Lost Heritage

Newborn

Rachel had made no attempt to contact Victor for more than two weeks, so one night he risked a brief inspection of her house. He found her in the attic and had to call her down. She had poked holes in the roof, to spy on the town from cracks between the exterior asphalt shingles. At some point she had destroyed the flimsy retractable attic ladder and had replaced it with a reinforced stairway, cut into the ceiling of her old bedroom. He shrugged a pair of half-dead human boys off his shoulders and dropped them at her feet. She stared at him for three hundred forty-six milliseconds, with wild eyes, and then fell on both of them without a word.

She should have been watching the town for vampires. The thousand scarred warrior and the fortune teller, especially. She had cut the spy holes to take an inventory of the blood. Every day for the past two weeks, she had labored to talk herself out of pillaging the town and leaving no one alive.

Rachel took her mouth from the neck of a boy to inform Victor, "You waited too long."

"I came as soon as I was able."

"Too long," she insisted. "You told me to stay in the house, tidy it up. I did that. You promised you would bring someone."

"I've brought you two."

"Too long. I can feed myself. I almost did."

"No. You must not feed here."

"Why can't I? You did," she accused, glancing down at the pair of dying boys.

"No. I didn't. I carried these two from Oregon. You must not, Rachel. You'll be destroyed, if you try."

She bent her teeth to the neck of the closest dying boy. "You waited too long."

Later, after Victor showed her how to cake the bodies inside and out with lime and dispose them several hundred feet below the house, they whispered once more in the attic. She poked a hole in the roof to lift an asphalt shingle and pointed out the outdoor outfitting shop at the end of the town. From the attic, they could readily identify the silhouette of the pinnacle of a totem pole, bearing at its apex the spread wings of a golden eagle.

"One of the wolves is there," she told him. "Yes, that's right," she added, in response to his shock. "A Quileute wolf. One of those unnatural creations you've been telling me about."

Victor harshly said, "Here? In the town? How do you know?"

"I listen. Not only to her voice. Also her heart. She has an unnaturally slow heart. And I watch her. She is easy to spot. As fast as we are. Faster. She runs to and from the coast each day. She also runs to Port Angeles most days"

"Why?"

"The community college. She takes courses there. She does her homework at the cash register."

Victor hissed, "They have spies! Right here in town!"

Rachel rolled her eyes and shook her head, with the deprecatory mutter, "You have spies here in town."

"Close that peek-hole. She could be watching and listening, right now."

"I don't think so. She's not looking for me. She's guarding the girl from Phoenix. The rock climber who lives in the apartment behind the store. She's also guarding the boy."

"Boy? What boy?"

"Charlie's kid. Edythe Cullen's boyfriend."

Victor growled low in his throat. "The human pet?"

"He's not a pet, you fool. They're lovers. I enjoy listening to them. I think they're sweet."

Victor took her hand firmly and attempted to pull her finger from the spyhole, to drop the asphalt shingle. She resisted his pull, with a modicum of effort, and he felt the vestigial adrenaline rush, the race of fear, in reaction to her effortlessly prodigious strength. She slowly turned her head and regarded him with a curious and sanguine calm, well aware that with a twist of her forearm, she could snap his hand off at the wrist. Victor slowly released his hold, finger by finger. She smirked at him without a word and flexed her forearm.