Terrible Praise

by Lara Hayes

  Shame washes over me, the conviction of my claim waning under the weight of a dozen implications. Her fragile frame tiptoes down the hall. I stand beside the parted curtains and scan the street below. But with a wide, gaping yawn, the city sprawls around us—wrapped in sleep—without a stir. The night is far less troubled than I.

  “Is someone out there?” Elizabeth’s damp hair glistens in the dark reflection of the glass. I do not turn.

  “No. Not tonight.”

  “But you think that won’t last.” She pulls the front of her white, terry cloth robe tighter, and absently continues to towel dry her hair.

  “Nothing lasts forever, Elizabeth. Not even peace.”

  “Says the person who I’m guessing can’t die,” she rejoins.

  A small chuckle betrays my stony indifference, and I turn in her direction. “I never claimed to be invincible. I can die, of course. Just not as…organically as you.”

  “But you don’t age,” she posits.

  “Are these more myths?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes darken, two smoldering coals in her humorless face. She drops the sodden towel on top of her dresser. She inches closer, pink toes budding against the polished floor, her ire perfectly obvious in each deliberate step. “Is that all you can give me?” she challenges, her voice deceptively reasonable. “Riddles? Answering my questions with more questions?”

  “I told you before, we will not speak of peasant legends.”

  She stands before me, undaunted. I find myself pleased in a way I have no right to be. “If these legends irritate you so much, why not give me the truth?”

  The truth.

  Why not?

  Several hundred years of firsthand experience, and sound reason. Years spent in hiding, hunting in the shadows. Centuries of last-minute relocation and upheaval.

  Although she may have a point, I suppose. In all that time, it was the myths we ran from, not the truth. Never the truth.

  “Fire. Beheading,” I offer, though for the life of me I cannot say why. Elizabeth, who had turned her back to seek clean clothes, pauses with one hand on the open drawer. “Catastrophic blood loss can rob our bodies of the ability to regenerate, and leave us as open to assault as any other living thing. More so, in fact.”

  Elizabeth runs her tongue across her bottom lip, eyes wide in awe, and undeniably intrigued. “And aging?” she ventures.

  “A disease to which I am immune.”

  The flick of her smile is just visible in the mirror.

  “But I’m not,” she whispers, as though to halt my slow approach. My hands, outstretched, unconsciously reaching for the curve of her hips. “So why would you go to all this trouble?”

  For someone who will wither and die, she means. How many times have I asked myself the very same question? My hands fall flat at my sides, and Elizabeth stares at me from the mirror, motionless, holding her breath. She cannot know what she asks. Or how dangerously thin the line we walk grows with each encounter.

  Everyone thinks they want to know how their story ends. Even I have speculated on my own. Far be it from me to tell her what I know, to give her the knowledge she almost begs for, and in so doing make it plain that soon she will have to choose. She can live a mortal life, forever intruded upon by this unwilling bond, and die a natural death. Or she can become something more, bonded to me by blood, bound to Fane by name. When the choice is forever with conditions, or decades with a catch, is it really a choice?

  I trail the tips of my fingers up the cuff of her loose sleeves. Her desire is indistinguishable from my own, and perhaps the two are not separate at all, but one beast—two-headed—and growing stronger every wasted second. “You are not as tired today,” I observe, nearer to her exposed ear than necessary. “I am glad of it.”

  “You told me to rest easy, and I did,” she says, leaning back to be embraced. Eyes drifting closed, and so deliciously vulnerable.

  “Would that you were always so adherent.” I step back and with sharpened outrage she watches my steady retreat. Her curled fingers grip the lip of her dresser until I perch at the foot of her bed, waiting for her. Elizabeth’s harsh swallow cannot be disguised.

  Crossing her arms in that prim, forbidding way she has, Elizabeth stalks the edge of the room. She keeps as far from me as she can manage and steals my spot beside the bay window. “What did you do to him, Stela?”

  “I killed him.”

  Elizabeth nods her head gravely, her arms wrapped around her waist. “Was he going to kill me?”

  “By his own hand? I cannot say. And should it matter?” Elizabeth does not move. “It became clear that he would play some pivotal role in your execution. I have killed better men for less.”

  She finds my eyes from the safety of the windowpane, and though we have not spoken of the power of my direct gaze, Elizabeth appears to have an instinctual understanding. She gravitates to viewing me via reflective surfaces, and through those barriers she is protected, unreachable. “How did you do it?”

  The wet weight of Collins’s freshly peeled skin is a fresh memory, and it is a small mercy that Elizabeth appears to have no knowledge of the nightmares that plagued me. “That I will never tell you. As a courtesy.”

  Elizabeth purses her lips and turns around, leaning back against the glass. With the streetlights streaming in around her, she looks as though she flirts with the edge of an abyss. And perhaps she does.

  “You know what thought keeps me awake at night?” she volunteers.

  “I am sure they are numerous.”

  Elizabeth comes to stand between my bent knees. Even with her face tipped down, she avoids my eyes.

  “If you can exist, what else is there?”

  To my surprise, Elizabeth does not shy away from my touch. Instead, she allows herself to be guided by the wrists and gently settled at my side. “There are a great many wonders in this world,” I begin, brushing a thick curl of hair behind her shoulder. “Be more specific.”

  Several times she hesitates, her fears utterly ridiculous. “Should I start sleeping with silver bullets?” She nearly laughs at herself. “Or do I need to bone up on my knowledge of the occult? Spells. Spirits. Exorcism? And is there some kind of FAQ? What to do when you’ve thoroughly pissed off the powers that be? How to Navigate the Unexplainable? A Rational Woman’s Guide to the Irrational World? Witches, and Everything You Need to Know About Hexes?”

  “Silver bullets?” I nudge her with my shoulder.

  “Stela, if you’re going to make fun of me, I’d rather you just leave.”

  She is suddenly sullen and exhausted, as though the mere act of giving voice to such folly has drained her completely. Without thinking, I reach out and sweep her hair aside, stroking the back of her neck with my thumb. A small sigh escapes her parted lips and though her expression remains furrowed, guarded, Elizabeth leans against my side. She takes hold of my free hand and draws it into her lap, a silent plea to give what answers I can, if only so she can sleep without fear.

  “Werewolves were a misunderstanding. Like many superstitions. But there remains a grain of truth.”

  Elizabeth perks up, intrigued. “What truth? Which part?”

  I turn to face her with both legs crossed on the mattress and she follows suit, bringing our knees together. Storytelling is an art I have never had occasion to perfect.

  “A great many years ago, in a small village belonging to what is now the Swedish city of Västerås, a Strigoi was made in the worst possible way. His Maker drained this man of blood, but must have taken pity on him and let him drink from immortal veins. The man had no brood, or shelter, or master, and was abandoned before he was named. He was left to wake in the woods alone, freshly buried beneath a blanket of snow with the sunlight gleaming all around him. He suffered the same pain you felt the morning after you woke with my blood fresh in your veins, only a hundredfold worse.

  “The man crawled on hands and knees to return home, every movement under the weight of the sun excruciating. His wife
—a strong, kind woman—tended to him beside the hearth, where he collapsed for two days. She sent their only child, a son, back and forth from the village for drinking water. But no matter how many cups she raised to her husband’s pale lips, his thirst could not be sated, and the man wailed, writhing in agony, begging for more.

  “On the third day, he awakened as his wife leaned over him to lay a cool compress on his brow, and drape him with blankets she had warmed beside the fire.”

  Elizabeth leans forward, still clutching my hand. She tightens her grip just as I begin to reconstruct the story, to soften the sharp edges. As if to remind me, without speaking, that all she asks is the truth.

  “I have often wondered, what kind of hell it must have been…to have your only son find you like that. Bent over his mother’s lifeless body. For surely, he loved the boy, even then. Even as the blood ran down his chin. But he was feral, and the son fared no better than she.”

  I pause to take stock of Elizabeth. The air around us is curiously quiet. “Realizing what he had done, the man covered his family with the blankets and fled. For days he walked, deeper and deeper into the black forest, but he was not alone. The son’s wolfhound, Bjorn, was close at his heels.

  “In four days’ time, the bloat of his family’s blood had all but abandoned him. The thirst—which never abates—was sharper, and brighter than before, because now, you see, he knew exactly what he needed. Bereft, and encamped as far from his village as his body could carry him, he called to the wolfhound and fed from him.

  When the beast stopped clawing at the man’s face and chest, he paused. Bjorn whimpered in his lap, struggling for those last shallow breaths, and the man—being so recently human—was overcome with sorrow. He could not bear to see what he had done, and so he bent over the mutt, spilling his heartache into the coarse fur, lamenting all that he had lost.

  And then there came the leathery pull of a long dry tongue that ran down the gashes at the man’s neck, still healing slowly. When he pulled away, the hound tried to lift its head, his silver snout smeared with blood. He raised Bjorn’s head in his hands, and with surprising strength the animal continued to lick his master’s wounded chest.

  The man recalled his own attack just days before, in those very woods, the horror he visited upon those most dear to him, and opened his own wrist with a hunting blade. The wolfhound lapped at it too, until the wound closed, and to the man’s shock, the hole in the beast’s throat began to close.

  “They fed from one another in that same manner for a fortnight, during which time the man noticed that Bjorn had grown a least five inches in height. The dog was also more sprightly than he, and would often set out ahead of him, returning with live game for his master.

  But one golden evening, the man awoke on the shore of the river Svartån with the beast nowhere to be found. For several hours, he walked in the moonlight, along the icy bank, following Bjorn’s footprints in the snow, until finally, he found him. The beast had consumed an entire hunting party, save for one gangly young boy who screamed in pain and terror as Bjorn pulled his torn ravaged body down toward his master.

  “All that time, although feeding from all manner of game, the man still experienced a crippling unslaked thirst. He praised the hound, and drank the offering without pity or remorse. Together, the pair continued in such a fashion for longer than the man could count. He would wake alone, in some desolate place, and he would follow the paw prints in the snow until he was reunited with Bjorn, who never emerged without an offering.

  “But the hound was smarter than the man could know. His senses as sharp as ten wolves, and all too late the man realized that the wolf had brought them to the outskirts of another, smaller village. The man bolted into action, calling out to the dog. This time, Bjorn did not answer his master’s call.

  When the man reached the encampment he fell to his knees in despair. Just at the edge of the tree line, suspended between towering branches, was the empty weeping carcass of his faithful companion. But two armed villagers heard the anguished cries of the man, and approached the stranger, high up in the tree as he attempted to cut the ropes laced around the hound’s great paws. The man dropped from the branches and attacked the larger of the party, while the other fled to alert his fellow villagers, pounding his fists against the mud walls of the surrounding huts, screaming Varulv!

  “From that village, the legend spread of a hound the size of three wolves, drunk on human blood. And of the beast’s master, or the man trapped inside the animal, who came to the village to wreak vengeance on the brave men who captured and killed the monster.”

  For once, Elizabeth does not repay my honesty with cynicism. In fact, she does not reply straightaway. She merely stares, open-mouthed, seemingly saddened by the tale. “What happened to the man?”

  I sweep my thumb across her cheek, and smile as reassuringly as I can. “The man escaped the villagers, but he was alone for many years until he discovered more of his kind.”

  Her eyes narrow to slits, and it is clear the skeptic has returned before she utters a word. “Where did you hear this story? How do you know it’s the truth?”

  With a weary sigh, I stretch out across the mattress, raised on my elbows.

  “When I was young, the only things that traveled any distance were plague or parable. My village elders used a similar tale to keep children from wandering in the woods after dark. And many years later, the man himself told me his side of things.”

  Elizabeth’s face falls, lips turned ghostly pale and pressed tight as though fending off a scream. She wins this internal struggle—thankfully—and after a steadying breath she reclines alongside me, her head balanced in one hand. She watches me closely, unblinking, rolling the story over in her mind, picking it apart and digesting it piece by piece. She searches my face for a wry smile, something physical to confirm my falsehood.

  “You know him?”

  “Indeed. Quite well, and for some time now. He’s my kinsman, Bård. The word means devil in old Scandinavian. Fane, my Maker, named him, claimed Bård as his own. But that was ages before my time. It was the story that first endeared Fane to Bård. We did not know that our blood had power over beasts and Fane was impressed, which is no small feat. Bård presented Fane with a male and a female pup to show his gratitude and fealty.”

  Elizabeth collapses with a theatrical thud and rolls over on her back, staring blankly at the ceiling. I tug the edges of her robe together where they have begun to part down her chest. She barely seems to notice.

  “The Moroi, Fane’s kind, are different. They were not made, but born of two Strigoi. They have special skills. For example, the ability to set fires with their minds.” Elizabeth releases a quiet gasp. “You equated my presence, my nearness to you, to electricity. The sensation preceding these fires is similar, more volatile, obviously, and the heat can be detected by bystanders, as well as the intended target. The Moroi are the only creatures that prey on the Strigoi, my lot. They possess a force powerful enough to obliterate us, their closest competitors, with just a focused glare.”

  Elizabeth curls on her side, drawing her limbs close. Her chilled toes brush my shin. Perhaps it was unwise to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that there are things in this world far more formidable than I am.

  “Fane. Your Maker is a Moroi?”

  “The head of the family is always Moroi. They also have the power to name, to claim.”

  “And you’ve seen him do this? You’ve seen him set fires?”

  “I have. But I do not wish to recount any such unpleasantness tonight.”

  She tightens under my casual touch, not because it is unwelcome. “Where is Fane from? Originally?” A change of tack, but as undeterred as ever.

  “He is native to the Balkans.”

  “In your dream he was fair-skinned, with bright eyes. He looked more Nordic than Eastern European. Certainly, not Romani. He’s too pale to be descended from folk who originated in Northern India.”

  “Have you done
much reading on the migratory patterns of early tribes in fourteenth century Europe?” Her eyes narrow, body coiling for an argument. “The Moroi are all fair of feature, at least by the standards of their respective regions. So much so that in the light, you can see the purple casing of their muscles beneath the skin, trace the path of each vein. It is the reason Fane cannot move aboveground unnoticed.”

  Elizabeth gnaws thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “Is that why you’re so pale?”

  My shoulders shake from the force of another smothered laugh. She could not hope to understand the flattery she has heaped upon me, or the insult she has dealt my Lord by raising my station. “I was turned, not born. There’s a vast difference. All I know of my past is that I was an anomaly, which was an omen in those days. I was the first child born to my village with blue eyes and blond hair. Hence the haste to rid the village of my presence. Fane taking me away was an alternative to drowning me in the river.”

  Elizabeth stares at me, grave and discomfortingly quiet, as though trying to imagine my dark eyes as they once were. She raises a hand between us, inches from my face, a finger hovering above my brow. She changes course, threading her fingers through her hair instead. “You said Bård means ‘devil,’” she continues with forced airiness. “Are all your names equally revealing?”

  “Stela in Romanian means ‘star.’ Fane so named me the night I was turned. He said that is what I was to him, his night star, his star pupil.”

  Elizabeth scoffs. “A stela is also a stone slab or pillar used for commemorative purposes.” She raises a hand to her mouth as though the words might be swallowed unspoken. Her eyes glass over. The door between our minds must open both ways, because without a single word of acknowledgment from me, Elizabeth is fending off a frightful round of tears, like my pain is a part of her. “I don’t know why I said that,” she chokes, shaking her head savagely. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Names are powerful things. Sacred.”

  “I know,” she assures.

  She could not possibly. I stare impassively at the ceiling. It would be so easy to end this madness. A moment of shared bliss, and never another careless utterance. Never another betrayal to Fane. A clean slate, a new beginning.