The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (17 page)

For a long while he slumped against the icy metal bars of his prison. He didn’t know if even a very strong
Superior
in good health could escape from his steel cage. And he had neither strength nor health, although the food Sally had brought and her donation had helped him more than he’d expected. He had thought that after so long without eating and with the seriousness of his injuries, the food would have little effect. But he noticed upon waking the next evening that he felt stronger, more alert.

The worst was the pain that never ceased. Sometimes he lay fogged with it, wondering if his captors would keep him just barely alive forever, feed him just enough to keep him conscious and aware of the pain. He hurt from cold. His hands and feet had frozen through, and ice worked its way up his arms, freezing his veins. His ears and face froze. Everything ached with tremendous force.

He slept.

When he woke, he had new pains, small at first, little injuries added to the more dire ones the humans had already inflicted. Once, he awakened to find them removing his hand. The pain swelled until it became unbearable, maddening. He twisted towards the knife, gnashing his teeth, snapping at the hand. The man jerked back, then slashed with the knife blade, leaving a gaping gash down the left side of Draven’s face. His cold blood barely made it to the wound, slowly tracing a path down his jaw.

A woman tossed an icy chain over this head and tightened it from behind while he struggled. She secured it around his neck, tight enough that with every movement the steel cut into his flesh. Again the serrated blade began to saw at his wrist and he screamed, thrashing against the unbreakable steel bonds. He twisted towards the woman, attempting to secure the healing nourishment that surrounded him each time the humans visited. But instead of finding the yielding warmth of a sapien limb, his jaws were forced wider by a rough-hewn wooden stake entering his mouth. It sank into the soft flesh of his throat, cutting off both breath and speech.

“Dammit, don’t kill it,” the man said.

“I didn’t,” the woman protested. “Look, it’s still blinking.”

At last Draven’s hand separated from his wrist and the tearing sensation of his flesh giving way to the dull blade ceased, leaving only the throbbing, unnatural agony of absence.

He wanted it to end, all of it. He couldn’t imagine he’d ever considered this inability to die an advantage. He prayed to something he couldn’t fathom for relief and for death, but it didn’t come.

For many nights, no one came during his wakeful hours. His body began to shut down, not waking during daylight hours even when the humans came. In his deep-sleep state, he had small awareness of their coming and going. He knew only they had visited when he had new injuries, more pain added to the growing mountain that never ended. Sometimes he woke for the particularly gruesome tortures. But many times he did not feel them inflicting the pain, only felt it when he awakened at night, alone once more on the frozen dirt floor of the shed.

A few times he awoke and did not know where they’d taken him, only that they had moved him from the shed. He did not look about. The chains cut into him, and he knew the futility of trying to escape when steel bonds held him fast. When the humans covered his head or his face, he did not try to remove the covering. He lay and waited for an end that didn’t come.

Sally came instead. He heard her approach the shed, and when she opened the door, he smelled her blood and knew her. His mind struggled to find hope but could not.

“Oh my—holy—what the—I’ll be…” Sally said. Draven heard her unlocking the door to his cell, and then she drew near, too near, and everything in him came alive at once.

“Don’t,” he said, not moving yet. Every muscle in his body snapped taut, ready to spring.

Sally came closer, one hand over her mouth and her eyes wide above it. She held her other hand towards him, as if she might touch him if she were near enough.

“I’ll kill you,” he said. Although he didn’t imagine he would, he’d rather warn her now than when he had begun to do it.

“They telled me they done killed you already,” she said. “Holy hell-hole. You look just about the sorriest sight I ever seen.”

“Lie down with me,” he said.

“Why?” She stopped coming towards him. Then she started backing away slowly. “I didn’t think you’d do it when you said you’d kill me. You really mean it, don’t you? Well, I tell you what. My sister got killed by one of you folks when she done that, so I’m gonna have to say I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“Bring me a stake then.”

“What you talking about? I see you’re just about crazy, but you know I can’t—”

“Bring me a stake. If you won’t do it, have mercy and let me do it myself.”

Sally left the cage, went to her chair and sat covering her face with both hands.

“Sally, please. I beg of you. Kill me. It would be…the kindest gift you could give me. Please. Put it through the bars to me if you cannot do it, and I will.”

She rose from her chair and walked out. All the energy that had come into Draven’s body when she came near melted away, and he collapsed onto the floor again, rolling onto his side. He wanted to weep, but his body only shook. He would never cry tears again.

He slept, he did not know how long. When he awakened, Sally stood outside the bars, speaking to him. He struggled to find awareness. Realized he was unchained except for one ankle. Tried to move and found that his legs no longer functioned. Remembered the men coming with sledgehammers, taking turns grinding his bones... He turned and dragged himself across the floor on his forearms, careful not to touch the stump of his wrist to the dirt floor. Sally stood weeping until he reached her.

“You poor thing,” she said, pushing flat silver objects through the bars at him. “You poor soul. Here, eat them. Eat.” His hand shot through the bars and caught Sally’s wrist. She let out a small yelp and brought her fist down on his hand. He didn’t notice. He pulled her hand through the bars.

“I need this,” he said, and bit her.

“Stop, you dern fool. I’m giving you food,” Sally said, pulling back. She lay back on the floor and braced her feet on the bars and pushed, but he had the strength of a starving Superior, and she could do little to free herself. Instead, she turned herself sideways, and then she had a stake in her hand. She brought the blunt end down on his skull. “Let me go, or I’ll stake you right now.”

He did not stop. He wanted her to stake him. And this would be the best way to die. Almost the best way. The best way would be to die eating Cali.

The thought of Cali snapped in his mind like the end of a whip, and he released Sally and flung himself backwards just as the arc of her movement began. The stake clattered to the floor. He looked at it and then at Sally. Her eyes widened with shock.

“I…I weren’t going to kill you,” she said, reaching for the stake. But Draven pounced first. “Now, dang it. Don’t you do it,” Sally said. “’Sides, I thought you was all slow and couldn’t hardly move.”

“I told you that if I were gravely injured, I’d shut down, but I’d be fast enough to eat.” Draven tried to sit but found he could not.

“Well, dang me or hang me. Here I was bringing you all this food and you’re just gonna go and kill yourself. I shouldn’t have bothered. I could’ve just gave you a stake instead of risking my hide bringing you all this dried up blood.”

“For what purpose? If I eat it, I’ll still be here. Your people will never let me go, Sally. Never. They will find new means of torturing me until I die. Do you not understand this? This way I do not have to endure the part before I die.”

“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard.”

“Because it is true.”

She looked so sad that he regretted his harsh treatment of her.

He moved closer to the bars again, every particle in his body alive and humming with the frenzy of desire that came with such an intensity of hunger. He had to force himself not to throw his body against the bars and snarl at her. “I’m sorry I bit you,” he said.

“You really ain’t never gonna die, is you?”

“Eventually I will. It’s the eventual part that frightens me.”

“You’re scared?”

Draven looked at Sally and did not speak.

She sank into her chair as if her legs had given out. “Course you are,” she said. “Look at you.”

Draven retrieved one of the packets Sally had dropped and opened it slowly with his teeth. He poured the contents into his mouth while he watched her. “May I have some water, please?” he said when he had finished the packet.

Sally picked up a quart jar of water and held it out to him. He took it through the bars and drank, all the while keeping his injured arm close to his side. “What has given your people such intense hatred for me?” he asked, careful to keep his voice and hand steady. He was not an animal.

“They don’t hate you. They just…they don’t like your kind.”

“Why? If they wish to make me feel as they felt when a Superior owned them, I would understand it, though I’ve never owned a human. But this…what they’ve done to me…is beyond retribution. You’d not do to a dog the things you’ve done to me, would you?”

“I ain’t done nothing to you,” Sally said. She burst into tears and covered her face.

Draven slowly ate another packet while she sobbed. He ate another, and another, rationing the water to go with them until he had eaten the dozen or so packets she had dropped through the bars. Only by sheer force of will could he hold himself back from devouring the food without stopping to open the packets. Because he was not an animal.

He no longer cared if her people discovered him in the act. Perhaps they would kill him. He didn’t care if they caught Sally in her betrayal, either. When she stopped weeping, Draven said, “I meant your people. Not you individually.”

Sally sniffed and wiped her red nose on the back of her hand. She no longer wore gloves. The ever-present ache of cold no longer throbbed under the more intense pains in Draven’s body. 

“How long have I been here?” he asked, looking around. Already the food began to take effect, sharpening his senses. Twelve packets, two rations per pack. Five days worth of food.

“Three months, or thereabouts. I wish I’d never brought you here. If I’d known what they was gonna do to you, I’d never have followed your trail.”

“You’ve done nothing.”

“That’s just it,” she said, her voice breaking again. She swept the tears from her cheek with a bare hand. “I ain’t done nothing. All this time. You know, you should be my bloodsucker. I’m the one who done found you. I should get to decide what gets done to you.”

“What would you have them do with me?”

“Nothing. I want them to leave you alone.”

“I’d remain in this cage for years, until long after all your people died.”

Sally sighed. “I reckon.”

“You couldn’t release me. I’d tell someone where you were.”

“Would you?”

“No. Not if you let me go. But I know you will not.”

“And you’re right. I won’t. I can’t. They’d know it was me let you loose, and they’d be just about as mad at me as at you. I could say you hypnotized me, maybe.”

“Why do they think I can do that?”

“I don’t know. You can’t?”

“No.”

“You sure? ‘Cause that one day you done bit me…” Sally looked at her empty hands and twisted her fingers. “I mean, I ain’t saying you did, if you say you can’t. But it seemed like…I wasn’t my right self.”

“I did not do anything to you.”

Sally looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “I believe you.” Neither of them spoke for a time. Sally broke the silence. “We all got different reasons for hating bloodsuckers, I reckon. My family does because one killed my sister.”

“Yes, I know this.” When Draven finished the water, he made a small knot of the empty sap packets and slid them through the bars. “If you would like,” he said, “you may tell me of her.”

Chapter 27

“Alrighty,” Sally said slowly. “Okay. I’ll tell you about Angela. But it ain’t a nice story.” She didn’t say nothing for a spell, and the bloodsucker didn’t neither. She wasn’t real sure how to start. So she started at the beginning.

“My sister was six years younger than me. Larry is two years younger. Mama had another three babies but they all died. Anyways, I was born out here, and I always lived out here, and we always hated bloodsuckers even before, but not as much. Mostly everybody’s just scared of going back and getting caught, I reckon. Some of them are just plain mean, I reckon, but most of them are decent folks who wants to be left alone and not be slaves. Least my mama and daddy and my uncle and aunt are.”

Draven got the last drop of water and handed the jar to her, and she took it and set it on the floor without paying no mind. “Anyhow, Angela was the youngest of Mama’s kids that lived, so she done loved her the best, I reckon. And Angela was real pretty too, and kinda sickly. Me, I can do a man’s work right alongside Larry, but Angela was always getting sick with every little thing. She was kinda quiet-like too, round other people, least. Round me she was just funny as you please, and real nice. She couldn’t have stood for what they done to you.”