection, unlike the
smaller car he’d previously occupied. After allowing his treasures to dry and
air out, he spread them behind the back seat of the Rosso.

The
nights grew colder, although the days remained tolerably warm. Because the
Rosso’s blinders darkened the windows and helped to warm the car during the
day, Draven slept comfortably. Once he’d fitted together a blanket from old
clothing scraps to wrap about himself while he slept, he had no complaints.

One
night a week, he skipped calling upon Cali and trekked to a small lake formed
at the base of two mountains. He washed himself, any clothing he’d scavenged,
and other acquisitions that needed washing. After bathing, he wrapped the bar
of soap Sally had given him in its crumpled wax-paper package and wondered
about her, as he did each time he ventured up the mountain. But he would never
return to her.

Although
he let himself think only of Sally, the one bright spot in the eight months
he’d spent with her family, the knowledge of those months would always stay
with him. He carried the memories on his body a year and a half later, just as Cali carried her bruises as a reminder of her escape attempt. Draven could not lie on his
back, although he’d dug the splinters from his skin everywhere he could reach.
Those in his back, he would live with, having made a few minor adjustments and
not allowing anything to touch his back more than necessary.

Chapter 12

Cali wandered into the garden, even though the plants had died and the cold pierced her
woolen jumpsuit in minutes. She poked at the dirt, looked around. The moon
sagged round in the sky, almost full, like a belly in the eighth month of
pregnancy.

“What
you doing out there?” Shelly asked, poking his head out the door.

“Oh,
nothing,” Cali said, kneeling to push at the edge of one of the garden beds.
The plastic border strips had begun to crumple, letting dirt spill out. They’d
have to be fortified next spring, after the thaw.

Without
another word, Shelly slid the door closed. Cali wrapped her arms around herself
and glanced up.

“Are
you looking for something?”

The
warm, low voice startled Cali, and she jerked upright and spun around, catching
her free foot in the chain. She stumbled and almost fell before Draven caught
her arm. “Steady there,” he said, smiling at her in the most gentle,
un-Superior way. Sometimes she almost forgot what he was, forgot the impossible
distance between their species, the unforgivable difference. “May I draw from
you tonight?”

And
then he reminded her of it.

“I
guess.”

Draven
drew her close, slid his arm around her waist and held her body securely
against his. She submitted to his preference without comment or analysis. She’d
worked in restaurants long enough to know that Superiors had as many different
eating styles and preferences as humans did, maybe more. She’d gotten used to
Draven, although she didn’t know if she’d ever get used to his stroking while
he fed, or the way he kept his cold mouth on her neck for so long after he’d
withdrawn his teeth.

He
finally finished cleaning her neck and pulled back. Her skin prickled with cold
where his mouth left her wet. He slid both hands into Cali’s hair and pulled it
back from her face. “I can’t bear him so much as touching you,” he said
quietly. His eyes shone like polished black stones in his moonlit face. Without
releasing his hold, he pulled her face closer until their noses almost touched.
“When will you be ready for me?” he whispered.

“You
weren’t here yesterday,” she said, pulling back. Draven released her and
wrapped his hands around the bars, leaning back into the empty space of
darkness behind him. At night, Cali could see nothing but her own garden, as if
the rest of the world blinked out altogether every evening, leaving only her
small rectangle of light in existence. Only Draven’s appearance, as he slipped
easily from the unseen world to the seen, proved that something waited beyond the
bars.

He
studied her until she turned away. “I went swimming,” he said, when she’s gone
back to poking at her garden, this time with the toe of her shoe.

“In
this cold?”

“Yes.”

She
checked to see if he was pulling a joke, but he didn’t smile. “I guess cold
doesn’t bother you.”

“Not
this degree of it. Although warmer is better.”

Cali
pushed a bit of loose soil around the cement patio. “What’s it like?” she
asked, studying the half-moon pattern she’d formed from the dirt.

“What?”

“You
know. Being out there.”

“Come
with me and I’ll show you.”

“Draven,
you know I can’t. I have a family here.”

“I
know.” He looked sad suddenly, and Cali almost wanted to apologize, although
for what, she couldn’t imagine. He was the one who bit her every night.

The
breeze blew his feathery hair off his face, but he didn’t seem to notice the
cold of it. Cali crossed her arms around herself and stared back at him,
knowing Superiors didn’t like humans making eye contact so directly.

“It’s
quite…large,” he said.

“What
is?”

“You
asked how it is out here. It’s immense.”

“Oh.
I don’t know that word.”

“Very
large. Nearly endless. And you, little pet, look immensely cold. I’m sorry to
have kept you. Please go warm yourself.”

“Okay…”
Cali said, but she lingered another minute, rocking back and forth while he
studied her. He wasn’t like Shelly, so easy to talk to. But he knew so much,
things she couldn’t even imagine. She wanted to climb into his brain and
explore it for days. She had to stop herself from asking a million questions,
one after another, every time she saw him. But his visits got shorter as the
nights grew colder, since she couldn’t stay out in the cold very long.

“Thank
you for feeding me,” he said. Then he was gone.

Every
time he did that, Cali had the instinctive urge to throw herself at the bars
and grab him. It always seemed like he just let go and fell, and she had a
moment every time where she gasped in horror. Then she scolded herself for
being silly. Of course he was fine. Superiors couldn’t die. Still, she couldn’t
stop the jolt of panic at thinking that if she looked down, she’d see him
flattened on the concrete below, though she knew he didn’t splatter, that
somehow he could jump without getting hurt. And even if he did fall one night
and splatter, she couldn’t see that far in the dark, anyway.

Cali
went inside, rubbing her hands together. She slid the door closed, then put her
hands under her arms and turned to Shelly. “What?”

“Girl,
there ain’t nothing in that garden for you to do this time of year.”

“I
just like to be outside and make sure nothing else comes up.”

“Uh
huh. Sure you do.”

“What?
I really do,” she said, laughing half out of embarrassment and half out of
frustration.

“Mm
hmm. I bet that’s what took you so long.”

“Well,
that Superior was talking to me. I can’t just walk off in the middle of a
conversation. That would be rude.”

“Oh,
I know. I wouldn’t walk away from him, either. He’s so yummy I’d let him bite
me, too. I might even bite back.”

“Ew,
Shelly. That’s rotty.”

“Oh,
don’t pretend like you haven’t had that same thought.”

“Um,
not even once. That’s just oddball.”

“Hey,
no judgment here. I’m just saying. But lords, I’d understand.”

“You
can just stop your words right now. There’s nothing to understand.”

“There
is one thing. How come you let some strange Superior come and feed off you
every night? You know Master’s gonna feed off you, too, just like always.”

“I
know.” Sometimes she wished Draven would suck until there was nothing left for
Master. She liked knowing how furious he’d be if he knew she fed someone else,
that she had found a way to defy him, despite her brand and her chain.

“So
why you let this other one do it, too?” Shelly asked. “You don’t even gotta do
it. He’s not your master, and he can’t reach you unless you let him.”

“I
know. Sometimes I just forget that I can say no to one of them.” Sometimes she
didn’t forget at all, but she just couldn’t. When Draven looked at her, his
eyes forced her to obey. Or forced her to want to obey.

“Maybe
you don’t want to,” Shelly said.

“It’s
not like that. I just feel sorry for him. He’s…you know. Lonely and hungry and
stuff.” Cali tried to find the right thing to say to make Shelly understand.
He’d always understood everything about her. But this time he had it all wrong.

“Well,
if he’s lonesome out there, I’m sure you can keep him all kinds of company,”
Shelly said.

“He
came all the way here from back home, and he misses it like I do,” Cali
insisted. “He reminds me of home, and I remind him. That’s all it is.”

“Yeah,
except he didn’t just happen to come all this way. You told me yourself he came
here for you.”

“I’m
sure he’s just saying that.”

“Whatever
you say, girl.”

“He
is. No Superior would come all the way here to get one of us.” Shelly didn’t
say anything. Cali looked up at him where he sat perched on the edge of the
counter. “Right?”

“Hey,
it’s your business. I ain’t trying to interfere. I’m just saying…yum.”

“You’re
so rotty. You can’t think about them that way. We’re pets to them. He even
calls me his ‘little pet.’”

“Girl,
he can pet me any old day.”

“That’s
so wrong,” Cali said, laughing.

“I
think someone’s in love,” Shelly said, ducking off the counter to avoid Cali’s
swat.

“You’re
rotty.”

“Don’t
worry, I understand. And let me say again, in case you forgot, if your
bloodsucker boy wanted to run away with me I’d say, ‘take me now.’” Shelly
posed dramatically, and Cali laughed.

Cali
sobered and shook her head. “I’m not running away again. I couldn’t do that to
you,” she said. “Besides, it’s not like we’d be running away together. I’d just
have a different master. He’s no different from what I already have.”

“Go
on telling yourself that, girl. I think you like it.”

“Like
what?”

“Like
making him beg. That’s the way to do it, too. That’s what keeps a man coming
back.”

“He’s
not a man, silly.”

“I
had a master like that once, remember, and believe me, he was all man. And I
seen you out there letting that cute boy suck on your neck. Don’t pretend you
don’t like it.”

“There’s
something seriously wrong with you, Shelly. How could I like it? He bites me.”

“Mm
hmm. I’ll bet he does. Just like this.” Shelly got up and flung his shoulders
and his head back and started moaning and swaying back and forth until Cali
punched him.

“Stop.
You’re making things up. I don’t look anything like that.”

“You
do from in here.”

“Well
then stop spying on me.”

“Okay.
From now on I’ll leave you alone with your lover-boy.”

“That’s
just oddball. We can’t love a Superior any more than they can love us.”

“Oh,
believe me, they can. And let me just say, it’s fantastic.”

“That’s
not even possible. It’s like saying a dog is in love with its master.”

Shelly
shrugged. “Who says it isn’t?”