The Superiors (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“What, you not interested? You think ‘cause you been working in them restaurants that you too good for us now? Is that it? Now you come back here, and Johnny just ain’t good enough for you?”

“Forget her, she’s a bitch.”

Cali got her food without a word and turned away from the girls. She sat at a table and waited for one of her sisters to show up. Not that she couldn’t defend herself if she needed to. She thought she could. It would just be less likely to come to blows if she had a sister or two with her. She’d gotten used to the teasing. Her sisters kept telling her it would die down, and as far as she was concerned, it couldn’t happen soon enough. It didn’t help that one of the boys had been sniffing around.

“Yeah, Mona says you got a bloodsucker boyfriend. She says she saw you wearing his shirt last week. Said you was out kissing in the garden.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Poppy said. “If I couldn’t have a real boyfriend, I’d probably look at a bloodsucker. Some of them are cute, when they’re not smiling.”

“Yeah, but that’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here,” Poppy said, leaning across the table. “Everyone knows they like the women with the most babies. They get treated the best. And then they get out, they’re free out there somewhere having their own gardens and never once ever getting bit.”

“I don’t believe it. I’ve been out there for three years, and I’ve never seen a free homo-sapien yet. The only thing free is the bloodsuckers.”

“Okay, whatever you say. But I haven’t been bit for months. I just thought you could ask one of them. What about that one who comes in every night? I heard one of the girls said he looked real big-stuff.”

“He’s mean, and I don’t think we even speak his language. He never says anything, and my arms are aching every minute of the day from him biting me. Want to get some followers, Poppy? You can have them.”

“Gee, you don’t have to get all mad. I was just saying. I thought maybe you were important now that you’d been in the restaurants.”

“I don’t want to be important. I just want to be in the garden and for the stupid biters and the stupid girls in here to leave me alone. I’m going to see Mama. And if you want to be important to a Superior, why don’t you let me have your spot in the house and you can sleep in the barracks?”

Cali walked off, since none of her sisters had an answer for that. They didn’t understand. They got bit once in a while, if they happened to be out or if a Superior had extra time to wander and liked the smell of one of them. Otherwise they only had to go to the regular blood-draw every day. Her sisters were the lucky ones. They hadn’t been bitten every night for years, lots of times every night, and they didn’t quite understand how awful it was to have ‘loyal followers.’ Cali didn’t want followers. She just wanted her stupid arms to stop hurting.

Chapter Thirty

When he went to see her again, Cali lay limp and slumped away from him, and Draven had to pull her from her bunk. He dragged her out, and she stood while he wrapped his shirt around her shoulders. She looked at the floor, and at first he thought her only tired.

“Then let us go and walk outside.” He started to leave but she didn’t move. He turned back and took her arm and pulled, and Cali came with him, hanging back. He checked her out, and they stepped out into the blue dawn. A fog hung low over the grounds, and when they walked into the garden it was like walking on clouds. When Draven looked down, he could hardly see their feet.

Neither he nor Cali spoke. He’d never ventured so far into the garden, and he had to follow Cali to make sure he wasn’t stepping on the plants. He saw a large boulder at the end of a row and stopped. Daylight would come soon, and he wanted to eat first.

“Let us sit here, little pet.”

Cali didn’t answer, and she didn’t stop. Her insolence was dangerous. She needed to learn, and someone else might teach her a harsher lesson than he would. He strode up behind her and caught her arm and spun her around. But the words he had intended stopped in his mouth.

“What is this?” he asked, relaxing his grip on her arm. “Why do you weep?”

She shook her head and turned away a bit, and he stood and didn’t know what to do. He had soothed many saps when he had worked with them. He had seen many cry from fear and pain. But he didn’t see that Cali was in pain, and she didn’t have the smell of fear.

She covered her face with one hand and made a choking sound, and he pulled her to him. It was a strange feeling he had, pity and something else. Something like helplessness, but not quite so profound. He lifted her and brought her to the boulder, and there he sat with her folded in his arms. For a while her quiet sobs made the only sound in the garden muffled by fog. Draven held onto her, wanting to eat but not wanting to draw from her while she wept.

When she quieted, she wiped her face on the sleeve of the shirt she wore, his shirt. She had that strange look about her again, that look of embarrassment. Draven reached out and wiped a tear with his index finger and held it out towards Cali’s face.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

“I’m sorry. I—it was stupid of me. Go ahead.” She pulled up the sleeve of the shirt and presented her arm.

“I will draw, and then you will explain yourself,” Draven said, and he pulled her wrist up to his mouth and closed his teeth around it. He ate slowly, stroking her leg until she had stopped trembling from her tears. When he finished, she looked calmer. He also felt very much calmed and relaxed and drowsy after filling himself with the wonder of her sap.

“Now tell me, my
jaani
. Are you in pain?”

“No.” Cali pulled the sleeves of his shirt down over her hands and balled the cuffs in her fists. “I just thought…when I was here before, it was really good. I was pretty happy, and I thought it would be the same when I came back, but now…the other girls tease me and worse, and they’re awful to me. And there’s this stupid boy, he wants to be mated with me, and—.” Cali’s voice caught and she began to weep again. “My mother died. She got sick and we tried to get them to take her to the clinic, and when they did it was too late and she died. And everything is just so…so…ugly.”

Draven petted her hair and her back with strong even strokes until she stopped crying. He didn’t know what to make of this. Cali seemed smarter than most saps, but he still had trouble believing she had emotions like sadness at her loss. But that was exactly what it looked like.

“So you are sad?” he said, almost to himself.

Cali nodded and dried her eyes, her fresh burst of tears much shorter than the previous one. “It’s stupid, I know. I haven’t even seen her for three years, and now I’ve only been back here for a few months, and I shouldn’t have as much right to cry as my sisters. I just thought…I thought when I came back everything would be good. And it’s not.”

“I see.” Draven wondered if she would behave when he bought her. Perhaps she would be unhappy, would run away and try to return to the Confinement. She seemed attached to her family, and they lived here. But it didn’t matter. She might have feelings, but he wanted to bring her home, so he would. She would get used to it. One good thing about saps—they were adaptable. They could get used to just about anything.

Draven thought of the human prostitute he had trapped the night Ander had gotten away, and he grimaced. Nina had gotten used to something so awful it seemed no one could grow accustomed to it. But saps could. He hoped Cali wouldn’t hate his living arrangement that much, but he didn’t want to tell her his plan yet. He didn’t want to tell anyone until he could make it a reality. It might still be several years until he had saved enough to bring Cali home.

When Cali had dried her face again, she looked as usual except for the redness around the eyes. They watched the warm fog melting in the garden. Draven squinted a bit in the increasing light, but the fog kept the morning from becoming too bright. He liked it for this reason. He could stay out later when the sun wasn’t blinding him on the way home.

“I am sorry that your mother has died,” Draven said, twisting a clump of Cali’s hair between his fingers. He worked his way through a tangled knot in the back of her hair.

“Yeah, me too. But thanks. Anyway, now I don’t know...I can go live in her place with my sisters, since there’s room for me now. There’s that, at least. And this boy wants to marry me, I think, or take me as a mate, anyway. I guess I should go, now that my mama is gone. He has his own little house and it wouldn’t be so crowded. My sister has a kid, and the other one’s having another baby, and there’s not a lot of room there anyway.”

“I know. But it just makes more sense. There’s four people in my mama’s house, and five if I move in there, and more with the baby. And this boy has a house all to himself, and it’s almost as big as the one my sisters have.”

“Why do you not want to stay in the barracks? I’d hardly call the houses here livable.”

Cali pulled up her other sleeve and showed him a rash of red marks, unhealed bites and scars with pebbles under them from the bites that had been left open and healed. “Maybe he will come less.”

“
Merde
. Does he come every night?”