Fledgling(6)

“You ate the deer raw?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, no you didn’t.” Something seemed to occur to him suddenly. “Show me your knife.”

I hesitated. “Knife?”

“To clean and skin the deer.”

“A thing? A tool?”

“A tool for cutting, yes.”

“I don’t have a knife.”

He held me away from him and stared at me. “Show me your teeth,” he said.

I bared my teeth for him.

“Good God,” he said. “Are those what you bit me with?” He put his hand to his neck. “You are a damned vampire.”

“Didn’t hurt you,” I said. He looked afraid. He started to push me away, then got that confused look again and pulled me back to him. “Do vampires eat deer?” I asked. I licked at his neck again.

He raised a hand to stop me, then dropped the hand to his side. “What are you, then?” he whispered.

And I said the only thing I could: “I don’t know.” I drew back, held his face between my hands, liking him, glad that I had found him. “Help me find out.”





Three

On the drive to his cabin, the man told me that his name was Wright Hamlin and that he was a construction worker. He had been a student in a nearby place called Seattle at something called the University of Washington for two years. Then he had dropped out because he didn’t know where he was heading or even where he wanted to be heading. His father had been disgusted with him and had sent him to work for his uncle who owned a construction company. He’d worked for his uncle for three years now, and his current job was helping to build houses in a new community to the south of where he’d picked me up.

“I like the work,” he told me as he drove. “I still don’t know where I’m headed, but the work I’m doing is worth something. People will live in those houses someday.”

I understood only that he liked the work he was doing. As he told me a little about it, though, I realized I would have to be careful about taking blood from him. I understood—or perhaps remembered—that people could be weakened by blood loss. If I made Wright weak, he might get hurt. When I thought about it, I knew I would want more blood—want it as badly as I had previously wanted meat. And as I thought about meat, I realized that I didn’t want it anymore. The idea of eating it disgusted me. Taking Wright’s blood had been the most satisfying thing I could remember doing. I didn’t know what that meant—whether it made me what Wright thought of as a vampire or not. I realized that to avoid hurting Wright, to avoid hurting anyone, I would have to find several people to take blood from. I wasn’t sure how to do that, but it had to be done.

Wright told me what he remembered about vampires—that they’re immortal unless someone stabs them in the heart with a wooden stake, and yet even without being stabbed they’re dead, or undead. Whatever that means. They drink blood, they have no reflection in mirrors, they can become bats or wolves, they turn other people into vampires either by drinking their blood or by making the convert drink the vampire’s blood. This last detail seemed to depend on which story you were reading or which movie you were watching. That was the other thing about vampires. They were fictional beings. Folklore. There were no vampires.

So what was I?

It bothered Wright that all he wanted to do now was keep me with him, that he was taking me to his home and not to the police or to a hospital. “I’m going to get into trouble,” he said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

“What will happen to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Jail, maybe. You’re so young. I should care about that. It should be scaring the hell out of me. It is scaring me, but not enough to make me dump you.”

I thought about that for a while. He had let me bite him. I knew from the way he touched me and looked at me that he would let me bite him again when I wanted to. And he would do what he could to help me find out who I was and what had happened to me.

“How can I keep you from getting into trouble?” I asked.

He shook his head. “In the long run, you probably can’t. For now, though, get down on the floor.”

I looked at him.

“Get down, now. I can’t let my uncle and aunt or the neighbors see you.”

I slid from the seat and curled myself up on the floor of his car. If I had been a little bigger, it wouldn’t have been possible. As it was, it wasn’t comfortable. But it didn’t matter. He threw the blanket over me. After that, I could feel the car making several turns, slowing, turning once more, then stopping.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re at the carport behind my cabin. No one can see us.”

I unfolded myself, got back up onto the seat, and looked around. There was a scattering of trees, lights from distant houses, and next to us, a small house. Wright got out of the car, and I looked quickly to see which button or lever he used to open the door. It was one I had tried when he was threatening to take me to a hospital or the police. It hadn’t worked then, but it worked now. The door opened.

I got out and asked, “Why wouldn’t it open before?”

“I locked it,” he said. “I didn’t want you smearing yourself all over the pavement.”