Fledgling_ a novel Part 6

Hunting steadied me, focused me. And hunting was good because it meant I would eat soon.

I wound up eating most of someone's little nanny goat. I didn't mean to take a domestic animal, but it was all I found after hours of searching. It must have escaped from some farm. Better the goat than its owner.

Relieved and sated, I began hiking back toward the ruin to wait for Wright. Then I caught the scent of other people nearby. Farms. I had avoided them while I was hunting, but now I let myself take in the scents and sort them out, see whether I recognized any of them.

And I found the gunman.

It wasn't midnight yet-too early for Wright to have arrived. I had time to talk to the man who had caused me so much pain and nearly cost Wright his life. I turned toward the farm and began to jog.

I came out of the woods and ran through the farm fields toward the scent. It came from a one-story, gray farmhouse with a red roof. That meant I might be able to go straight into the room where the gunman was snoring. There were three other people in the house, so I would have to be careful. At least everyone was asleep.

I found a window to the gunman's bedroom, but it was closed and locked. I could think of no way to open it quietly. The doors were also locked. I went around the house and found no open door or window. I could get into the house easily, but not quietly.

I went back to the gunman's bedroom window-a big window. I pulled my jacket sleeve down over my hand and closed my hand around the sleeve opening so that my fist was completely covered. This was made easier by the fact that the jacket, like the rest of my clothing, was a little too big. With one quick blow, I broke the window near where I saw the latch. Then I ducked below the windowsill and froze, listening. If people were alerted by the noise, I wanted to know at once.

There was no change in anyone's breathing except the gunman's. His snoring stopped, then began again. I waited, not wanting there to be too many alien sounds too close together. Then I reached in, turned the window latch, and raised the window. The window opened easily, silently. I stepped in and closed it after me.

At that point, the man in the bed stopped snoring again. The colder air from outside had probably roused him.

As quickly as I could, I crossed the room to the bed, turned his face to the pillow, grabbed his hands, dropped my weight onto him, and bit him.

He bucked and struggled, and I worried that if he kept it up, he would either buck me off or force me to break his bones. But I had already bitten him once. He should be ready to listen to me.

"Be still," I whispered, "and be quiet."

And he obeyed. He lay still and silent while I took a little more of his blood. Then I sat up and looked around. His door was closed, but there were people in the room next to his. I had heard their breathing when I was outside-two people. On the other hand, because his closet and theirs separated the two rooms, I could barely hear them now. Maybe they wouldn't hear us.

"Sit up and keep your voice low," I said to the gunman. "What's your name?"

He put his hand to his neck. "What did you do?" he whispered.

What's your name?" I repeated.

"Raleigh Curtis."

"Who else is in this house?"

"My brother. My sister-in-law. Their kid."

"So is this their house?"

"Yeah. I got laid off my job, so they let me stay here."

"All right. Why did you shoot me, Raleigh?"

He squinted, trying to see me in the dark, then reached for his bedside lamp.

"No," I said. "No light. Just talk to me."

"I didn't know what you were," he said. "You just shot out of nowhere. I thought you were some kind of wild cat." He paused. "Hey, do that thing again on my neck."

I shrugged. Why not? He would definitely be sick the next day, but I didn't care. I took a little more of his blood while he lay back trembling and writhing and whispering over and over, "Oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d."

When I stopped, he begged, "Do it some more. Jesus, that's the best feeling I've ever had in my life."

"No more now," I said. "Talk to me. You said you shot me because I scared you."

"Yeah. Where'd you come from like that?"

"Why were you aiming your rifle at the man? He didn't scare you."

"Had to."

"Why?"

He frowned and rubbed his head. "Had to."

"Tell me why."

He hesitated, still frowning. "He was there. He shouldn't have been there. It wasn't his property."

"It wasn't yours either." This was only a guess, but it seemed reasonable.

"He shouldn't have been there."

"Why was it your job to drive him off or kill him?" Silence.

"Tell me why." After three bites, he should have been eager to tell me. Instead, he almost seemed to be in pain.

He held his head between his hands and whimpered. "I can't tell you," he said. "I want to, but I can't. My head hurts."

Something occurred to me suddenly. "Did you see the man in the helicopter?"

He put his face into the pillow, whimpering. "I saw him," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled, barely understandable.

"When did he come? Thursday night?"

He looked up at me, gray-faced, and rubbed his neck, not where I had bitten him, but on the opposite side. "Yeah. Thursday."

"Did he see you, talk to you?"

He moaned, face twisted in pain. He seemed to be about to cry. "Please don't ask me. I can't say. I can't say."

The man, the male of my kind, had found him, bitten him, and ordered him to guard the ruin and not tell anyone why he was doing it. But what was there to guard? What was there to shoot a person over?

In spite of myself, I began to feel sorry for Raleigh. His head probably did hurt. He was torn between obeying me and obeying the man from the helicopter. That kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen. Just thinking about it made me intensely uncomfortable, and, of course, I didn't know why. I waited, hoping to remember more. But there was no more, except that I began to feel ashamed of myself, began to feel as though I owed Raleigh an apology.

"Raleigh."

"Yeah?"

"It's all right. I won't ask you about the man in the helicopter any more. It's all right."

"Okay." He looked as though he hadn't taken a breath for too long, and now, suddenly, he could breathe again. He also looked like he was no longer in pain.

"I want to meet the man in the helicopter," I said. "If he comes to you again, I want you to tell him about me."

"Tell him what?"

"Tell him I bit you. Tell him I want to meet him. Tell him I'll come back to the burned houses next Friday night. And tell him I didn't know that you ... that you knew him. If he asks you any questions about me, it's okay to answer. All right?"

"Yeah. What's your name?"

Good question. "Don't bother about a name. Describe me to him. I think he'll know. And don't tell anyone else about either of us. Make up lies if you have to."

"Okay."

I started to get up, but he caught my hand. Then he let it go. "That thing you did," he said, touching the spot I'd bitten. "That was really good."

"It will probably make you feel weak and sick for a while," I said. "I'm sorry for that. You'll be all right in a couple of days."

"Worth it," he said.

And I left feeling better, feeling as though he'd forgiven me. Whoever I was before, it seemed I had had strong beliefs about what was right and what wasn't. It wasn't right to bite someone who had already been claimed by another of my kind. Certainly it hadn't been all right to drain Raleigh to the point of sickness when he wasn't truly responsible for shooting me. Why on earth would one of my own people take the chance of being responsible for a pointless shooting, perhaps even a death?

I jogged back toward the ruin. Eight chimneys, much burned rubble, a few standing timbers and remnant walls. That's what was left. Why did it need guarding? The guarding should have come before the fire when it might have done some good.

Finally, I jogged over to the unblocked part of the private road, coming out where Wright and I had parked the night before. I heard him coming-heard him stop down at the gate, then start again. I waited, making sure it was his car and not some stranger's. The moment I recognized the car and caught his scent, I could hardly wait to see him. The instant he stopped the car, I pulled the pa.s.senger door open and slid inside.

He was there, smelling worried and nervous. And somehow he didn't see me until I was sitting next to him, closing the door.

He jumped, then grabbed me and yanked me into a huge hug.

I found myself laughing as he examined me, checked my leg, then the rest of me. "I'm fine," I said, and kissed him and felt alarmingly glad to see him. "Let's go home," I said at last. "I want a hot bath, and then I want you."

He held me in his lap, and I was surprised that he had managed to move me there without my realizing it. "Anytime," he said. "Now, if you like."

I kissed his throat. "Not now. Let's go home."

Seven.

A week later, we went back to the ruin.

I wanted Wright to park the car beside the gate to the private road. I thought it would be safest for him to stay with the car while I went in alone. But I had told him the little that Raleigh Curtis had told me, and Wright was adamant. He was going with me.

"You don't know what this guy will do," he said. "What if he just grabs you and takes you away with him? h.e.l.l, what if he's the one who torched those houses to begin with?"

"He's of my kind," I said. "Even if he doesn't know anything about me, he'll probably know someone who does. Or at least he can tell me about my people. I have to know who I am, Wright, and what I am."

"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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.