Covet (Clann)

farce of a tour, answering the questions I could and confessing the stuff I didn’t know as he led the way up the street past banks and shops and under the overpass with the thunder of the passing traffic’s wheels rolling overhead. We continued on to the boutiques and stores that sold local artisans’ crafts. Nanna used to sell her custom crocheted names and blankets in several of them.
    As we walked, the emotions I sensed from him were even more confusing. He seemed genuinely curious. I was also picking up a certain kind of warmth from him, not so much that I thought he was romantically interested in me, but more that he wanted to like me in general. It was…strange. The council had seemed so scared of me at my trial, yet here was one of them walking and chatting with me as casually as if we were long-lost cousins getting reacquainted.
    We paused by one shop, and he peered in through the window. “So I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to give me this tour.”
    “Um, a little,” I admitted. “I figured you wanted to soften me up before the interrogation began.”
    He laughed and looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “Interrogate you? Not hardly. Though I will confess that, like my fellow council members, I’m quite intrigued by you. You are such a wonder among our kind. A real miracle, if you will. I do have a thousand questions I’d love to throw at you, about your life, your abilities, and what this slow evolution into our world has been like so far for you. Obviously it hasn’t been easy.”
    I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, not trusting myself to start speaking yet. This was going way too easy so far. It made me even more nervous. “Maybe I have a few questions for you, too.”
    “Things you don’t feel comfortable asking your father?” he said. “Ask away. That’s part of the reason the council agreed that I should come see you.”
    “Okay. What’s it like to be turned? I mean, through the normal way?”
    “Well, I guess it’s a little different for each of us. But in general, the vamp drains you then gives you his or her blood, and then it’s fast and terrifying and exciting all at once. One minute you’re a human, the next you wake up and you don’t remember anything at all. Your memory eventually comes back to you, but slowly, usually days or even weeks later, mostly because you’re too busy trying to absorb all the input from your newly heightened senses in the meantime.”
    “So everything seems different to you then?”
    “Yes. It’s a very big change. For us, at least. It’s like going through life half blind, and suddenly putting on the perfect pair of glasses. The world around you seems more alive, beautiful and sharp and vivid. You get used to it after a while, even start to take your new senses for granted. Some of us forget how dull the world looked through our human eyes. And then there’s your new speed and strength and reflexes…now those take a while to get used to, because your body is literally able to move faster than your mind can fully process in the beginning. That’s the real danger for fledglings.” He said the last in a low murmur, as if confiding a secret to me.
    “I guess the bloodlust doesn’t help, either,” I said.
    Gowin nodded. Shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, he continued along the sidewalk. “For a fully turned fledgling, the urge to hunt any human they can smell is nearly overpowering within a few hours of being turned. And because they can move so fast, as soon as the impulse to attack hits them, they don’t have the time to think it through before their bodies act on that urge.”
    Wow. No wonder Dad was nearly obsessive about making me practice tai chi every morning. “I guess that’s why we need to learn how to slow ourselves down then?”
    “Is your father teaching you tai chi yet?”
    I nodded.
    He grinned. “That’s the method I used on him. It works, too.” He let out a long sigh. “You’re incredibly lucky, you know. So is your father. You both have so much time to ease you into this, to train you properly before it becomes a real problem.”
    I thought of the knob I’d ripped out of the bathroom door at the spring dance, and gulped. “What happens if you wait too late to train a…”
    “Fledgling,” Gowin supplied.
    “Right.”
    “Well, they usually go on a killing spree, massacring humans right and left until we manage to catch them and put them under.”
    Put them under?
    At