Fledgling(70)

“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.”