"We met this afternoon."
"Uh-huh. This is her house, isn't it? You just decided to take it over."
I didn't say anything. It was clear that he knew more about me--about us--than was safe, and I wanted him to reveal exactly how much that was. Answering his questions would allow him to shut down his mind, taking in information without handing any back to me. Forcing him to answer those questions for himself would make him think about what he was saying. I could learn from that.
"Of course you did," he said, disgust coating his words. "That's what you do. You take. You're monsters."
"How did you find me?"
"I pay someone. To watch the traffic cameras for women who look like you."
He thought we were an all-female species. Not uncommon. We have so little physical variation within genders that sometimes people assume we're even more like earth wasps than we actually are. He could have missed a dozen male cuckoo
s while waiting for a shot at me.
"This 'Victoria' hurt you," I said. "That's funny. The memory you showed me was a warm one. I wouldn't expect you to feel so warm about someone who'd hurt you."
"I bought that memory from a witch who'd seen one of your kind at a comic-book convention," he said. "I've never met that Victoria in my life. I'd kill her if I could. But the memory loves her."
"Charming." He was willing to modify his own mind to be a better hunter. That was . . . not good. Humans are so picky about what goes into their heads. They feel like thought can be pure only if it originates with them. That's why they hate us so much. Well, that and our tendency to kill them when it suits us.
Something inside me snapped closed, a circuit I was barely aware of completing itself. The math of the moment said that he was a threat to the hive, with his new technique for hunting us. We might be scattered, we might hate each other's company with a hot passion we rarely felt for anything else, but the continuation of the species was more important than any individual. I took a breath, broadcasting alarm as loudly as I could on all the frequencies my mind knew how to reach. I might die here. I hated that thought. I didn't want the world to exist beyond me. But the cuckoos, the Johrlac . . .
We would endure. No matter what happened, we would endure.
"It got me close to you." He trained the gun more firmly on my chest. "I won't show you Victoria. She'd like that. She'd enjoy knowing she was remembered. So I won't give her the satisfaction. Do you know what's in this gun?"
He was thinking of Halloween, children in masks running down the sidewalk with pillowcases clutched in their hands. It didn't make any sense. I didn't answer him.
"Victoria was my first love."
Of course she was. Humans were almost as infatuated with the idea of love as they were with the idea of their thoughts being their own. I didn't move.
"She said she'd stay with me forever."
Of course she did. What would be the point in acquiring a toy if it already knew it was going to be thrown away? Humans did the same. Their animal shelters are always full. I didn't speak.
"She made me a murderer."
Well. That was interesting. "Who did you kill?"
"I didn't kill anyone," he snarled. "She did. She used me as a weapon, and she killed my parents, and she stole everything they had, and she ran."
"Were they wealthy, then?" He nodded silently, and I smiled. "What a smart girl. She found a good target."
He pulled the trigger.
His little toy gun spat a dart into my chest. I gasped and yanked it free, dropping it on the floor. He grinned.
"Theobromine," he said. "That's something you have in common with a dog: it's poison to you. I guess the worst thing in the world had to have something in common with the best."
I glared at him.
"You'll stop breathing soon. But why didn't you stop me?"
Because by the time I'd realized he was a threat, Barb had been down and I hadn't known how to get away. Because my species was designed to hide and go unseen, not to stand and fight. Because I wasn't important. I would miss so many things about being alive. I would miss so many things about being me. But I am--I was--a cuckoo, and to be a cuckoo is to be part of a hive.
Wheels screeched outside the house. Doors slammed. The cavalry was coming, too late for me, but not too late for this fool, who'd thought he could play games with something bigger than himself. I smiled.