Fledgling

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.

My symbionts and I moved our things from the cars into the house and relaxed for the rest of the night. There was canned and frozen food, as there had been in the Arlington house, and Wright, Celia, and Brook put together a meal. A short time later we were all asleep.

Just before dawn, though, I left the bed I was sharing with Wright and went to the room Celia had chosen. I was hungry but didn’t want to be in too much of a hurry with her. I slipped into her bed, turned her toward me, and kissed her as she woke. Once the surprise and stiffness had gone out of her, I found the place on her neck where I could feel her pulse most strongly. I licked the dark, salt-and-bitter skin where I would bite her. She didn’t struggle. Her body jerked once when I bit her, then it was still. Afterward, she dozed off easily, resting against me while I licked the wound I had made. Like Brook, she still wasn’t enjoying herself, but at least she was no longer suffering.

When she was asleep, I got up, showered, dressed, and went outside while it was still comfortably dim. I meant to wander around, take a look at the place. But I found Preston sitting on a seat that swung from chains attached to the ceiling on the front porch of the guest house. He looked up at me, smiled, and said, “I hoped you would get up before I got too drowsy. I’m here to speak with you on behalf of the son of one of my symbionts.”

I sat down next to him. “All right,” I said.

He smiled. “We love our mates,” he said. “Their venom never lets us go. We would be lost if it did. But our symbionts . . . they never truly understand how deeply we treasure them. This boy . . . I still miss his mother.”

I waited, very curious. I liked him. That was interesting. I didn’t know him, but I liked him. He smelled good somehow, not in the slightest edible, not even sexually interesting, but good, comfortable to be with.

“One of my symbionts had a son,” he said. “Then about ten years ago, she was killed in a traffic accident in San Francisco. She had gone there to visit her sister. I might have been able to help, but I wasn’t notified until she was dead. Her husband is still alive, still here. He’s one of William’s symbionts. But in this matter ... Well, I promised father and son I would speak to you. The son is twenty-two and just out of college. He’s heard about you and seen your picture. Last night when you arrived, he saw you for the first time. He says he would like to join with you if you’ll have him. He has a degree in business administration, and I think you’ll eventually need someone like him to help you manage the business

affairs of your families.”

I drew a deep breath and smiled sadly. “I don’t know about that, but I think I need more symbionts soon. I don’t believe three is enough, and I’m worried about hurting the ones I have.”

“I wondered whether you were aware of the danger,” he said. “You do need more people quickly. In fact, you need three or four more symbionts.”

“I left one back in Washington. We have an emotional connection, but that’s all so far. I refused to bring her because I didn’t know what I would find here, and I didn’t know whether I could protect her.”

“With our help, you should be able to do that.”

“And I have no home,” I said. “I’ll have to start from nothing. I’ll do that, but with my memory gone, I’ll need a lot of information from you. I don’t really know how to be Ina.”

“You do, I believe, even though you don’t realize that you do. Your manner is very much that of an intelligent, somewhat arrogant, young Ina female. I think you learned long before you lost your memory that you could have things pretty much your own way.” He smiled.

“You see that in my behavior?” I asked surprised.

“Yes, I do. Don’t worry about it. A little selfconfidence may be just what you need right now.”

“I have nothing to be confident about,” I said. “I really do need to learn all I can from you and your family.”

“Of course you do. Ask us any questions you like. Best to ask only the fathers. You won’t torment us quite so much.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry about that. I know my scent bothers you.” “Do you remember?”

“No. Iosif told me.”

“I see. Will you have my symbiont’s son?”

“Of course I will, if it turns out he and I like each other. What’s his name?”

“Joel Harrison. I think you’ll like him, and as I’ve said, he’s seen you and he wants to be with you. And as a bonus, his father saw you last night, too. They were both on guard. He got a look at you and liked the way you stood up for your symbionts. He said you would take care of Joel.”

“As best I can,” I said. “But—”

“You’re with us now. You aren’t alone. And what you said earlier about having nothing . . . that probably isn’t true. Your mothers and your father owned large tracts of land, several apartment buildings in Seattle run by a management company, and interests in several businesses. They had substantial incomes. Daniel was involved in some sort of business venture with one of your brothers. He knows something about their affairs, and we can find out more. Eventually, what they owned will be yours.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I knew they owned the land they lived on, but I didn’t have any idea what else there was or how to find out about it.” I frowned, remembering something I had read about on Wright’s computer. “Would they have left wills?”

He frowned. “Well, yes, but they would never have foreseen being so completely wiped out. We’ll find out. Somewhere along the line, there will be a lawyer or two who’s been bitten and who, as a result, will be very helpful and very honorable about seeing that your rights are respected.”

I nodded and repeated, “Thank you.”

He stood up, and it was as though he suddenly unfolded, tall and lean. “You’re welcome, Shori. Now, I think I’d better introduce you to Joel so that I can get to bed.” He raised his arm and beckoned. A young man emerged from one of the houses across the road. The man was as tall as Wright, but not as heavily muscled. And this man was as dark skinned as I was and had hair like mine. He walked toward me with

a little smile on his face. I got the impression he was excited—both happy and very nervous.

I liked the way he looked—strong and wiry and healthy and brown, striding as though there were springs in his legs.

“You will have to talk to your first,” Preston said. I glanced up at him, startled.

“You don’t want them fighting or competing with one another in ways that make the rest of you miserable. Each must find a way to accept the other. Each must find a way to accept the other’s relationship with you. You must help them do this.”

I sighed.

The young man came up to me, towering over me, smiling down.

“Shori Matthews, this is Joel Harrison,” Preston said. “I believe the two of you will be very good for one another.”

“Thank you,” I said to him. And to Joel, “Welcome.”

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” Joel said. Slowly, deliberately, he extended his arm, wrist up, clearly not so that we could shake hands.

I laughed, took the hand, kissed his wrist, and said to him, “Later.” “Date,” he said. “Is there room for me over here?”

“There’s room.” “I’ll get my stuff.”

I watched him walk away, then said to Preston, “He smells wonderful.”

Preston crooked his mouth in something less than a smile. “Yes. He’s been told that, I’m afraid. Be good to each other.”

He had started to walk away from me when I stopped him. “Preston, do you know whether I had my own family of symbionts before . . . before the fire?”

He looked back. “Of course you did. You can’t remember them at all?” “Not at all.”

“Good.”

I stared at him.

“Child ... you have no idea how much it hurts when they die. And you’ve lost all of yours. All seven. If you remembered them, the pain would be overwhelming . . . unbearable.”

“But they were mine, and I don’t recall their scents or their tastes or the sounds of their voices or even their names.”

“Good,” Preston repeated softly. “Let them rest in peace, Shori. Actually, that’s all you can do.” He walked slowly away to the house Joel had gone into. I watched him go, wondering how many symbionts he had lost over the years, over the centuries.

The sun was rising now and growing bright enough to be uncomfortable even through the low clouds. I

went back inside and found Celia frying frozen sausages from the refrigerator. “How are you?” I asked.

“I’m good,” she said. “How about you? You didn’t hurt me, but you filled up on me, didn’t you?”

“I did.” I looked at the sausages. “Do you need more food? You can get things from one of the other houses.” That felt right. No one here would wonder why a symbiont needed to eat well.

“Some butter?” she asked. “There are frozen waffles in the refrigerator, and there’s syrup in the cupboard—good maple syrup—but no butter.”

“Go to the house next door and tell whoever answers that you’re with me. If they don’t have what you want, they’ll tell you who does.”

She nodded. “Okay. Don’t let my sausages burn.” And she ran off to the nearest house, introduced herself, and asked not only for butter, but for fresh fruit and milk as well. I listened while turning her sausages. Wright hadn’t managed to teach me to cook, but he had cooked food around me often enough for me to be able to keep pork sausage from burning. The symbiont who answered Celia just said sure, introduced herself as Jill Renner, put the things Celia wanted into a bag, and told her to have a good breakfast. Celia thanked her and brought them back to the guest-house kitchen. Brook came in just then, and she dove right into the bag, took out a banana, and began to peel and eat it.

“A new symbiont will be coming in sometime soon,” I told her. “Offer him breakfast, would you?” “Ooh,” Brook said. “Him?”

“Damn,” Celia said and sighed. “See, now here’s where I don’t envy you guys. You’re going to go upstairs and kick that nice hairy man of yours right in his balls, aren’t you? A new man already! Damn.”

“Keep the new guy down here until I come back,” I said. I left them and went up to talk to Wright.

Wright had showered and was shaving. There was another sink in the bathroom—one that had a chair in front of it and a large low mirror with lights around it. I sat down in the chair and watched him shave before a similar, higher mirror. He had collected his electric razor from his cabin when we stopped there and was using it now to sweep his whiskers away quickly and easily.

Then he looked at me. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Not wrong,” I said. “But perhaps something that will be hard for you.” I frowned. “Hard on you. And I

don’t want it to be.” “Tell me.”

I thought about how to do that and decided that directness was best. “Preston has offered me another symbiont, one whose mother, when she was alive, was one of Preston’s symbionts. The new one’s name is Joel Harrison.”

He turned his shaver off and put it on the sink. “I see. Is Preston the father?” I stared at him in surprise. “Wright, that’s not possible.”

“I didn’t think it was, but I thought I’d ask, since you didn’t mention the father.”

“I don’t know who Joel’s father is, but he’s here. He’s one of William’s symbionts. Joel’s mother was killed in a traffic accident ten years ago.”

“What does the father think about his son coming to you?”

“He wanted his son to come to me. He asked Preston to introduce us.” “So he’s pimping his own son.”

I hesitated. “I don’t know what that means, but your voice says it’s something disgusting. Joel’s father hasn’t done anything disgusting, Wright. He and Joel both looked at me and decided I would be good for Joel. He’s been away at school. He could have stayed away, could have come back now and then to

visit his father. But he chose a life with the Ina, with us. I’m glad of it. I need him.” “For what? You need him for what?”

I looked at him, wanting to touch him, knowing that at that moment he did not want to be touched. “Three of you aren’t enough to sustain me for long without harm to you. I’m going to try to have Theodora brought here, too.”

He shook his head angrily. “I don’t mind the women so much I guess. I kind of like the two downstairs. I

was hoping you’d get all women—except me. I think I could deal with that.” He turned around, filled with energy and violence, and punched the wall, breaking it, leaving a fist-sized hole. And he had hurt his hand. I could smell the blood. But he did not seem to notice. “Hell,” he said, “you don’t even know Harrison. Maybe you’ll hate him.”

I shrugged. “If I don’t like him, I’ll have to find someone else and soon.” He looked at me sadly. “My little vampire.”

“Still,” I said.

He stepped over to me, picked me up with a hand under one arm, sat down, and sat me on his lap. I took his injured hand and looked at it, licked away the blood, saw that he hadn’t done himself much damage. It would heal overnight like a shallow bite.

“I could get a lot more pissed with you if you were bigger,” he said softly. “I hope not,” I said.

He wrapped both arms around me, held me against him. “I don’t think I can do this, Shori. I can’t share you.”

I leaned back against him. “You can,” I said softly. “You will. It will be all right. Not now, perhaps, but eventually, it will be all right.”

“Just like that.” The bitterness and sorrow in his voice was terrible. I turned on his lap, straddled him, and looked up at him.

After a moment, he said, “I want you for myself. It scares me how much I love you, Shori.”

I pulled his head down and kissed him, then rested my forehead against his chest, savoring his scent, his

wonderful furry body, the beat of his heart. “Preston says our symbionts never know how much we treasure them,” I said.

“You treasure me?” “You know I do.”

He held me away from him and looked at me. “You’ve taken over my life,” he said. “And now you want me to share you with another man.”

“I do,” I said. “Share me. Don’t fight with him. Don’t hurt the family by fighting with him. Accept him.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” I repeated. “You will. He’s part of the family that we must form. He’s one of us.”

When I left him and went down to the kitchen, I found Joel sitting at the table drinking coffee with Brook and Celia.

“Hey,” he said when I came in. He had two large rolling suitcases parked near his chair.

“Hey,” I said reflexively. “Come talk to me.” I took his hand and led him to the other end of the house to what I had been told was the “family room.”

“Don’t you mean that you’re going to talk to me?” Joel asked as he sat down in one of the large leather-covered chairs. I sat on the arm of his chair.

“First things first,” I said and took the wrist he had offered earlier. He watched me raise it to my mouth and kiss it a second time, and he smiled. I bit him.

He was delicious. I had intended only to taste him and get a little of my venom into him, but he was such a treat that I took a little more that a taste. And I lingered over his wrist longer than was necessary.

Finally, I looked up at him and found him leaning back bonelessly in the chair. “God,” he said. “I hit the jackpot.”

“How have you managed to stay unattached?” I asked. “Didn’t anyone here want you?”

He smiled. “Everyone wanted me. Everyone except Preston and Hayden. They said I was too young to join with them. The others ... they left me alone when I asked them to, but before that, they were all after me. And I didn’t want to join with a man. There’s too much sexual feeling involved when you guys feed. I wanted that from a woman. Preston said he would check with nearby female families after I finished college, and he’s taken me to see a couple of them, but I wasn’t interested. You are the only Ina I’ve

ever been attracted to.” “After seeing me only once?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even see you when you were here before ... before your parents died. I had gone to San Francisco to spend time with some friends from college.” He shook his head. “I liked your looks when I saw the pictures the Gordons had of you and your sisters. When I saw you last night, I didn’t have a chance.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m only beginning to form my family,” I said. “You would probably have an easier life with anyone here or any of the female families you’ve seen. You know my memory only goes back a few weeks.”

“I heard.”

“And when I leave the Gordons, I’ll be alone.”

He nodded. “Then let me help you make a new family.”

I looked at him and saw that his expression had changed, had become more serious. Good. “I want you to be part of my new family,” I said. “More than that, I need you. But you and my first will have to accept each other. You will accept him. There will be peace between you. No fighting. No endangering the rest of us with destructive competitions.”

“All right. I doubt that your first and I will ever be anything like friends, but I know how it is. I suppose you told him the same thing.”

“Of course.” I paused. “He helped me, Joel. When I had no one else, when I had no idea who or what I

was, he helped me.”

“I wish I had had the chance to do such a thing.” He reached up and touched my face. “Like I said, let me help you make a new family.”

A little later that morning, I put on my hooded jacket, sunglasses, and gloves and walked around to each of the houses of the community. I spotted the guards from outside, then went into the houses to do what I could to help them be less easily spotted. Being easily spotted by the kind of attackers my symbionts and I had faced would mean easily shot.

The Gordon symbionts greeted me by touching me—my shoulders, arms, hands. I found that I was comfortable with that, although I had not expected it. It was as though they had to touch me to believe that I could be Ina and yet be awake.

“You aren’t drowsy at all?” a woman named Linda Higuera asked. She was a nervous, muscular brown woman, at least six feet tall and leaning on a rifle. We were on the third floor of William’s house, and she was one of his symbionts. From what I had seen, William preferred big, powerful-looking symbionts, male and female. Wise of him.

“I’m not drowsy,” I said. “As long as I don’t get too much sun, I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “I wish William could do that. I would feel safer if he could at least wake up if we need him.”

I shrugged. “Your turn to keep him safe.”

She thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right. Damn. He’s so strong, I’ve just gotten used to depending on him. Guess it ought to work both ways.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Do you have a phone?”

“There are phones in the guest house.” “I mean a cell phone.”

“No, I don’t.” I wasn’t entirely sure what a cell phone was.

“You should have one so we can talk to each other if something happens. The house phones are too easy to disable.”

That made sense. “Is there one I can borrow?”

She sent me down to wake up a huge man named Martin, a man so brown he was almost black. Martin not only supplied me with a charged cell phone, but saved several numbers on it and made me repeat the names that went with them and whose house each person was in. Then he showed me how to make a call, and I made a practice call to the guard at Daniel’s house. Finally, he dug out a charger and showed me how to use that.

“Here’s your number,” he said, making it flash across the phone’s small screen, “just in case you have to give it to somebody.”

“Thank you,” I said, and he grinned.

“No problem. How’s Linda doing up there?” “Doing well,” I said. “Alert and thoughtful.”

“And how about my son?” he asked in a different tone. “How’s he?” I looked at him, startled. “You’re Joel’s father?”

“Yep. Martin Harrison. Joel move into the guest house yet?” “He has, yes. I like him.”

“Good. You’re what he wants. If you take care of him, he’ll take care of you.”

I nodded and left him feeling much better about the safety of the Gordon community. With or without me, these people would not be caught by surprise and murdered, and now I could communicate with them in

a quiet, effective way.

I walked around the community once more, stopping now and then to listen to the activity around me. There were symbionts eating meals, making love, discussing children who were away at boarding schools, discussing the vineyards and the winery, pruning nearby trees, washing dishes, ordering audiobooks by phone, typing on computers ... There were little children playing games and singing songs in a room at Hayden’s house. It seemed that here some symbionts still carried on most of their activities during the day while others had switched to a nocturnal schedule to spend more time with their Ina.

As I wandered back toward the guest house, I found myself paying attention to a conversation that

Wright and Brook were having there.

“They take over our lives,” Brook said. “They don’t even think about it, they just do it as though it were their right. And we let them because they give us so much satisfaction and . . . just pure pleasure.”

Wright grunted. “We let them because we have no choice. By the time we realize what’s happened to us, it’s too late.”

There was a long pause. “It’s not usually that way,” Brook said. “Iosif told me what would happen if I accepted him, that I would become addicted and need him. That I would have to obey. That if he died, I might die. Not that I could imagine him dying. That seemed so impossible . . . But he told me all that. Then he asked me to come to him anyway, to accept him and stay with him because I could live for maybe two hundred years and be healthy and look and feel young, and because he wanted me and

needed me. I wasn’t hooked when he asked. He’d only bitten me a couple of times. I could have walked away—or run like hell. He told me later that he thought I might run. He said people did run sometimes

out of superstitious fear or out of the puritanical belief that anything that feels that good must have a huge downside somewhere along the line. Then he had to find them and talk them into believing he was a

dream or an ordinary boyfriend.”

Wright said, “By the time Shori asked me—or rather, by the time she offered to let me go—I was very thoroughly hooked, psychologically if not physically.”

“That was probably because of her memory loss.”

Wright made an “mmmm” sound of agreement. “I suppose. She’s shown herself to be a weirdly ethical little thing most of the time. It still bothers me, though, and now there’s this new guy she told me about ...”

“Joel,” Brook said. “You haven’t met him yet?”

“She didn’t hang around to introduce us. I met him in the upstairs hall. He had the nerve to ask me which bedrooms were empty. You know she never even told me he was black.”

“They’re not human, Wright. They don’t care about white or black.”

“I know. I even know she needs the guy—or at least, she needs a few more people. But I hate the bastard. I’m not going to do anything to him. I’ll deal with this somehow, but Jesus God, I hate him!”

“You’re jealous.” “Of course I am!”

“You aren’t sure you want her, but you don’t want anyone else to have her.”

“Well, it’s not like I can leave. Hell, I can feel the hold she’s got on me. I can’t even think of leaving her without getting scared.”

“Would you change that?” Brook asked. “If you could escape her, would you?” “. . . I don’t know.”

“I think you do. I’ve seen you with her.”

“I can’t imagine being without her, but I’m not sure I would have begun if I’d known what I was getting into.” There was a silence, then he asked, “What about you? How do you feel about the way she claimed you?”

“Better,” Brook admitted. “Better?”

“She got us out of the Arlington house alive, and she shouldn’t have been able to do that. And she stood her ground last night. The Gordons were pushing her, trying to intimidate her a little just to see what she would do, what she was like. Well, she’s strong, and it matters to her how other Ina treat us. We can trust her. Celia said we could, but I wasn’t sure.”

“You’re saying you want to be her symbiont, not some man’s? I mean, I thought that after choosing to be with Iosif . . .”

There was another short silence, then Brook said, “I would probably have chosen a man if I’d had a choice initially. But I’m okay with Shori. I can find myself a human man if I need one. I can’t believe what she’s done for Celia and me. I’ve seen symbionts who’ve lost their Ina. An old Ina who was visiting died while he was with us. I saw his symbionts in withdrawal, and I heard them screaming when other Ina tried

to save their lives by taking them over. It was bad. Convulsions, pain, helpless fear and revulsion for the Ina who is only trying to help. It went on for days, weeks. It was really horrible. One of the symbionts died. But with Shori . . . she’s fed from me twice, and already it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s not fun, but it’s not bad. I can’t wait to know what it will be like when I’m fully her symbiont.”

“So . . . they don’t all feel the same when they bite?”

“No more than we all look the same. Their venom is different—very individual. I suspect her bite is spectacular. That’s why she was able to get you the way she did.”

“And she’s only a kid,” he said.

They said nothing more. I listened for a few moments for more conversation, then for outsiders, intruders. When I knew that the community was safe, for the moment, I thought about what Brook and Wright had said. What they had said, overall, was that, except for Wright’s problem with Joel, they were content

with me. It felt remarkably good to know this. I was relieved, even though I had not realized I needed relief. Wright would have to find his own way to accept Joel, and Joel would have to do the same with Wright. There would be a period of unease that I would have to pay attention to, but we would get through it. Other families of Ina and symbionts proved that it could be done.

That day, there were no intruders. The symbionts kept watch, with fresh guards arriving every three

hours so that no one got too tired or drowsy. I met a few more of them and liked their variety—a dentist, an oceanographer, a potter, a writer who also worked as a translator (Mandarin Chinese), a plumber, an internist, two nurses, a beautician who was also a barber, and, of course, farmers and winegrowers. And those were just the ones I met. Some no longer did the work they had trained to do except on behalf of the people of Punta Nublada. Some worked in nearby towns or in the Bay Area two or three days out of the week. Some worked in the vineyards and the winery that the Gordons owned. Some, who were self employed, worked in Punta Nublada. Three of the buildings I had mistaken for barns or storage buildings proved to be full of offices, studios, and workshops.

“We fill our time as we please,” Jill Renner told me during her watch at Wayne Gordon’s house, next to the guest house. “We help support the community whether we have jobs away from it or stay here, whether we bring in money or not.” She was the daughter and granddaughter of symbionts and had been much relieved when Wayne Gordon took an interest in her and asked her to accept him. She had a

half-healed bite just visible on the side of her neck. I realized that she wanted it to be seen. She was proud of Wayne’s obvious attentions to her. Interesting.

That night Wayne and Manning, one of Wayne’s fathers, drove to a local airfield where they kept a private plane. Each took two symbionts with him, so I assumed they expected to be gone for two full nights—not that they couldn’t graze on strangers if they had to. The Gordons called it grazing. It was

what I’d done when I lived with Wright at his cabin, except for Theodora. Ina often found new symbionts when they grazed.

Wayne and Manning came to the guest house before they left to tell me that they were going up to Washington to begin to work out the legal affairs of my male and female families and to look at the ruins of their former communities in the hope that they would see something that we had missed. I had Brook tell them the exact address of Iosif’s guest house near Arlington. Let them look at that, too.

“Shall I go?” I asked them. “Won’t you need me as daughter and only survivor? Anyway, I think I’d like to collect Theodora.”

“We won’t need you yet,” Wayne said. He was tall even for an Ina, the tallest in his family. He towered over even his tallest symbionts. “We’ll have to produce you eventually, but for now, we just want to find

out who handled Iosif’s and your mothers’legal affairs. Then we’ll bite them and see how quickly all this can be sorted out. The land should be yours whether or not you want to live on any of it. If you like, you can sell one parcel and use the money to get a couple of houses started on the other. And your parents owned apartment houses in Seattle and quite a bit more than just the land their communities stood on.

We need to learn all we can about their business affairs before you can even begin to decide what to do.” I nodded. “Can you collect Theodora?”

“Give us her address.”

I called Wright, described Theodora’s location three doors east of his uncle’s house, and he told Wayne how to find her.

“Theodora Harden,” I said. “I’ll phone her and tell her you’ll be there ... when?”

They worked that out. They would pick up Theodora on their way home on the third night. “Thank you,” I said. “Be careful. Someone should always be awake and on guard.”

They nodded and went out to their huge, boxy car. Joel told me it was called a Hummer and that it cost more money than some houses.

Then they were gone.

The next day, Punta Nublada was attacked.

sixteen

The attackers arrived just after ten the next morning. Except for me, all Ina were asleep. I had spent nearly an hour on the phone with Theodora and was thinking about her, wanting her, looking forward to seeing her. Then I heard the cars.

They drove into the community in three large, quiet cars, each almost as big as the Gordons’ Hummer, and I heard them before I was able to see them from my perch at one of the dormer windows in the guest-house bedroom that Wright and I shared. I didn’t know who the newcomers were. They weren’t talking among themselves. They weren’t making much noise of any kind, but the moment I heard their approach, I was suspicious. I phoned two other houses and told the symbionts there to alert everyone else.

“Wake everyone,” I said. “Wrap your Ina in blankets and be ready to get them out of the house. These people like to set fires. Watch. If they carry large containers, if they try to spread any liquid, shoot them.”

I was worried about innocent visitors being killed by frightened symbionts, but I was even more worried about the Gordons and their symbionts being killed in their sleep, perhaps because of me or something to do with my family.

I pulled on my hooded jacket and put on my sunglasses and gloves. The sun was shining outside. There were no clouds. Finally I ran down-stairs and found Wright in the kitchen. He hadn’t spoken to me at all today because I had spent part of the night with Joel. I grasped his arms. “This may be an attack,” I said. “Get Brook, Celia, and Joel. Get guns. Watch! Don’t show yourselves and don’t fire unless you see gas containers or guns.”

I needed to be outside so that I could keep an eye on things and take whatever action was needed. I went out the back door. I had my phone in my pocket—set to vibrate, not ring—but no gun. I would kill quietly if I had to kill.

The cars came down the private road that led to the Gordon houses. They stopped before they reached the first house—the guest house—and men spilled out of the doors. Each carried some burden in his hand, and at once I could smell the gasoline.

I phoned the nearest house—Wayne’s house—and said, “Shoot them. Now!”

There was a moment when I thought they would not obey me. Then the shooting started. The symbionts had a wild mixture of rifles, hand-guns, and shotguns. The sound was a uneven mix of pops, thunderous roars, and intermediate bangs. Somehow, most of the invaders went down in that first barrage. They were used to taking their victims completely by surprise, setting their fires, and shooting the desperate who awoke and tried to run. Now it was the raiders who were running—at least those still able to run.

I heard someone running my way, around the side of the guest house toward the back, away from the road. The runner was human and smelled strongly of gasoline. He was spilling gasoline as he ran. He never saw me.

I let him come around the house to me, let him get completely out of sight of his friends, and then hit him with my whole body. As he went down, I broke his neck. He was too slow to understand fully what was happening. He made no noise beyond the rush of air from his lungs when I hit him.

I left his gun and his gasoline can out of sight behind a garage, then I ran along the backs of the houses, hoping that if anyone saw me, I would be moving too fast for them to aim and shoot. I ran around the community, killing three more men as the symbionts went on shooting and as someone set fire to Henry’s house, then to Wayne’s.

I saw that Henry was being looked after—three of his symbionts were carrying him from his house thickly wrapped from head to toe in blankets. They took him into William’s house. The rest of Henry’s symbionts poured out of his house, too, and three of them found hoses and began to fight the fire. The other two guarded them with rifles.

I felt a particular duty towardWayne’s symbionts because he had gone up to Washington to help me. I made sure everyone was out of his house, checked with the symbionts flowing out the doors, and told them to count themselves. All were present and healthy, three of them carrying young children whom they took to William’s house. The rest got hoses and shovels and began to fight the fire. They needed no help from me.

I went through the community, looking everywhere. There was no more shooting. All the intruders seemed to be dead or wounded. Then I heard footsteps and caught an unfamiliar scent. I realized there was at least one intruder still alive and trying to get back to one of their cars. I spotted him moving behind the houses. He took off his shirt as he slipped past Preston’s house. He wanted to blend in, look, at least from a distance, like one of the male symbionts who had been awakened unexpectedly and were now fighting the fires or tending the wounded, shirtless.

Shirtless or not, this man smelled of gasoline and alienness. He was an outsider. There was nothing of the

Gordon community about him.

I ran after him as he sprinted from the back of Preston’s house toward one of the buildings that housed offices and studios. This did not take him closer to any of his group’s cars. He couldn’t have reached them without running across a broad open space. But the building was unlocked, and it would have given

him a place to hide and bide his time. It was his bad luck that I had seen him.

I caught up with him, tripped him, and dragged him down just as he reached the building. He fell hard and knocked himself out on the concrete steps in front of the building. I was glad of that. I wanted him unconscious, not dead. I had questions to ask him. I took a full meal from him while he lay there. I didn’t need it yet in spite of the running around and fighting I’d done, but I needed him cooperative.

He came to as I finished and tried to buck me off him. “Be still,” I said. “Relax.”

He stopped struggling and lay still as I lapped at the bite just enough to stop the bleeding and begin the healing.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go see how things stand between your people and mine.” I stood up and waited for him to get up. He was a short, stocky, black-haired man, clean shaven but disfigured by the beginnings of a big lump over his left eye and a lower lip rapidly swelling from a blow that had probably loosened some of his teeth.

He stumbled to his feet. “They’ll kill me,” he said, mumbling a little because of the swelling lip and looking toward the clusters of people putting out the fires, gathering weapons, moving cans of gasoline away from the houses, checking dead or wounded raiders, keeping children away from the bodies.

“Stay close to me and do as I say,” I told him. “If you’re with me and if you don’t hurt anyone, they won’t kill you.”

“They will!”

“Obey me, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

He looked at me, dazed. After a moment he nodded. “Okay.”

“How many of you were there in those three cars?” I asked, glancing back at the cars. None of this group should escape. Not one.

“Eighteen,” he said. “Six in each car.”

“That many and your gear. You must have really been packed in.”

I walked him back toward the houses, made him pick up his shirt and put it on again. Then I spotted

Wright. He came toward me, looking past me at the raider.

“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “Are Celia, Brook, and Joel all right?” “They’re fine.”

I nodded, relieved, and told him where to find the men I’d killed and their guns and their gasoline. “Get other symbionts to help you collect them,” I said. “There should be a total of eighteen raiders, living and dead, including this one.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why is this one still alive?”

“I’ve got questions for him,” I said. “Are any of the rest of them alive?”

“Two. They’re shot, and they’ve been kicked around a little. The symbionts were pissed as hell at them.”

“Good. Make sure the dead, their cars, and the rest of their possessions are gathered and shut up out of sight in case the noise or the smoke attracts outside attention.” The Gordons had no neighbors who could be seen from the houses, but the noise might have reached some not-too-distant farm. And the smoke might be seen, although there was much less of it now. The fires were almost out. Two houses had been damaged, but none of them had been destroyed. That was amazing. “Where are the survivors?” I asked.

He pointed them out in the yard where they had been laid, then he said with concern, “Shori, your face is beginning to blister. You should get inside. If it gets any worse, you might have scars.”

I touched his throat just at the spot I had so often bitten. “I won’t scar anymore than you do when I bite you. Thank you for worrying about me, though.” I left him. My raider followed me as though I were leading him with a rope.

The two surviving raiders were battered and unconscious. They lay on the grass in front of Edward’s house. “Don’t hurt them any more,” I told the symbionts who were guarding them. “When they can talk, your Ina will want to question them. I will, too.”

“Our doctor will look at them when she gets around to them,” a man named Christian Brownlee said. He stared at my raider, then ignored him. My raider inched closer to me.

“Are all the symbionts alive?” I asked.

He nodded. “Five hurt. They’re in Hayden’s house.”

I knew the Gordons had a doctor and two nurses among the ninety or so adult humans in the community, and I went to Hayden’s house, expecting to find her at work there. She was.

The doctor was one of Hayden’s symbionts. She was an internist named Carmen Tanaka, and she was assisted not only by the two nurses, a man and a woman, but by three other symbionts. She was busy but not too busy to lecture me.

“You stay out of the sun,” she said. “You’re blistering.”

“I came to see whether I could be of use,” I told her. “I don’t know whether there is anything I can do to help heal symbionts not my own, but I want to help if I can.”

Carmen looked up from the leg wound that she was cleaning. The bullet had apparently gone straight through the man’s calf. “If any of them were in danger or likely to be in danger before their Ina awake, I’d ask for your help,” she said. “But as things are, you’d just cause them unnecessary pain and create problems between them and their Ina.”

I nodded. “Let me know if anything changes,” I said. “I’m going to do what I can for the raiders who survived. We’re going to want to talk to them later.”

“Is this one?” she looked at my companion. “Yes.”

She looked at the bite wound on the man’s neck and nodded. “If you bite the others, you’ll help them avoid infection and they’ll heal faster and be more manageable.”

I nodded and went out to tend to the raiders. Once I finished with them, I took my raider back to the guest house, gave him a cold bottle of beer from the stock we’d found in the pantry, and sat down with him at the kitchen table.

“What’s your name?” I asked him. “Victor Colon.”

“All right, Victor. Tell me why you attacked this place.” He frowned. “We had to.”

“Tell me why you had to.”

He frowned, looking confused. It was a kind of confusion that worried me since it seemed to me that it could mean only one thing.

Celia and Brook came into the kitchen, saw us, and stopped. “Come in,” I said. “Did you come to get food?”

“We missed lunch,” Brook said. “We probably shouldn’t be hungry after all this, but we are.” “It’s all right,” I said. “Eat something. Fix some for Victor here, too. And sit and talk with us.”

They didn’t understand, but they obeyed. They cooked hamburger sandwiches for themselves and one for Victor Colon. They had found loaves of multigrain bread, hamburger meat, and bags of French fries in the freezer, and had put the meat and bread in the lower part of the refrigerator to thaw. Now, they fried the meat and the potatoes in cast-iron pans on the stove. There was salt and pepper, mustard and catsup, and a pickle relish in the cupboard but, of course, no fresh vegetables. At some point we were going to have to find a supermarket.

Once they all had food and bottles of beer from the refrigerator, and I had a glass of water, the confused man seemed more at ease. As he ate, he watched Celia and Brook with interest. He was seeing them, I thought, simply as attractive women. He stared at Celia’s breasts, at Brook’s legs. They knew what he was doing, of course. It seemed to amuse them. After a few glances at me, they relaxed and behaved as though Victor were one of us or, at least, as though he belonged at our table.

Celia asked, “Where do you come from?” Victor answered easily, “L. A. I still live there.”

Brook nodded. “I went down to Los Angeles a few years ago to visit my aunt—my mother’s sister. It’s too hot there.”

“Yeah, it’s hot,” Victor said. “But I wish I were there now. This thing didn’t go down the way it was supposed to.”

“If it had, we’d be dead,” Celia said. “What the hell did we ever do to you? Why do you want to kill us?” Oddly, at that moment she handed him another bottle of beer. He’d already finished two.

Victor frowned. “We had to,” he said. He shook his head, reverting to that blank confusion that so worried me.

“Oh my God,” Brook said. She looked at me, and I knew she had seen what I had seen. Celia said, “What? What?”

“Victor,” Brook said, “who told you and your friends to kill us?”

“Nobody,” he responded, and he began to get angry. “We’re not kids! Nobody tells us what to do.” He drank several swallows of his beer.

“You know what you want to do?” Brook said. “Yeah, I do.”

“Do you want to kill us?”

He thought about that for several seconds. “I don’t know. No. No, I’m okay here with you pretty ladies.”

I decided he was getting too relaxed. “Victor,” I began, “do you know me? Who am I?”

He surprised me. “Dirty little nigger bitch,” he said reflexively. “Goddamn mongrel cub.” Then he gasped and clutched his head between his hands. After a moment, he put his head down on the table and groaned.

It was clear that he was in pain. His face had suddenly gone a deep red.

“Didn’t mean to say that,” he whispered. “Didn’t mean to call you that.” He looked at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it.”

“They call me those things, don’t they?” He nodded.

“Because I’m dark-skinned?”

“And human,” he said. “Ina mixed with some human or maybe human mixed with a little Ina. That’s not supposed to happen. Not ever. Couldn’t let you and you . . . your kind . . . your family . . . breed.”

So much death just to keep us from breeding. “Do you think I should die, Victor?” I asked. “I ... No!”

“Then why try to kill me?”

Confusion crept back into his eyes. “I just want to go home.”

“Victor.” I waited until he sat up and faced me. “If you leave here, do you think they’ll send you after me again?”

“No,” he said. He swallowed a little more beer. “I won’t do it. I don’t want to hurt you.” “Then you’ll have to stay here, at least for a while.”

“I . . . can I stay here with you?”

“For a while.” If I bit him a time or two more and then questioned him, I might get the name of our attackers from him—the name of whoever had bitten him before me, then sent him out to kill. And if I got that name, the Gordons would probably recognize it.

“Okay,” he said. He finished his beer. Celia looked at me, but I shook my head. No more beer for now. “You’re tired, Victor,” I said. “You should get some sleep.”

“I am tired,” he said agreeably. “We drove all night. You got a spare bed?”

“I’ll show you,” I said and took him upstairs to our last empty bedroom. I had intended to give it to Theodora. We would have to get rid of Victor soon. Maybe one of the other houses would have room for him. “You’ll sleep until I awaken you,” I told him.

“Will you bite me again?” he asked.

“Shall I?” I didn’t really want to, but of course I would. “Yeah.”

“All right. When I awaken you, I will.”

“Listen,” he said when I turned to leave. “I didn’t mean to call you ... what I called you. My sister, she married a Dominican guy. Her kids are darker than you, and they’re my blood, too. I would kick the crap out of anyone who called them what I called you.”

“You only answered my question,” I said. “But I need more answers. I need to know all that you can tell me.”

He froze. “Can’t,” he said. “I can’t. My head hurts.” He held it between his hands as though to press the pain out of it somehow.

“I know. Don’t worry about it right now. Just get some sleep.”

He nodded, eyelids drooping, and went off to bed. I felt like going off to bed myself, but I went back down to the kitchen where Celia and Brook were waiting for me. Wright and Joel had joined them. Wright spoke first.

“All eighteen attackers are accounted for,” he said. “No one got away.”

I nodded. That was one good thing. None of them would be running home to tell the Ina who had sent them that they had failed, although that would no doubt be obvious before long. And what would happen then? I sighed.

Joel seemed to respond to my thought. “So some Ina is sicking these guys on us,” he said. “When he sees it didn’t work this time, he’ll send more.”

“It seems that way,” I said wearily. I sat down. “I don’t know my own people well enough to understand this. I feel comfortable with the Gordons, but I don’t really know them. I don’t know how many Ina might be offended by the part of me that’s human.” I wanted to put my head down on the table and close my eyes.

“The Gordons will help you,” Joel said. “Preston and Hayden are decent old guys. They can be trusted.” I nodded. “I know.” But of course I didn’t know. I hoped. “Tonight we’ll talk to the prisoners. Maybe

we’ll all learn something.”

“Like which Ina have been trying to kill you,” Celia said.

I nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know whether we can find that out yet. It may be too soon. But Victor isn’t really injured, so we can begin questioning him tonight. The others, though, they might need time to recover, and they might know things that Victor doesn’t. Or we might just use them to verify what Victor says.”

“You’re sure you can make Victor tell you what he knows?” Wright asked.

“I can. So could the Gordons. It will hurt him, though, stress him a lot. It might kill him. I don’t believe any of this is his fault, so I don’t want to push him that far.”

“You remember that,” he asked, “that your questioning him could kill him?”

I nodded. “I saw his face when I asked him who I was, and he answered. It hurt him. In that moment, I

knew I could kill him with a few words. But he’s only a tool—one of eighteen tools used today.” “What makes you so sure he’s not a willing tool?” Celia asked.

“His manner,” I said. “He’s confused, sometimes afraid, but not really angry or hateful.” I shrugged. “I

could be wrong about him. If I am, we’ll find out over the next few days.” “You’re sure it’s all right to leave him alone upstairs?” Wright said.

“He’ll sleep until I wake him,” I said. “And when he wakes, I won’t be the only one wanting to question him.”

seventeen

I went upstairs feeling tired and a little depressed. I didn’t know why I should feel that way. I was close to finding out who was threatening me, and I had taken a full meal from Victor, which should have restored my energy after all my running around in the sun and blistering my face until it hurt. Somehow, it hadn’t.

I had taken off my shoes and was lying down on the bed Wright and I usually shared when Brook looked in and said, “Come to my room and lie down with me for a little while.”

The moment she suggested it, it was all I wanted to do. I slid from the bed and went down the hall to her room.

I lay down beside her, and she turned me on one side and lay against me so that I could feel her all along my back.

“Better?” she asked against my neck. “Or is this hurting your face?”

I sighed. “Much better.” I pulled one of her arms around me. “My face is healing. Why do I feel better?” “You need to touch your symbionts more,” she said. “Temporaries like Victor don’t matter in the same

way, and Joel isn’t yours yet. You need to touch us and know that we’re here for you, ready to help you if you need us.” She brought her hand up to my hair and stroked gently. “And we need to be touched. It pleases us just as it pleases you. We protect and feed you, and you protect and feed us. That’s the way an Ina-and-symbiont household works, or that’s the way it should work. I think it will work that way with you.”

I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed it. “Thank you,” I said.

“Sleep a little,” she said. “It isn’t likely that there will be any more danger today. Take a nap.” I drifted off to sleep in utter contentment.

“Shori?”

I awoke sometime after dark and disentangled myself from Brook as gently as I could. I got up, listening. Someone had called my name. Daniel’s voice, not speaking loudly, not in the room with me, not even in the house, but clearly speaking my name to me.

I didn’t want to wake Brook so I went to the bathroom down the hall. The window there faced the road and the other houses.

“Yes,” I said aloud, eyes closed, listening.

“Bring your captive to my house for questioning,” he said. “You can act as his protector, as some of us will scare him.”

“Other Ina ordered him to kill us,” I said. “He’s their tool, not a willing volunteer.”

Silence. Then, “All right. Bring him anyway. We won’t hurt him any more than we have to.” “We’ll be over in a few minutes.”

I went to Wright’s and my bedroom and got my shoes from beneath the bed. Wright was there, snoring softly. I didn’t disturb him. I went back to the bathroom, put my shoes on, and washed my face, all the while thinking about how easily Daniel and I had spoken. I had heard him even though he had not left his house, and he had known that I would hear him. I stood for a moment in the bathroom and listened, focusing my listening first on the guest house where Victor and my four symbionts were all asleep, breathing softly, evenly. Then I focused on Preston’s house and heard a female symbiont tell a male named Hiram that he should telephone his sister in Pittsburgh because she had phoned him while he was out helping with the wounded. A male was trying to repair something. He was cursing it steadily, making metallic clattering noises, and insisting, apparently to no one at all, “It’s not supposed to do that!” And a woman was reading a story about a wild horse to a little girl.

Of course I had been focusing my listening almost since I awoke in the cave, but I had not been around other Ina enough to know how sensitive our hearing could be. It had never occurred to me that someone could awaken me and get my full attention just by calling my name in a normal voice from another house across and down the road. Had I heard because on some level I was listening for my name? No, this couldn’t have been the first time people talked about me when I wasn’t present or wasn’t awake.

But it probably was the first time someone so far away had spoken to me as I slept. And perhaps that small thing, the tone of Daniel’s voice alone, had been enough to catch my attention.

I went to Victor’s room and woke him. Then, because I had promised and because it would help me get information out of him later, I bit him again, tasting him, taking only a little blood. He lay writhing against me, holding me to him, accepting the pleasure I gave him as willingly as I accepted his blood. I found myself wondering whether anyone had ever investigated the workings of Ina salivary glands or tried to synthesize our saliva. It was no wonder that Ina like my father worked so hard to conceal our existence.

When the bite wound had ceased to bleed, we got up, and I took him over to Daniel’s house where all of the Gordons, except those who had flown up to Washington, waited.

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asked as we went. He seemed frightened but resigned. He had

been in Ina hands long enough to know that there was no escape, no way of refusing his fate, whatever it turned out to be.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You do your best for us, and I’ll do my best for you. Relax and answer all

questions truthfully.”

When we reached Daniel’s house, I saw that the Gordons had gathered in the living room. There were no symbionts present. That was interesting. I had not even thought of awakening my symbionts to bring them along. If Victor died tonight, I didn’t want them to see it happen. I didn’t want to confront them

with the reality of what could happen to them if some Ina who hated me got hold of them. But they knew, of course. They were all intelligent people. They even had some idea of what I could do to them if I were to lose my mind and turn against them. But they trusted me, and I wanted—needed—their trust. They didn’t have to see the worst.

I sat with Victor. He was alone and afraid, actually shaking. He needed someone to at least seem to be on his side. He was the alien among us, the human being among nonhumans, and he knew it.

“His name is Victor Colon,” I told the Gordons when we were settled. “Victor,” I said and waited until he looked at me. “Who are they?”

He responded in that quick, automatic way that said he wasn’t thinking. He was just responding obediently, answering the question with information he had been given. “They’re the Gordon family. Most of it.” He looked them over. “Two are missing. We were told there would be ten. Ten Gordons and

you.” He glanced at me.

I nodded. “Good. Relax now, listen to their questions and answer them all. Tell the truth.” I looked at the Gordons. They must know more than I did about questioning humans who had been misused by Ina. I would leave it to them as much as possible.

Preston said, “What else are we, Victor? What else do you know about us?”

“That you’re sick. That you’re doing medical experiments on people like the Nazis did. That you are prostituting women and kids. I believed it. Now, I don’t know if it’s true.” He was trembling more than ever. He jumped when I put my hand on his arm, then he settled down a little. “They said we all had to work together to stop you.”

“How many of you were there?” This was from Hayden, the other elder of the group. They were centuries old, Hayden and Preston, although they looked like tall, lean, middleaged men in their late forties or early fifties, perhaps. Their symbionts had told me they were the ones who had emigrated here from England, arriving at the colony of Virginia in the late eighteenth century.

“There were twenty-three of us at first,” Victor said. “Some got killed. Jesus, first five guys dead and now just about everyone else . . . Today there were eighteen of us.

“Eighteen.” Hayden said nodding. “And were they your friends, the other men? Did you know them well?”

“I didn’t know them at all until we all got together.” “They were strangers?”

“Yeah.”

“But you joined with them to come to kill us?”

Victor shook his head. “They said you were doing all this stuff . . .” “Where were you?” Preston asked quietly. “Where did you get together?”

“L. A.” Victor frowned. “I live in L. A.”

“And how were you recruited? How were you made part of the group that was to come for us?” Victor frowned. He didn’t appear to be in pain. It was as though he were trying hard to remember and

understand. He said, “It almost feels like I’ve always been working with them. I mean, I know I wasn’t, but it really feels like that, like nothing really matters but the work we did together. I remember I had been watching TV with my brother and two of my cousins. The Lakers were on. Basketball, you know? I needed some cigarettes. I went down to the liquor store to buy some, and this tall, skinny, pale guy

pulled me into an alley. He was goddamn strong. I couldn’t get away from him. He . . . he bit me.” Victor looked down at me. “I thought he was crazy. I fought. I’m strong. But then he told me to stop fighting. And I did.” He stopped talking, looked at me, suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders. “What do you people do to us when you bite us? What is it? You’re goddamn vampires!”

He shook me. I think he meant to hurt me, but he wasn’t really strong enough to do that. I took his hands, first one, then the other, from my arms. I held them between my hands and looked into his frightened eyes.

“Answer us honestly, Victor, and you’ll be all right. Relax. You’ll be all right.” “I don’t want you to bite me again,” he said.

I shrugged. “All right.”

“No!” he shouted. And then more softly, “No, I’m lying. I do want it again, tomorrow, now, anytime. I

need it!” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But I don’t want to need it. It’s like coke or something.”

I suddenly felt like hugging him, comforting him, but I didn’t move. “Relax, Victor,” I said. “Just relax and answer our questions.”

The Gordons watched both of us with obvious interest. Daniel, in particular, never looked away from me. I supposed that I was as much on trial as Victor was but in a different way. What did I remember? How well did I compensate for what I didn’t remember?

Did they still want me? I thought Daniel did. His scent pulled at me. His brothers smelled interesting, but his scent was disturbing. Compelling.

I sighed and dragged my attention back to Victor. I looked from Preston to Hayden. The others had left the questioning to them so far.

“Victor,” Preston said, “where were you taken after you were bitten for the first time?”

“The guy had a big Toyota Sequoia. He told me to get in and just sit there. I did, and he just drove around. He was spotting other guys and picking them up. I guess I was his first catch of the night. He caught five more guys, then he took us all out to some houses up above Altadena, up in the San Gabriel Mountains, kind of all by themselves on a dead-end road. His family was there. They all looked like him—tall, lean, pale guys. And there were a lot of other just ordinary people.”

There was a stir among the Gordons. They didn’t say anything, but I could see that they knew something. Most likely, they knew which Ina family lived aboveAltadena in the San Gabriel Mountains. I had no idea how far away these places might be, but they did.

“Victor,” Hayden said, “when did all this happen? When were you taken and bitten for the first time?”

He frowned. “More than a month ago? Yeah, it was that long. Maybe six weeks.”

I could see what was coming. I stared at the rug, needing to hear more, needing to hear everything, but not quite wanting to hear it. It was only reasonable that Victor had been one of those used to kill both my families.

“So you’ve done other jobs, then, haven’t you?” Hayden continued.

“Up in Washington State, yeah,” Victor agreed. “We did three jobs up there.” “How did you get there?”

“They flew us up in private planes with all our gear. Then we rented cars. Followed the maps we were given.”

“So they gave you new identities? Credit cards?”

“Not me. Five of the other guys. And they gave them plenty of cash. They had cell phones, too. They’d call in when we were ready to do a job and tell us to go ahead. Then they’d call in afterward and we’d

be told what to do next, which was mostly to get motel rooms and wait for the call to get into position for the next job. The five guys they chose, they were all ex-military. One used to be Special Forces. They told the rest of us what to do.”

So by now, with no phone call, their bosses must have realized that something was wrong. I wondered how long it would take these enemy Ina to collect new human tools and send them out to try again.

“You said you did three jobs,” Preston said. “Where in Washington did you do those . . . jobs?” “One a few miles outside a little town called Gold Bar. Another not too far from a town called ...

Darlington? No, Darrington. That’s it. And one at a house near the town of Arlington. That’s all up in

western Washington. Pretty country. Trees, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, little towns. Nothing like L. A.” “You were successful in Washington?”

“Yeah, mostly. We hit the first two, and everything went the way it was supposed to. Something went wrong at the third. People got killed. The cops almost got us.”

“Weren’t people supposed to get killed?”

“I mean . . . our people got killed. We didn’t know what happened at first. Later we heard on the radio that two got shot and three had their throats ripped out. The rest of us never saw what did that—a dog, maybe. A big dog. Anyway, the cops were coming, and we had to run.”

I thought about telling him exactly what had killed his friends, then decided not to. None of it was his doing, really. Even so, I didn’t want to be sitting next to him any longer. I didn’t want to know him or ever see him again. But he was not the one who would pay for what had been done to my families. He was not the one I had to stop if I were going to survive.

I took a deep breath and spoke to Preston. “Do you know who’s doing this?”

He looked at Victor. “Who are they, Victor? What’s the name of the family who recruited you and sent you to kill us?”

Victor’s body jerked as though someone had kicked him. He looked at me desperately, confusion and pain in his eyes.

Hayden picked up the question. “Do you know them, Victor? What is their family name?” Victor nodded quickly, eager to please. “I know, but I can’t say . . . please, I can’t.”

“Is the name ‘Silk’?”

Victor grabbed his head with both hands and screamed—a long, ragged, tearing shriek. Then he passed out.

I didn’t want to care. It was clear from the Gordons’ expressions that they didn’t care. But I had bitten him twice. I didn’t want him, wouldn’t have kept him as my symbiont, but I did care what happened to him. I couldn’t ignore him. It seemed that the bites made me feel connected to him and at least a little responsible for him.

I listened to his heartbeat, first racing, then slowing to a strong, regular beat. His breathing stuttered to a regular sleeping rhythm. “What can we do with him?” I asked Preston. “I can talk him into forgetting all this and send him home, but what if the Silk family picks him up again?”

“You feel that you need to help him, in spite of everything?” he asked.

I nodded. “I don’t want him. I don’t like him. But none of this really has anything to do with him.” He looked around at his brother and his sons. Most of them shrugged.

Daniel said, “I don’t think the Silks will bother about him. They won’t know he survived. They probably don’t even know exactly where he lived before they picked him up. He’s just a tool. They might have rewarded him if he survived, but if they think he’s dead, that will be the end of it. We need to check what he’s said with what the other prisoners say. If their stories agree, they can all go home. You can send them back to their families.”

I nodded. “I’ll fix Victor. Do you want me to fix the others, too?”

“Once we’ve questioned them, you might as well. You’ve already bitten them.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about this. I wondered why.

“Is there transportation back to L. A. from somewhere around here?” I asked.

“We’ll get them back.” Daniel looked uncomfortable. “Shori, I think your venom is the reason this man is still alive, the reason he was able to answer as many questions as he did.”

This was obvious so I looked at him and waited for him to say something that wasn’t obvious. “I mean, your venom. If one of us had bitten him instead of you, I think he’d be dead now.”

I nodded, interested. That was something I hadn’t known.

“And that means that if the Silks do get him again somehow and question him, he won’t survive. There may be female relatives of the Silks—sisters or daughters—with venom that’s as strong as yours. They could question him, but chances are, they won’t. And he wouldn’t survive being questioned by males. Their venom would make it necessary for him to answer but not really possible. The dilemma would kill him. He’d probably die of a stroke or a heart attack as soon as they began.”

I looked at Victor and sighed. “Is there anything we can do to keep him safe?”

“No,” Preston said. “It really isn’t likely that the Silks will pick him up again. He’ll probably be all right.

But unless one of us wants to adopt him as a symbiont, we can’t keep him safe. Daniel only wanted you to know ... everything.” I heard disapproval in his voice, and I didn’t understand it. I decided to ignore it, at least for now.

I looked at Daniel and thought he looked a little embarrassed, that he was staring past me rather than at me. “Thank you,” I said. “So much of my memory is gone that I’m grateful for any knowledge. I need to know the consequences of what I do.”

Daniel got up and left the room.

I looked after him, surprised, then looked at Preston. “When should Victor be ready to go?” “A couple of nights from now. After we’ve questioned the others.”

“All right,” I paused. “Can one of you take him? I don’t want him back at the guest house.”

Preston glanced at the doorway Daniel had gone through. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”

“Thank you,” I said with relief. Then I changed the subject and asked a question I had been wanting to ask since I arrived. “Are there ... do you have Ina books, histories I could read to learn more about our people? I hate my ignorance. As things stand now, I don’t even know what questions to ask to begin to understand things.”

It was Hayden who answered, smiling. “I’ll bring you a few books. I should have thought of it before. Do you read Ina?”

I sighed and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. We’ll find out.”

eighteen

To my surprise, I did read and speak Ina.

Hayden brought me three books and sat with me while I read aloud from the first in a language that I could not recall having heard or seen. And yet as soon as I opened the book, the language seemed to click into place with an oddly comfortable shifting of mental gears. I suppose I had spoken English from the time I met Wright because he and everyone else had spoken English to me. If I had heard only Ina since leaving the cave, I might not know yet that I spoke English.

I shook my head and switched back to English. “I wonder what else I’ll remember if someone prods me.”

“Do you understand what you’ve read, Shori?” Hayden asked.

I glanced at the symbols—clusters of straight lines of different lengths, inclined in every possible direction, and often crossed at some point by one or more S-shaped lines. They told the Ina creation myth. “Iosif told me a little about this,” I said. “It’s an Ina myth or legend. The goddess who made us sent us here so that we could grow strong and wise, then prove ourselves by finding our way back home to her.”

“Back to paradise or back to another planet,” Hayden said. “There was a time when Ina believed that paradise was elsewhere in this world, on some hidden island or lost continent. Now that this world has been so thoroughly explored, believers look outward either to the supernatural or to rather questionable

science.”

“People truly believe this?” I frowned. “I thought the story was like one of the Greek or Norse myths.” I

had run across these in Wright’s books.

“There was a time when those were believed, too. A great many of us still believe in the old stories, interpreted one way or another. What you’re holding could be called the first volume of our bible. Your parents believed the stories were metaphors and mythologized history. We do, too. None of us are much interested in things mystical. I don’t believe you were either before, but now I suppose you’ll have to

read the books, talk to believers as well as nonbelievers, and make up your mind all over again.” “How old is this book?” I asked.

“We believe that its oldest chapters were originally written on clay tablets about ten thousand years ago. Before that, they had been part of our oral tradition. How long before that had they been told among us? I don’t know. No one knows.”

“So old? Are there human things ten thousand years old?”

“Writings, you mean? No. There were wandering family bands, villages of human farmers, and there were nomadic human herders. They left behind remnants of their lives—stone tools, carved stone figurines, pottery, woven matting, stone and wood dwellings, some carving on bone and stone, painting on cave or cliff walls, that sort of thing.”

I nodded, interested. “What signs did we leave?”

“We had already joined with humans ten thousand years ago, taking their blood and safeguarding the

ones who accepted us from most physical harm. I suspect that by then we had already been around for a very long time. Whenever we evolved or arrived, it was much longer ago than ten thousand years. Ten thousand years ago, we were already thinly spread among human tribes and family bands. Even then, that was the most comfortable way for us to live.

“Our earliest writings say that we joined humans around the rivers that would eventually be called Tigris and Euphrates and that we had scattered north and west into what’s now Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and those regions. Some of us wandered as nomads with our human families. Some blended into stationary farming communities. Either way, we were not then as we are now. We were weak and sick. I don’t know why. The stories say we displeased the goddess and were suffering her punishment. The group that believes in an outer-space origin says that our bodies needed time to adjust to living on Earth.

“For a while, it seemed that we might not survive. I think that’s when some of us began to find a new use for the writing we had developed for secret directional signs, territorial declarations, warnings of danger, and mating needs. I think some of us were writing to leave behind some sign that we had lived, because it seemed we would all die. We weren’t reproducing well. Our children, when they were conceived, often did not survive their births. Those who did survive were not strong. Few mated families managed to have more that one or two children of their own. Everyone took in orphans and tried to weave new families from remnants of the old. We suffered long periods of an Inaspecific epidemic illness that made it difficult or impossible for our bodies to use the blood or meat that we consumed, so that we ate well and yet starved. We believe now that the disease was spread among us by Ina nomads and by families traveling to be near mates.

“Our bodies were no better at dealing with this illness than our human contemporaries were at dealing with their illnesses. But while our attentions helped them deal with their infections, defects, and injuries,

they could not help us deal with ours. We died in greater numbers than we could afford. It got harder and harder for us to find mates. Then, gradually, we began to heal. Perhaps we had simply undergone a kind of microbial winnowing. The illness killed most of us. Those left were resistant to it, as were their

children.

“Even when we were fit, though, we had to be careful. Nonsymbiont humans might attack us and murder us to steal our possessions or because we were careless and lived too long in one place without seeming to age.” He shrugged. “Some humans wanted to know how we could live so long. What secret magic did we possess to avoid growing old? What could be done to us to force us to share our magic with them?

“Suspicions about us grew out of control now and then down through the ages, and we had to run or fight, or we were tortured and murdered as demons or as possessors of valuable secrets. Sometimes they hacked at us until they thought we were dead, then buried us. When we healed, we came out of our graves confused, mad with hunger . . . perhaps simply mad. Well, that’s how in some cultures we

became the ‘walking dead’or the ‘undead.’That’s why they learned to burn or behead us.” “What about the wooden stake through the heart?” I asked.

“That might work or it might not. There’s nothing magical about wood. If the stake leaves enough of the heart intact, we heal. One of my fathers was buried with a stake in his heart. He lived and ... killed six or seven people when he came out of his grave. As a result, my families had to leave Romania and change their names. That’s how my brothers and I happened to grow up in England.”

He sighed. “Even in the most savage of times, when there were Ina family feuds that were like small wars, it almost never happened that we wiped out whole families. What is happening now, what happened to your families, Shori, is rare and terrible.”

“And by coming here, I’ve brought it to your family,” I said. “I’m sorry for that. I just . . . didn’t know what to do or where else to go. And I was afraid for my symbionts.”

Hayden nodded, watching me. “I don’t believe my sons’sons would have wanted you to go to anyone else, although you’re already making Daniel’s life uncomfortable.”

I wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t know what to say. He smiled. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“I thought I might be. I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be. It’s normal. Daniel apologizes for his behavior. He knows you’re much too young to make the kind of commitment he’s thinking of. And your efforts and warnings have kept us safe so far. No one is seriously hurt. What we do next, though . . . well . . .” He sighed. “I suppose we will do what we must. These murders must be stopped.”

He wouldn’t talk about what he and his family meant to do next. He only told me to keep the books as long as I needed them and to come to him when I wanted more or if I wanted to talk about what I’d read.

When he was gone, instead of reading more, I went up to where Wright lay sleeping. I undressed and climbed into bed beside him. He awoke enough to curl his body around mine.

“You okay?” he asked, his chin against the top of my head. “Better,” I said. “Better now.”

“Do they know who killed your family or, rather, who’s idea it was?”

“They know one family name, and where they live. The two injured captives can’t be questioned yet.” “Is Victor alive, Shori?”

“He is.” I swallowed. “Even though he remembers helping to murder both of my families. He even remembers attacking the house at Arlington where you and I and Celia and Brook could have died.”

“But it wasn’t his idea.”

“It wasn’t. So far, the Silk family seems to be guilty of all three attacks.” “Silk,” he said. “Interesting name. I wonder if you knew them before.”

“I don’t think so. None of the Gordons mentioned any connection between them and me, and I think at least one of them would have.”

“What will be done to them?”

“I don’t know. Hayden wouldn’t tell me. But I don’t think anything will be done until the other two prisoners are questioned.”

“You bit them.”

“I did. It will help them heal quickly.”

He moved me so that we lay eye-to-eye and took my face between his hands. “It will help you question them.”

“Of course it will.”

“What will happen to them after that, to Victor and the other two captives?”

“When we’ve finished questioning them, I’ll help them forget us because I’m the one who bit them. Then they’ll be sent back to their families.” I rubbed his shoulders. “They’re not anyone’s symbionts, Wright. They’re only someone’s tools. People who never wanted them, never cared about them, kidnapped them and used them to kill my families.”

He nodded. “I understand that, but . . . they did what they did.” “The Silks are responsible, not Victor and the others.”

He nodded again. “Okay.”

He didn’t sound happy. “What?” I asked.

“I don’t know exactly. I guess I’m just learning more about what I’ve stumbled into and become part of.” I was silent for several seconds, then asked, “Shall I let you alone tonight? I can go sleep with one of the

others.”

“Not with Victor?”

I drew back, staring at him.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“At Daniel’s house. Daniel had room for him, and Theodora will be here soon. And ... I didn’t want him here.”

After a while, he nodded. “Shall I go?”

“Of course not.” He pulled me against him. He caressed my face, my throat. Then, as he kissed me, he slipped his free hand between my thighs. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

I shook my head against him. “No, but I want to be close to you anyway.” “Do you? Good. If you taste me, I want you to do it from my thigh.”

I laughed, surprised. “I’ve heard of doing it that way, although I don’t know whether I ever have. You’ve been talking to someone!”

“What if I have?”

I found myself grinning at him. A instant later, I threw the blankets off him and dove for his thigh. He had nothing on, and I had him by the right thigh before he realized I had moved. Then I looked up at him. He looked startled, almost afraid. Then he seemed to catch my mood. He laughed—a deep, good, sweet sound. By touch and scent I found the large, tempting artery. I bit him, took his blood, and rode his leg as he convulsed and shouted.

The next night, the Gordons and I questioned the other two prisoners. Hayden and Preston questioned them while I prodded and reassured them. I had bitten each of them twice. They trusted me, needed to please me.

They, too, told us about what sounded like members of the Silk family abducting them at night. One had been in downtown Los Angeles, looking for one of his girls—one of the prostitutes who worked for him. He was angry with her. He didn’t think she was working hard enough, and he meant to teach her a lesson. Hayden had to explain this to me, and at last I found out what a pimp was. The explanation made me wonder what other unsavory things I didn’t remember about human habits.

The other captive had been on his way to the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena to pick up his mother who was a nurse there and whose shift was ending. Her car had stopped running the day before, and he had promised to meet her and give her a lift home.

One prisoner was a pimp. The other was a college student keeping a promise to his mother. Both had been collected by members of the Silk family and sent north to kill my family and me. Neither had any information beyond what Victor had already told us.

When both captives were unconscious, much stressed by being made to talk about things that they had been ordered not to talk about, the Gordons and I looked at one another. Again, except for the captives, the company was all Ina.

“What can we do?” I took a deep breath and looked at the younger Gordon males—men who might someday be the fathers of my children. “These people have killed my family. Now they’ve come after you. They’ll probably come after you again.”

“I believe they will unless we stop them,” Hayden said.

Daniel nodded once. “So we stop them.”

“Oh my,” Preston said, his head down, one hand rubbing his forehead. “What else can we do?” Hayden demanded.

“I know.” Preston glanced at him sadly. “I’m not disagreeing. I’m just thinking about what it will mean, now and in the long run.”

Hayden made a growling sound low in his throat. “They should have thought about what it would mean.” Wells, one of Daniel’s fathers, said, “I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday. We need to start by

talking to the Fotopoulos and Braithwaite families, and perhaps the Svoboda and the Dahlman families as

well. The Dahlmans are related to the Silks through Milo, aren’t they? All these people are related in one way or another to the Silks and to Shori.”

And I thought, I still have relatives. I didn’t know them, didn’t know whether they knew me. But they were alive. What would that mean?

“Don’t phone the Dahlmans yet,” Preston said. “Make them your eighth or ninth call. Try the Leontyevs and the Akhmatovas, and perhaps the Marcu and Nagy families.”

“You believe we’ll have time to bring together a Council of Judgment before they try again to kill us?” Daniel demanded.

Hayden and Preston looked at one another—the two elderfathers of the Gordons. Apparently they would decide.

“As soon as we get agreement from seven of the thirteen families, I’ll call the Silks,” Preston said. “I know Milo Silk, or I thought I did. How he and his sons have gotten involved in all this, I can’t imagine. Anyway, once they’ve been notified that we’re calling a Council of Judgment, that we have the first seven families, they won’t instigate another attack.

They won’t dare.” “Why not?” I asked.

Everyone looked at me as though I’d said something very stupid.

I stared back at them. “My memory goes back a few weeks and no further,” I said. “I ask because I don’t know, and I don’t want to make assumptions about anything this important.” And because I was annoyed. I let my tone of voice say, You should all realize this. I’ve explained it before.

Hayden said, “If they attack us after we’ve called for a Council, the judgment will automatically go

against them. Our legal system is ancient and very strong. That part of it in particular is absolute. It’s kept feuds from getting out of control for centuries.”

“And what does that mean?” I asked. “What would happen to them if they attacked you again?” “The adults would be killed, and their children dispersed among us to become members of other

families.” He stared down at me. “We would bring the adults to you. You are the person most wronged

in all this and the only surviving daughter. I think you could manage it.” “Manage . . . I would be their executioner?”

“You would be, yes. You would bite them and speak to them, command them to take their lives. I

suspect that you would grant them a gentler death than they deserve.”

For a moment, I was shocked speechless. Of course I knew I could kill humans directly by destroying their bodies or indirectly by biting them and then telling them to do things that were harmful to them, but kill Ina just by biting them and ordering them to die?

“I was almost tempted not to tell you,” Hayden said. “Your youth and your amnesia make you both very attractive and very frightening.”

“I can really do that? Bite another Ina and just ... tell him to kill himself?” They all looked at one another. Preston said, “Hayden, damnit—”

Hayden held up both hands, palms outward. “She needs to know. We’ve had a chance to see what sort of person she is. And let’s face it, it’s too dangerous for her not to know. If not for the crime that took her memory, she would know.” He looked at me. “When you’re physically mature, you’ll take blood from your mates, and they’ll take blood from you. That’s the way you’ll bond. The only other reason for you to take blood from an Ina male would be to kill him.”

I thought about that for several seconds, then asked an uncomfortable, but necessary, question: “It wouldn’t work on an Ina female?”

“It might. Your handling of the human captives says you’re strong. But if you go against another Ina female, you might die. Even if you manage to kill her, you might die, too.”

I thought about this. It dovetailed with what Brook had told me. “Do you know,” I said, “I have no memory of ever having seen or spoken to an Ina female. I’ve only seen my father, one of my brothers, and you. I try to picture a female, and I can’t.”

“They learn early to be careful of what they say,” Hayden told me. “It’s one of their first and most important lessons. I believe that’s a lesson you’ve remembered in spite of your amnesia.”

I nodded. “I was always careful with my symbionts, even before I understood fully why I should be. But now . . . I might have to kill the Silks?”

“Probably not,” Hayden said. “That kind of thing hasn’t happened in living memory. The Silks will respect the call for a Council of Judgment.”

“I hope so,” I said. “What can I do now to help?” They were beginning to get up. Some of them took phones from their pockets. Daniel went to the kitchen and brought back a cordless phone for Hayden.

“Nothing yet,” Hayden told me. “You’ll have to speak at the Council.”

“All right. But shouldn’t we keep the three captives? Shouldn’t they speak, too?”

He shook his head. “Who would believe them? By now you could have taken them over completely and taught them to say—and to believe—anything at all.”

“All right. But why should the Council believe me—or you for that matter?”

He smiled. “I don’t think they would believe me. I’m 372 years old. I think they might feel that someone my age might be able to lie to them successfully. You’re a child. They’ll assume that they’ll be able to read your body language well enough to know whether or not you’re lying.”

“Will they be your age?” “Some will be older.”

I sighed. “They’re probably right then. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t felt inclined to tell lies. So far, my problem is ignorance, not dishonesty.”