The Renegades (The Superiors) (33 page)

Chapter 45

Cali woke with a start and sat up. Something scratched at the tent, shrieking against the
material. But when she turned towards the door, she could see nothing but a
blackness so deep it surrounded her eyeballs, pushing in on them from every
side. She slowed her breath to the most silent stream she could manage to push
between her lips, stiff with cold. She didn’t dare reach over to feel Draven’s
spot. Her sleep sack might rustle. What if someone—some thing—came while he was
gone? Moving as slowly as possible, she found the handle of the aspen stake
Draven had made. Its cold, solid presence in her palm settled her a bit.
Ignoring the ache in her knuckles at the force of her grip, she steadied it in
front of her chest. She would have one moment to strike, blind and desperate,
before the thing overpowered her.

Her
breath caught when the zipper began to slide down in slow jerks. This was no
animal. With each rasping pull, she thought she’d scream. Her heart hammered so
hard she had to force herself to stay still, not to turn and scramble blindly
into the wall of the tent, claw her way out and run, run, run.

The
door fell open, and a blast of cold air circled the inside of the tent, licking
at the warmth of Cali’s skin, sucking it away like Draven did her blood. Was it
him? She tried to find her voice, but her throat had tightened until she
couldn’t swallow or speak.

If
she stabbed Draven…

She
didn’t dare do it. Not without making sure. She did not move, not when she felt
his cold hand like ice brush her cheek, not when the tent closed and the
silhouette disappeared with the vague light that hinted at his figure, cast
black against a larger blackness. Still, she could
feel
someone inside
the tent with her, pressing into the space she shared only with Draven.

A
strange smell, foreign and familiar at once, had come in with him. She heard
the movements of cloth, of him moving and rearranging. It had to be Draven. It
had to. Who else would come into her tent,
their
tent? Anyone else, another
Superior, would have smelled her or heard her, and they’d do something or say
something. So it had to be her Superior.

“Is
it you?” she whispered, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

“Se
moi,”
Draven said, his voice muffled in the sleep sack next to her.

She
dropped the wooden knife to the floor. “Oh my lords. You scared the hair off me.
Why didn’t you turn on a light or say something? I thought you were…I thought…”
She paused to catch her breath, stifling what could have been laughter or a
sob. “What’s that smell?”

“Dog.”

“Dog?”
she asked, making sure she’d heard him right through his mouthful of bedding.
“Why do you smell like a dog?”

“They
attacked.”

“Dogs
attacked you? Did they get you bad? Are you okay?”

“Not…yet.”

Cali
fumbled in the dark for her flashlight and switched it on. She wished she
hadn’t. His legs didn’t look so much like a dog had bitten them as that a dog
had eaten them. Chunks of them, anyway.

“Holy
lord and master…” She covered her mouth with her hand and tried to quell the
queasiness that lurched into her stomach. His blood looked black in the dim
light, blood that covered his pants and shoes and part of his shirt, that
filled the ragged holes torn away from the fabric of his pants, pooling in
glistening tar pits on the backs of his legs. He lay on his stomach, propped up
on his elbows with his face hanging down into the sleep sack.

“What
happened?” she asked when she’d recovered enough voice for a whisper.

“I
was out. They caught me from behind.”

“Oh
my lord and master…what should I do?”

“Is
it as dreadful as it feels?”

“I
hope it doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.”

He
turned his face towards her but kept his head down so he was looking at her
almost upside down. His eyes were the same shiny black as his blood, pools of unfathomable
darkness and depth. And pain.

“What
should I do?” she asked again.

“Don’t
waste it.”

“Waste
what?”

“The
blood, don’t waste it. Eat it.”

Cali
tried to hide her disgust. “I can’t eat it,” she said, her throat threatening
to revisit what she’d eaten last. “That’s…like…that’s not what humans eat.
Remember?”

“What
if I can’t get food for you, for a while…”

“But
it’s…I can’t. Isn’t it…wrong or something?”

“You’ve
eaten meat before. It’s not so different.”

“But
that’s an animal, and it’s not still alive.”

“It
is only blood, but it will give you some strength. Though it is perhaps not
pleasant for you, it is sustenance.”

She
regarded his legs again, those ragged holes with their shredded skin and oozing
muscle exposed. “Will it make me sick?”

“No.”

“Are
you sure?”

“Collect
it before it spills. I’ve already lost....”

“Okay,
okay, I will,” Cali said, but she wasn’t at all sure. She knew how much
Superiors liked drinking blood, but the thought of it repulsed her. Still, if it
would give her the same energy as food… If she didn’t think about it, just
licked it off, what would it matter if she liked it or not? He’d taken enough
of her blood. Why not take a little back?

She
leaned down, placed her hands on either side of the worst wound, squeezed her
eyes shut and put her lips to his flesh. The smell of blood hit her a moment
before her lips touched him, strong and metallic and salty, and her gorge
turned over in her throat. She might have still done it if she hadn’t felt the
icy cold of it, slimy and still and dead as the old woman she’d found one day
at the Confinement when she’d forgotten to strip her bed and gone back to get
her sheets before the laundry overseer penalized her. The sleeping building had
been empty, everyone out working. She’d seen the feet, splayed out with the
toes pointing in opposite directions. She’d called out, then reached out to
shake the woman’s ankle.

Draven
was that cold, colder, like thick icy dead flesh. Her mouth touched inside him,
inside his skin, on the broken, exposed muscle. She pulled back and started to
wipe her mouth, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her down beside him, flipping
her over so quickly it took a moment to register what had happened. She looked up
at him, that same mixture of nervousness and excitement flitting through her
she got every time he drew from her without healing Byron’s bites. When he did
that, it hurt too much. But when he just fed, she’d started to almost enjoy it.
Some unnamable quality had entered into it, something at once generous and kind,
and also scary and thrilling, so she would wait, anticipating and wary both,
when he came to her.

But
now he only looked at her a moment and then pushed his open mouth down on hers,
his cold, wet tongue wiping away the blood she couldn’t bring herself to drink.
He held her hair with one hand, pulling too hard, running his tongue over her
lips and the surrounding area. He pulled back, relaxed his grip her hair, and
the glimmer of his eyes, so warm she could almost forget the coldness of his
tongue, captivated her.

“Is
it in your mouth?” he asked.

“No,”
she said, not sure her voice had come out at all or only a breath. Her heart had
started beating very hard.

“I
would take it from your tongue,” he said, his face still close. She could feel
the whisper of his breath across her wet lips.

He
released her all at once and scooted away, twisting to reach one of their
foldable cups. He pressed it into her hand and nodded his head back. “If you
can’t eat it then I will. Collect what you can in that.”

Something
about his request nauseated her. Not the blood itself that slid sluggishly down
the side of the cup and smelled so acrid, but the thought of him drinking it.
Of course, he drank her blood all the time, but drinking his own blood seemed
different, like something too taboo to have a name, something between
cannibalism and incest.

Draven
took the cup and dumped it into his mouth. Cali turned away, but not before he
caught her expression.

“I’ve
disgusted you,” he said.

“No—”

“I
have. I’m only putting it back where it belongs. It came from me, and that’s
where it is again. I’d have given it to you, if you’d take it.”

“I
know,” she said, shifting away. “Thank you, I guess. That’s…nice.” Nice but
awful at the same time. Sweet and horrifying.

“Nice.
Yes.”

She
glanced at Draven, getting that feeling that she’d said something wrong again,
like she should know the right thing to say, but she didn’t. She’d disappointed
him. Maybe to Superiors, the offer conveyed a great honor, and by refusing, she
had offered him a grave insult in return. But how would she know? She was a
human, with only the beginning of a general idea of how Superiors lived and how
their society worked.

“Is
there more?” Draven asked, holding out the cup to her. She fought back her
disgust again. But they weren’t the same, he and she. They didn’t come from the
same society or even the same species. She couldn’t imagine being so hungry she
wanted to eat part of her own body. But for him, it wasn’t far from his usual
meal. Maybe it was like if she ate dog, or some other thing that would serve as
a meal though she didn’t prefer it.

Wordlessly,
she gathered what blood she could from his wounds. Most of the blood that would
come had already soaked into his clothes. When Cali told him she couldn’t get
more, he sat and removed his pants. She heard his shuddering breaths when he
stopped a few times to rest, but she sat silently on her sleep sack and didn’t
offer to help. She didn’t want to see him this way, hurt and weak. If he
couldn’t even get undressed… With growing anxiety, she watched his face, the
studied blankness of it, and hoped he only stopped to absorb the pain before it
became unbearable and not out of exhaustion. She turned away and opened her
sleep sack. His pain shouldn’t bring her relief, but she didn’t want to think of
the alternative. She could not take care of herself if he died—taking care of
him, too, would be further than impossible.

After
Draven had worked his pants over his feet, he balled them up and set them on Cali’s
food bag. He didn’t look at Cali, didn’t even glance at her, so she let herself
stare. She studied him with a sick fascination at how much pain he could endure
and still function rationally. He had dug a bloodstained shirt from the
backpack, and he tore it into strips and wrapped them around his legs, tying
the ends securely and adding more layers until blood stopped blooming on the
cloth.

Using
his teeth and hands to tear the shirt, he worked until he’d used every scrap of
cloth, and then he used another stained shirt to finish bandaging his legs. The
whole time he never stopped or even paused, and he never looked at Cali. She
found herself wishing he would, wishing he’d say something that let her answer
with a compliment to his determined bravery, the matter-of-fact way he didn’t
let pain stop him but did what had to be done because that’s what he had to do.
Not just now, but every time.

When
he had finished the second shirt, he pulled on a pair of jeans stained brown
with blood splatters and limped out with the newly ruined pair he’d shed. A
while later, he came back empty-handed. Cali thought she should say something,
but she couldn’t decide what. Draven closed the tent and got into his mummy
bag, but not with his usual grace and speed. Now he moved in a tentative,
faltering way. She could hardly stand to look at him. She’d gotten used to the
quietly efficient Draven, the one who did things like leaping across buildings without
pause, without mention, like he’d only stepped over a little rock in the trail.

But
she wouldn’t worry. Not for a few days.

“I
did not get food,” Draven said when Cali turned off her flashlight.

“It’s
okay. I still have plenty. A whole bag.”

“I
would ask to draw from you. I’ve lost blood and I’m weak.”

“Of
course,” Cali said, sliding her arm out of the bag and passing it across the
cold space between them. He didn’t remove scars this time, or linger over his
meal. He went in quickly and sucked at a moderate rate until she felt her head
start to swim and spots of blackness opening behind her eyes like the spots
that bled through his bandages. She had to fight the urge to stop him, to tell
him he’d taken enough and more.

He
stopped before she could ask and closed her skin in the same efficient way he’d
eaten, businesslike, like the clients she’d had while working at restaurants. Just
getting it done, not enjoying it like he usually did. She surprised herself by
missing his usual enthusiasm. She liked how much he appreciated her, and that
in this one way, he let her know, without having to say anything.

They
lay a while in silence. Cali wondered if it was light out yet, if she should
pull on her wool jumpsuit under the sleep sack, layering on a pair of jeans
from one of the Superiors they’d killed and Draven’s shirt and jacket over it
to keep her warm when she went out. She didn’t go out as much as she had when
they’d first arrived in the endlot, but sometimes she had to. She couldn’t
stand just lying in the tent all day. Moving around during the day kept her
warmer, too, even later that night.

“I
wanted you to put your mouth into my flesh,” Draven said after a while. Cali started.
She hadn’t realized he was awake. “I wanted you to put your hands inside so I
could feel your warmth inside me, and your tongue…”

Cali
shrugged down as deep into her bag as she could get. Sometimes he said the
sickest things, things that made her feel strange and crawly and awkward and a
little bit exhilarated. The intensity of his desires terrified and captivated
her at once.