Fledgling

I awoke to darkness. I was hungry—starving!—and I was in pain. There was nothing in my world but hunger and pain, no other people, no other time, no other feelings.

I was lying on something hard and uneven, and it hurt me. One side of me was hot, burning. I tried to drag myself away from the heat source, whatever it was, moving slowly, feeling my way until I found coolness, smoothness, less pain.

It hurt to move. It hurt even to breathe. My head pounded and throbbed, and I held it between my

hands, whimpering. The sound of my voice, even the touch of my hands seemed to make the pain worse. In two places my head felt crusty and lumpy and . . . almost soft.

And I was so hungry.

The hunger was a violent twisting inside me. I curled my empty, wounded body tightly, knees against chest, and whimpered in pain. I clutched at whatever I was lying on. After a time, I came to understand, to remember, that what I was lying on should have been a bed. I remembered little by little what a bed was. My hands were grasping not at a mattress, not at pillows, sheets, or blankets, but at things that I didn’t recognize, at first. Hardness, powder, something light and brittle. Gradually, I understood that I must be lying on the ground—on stone, earth, and perhaps dry leaves.

The worst was, no matter where I looked, there was no hint of light. I couldn’t see my own hands as I held them up in front of me. Was it so dark, then? Or was there something wrong with my eyes? Was I blind?

I lay in the dark, trembling. What if I were blind?

Then I heard something coming toward me, something large and noisy, some animal. I couldn’t see it, but after a moment, I could smell it. It smelled . . . not exactly good, but at least edible. Starved as I was, I was in no condition to hunt. I lay trembling and whimpering as the pain of my hunger grew and eclipsed everything.

It seemed that I should be able to locate the creature by the noise it was making. Then, if it wasn’t frightened off by the noise I was making, maybe I could catch it and kill it and eat it.

Or maybe not. I tried to get up, fell back, groaning, discovering all over again how badly every part of my body hurt. I lay still, trying to keep quiet, trying to relax my body and not tremble. And the creature wandered closer.

I waited. I knew I couldn’t chase it, but if it came close enough, I might really be able to get my hands on it.

After what seemed a long time, it found me. It came to me like a tame thing, and I lay almost out of control, trembling and gasping, and thinking only, food! So much food. It touched my face, my wrist, my throat, causing me pain somehow each time it touched me and making noises of its own.

The pain of my hunger won over all my other pain. I discovered that I was strong in spite of all the things that were wrong with me. I seized the animal. It fought me, tore at me, struggled to escape, but I had it. I clung to it, rode it, found its throat, tasted its blood, smelled its terror. I tore at its throat with my teeth until it collapsed. Then, at last, I fed, gorged myself on the fresh meat that I needed.

I ate as much meat as I could. Then, my hunger sated and my pain dulled, I slept alongside what remained of my prey.

When I awoke, my darkness had begun to give way. I could see light again, and I could see blurred shadowy shapes that blocked the light. I didn’t know what the shapes were, but I could see them. I began to believe then that my eyes had been injured somehow, but that they were healing. After a while there was too much light. It burned not only my eyes, but my skin.

I turned away from the light, dragged myself and my prey farther into the cool dimness that seemed to be so close to me, but took so much effort to reach. When I had gone far enough to escape the light, I fed again, slept again, awoke, and fed. I lost count of the number of times I did this. But after a while, something went wrong with the meat. It began to smell so bad that, even though I was still hungry, I couldn’t make myself touch it again. In fact, the smell of it was making me sick. I needed to get away from it. I remembered enough to understand that it was rotting. Meat rotted after a while, it stank and the insects got into it.

I needed fresh meat.

My injuries seemed to be healing, and it was easier for me to move around. I could see much better, especially when there wasn’t so much light. I had come to remember sometime during one of my meals that the time of less light was called night and that I preferred it to the day. I wasn’t only healing, I was remembering things. And now, at least during the night, I could hunt.

My head still hurt, throbbed dully most of the time, but the pain was bearable. It was not the agony it had been.

I got wet as soon as I crawled out of my shelter where the remains of my prey lay rotting. I sat still for a while, feeling the wetness—water falling on my head, my back, and into my lap. After a while, I understood that it was raining—raining very hard. I could not recall feeling rain on my skin before—water falling from the sky, gently pounding my skin.

I decided I liked it. I climbed to my feet slowly, my knees protesting the movement with individual outbursts of pain. Once I was up, I stood still for a while, trying to get used to balancing on my legs. I held on to the rocks that happened to be next to me and stood looking around, trying to understand

where I was. I was standing on the side of a hill, from which rose a solid, vertical mass of rock. I had to look at these things, let the sight of them remind me what they were called—the hillside, the rock face, the trees—pine?—that grew on the hill as far as the sheer wall of rock. I saw all this, but still, I had no idea where I was or where I should be or how I had come to be there or even why I was there—there was so much that I didn’t know.

The rain came down harder. It still seemed good to me. I let it wash away my prey’s blood and my own, let it clean off the crust of dirt that I had picked up from where I had lain. When I was a little cleaner, I cupped my hands together, caught water in them, and drank it. That was so good that I spent a long time just catching rain and drinking it.

After a while, the rain lessened, and I decided that it was time for me to go. I began to walk down the hill. It wasn’t an easy walk at first. My knees still hurt, and it was hard for me to keep my balance. I stopped once and looked back. I could see then that I had come from a shallow hill-side cave. It was almost invisible to me now, concealed behind a screen of trees. It had been a good place to hide and heal. It had kept me safe, that small hidden place. But how had I come to be in it? Where had I come from? How had I been hurt and left alone, starving? And now that I was better, where should I go?

I wandered, not aware of going anywhere in particular, except down the hill. I knew no other people, could remember no other people. I frowned, picking my way among the trees, bushes, and rocks over the wet ground. I was recognizing things now, at least by category—bushes, rocks, mud . . . I tried to remember something more about myself—anything that had happened to me before I awoke in the cave. Nothing at all occurred to me.

As I walked, it suddenly occurred to me that my feet were bare. I was walking carefully, not stepping on anything that would hurt me, but I could see and understand now that my feet and legs were bare. I knew I should have shoes on. In fact, I knew I should be dressed. But I was bare all over. I was naked.

I stopped and looked at myself. My skin was scarred, badly scarred over every part of my body that I could see. The scars were broad, creased, shiny patches of mottled red-brown skin. Had I always been scarred? Was my face scarred? I touched one of the broad scars across my abdomen, then touched my face. It felt the same. My face might be scarred. I wondered how I looked. I felt my head and discovered that I had almost no hair. I had touched my head, expecting hair. There should have been hair. But I was bald except for a small patch of hair on the back of my head. And higher up on my head there was a misshapen place, an indentation that hurt when I touched it and seemed even more wrong

than my hairlessness or my scars. I remembered discovering, as I lay in the cave, that my head felt lumpy and soft in two places, as though the flesh had been damaged and the skull broken. There was no softness now. My head, like the rest of me, was healing.

Somehow, I had been hurt very badly, and yet I couldn’t remember how.

I needed to remember and I needed to cover myself. Being naked had seemed completely normal until I

became aware of it. Then it seemed intolerable. But most important, I needed to eat again.

I resumed my downhill walk. Eventually I came to flatter, open land—farmland with something growing in some of the fields and other fields, already harvested or empty for some other reason. Again, I was remembering things—fragments—understanding a little of what I saw, perhaps just because I saw it.

Off to one side there was a collection of what I gradually recognized as the burned remains of several houses and outbuildings. All of these had been burned so thoroughly that as far as I could see, they offered no real shelter. This had been a little village surrounded by farmland and woods. There were animal pens and the good smells of animals that could be eaten, but the pens were empty. I thought the

place must once have provided comfortable homes for several people. That felt right. It felt like something I would want—living together with other people instead of wandering alone. The idea was a little frightening, though. I didn’t know any other people. I knew they existed, but thinking about them, wondering about them scared me almost as much as it interested me.

People had lived in these houses sometime not long ago. Now plants had begun to grow and to cover the burned spaces. Where were the people who had lived here? Had I lived here?

It occurred to me that I had come to this place hoping to kill an animal and eat it. Somehow, I had expected to find food here. And yet I remembered nothing about this place. I recognized nothing except in the most general way—animal pens, fields, burned remnants of buildings. So why would I expect to find food here? How had I known to come here? Either I had visited here before or this place had been my home. If it was my home, why didn’t I recognize it as home? Had my injuries come from the fire that destroyed this place? I had an endless stream of questions and no answers.

I turned away, meaning to go back into the trees and hunt an animal—a deer, I thought suddenly. The word came into my thoughts, and at once, I knew what a deer was. It was a large animal. It would provide meat for several meals.

Then I stopped. As hungry as I was, I wanted to go down and take a closer look at the burned houses. They must have something to do with me or they would not hold my interest the way they did.

I walked down toward the burned buildings. I might at least be able to find something to wear. I was not cold. Even walking in the rain had not made me cold, but I wanted clothing badly. I felt very vulnerable without it. I did not want to be naked when I found other people, and I thought I must, sooner or later, find other people.

Eight of the buildings had been large houses. Their fireplaces, sinks, and bathtubs told me that much. I walked through each of them, hoping to see something familiar, something that triggered a memory, a memory about people. In one, at the bottom of a pile of charred rubble, I found a pair of jeans that were only burned a little at the bottoms of the legs, and I found three slightly burned shirts that were wearable. All of it was too large in every way—too broad, too long... Another person my size would have fit easily into the shirts with me. And there were no wearable underwear, no wearable shoes. And, of course, there was nothing to eat.

Feeding my hunger suddenly became more important than anything. I put on the pants and two of the shirts. I used the third shirt to keep the pants up, tying it around my waist and turning the top of the pants down over it. I rolled up the legs of the pants, then I went back into the trees. After a time I scented a doe. I stalked her, killed her, ate as much of her flesh as I could. I took part of the carcass up a tree with me to keep it safe from scavenging animals. I slept in the tree for a while.

Then the sun rose, and it burned my skin and my eyes. I climbed down and used a tree branch and my hands to dig a shallow trench. When I finished it, I lay down in it and covered myself with leaf litter and earth. That and my clothing—I folded one of my shirts over my face—proved to be enough of a shield to protect me from sunlight.

I lived that way for the next three days and nights, eating, hunting, examining the ruin during the night, and hiding myself in the earth during the day. Sometimes I slept. Sometimes I lay awake, listening to the sounds around me. I couldn’t identify most of them, but I listened.

On the fourth night curiosity and restlessness got the better of me. I had begun to feel dissatisfied, hungry for something other than deer flesh. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I went exploring. That was how, for the first time in my memory, I met another person.

two

It was raining again—a steady, gentle rain that had been coming down for some time.

I had discovered a paved road that led away from the burned houses. I had walked on it for some time before I remembered the word “road,” and that led to my remembering cars and trucks, although I hadn’t yet seen either. The road I was on led to a metal gate, which I climbed over, then to another, slightly wider road, and I had to choose a direction. I chose the downslope direction and walked along for a while in contentment until I came to a third still wider road. Again, I chose to go down-hill. It was easier to walk along the road than to pick my way through the rocks, trees, underbrush, and creeks, although the pavement was hard against my bare feet.

A blue car came along the road behind me, and I walked well to one side so that I could look at it, and it would pass me without hitting me. It couldn’t have been the first car I had ever seen. I knew that because I recognized it as a car and found nothing surprising about it. But it was the first car I could remember seeing.

I was surprised when the car stopped alongside me.

The person inside was, at first, just a face, shoulders, a pair of hands. Then I understood that I was seeing a young man, pale-skinned, brown-haired, broad, and tall. His hair brushed against the top of the inside of his car. His shoulders were so broad that even alone in the car, he looked crowded. His car seemed to fit him almost as badly as my clothing fitted me. He lowered his window, looked out at me, and asked, “Are you all right?”

I heard the words, but at first, they meant nothing at all. They were noise. After a moment, though, they seemed to click into place as language.

I understood them. It took me a moment longer before I realized that I should answer. I couldn’t remember ever speaking to another person, and at first, I wasn’t sure I could do it.

I opened my mouth, cleared my throat, coughed, then finally managed to say, “I ... am. Yes, I am all right.” My voice sounded strange and hoarse to my own ears. It wasn’t only that I couldn’t recall speaking to anyone else. I couldn’t remember ever speaking at all. Yet it seemed that I knew how.

“No, you’re not,” the man said. “You’re soaking wet and filthy, and ... God, how old are you?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I didn’t have any idea how old I was or why my age should matter.

“Is that blood on your shirt?” he asked.

I looked down. “I killed a deer,” I said. In all, I had killed two deer. And I did have their blood on my clothing. The rain hadn’t washed it away.

He stared at me for several seconds. “Look, is there someplace I can take you? Do you have family or friends somewhere around here?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You shouldn’t be out here in the middle of the night in the rain!” he said. “You can’t be any more than ten or eleven. Where are you going?”

“Just walking,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. Where was I going? Where would he think I should be going? Home, perhaps. “Home,” I lied. “I’m going home.” Then I wondered why I had lied. Was it important for this stranger to think that I had a home and was going there? Or was it only that I didn’t want him to realize how little I knew about myself, about anything?

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “Get in.”

I surprised myself completely by instantly wanting to go with him. I went around to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. Then I stopped, confused. “I don’t really have a home,” I said. I closed the door and stepped back.

He leaned over and opened the door. “Look,” he said, “I can’t leave you out here. You’re a kid, for Godsake. Come on, I’ll at least take you some-place dry.” He reached into the backseat and picked up a big piece of thick cloth. “Here’s a blanket. Get in and wrap up.”

I wasn’t uncomfortable. Being wet didn’t bother me, and I wasn’t cold.

Yet I wanted to get into the car with him. I didn’t want him to drive away without me. Now that I’d had a few more moments to absorb his scent I realized he smelled ... really interesting. Also, I didn’t want to stop talking to him. I felt almost as hungry for conversation as I was for food. A taste of it had only whetted my appetite.

I wrapped the blanket around me and got into the car.

“Did someone hurt you?” he asked when he had gotten the car moving again. “Were you in someone’s car?”

“I was hurt,” I said. “I’m all right now.”

He glanced at me. “Are you sure? I can take you to a hospital.”

“I don’t need a hospital,” I said quickly, even though, at first, I wasn’t sure what a hospital was. Then I knew that it was a place where the sick and injured were taken for care. There would be a lot of people all around me at a hospital. That was enough to make it frightening. “No hospital.”

Another glance. “Okay,” he said. “What’s your name?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. After a while, I admitted, “I don’t know what my name is. I

don’t remember.”

He glanced at me several times before saying anything about that. After a while he said, “Okay, you don’t want to tell me, then. Did you run away? Get tired of home and strike out on your own?”

“I don’t think so,” I frowned. “I don’t think I would do that. I don’t remember, really, but that doesn’t feel like something I would do.”

There was another long silence. “You really don’t remember? You’re not kidding?” “I’m not. My . . . my injuries are healed now, but I still don’t remember things.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “You really don’t know what your own name is?” “That’s right.”

“Then you do need a hospital.”

“No, I don’t. No!”

“Why? The doctors there might be able to help you.”

Might they? Then why did the idea of going among them scare me so? I knew absolutely that I didn’t want to put myself into the hands of strangers. I didn’t want to be even near large numbers of strangers. “No hospital,” I repeated.

Again, he didn’t say anything, but this time, there was something different about his silence. I looked at him and suddenly believed that he meant to deliver me to a hospital anyway, and I panicked. I unfastened the seat belt that he had insisted I buckle and pushed aside the blanket. I turned to open the car door. He grabbed my arm before I could figure out how to get it open. He had huge hands that wrapped completely around my arm. He pulled me back, pulled me hard against the little low wall that divided his legs from mine.

He scared me. I was less than half his size, and he meant to force me to go where I didn’t want to go. I pulled away from him, dodged his hand as he grasped at me, tried again to open the door, only to be caught again.

I caught his wrist, squeezed it, and yanked it away from my arm. He yelped, said “Shit!” and managed to rub his wrist with the hand still holding the steering wheel. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

I put my back against the door that I had been trying to open. “Are you going to take me to the hospital even though I don’t want to go?” I asked.

He nodded, still rubbing his wrist. “The hospital or the police station. Your choice.”

“Neither!” Being turned over to the police scared me even more than the idea of going to the hospital did. I turned to try again to get the door open.

And again, he grasped my left upper arm, pulling me back from the door. His fingers wrapped all the way around my upper arm and held me tightly, pulling me away from the door. I understood him a little better now that I’d had my hands on him. I thought I could break his wrist if I wanted to. He was big but not

that strong. Or, at least, I was stronger. But I didn’t want to break his bones. He seemed to want to help me, although he didn’t know how. And he did smell good. I didn’t have the words to say how good he smelled. Breaking his bones would be wrong.

I bit him—just a quick bite and release on the meaty part of his hand where his thumb was. “Goddamnit!” he shouted, jerking his hand away. Then he made another grab for me before I could get

the door open. There were several buttons on the door, and I didn’t know which of them would make it

open. None of them seemed to work. That gave him a chance to get his hand on me a third time.

“Be still!” he ordered and gave me a hard shake. “You’ll kill yourself! If you’re crazy enough to try to jump out of a moving car, you should be in mental hospital.”

I stared down at the bleeding marks I’d made on his hand, and suddenly I was unable to think about anything else. I ducked my head and licked away the blood, licked the wound I had made. He tensed, almost pulling his hand away. Then he stopped, seemed to relax. He let me take his hand between my own. I looked at him, saw him glancing at me, felt the car zigzag a little on the road.

He frowned and pulled away from me, all the while looking uncertain, unhappy. I caught his hand again between mine and held it. I felt him try to pull away. He shook me, actually lifting me into the air a little,

trying to get away from me, but I didn’t let go. I licked at the blood welling up where my teeth had cut him.

He made a noise, a kind of gasp. Abruptly, he drove completely across the road to a spot where there was room to stop the car without blocking other cars—the few other cars that came along. He made a huge fist of the hand that was no longer needed to steer the car. I watched him draw it back to hit me. I thought I should be afraid, should try to stop him, but I was calm. Somehow, I couldn’t believe he would hit me.

He frowned, shook his head. After a while he dropped his hand to his lap and glared at me. “What are you doing?” he demanded, watching me, not pulling away at all now, but looking as though he wanted to—or as though he thought he should want to.

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t getting enough blood from his hand. I wanted to bite him again, but I didn’t want him afraid or angry. I didn’t know why I cared about that, but it seemed important. Also, I knew hands weren’t as good for getting blood as wrists and throats were. I looked at him and saw that he was looking intently at me.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said. “It feels good. Which is weird. How do you do that?” “I don’t know,” I told him. “You taste good.”

“Do I?” He lifted me, squeezed past the division between the seats to my side of the car, and put me on his lap.

“Let me bite you again,” I whispered.

He smiled. “If I do, what will you let me do?”

I heard consent in his voice, and I hauled myself up and kissed the side of his neck, searching with my tongue and my nose for the largest blood source there. A moment later, I bit hard into the side of his neck. He convulsed and I held on to him. He writhed under me, not struggling, but holding me as I took more of his blood. I took enough blood to satisfy a hunger I hadn’t realized I had until a few moments before. I could have taken more, but I didn’t want to hurt him. He tasted wonderful, and he had fed me without trying to escape or to hurt me. I licked the bite until it stopped bleeding. I wished I could make it heal, wished I could repay him by healing him.

He sighed and held me, leaning back in his seat and letting me lean against him. “So what was that?” he asked after a while. “How did you do that? And why the hell did it feel so fantastic?”

He had enjoyed it—maybe as much as I had. I felt pleased, felt myself smile. That was right somehow. I’d done it right. That meant I’d done it before, even though I couldn’t remember.

“Keep me with you,” I said, and I knew I meant it the moment I said it. He would have a place to live. If I could go there with him, maybe the things I saw there would help me begin to get my memory back—and I would have a home.

“Do you really not have anywhere to go or anyone looking for you?” he asked.

“I don’t think I have anyone,” I said. “I don’t remember. I need to find out who I am and what happened to me and . . . and everything.”

“Do you always bite?”

I leaned back against him. “I don’t know.” “You’re a vampire, you know.”

I thought about that. The word stirred no memories. “What’s a vampire?”

He laughed. “You. You bite. You drink blood. He grimaced and shook his head. “My God, you drink blood.”

“I guess I do.” I licked at his neck.

“And you’re way too young,” he said. “Jailbait. Super jailbait.”

Since I didn’t know what “jailbait” was and I had no idea how old I was, I didn’t say anything.

“Do you remember how you got that blood on your clothes? Who else have you been chewing on?” “I killed a deer. In fact, I killed two deer.”

“Sure you did.” “Keep me with you.”

I was watching his face as I said it. He looked confused again, worried, but he held me against his body and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m not sure how I’m going to do that, but yeah. I want you with me. I don’t think I should keep you. Hell, I know I shouldn’t. But I’ll do it anyway.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be alone,” I said. “I don’t know who I should be with, though, because I

can’t remember ever having been with anyone.”

“So you’ll be with me.” He smiled and his confusion seemed to be gone. “I’ll need to call you something. What do you want to be called?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to give you a name?”

I smiled, liking him, feeling completely at ease with him. “Give me a name,” I said. I licked at his neck a little more.

“Renee,” he said. “A friend of mine told me it meant ‘reborn.’That’s sort of what’s happened to you. You’ve been reborn into a new life. You’ll probably remember your old life pretty soon, but for now, you’re Renee.” He shivered against me as I licked his neck. “Damn that feels good,” he said. Then, “I

rent a cabin from my uncle. If I take you there, you’ll have to stay inside during the day. If he and my aunt see you, they’ll probably throw us both out.”

“I can sleep during the day. I won’t go out until dark.”

“Just right for a vampire,” he said. “How did you kill those deer?” I shrugged. “Ran them down and broke their necks.”

“Uh-huh. Then what?”

“Ate some of their meat. Hid the rest in a tree until I was hungry again. Ate it until the parts I wanted were gone.”

“How did you cook it? It’s been raining like hell for the past few days. How did you find dry wood for your fire?”

“No fire. I didn’t need a fire.” “You ate the deer raw?” “Yes.”

“Oh God, no you didn’t.” Something seemed to occur to him suddenly. “Show me your knife.” I hesitated. “Knife?”

“To clean and skin the deer.” “A thing? A tool?”

“A tool for cutting, yes.” “I don’t have a knife.”

He held me away from him and stared at me. “Show me your teeth,” he said. I bared my teeth for him.

“Good God,” he said. “Are those what you bit me with?” He put his hand to his neck. “You are a damned vampire.”

“Didn’t hurt you,” I said. He looked afraid. He started to push me away, then got that confused look again and pulled me back to him. “Do vampires eat deer?” I asked. I licked at his neck again.

He raised a hand to stop me, then dropped the hand to his side. “What are you, then?” he whispered. And I said the only thing I could: “I don’t know.” I drew back, held his face between my hands, liking

him, glad that I had found him. “Help me find out.”

three

On the drive to his cabin, the man told me that his name was Wright Hamlin and that he was a construction worker. He had been a student in a nearby place called Seattle at something called the University of Washington for two years. Then he had dropped out because he didn’t know where he was heading or even where he wanted to be heading. His father had been disgusted with him and had sent him to work for his uncle who owned a construction company. He’d worked for his uncle for three years

now, and his current job was helping to build houses in a new community to the south of where he’d picked me up.

“I like the work,” he told me as he drove. “I still don’t know where I’m headed, but the work I’m doing is worth something. People will live in those houses someday.”

I understood only that he liked the work he was doing. As he told me a little about it, though, I realized I would have to be careful about taking blood from him. I understood—or perhaps remembered—that people could be weakened by blood loss. If I made Wright weak, he might get hurt. When I thought about it, I knew I would want more blood—want it as badly as I had previously wanted meat. And as I

thought about meat, I realized that I didn’t want it anymore. The idea of eating it disgusted me. Taking Wright’s blood had been the most satisfying thing I could remember doing. I didn’t know what that meant—whether it made me what Wright thought of as a vampire or not. I realized that to avoid hurting Wright, to avoid hurting anyone, I would have to find several people to take blood from. I wasn’t sure how to do that, but it had to be done.

Wright told me what he remembered about vampires—that they’re immortal unless someone stabs them in the heart with a wooden stake, and yet even without being stabbed they’re dead, or undead. Whatever that means. They drink blood, they have no reflection in mirrors, they can become bats or wolves, they turn other people into vampires either by drinking their blood or by making the convert drink the vampire’s blood. This last detail seemed to depend on which story you were reading or which movie you were watching. That was the other thing about vampires. They were fictional beings. Folklore. There

were no vampires. So what was I?

It bothered Wright that all he wanted to do now was keep me with him, that he was taking me to his home and not to the police or to a hospital. “I’m going to get into trouble,” he said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

“What will happen to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Jail, maybe. You’re so young. I should care about that. It should be scaring the hell out of me. It is scaring me, but not enough to make me dump you.”

I thought about that for a while. He had let me bite him. I knew from the way he touched me and looked at me that he would let me bite him again when I wanted to. And he would do what he could to help me find out who I was and what had happened to me.

“How can I keep you from getting into trouble?” I asked.

He shook his head. “In the long run, you probably can’t. For now, though, get down on the floor.” I looked at him.

“Get down, now. I can’t let my uncle and aunt or the neighbors see you.”

I slid from the seat and curled myself up on the floor of his car. If I had been a little bigger, it wouldn’t have been possible. As it was, it wasn’t comfortable. But it didn’t matter. He threw the blanket over me. After that, I could feel the car making several turns, slowing, turning once more, then stopping.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re at the carport behind my cabin. No one can see us.”

I unfolded myself, got back up onto the seat, and looked around. There was a scattering of trees, lights from distant houses, and next to us, a small house. Wright got out of the car, and I looked quickly to see which button or lever he used to open the door. It was one I had tried when he was threatening to take me to a hospital or the police. It hadn’t worked then,

but it worked now. The door opened.

I got out and asked, “Why wouldn’t it open before?”

“I locked it,” he said. “I didn’t want you smearing yourself all over the pavement.”

“... what?”

“I locked the door to keep you safe. You were trying to jump from a moving car, for Godsake. You would have been badly hurt or killed if you had succeeded.”

“Oh.”

He took me by the arm and led me into his house.

Once I was inside, I looked around and immediately recognized that I was in a kitchen. Even though I could not recall ever having been in an intact kitchen before, I recognized it and the things in it—the refrigerator, the stove, the sink, a counter where a few dishes sat on a dish towel, a dish cabinet above the counter, and beside it, a second cabinet where my nose told me food was sometimes stored. I remembered the blackened refrigerators and sinks at the burned ruin. But this was what a kitchen should look like when everything worked.

The kitchen was small—just a corner of the cabin, really. Beyond it was a wooden table with four chairs. Alongside the kitchen on the opposite side of the cabin was a small room—a bathroom, I saw when I looked in. Beyond the bathroom was the rest of the cabin—a combination living room-bedroom containing a bed, a chest of drawers, a soft chair facing a stone fireplace, and a small television on top of a black bookcase filled with books. I recognized all these things as soon as I saw them.

I went through the cabin, touching things, wondering about the few that I did not recognize. Wright would tell me and show me. He was exactly what I needed right now. I turned to face him again. “Tell me what else to do to keep you out of trouble.”

“Just don’t let anyone see you,” he said. “Don’t go out until after dark and don’t ...” He looked at me silently for a while. “Don’t hurt anyone.”

That surprised me. I had no intention of hurting anyone. “All right,” I said.

He smiled. “You look so innocent and so young. But you’re dangerous, aren’t you? I felt how strong you are. And look what you’ve done to me.”

“What have I done?”

“You bit me. Now you’re all I can think about. You’re going to do it again, aren’t you?” “I am.”

He drew an uneven breath. “Yeah. I thought so. I probably shouldn’t let you.” I looked up at him.

He took another breath. “Shit, you can do it right now if you want to.”

I rested my head against his arm and sighed. “It might hurt you to lose more blood so soon. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t you? Why not? You don’t even know me.”

“You’re helping me, and you don’t know me. You let me into your car and now into your house.” “Yeah. I wonder how much that’s going to cost me.” He put his hand on my shoulder and walked me

over to the table. There he sat down and drew me close so that he could open one of my filthy shirts,

then the other. Having reached skin, he stroked my chest. “No breasts,” he said. “Pity. I guess you really are a kid. Or maybe ... Are you sure you’re female?”

“I’m female,” I said. “Of course I am.”

He peeled off my two shirts and threw them into the trash can. “I’ll give you a T-shirt to sleep in,” he said. “One of my T-shirts should be about the size of a nightgown for you. Tomorrow I’ll buy you a few things.”

He seemed to think of something suddenly. He took my arm and led me into the bathroom. There, over the sink, was a large mirror. He stood me in front of it and seemed relieved to see that the mirror reflected two people instead of only one.

I touched my face and the short fuzz of black hair on my head, and I tried to see someone I recognized. I was a lean, sharp-faced, large-eyed, brown-skinned person—a complete stranger. Did I look like a child of about ten or eleven? Was I? How could I know? I examined my teeth and saw nothing startling about them until I asked Wright to show me his.

Mine looked sharper, but smaller. My canine teeth—Wright told me they were called that—were longer and sharper than his. Would people notice the difference? It wasn’t a big difference. Would it frighten people? I hoped not. And how was it that I could recognize a refrigerator, a sink, even a mirror, but fail to recognize my own face in the mirror?

“I don’t know this person,” I said. “It’s as though I’ve never seen her before.” Then I had another thought. “My scars are gone.”

“What?” he asked. “What scars?”

“I was all scarred. A few nights ago ... three nights before this one, I was scarred. I remember thinking that I must have been burned—all over. And I couldn’t see for a while when I first woke up, so maybe my eyes were scarred, too.” I sighed. “That’s why I hurt so much and why I was so hungry and so tired. All I’ve done is eat and sleep. My body had so much healing to do.”

“Scars don’t vanish just because wounds heal,” he said. “Especially not burn scars.” He pushed up the sleeve of his right arm to display a shiny, creased patch of skin bigger than my hand. “I got this when I was ten, fooling around our barbecue pit. Caught my sleeve on fire.”

I took his arm and looked at the scar, touched it. I didn’t like it. It felt the way my own skin had when I examined my scars. I had the feeling I should be able to make his scars go away too, but I didn’t know how. I turned his hand to look at the bite mark I’d made, and he gasped. The wound seemed to me to be healing as it should, but he snatched his arm from me and examined the hand.

“It’s already healing!” he said.

“It should be healing,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

“Now that you mention it, I am. I had a big meal at a café not far from the job site, but I’m hungry again.” “You should eat.”

“Yeah, but I’m not into raw meat.”

“Eat what’s right for you. Eat what your body wants.”

“But you ate raw meat to heal?” he asked.

His words triggered something in me—a memory. It felt real, true. I spoke it aloud: “All I need is fresh human blood when I’m healthy and everything’s normal. I need fresh meat for healing injuries and illnesses, for sustaining growth spurts, and for carrying a child.”

He put his hands on my shoulders. “You know that? You remember it?” “I think so. It sounds right. It feels right.”

“So, then,” he said, “what are you?”

I looked up at him, saw that I had scared him, and took one of his huge hands between mine. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know why I remembered just now about flesh and blood. But you helped me do it. You asked me questions and you made me look into the mirror. Maybe now, with you to help me, I’ll remember more and more.”

“If you’re right about what you’ve remembered so far, you’re not human,” he said. “What if I’m not?” I asked. “What would that mean?”

“I don’t know.” He reached down and tugged at my jeans. “Take these off,” he said.

I undid the shirt that I had twisted and tied around me to keep the jeans up, then I took them off.

He first seemed frozen with surprise that I had done as he said. Then, slowly, he walked around me, looking. “Well, you’re a girl, all right,” he whispered. At last, he took me by the hand and led me back to the main room of the cabin.

He led me to the chest of drawers next to the bed. There, in the top drawer, he found a white T-shirt. “Put this on,” he said, handing it to me.

I put it on. It fell past my knees, and I looked up at him. “You tired?” he asked. “You want to go to sleep?

“Not sleepy,” I said. “Can I wash?” I hadn’t minded being dirty until the clean shirt made me think about just how dirty I was.

“Sure,” he said. “Go take a shower. Then come keep me company while I eat.”

I went into the bathroom, recognized the shower head over the bathtub, and figured out how to turn the shower on. Then I took off the T-shirt and stepped in. It was a hot, controlled rain, wonderful for getting clean and feeling better. I stayed under the shower longer than necessary just because it felt so good. Then, finally, I dried myself on the big blue towel that was there and that smelled of Wright.

I put the T-shirt back on and went out to Wright who was sitting at his table, eating things that I recognized first by scent then by sight. He was eating scrambled eggs and chunks of ham together between thick slices of bread.

“Can you eat any of this?” Wright asked as he enjoyed the food and drank from a brown bottle of beer. I smiled. “No, but I think I must have known people who ate things like that because I recognize them.

Right now, I’ll get some water. That’s all I want.”

“Until you want to chew on me again, eh?”

I got up to get the water and touched his shoulder as I passed him. It was good to see him eat, to know that he was well. It made me feel relieved. I hadn’t hurt him. That was more important to me than I’d realized.

I sat down with a glass of water and sipped it.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked after a long silence. “Why’d you let me undress you like that?” “You wanted to,” I said.

“You would let anyone who wanted to, do that?”

I frowned, then shook my head. “I bit you—twice.” “So?”

“Taking my clothes off with you is all right.” “Is it?”

I frowned, remembering how badly I had wanted to cover myself when I was naked in the woods. I must have been used to wearing clothes in my life before the cave. I had wanted to be dressed as soon as I knew I was naked. Yet when Wright had taken my shirts, I hadn’t minded. And I hadn’t minded taking off the jeans when he asked me to. It had felt like what I should do.

“I don’t think I’m as young as you believe,” I said. “I mean, I may be, but I don’t think so.” “You don’t have any body hair at all,” he told me.

“Should I?” I asked.

“Most people over eleven or twelve do.”

I thought about that. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know enough about myself to say what my age might be or even whether I’m human. But I’m old enough to have sex with you if you want to.”

He choked on his sandwich and spent time coughing and taking swallows of beer.

“I think you’re supposed to,” I continued, then frowned. “No, that’s not right. I mean, I think you’re supposed to be free to, if you want to.”

“Because I let you bite me?” “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“A reward for my suffering.”

I leaned back, looking at him. “Does it hurt?” “You know damn well it doesn’t.”

He drank a couple of swallows more, then stood up, took my hand, and led me to his bed. I sat on the bed, and he started to pull the T-shirt over my head.

“No,” I said, and he stopped and stood looking at me, waiting. “Let me see you.” I pulled at his shirt and unbuttoned one of the buttons. “You’ve seen me.”

He nodded, finished unbuttoning his shirt, and pulled his undershirt over his head.

His broad chest was covered with a mat of brown hair so thick that it was almost like fur, and I stroked it and felt him shiver.

He kicked off his shoes and stripped off his pants and underwear. There was a great deal more fur on him everywhere, and he was already erect and eager.

I had seen a man this way before. I could not remember who he had been, could not recall a specific face or body. But all this was familiar and good to me, and I felt my own eagerness and growing excitement. I pulled the T-shirt over my head and let him push me back onto the bed, let him touch me while I petted and played with his fur and explored his body until, gasping, he caught my hands and held them. He covered me with his huge, furry blanket of a body. He was so tall that he took care to hold himself up on his elbows so that my face was not crushed into his chest.

He was very careful at first, afraid of hurting me, still afraid that I might be too young for this, too small. Then, when it was clear that I was not being hurt at all, when I had wrapped my arms and legs around him, he forgot his fears, forgot everything.

I forgot myself, too. I bit him again just beneath his left nipple and took a little more blood. He shouted and squeezed the breath from me. Then he collapsed on me, empty, spent.

It bothered me later, as he lay sleeping beside me, that I had taken more blood. If I didn’t find another source of blood soon, I would weaken him too much.

I got up quietly, washed, and put on his T-shirt. I would not let myself be seen, but I had to go out and look around. I had to see who and what else might be nearby.

four

Wright lived in an area where houses were widely scattered along a road. They sat well back from the road, and sometimes they were surrounded by trees. It was as though the people in each of these houses were pretending they lived alone in the woods. Most of the other houses were much larger than Wright’s cabin. His closest neighbor was one of these larger houses—a two-story house made of wood, painted white, and now full of light. This must be where Wright’s aunt and uncle lived. I could hear people talking downstairs and music coming from upstairs. Best to let these people alone, at least until they slept.

Three houses away there were no lights, and the people were already asleep. I could hear the soft, even breathing of two of them upstairs in a front bedroom.

I went around the house looking for a quiet way in. The house had plenty of windows, but the ones on the lower floor were closed and locked. On one side, though, where the trees screened the house from the road and the neighbors, I found a little platform next to a second-floor window, and the window was partly open. I stared up at the platform, recognizing it, remembering that it was called a “balcony,” but knowing nothing about it beyond that. Things kept coming to me in this frustrating, almost useless way.

I shook my head in annoyance and decided that I could leap the distance from the ground to the balcony. I’d made longer leaps on my two deer hunts, and the balcony, at least, wasn’t moving. But I was concerned that I might make too much noise.

Well, if I awoke more than one person, I would run. If I were quick enough, maybe no one would catch me.

That’s when I remembered that more might happen to me than just capture. I might be shot. I recalled being shot once before—perhaps more than once. This, like the balcony, proved to be another of my limited, nearly useless slivers of memory. I remembered the hammering impact of the bullet. I remembered that it hurt me more than anything had ever hurt me. But who had shot me? Why? Where had I been when it happened? Did it have something to do with my winding up in the cave?

Nothing.

No answers.

Just slivers of memory, tormenting me.

I stood slightly back from the balcony, seeing and understanding how far up it was, how I must grasp the somehow familiar wrought iron, hold it, and haul myself up. It was like watching a deer and figuring out where to leap so that I could seize it, or at least run it down with the least effort.

I stooped, looked up at the place on the balcony where I intended to land, jumped, landed there, caught the wrought-iron railing, pulled myself up and over it. Then I froze. Had anyone heard me?

I didn’t move for several seconds—not until I was sure no one was moving nearby. The breathing I could hear was the even, undisturbed breathing of sleeping people. The room I slipped into was occupied by one person—a woman, sleeping alone. I crept closer to her bed and took a deep breath.

This woman didn’t smell as enticing as Wright had. She was older, no longer able to have children, but not yet truly old. For her age, though, she was healthy and strong, and from what I could see of her body stretched out on the bed, she was almost as tall as Wright, but slender. I didn’t like her age, and I thought she was too thin, but her height and her good health beckoned to me. And her aloneness was good, somehow. There were other people in the house, but none of them had been in her room for a long time. She didn’t smell of other people. Perhaps it was only because she had bathed, but I got the impression that no one had touched her in a long while.

Most important, though, she could feed me without harm to herself. Wright was larger and could give more blood, but this woman had possibilities. I needed to know several more people like her.

I moved closer to the bed and the sleeping woman—and knew suddenly that there was a gun in the room. I smelled it. It was a terrifyingly familiar smell.

I almost turned and ran out. Being shot had apparently done me more harm than I realized. It had left me an irrational fear to deal with. The pain had been very bad, but I was not in danger of being shot now.

No one was holding this gun. It was out of sight somewhere, perhaps in one of the drawers of the little table that sat next to the head of the woman’s bed.

I stood still until my fear quieted. I would not be shot tonight.

When I was calm, I lay down beside the woman and covered her mouth with my hand as she woke. I held on to her with my other arm and both my legs as she began to struggle. Once I was sure of my hold on her, I bit into her neck. She struggled wildly at first, tried to bite me, tried to scream. But after I had fed for a few seconds, she stopped struggling. I held her a little longer, to be sure she was subdued; then, when she gave no more trouble, I let her go. She lay still, eyes closed.

I fed slowly, licking rather than sucking. I wasn’t hungry. Perhaps tomorrow I would come back and

take a full meal from her. Now I was only making certain of her, seeing to it that she would be here, available to me when I needed her. After a while, I whispered to her, “Is it good?”

She moaned—a satisfied little sound.

“Leave your balcony door unlocked from now on, and don’t tell anyone about me.” “You’ll come back?”

“Shall I?”

“Come back tomorrow.” “Maybe. Soon.”

She started to turn to face me. “No,” I said. “No, stay as you are.” She obeyed.

I licked at her neck for a while, then asked, “What’s your name?” “Theodora Harden.”

“I’ll see you again, Theodora.” “Don’t go. Not yet.”

I left her, content that she would welcome me when I came back. I wandered up and down both sides of the road until I had found four more—two men and two women—who were young enough, healthy, and big enough. One by one, I collected them. I would stay with Wright but go to these others when I needed them. Were they enough? I didn’t know.

I went back to Wright’s cabin, still wide awake, and sat at his table. I wanted to think about what I had done. It bothered me somehow that it had all been so easy, that I had had no trouble taking blood from six people including Wright. Once I had tasted them, they enjoyed the way I made them feel. Instead of being afraid or angry, they were first confused, then trusting and welcoming, eager for more of the pleasure that I could give them. It happened that way each time. I didn’t understand it, but I had done it in a comfortable, knowing way. I had done it as though it was what I was supposed to do.

Was there something in my saliva that pacified people and pleasured them? What else could it be? It must also help them heal. Wright had been surprised with how quickly his hand was healing. That meant healing must normally take longer for him. And that meant I could at least help the people who helped me. That felt important.

On the other hand, it felt wrong to me that I was blundering around, knowing almost nothing, yet involving other people in my life. And yet it seemed I had to involve them. I hadn’t hurt anyone so far, but I could have. And I probably would unless I could remember something useful.

I thought back as far as I could remember, closed my eyes and thought myself back to the blindness and pain of the little cave. I had emerged from it almost like a child being born. Should I go back there? Could I even find the place now? Yes, I thought I could find it. But why go back? Could there be anything there that would help me remember how I’d gotten there?

I had gone from the cave down to the site of the burned houses. I had found nothing that looked familiar at the houses, but maybe it would help me to know when the houses burned and why and who had done it. Also, it might help to know who had lived at the houses. I had found no burned bodies, although there had been places that smelled of burned flesh. So maybe the people who lived there had been hurt but

had gotten away, or maybe they had been killed and were taken away. If I had lived there, I had certainly gotten away. Maybe in the confusion of the fire, we’d gotten separated. But why hadn’t the others—whoever they were—looked for me, searched the forest and the hillside? Why had I been left to fend for myself after being so badly injured? Maybe they were all dead.

I went back again, to my memory of the cave. I had awakened in terrible pain—blind, lost, naked. And then some animal had come to me, had come right up to me, making me a gift of its flesh. And I had killed it and eaten it.

I thought about the animal and its odd behavior. Then, in memory, I saw the remains of the animal, scattered around the cave. I had seen it briefly, just before I left the cave. I had been able to see then, but I had not been aware enough to understand what I was seeing. What I had killed . . . and eaten . . . in the cave had not been an animal. It had been a man.

I had not seen his face, but I had seen his short, straight black hair. I had seen his feet, his genitals, one of his hands . . .

A man.

He had come up through the trees and spotted me in the shallow cave. He came to me. He touched my face, sought a pulse in my wrist, then my throat. It hurt when he touched me because my burns were still raw. He had whispered something. I hadn’t understood the words at the time, hadn’t even understood that they were words. He bent over me. I could feel him there, warm—a large, edible-smelling patch of warmth—so tempting to my starving, damaged body and to my damaged mind. Close enough to touch. And I grabbed him and I tore out his throat and I ate him.

I was capable of that. I had done that.

I sat for a long time, stunned, not knowing what to think. The words that the man had whispered when he found me were, “Oh my God, it’s her. Please let her be alive.” That was what he said just before I killed him.

I put my head down on the table. The man had known me. He had cared about me. Perhaps I had had a relationship with him like the one I was developing with Wright. I must have had such relationships with someone—several someones.

How could I have killed such a person?

I couldn’t kill Wright. Could I? I’d been with him for only one night, and yet there was a bond between us. But I had not recognized the other man. I couldn’t see his face—had no memory of ever seeing his face—but his scent should have told me what he was. How was it that he had smelled only like food to me and not like a person at all?

I heard Wright wake up. Heard his breathing change. After a moment, he got up and came over to me. The room was dim but not dark. There was a window in the kitchen area where the moonlight shone in.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed me pleasantly. I sat up. “I’ve been trying to remember things,” I said.

“Any luck?”

“Pain, hunger, bad things. Nothing from before I woke up hurt and blind in the cave.” I couldn’t tell him about the man I’d killed. How could I ever tell him about a thing like that?

“Give it time,” he said. “You’ll get it back. If you’d see a doctor—” “No! No hospital. No doctor.”

“Why?”

“Why?” I stood up, turning to face him. He stepped back, startled, and I realized I had moved too quickly—faster than he expected me to move. No matter. It helped me make my point. “Wright, I don’t know what I am, but I’m not like you. I think maybe . . . maybe I look a lot more human than I am. I don’t want to draw attention to myself, maybe have people try to lock me up because they’re afraid of me.”

“For Godsake, girl, no one’s going to lock you up.”

“No? I look like a child. I might be locked up for my own safety even if they weren’t afraid of my differences. You thought I was a child.”

He grinned. “I don’t any more.” Then he hugged himself, hands rubbing his furry forearms a little.

I realized that he had gotten cold standing naked in the unheated room while he talked with me. “Come back to bed and get warm,” I said.

He got back into bed, pulling me against him as I slid in beside him. “Can you get information for me?” I asked.

“Information?”

“About memory and not being able to remember things.” “Amnesia,” he said, and just like that, the word was familiar to me.

“Amnesia, yes. And about vampires,” I said. “Most of what you told me ... I don’t think it has anything to do with me. But I do need blood. Maybe there are bits of truth mixed into the movies and folktales.”

“I’d like to know how old you are,” he said.

“When I know, I’ll tell you. But, Wright, don’t tell anyone about me. Don’t tell your friends or your family or anyone.”

“You know I wouldn’t. I’m more likely to get into trouble than you are if anyone found out about you.” “I think your trouble would be shorter-lived than mine,” I said.

“I won’t say a word.”

After a while, I thought of something else. “There was a fire, Wright. Some houses surrounded by farmland and woods. Eight houses not far from where you picked me up. Do you remember hearing about it?”

He shook his head. “Sounds big, but no, I don’t remember hearing anything about it. Do you know when

the fire happened?”

“No. I found the ruin when I was able to get up and walk around. There weren’t any bodies or bones or anything. It was just a burned-out ruin.”

“How close is it to where I picked you up?”

“I don’t know. I had been wandering away from it since just after sun-down when I met you. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I was feeling frustrated. I’d been hunting, eating, sleeping, and going over the ruin for three days, not even knowing what I was looking for.” I shook my head against the pillow. “I believe I could find the place because I’ve been there. It seems that I have a very good memory for the little I’ve done and sensed in the past few days.”

“Maybe this weekend you could show me the ruin.” “All right.”

“Meanwhile, it’s almost time for me to get up and get ready for work.” “It’s not dawn yet.”

“Yeah, how about that? But before I go, I’m going to show you how to use my computer. Do you remember computers?”

I frowned, then nodded. “I remember what they are. Like refrigerators. But I don’t think I know how to use one.”

“Like refrigerators?”

“I mean, sometimes when you say something or I see something—like when I saw your refrigerator—I

know what it is, what it’s for, but I don’t remember how I know or if I’ve ever had one.”

“Okay. Let’s get you online, and you can gather some information yourself.” We got up again, and he put on a white terry-cloth robe and put one of his vast plaid shirts on me. I wasn’t cold, but I didn’t mind.

His computer was a slender laptop that he took from the back of the black bookcase where I had not noticed it. He opened it on his kitchen counter where there was an electrical outlet and a phone jack. He turned it on, making sure I saw everything he did and what he typed in to get online. Then he shut everything down and made me do it. It all felt vaguely familiar to me. I was comfortable with it. When I’d gone through the process, he was happy.

“I don’t use the thing much anymore,” he said. “I thought for a moment I’d forgotten my password.”

It occurred to me just then that his memory would improve. I managed not to say it, but, yes, his memory should improve because I was with him, because now and then, I would bite him, injecting whatever I injected into people when I bit them. I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want him to ask me questions I couldn’t answer—like what other changes might be in store for him.

“I’m going to stop by the library on my way home,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find for you about vampires and amnesia. Maybe I can even scare up something on your fire.”

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “We aim to please.” He went off to take a shower and get dressed.

By the time he came out, clean and shaved, dressed in blue jeans and a red plaid shirt like the one I had

on, I had already looked through a huge amount of nonsense about vampires. Apparently they were in fashion with some people. There were television shows, movies, plays, and novels about them. There were groups devoted to talking about them endlessly in online chat groups. There were even people who tried to look the way they thought a vampire should look—a cloaked figure with long, sharp teeth, and long, dark hair . . .

“Anything useful?” Wright asked me. “Nothing,” I said. “Worthless stuff.”

He nodded. “Stay away from the TV stuff and movies. Go with folk-lore and mythology, maybe anthropology. And there are some medical conditions I’ve heard of. There’s one that makes people so allergic to sunlight that they only go out at night, and maybe superstitious people of the past thought they were vampires. There’s also a disease or a psychological condition that makes people think they’re vampires.”

“You mean they’re insane?”

“I don’t know. If a psychiatrist found out what you eat and drink, he might think you’re insane.” “Even if I bit him?”

He looked away. “I don’t know. I think that might convince him whether he liked it or not. Renee, are you going to go unconscious during the day?”

“I’ll probably sleep for a while.”

“But will it be normal sleep? I mean, would you be able to wake up if the house were on fire or if someone broke in—not that either of those things is likely?”

“I just sleep,” I said. “Normal sleep. The sun hurts my eyes and my skin, and I seem to prefer to sleep during the day—the way you prefer to sleep at night. I don’t catch fire or turn to ash or dust or anything like what I’ve read about so far on your computer. Anything that would wake you up would wake me up.”

“Okay, good. Lock the door when I leave. Nobody should be coming in here when I’m not home. If someone knocks, ignore them. If the phone rings, don’t answer it.” He started to leave, then turned back, frowning. “Ordinary sun exposure burns your skin even though you’re black?”

“I’m . . .” I stopped. I had been about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant. Then his question triggered another memory. I looked at him. “I think I’m an experiment. I think I can withstand the sun better than . . . others of my kind. I burn, but I don’t burn as fast as they do. It’s like an allergy we all have to the sun. I don’t know who the experimenters are, though, the ones who made me black.”

He became intensely interested. “Do you know if the experimenters were like you—sort of vampires—or were they like me?”

“Don’t know.” I looked at him. “But keep asking me things. Whenever you think of a question, ask me. Sometimes it helps.”

He nodded, then kissed me. “I’ve got to go.” “Breakfast?” I said.

“I ate it last night. I’ll pick something up on the way to work. I’ve got to go grocery shopping this evening. It’s a good thing you don’t eat.” And he went out the door and was gone.