Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

I gave her a moment to understand that I had stopped, and when she stopped struggling, I let her go. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

She was crying silently. She cringed as I leaned over to lick the bite and take the blood that was still coming. She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed but managed not to push hard. I went on licking the bite. She needed that to help with healing.

“I always liked that so much when Stefan did it,” she said.

“It should be enjoyable,” I said, although I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. I was doing what seemed to be my duty. “And it helps your wounds heal quickly and cleanly. It will be enjoyable again someday soon.”

She relaxed a little, and I thought I might be reaching her. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you’ve got some kind of keep-out sign on you, too—as far as I’m concerned, I mean. I panicked. I couldn’t control myself. Your bite didn’t hurt, but it was . . . it was horrible.” She drew away from me with a shudder.

“But do you feel better?” I asked. “Better?”

“You’ve stopped shaking.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks . . . I guess.”

“I don’t know exactly how long it will be before we can take pleasure in one another, but I think it’s important that you do feel better now. Next time will be easier and more comfortable.” Now that I’d bitten her, it would. It seemed best to tell her that.

“Hope so.”

I left her alone in the huge bed. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d stayed. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d stayed.

I went to the bathroom, washed, and then just stayed there. I knew I had to go to Brook soon. The longer I waited, the harder it would be. Maybe Brook would have an easier time since she hadn’t seemed so needy. Or perhaps it would be worse because she’d been with Iosif for so long. Was

twenty-two years a long time when she would live to be maybe two hundred? If only I knew what I was doing.

I sat on the side of the bathtub for a long time, hearing Celia cry until she fell asleep, hearing Wright moving around the kitchen, hearing Brook breathing softly in one of the bedrooms. She was not asleep, but she was not moving around either. She was sitting or lying down—probably waiting for me.

I got up and went to her.

“I thought you could wait,” she said when she saw me. “If you wanted to, you could wait until tomorrow.

I mean, I’m all right now. I’m not getting the shakes or anything.”

I didn’t sigh. I didn’t say anything. I only went to the bed where she lay atop the bedspread and lay down beside her. Her scent was so much like my father’s that if I closed my eyes, it was almost as though I were lying in bed beside Iosif, and even though I had begun to trust Iosif and even to like him, I had not found him appetizing in any way at all.

“We will get through this,” I said. “What you feel now will end.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I hope so,” she said. “Do it.”

I did it. And when I was finished, I left her crying into a pillow. She was no more able to take comfort from me than Celia had been, and there was no comfort for me in either of them. I went out, hoping to find the comfort I needed with Wright. He was in the living room, eating a ham sandwich and a bag of microwave popcorn and watching a television that I had not noticed before. He aimed the remote and stopped the program as I came in.

“No cable,” he said, “but movies and old TV shows galore.” He gestured toward the shelves of tapes and DVDs in the cabinet. Then, after a moment, he asked, “How are things?”

I shook my head and went to sit next to him on the arm of his chair. I had worried that he would draw away from me, resent my bringing two strangers into our family, but he reached up, lifted me with a hand under one of my arms, and put me on his lap. I made myself comfortable there, his arms around me. I sighed with contentment.

“Things were horrible,” I said. “But they’re better now.”

That was when I heard the people outside, first two of them, then, as I sat up and away from Wright’s chest and the beat of his heart, I heard more. I couldn’t tell how many.

Then I smelled the gasoline.

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.