The Superiors Read Free Page B

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.
    He touched the inside of her arm, the old white scars and the newer, red puncture wounds. Some of them hadn’t been cauterized fully. One of them didn’t look like it had been sealed at all. It was still fresh and looked tender and a bit swollen, probably as new as a few nights ago or even last night.
    “Does this hurt?” he asked, placing his thumb on the worst of the red welts. Her skin, like that of all saps, held the usual warmth of a warm-blooded species, but here it almost scalded him. He pulled his thumb away partly out of disgust for the heat, something he had grown a bit squeamish of after so many years without it, and partly because she jerked when he touched it. Her eyes went wide and she drew in a quick breath.
    “No,” she said. But Draven had worked with enough saps to know that body language was a more accurate read than words. Most saps, even when they spoke his language, didn’t know themselves. His frustration at their stupidity had caused him to quit a job working at the sap clinic. Most of them reported different symptoms on different days or to different Superiors, or didn’t know answers about their own