The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (22 page)

“What are you thinking about over there?” Shelly asked, making her jump.

“Nothing,” she said, but then she told him anyway. She couldn’t stay mad at Shelly. He was the only person she had.

After she finished telling him, Shelly said, “You know I love you, girl. But if Master brings a breeder in here, he’s gonna know I’m the problem, and he’s gonna sell me. You know that, right?”

“But…how can he tell? I mean, you probably could get someone pregnant. He just comes in to make it happen, right?” Cali shuddered thinking about the doctor in the clinic probing around her private area when she went to the Confinement. But as humiliating as that experience had been, the one tonight had been more so.

“No, sweetie. A breeder doesn’t get us to breed. He’s a guy who gets rented out to, you know, impregnate the girls on the farms if they don’t have a good male around to do it. The bigger farms have males of their own, but the smaller ones, or just Superiors who own one sap and want her to have a baby, well, they pay a farmer to loan out his breeder. He’s not gonna get us together, girl. He’s going to, you know, get you full up.”

“Full up?”

“Yeah. You know, pregnant.”

Cali lay there thinking about this with growing horror. She hadn’t even wanted babies. She’d only been willing to do it for Master if she could with Shelly, her best friend and the only person she knew and talked to and loved. She couldn’t have a baby with some random man who just went around impregnating all the women on the farms. But what choice did she have?

“I can’t do it,” she said, trying not to let panic rise in her voice. “We have to do it. You have to do it. You can’t let some gross man I’ve never met do that to me. Shelly, you have to.”

“Girl, I’ve tried before. It just don’t work with girls. I mean, if I tried real hard I might be able to get started, but I’d never finish, and you gotta finish to make the babies.”

“I know, but…I’m scared. What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, girl. We’ll think of something.”

Chapter 34

Sally came every night, and Draven took as much sap from her as he dared, always from the same location, so she’d have one mark only. The downside was that the mark grew a bit larger after many feedings from the same spot, and in summer she no longer wore long sleeves. When he noticed she’d grown a bit pale one night, he resisted, although she tried to persuade him to eat. He told her to eat more until the evolution so she would be as strong as possible. Despite the food, his strength did not return, and he began to wonder if he hadn’t passed some point after which his self-healing process could no longer function.

One day he woke to find Sally in the shed with him. He squinted in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the cracks in the walls. Sally opened the door to his cell, slid it back and entered.

“Sally,” Draven said, trying to clear his tired mind and see through the brightness. “Why have you come? I cannot go now unless you bring me my shades. I can’t see well when it’s so bright.”

“Bright? I can’t hardly see it’s so dark in here.”

“Why have you come?” he asked again.

“You gotta change me now, and we’ll leave out of here come night.”

“Tonight?” Draven jerked upright, yanking at the chain that now only held one ankle. He hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. Although he remained weak, he imagined he could force himself to go on through willpower alone if he had to.

“Yeah, tonight,” Sally said, coming to him and kneeling in front of him. She put her arms around his neck and gave him a strange look.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m here for you to change me.” She slid her hand down his shorts. When he pushed at her, she leaned on him, and they toppled onto the dirt floor together.

“Sally, wait,” he said, taking her wrist in his hand. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah, it does. Angela done told me. I know I ain’t no looker, but you done promised.”

“Hey, hey, stop,” Draven said, struggling with her. She was strong and heavy, and pains he didn’t know still existed burned holes on the inside of his skull. “Sally, stop.”

She sat up from him, disheveled, and looked at him. He lay perfectly still on his side, closed his eyes and made his breath stop, and attempted to end the pain. But it would not cease. It felt as if someone had run a steel spike through every one of his vertebrae and into his brain and started wiggling it.

“Hey, you said you’d do it,” Sally said. “I know it ain’t right and whatnot, and you love your human, but I aim to be changed over, and if you aim to get out and see your girlfriend, that’s the deal.”

“She’s…not…,” Draven managed, but the vibration of speaking made the spike scrape harder so he stopped.

“Something…not…right,” he said after a minute’s rest.

“Well, shoot. I thought you was ready to go. You didn’t seem sick no more. And everyone’s at a meeting, and I convinced them I was sick, and I had to steal this here key from Daddy. Ain’t gonna be another chance this good.”

Draven clenched his teeth and pushed himself into a sitting position. He allowed himself a breath and spoke through the grinding pain. “You know you cannot see your family again after this.”

Sally hesitated only a moment, but even a moment concerned Draven. “I know,” she said.

“That is not how evolution works,” he said, measuring out his words slowly. “You evolve in your sleep. When you wake, you’ll be changed.”

Sally stared at him a moment before covering her mouth. She looked stunned. Then she started crying.

“What is it?” Draven asked.

She shook her head, and he waited for her to stop and speak. “Angela…when we found her, she was dead,” Sally said, wiping her eyes. “Does that mean…I mean, is she one of you now? Or one of those things, whatever they are, you done told me about t’other day? And we buried her! You reckon she’s out there in the ground alive?”

“No,” he said, putting a hand on Sally’s arm. “I’ve not heard of an incubus evolving a human. And…” Draven paused while a flower of pain unfurled along his spine and bloomed inside his brain. “And as you certainly didn’t chain her in her coffin… She long ago freed herself if she evolved.”

“Well, just so you know, that’s what they intend to do with you. They’re just gonna wrap you up in chains and bury you, in case you rise up again. What will happen to you?”

“Nothing. I’ll only lie there and grow hungry.”

“And you won’t never die?”

“Eventually I’d shut down…go into starvation mode. But I’d live.”

“So you’d lie down in the ground for eternity and always be alive?”

“Yes.”

“That’s real awful sounding.”

“I imagine it would be.”

“So there could be some of you down in the ground right now for centuries and nobody would ever know.”

“I suppose.”

“Dadgum, that’s creepy.”

“Sally…I know you planned for tonight, but…I do not think I can go just yet. I’m not feeling quite well.”

“Well, then just change me, and then when I wake up, we’ll go. You said I had to sleep when it happened.” Sally climbed onto Draven’s lap and started kissing him. He put a hand on her stomach and pushed her back.

“That’s not how.”

“Angela said that’s what she did with hers.”

“And she’s dead.”

“What, you gotta do it while I’m sleeping?’ Cause that’s kinda creepy, but I reckon if you have to. I’d rather do it awake first though, and see if it wouldn’t work.” She tried to kiss him, but he turned his face from hers. The light had given him a headache, and Sally’s weight increased the pain, and her warmth was awful now that the weather had turned warm.

“What is it?” she asked. “I put on my pretty dress for you. Just don’t think about it if it bugs you that much. I can do the work. I think you’re pretty good looking for a bloodsucker. I don’t mind it that much.”

“Sally, listen to me,” he said, alarmed at her seeming strength. He knew it meant his own strength remained so insignificant that a mere human could nearly overpower him. “I am not an incubus. I cannot evolve you in that way.”

“Well, how do you know if you ain’t tried it? If this don’t work, I reckon you can do it while I’m sleeping. But don’t you be doing nothing dirty to me when I don’t know about it.”

“Sally, you’re a human. I’m not going to do anything sexual to you.”

“I reckon that’s obvious,” she said, releasing him. “I ain’t pretty enough, am I?”

“You look fine, and you’re kind and good. And you’re a decent woman, so don’t act like this.”

She climbed off his lap and sat on the ground beside him. “Well, how’s it work then?”

“I can’t…I need to rest a bit. Come back when it’s dark out.”

“I can’t. I won’t have the key then. They’re coming back from the meeting real soon. They don’t never stay out past dark. And I’ll have to put the key back before he gets back, or he’ll know I been out here.”

“We will go, but perhaps not tonight. Before they bury me. Now, I need you to…” Draven slid onto his side and put his cheek to the cool earth. “Get things together for us…need when we leave…and Cali…”

“What’s wrong? I thought you was better.”

“Not…yet.”

“What’s hurting you?”

“Back…neck.”

Sally stood and deftly rolled him over. “Holy Moses,” she said. “Yup. Looks like they done broke up your back something awful. I can push the bones back in if you think it’ll help.”

“Please.”

“Alright. Now lay real still. All your spine bones are off in funny places.” Sally began working while Draven ground his teeth and tried not to scream. The pain went on and on, mounting to a point where he could no longer hold it, and he screamed, but she took no notice. She continued grinding the bones together and talking about what she was doing as if telling someone about one of her knitting projects.

When she finished, she knelt beside Draven’s head and put her wrist to his mouth. His eyes rolled up to her, and he wanted to say something grateful, but he couldn’t think of a single word. He let himself have the sap and the relief of it, and he could hardly make himself close the bite before he went into a sleep of throbbing pain.

Chapter 35

Byron tried to contact Meyer Kidd several times, but each time, an assistant told him the boy was out on business. So Byron spent his time poring through records, trying to find any information he could on Kidd and his holdings. Certain the boy was connected somehow, he kept searching even when he found nothing incriminating. He’d always had a strange feeling about the boy, and now it turned out that Meyer hadn’t had one, but two, saps go missing in the
Princeton
area.

So maybe Kidd was the collector. He’d collected these saps over thirty years. And done what with them? And before that? Had Kidd been collecting saps somewhere else before that, and when someone grew suspicious, he changed his vacation spot? Or was this the beginning? Had he plotted the whole thing out over hundreds of years until he found the perfect location and situation?

Byron told his team about Meyer, and they said it sounded suspicious, although none of them seemed as concerned with Kidd’s importance in the case as Byron. Milton shrugged it off and said, “Some people are just lax about security. They assume saps are as loyal as dogs.” Milton seemed least concerned of any of them.

“More like sly as foxes,” Drake said, then went to check on an employer of one of the missing persons who had been eluding him.

Byron went back to the files, and when he got tired of that, he checked around for a farm that had a breeder. When he found one, he arranged to rent the sapien for a few hours, and then he went back to work. He tried Kidd again, and this time the boy’s face appeared on the screen when he accepted contact.

“Ah, my favorite Enforcer,” Meyer said. “You must be getting bored up there, calling to chat again so soon. What can I do for you, Byron?”

He could stop calling a man four times his age at evolution by his first name.

“I found some interesting information in these files I’ve been looking through,” Byron said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I found your insurance claim for another missing sapien.”

Meyer laughed and clapped his hands. “Very good, Enforcer. I was wondering when that would come up.”

“And it has. How is it possible for you to ‘lose’ two saps in thirty years while vacationing?”

“I answered all the questions you asked me. You aren’t very thorough at going through the files.”

“Just humor me, Meyer.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Well, I had to explain all this when I filed two claims so close together. To be honest, it’s my fault. I prefer saps with a, shall we say, lively spirit?”

“You said Herman was well trained.”

“So I did. He was. But despite the training, he was a bright individual. By sap standards, of course. And the first one, Tom, well, he was just defiant. But quite tasty.”