Fledgling_ a novel Part 15

"Yeah, but before you do, I'll have time to get used to you." She paused. "How about you? Are you okay with me?"

"You mean do I want you?"

"... yeah. You didn't exactly choose us."

"I inherited you, both of you, from my father's family. You're mine."

"You want us?"

I smiled up at her. "Oh, yes."

Thirteen.

We turned northeast again and drove until we found a place where we could go off a side road and camp in the woods, far enough away from the road and the highway to be invisible. I took a look around before I went to sleep, made sure there was no one near us, no one watching us.

After I got back, I asked Celia to stay awake and keep one of the guns handy until dark. She was a good shot, she'd had some rest, and she said she wasn't very tired. We had the three guns I had taken from the gunmen and Celia's handgun-a semiautomatic Beretta. She told me the gunmen had used silenced Heckler & Koch submachine guns. She said she'd never seen one before, but she'd read about them.

"The gunmen meant to kill us all, but to do it quietly," she said. "I don't think anyone heard the shooting over the noise of the fire and the distance between houses. We need to avoid these people, at least until we find a few more friends."

I agreed with her. But at that moment, I just wanted to sleep. I went to sleep in the backseat of Wright's car and woke briefly as Wright lifted me out and put me down in Brook's car, where someone had folded the back seats down and spread clothing on them to make them less uncomfortable.

"What are you doing?" I whispered.

He climbed in, lay down beside me, and pulled me against him. "Go back to sleep," he said into my ear. I did. The makeshift bed turned out to be not so uncomfortable after all.

Then Brook lay down on the other side of me, and her scent disturbed me, made me want to get up and go sleep somewhere else. I tried to ignore it. Her scent would change, was already beginning to change. I slept.

Sometime later, after dark, I bit her.

She struggled. I had to hold her to keep her still and silent at first. Then, after a minute, she gave a long sigh and lay as I'd positioned her, accepting me as much as she could. She didn't enjoy herself, but after that first panic, she at least did not seem to be suffering.

I had only tasted her before. Now I took a full meal from her-not an emotionally satisfying meal, but a physically sustaining one. Afterward, I spent time lapping at the wound until she truly relaxed against me. She eased back into sleep and never noticed when I got up, stepped over her, and got out of the car.

I closed the door as quietly as I could and stood beside it. Not being fully satisfied made me restless. I paced away from the car, then back toward it. I found myself wondering whether Brook, Celia, and Theodora would be better able to sustain me when they were as fully mine as Wright was. Would they be enough? I was much smaller than my father who had preferred to have eight symbionts. My demands must be smaller.

Mustn't they?

I shook my head in disgust. My ignorance wasn't just annoying. It was dangerous. How could I take care of my symbionts when I didn't even know how to protect them from me?

I stopped beside the car and looked through its back window at Brook and Wright, now lying next to each other, both still asleep. Both had been touching me. Now that I had moved, they were almost touching one another.

My feelings shifted at once from fear for them to confusion. I wanted to crawl between them again and feel them both lying comfortably, rea.s.suringly against me. They were both mine. And yet there was something deeply right about seeing them together as they were.

Celia came up behind me, looked at me, glanced into the car, then drew me away from it. We went to the other car and sat there. "I long for a shower," I said.

"Me too," Celia said. "You mind if I go to sleep now?"

"Go ahead." She had already climbed into the backseat of Wright's car. She put her handgun on the floor and lay on her back on the seat.

"I think I need to say something you won't like hearing," she said.

"All right."

She closed her eyes for several seconds, then said, "Stefan told me what happened to Hugh Tang. He told me and he told Oriana Bernardi because he knew we both loved Hugh."

Loved? I listened to her with growing confusion. I didn't know what to say so I said nothing.

"The relationship among an Ina and several symbionts is about the closest thing I've seen to a workable group marriage," she said. "With us, sometimes people got jealous and started to pull the family apart, and ... well ... Stefan would have to talk to them. He said the first time that happened, he was still living with his mothers and one of them had to tell him what to do, and even then he could hardly do it because he was feeling so confused himself. He didn't say 'jealous.' He said 'confused.'"

I nodded. "Confused."

"I don't really understand that, but then, we are different species."

"How did you wind up with Hugh?"

She smiled. "Hugh had been with Stefan for a few years when Stefan asked me to join him. When I'd been there for a while, Hugh asked for me. Stefan said that was up to me, so Hugh asked me. It scared me because I didn't understand at first how an Ina household works, that everyone went to Stefan, fed him, loved him, but that we could have relationships with one another, too, or with other nearby symbionts. Well, I didn't go to Hugh when he first asked, but after a while, I did. He was a good man."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I wish he hadn't found me when he did."

"I know."

I looked at her lying there, not looking at me. "Thank you for telling me," I said.

She nodded and looked at me finally. "You're welcome. I didn't just say it for your benefit, though. I figure I might want to have a kid someday."

I wanted that-a home in which my symbionts enjoyed being with me and enjoyed one another and raised their children as I raised mine. That felt right, felt good.

I left Celia alone so she could sleep, and I checked the area again to make sure we were still as alone as we seemed to be. Once I was sure of that, I set out at a jog, then a run to find out who our nearest neighbors were. I followed my nose and found a farm where two adults and four children lived, along with horses, chickens, geese, and goats. I found three other houses, widely separated along the side road, but without farm fields around them. I found no real community on the territory I covered.

It seemed we had privacy and a little more time to recover and decide what to do. I could question Celia and, in particular, Brook.

I went back to the cars and used some of the disposable wipes that Wright and Brook had bought to clean up as best I could. Then I put on clean clothes. As I got my jeans on, I heard Brook wake up and slip out of the car behind me. She made slightly different noises breathing and moving around than Wright or Celia did.

"G.o.d, it's dark out here," she said. "If I weren't a symbiont, I don't think I could see at all. Aren't you cold?"

I wasn't really, but I pulled on an undershirt, then put my long-sleeved shirt on, b.u.t.toned it, and pulled on my new jacket. "I'm all right," I said. "I'm glad you're awake. I need to talk to you."

"Sure."

"Eat first. Do whatever you need to do. This will probably take a while."

"That doesn't sound good."

"I hope it won't be too bad. Your neck okay?"

She pulled her collar aside and showed me the half-healed wound. "It ... wasn't so bad this time."

"It will get better."

"I know."

She pulled open the white Styrofoam cooler they had bought and filled with ice and food. She took out a plastic packet of four strips of pepper-smoked salmon and a bottle of water. She made a sandwich with the salmon and some bread from one of the grocery bags. When she'd eaten that and drunk the water, she got more water from the chest and dug out a blueberry m.u.f.fin and two bananas from one of the bags. It didn't seem to bother her that I sat in the car watching her-that I enjoyed watching her.

Finally she took the plastic can of wipes and went away into the trees to make her own effort to clean up. While she did that, Wright awoke and stumbled off in a different direction. A few moments later he came back and got another plastic can of wipes, scrubbed his face and hands, then got into the food.

"You okay?" he asked me.

"I'm fine. I'm going to see what I can learn from Brook. I need some idea where to find adult Ina. Now that I know what my parents' communities faced-humans with gasoline and guns-I think I can ask for help without endangering other Ina or their symbionts."

"You didn't think so yesterday."

"I do now. I still don't want to stay at the cabin near your relatives. Anyone I go to will have to post guards, stop shutting down during the day, be willing to fight and kill, be able to plant false stories in the memories of any witnesses, and be able to deal with the police. Ina families with symbionts can do that if they know they should. They can survive and help remove a threat."

He shook his head. "I just can't figure out why human beings would be killing your kind plus a h.e.l.l of a lot of their own kind unless it's some kind of misguided vampire hunting."

"It may be," I said. "I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it's something to do with my family's genetic experiments. Will you sit with us and speak up whenever you think of anything useful?"

"Sure. Not that I'm going to know what's useful."

"Unless something she says shakes loose some part of my memory, you'll know as much as I do."

"Scary thought," he said. Then, "Here's Brook."

"I'm cold," she said, rubbing her hands together. "Let's get back into the car." Once we had moved the clothing we'd slept on and put the back seats up, we all climbed in, Brook in front and Wright and I in the back. "Okay," she said, "what do you want to talk about?"

"We need help," I told her. "I need to find adult Ina who will help me get rid of these a.s.sa.s.sins and then help me learn what I need to know to do right by the family I seem to be building. So I need you to tell me whatever you can about Iosif's Ina friends and relatives."

"I told you, I don't know how to contact any of them. Outside of our community, the only ones I had phone numbers for were your mothers."

"But you would have heard of others," I said. "Whether or not you know how to reach them, you would have heard their names, maybe met them."

She shook her head. "Iosif was unusual because he was so alone. He was too young to take part in the various Ina council meetings, and he had no elderfathers to represent his family. His brothers and his fathers, like his mothers and sisters, are all dead. Most of his relatives used to be scattered around Romania and Russia and Hungary. They died during the twentieth century-most of them during and after World War II when a lot of European Ina were killed. His sisters died with his mothers during the war. The n.a.z.is got them. And his brothers and fathers were killed later by the Communists. They were some kind of n.o.bility-had a lot of land taken from them before the war. Afterward, with all the destruction, I guess there was nothing left to take but their lives. Iosif was barely able to get out. They all should have left well before the war, but they were stubborn. They said no one would drive them from their homes."

"Were all Ina originally based in Romania-Transylvania?"

"No, they've been scattered all over Europe and the Middle East for millennia, or so their records say. They claim to have written records that go back more than ten thousand years. Iosif told me about them. I think he believed what he was saying, but I never quite believed him. Ten thousand years!" She shook her head. "Written history just doesn't go back that far. Anyway, now Ina are scattered all over the world. You just happen to be descended from people who lived in what Iosif used to call 'vampire country.' I think some of your ancestors there were outed and executed as vampires a few centuries ago. Iosif used to joke about it in a bitter way. He said that, physically, he and most Ina fit in badly wherever they go-tall, ultrapale, lean, wiry people. They usually looked like foreigners, and when times got bad, they were treated like foreigners-suspected, disliked, driven out, or killed."

"He told Wright and me that there is an Ina theory that claims the Ina were sent here from another world."

"Yes, that's something young Ina have come up with. They read and go to movies and pick up and adapt whatever's current. For a while, there was an idea that Ina were angels of some kind. And there's the old standby legend of the Ina being sent here by a great mother G.o.ddess. You're all supposed to be stuck here until you prove yourselves," she said. "Did Iosif tell you that one?"

"He did," Wright said. "It's a little like Christianity."

"It isn't, really," Brook said. "They're not supposed to go home in some spiritual way after they die. Some future generation of them is supposed to leave this world en ma.s.se and go to paradise-or back to the homeworld. It might be mythology or it might be that you and I have finally found-and joined-those extraterrestrial aliens that people keep claiming to spot on lonely back roads."

Wright laughed. Then he stopped laughing and shook his head. "There's another intelligent species here on Earth, and they're vampires. What am I laughing at?"

I took his hand and held it, looking at him. He looked at me, put his head back against the seat, and curled his fingers around my hand.

"Didn't other Ina visit Iosif?" I asked. "Did you ever meet others?"

She nodded. "That was scary sometimes."

"Why?"

"Because not everyone treats symbionts as people. I didn't realize that until I'd been with Iosif for a few years, but it's true. I remember one guest-actually, he came back recently to negotiate with Iosif for an introduction to you and your sisters. You weren't old enough yet, but he hoped to win all three of you for himself and his brothers when you came of age. That was never going to happen because your father was smart enough to see what he was."

"There were three of us?" I said, my mind latching on to this new bit of information about my past, about my family. "I didn't know that. I asked Iosif, but I was asking him so many questions ... he never got around to answering that one."

"There were three of you. This was not a man Iosif would ever have introduced to you or your sisters. This man liked to ... amuse himself with other Ina's symbionts. He was very careful and protective of his own, but he liked sending them among us with instructions to start trouble, raise suspicions and jealousies, start fights. He liked to watch arguments and fights. His symbionts were so good, so subtle that we didn't realize what was happening at first. It excited the h.e.l.l out of him when two of Radu's symbionts almost killed one another. He got something s.e.xual out of watching. The symbionts would have died if they hadn't been symbionts-but then, they never would have been endangered if they hadn't been symbionts."

"Radu," I said, remembering that Iosif had mentioned the name.

"Your brothers were Stefan, Vasile, Mihai, and Radu. It was your father's right to name them, and he named them for the dead-his two brothers and two of his fathers who died in Romania. Your mothers liked plainer, American-sounding names. Your sisters were Barbara and Helen. You were lucky. Your human mother claimed the right to name you." She smiled. "'Shori' is the name of a kind of bird-an East African crested nightingale. It's a nice name."

"Oh," Wright said. We looked at each other, then I reached into my shirt and pulled out the gold chain with the crested bird.

"Was this mine before?" I asked, showing it to her. "Wright found it in the rubble of my mothers' houses."

She turned the car's interior light on and looked at the bird, then looked at me. "Your human mother gave you this. I think she loved you as though she had given birth to you herself. Her name was Jessica Margaret Grant."

Jessica Margaret Grant. I shut my eyes and tried to find something of this woman in my memory-something. But there was nothing. All of my life had been erased, and I could not bring it back. Each time I was confronted with the reality of this, it was like turning to go into what should have been a familiar, welcoming place and finding absolutely nothing, emptiness, s.p.a.ce.

After a moment, I said, "I wouldn't want to meet the Ina you described. What about others? Who's visited Iosif or one of my brothers recently?"

Brook frowned. "There was one a few months ago. He and Vasile owned some sort of business together. He was interested in joining with you and your sisters, and Vasile thought it might be a good match. Iosif was willing to be convinced so this man-what was his name? One of the Gordon family ... Daniel Gordon! He had his brothers come to see us. Their ancestors were English, I think. They immigrated first to Canada, then to the United States. All the symbionts of Iosif's community were told to notice them, notice their behavior, talk to their symbionts, and listen to them. We did, and no one spotted anything bad. They seemed to be good, normal people. Shori, you met them yourself and liked them, even though it was way too soon for you to mate. They had heard about you and they wanted to meet you. Iosif went down, collected you, and brought you to stay with us for a few days."

"All because of my dark skin?" I said.

"That's the most obvious reason. You're not only able to stay completely awake and alert during the day, but you don't burn."

"I burn."

"You didn't yesterday."

"I blistered a little. I tried to keep covered up, and it was cloudy yesterday. Did the brothers like me?"

"Have you healed?" Wright asked, interrupting. "I meant to buy you some sunscreen, but I forgot."

"I healed," I said and wondered what all this talk of my mating was doing to him. I looked at him but couldn't read anything more than mild concern in his expression as he examined my face-probably for burns.

"The Gordon brothers were delighted with you," Brook said. "They wished you were a little older, but they were willing to wait. They planned to go down to meet your sisters and your mothers. I don't know whether or not that had happened, but it would have been necessary. Your mothers would have to meet the whole Gordon family and then give or refuse their consent."