Fledgling(38)

Finally, I found the place where Stefan’s body had fallen and burned in one of the bedrooms near part of the window frame. Had be been trying to get out or … might he have been firing a gun at his attackers? I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed likely to me that he died fighting against whoever had done this.

I went back to Celia and shook my head. “I’m sorry. He didn’t survive either.”

She glared at me as though I’d killed him—a look filled with grief and rage.

“Where,” she demanded. “Where did he die?”

“Over here.”

They both followed me to the place where Stefan had died curled on his side, limbs drawn tight against his body.

“Here,” I said.

Celia looked down, then knelt and put her hands flat in the ashes, taking up some of what remained of Stefan. For a long time, she said nothing. I glanced to the east where the sky was growing a little more light.

After a while, Celia looked up at Brook. “He was shooting back at them,” she said. “He could have made himself do it, even if they came during the day. Days were hard on him, but he could wake up enough to shoot back.”

Brook nodded. “He could have.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

Celia glared at me, then closed her eyes, tears spilling down her face. “You can’t tell for sure?”

“No. But I know there was shooting. I found a bullet that smelled of one of the other members of his household. And Stefan’s position … somehow it seemed that he might have been shooting back. I hope he hit some of them.”

“He had guns,” Celia said. “Iosif didn’t like guns, but Stefan did.”

It hadn’t helped him survive.

“It’s almost dawn,” I said. “Will you drive me back to where Wright is waiting? I can direct you.”

They looked at each other, then at me.

“Drive me to Wright, then follow us to his cabin,” I said. “Although we’ll have to find another place soon. The cabin is almost too small for two people.”

“Iosif owns—owned—a house outside Arlington,” Brook said. “Some of us used it to commute to jobs or to entertain visiting family members. There are three bedrooms, three baths. It’s a nice place, and it’s ours. We have a right to be there.”

I nodded, relieved. “That would be better. Could other symbionts be there already?”

Brook looked at Celia.

“I don’t use it,” Celia said. “I haven’t kept up with the schedule.”

“I don’t think anyone’s there,” Brook said. “If there is … if some of us are there, Shori, they need you, too.”

I nodded. “Take me back to Wright. Then we’ll go there.”

During the sad, silent trip back to Wright’s car, I had time to be afraid. These two women’s lives were in my hands, and yet I had no idea how to save them. Of course I would take their blood. I didn’t want to, but I would. They smelled like my father and my brother. They smelled almost Ina, and that was enough to make them unappetizing. And yet I would make myself take their blood. Would that be enough? Iosif had told me almost nothing. What else should I do? I could talk to them. What I told them to do, they would try to do, once I’d taken their blood. Would that be enough?

If it wasn’t, they were dead.





Eleven

To get to the house that my father had bought for his symbionts and my brothers’, we followed the highway through dense woods, past the occasional lonely house or farm, past side roads and alongside the river. I asked Wright whether the river had a name.

“That’s the north fork of the Stillaguamish,” he told me. “Don’t ask me what ‘Stillaguamish’ means because I have no idea. But it’s the name of a local Native American tribe.”

Eventually we reached more populated areas where houses and farms were more visible, scattered along the highway. There were still many trees, but now there were more smells of people and domestic animals nearby. In particular, there was the scent of horses. I recognized it from the time I’d spent prowling around Wright’s neighborhood. Horses made noises and moved around restlessly when I got close enough to them to be noticed. My scent apparently disturbed them. Yet their scent had become one of the many that meant “home” to me.

Wright and I followed the women’s car talking quietly. I told him what had happened to my father’s community and that Celia and Brook had survived because they were in Seattle.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said. “Your kind have some serious enemies. What we need to do is find some place safe where we can hunker down, pool information, and figure out what to do. There’s probably a way to tip the police to these people if we can just figure out who they are.”

As he spoke, I realized that I was willing to go further than that. If we found the people who had murdered both my male and my female families, I wanted to kill them, had to kill them. How else could I keep my new family safe?

My new family …

“Wright,” I said softly and saw him glance at me. “Celia and Brook will be with us now. They have to be.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the said, “They’re not going to die?”