Fledgling(37)

She stared at me silently, frowning as though I had said words she could not understand. Then she began to make a noise. It began as a moan and went on to become an impossibly long, ragged scream. She fell to the ground, gasping and moaning. “Oh God,” she cried. “Oh God, Iosif, Iosif.”

Someone else was coming.

Brook had come in a car, I realized. I had been so focused on my own distress that I had missed not only the sound and smell of a person walking up to me, but the noise of a car as well. Now someone else was coming from the car—another human female. This one had a handgun, and she was aiming it at me.

I jumped away from Brook, ran wide around her, leaping through the rubble as fast as I could. I reached the woman with the gun before she could track me and shoot me, and I knocked the gun from her hand before she could fire and grabbed her. I absolutely did not want to spend another day and night recovering from a bullet wound.

This woman was also someone I’d met—Celia, one of Stefan’s symbionts. She had been in his kitchen with two other women whose scents I was glad not to have found.

“Celia, it’s Shori,” I said into her ear as she struggled against me. “Celia!” She lifted me completely off the ground, but she couldn’t break my hold on her. “It’s Shori,” I repeated in her ear. “Stop struggling. I don’t want to hurt you.”

After a moment, she stopped struggling. “Shori?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do this?”

That surprised me into silence. Celia was one of the two black women in the kitchen. She had seemed friendly and interesting. Now there was nothing but grief and anger in her expression.

Brook came up at that moment and said, “Celia, it’s Shori. You know she didn’t do this.”

“I know what she did to Hugh!” Celia said.

I let go of her. Hugh Tang was symbiont with her to Stefan. They were family.

Celia jabbed her fist up, clearly meaning to hit me. I dodged the first jab, then grabbed one fist, then the other. She tried to kick me, so I tripped her and took her to the ground.

She lay stunned for a moment, breathless and gasping since I fell on top of her. She glared up at me. I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say so I kept quiet. She and I lay on the ground. After a moment, she looked away from me and her muscles relaxed.

“Let me up,” she said.

I didn’t move or loosen my hold on her.

“What do you want me to do, say ‘please?’”

“I truly don’t want to hurt you,” I said, “but if you attack me again, I will.”

After a moment, she nodded. “Let me go. I won’t bother you.”

I took her at her word and let her up.

“She says Iosif’s dead,” Brook said.

Immediately, Celia confronted me. “How do you know he’s dead? Were you here when all this happened? Did you see?”

I took both their hands, although Celia tried to snatch hers away, and led them over to the place where Iosif had burned. “He died here,” I told them. “I can smell that much. I don’t know whether it was only the fire or whether he was shot, too. I couldn’t find any bullets. But he died here. A few of his ashes are still here.”

I looked at one woman, then the other. Both now had tears streaming down their faces. They believed me. “I don’t remember anything about Ina funerals or beliefs about death,” I said. “Do either of you know other Ina families—Iosif’s mothers perhaps—who would be able to do what should be done?”

“His mothers were killed in Russia during World War II,” Brook said. She and Celia looked at one another. “We went to Seattle to shop and visit our relatives. That’s why we weren’t here. The only Ina phone numbers I know from memory are the numbers of several of the people who lived here and some of your mothers’ phone numbers.” She looked at Celia.

“I knew some of our community’s numbers and Shori’s mothers’ numbers too,” Celia said. “That’s all.”

It occurred to me then for no reason I could put my finger on that Celia was much younger than Brook—young enough to be Brook’s daughter. Brook was only a few years younger than Theodora but except for very small signs, she appeared to be the same age as Celia. That, I realized, was what happened when a human became an Ina symbiont while she was still young. Wright would age slowly the way Brook had.

I pulled my thoughts back to the rubble we stood in. “When did you go into Seattle?” I asked.

Celia answered, “Five nights ago.”

“I won’t be able to visit my relatives many more times,” Brook said. “My sister and my mother are aging a lot faster than I am, and they keep staring at me and asking me what my secret is.”

Celia and I both raised an eyebrow and looked at her in the same way. She noticed it, glanced at the spot where Iosif had died, and whispered, “Oh God.”

I took a deep breath, glanced at Celia, then left them and walked toward Stefan’s house. They followed, saying nothing. Then they stood outside the site of the house while I walked through the rooms, finding five symbionts, including the two I’d met when I met Celia. And I found a misshapen bullet inside a charred plank. I had to break apart what was left of the plank to get at it, but once I had it, I found a faint blood scent. One of the symbionts. The bullet had passed through the man’s body and gone into the wood.