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He put his hand on my shoulder and walked me over to the table. There he sat down and drew me close so that he could open one of my filthy shirts, then the other. Having reached skin, he stroked my chest. “No breasts,” he said. “Pity. I guess you really are a kid. Or maybe … Are you sure you’re female?” “I’m female,” I said. “Of course I am.”
uhhh
“All I need is fresh human blood when I’m healthy and everything’s normal. I need fresh meat for healing injuries and illnesses, for sustaining growth spurts, and for carrying a child.”
“I don’t think I’m as young as you believe,” I said. “I mean, I may be, but I don’t think so.” “You don’t have any body hair at all,” he told me. “Should I?” I asked. “Most people over eleven or twelve do.” I thought about that. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know enough about myself to say what my age might be or even whether I’m human. But I’m old enough to have sex with you if you want to.” He choked on his sandwich and spent time coughing and taking swallows of beer. “I think you’re supposed to,” I continued, then frowned. “No, that’s not right. I mean, I think you’re supposed to
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Was there something in my saliva that pacified people and pleasured them? What else could it be? It must also help them heal. Wright had been surprised with how quickly his hand was healing. That meant healing must normally take longer for him. And that meant I could at least help the people who helped me. That felt important.
On the other hand, it felt wrong to me that I was blundering around, knowing almost nothing, yet involving other people in my life. And yet it seemed I had to involve them.
What I had killed … and eaten … in the cave had not been an animal. It had been a man.
The words that the man had whispered when he found me were, “Oh my God, it’s her. Please let her be alive.” That was what he said just before I killed him.
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.
“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.”
We do keep those who join with us healthier, stronger, and harder to kill than they would be without us. In that way, we lengthen their lives by several decades.”
It was so hard to know nothing—absolutely nothing all the time.
treat your people well, Shori. Let them see that you trust them and let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions. Do that and they will willingly commit their lives to you. Bully them, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, and after a while, you’ll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, and stifling their resentment. Do you understand?”
“It’s good to know we don’t hurt each other even when we’re upset.”
“Hello,” I said, and as she recognized my voice, as her expression began to change to one of shock, I said, “Invite me in.” At once, she stood aside and said, “Come in.” This was a bit of vampire theater. I knew it, and I was fairly sure she knew it, too. She had probably been brushing up on vampires recently. Of course, I didn’t need permission to enter her home or anyone else’s. I did find it interesting, though, that human beings made up these fantasy safeguards, little magics, like garlic and crucifixes, that would somehow keep them safe from my kind—or from what they imagined my kind to
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I found myself wondering whether Brook, Celia, and Theodora would be better able to sustain me when they were as fully mine as Wright was. Would they be enough? I was much smaller than my father who had preferred to have eight symbionts. My demands must be smaller. Mustn’t they?
You just happen to be descended from people who lived in what Iosif used to call ‘vampire country.’ I think some of your ancestors there were outed and executed as vampires a few centuries ago. Iosif used to joke about it in a bitter way. He said that, physically, he and most Ina fit in badly wherever they go—tall, ultrapale, lean, wiry people. They usually looked like foreigners, and when times got bad, they were treated like foreigners—suspected, disliked, driven out, or killed.”
All of my life had been erased, and I could not bring it back. Each time I was confronted with the reality of this, it was like turning to go into what should have been a familiar, welcoming place and finding absolutely nothing, emptiness, space.
Or it’s happening because Shori is black, and racists—probably Ina racists—don’t like the idea that a good part of the answer to your daytime problems is melanin.
It doesn’t matter. I haven’t felt inclined to tell lies. So far, my problem is ignorance, not dishonesty.”
I mean … having Wright and Joel as well as Brook, Celia, and Theodora. It scares me. I need them. I care about them more than I thought I could care about anyone. But having them scares me.” “Good,” he said. “It ought to. Pay attention. Help them when they need help.” He paused. “Only when they need help.”
“Someone might offer you pity and sympathy for your disability. Make them state the disability. Make them say what they mean. Make them support it with evidence. If they say that you’re delusional or mentally deficient or too grief stricken to know what you’re saying—which, I believe, you definitely would be if your memory were intact—make them explain how they’ve come to that conclusion. Then, by your questions and your behavior, prove them wrong. If, on the other hand, they can’t say what it is they’re pitying you for, they must be the ones who are confused. You see?”
They thought mixing human genes with ours would weaken us. You proved them very wrong.”
“May we remember always that we are Ina,” he said in his deep, quiet voice. “We are an ancient and honorable people with more than ten thousand years of recorded history. We are a proud and powerful people, well aware of our duty to our families, to our kind, and to the truths that make us who we are. May we look after our human symbionts with kindness and firmness. May we care for them and keep them from harm. May we be loving, loyal, and generous to our mates. May the proceedings of this Council of Judgment be carried on with honor, justice, and truth. May we remember and honor the Goddess
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ina nationalism is crazy
Harold Westfall was also married to his first for legal as well as social reasons. He lived in South Carolina and felt that anything he could do to seem normal and unworthy of notice was a good thing. He and his family had been in South Carolina for 160 years, and yet I got the impression that he still was not comfortable there. I wondered why he stayed.
“You’re not Ina!” he shouted. He slammed his palm down on the table, making a sound like a gunshot. “You’re not! And you have no more business at this Council than would a clever dog!”
Ina could not survive without humans, and yet Milo seemed to consider them little more than useful domestic animals. What must life be like for his symbionts? And how did families who thought like the Silks get along with other Ina? Joan Braithwaite had said that there were many who loved Milo. They must have loved him in spite of his arrogance. Or perhaps they loved him for what he had been when he was younger. He was far from lovable now.
I had read in one of the books I’d borrowed from Hayden about the periods of feuding between Ina families during which Ina fought mainly by doing what the Silks had done to my families—using humans as weapons—using them to kill members of one another’s families. Hayden said that hadn’t happened anywhere in the world for centuries. It was considered as barabaric among Ina as boiling people in oil was among humans. And yet, somehow it had come back into fashion.
“You, more than anyone, must show that you can follow our ways. You must not give the people who have decided to be your enemies any advantage. You must seem more Ina that they.”
“Over the centuries, I’ve seen too much racial prejudice among humans. It isn’t a weed we need growing among us.”
I did not like Joan Braithwaite. But I thought I might eventually love her.
Sometime later, as we lay together, sated, but still taking pleasure in the feel of skin against skin, I said, “You’re mine. Did you know that? You’re scent is so enticing, and I’ve nibbled on you so often. You’re mine.” He laughed softly—a contented, gentle sound. “I thought I might be,” he said.
“What about Katharine?” I asked. She shook her head. “I don’t know.” “I don’t believe I could let her go.” “Wait and see.” “Theodora wasn’t even a person to Katharine. She was just something Katharine could snatch away from me to make me weaker.” “I know. Don’t give her what she wants. Wait, Shori. Wait and see.”
She was tall, lean, and blond like most Ina but was a striking, memorable woman. When she arrived, I had asked Wright what he thought of her. He said, “Sculpted. Perfect, like one of those Greek statues. If she had boobs, I’d say she was the best-looking woman I’ve ever seen.” Poor Wright. Maybe one of the Braithwaite symbionts would have large breasts.
It occurred to me suddenly that Russell had asked about my being adopted because if I, like his sons, became a member of a different family, he might not be legally forbidden from attacking me. If I were not Shori Matthews, but Shori Braithwaite, for instance, I might be fair game.
They were all gone. The person I had been was gone. I couldn’t bring anyone back, not even myself.
