Fledgling(12)

“I don’t use the thing much anymore,” he said. “I thought for a moment I’d forgotten my password.”

It occurred to me just then that his memory would improve. I managed not to say it, but, yes, his memory should improve because I was with him, because now and then, I would bite him, injecting whatever I injected into people when I bit them. I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want him to ask me questions I couldn’t answer—like what other changes might be in store for him.

“I’m going to stop by the library on my way home,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find for you about vampires and amnesia. Maybe I can even scare up something on your fire.”

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “We aim to please.” He went off to take a shower and get dressed.

By the time he came out, clean and shaved, dressed in blue jeans and a red plaid shirt like the one I had on, I had already looked through a huge amount of nonsense about vampires. Apparently they were in fashion with some people. There were television shows, movies, plays, and novels about them. There were groups devoted to talking about them endlessly in online chat groups. There were even people who tried to look the way they thought a vampire should look—a cloaked figure with long, sharp teeth, and long, dark hair …

“Anything useful?” Wright asked me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Worthless stuff.”

He nodded. “Stay away from the TV stuff and movies. Go with folklore and mythology, maybe anthropology. And there are some medical conditions I’ve heard of. There’s one that makes people so allergic to sunlight that they only go out at night, and maybe superstitious people of the past thought they were vampires. There’s also a disease or a psychological condition that makes people think they’re vampires.”

“You mean they’re insane?”

“I don’t know. If a psychiatrist found out what you eat and drink, he might think you’re insane.”

“Even if I bit him?”

He looked away. “I don’t know. I think that might convince him whether he liked it or not. Renee, are you going to go unconscious during the day?”

“I’ll probably sleep for a while.”

“But will it be normal sleep? I mean, would you be able to wake up if the house were on fire or if someone broke in—not that either of those things is likely?”

“I just sleep,” I said. “Normal sleep. The sun hurts my eyes and my skin, and I seem to prefer to sleep during the day—the way you prefer to sleep at night. I don’t catch fire or turn to ash or dust or anything like what I’ve read about so far on your computer. Anything that would wake you up would wake me up.”

“Okay, good. Lock the door when I leave. Nobody should be coming in here when I’m not home. If someone knocks, ignore them. If the phone rings, don’t answer it.” He started to leave, then turned back, frowning. “Ordinary sun exposure burns your skin even though you’re black?”

“I’m …” I stopped. I had been about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant. Then his question triggered another memory. I looked at him. “I think I’m an experiment. I think I can withstand the sun better than … others of my kind. I burn, but I don’t burn as fast as they do. It’s like an allergy we all have to the sun. I don’t know who the experimenters are, though, the ones who made me black.”

He became intensely interested. “Do you know if the experimenters were like you—sort of vampires—or were they like me?”

“Don’t know.” I looked at him. “But keep asking me things. Whenever you think of a question, ask me. Sometimes it helps.”

He nodded, then kissed me. “I’ve got to go.”

“Breakfast?” I said.

“I ate it last night. I’ll pick something up on the way to work. I’ve got to go grocery shopping this evening. It’s a good thing you don’t eat.”

And he went out the door and was gone.





Five

I spent most of the day at the computer making no real progress. There were diseases that people might once have mistaken for vampirism. One of them was called porphyria. It was probably what Wright thought of as a sun-allergy disease. In fact, it was a group of diseases caused by pigments that settled in peoples’ teeth, bones, and skin. The worst of the porphyriac diseases made people so vulnerable to light that they developed huge sores as parts of their flesh eroded away. They might lose their noses or their lips or patches of their cheeks. They would look grotesque.

That was interesting, but it awakened no memories in me. After all, I had already proved that if I were badly burned or wounded, I would heal.

There were river-borne microorganisms that caused people to develop problems with their memories just as there were microorganisms that could cause people to look hideous and, in the past perhaps, be mistaken for vampires. But that had nothing to do with me either. Whoever and whatever I was, no one seemed to be writing about my kind. Perhaps my kind did not want to be written about.

I wandered from site to site, picking up more bits of interesting, but useless, information. Finally, I switched to hunting through information about recent fires. I found a couple of articles that probably referred to what I was coming to think of as “my fire.”