Fledgling(41)

“It happens sometimes.”

“But only with new symbionts, right?”

“You have amnesia, and yet you know that?”

“I’m alive, Celia. My senses work. I can’t help but know.” I unbuttoned her shirt to bare her neck. “What I don’t know is how this will be for you. Not good, maybe.”

“Scares me,” she admitted.

I nodded. “Bear it. Bear it and keep still. Later, when I can, I’ll make it up to you.”

She nodded. “You remind me of Stefan a little. He told me I reminded him of you.”

I bit her. I was more abrupt than I should have been, but her scent was repelling me more and more. I had to do it quickly if I were going to be able to do it at all.

She gave a little scream, then frantically tried to push me away, tried to struggle free, tried to hit me … I had to use both my arms and my legs to hold her still, had to wrap myself all around her. If she’d been any bigger, I would have had to knock her unconscious. In fact, that might have been kinder. I kept waiting for her to accept me, the way strangers did when I climbed through their windows and bit them. But she couldn’t. And strangely, it never occurred to me to detach for a moment and order her to be still. I would have done that with a stranger, but I never thought to do it with her.

She managed not to scream anymore after that first strangled sound, but she struggled wildly, frantically until I stopped taking her blood. I had only tasted her, taking much less than a full meal. It was as much as I could stand. I hoped it was enough.

I gave her a moment to understand that I had stopped, and when she stopped struggling, I let her go. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

She was crying silently. She cringed as I leaned over to lick the bite and take the blood that was still coming. She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed but managed not to push hard. I went on licking the bite. She needed that to help with healing.

“I always liked that so much when Stefan did it,” she said.

“It should be enjoyable,” I said, although I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. I was doing what seemed to be my duty. “And it helps your wounds heal quickly and cleanly. It will be enjoyable again someday soon.”

She relaxed a little, and I thought I might be reaching her. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you’ve got some kind of keep-out sign on you, too—as far as I’m concerned, I mean. I panicked. I couldn’t control myself. Your bite didn’t hurt, but it was … it was horrible.” She drew away from me with a shudder.

“But do you feel better?” I asked.

“Better?”

“You’ve stopped shaking.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks … I guess.”

“I don’t know exactly how long it will be before we can take pleasure in one another, but I think it’s important that you do feel better now. Next time will be easier and more comfortable.” Now that I’d bitten her, it would. It seemed best to tell her that.

“Hope so.”

I left her alone in the huge bed. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d stayed. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d stayed.

I went to the bathroom, washed, and then just stayed there. I knew I had to go to Brook soon. The longer I waited, the harder it would be. Maybe Brook would have an easier time since she hadn’t seemed so needy. Or perhaps it would be worse because she’d been with Iosif for so long. Was twenty-two years a long time when she would live to be maybe two hundred? If only I knew what I was doing.

I sat on the side of the bathtub for a long time, hearing Celia cry until she fell asleep, hearing Wright moving around the kitchen, hearing Brook breathing softly in one of the bedrooms. She was not asleep, but she was not moving around either. She was sitting or lying down—probably waiting for me.

I got up and went to her.

“I thought you could wait,” she said when she saw me. “If you wanted to, you could wait until tomorrow. I mean, I’m all right now. I’m not getting the shakes or anything.”

I didn’t sigh. I didn’t say anything. I only went to the bed where she lay atop the bedspread and lay down beside her. Her scent was so much like my father’s that if I closed my eyes, it was almost as though I were lying in bed beside Iosif, and even though I had begun to trust Iosif and even to like him, I had not found him appetizing in any way at all.

“We will get through this,” I said. “What you feel now will end.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I hope so,” she said. “Do it.”

I did it. And when I was finished, I left her crying into a pillow. She was no more able to take comfort from me than Celia had been, and there was no comfort for me in either of them. I went out, hoping to find the comfort I needed with Wright. He was in the living room, eating a ham sandwich and a bag of microwave popcorn and watching a television that I had not noticed before. He aimed the remote and stopped the program as I came in.

“No cable,” he said, “but movies and old TV shows galore.” He gestured toward the shelves of tapes and DVDs in the cabinet. Then, after a moment, he asked, “How are things?”

I shook my head and went to sit next to him on the arm of his chair. I had worried that he would draw away from me, resent my bringing two strangers into our family, but he reached up, lifted me with a hand under one of my arms, and put me on his lap. I made myself comfortable there, his arms around me. I sighed with contentment.