Fledgling

Fledgling is a vampire novel by the American writer Octavia E. Butler, published in 2005. It was the last of her books to appear before her death.

Shori wakes in the woods, badly burned, with no idea who she is, and kills and eats the first living thing that comes near. That meal lets her heal enough to walk, and a construction worker named Wright picks her up at the side of the road and becomes the first human to feed her. As her memory returns in pieces she learns what she is: one of the Ina, long-lived, nocturnal, dependent on human blood, and bound to the humans who supply it by a relationship that keeps them healthy and extends their lives. Shori is also new in a way the Ina find difficult. She has been genetically altered so that she can survive sunlight, and her family has been destroyed by others of her own species who regard the change as an abomination. Butler uses the vampire convention to write about race, family and consent, and the last third of the book is a trial in which Shori has to justify her existence to her own people.

The novel is the only vampire story Butler wrote, and it is as interested in biology and law as it is in horror.