The Renegades (The Superiors) by Lena Hillbrand Read Free Book Online

or Angel? Not Draven or Herman, obviously. Maybe
Draven had gone crazy, gotten sucked under Angel’s spell. Lord knew he wasn’t
too gifted in the brains department. Courageous and impulsive, yes. Brave in
the humanoid sort of way. Strategic and intelligent—not among Draven’s
characteristics.
    Byron
tapped his stylus on the desk and stared at the screen in front of him. He went
back to his theory that Meyer had started raising saps somewhere out in the
woods. Maybe feeding on them with Angel so the two of them could become more
powerful. But for what purpose?
    Meyer
already had more wealth than he could possibly spend in the next thousand
years, so he could buy all the saps he wanted. And he didn’t seem the greedy
sort—he ran a charity for pathetic, homeless Thirds. And Angel didn’t want to
be seen, let alone take over any sort of government. He’d somehow escaped even
after Byron had shot him with his Deactivator, and no one had seen or heard
from him since.
    Byron
himself, along with Milton and a team of Enforcers from town, had searched the
ghost town. Nothing. No link to Meyer, no evidence of any kind. Plenty of
evidence of Angel, but it didn’t help them trace him once he’d fled. And unlike
Thirds, Angel didn’t have anything to trace—no pod, no pin. He’d left a
basement with six dead girls lain with flowers and love notes, and a decrepit
movie theater full of drained sapiens, but no clue to how he’d escaped or where
he’d gone.
    In
hindsight, it was a shame that Byron had killed those saps and left them. He
should have drawn them to death. But they’d armed themselves well, and he
hadn’t been thinking about eating when they’d ambushed him. Instead of gaining
strength and having a good meal, Byron had left them dead. Unfortunately, Angel
and that little worm Draven, both supposedly paralyzed, had somehow survived to
feast on the dead and gain all that strength that should have been Byron’s.
    Draven,
who turned up his nose at pure Superior blood, wasn’t too good to drink a dead
sap’s.
    Byron
threw down his stylus and rose from his desk. He needed to stretch his legs, shine
his mind. He went outside and smoked a cigarette. The air chilled him. Not even
October and already the nights had a bite to them. Not like back home, where he
never had to worry about the discomfort of cold.
    He
needed to check his Deactivator again. He’d checked it after both men he’d shot
had fled. But the gun showed no sign of defect or damage. He knew what he
needed to do. He needed to test it on a real person, not just look at the parts
and run it through a diagnostics machine. But firing it could get him fired if he didn’t play his hand right. He couldn’t just go shoot a Third on
the street, as tempting as the idea was. He couldn’t even shoot a prisoner or a
criminal unless the perpetrator resisted arrest. Fortunately for him, Superiors
had retained much of their instinct for self-preservation and pain-avoidance.
He could think of a few ways to make a man resist arrest.
    Byron
crushed out his cigarette and went inside to wait for a call. Some worthless
Third would slip up and break a minor law soon enough, and Byron would put him
to good use for once in his miserable life.

 
     
    Chapter 11
     
    Draven
returned often to Cali. He couldn’t help himself and he didn’t try. She fed him
nearly every night, and although he wondered why she allowed him this
privilege, he did not ask. When she denied him, he did not take offense or
argue or press her for more. Instead, he spoke with her while she fiddled with
her garden.
    Sometimes
her mate entered the garden, looked at Draven and shook his head, but he rarely
spoke to him. His activity in the garden appeared more purposeful than Cali’s. Sometimes, too, the baby came outside, at first shying away from Draven before
coming to know, and largely ignore, him. Draven ignored the child in return. He
called upon Cali for one reason, and while there, he did not