Fledgling

ruin where flesh had been burned. Now I tried to sort through them, understand who was who.

After a while, I understood that some of them had been like me and some like Wright—vampires and other people living and dying together. What did that mean?

Wright got up, came to stand beside me, and took the book out of my hands. He laid it open, its pages facedown on the table. “I think I’m strong enough to take you on now,” he said.

Perhaps he was, but I took only a few drops more of his blood while I enjoyed sex with him. It seemed necessary to take small amounts of his blood often. I felt a need for it that was something beyond hunger. It was a need for his blood specifically. No one else’s. I took it slowly and gave him as much pleasure as I could. In fact, I took delight in leaving him pleasurably exhausted.

I went out later when Wright was asleep and took a full meal from Theodora. She was smaller and older than Wright, and she would probably feel a little weak tomorrow, tired perhaps.

“What work do you do?” I asked her when she looked ready to drift off to sleep.

“I work for the county library,” she said. Then she laughed. “It doesn’t pay very well, but I enjoy it.” And then, as though my question had opened the door for her to talk to me, she said, “I didn’t think you were real. I thought I’d dreamed you.”

“I could be just a dream,” I said. I stroked her shoulder and licked the bite. I wondered what work was done in libraries, then knew. I had been in libraries. I had memories of rooms filled with books. Theodora worked with books and with people who used books.

“You’re a vampire,” she said, breaking into my thoughts. “Am I?” I went on licking her bite.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked as though she didn’t care what the answer might be. And there was no tension in her.

“Of course not. But you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow. You might be a little weak.” “I’ll be all right. I don’t like to take time off.”

“Yes, you will be all right. Stay home tomorrow.”

She said nothing for a moment. She moved restlessly against me, moved away, then came back, accepting again, at ease. “All right. Will you come back to me again? Please come back.”

“In a week, maybe.” “That long?”

“I want you healthy.”

She kissed me. After a moment of surprise, I kissed her back. I held her, and she seemed very comfortable in my arms.

“Be real,” she said. “Please be real.”

“I’m real,” I told her. “Sleep now. I’m real, and I’ll come to you again. Sleep.”

She went to sleep, happily fitted against me, one arm over and around me. I lay with her a few moments, then slipped free and went home to Wright’s cabin.

On Friday evening after dark, Wright drove me back along the road where he had found me. The road was almost as empty on Friday as it had been when I walked it, barefoot and soaking wet. One or two cars every now and then. At least it wasn’t raining tonight.

“I picked you up near here,” Wright said.

I looked around and couldn’t make out much beyond his headlights. “Pull off the road when you can and turn your lights off,” I said.

“You can see in the dark like a cat, can’t you?” he asked.

“I can see in the dark,” I said. “I don’t know anything about cats so I can’t compare myself to them.”

He found a spot where there was room to pull completely off the road and park. There, he stopped and turned off his headlights. Across the road from us there was a hillside and, on our side of the road, a steep slope downward toward a little creek. This was a heavily wooded area, although there was a

clear-cut area not far behind us.

“We’re not far from the national forest,” he said. “We’re running parallel to it. Does anything look familiar?”

“Nothing yet,” I said. I got out of the car and looked down into the trees, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I had walked this road. I began to walk it now, backtracking. After a while, Wright began to follow me in the car. He didn’t turn his lights on but seemed to have no trouble seeing me. I began to jog, always looking around, knowing that at some point it would be time for me to turn off onto a side road and go down into the woods.

I jogged for several minutes, then, on impulse, began to run. Wright followed until finally I spotted the side road that led to the ruin. I turned but he didn’t.

When he didn’t follow, I stopped and waited for him to realize he’d lost me. It seemed to take a surprisingly long time. Finally, the car came back, lights on now, driving slowly. Then he spotted me, and I beckoned to him to turn. Once he had turned, I went to the car and got in.

“I didn’t even see this road,” he said. “I had no idea where you’d gone. Do you know you were running about fifteen miles an hour?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“I suspect it means you should try out for the Olympic Games. Are you tired?” “I’m not. It was a good run, though. What are the Olympic Games?”

“Never mind. Probably too public for you. For someone your size, though, that was a fantastic run.” “It was easier than running down a deer.”

“Where are we going? Don’t let me pass the place.”

“I won’t.” I not only watched, I opened my window and smelled the air. “Here,” I said. “This little road coming up.”

“Private road,” Wright said. “Open the gate for me, would you?”

I did, but the gate made me think for a moment. I had not opened a gate going out. I had climbed over it. It wasn’t a real barrier. Anyone could climb it or walk around it or open it and drive through.

Wright drove through, and I closed the gate and got back into the car. Just a few moments later, we were as close to the ruin as it was safe to drive. There were places where rubble from the houses lay in the road, and Wright said he wanted to be careful with his tires.

“This was a whole community,” he said. “Plus a lot of land.”

I led him around, showing him the place, choosing the easiest paths I could find, but I discovered that he couldn’t see very well. The moon wasn’t up yet, and it was too dark for him. He kept stumbling over the rubble, over stones, over the unevenness of the ground. He would have fallen several times had I not steadied him. He wasn’t happy with my doing that.

“You’re a hell of a lot stronger than you have any right to be,” he said.

“I couldn’t carry you,” I said. “You’re too big. So I need to keep you from getting hurt.”

He looked down at me and smiled. “Somehow, I suspect you would find a way to carry me if you had to.”

I laughed in spite of myself.

“You’re pretty sure this was your home, then?”

I looked around. “I’m not sure, but I think it was. I don’t remember. It’s just a feeling.” Then I stopped. I’d caught a scent that I hadn’t noticed before, one that I didn’t understand.

“Someone’s been here,” I said. “Someone ...” I took a deep breath, then several small, sampling breaths. Then I looked up at Wright. “I don’t know for sure, but I think it may have been someone like me.”

“How can you tell?”

“I smell him. It’s a different scent—more like me than like you even though he’s male.” “You know he’s male? You can tell that from a smell?”

“Yes. Males smell male. It isn’t something I could miss. You smell male.” He looked uncomfortable. “Is that good or bad?”

I smiled. “I enjoy your scent. It reminds me of all sorts of good feelings.”

He gave me a long, hungry look. “Go have the rest of your look-around on your own. You’ll finish faster without me. Suddenly I want to get out of here. I’m eager to get back home.”

“All right,” I said. “We can go as soon as I find out about our visitor.” “This other guy, yeah.” Suddenly, he sounded less happy.

“He may be able to tell me about myself, Wright. He may be my relative.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. When was he here?”

“Not that long ago. Last night I think. I need to know where he came from and where he went. Stay here. I won’t go far, but I need to follow the scent.”

“I think I’ll come with you after all.”

I put my hand on his arm. “You said you’d wait. Stay here, Wright.”

He stared at me, clearly unhappy, but after a moment he nodded. “Watch yourself,” he said.

I turned away from him and began to zigzag through the rubble until I felt I had the direction of the scent—the direction from which the man had come and in which he had gone. It was like a thread that drew me.

I followed it as quickly as I could to the opposite end of the ruin and beyond, through a stand of trees and on to a broad, open meadow. It ended there. I walked through the trees and into the meadow, confused, no longer understanding what I was looking for. I found marks on the ground, marks that were wrong for a car or a truck. There were two of them—long, narrow indentations too narrow and far apart to be tire marks. The word helicopter occurred to me suddenly, and I found that I knew what a helicopter was. I had a picture of one in my mind—clear bubble, rotor blades on top, metal structure sweeping back to the tail rotor, and two long runners instead of wheels. When had I ever seen such a thing?

Had a helicopter landed here, then? Had a man of my people gotten out and looked around the ruin, then gotten back into the copter and flown away?

That had probably happened. I couldn’t think of any reason why it would be impossible.

Would he come back, then? Was he my relative? Had he been looking for me? Or had he had something to do with setting the fire?

If I had stayed in the area instead of wandering out to the highway and getting into Wright’s car, I might have already been in contact with people who knew who I was, knew much more about me than I did. Or I might have been hurt again or