Fledgling

by Butler, Octavia

  As quickly as I could, I crossed the room to the bed, turned his face to the pillow, grabbed his hands, dropped my weight onto him, and bit him.

  He bucked and struggled, and I worried that if he kept it up, he would either buck me off or force me to break his bones. But I had already bitten him once. He should be ready to listen to me.

  “Be still,” I whispered, “and be quiet.”

  And he obeyed. He lay still and silent while I took a little more of his blood. Then I sat up and looked around. His door was closed, but there were people in the room next to his. I had heard their breathing when I was outside—two people. On the other hand, because his closet and theirs separated the two rooms, I could barely hear them now. Maybe they wouldn’t hear us.

  “Sit up and keep your voice low,” I said to the gunman. “What’s your name?” He put his hand to his neck. “What did you do?” he whispered.

  What’s your name?” I repeated. “Raleigh Curtis.”

  “Who else is in this house?”

  “My brother. My sister-in-law. Their kid.” “So is this their house?”

  “Yeah. I got laid off my job, so they let me stay here.” “All right. Why did you shoot me, Raleigh?”

  He squinted, trying to see me in the dark, then reached for his bed-side lamp. “No,” I said. “No light. Just talk to me.”

  “I didn’t know what you were,” he said. “You just shot out of nowhere. I thought you were some kind of wild cat.” He paused. “Hey, do that thing again on my neck.”

  I shrugged. Why not? He would definitely be sick the next day, but I didn’t care. I took a little more of his blood while he lay back trembling and writhing and whispering over and over, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  When I stopped, he begged, “Do it some more. Jesus, that’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life.” “No more now,” I said. “Talk to me. You said you shot me because I scared you.”

  “Yeah. Where’d you come from like that?”

  “Why were you aiming your rifle at the man? He didn’t scare you.” “Had to.”

  “Why?”

  He frowned and rubbed his head. “Had to.” “Tell me why.”

  He hesitated, still frowning. “He was there. He shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t his property.” “It wasn’t yours either.” This was only a guess, but it seemed reasonable.

  “He shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Why was it your job to drive him off or kill him?” Silence.

  “Tell me why.” After three bites, he should have been eager to tell me. Instead, he almost seemed to be in pain.

  He held his head between his hands and whimpered. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “I want to, but I can’t. My head hurts.”

  Something occurred to me suddenly. “Did you see the man in the helicopter?”

  He put his face into the pillow, whimpering. “I saw him,” he said, his voice muffled, barely understandable.

  “When did he come? Thursday night?”

  He looked up at me, gray-faced, and rubbed his neck, not where I had bitten him, but on the opposite side. “Yeah. Thursday.”

  “Did he see you, talk to you?”

  He moaned, face twisted in pain. He seemed to be about to cry. “Please don’t ask me. I can’t say. I

  can’t say.”

  The man, the male of my kind, had found him, bitten him, and ordered him to guard the ruin and not tell anyone why he was doing it. But what was there to guard? What was there to shoot a person over?

  In spite of myself, I began to feel sorry for Raleigh. His head probably did hurt. He was torn between obeying me and obeying the man from the helicopter. That kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. Just thinking about it made me intensely uncomfortable, and, of course, I didn’t know why. I waited, hoping

  to remember more. But there was no more, except that I began to feel ashamed of myself, began to feel as though I owed Raleigh an apology.

  “Raleigh.” “Yeah?”

  “It’s all right. I won’t ask you about the man in the helicopter any more. It’s all right.”

  “Okay.” He looked as though he hadn’t taken a breath for too long, and now, suddenly, he could breathe again. He also looked like he was no longer in pain.

  “I want to meet the man in the helicopter,” I said. “If he comes to you again, I want you to tell him about me.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him I bit you. Tell him I want to meet him. Tell him I’ll come back to the burned houses next Friday night. And tell him I didn’t know that you . . . that you knew him. If he asks you any questions about me, it’s okay to answer. All right?”

  “Yeah. What’s your name?”

  Good question. “Don’t bother about a name. Describe me to him. I think he’ll know. And don’t tell anyone else about either of us. Make up lies if you have to.”

  “Okay.”

  I started to get up, but he caught my hand. Then he let it go. “That thing you did,” he said, touching the spot I’d bitten. “That was really good.”

  “It will probably make you feel weak and sick for a while,” I said. “I’m sorry for that. You’ll be all right in a couple of days.”

  “Worth it,” he said.

  And I left feeling better, feeling as though he’d forgiven me. Whoever I was before, it seemed I had had strong beliefs about what was right and what wasn’t. It wasn’t right to bite someone who had already been claimed by another of my kind. Certainly it hadn’t been all right to drain Raleigh to the point of sickness when he wasn’t truly responsible for shooting me. Why on earth would one of my own people take the chance of being responsible for a pointless shooting, perhaps even a death?

  I jogged back toward the ruin. Eight chimneys, much burned rubble, a few standing timbers and remnant walls. That’s what was left. Why did it need guarding? The guarding should have come before the fire when it might have done some good.

  Finally, I jogged over to the unblocked part of the private road, coming out where Wright and I had parked the night before. I heard him coming—heard him stop down at the gate, then start again. I waited, making sure it was his car and not some stranger’s. The moment I recognized the car and caught his

  scent, I could hardly wait to see him. The instant he stopped the car, I pulled the passenger door open and slid inside.

  He was there, smelling worried and nervous. And somehow he didn’t see me until I was sitting next to him, closing the door.

  He jumped, then grabbed me and yanked me into a huge hug.

  I found myself laughing as he examined me, checked my leg, then the rest of me. “I’m fine,” I said, and

  kissed him and felt alarmingly glad to see him. “Let’s go home,” I said at last. “I want a hot bath, and then

  I want you.”

  He held me in his lap, and I was surprised that he had managed to move me there without my realizing it. “Anytime,” he said. “Now, if you like.”

  I kissed his throat. “Not now. Let’s go home.”

  seven

  A week later, we went back to the ruin.

  I wanted Wright to park the car beside the gate to the private road. I thought it would be safest for him

  to stay with the car while I went in alone. But I had told him the little that Raleigh Curtis had told me, and

  Wright was adamant. He was going with me.

  “You don’t know what this guy will do,” he said. “What if he just grabs you and takes you away with him? Hell, what if he’s the one who torched those houses to begin with?”

  “He’s of my kind,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t know anything about me, he’ll probably know someone who does. Or at least he can tell me about my people. I have to know who I am, Wright, and what I am.”

  “Then I have to go with you,” he said. “And I think I’d better take my nice new rifle along.”

  I had not made any effort to get Raleigh Curtis’s rifle back to him. If he didn’t hav
e it, he couldn’t shoot some exploring stranger with it. Wright had kept the gun and had gone out and bought bullets for it.

  “This guy is a man of your kind,” he told me. “An adult male who is probably a lot bigger and stronger than you. I’m telling you, Renee, he might just decide to do what he wants with you no matter what you want.”

  He was afraid of losing me, afraid this other man would take me from him. He might be right. And he was probably right in thinking that the man would be bigger and stronger than I was.

  That last possibility was enough to make me want Wright to stay with me and keep the gun handy. We left his cabin well before sunset because he wanted to get a look at the ruin in something more than starlight. To be sure he would be able to see well, he took along a flashlight zipped in his jacket pocket—the pocket that wasn’t full of bullets.

  With my jeans, my shirt, and my hooded jacket, I was reasonably well covered up so I didn’t mind the daylight. It was a gray day anyway, with rain threatening but not yet falling. That kind of light was much easier on my eyes than direct sunlight.

  “He won’t be there yet,” I told Wright as he drove. “If he’s coming, he’ll show up after sundown.” “If?” Wright asked.

  “Maybe Raleigh didn’t see him and couldn’t pass along my message. Maybe he’s not interested in meeting me. Maybe he had something else to do.”

  “Maybe you’re getting nervous about meeting him,” Wright said.

  I was, so I didn’t answer.

  “You should have gotten Raleigh’s phone number. Then you could have called and asked him if he’d passed on your message.”

  “He might not tell me,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d trust him to tell me the truth on the phone.” I stopped suddenly and turned to face him. “Wright . . . listen, if this guy bites you, you tell him whatever he wants to know. Do that, okay?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be letting him bite me.” “But if he does. If he does.”

  “Okay.” And after a moment, “You don’t want me to suffer like Raleigh did, is that it?” “I don’t want you to suffer.”

  He gave me a strange little smile. “That’s good to know.”

  We went on for a few minutes, then turned down the side road. By the time we reached the gate, we should have been close enough to the ruin for me to get a good scent picture of it, if only the wind had been blowing toward us.

  “Wait here,” I said when we reached the gate. “I’m going to make sure Raleigh or someone else isn’t waiting for us with another gun.”

  He grabbed me around the waist. “Whoa,” he said. “You don’t need to be shot again.”

  I was half out of the car, but I stopped and turned back toward him into his arms. “I’ll circle around and get whatever scents there are,” I said.

  “Stay here. Don’t make noise unless you need help.” And I slipped away from him.

  I ran around the area, stopping now and then, trying to hear, see, and scent everything. As I expected, there was no helicopter yet. Raleigh had not been near the place recently. Someone else had, but I didn’t recognize his scent. It was a young man, not of my kind, not carrying a gun. But he wasn’t there now. No one was there now.

  I went back to the gate where I’d left Wright and managed to surprise him again. He’d gotten out of the car and was leaning against the gate.

  “Good God, woman!” he said when I caught his arm. “Make some noise when you walk.”

  I laughed. “No one’s there. This whole night might turn out to be a waste of time, but let’s go in anyway.” We got back into the car and drove in. At the ruin, we spent our time looking though the rubble and

  finding a few unburned or partially burned things:a pen, forks and spoons, a pair of scissors, a small jar of buttons ... I recognized everything I found until I discovered a small silver-colored thing on the ground near where Wright had piled burned wood to wall me into my shelter. It must have been under the wood that I had pushed aside when I broke out.

  “It’s a crucifix,” Wright told me when I showed it to him. “It must have been worn by one of the people who lived here. Or maybe the arsonist lost it.” He gave a humorless smile. “You never know who’s liable to turn out to be religious.”

  “But what is it?” I asked. “What’s a crucifix? I kept running across that word when I was reading about vampires, but none of the writers ever explained what it was except to say that it scared off vampires.”

  He put it back into my hand. “This one’s real silver, I think. Does it bother you to hold it?”

  “It doesn’t. It’s a tiny man stuck to a tiny “†”-shaped thing. And there’s a loop at the top. I think it used to be attached to something.”

  “Probably a chain,” he said. “Another perfectly good vampire superstition down the drain.” “What?”

  “This is a religious symbol, Renee—an important one. It’s supposed to hurt vampires because vampires are supposed to be evil. According to every vampire movie I’ve ever seen, you should not only be afraid of it but it should burn your skin if it touches you.”

  “It isn’t hot.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry about it. It’s just movie bullshit.” He went to look around the chimneys and examine broken, discolored remains of water heaters, sinks, bathtubs, and refrigerators. As I looked around, I realized that some of the houses were missing sinks and tubs, and I wondered. Perhaps people had come here when Raleigh wasn’t on guard and taken them away. Or perhaps Raleigh and his relatives had taken them. But why? Who would want such things?

  Then Wright found something outside the houses more than half buried in the ground near one of the chimneys: a gleaming gold chain with a little gold bird attached to it—a crested bird with wings spread as though it were flying.

  “I’m surprised something like this is still here,” he said. “I’ll bet plenty of people have been through here, picking up souvenirs.” He wiped the thing on his shirt, then let it side like liquid into my hand.

  “Pretty,” I said, examining it. “Let me put it on you.”

  I thought about whether I wanted the property of a person who was probably dead around my neck, but then shrugged, handed it back to him, and let him put it on me. He wanted to. And he seemed to like the effect once it was on.

  “Your hair is growing out,” he said. “This is just what you need to decorate yourself a little.”

  My hair was growing out, crinkly and black and about an inch long, and my head was no longer disfigured by broken places. I’d had Wright trim the one patch of hair that hadn’t been burned off so that now it was all growing out fairly evenly. I thought I almost looked female again.

  “Did you ever think I was a boy?” I asked him. “I mean when you stopped for me on the road that first time?”

  “No, I never did,” he said. “I should have, I guess. You were almost bald and wearing filthy, ill-fitting clothes that could have been a man’s. But when I first saw you in the headlights, I thought,‘What a lovely, elfin little girl. What in hell is she doing out here by herself?’”

  “Elfin?”

  “Like an elf. According to some stories, an elf is a short, slender, magical being—another mythical

  creature. Maybe I’ll run into one of them on a dark road someday.”

  I laughed. Then I heard the helicopter. “He’s coming,” I said. “It’s early for him to be awake and out. He must be eager to meet me.”

  “I don’t hear a thing,” Wright said, “but I’ll take your word for it. Shall I get out of sight?”

  “No. You couldn’t hide your scent from him. Let’s wait over by that largest chimney.” It was a big brick chimney that rose from a massive double fireplace. It might shelter us if our visitor decided to try to shoot us.

  The copter didn’t bother about landing in the meadow this time. I wondered why he had landed there before. Habit? Or was this stranger someone who would have come to visit the eight houses when they were intact and occupied?
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  The copter, looking like a large, misshapen bug, landed in what Wright said must have once been a big vegetable garden. He had been able to identify several of the scorched, mostly dead plants. The copter crushed a number of the survivors—cabbages and potatoes mostly.

  The pilot jumped out, ducked under the rotors, and looked around. Once he spotted us, he came straight toward us. Wright, who had been checking the rifle, now stood straight, watching the stranger intently. I watched him, too. He was a tall, spidery man, empty-handed, and visibly my kind except that he was blond and very pale-skinned—not just light-skinned like Wright, but as white as the pages of Wright’s books. Even so, apart from color, if I ever grew tall, I would look much like him—tall and lean, probably not elfin at all.