Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was, so I didn’t answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It isn’t hot.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Elfin?”

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

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

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