Terrible Praise

by Lara Hayes

  “I suspect so, yes. But it will fade. Dress yourself,” she instructs, walking to the window.

  “Why?”

  “To join me for a walk.”

  Outside, the moonless night is black as ink and under any other circumstances I would have refused. But I have so many questions and perhaps the fresh air will help. I inch out from beneath the sheet and Stela turns away and stares into her reflection in the windowpane.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “What?”

  “Why were you there with him? At the club?”

  I freeze. “Is it so unbelievable that I would go out dancing?”

  “You are deflecting.” I can hear her smile. She runs her long fingers affectionately between the creases of the drapes.

  “To get away from you.”

  Stela turns on her heel and clearly the response is more honest than either of us anticipated. I smooth my jeans down into the cuffs of each boot and stand stiffly. “Why were you there?”

  She closes the distance between us, her face smooth and severe, and placing the palm of her hand against the small of my back she ushers me into the darkened hallway.

  “To feed.”

  * * *

  The wind howls down Michigan Avenue and I tug the collar of my coat around my neck. Sharp as needles, the breeze is icy and I regret the decision to accompany her. Stela hasn’t removed her hand from my back, or faltered a single step in the piercing chill.

  “Are you cold?” It was rude of me not to offer her a jacket before we left. Stela answers with a bemused shake of her head and tilts her chin defiantly into the breeze to clear her tangled hair.

  “The cold is not oppressive to me,” she assures. “I am aware of temperature. I prefer to be warm, but our bodies do not suffer the effects the same way.”

  A block ahead four young men in oversized coats are taunting one another under a streetlight. Instinctively, I move closer to her and her hand wraps protectively around my waist. The irony isn’t lost on me. The young thugs notice us, stepping from the curb into the street. With one murderous glance from Stela their catcalls die in their open mouths. We pass unchallenged and I stay beside her, expecting to her to remove her arm. She doesn’t.

  “What do you call yourself? Your kind?”

  Stela steers our course to Buckingham Fountain, which will soon be shut off and drained to protect the pipes from freezing. She releases me from her embrace to sit on the edge of the pool and I miss the contact immediately. We stay close enough for our shoulders to brush, facing the city, and the streetlights shine in the surface of every window.

  “Strigoi. An old word, from another life.”

  “Eastern European?” I know Latin roots when I hear them. The word has a certain elegance, at least the way she says it. A whimsical name for a frightening thing.

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  Stela keeps her face forward, scanning the city Her reluctance to answer is a wall between us.

  “I was born to a small village along the Danube, in Moldavia. Raised in Brașov.”

  “Romania?”

  “Today, Romania. Transylvania during my formative years.” Her wariness is obvious, but I can’t seem to help myself.

  “When was that?”

  Stela laughs openly, the same girlish giggle that filled my bedroom. Her fingers wrap a lock of unruly hair behind my ear without even a cursory glance in my direction. I could not guess at her age.

  “A long time ago,” she says on an empty breath.

  When I was young my mother took me to the Art Institute every Sunday. Though nominally Presbyterian, those cultured outings were the closest we came to religion. The sculpture court was her favorite exhibit and one we visited together for many years. I didn’t share Mother’s enthusiasm for the cold, unchanging faces, but one piece I found particularly moving was Truth by Daniel French Chester. A classical sculpture of a woman partially draped, staring out into space with a mirror just inches from her face, looking down at the passersby in a state of perpetual remorse. Every time we passed that statue I braced myself for the inevitable crash the mirror would make against the marble floor, but it never came. Stela reminds me of her. Frozen in time, neither old nor young. In the right light, she could be in her early to mid-twenties. But facing her head on, without a hint of her carefree laugh, she’s tired in a way that defies her physical body.

  “You were with me on my feed earlier this evening,” she says. There seems to be an insurmountable distance between us, even with her hair tickling my cheek. “That must have been unpleasant for you.”

  “There was a moment before the taste hit me when the platform lit up like the sun was shining and I could see everything. The faces of the people around me, the threads of their clothing, the dirt swirling in the air above us. For a second, it was beautiful.”

  Stela narrows her eyes and waits for me to continue, but what would be the point? We both know the end result was sickening.

  “I had to replace the blood I gifted to you,” she explains slowly, as though anticipating protest or interruption. “Hunting does not happen every night, as I suspect you know. In a few days, when I am compelled to feed again, the bond we share should have waned.”

  The bond of our blood but not our minds. Stela is going to feed, regardless of whether it’s convenient for me. “I can handle what it was like before. When there was only the smell and the tinge of taste.”

  She’s silent for a long while, with eyes like two polished onyx stones locked on my face. “You are strange,” she remarks when I don’t flinch under her unwavering attention.

  “How am I strange?”

  A smile pulls the corner of her mouth. “I seek to make amends for sickening you mere hours ago, and your only remark of the experience is the lovely view.” She doesn’t laugh at me, but I can hear the humor coloring her words. “I make a point of mentioning that I will continue to feed and you make no attempt to dissuade me?” She’s on a roll now, working herself up and speaking rapidly. “You bore witness to my brutality in the alley last night, and here you are: unprotected, isolated, asking me where I hail from.”

  I cross my legs toward her and our shins brush. Stela straightens, and I lean forward with my hands folded diplomatically in my lap. A trick I learned from my mother. “What am I supposed to say, Stela? Get away from me? I begged you to remove yourself from my life and you told me it couldn’t be done. Was that a lie?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” We regard each other silently for several uncomfortable moments. Stela stares back out at the city. “I know what you are, even if I didn’t know what I should call you. I think I’ve known since the night we met. Any doubt I had disappeared when you saved my life. Whatever this is, this bond, it feels inextricable for me too. And I’m not going throw a fit and ask you to stop killing people, no matter how contemptuous I find murder, any sooner than I would ask an obligate carnivore to do the same. This is a biological imperative for you, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, we understand each other then. Or, I understand the situation. But I would like your word on something.”

  She’s inclines forward intently, elbows on her thighs, watching me as though I’m still holding that carving knife. This isn’t her first negotiation. “Name your terms.”

  “You will not feed from my hospital, or in front of me under any circumstances.” Stela tilts her head, running her eyes up and down my person. She hears what isn’t said, but that’s as close as I can get to asking that she stay. Being near her is the first time today that I’ve felt even remotely safe.

  Before I understood what she was, when there was only the inkling that I was not completely insane and that someone was really following me, I sensed that it was more than just a single pursuer. Something much bigger and far more dangerous. Now I understand that I know next to nothing about what happens on these empty streets when I’m warm in my bed. To push Stela away with ultimatums would be suicide.
And this creature, so polite, so convincingly female is intrigued by me for who knows what reason.

  “That is a fair request,” she says guardedly. Stela stands abruptly, extending her hand and helping me up. My legs are stiff with chill and I’m surprised to note that her fingers are as cold as mine. “And one I intend to honor, at all cost.” Stela pulls me in step beside her and the shoulder of her sweater brushes my chin. It’s the softest material I’ve ever felt—cashmere, of course—but finer than anything I’ve ever owned.

  We move north toward home down roads and dark alleys I’d never risk. I reach for her hand and she surprises me by sparing my fingers a light, reassuring squeeze.

  “Are you always this cold?” I ask, resisting the urge to hold her hand cupped in both of mine. Stela remains vigilant in her surveillance of the vacant street, the apprehension only visible in the tightening of her jaw.

  “My skin takes the temperature of my surroundings. After a feed, I am as warm to the touch as any other living thing.”

  Cold-blooded then, like a reptile though I can’t imagine she suns herself. The science of her is seductive. “I would ask about your reflection but I’ve already seen it. Any truth to crosses and holy water?”

  Stela stops abruptly, and I keep walking until her hand, wrapped around my wrist, makes another step impossible. I know I’ve misspoken before I turn around. Her eyes glimmer around the edges with a silver sheen. The effect is as menacing as her pointed silence, which stretches on for an age.

  “We will not speak of myths.” She doesn’t approach me. She stays exactly two steps back, and though we’re roughly the same height there is something towering about the way she stands.

  “Sorry. I was just curious.”

  Stela sighs pointedly. An audible declaration, but not of fatigue. Does she sleep? She must if she dreams. She takes a step forward and encloses my hand in both of hers.

  “I know you are riddled with questions. You would be a fool not to want answers.” She stares down at my hand in hers. “But this is new territory for both of us. I ask that you respect my apprehension in discussing these matters, for now. Our existence is built on deception. The answers you seek are truths I have never shared with any person.”

  I slip my fingers from her chilled palms and clutch my coat tightly as the brutal night rushes a gust of icy wind past my collar. Stela’s grave expression softens with my obvious discomfort and she runs her index finger up my cheekbone. The temptation to lean into her touch is overwhelming. Stela’s hand lingers in the space between us, as though she doesn’t know what to do with it now. Self-consciousness looks awkward on anyone, but especially on her. She brushes her fingertips once against my elbow to usher me on, and we begin walking again under a dense silence.

  She must be a capable hunter. Despite having witnessed her viciousness, my body responds to her with frantic desperation and I ache at the thought of her leaving me tonight. I’m not sure if that is a lingering side effect of the blood she gave me, or symptomatic of the space she’s taken in my mind and made her own. Growing up as independent as I have, this connection to Stela is unsettling. All day I was furious at having been pushed around, coerced, but the second I laid eyes on her that anger withered in favor of this awful magnetism.

  “I pushed you this evening,” I admit. Stela regards me cautiously. “I won’t apologize for that.” I can sense her answering smile. “Trust is vital to any relationship. You’ve asked me to take you at your word, that I won’t be harmed. I’m trying to trust you. You’ve been to my home. My work. You’ve seen my mother. You know me, Stela. But I only know what you show me of you, what you tell me. It’s hard to trust something when you’re kept in the dark.”

  Stela shakes her head, her loose hair obscuring her shadowed face. “You have not asked me to stop feeding. I will not ask you to stop questioning. This is who we are. What I want is your patience.”

  “That sounds fair to me.”

  By the time we reach my desolate street I’m overcome with exhaustion from this late night excursion. Should Stela’s visits become a frequent occurrence, between her and my early bird mother, I’ll never sleep.

  My mother’s stoop looms in the distance. Do we part with a hug? A kiss on the cheek? A handshake seems so impersonal after what we’ve been through together. She absolutely cannot accompany me upstairs. I’d never be able to rest with her perched beside my bedroom window.

  These idle worries are quickly dispelled as Stela’s hand pushes roughly against my spine. She smothers my protest with her palm and pushes me behind a flight of stairs three doors down from my own. I struggle to free my mouth, but I’m completely pinned between her body and the brick wall at my back. The fight all but leaves me when I notice the way her eyes narrow and focus on a single point, every muscle in her body clenched. She brushes her lips across my cheek, pushing the hair back from my ear with her nose.

  “I do apologize,” she whispers, eyes still straight ahead and unmoving. “I will uncover your mouth if you promise to be quiet.”

  I nod my head, and Stela slowly pulls her hand away with an encouraging, albeit pained smile. The concern in her dark eyes carries a heat all its own, and I can see my own mounting anxiety reflected there, like two round mirrors. She cups the side of my face, and the touch has the same protective inflection as when we encountered those young men on the street. It’s enough to escalate my anxiousness into outright panic.

  “Is it one of the others?”

  Stela’s face remains cautiously reserved and she straightens my jacket collar, smoothing the front of my wool lapels. A calm settles inside me. My body relaxes when Stela’s does.

  “Were it one of mine, we would be dead where we stand.”

  “Comforting. Thanks.”

  She guides me by the shoulders between two tall, narrow brownstones. The space between them is so slight I walk with my back pressed against the wall. Stela pushes me in front of her and slips after me in the dark, side-stepping at my heels. My hand reaches for hers instinctively the second I step out into the alley that runs behind my backyard, and she grasps my fingers eagerly. Stela leads and pulls me along after her, swift and silent.

  We sprint beneath the shadows cast by my neighbors’ privacy fences until we reach Mother’s. The lock on the back gate has always caught and has to be wiggled, just so, before it gives. The warning is on the tip of my tongue when Stela swings wide the gate and shuts us inside my backyard with a familiarity that is both unnerving, and completely expected. Likewise, she makes quick and quiet work of the sliding glass door—which has opened with a screech my entire life—and shoves me unceremoniously into my own kitchen.

  “Who’s out there?”

  She’s nearly to the island when she whips her head in my direction, and the look on her face is enough to silence anyone. I shift closer to her, but she places a firm hand against my sternum to keep me in the shadows. I wait as Stela slinks over the tile toward the living room. As carefully as she moves, Stela remains tall, gliding between the shadows stretched from the pane of each window. She hooks the edge of one curtain with her finger and peers out onto the street. The light from above our stoop cuts like a blade across her white cheek.

  “Collins,” she hisses.

  Stela drops the curtain back into place with a contemptible snarl. She charges into the kitchen. I’ve seen this look before, when I noticed her in the sea of writhing bodies at the club. She has a hand on the sliding glass door, and I grab hold of her shoulder, though I’m not entirely convinced that distracting her is in my best interest.

  Without pause my wrist is caught in her iron grip, and she wheels around to face me without a spark of recognition in her twisted scowl. The blood drains from my face so quickly that the top of my scalp tingles, and I plant my free palm forbiddingly against her chest. A flicker of remorse flashes across her features and her grip loosens. She takes both my hands gently in hers, holding them in the limited space between us, stroking my knotted knuckles with her
thumbs. I stare down at our fingers, astonished that they lace together so readily.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “One of my family’s associates is parked on the far side of your street.”

  “Why?”

  “Reconnaissance. He would not send a human to harm you.”

  “He who?”

  Her fingers tighten around mine and she brings them to her chest, cradling them close. There is a palpable fury clouding the air around us, and Stela’s fight to direct that rage away from me lingers in her touch. “Elizabeth,” she whispers, and my eyes snap to her face as though my name is a command. Maybe it is. “There is a man outside your home. He answers to two people in my family, and it won’t have been my brother that sent him. I will deal with this matter.”

  I try to wrench my hands from her gentle grasp, and though she doesn’t tighten her hold, neither will she release me. The harder I pull, the stiller she becomes, staring in that silent, beseeching way she has, until I have no choice but to relent and stop railing against her.

  “I can’t just sit inside all day. I have a job, Stela. A life.”

  She releases one of my hands to reach into the pocket of my coat for my cell phone. Her rummaging drags me a step closer and our knees brush. Stela either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t mind. The light from the screen casts an eerie blue glow across her pale cheeks. She flips the device around and shows me her newly added contact information.

  “You will go about your day tomorrow as though this never happened, without a word to anyone, without a single thought of me. You will be followed, Elizabeth, as surely as the sun will rise. A dark-haired gentleman in a black van will note your every move. If he exits his vehicle, if he speaks to you or takes a single step in your direction, you will notify me immediately. Am I clear?”

  Her number is programmed in my phone under S. The link to her is comforting, and for once this affair doesn’t seem entirely one-sided.

  “Who sent him here?”

  She takes a step back, hands dropping limply to her sides and despite my earlier resistance, I immediately reach out for her straight shoulders. She abandons her retreat, and my thumbs find the shelf of her collarbones beneath the impossibly soft sweater. We linger for a tense moment, openly staring at each other, drifting back together.