The Superiors (2 page)

He examined Aspen’s ankles, her legs, ran his fingers behind her knees. She sat perfectly still, staring at the wall above his head while he pushed up her shift and checked her groin and thighs. Nothing. She was smooth all over. The insides of her thighs had a few round scars the size of the pad of his thumb, but he didn’t find more. He stood looking at her scars, fitted his thumbs to the tissue-thin skin of the marks. He knew those marks. He had those marks.

“Twenty-three.” He didn’t know his actual years anymore. But to her, he would be twenty-three. He had been twenty-three for a very long time.

“I’m almost twelve,” she said.

He looked at her, calculating. “And you’ve never been bitten?”

“No. I was bought once, but I ran away. And they took me to the blood bank for a while, but I got sick and they sent me back to the Confinement.”

He wasn’t sure how she’d react to this, then. She had run twice now, even after knowing the risk of going back to the blood bank. She must have a phobia of biting, and she’d gotten quite lucky.

“Hold quite still for me. That’s a good little sap. Just like that. Very nice.” While he tied a cord around her arm, he continued speaking to her. “I’ll be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you. Just like this, yes. You’re so good.” He placed a towel on the edge of the table and sat between her knees so he could hold her if she struggled. “If you struggle, it will hurt more, yes? It will tear your flesh. So be nice and good for me, and I’ll be good to you.”

Her nearness, the mouthwatering smell of her, the sound of her blood rushing under her skin, all of it blinded him. He was so very hungry.

Putting an arm around her back to keep her still, he scooted her forward until she sat at the very edge of the table. He could hardly control himself anymore. But when he looked up, he found her terrified, panicking. He kept an arm around her back like a steel band while he reached up with his other hand and gently covered her eyes. “Close your eyes now,” he said gently.

Her vein had popped up beautiful and blue and pulsing with life. He couldn’t control himself any longer, but he didn’t have to. He turned her arm and let his teeth enter her vein. She gave a small cry and her body went rigid, but he kept his arm around her back so she couldn’t escape. After a moment she gave in, and he stroked her back while he drew gently on her arm. The sweet sap in her vein flowed into him, warm and so full of life he could almost, for a moment, feel like he too flowed with that much life.

Chapter Two

Aspen sat silent in the car, her mind flitting like a busy butterfly here and there. Where was this strange Superior man taking her? He’d said back to the Confinement, but her mama always told her you couldn’t trust a Superior any more than you could trust a dog with rabies. Aspen wasn’t actually sure what rabies were, but she figured they were something pretty bad.

“Please don’t kill me,” she said. She clamped her mouth shut to keep her desire to beg locked up tight.

“I’m not going to kill you,” the Superior said. He was smiling at the window, laughing at her actually. That made her mad. When he reached over and stroked her hair, she wanted to slap his hand away. Her sisters were all jealous of her hair. They all had dull hair the color of dirt, and her mama said hers was the color of the sun. She didn’t think all that was true, but it was the color of sand.

“Here is what we’ll say,” the Superior said. She noticed that he had good hair too—the darkest brown, almost black, and it looked so soft she wanted to touch it back. But she was way too scared. “We’ll tell them that you were in a group being selected for restaurant work, and that you got lost. You’re just a kid, they’ll understand. I know the lady in charge up there, too, so I’ll make sure you don’t get sent back to the blood bank, yes? You just have to remember to say what I told you, if anyone asks. Can you remember that?”

“Of course I can. I was being inspected and I ran off. I’m not stupid, you know.”

He smiled again, and his eyes were so warm when he looked at her that she almost forgot how his touch had chilled her. It hadn’t been so bad when he bit her, not like she’d thought. Sometimes, at the Confinement, she’d hear people screaming at night, and crying after the Superiors left. It had hurt, but no worse than the donation she had to make at the Confinement every night. Well, maybe a little more, when he sucked. She’d thought it would be a lot worse and a lot scarier.

She kept expecting him to stop the car and kill her. He just didn’t look scary enough to be a bloodsucker. In fact, when he wasn’t smiling, he looked just like anybody else. Pretty even, if he’d been a real person. He was small, not quite skinny, with these big warm eyes the color of his hair and his pale brown skin, like dust. She’d always imagined being bit by a huge scary man with bushy eyebrows and no hair and bulging muscles, that he’d take a big bite out of her. Of course that was just her fear-fantasy. She’d seen lots of bites, and they didn’t look so bad. Her sisters had all been bitten, some of them a lot of times.

The Superior with the soft-looking hair pulled into the lot in front of the Confinement. She hadn’t taken a lot of time to look at it before she ran, and it had been years since she’d seen the outside. It looked so normal, not like somewhere scary, or happy, or in any way noticeable. It didn’t look alive, like hundreds of live people carried on their busy living inside the walls. And the walls outside hid all the prettiness of the gardens so it looked strange and bare, not like the place she’d lived her whole life.

“Oh. Thank you, Master. I’m sorry for offensing you.” She had a hard time keeping her manners sometimes. She didn’t have to act any certain way with people, and she’d hardly had contact with Superiors before. Doctors and a few buyers had looked at her, and a lady had bought her once. But Aspen had never talked to one like this. It was strange, almost like he should speak a different language. It didn’t make sense that they could communicate like two people, like they were the same. This Superior sounded so polite and formal all the time, stiff. Even when he was sucking her blood he’d seemed somehow dignified.

Now he was smiling at her again with that look like he wanted to laugh. She couldn’t imagine a Superior laughing.

“What?” she asked.

“
Offending
,” he said. “You’re sorry for offending me.”

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. Master.”

He smiled and shook his head and led her inside, his hand on the back of her neck again. His fingers were cool against her skin and it felt nice. She’d gotten all covered in sweat and dirt from running in the streets half the night.

The man Superior talked to a lady Superior for a few minutes, and then the lady came to take Aspen away. She’d seen the lady a few times, but only the Superior guards inside the fence were familiar.

The man Superior bent down in front of Aspen so his face was right in hers and his curly hair almost touched her forehead. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said, that amused smile still on his face. She knew he was smirking at her, thinking he was so much better. So Superior. “Now promise me you’ll keep out of trouble, little sapling. We can’t have you wandering around in the streets getting picked up by criminals. You know some Superiors would bite you if they found you out there.” He smiled at her, and winked, and stood up.

She fought the urge to giggle as she walked back towards the door that led out to her home in the Confinement. She couldn’t wait to tell her sisters all about her adventure. She’d run away, been brave, and gotten caught. But she hadn’t been punished. She’d been bitten, and she had a secret with a Superior. And he’d winked at her. A Superior really honestly winked at her. Who knew they could be so snarky?

Chapter Three

Draven didn’t see Aspen again for over three years. He’d changed jobs, again, and gone back to work with the health department, this time as a restaurant inspector. He had done this job many times over the years, and it was the most enjoyable of the many jobs he’d had. Otherwise, nothing much changed in Draven’s life from year to year.

“What can we get you tonight?” the hostess asked, the night he would meet Aspen for the second time. The waitress smiled, showing exceptionally long teeth. She had short black hair under her hairnet and a heavy accent.

“How many do you have on tap tonight?” he asked. He could have flashed his health inspector card, but he preferred to do his work unobtrusively. It was easier to get a true picture of a place by using the amenities first. Like a secret shopper.

“We have twelve table, but only eight open at the moment. Would you to like have look around, or would you prefer to make this quick stop? We have many varieties at the bar if you’re pressed for time.”

“Do you have the new flavors?”

“Of course. Why don’t you come back to bar and our server will help you.”

He followed the tiny hostess back to the bar where a neon sign filled the glasses with reflected light. The bartender wore a vest with nothing under it, a habit of bartenders that Draven found particularly distasteful.

“What can I get for you, my man? We got bottles, we got cans,” the bartender called out in a familiar way. Draven regretted that he couldn’t give scores based on poor wardrobe choices and lack of manners.

“I am undecided. What flavors do you have?”

“If they make it, we got it, that’s our motto,” the vest-clad man sang out. “We got hot sap, cold sap, old sap, new sap. We got maple sap, caramel, Coca-Cola flavor. We got strawberry, vanilla, cherry-vanilla. You name it, we claim it. You got a thirst, we got the quencher. So what’ll it be?”

“I may just look at the tables,” Draven said, sliding off the stool. Too many bartenders adopted the pushy air of salesmen, which they were, but Draven didn’t want to listen to the bartender’s yammering while he did his job. He walked around the end of the bar, through the heavy curtain and into the restaurant part of the establishment. He roved through the grove of tables, noting the required six bouncers for twelve tables, their appropriate watchfulness. The most common mark against a restaurant was inattentive bouncers, but these were standing against the walls, watchful if a bit bored. Slow night at Estrella’s.

Draven noted the clean tables, the sterile atmosphere, the clean trays on the corners of each table. Then he surveyed the sapiens. Their ages varied, but all appeared in good health. He drew in a breath at each table and paused, listening to the thrum and rush of sap through their veins, turning over the scent in his mind, checking for subtleties in their smell that indicated disease. Superiors were not affected by diseases that troubled sapiens, but they could spread them. And spreading a deadly disease to a sapien meant one less food supply in a world already on rationing.

Draven rarely found anything serious. Restaurant owners stayed diligent, and most of the sapiens with disease had already died off. Draven came to the ninth table and paused. The alluring scent that had wafted through his mind on occasion for the past three years hit him with undeniable force. He looked down at Aspen, and she looked up at him, unblinking. Although the short span of three years had not changed Draven, Aspen had changed in striking and obvious ways. He knew her immediately, despite the shortened hair, the longer limbs, the bored and sullen expression on her still-childlike face.

He had thought at the time he’d had her that she only smelled so enticing because of his burning hunger, that she only tasted so incredible because he had let his thirst build for too long. Now he knew that wasn’t the case. He would know that scent anywhere, and despite her obvious flaws—too young, thin blood, childish appearance—he would stray from his usual routine for something so irresistible. He preferred the stronger-flowing sap of an active sapien, the complexities in flavor of a female further into her childbearing years or a male of an active inclination. But this willful little sap’s lifeflow drew him like a Siren’s song.

He checked the last three tables before returning and plucking her place card from the table.
Cali Youngblood
, the card read. But he’d never forgotten her scent. He handed the card to the bouncer, and slid out his ration card as well.

Draven sat across from Aspen at the small table and studied her for a moment, noticing the development of her young body, the darkening of the hair, the dulling in the eyes. Restaurant life was hard on the saps. She looked at him, no longer scared or wondering his motive. If she recognized him, she gave no indication, although of course he looked the same. He’d always look the same, just as he had looked the night he evolved.

She sat with her legs spilling out from under the table, her arms laid out for his choosing. Draven took her right arm and stretched it out in front of him. She was certainly no virgin to a bite anymore. He felt a twinge of pity for her, the wildness gone out of her. He had enjoyed his secret defiant act, had felt a thrill when he’d gotten away with it. In some way he’d connected it with her—his act of lawlessness fit with her defiant personality.