Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

“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

The Gordons had a guest house at Punta Nublada.

It was a comfortable two-story, five-bedroom house, smaller than the sprawling family houses but easily large enough for us and as ready to be lived in as Iosif ’s guest house had been. It was usually used by visiting Ina and their symbionts or visiting members of the Gordon symbionts’families. Daniel said such people imagined that their relatives lived in a commune that had somehow survived from the 1960s. Then he had to tell me something about the 1960s. I might not have asked, but I found I enjoyed hearing his voice.