Fledgling

twelve

I turned to speak very softly into Wright’s ear. “The killers are here.” I covered his mouth with my hand. “They’re here now. They have guns and gasoline. Go wake Brook and Celia—quietly!—and look after them. Keep them safe. Watch the side door. When I clear a way, get them out of here. Don’t worry about me. Don’t try to help me. Go. Now.”

I slid off his lap, avoided his grasping hands, grabbed my blanket and glasses, and ran for the side door. There were men—human males—at the front and back doors, and at least one was heading for the side door at the end of the hall, but no one reached it before I slipped out of it and down the three concrete steps to the ground.

The men were spreading gasoline all around the house, quietly splashing it on the wood siding so that it puddled on the ground. I threw my blanket on the ground alongside an oak tree that was losing its leaves. It was probably overhanging the house too much to survive what was to come. It gave me shade, though, and kept me from burning. I put the glasses on, then turned toward the sounds of a man who was approaching from the front yard, spreading his gasoline as quietly as he could.

He was like the deer I had killed—just prey. He was my first deer that day. Before he realized I was there, I was on his back, one hand over his nose and mouth, my legs around him, riding him, my other

arm around his head under his chin. I broke his neck, and an instant later, as he collapsed, I tore out his throat. I wanted no noise from him.

He’d had a gun—a big strange-looking one. I picked it up by the barrel, thrust it into the house through the door I’d come out of. Then I moved the dead man’s gasoline can to the oak tree.

Another man was coming around from the backyard, and he was my second deer, as quickly dispatched as the first. It was almost a relief to use my speed and strength without worrying about hurting someone. And it was good to kill these men who had surely taken part in killing my families.

Someone in the house opened the side door a crack, and I beckoned with both hands, calling them out. That same instant, someone threw something through two or three of the windows, smashing them. Someone in the backyard lit the gasoline, and flames roared around the house on every side but the one I had cleared. Through a window, I could see that there was fire inside the house, too.

Wright, Celia, and Brook spilled noisily out of the house, but the roar of the fire probably drowned out

the noise they made at least as far as the gunmen were concerned. Wright had the gun I had left for him. I snatched up the second man’s gun and thrust it into Celia’s hands. Of the two women, I thought she would be more likely to know how to use it. She started to say something, but I put a hand over her mouth.

She nodded and positioned herself so that she and Wright had Brook and I between them. She watched the front while Wright watched the back.

I went to Wright who was edging away from the heat of the fire, but still looking toward the backyard. He glanced back at me.

I touched his mouth briefly with my fingers to keep him silent, then stepped ahead of him, acting on what I had heard and he had not. For the second time that day, I had to evade his hands. One more gunman was coming around the house, around the fire at a run, perhaps to see what had happened to his friends. He was my third deer. Best not to make noise until we had to.

How many gunmen were left? How many had there been? There hadn’t been time for me to listen and estimate, but I tried to think back to what I had heard. Then my concentration was shattered by the sudden, deep, quick spitting of Celia’s gun. She had shot a man who had come around the house from the front.

The man fell, and even if no one had heard the strange spitting sound of Celia’s gun, someone must have seen him go down. The element of surprise was gone.

I snatched the gun of the man I’d just killed, shouted to the others, and all of us sprinted for the shelter of trees. They would give us cover when the other gunmen came to see what the shooting was about.

We all reached the trees in time. I was with Brook behind the oak, which, high above, was already catching fire where it overhung the house. I gave her the gun and she frowned, studying it. Meanwhile, Wright and Celia were already firing. I could see men firing back from both the front and the backyards, but they could not aim very well because they lacked cover where they were. We had trees, but they had only the burning house. If they had tried to reach trees that might have shielded them, Wright or Celia would have gotten a clear shot at them. If we survived, I would get Wright and Celia to teach me to

shoot.

Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. I heard it and froze, wondering how we could avoid being caught either by the gunmen or by the police. Then Brook looked up from her gun, and I realized

she was beginning to hear the sirens, too.

And the gunmen heard them. The shooting from the other side dribbled away to silence. Wright and Celia stopped their very careful firing because suddenly they had no targets.

I could hear the remaining gunmen running, their footsteps going away from us, toward the street. I

showed myself, walking out away from the tree, providing a target for anyone who had stayed behind. No one shot me.

I ran to the garage, lifted one of the doors, and glanced toward the side of the house, where I hoped

Wright, Celia, and Brook were paying attention. They were coming, all three of them, at a run.

I opened the other garage door and waited until they were all in the cars. Then I got in and we fled.

We fled slowly. Wright said we shouldn’t speed, shouldn’t do anything that might make us memorable to anyone who saw us or bring us to the attention of the police. He was leading this time so his judgment kept Brook’s speed down. There were no neighbors near enough to see the house or report that we’d left it (and left several corpses) just after the fire began. In fact, the guns had made so little noise that I wondered whether human ears had heard them with the houses so far apart. It was almost certainly the smoke that had caught someone’s attention. That meant the emergency call probably went to the fire department. Firemen would arrive, begin to put out the fire, find the bodies, and then call the police. They would also find the gas cans. We had to avoid getting involved in the investigation that would surely follow. I had seen too many police programs on Wright’s television to believe there was any story we could tell the police about this that would keep us out of jail.

“Where are we going?” I asked Wright.

“God,” he said. “I don’t know. Back to the cabin for now, I guess.”

“No,” I said. “Your relatives are there in the front house. Let’s not lead anyone to them.”

“Do you think that’s likely? Whoever these people are, they don’t know anything about me.” He shook his head. What he had been through seemed to be too much for him suddenly. “Whoever they are ... Who the hell are they? Why did they try to kill us? I’ve never shot at anyone before—never even wanted to.”

“We’re all alive,” I said.

He glanced at me. “Yeah.”

“We should find a place to stop when we’ve gotten a few miles farther away. We need to talk with the others, find out if they know of another place where we can stay for a while.”

“Any place they know is probably as dangerous as the place we just left.”

I sighed and nodded. “We need to be far away fromall this,” I said. “I can’t believe that Brook was with Iosif for twenty-two years, and yet she knows of no relatives but my mothers, no friends or business associates.”

“I was wondering about that,” he said. “Do you think she’s lying?”

I thought about that for a moment, then said, “I don’t think so. I just think she knows more than she

realizes she knows. Maybe Iosif told her not to remember or not to share what she knows with anyone outside his family. I mean, as things are, I don’t know where to begin a search for more of my kind. I don’t even know whether I should be looking for them. I don’t want to get people killed, but I have to

do something. I have to find out who these murderers are and why they want to kill us. And I have to find a way to stop them.” I paused, then fidgeted uncomfortably. I already had the beginnings of a burn on my face and arms, and had left my jacket in the house. “Wright, would you be cold if I used your jacket?”

“What?” He glanced at me, then said, “Oh.” I helped him struggle out of his jacket, pulling it off of him while he drove. Once I had it, I covered myself with it as though it were the blanket that I had lost, probably leaving it beside the oak tree. The jacket was warm and smelled of Wright and was a very comfortable thing to be wrapped in.

“You and I are conspicuous together,” he said. “But you could go into a clothing store with Celia and

pass as her daughter. You could get yourself some clothes that fit and another jacket with a hood, maybe a pair of gloves and some sunglasses that fit your face.”

“All right. We should get food, too, for the three of you. It should be things you can open and eat right here in the car. I’m not sure when we’ll dare to settle somewhere.”

“I should be back at work on Monday.”

I looked at him, then looked away. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea when this will be over.” He drove silently for a few minutes. We were, I realized, still headed southwest toward Arlington. Once

we arrived in Arlington, he seemed to know his way around. He took us straight to a supermarket where we could buy the food we needed. Once we were parked, we moved over to the larger car to talk with Celia and Brook.

“Don’t you need to sleep?” Brook asked me as soon as we got into the backseat. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s day bother you at all?”

“I’m tired,” I admitted. “You’re probably all tired.”

“But don’t you sleep during the day?” Celia asked. It occurred to me that they had been discussing me. Better that than terrifying themselves over the fact that several men had just tried to murder us.

“I prefer to sleep during the day,” I said, “but I don’t have to. I can sleep whenever I’m tired.”

Brook looked at Celia. “That’s why we’re not dead,” she said. “They came during the day, thinking that any Ina in the house would be asleep, completely unconscious.”

“Why didn’t it help her save her mothers?” Celia asked. Brook looked at me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Have either of you ever heard of a community being destroyed the way my parents’ communities were? I mean, has it happened before anywhere else?”

Both women shook their heads. Brook said, “Not that I know of.”

“Maybe that’s it then.” I thought for a moment. “If no one was expecting trouble, probably no one was keeping watch. Why would they? I don’t know whether I usually slept during the day. My mothers did, so I probably did, too, just because it was more convenient to be up when they were. I’ll bet the symbionts had adapted to a nocturnal way of life just as symbionts had in Iosif’s community. But I don’t

know. That’s the trouble;I don’t know anything.” I looked at Brook. “You must have spent time at my mothers’ community. Wasn’t everyone nocturnal?”

“Pretty much,” she answered. “Your eldermothers had three or four symbionts who did research for them. They were often awake during the day. I guess it didn’t help.”

I looked at Celia. “Did Stefan always sleep during the day?”

“He said he got stupid if he didn’t sleep,” she answered. “He got sluggish and clumsy.”

“Iosif had to sleep,” Brook said. “He would go completely unconscious wherever he happened to be when the sun came up. And once he got to sleep, it was impossible to wake him up until after sundown.”

Wright put his arm around me. “You’re definitely the new, improved model,” he said.

I nodded. “I think maybe someone’s decided there shouldn’t be a new, improved model.”

“We were talking about that,” Brook said. “About how maybe this is all because someone doesn’t like the experimenting that your family was doing. Or someone envied your family for producing you and Stefan. I don’t know.”

“How could it be about her?” Wright wanted to know. “Those guys were human, not Ina.” “They may be symbionts,” Celia said.

“Or one of them might be a symbiont and the rest hirelings,” Brook added.

Wright frowned. “Maybe. But it seems to me they could just as easily be ordinary human beings who imagine they’re fighting vampires.”

“And who have focused only on my family,” I said.

“We don’t know that. Hell, we’re in the same boat you are, Shori. We don’t really know anything.”

I nodded and yawned. “We probably know more than we realize. I think we’ll be able to come up with at least a few answers after we’ve gotten some rest.”

“Why are we in this parking lot?” Brook asked.

“To get food for you,” I said. “After that, we’ll find a place to park in the woods. We can get some sleep in the cars. Later, when we’re rested, we’ll see what we can figure out.”

“I thought we would go to your house,” Celia said to Wright.

“His relatives’ home is too close by,” I said. “I don’t want them to get hurt or killed because someone’s after us—or after me. I don’t want that to happen to anyone. So no hotel for now.”

The two women exchanged another look, and this time I had no idea what they were thinking.

“Let’s go buy what we need,” Wright said. “Celia, while Brook and I shop for food, can you be Shori’s mother or her big sister? There’s a clothing store ...” He opened the glove compartment, found a pencil and a small wire-bound notebook. “Here’s the address,” he said, writing. “And here’s how to get there. I did some work here in Arlington last year. I remember the place. This clothing store is only a few blocks from here, and it’s a good place for buying cheap casual clothes. She needs a couple of pairs of jeans, shirts, a good hooded jacket, gloves, and sunglasses that will fit her face. Okay?”

Celia nodded. “No problem if you have money. I spent most of what Stefan gave me in Seattle. He’s going to—” She stopped, frowned, and looked away from us across the parking lot. She wiped at her eyes with her fingers but said nothing more.

After a moment, Wright got his wallet out of his pocket and put several twenties into her hand. “I see an

ATM over there,” he said. “I’ll get more—enough for a few days.”

“We need gas, too,” Brook said. She looked at me, then looked past me. “I have my checkbook and a credit card, but they’re both Iosif’s accounts. I don’t know whether using them will attract the attention

of the police—or of our enemies. I have enough money to fill our tank, but if this lasts, if we’re on the run for more than a few days, money is likely to become a problem.” There was an oddly false note in her voice, as though she were lying somehow. She smelled nervous, and I didn’t like the way she looked

past me rather than at me. I thought about it, and after a moment, I understood. “Money will not be a problem,” I said, “and you know it.”

Brook looked a little embarrassed. After a moment, she nodded. “I wasn’t sure you knew . . . what to do,” she said.

And Wright said, “What do you expect her to do?”

“Steal,” I said. “She expects me to be a very good thief. I will be. People will be happy to give me money once I’ve bitten them.”

He looked at me doubtfully, and I reached up to touch his stubbly chin. “You should get a razor, too,” I said.

“I don’t want you getting in trouble for stealing,” he said.

“I won’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t feel good about doing it, but I’ll do what’s necessary to sustain us.” I glanced at Brook, feeling almost angry with her. “Ask me questions when you want to know things. Tell me whatever you believe I should know. Complain whenever you want to complain.

But don’t talk to other people when you mean your words for me, and speak the truth.” She shrugged. “All right.”

My anger ebbed away. “Let’s go buy what we need,” I said.

“Hang on a minute,” Wright said. He wrote something else in the wire-bound notebook. Then he tore out the page and handed it to Celia. “Those are my sizes. If you can, get me a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.”

She looked at the sizes, smiled, and said, “Okay.”

We left them. Celia and I took her car—one of Iosif ’s cars, she said—and drove to the clothing store. She found it easily, following Wright’s directions, and that seemed to surprise her.

“I usually get lost at least once and have to stop and ask somebody for directions,” she said. And then, “Listen, you’re my sister, okay? I refuse to believe I look old enough to be your mother.”

I laughed. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three. Stefan found me when I was nineteen, right after I’d moved out of my mother’s house.” “Twenty-three, same as Wright.”

“Yeah. And he’s your first. You did very well for yourself. He’s a decent-looking big bear of a guy, and he’s nice. That jacket of his looks like a way-too-big coat on you.”

“When he found me, when he stopped to pick me up, I couldn’t believe how good he smelled. My memory was so destroyed that I didn’t even know what I wanted from him, but his scent pulled me into the car with him.”

Celia laughed, then looked sad and stared at nothing for a moment. “Stefan would say things like that. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be one of you, so tuned in to smells and sounds, living so long and being so strong. It doesn’t seem fair that you can’t convert us like all the stories say.”

“That would be very strange,” I said. “If a dog bit a man, no one would expect the man to become a dog. He might get an infection and die, but that’s the worst.”

“You haven’t found out about werewolves yet, then.”

“I’ve read about them on Wright’s computer. A lot of the people who write about vampires seem to be interested in werewolves, too.” I shook my head. “Ina are probably responsible for most vampire legends. I wonder what started the werewolf legends.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Celia said. “It was probably rabies. People get bitten, go crazy, froth at the mouth, run around like animals, attacking other people who then come down with the same problems ... That would probably be enough to make ancient people come up with the idea of were wolves. Shori, what did you get mad at Brook about a few minutes ago?”

I looked at her and, after a moment, decided that she had asked a real question. “She touched my pride, I think. She worries that I can’t take care of the three of you. I worry that I won’t always know how to take care of you. I hate my ignorance. I need to learn from you since there is no adult Ina to ask.”

“Before I saw what you did today, I figured we’d be the ones taking care of you.” “You will. Iosif called it ‘mutualistic symbiosis.’ I think it’s also called just ‘mutualism.’”

“Yeah, those were his words for it. Before Stefan brought me to meet him, I’d never even heard those words used that way before. I thought he had made them up until I found them in a science dictionary. So you want us to be straight with you even if you don’t always like what we say?”

“Yes.”

“Works for me. Let’s get you some clothes.”

I wound up with two pairs of boy’s blue jeans that actually fit, two long-sleeved shirts, one red and one black, a pair of gloves, a jacket with a hood, sunglasses, and some underwear. Then Celia used the last of her own money as well as the last of what Wright had given her to get him a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Then we headed back to the supermarket to meet Wright and Brook.

“Brook and I are lucky we left our suitcases in the back of the car,” Celia said. “A Laundromat would be a good idea for us, but otherwise, we’re okay. Did you hear that saleswoman? She said you were the cutest thing she’d seen all day. She figured you were about ten.”

I shook my head. I’d said almost nothing to the woman. I had no idea how to act like a ten-year-old human child. “Does it bother you that I’m so small?”

She grinned. “It did at first. Now I kind of like it. After seeing you in action today, I think you’d be

goddamn scary if you were bigger.” “I will grow.”

“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, reassuringly 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.

“God, 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, buttoned 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 muffin 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 hell 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 assassins 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 Nazis got them. And his brothers and fathers were killed later by the Communists. They were some kind of nobility—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 goddess. 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 masse 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 hell out of him when two of Radu’s symbionts almost killed one another. He got something sexual 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, space.

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.”

“Where do the Gordons live?” I asked.

She hesitated, frowned. “Somewhere on the coast of northern California.” “You don’t know exactly where?”

She shook her head. “Their community has a name—Punta Nublada—but it’s not a real town. It’s only the four brothers and their three fathers and a couple of elderfathers who were born in the sixteen hundreds. It’s amazing to meet people like that.”

“You met them?” Wright asked.

“I went with Iosif and one of Shori’s mothers and some other symbionts to visit them. I loved the trip, but I didn’t know where I was most of the time. I know we flew into San Francisco Airport—at night, of course—and a couple of symbionts from Punta Nublada met us in vans and drove us up. It was more than two hours north of San Francisco Airport and on the coast. That’s all I know. They have a lot of land. Inland, away from their community, they own vineyards. They have a wine-making business, which is kind of funny when you think about it.”

Wright laughed. “Yeah. I’ll bet they still don’t drink it.” “What?” I demanded.

“Old joke from a vampire movie,” Wright said. “From the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula. Someone offers the Count a glass, and he says,‘I do not drink . . . wine.’”

I shrugged. Maybe I’d watch the movie someday and see why that was funny. “We’ll go to Punta

Nublada,” I said. “You’ll find it for us, Brook.”

She looked distressed. “I don’t know where it is, I swear.” “Did you sleep while you were being driven?”

“No, but it was dark.”

“You can see in this darkness—here, under the trees. Your night vision is good.” “It is. But most of what I saw was headlights and taillights.”

I nodded. “They can be a problem. But I think you saw more than you realize.” “I didn’t,” she said. “I really didn’t.”

“We need help, Brook,” I said. “Can you think of anyone else—anyone other than the Gordons—who might help us?”

She faced me and shook her head. “But these people may not help us, even if we find them. I don’t know whether there was a confirmed agreement between your family and theirs. And even if there was, they ... I’m sorry, Shori. They might not want you without your sisters. It’s hard for only children to find mates. Iosif said it would have been hard for him, but he was already mated when his brothers were killed. His mates were just smart enough to get out before he did.”

I shrugged. “All right, even if the Gordons don’t still want to mate with me, they should be willing to help find and stop the assassins. That’s what I really need help with, after all. Human gangs wiping out two whole communities of Ina. Any Ina should be willing to do something about that—out of self-preservation if nothing else.”

“They should.”

“Then you find them, and I’ll put it to them in just that way. Self-preservation. Iosif must have seen some good in them.” I looked at her, and she looked away. “I feel as though I know humans better than I know my own kind—not that that’s saying much. Am I missing something here? Is there some reason these people might not help us?”

She shook her head. “I think they will help, even if they don’t want you as a mate. I’m just scared I

won’t be able to find them for you.”

“Yes you will,” I said. “You’ll find them. Then once we get some peace, we can begin to assemble a household. The Gordons should be able to give us phone numbers and addresses of other Ina—my mothers’ brothers, perhaps. Are they alive?”

“Your mothers’ brothers? Yes. I’ve never met them, but you have.” Suddenly she put her hands to her face. She didn’t cry, but she looked as though she wanted to. “How can I do this?” she demanded. “You can’t depend on me. I don’t really know anything.”

“You can.” I said. “You will. Don’t worry about it. Just know that you will.”

Wright said, “We can drive down—all the way to San Francisco Airport if we have to. From there, we can turn north again, and maybe Brook can find the way.”

“We’ll start tonight,” I said.

He nodded. “What about Celia? She might know something.”

“She needed to sleep. We’ll tell her when she wakes up, and I’ll find out what she knows.”

“We need maps,” Wright said. “I don’t know the way, except that we’ll be going south, probably on I-5. We’ll make San Francisco Airport our destination, so when we reach California, we should stick to a coastal route—probably U. S. 101—until we reach the airport or until Brook recognizes something.”

“We should go back to your cabin first,” I said, “or if you don’t want to do that, you can let me out a few blocks from there. I need to talk to Theodora and see whether or not she should come with us.”

He nodded. “I need to talk to my uncle anyway, to let him know that I haven’t just disappeared on him and that I want my job. I want him to be willing to hire me again when this is over. I want to get some of my stuff, too. Hell, I was all packed to leave anyway.”

“Let’s go now,” I said. “We’ve got hours of darkness left. By daybreak, we should be well on our way.”

fourteen

Once we got back to Wright’s cabin, I went to visit Theodora. I slipped into her bedroom by way of her balcony, woke her, and told her what had happened and what we were going to do. Her scent was still mostly her own so I knew I could leave her, lonely but safe.

“I want to go with you!” she protested.

“I know,” I told her. “But it will be better if you wait. I can’t protect you now. I don’t even have the prospect of a home now, and I have no Ina allies. It was only luck that none of us was hurt or killed at the Arlington house.”

“You protected them.”

“Luck,” I said. “They could so easily have been burned or shot. Wright could have left the television on, and I might not have heard the intruders until it was too late. I want you with me, and you will be. But not yet.”

She cried and wanted me to at least stay the rest of the night with her. I bit her a little—only to taste her—then held her and lapped at the wound until she was focused on the pleasure. She was like Wright. She had some hold on me beyond the blood. At last, I knew I had to go so I told her to sleep. She resisted briefly, took something from the very back and bottom of the middle drawer in her night table, and put it in my hand. “You might need this,” she whispered. “Take it. I’ve got more.” Then she kissed me and let herself drift off to sleep.

She had put money into my hand, a thick roll of twenty-dollar bills with a rubber band around it. I took it back to Wright’s cabin. He was in the main house, talking to his uncle. He and the two women had each had a shower. By the time Wright came back, I was having one, and the women were eating the meal they had prepared. We were all wasting time, and I knew it, but I enjoyed my shower and let them enjoy their microwaved mugs of vegetable soup, slabs of canned ham, and dinner rolls heated in the convection oven—simple, quickly prepared food.

They finished, cleaned up, took out the trash, and made sandwiches of the last of the ham and some cheddar cheese Wright had had in his refrigerator. Meanwhile, I put Wright’s two suitcases and the canvas travel bag he had given me for my things into his car. Wright already had a book of maps called The Thomas Guide:King and Snohomish Counties—we were in Snohomish—and a map of Pierce County. We would get whatever else we needed as we traveled, although, according to Wright, all we really had to do was get on I-5 and stay on it until we got to California, then switch over to U. S.101. None of that meant anything to me. I meant to look at the relevant maps in The Thomas Guide while we traveled. I needed, for my own comfort, to have some idea of where we were going.

Wright came out ahead of the two women, and I put the money Theodora had given me into his hand. “Take this,” I said. “If I get separated from the rest of you, you take care of Brook and Celia. All of you would have to find other Ina as quickly as possible.”

His hand closed around the money, then he looked at it in the light from the back door of the cabin. His mouth dropped open. “Where did you get this?”

“From Theodora. She said we might need it, and we might.”

He put the money in an inside pocket of his jacket and zipped the pocket. “I’ll use it to keep us all as safe as I can,” he said. “But don’t imagine I would just drive off and leave you, Shori. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”

“I hope it won’t be necessary. But if it is necessary to keep you safe, to keep Celia and Brook safe, you’ll do it. You will do it!”

He drew back from me, angry, wanting to dispute, yet knowing he would obey. “Sometimes I forget that you can do that to me,” he said.

“I do it to save your life,” I said.

After a while he sighed. “You’re a scary little person,” he said.

I had no idea what to say to that so I ignored it. “Theodora wanted to come, too,” I said. “I couldn’t let her, even though I wanted her to. The only person I want more is you. I need you to be safe, and I need you to keep Brook and Celia safe.”

He shook his head, then put his arm around my shoulders, his expression going from angry to bemused. “That is the most unromantic declaration of love I’ve ever heard. Or is that what you’re saying? Do you love me, Shori, or do I just taste good?”

“You don’t taste good,” I said, smiling. “You taste wonderful.” I grew more serious. “I would rather be shot again than lose you.”

“More and more romantic,” he said and shook his head. He bent, lifted me off my feet, and kissed me. I nipped him, tasted him, and heard him draw a quick breath. He held me hard against him, and I closed my eyes for a moment, submerged in the scent, the feel, and taste of him.

Then Brook came out with her own suitcase. She had taken it from the back of her car to get at her toiletries. “We’d better get going,” she said, noticing the way Wright and I held each other, then looking away.

We sighed. Wright put me down, and we let each other go.

Celia came out carrying the sandwiches, each bagged with the apples and bananas that Wright had had in the cabin. She handed a bag to Wright and one to Brook, then said, “You guys got everything?”

We nodded, and Wright went to turn off the lights and lock the door.

We drove, Wright with me in one car and Celia with Brook in the other. We drove through what was left of the night and into the day. By daybreak we had reached Salem, Oregon. We were still, according to the maps, hundreds of miles north of San Francisco Airport. We got two motel rooms at a place that did not force us to park our cars where they could be seen from the street—just in case someone was hunting us. We picked up a map of the area, the others ate the food they had brought, and we all went to bed.

I lay awake for a while next to Wright, wondering whether I should even be in bed. Perhaps I should stay awake, keep watch. But I couldn’t quite believe that humans would have been able to follow us without my noticing them. And I couldn’t believe they would be willing to kill a motel full of humans unrelated to Ina if they did find us. Also, the motel was filled with windows—eyes—and perhaps with curiosity. Our enemies liked concealment and quiet. I could sleep. In fact, this was an excellent place to sleep. I let myself drift off.

Once Wright had slept off some of his weariness, he woke me up and told me to try biting him now and see what happened.

I laughed and bit him. I didn’t take much blood because I had taken a full meal from him only two days

before. Still, I was eager to see what happened, and he didn’t disappoint me.

After a few hours, we got up and got on the road again. We didn’t hurry. We stopped for meals, stayed within the speed limit, and, as a result, spent one more night in a motel. This time I was hungry enough to leave the room while Wright was asleep and wait until I spotted a stranger letting himself into his room. I slipped in with him before he realized I was there. I bit him and had a nourishing, but unsatisfying, meal. Afterward, I told him to keep the bite mark hidden until it healed and to remember only that he’d had an odd dream.

Sometime later, after we got underway on our third night, I realized that I should be riding with Brook to do what I could to encourage her memory. I didn’t really know whether she would remember more clearly or focus her attention more narrowly if I were there to prod her, but I meant to find out. When we stopped for gas, I switched cars.

“Do you want me to send Celia to keep you company?” I asked Wright. “Or would you rather have some time to yourself?”

He hesitated, then said, “Send her. I’ll ask her questions and find out more about this symbiont business.” I looked at him and saw that he wasn’t asking me to send Celia to him, he was daring me. And he was

smiling a little as he did it.

“Ask,” I said. “I’m afraid for you to talk to them and learn what they know—because I know so little. But you should talk to them. We’re a family, or the beginnings of one. We’ll be together for a very long time.”

“It’s all right,” he said, immediately contrite. “A little solitude might be good for me.”

“No,” I said. “Talk to her. Get to know her. Ask your questions. It isn’t all right, but it will be.” I walked away to where Brook was putting gas into her car.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m switching cars,” I said. “I want to do what I can to prod your memory.” She sighed. “I’m still afraid I won’t remember.”

“I’ll drive, then,” Celia said through her open window. “We’re more likely to survive the trip if the driver isn’t looking all around trying to remember stuff.”

She was right. Brook hadn’t been driving when she visited these people before. Best for her not to be driving now. I went back and told Wright he would be driving alone after all and told him why.

He grinned. “Decided you didn’t want me to know everything, then,” he said. I grinned back at him. “That must be it.”

They went into the store that was attached to the gas station and bought more maps, food, bottled water, and ice. Then Wright and Celia consulted over the new maps. Somewhere in Sonoma or Mendocino County in California we decided to use State Route 1 instead of U. S. 101 as we’d planned because Brook said State Route 1 “felt” like the right road. This apparently had to be discussed again. Then, finally, we were on our way. Celia led off.

Brook and I sat in the backseat, and she studied a huge, sheetlike map. Finally she put the map down

and looked at me. “We’re close enough,” she said, “but I don’t recognize anything yet.” “Are you still worried about your memory?” I asked.

She nodded. “Of course I am.”

“You will remember,” I said. “When you see things you’ve seen before, you’re going to recognize them. You’ve been to this place before. You’ve seen the way, going and coming. Now you’ll see the way a third time, and you’ll get us there. Look out the windows. Don’t worry about the map.”

She took a deep breath and nodded.

And yet we drove all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge before she began to see things that looked familiar to her. By then we had to cross the bridge, then find a place to turn back. On our way back, though, she kept seeing familiar landmarks, businesses, signs.

“I think I paid more attention when we were traveling to Punta Nublada from the airport,” she said. “We were headed north, the way we are now, and I know this place now. It all seemed so new to me when I came this way with Iosif. I hadn’t been anywhere far from home for a long time. I was so excited.”

Just over two hours later, a newly confident Brook had us turn down a narrow paved road that took us to a gravel road that led, finally, to Punta Nublada, a community of eleven large houses with garages and several other buildings scattered along either side of the road. It was almost a village. Behind some of the houses, I could see the remains of large gardens, most of them finished for the year, stark and empty. The community was dark and still, as though it were a humansonly place and everyone were asleep. I wondered why. I could smell Ina males nearby.

“Which house belongs to the oldest son, or perhaps we should see one of the elderfathers?” I asked, then had another thought. “Wait, which is the home of Daniel Gordon, the one you said first approached Iosif.”

“Daniel?” Brook asked. “He is the oldest son.” “Show me which home is his.”

“Third house on the right.”

We stopped there. I got out and understood something interesting and frightening at once. There were people—human and Ina—watching us with guns. I smelled the guns, I saw some of the people hiding in the darkness. I smelled them and knew they were all strangers to me, but I sorted through them anyway. The scents of the Ina were very disturbing. These people were nervous. Some of the humans were frightened. At least none of the humans present had been among those who attacked Wright, Celia, Brook, and me. That possibility had not occurred to me until I smelled all the guns.

“Don’t get out yet,” I said to Celia and Brook. But behind us, Wright had already gotten out and come to stand beside me. It frightened me how vulnerable he was, how vulnerable we all were, but if these people wanted to shoot us, surely they would already have done it.

I took Wright’s hand, or rather, I touched one of his huge hands and allowed it to swallow mine, and we walked to the front porch of Daniel Gordon’s house.

“This the guy who wants to be your mate?” he asked in a soft voice that I thought he tried hard to keep neutral.

“Things have changed,” I said, knowing that he was not my only listener. “I don’t know what they want now. But for the sake of the past, I hope they will speak with me and not just point guns at me.”

Wright froze, drew me closer to him, and I realized he had known nothing of those who watched us. He saw no one until the tall, male Ina stepped into view on the broad front porch.

“Shori,” he said, making a greeting of my name.

Of course, he was a stranger to me. “You’re Daniel Gordon?” I asked. He frowned.

“If you and your people are this alert,” I said, “you must know what’s happened to my family—to my mothers, my sisters, my brothers, and my father. It almost happened to me, too. I had a serious head injury. Because of it, I don’t remember you at all. I don’t remember any part of my life before getting hurt. So I have to ask:Are you Daniel Gordon?”

After what seemed to be a long while, he answered, “Yes, I’m Daniel.”

“Then I need to talk with you about what’s happened to my family and, very nearly, to me and my symbionts.”

Daniel looked at Wright, at our joined hands, at the two women in the car. Finally, he nodded. “You and your people are welcome here,” he said.

There was an almostsilent withdrawal of armed watchers. I saw a few of the humans around Daniel’s house and the houses of his nearest neighbors lower their guns and turn away. I turned to the car and beckoned to Brook and Celia.

They came out of the car and up to us, and Daniel looked at them, lifted his head and sampled their scent, then looked at me again. He recognized them. I could see that in his expression—realization and surprise.

“Those two ...” He frowned. “They aren’t yours, Shori.”

“They were my father’s and my brother Stefan’s. They’re with me now.” I knew they smelled wrong, but if he knew what had happened to my family, he must know why they smelled the way they did—of both the dead and the living.

“We must question them,” he said. “We’ve heard what happened on the radio, read about it in the newspaper, seen it on television. Two of my fathers even went up to look around. And yet even they don’t understand any of this. Who did these things?”

“We’ll share everything we know,” I said, “although that isn’t much. We came here because we need help against the assassins.”

“Who are they? Do you have any idea?”

“We don’t know who they are, but we killed some of them when they attacked us.” And I repeated, “We’ll tell you all we can.”

“How did you survive?”

I sighed. “Call your brothers and your fathers from the shadows, and let’s go into your house and talk.”

His fathers and brothers had gathered around us in near silence and just far enough away to prevent my symbionts from seeing them. They were listening and sampling our scents and looking us over. I didn’t see that it would do them any harm to examine us in comfort and with courtesy.

Perhaps Daniel thought so, too. He turned, opened his door, switched on a light, and stood aside. “Come in, Shori,” he said. “Be welcome.”

We went up the steps into the house, into a large room of dark wood and deep green wallpaper. A large flat-screen television set covered much of one end wall. Beneath it on shelves was a large collection of tapes and DVDs. At the opposite end of the room was a massive stone fireplace. Along one side wall there were three windows, each as big as the front door, and between them and alongside them, there were tall bookcases filled with books. On the other side wall there were photographs, dozens of them, some in black and white, some in color, most of them of outdoor scenes—woods, rivers, huge trees,

rock cliffs, waterfalls. They would have been beautiful if they had not been so crowded together.

There were a great many chairs and little tables around the room. We and the brothers and fathers who came in after us found places to sit. Wright, Celia, Brook, and I sat together on a pair of two-person seats at the fireplace end of the room. The fathers and brothers Gordon sat around us, surrounding us on three sides, crowding us. Our world was suddenly filled with tall, pale, vaguely menacing, spidery men, and I was annoyed with them for being even vaguely menacing and scaring my symbionts. I watched them, wondering why I was not afraid. They seemed to want me to be afraid. They stared at the four of

us in silence that was as close to hostile as silence could be. Or maybe they only wanted my symbionts to be afraid.

My symbionts were afraid. Even Wright was afraid, although he tried to hide it. He couldn’t hide his scent, though. Celia and Brook didn’t try to hide their fear at all.

I looked at Daniel who sat nearest to me. “Do you believe that I or my people murdered my families?” He stared back at me. “We don’t know what happened.”

“I didn’t ask you what you knew. I asked whether you believe that I or my people murdered my families?”

He glanced back at his fathers and brothers. “I don’t. I don’t even believe you could have.” “Then stop scaring my symbionts. If you have questions, ask them.”

“You’re a child,” one of the older men said. “And the two women with you are not your symbionts.”

I looked at him with disgust. He had already heard me answer this. I repeated the answer exactly: “They were my father’s and my brother Stefan’s. They’re with me now.”

“You don’t have to keep them,” he said. “They can have a home here . . . if you took them only out of duty.”

“They’re with me now,” I repeated.

The older man took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Tell us what you know, Shori.” And the pressure on us eased somehow, as it had when the guns were lowered outside. I felt it, even though I hadn’t been afraid. I looked at my symbionts and saw that they felt it, too. They were relaxing a little.

I turned back to face the Gordons and sighed. After a moment of gathering my thoughts, I summarized the things that had happened to me. I talked about awakening amnesiac in the cave, about Hugh Tang,

finding the ruin, finding Wright, and later finding my father, who told me that the ruin had been the community of my mothers, then losing my father and all of his community except Celia and Brook, going to the Arlington house and almost dying there, discovering that our attackers were all human . . .

One of the Gordons interrupted to ask, “Were you able to question any of them?”

I shook my head. “We killed several of them. The rest escaped. We only just escaped ourselves. The fire had attracted attention, and I didn’t want to have to deal with firemen or the police.”

“You weren’t seen,” Daniel said. “Or if you were, it’s being kept very secret. There’s been nothing in the media about cars escaping the scene, and none of the sources my fathers created have phoned to tell us about anyone escaping. The police seem very frustrated.”

“Good,” I said. “I mean I didn’t know whether or not we were seen. We spent the next night in our cars in the woods. Then, because Brook had been here once, I thought I could get her to bring us back here.”

A Gordon who looked about fifty and who was, almost certainly, one of the two oldest people present spoke with quiet courtesy: “May we question your symbionts?” He had a British accent. I had heard BBC reporters on Wright’s radio back at the cabin talking the way this man did.

I looked at Celia and Brook, then at Wright. “It’s all right,” I said. “Tell them whatever they want to know.” They looked alert but not afraid or even uncomfortable. I nodded to the older man. “All right,” I said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“I’m Preston Gordon,” he said. “I’m sorry. We should all introduce ourselves.” And they did. Preston and Hayden were the two oldest. They were brothers and looked almost enough alike to be twins,

except that Hayden was taller and Preston had a thicker mop of white-blond hair. Their sons wereWells, Manning, Henry, and Edward. And they in turn were the fathers of Daniel, Wayne, Philip, and William. William was, I suspected, only fifteen or twenty years older than I was. Although no one said so, I got

the impression that I’d met most of them, perhaps all of them, before. What did it say to them that I

couldn’t remember any of them now? It embarrassed me, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Preston directed his first question to Brook. “Did you recognize anyone among those your group killed? Had you seen any of them before?”

“No,” Brook told him. “I didn’t get to see all their faces, but the ones I saw, I had never seen before.” William asked, “How many did you kill, Shori, you personally, I mean.”

“Three,” I said surprised. “Why?”

“Three men,” he said and grinned. “You must be stronger than you look.”

I frowned because that was a foolish thing to say. Of course I was stronger than I looked, just as he was stronger than he looked.

Daniel said, “Shori, we didn’t know about your mothers. There was apparently no news coverage. Do you know why that was?”

“Iosif and two of my brothers covered it up. He said they did. And even so, there was some local coverage. He convinced local reporters and apparently the police that my mothers’ community had been abandoned, that someone burned a cluster of abandoned houses. That’s news, but it’s not important news. And he saw to it that some of my mothers’ neighbors kept an eye on the place. He thought the killers might come back to gloat.”

Preston shook his head. “I see. Iosif must have worked very hard to keep things quiet. Brook, did he say anything to you about his effort to cover up and, perhaps, about his effort to investigate?”

“He told me what happened,” she said. “He didn’t understand how it could have happened, who could have been powerful enough to do it. He said it must have happened during the day—that that was the only way Shori’s mothers could have been surprised. And he thought Shori might have survived if anyone did. But ... I don’t believe he thought of it as something that would happen again. I never got the impression that he was worried about it happening to our community.”

Celia nodded. “Stefan flew down with him to help with the neighbors. They took Hugh Tang and some other symbionts with them to search for survivors. They really did think it was just a single terrible crime. I mean, you hear about people committing mass murder—shooting up their schools or their workplaces all of a sudden—or you hear about serial murders where someone kills people one by one over a period of months or years, but serial mass murder . . . I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that except in war.”

“Iosif didn’t know anything,” I said. “I talked to him about it. He was frustrated, grieving, angry . . . He hated not knowing at least as much I hate it.”

There was a brief silence, then Daniel spoke to Wright. “What about you? You’re the outsider brought into all this almost by accident. What are your impressions?”

Wright thought for a moment, frowning a little. Then he said, “Chances are, this is all happening for one of three reasons. It’s happening because some human group has spotted your kind and decided you’re all dangerous, evil vampires. Or it’s happening because some Ina group or Ina individual is jealous of the success Shori’s family had with blending human and Ina DNA and having children who can stay awake through the day and not burn so easily in the sun. Or it’s happening because Shori is black, and racists—probably Ina racists—don’t like the idea that a good part of the answer to your daytime problems is melanin. Those are the most obvious possibilities. I wondered at first whether it could be someone or some family who just hated Shori’s family—an old fashioned Hatfields and McCoys family feud—but Iosif and his sons would have known about anyone who hated them that much.”

Philip Gordon, younger than Daniel, older than William, said, “You’re assuming that if Ina did it, they used humans as their daytime weapons.”

“I am assuming that,” Wright said.

“We don’t do that!” Preston said, his mouth turned down with disgust.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Wright told him. “Of course I didn’t think that anyone Iosif would introduce to his female family would do that. But there are other Ina. And your species seems to be as much made up of individuals as mine is. Some people are ethical, some aren’t.”

I watched the Gordons as he spoke. The younger ones listened, indifferent, but the older ones didn’t much like what he was saying. It seemed to make them uncomfortable, embarrassed. I wondered why. At least no one tried to shut Wright up. That was important. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay in a community that was contemptuous of my symbionts.

I also liked the fact that Wright wasn’t afraid to say what he thought.

The Gordons talked among themselves about the possibilities Wright had offered, and they didn’t seem

to like any of them, but I suspected that their objections came more from wounded pride than from logic. Ina didn’t use humans as daytime weapons against other Ina. They hadn’t done anything like that for centuries.

And Ina were careful, both Preston and Hayden insisted. No Ina would leave evidence of vampiric behavior for humans to find. And according to Daniel, Ina families all over the world were happy about my family’s success with genetic engineering. They hoped to use the same methods to enable their own future generations to function during the day.

And the Ina weren’t racists, Wells insisted. Human racism meant nothing to the Ina because human races meant nothing to them. They looked for congenial human symbionts wherever they happened to be, without regard for anything but personal appeal.

And of course, there was no feud. According to Preston, nothing of that kind had happened for more than a thousand years. Nothing of the kind could happen without a great many people knowing about it. Iosif certainly would have known, and he and his mates would have been on guard.

“Speaking of being on guard,” I said loudly.

The Gordons stopped and one by one turned to look at me.

“Speaking of being on guard,” I repeated, “it’s good that you have people guarding this place now, but are you also keeping watch during the day?”

Silence.

“We haven’t been,” Edward said at last. He was probably the youngest of the fathers. “We’ll have to now.” He paused. “And, Shori, you’ll have to stay with us until this business is over, until we’ve found these killers and dealt with them.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I came here hoping for help and refuge. If I stay, I might be most useful as part of your day watch.”

That seemed to interest them. “You can stay awake all day, every day and sleep at night?” William asked me.

I nodded. “I can as long as I get enough sleep,” I said. “If I’m allowed to sleep most of the night, I should be all right during the day. And ... it will keep me out of your way.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. I had noticed that a couple of the unmated sons were already beginning to fidget as my scent worked on them. And Daniel tended to stare at me in a way that made me want to touch him. I liked his looks as well as his scent. I wondered whether I had liked him before, when my memory was intact.

“I’ll need you to tell your day-watch symbionts to listen to me. When the killers attacked the Arlington house, they were fast and coordinated. If I’d been just a little slower or if Wright had been slower to wake up Celia and Brook and get them out, we might have died.”

“We’ll talk to our symbionts,” Preston said. “We’ll introduce them to you and tell them to obey you in any action against attackers, but Shori . . .” He stopped talking and just looked at me.

“I’ll do all I can to keep them safe,” I said.

fifteen