by Lara Hayes
The bed dips beneath me and Elizabeth leans up on her side. Her thin fingers brush across my forehead, sweeping stray hairs aside. She strokes my furrowed brow, her face contrite, and traces the line of my jaw. “I’m sorry. I hit a nerve. I hurt you.”
“Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.”
“Stela, look at me. Please.” She turns me by the chin. She meets my eyes with fearless intensity. She opens herself, she lets me inside without a blink, without subterfuge. Her sorrow is rancid on my tongue. “Parents,” she sighs, fidgeting with the collar of my shirt, “have a way of making their children feel like an extension of themselves. A means to achieve immortality.”
“Our relationship is more complex than that.” Elizabeth nods, blinking her dark brown eyes clear. “He is my Maker, not my parent. And immortality is his to dispense as he chooses.”
Her fingers keep busy with the lines of my blouse, stroking, straightening. She smooths her hand over my collarbone. Eyelids heavy, but gaze steadfast, the pressure of Elizabeth’s thigh between my legs is a surprise. Her robe has parted, leaving the limb exposed and warm against me—dizzying, even. She trails her fingertips over my lips, and in her touch are traces of all the objects those hands have held: countless cups of coffee, milled lavender soap, latex, Formica, iodine. I consider—against my better judgment—the flavors waiting on her tongue. Once entertained, the impulse is nearly impossible to ignore.
Further discourse could only serve to ruin what has already begun to unfold. I ghost the tips of my fingers up the back of her thigh and her lips part, hovering centimeters above mine. She tangles her delicate hand in the front of my blouse, shivering, uncertain as to whether she is frightened of me, or enamored, and probably too young to care. “This is a bad idea,” she affirms in a whisper.
An undignified yelp escapes her when I flip our position, but she does not go without a fight. Elizabeth remains raised on her elbows, her back arched like the neck of a harp. “Without doubt.” Her whisper is catching. I brush the hair from her eyes with a tenderness that surprises me. “This is the worst idea I have ever had.”
Doe-eyed and uncharacteristically silent, her lips quiver into a smile. I cradle the back of her head in my palm and listen to her body. Her rigid frame is caught in a war of fight or flight. She lifts her head and the tendons in her neck bulge—a stark reminder of how ill-advised this illicit affair truly is—but her frantic, uneven breath rushes over my lips and I cannot deny either one of us any longer.
The second our mouths meet my own impulses wage a blitzkrieg. The taste of her tongue, her warmth amplified, her galloping heart wears my defenses so frightfully thin that every inch of my body shakes with restraint. I have lain with more mortals than I can count, and not one among them has ever lived to see the morning sun. But any warning bells are consumed in the blaze of her thundering blood.
Elizabeth pulls her mouth away with a drowning gasp, urging me closer with pleading hands, trembling uncontrollably as I oblige. I drag my hand down the side of her flushed face, the front of her robe, and wrap my fingers around the already loose belt. She neither moves nor speaks, panting, heavy eyes that dart back and forth between mine. Her intoxicating scent, the heat leaching into my bones is such distraction that my fingers fumble with the knotted fabric. She grins, clearly pleased with her effect on me. Her eyes press firmly shut as my hand charts the length of her exposed torso. I kiss her lips, the decadent cleft of her chin, and holding her neck in my hand I press my mouth to the middle of her throat.
Frightened, Elizabeth’s palms press defensively against my breast in a sobering move for both of us. We remain locked in that position, Elizabeth blinking the lust from her eyes as I stroke the skin above her pounding heart. In a short eternity, her pulse steadies and those sharp eyes render me mute as her hands begin a journey all their own, down my abdomen, under the hem of my shirt. The effort to remain self-possessed is too much to bear.
“Elizabeth—”
“Don’t.”
She raises my shirt overhead—forgoing the meddlesome buttons altogether—and pulls my bare chest against hers, and there is nothing else. Nothing exists beyond her warm and welcoming limbs, her racing heart, the swift drum of her blood as it races beneath the skin, tapping like Morse code against my fingers.
Despite our best efforts, the skyline ignites with the mauve hues of the approaching sunrise. Elizabeth makes a disgruntled sound and twists onto her stomach, limbs flung out in every direction, as I quietly shrug into my trousers.
“Where are you going?” she groans into the bedclothes.
I drape my blouse across the foot of the bed and crawl alongside her. Surely, we can spare a moment before the inevitable. She bunches the sheets as she turns over, wrapping my neck in her weak arms and burying her face in my shoulder.
“I have to return home before sunrise.” The tunnels will be empty, apart from the hounds, as will the corridors should I choose to take them. Perhaps it would be best to return with my head held high through the main gate, as though nothing were amiss. My siblings have all retired for the day, or will have by the time I join them. Fane, however, is another matter entirely.
Elizabeth protests, tightening her grasp and holding me close. She releases me reluctantly and I part with a kiss to her cheek, the corner of her mouth, though she is too exhausted to respond. She smiles sleepily under the attention, and I hastily retrieve my blouse, buttoning as I slip my feet back into my boots.
“Stela?” She rises on one arm, her hair tumbling over her face.
“Sleep. It is nearly dawn.”
She flicks the hair from her eyes with an aggravated jerk of her head. “What was your name? Before?”
I hesitate on the last button and regard her timid face from over my right shoulder. Why should it matter now? So many lifetimes hence?
“I was called Ruxandra.”
Elizabeth is careful not to move. Her eyes dip down, shift right—a memory.
“I heard your mother say it. In the dream, when Fane came to take you away.”
“Did you? What else did you hear?”
She opens her mouth but utters no sound. Her pulse quickens, and through sheer force of will alone her eyes stay focused on mine, intent. “Nothing.” She lowers herself back into bed with a tight smile. “Will I see you soon?”
I run my fingers along the top of her exposed foot. “Soon,” I assure her. “Until then, Elizabeth.”
She watches after me as I pull the door gently closed, and through the barrier I sense her eyes upon me still. I linger at the top of the stairs, listening to her breath as it grows deep and heavy, as first threads of sleep reclaim her. The dip of the mattress as her body goes slack.
Why should she lie about a dream?
VIII
Not With A Bang
Who can say how, or when it happened? Did I fall straightaway, in one sweeping rush from our first meeting? Or was it a series of small, innocuous concessions that built on the back of the other, until there was no space inside of me that hadn’t been altered by Stela?
When we started, she was a fleeting shadow skirting the edge of my life. A half-remembered face lurking around every corner, waiting behind a closed door. Stela was the breath ghosting across my neck. The unexpected assault of lilac and earth. The tinge of iron that seemed to cling to her, like a droplet of rain at the tip of a petal.
Stela was always more than a figment, and she’s more than a presence in my bed, or fingers brushing the small of my back, or lips that spread into a smile against the shell of my ear, on the inside of my thigh. I can taste her as I exhale, feel her skin pressed against mine, even clothed. I wear proof of her existence in the goose bumps that bloom down my arms in the middle of the day. I can picture her so vividly that I question whether I’m asleep or awake. And are those moments her dreams, or mine?
The fear hasn’t left me, but it’s astounding what I’ve grown accustomed to. I know the carmine stain on her lips means she’s already fed,
and she’ll stay until I’ve fallen asleep. I know that the taste of blood will linger on her tongue, waiting to be shared. She won’t hesitate to reach for me. And I know the vulgar shade of red, the too-sweet taste of her mouth will excite me in ways that sicken and shame me into silence.
She is heartbreakingly beautiful. It’s hard to believe that I ever mistook her for a human being. She obscures everything when she’s near, the whole world narrowing to a single point, with the absolute certainty that Stela is the only thing that matters.
That conviction is so strong it terrifies me.
I don’t know if I dread these stolen evenings, or hold my breath waiting for her return. My body responds in a similar way, arching into her touch only to recoil just as quickly. Like teetering on the edge of the stairs with my crossed arms, waiting to be sucked down into darkness. Being with Stela is like falling, but the ground never rushes up to meet me.
There are peaceful moments. Time before and hours after, when our bodies are folded together and Stela fills the loaded quiet with colorful stories of villages long since dead. And we talk.
The night before last I was spent, and had wrapped myself around her body. My fingers traced the sharp lines of her collarbone, my leg draped casually across her hips. How is something so resilient, and in possession of such innate strength, still so soft?
“What drives you?” I asked, my cheek pressed against her shoulder.
“I have never viewed life as a choice. We live until we die. Had you asked me six months, or sixty years ago, I would have said loyalty.” Stela grew solemn, her grip tightening around my midsection as though the topic frightened her.
“And now?” I whispered, worried that an ill-timed question would speed her departure.
Stela shifted, relinquishing her hold on me to lie on her side with her head propped in her pale hand. I doubt I’ll ever grow accustomed to her eyes, the weight of her unwavering stare. I don’t know what she sees when she looks at me, but I’m certain she sees more than I would ever willingly share.
“I continue because I am,” she responded as though the question was ridiculous. “What motivates you?” she rejoined with a pleased smirk.
“The pursuit of happiness.”
Stela arched her brow and fought valiantly against laughing. “The least you can do is repay my candor, Elizabeth.”
“I used to think praise was enough. My father was generous with his. When he died, I craved it, terribly. But my mother has always believed that accomplishment is enough. I tried to believe it too.” I saw no need to elaborate. Somehow, I knew she understood. A person cannot sustain themselves on accomplishments alone, something I had learned only when the validation stopped, after I’d come home and lost myself in the task of caring for my mother. Outside academia, I was lost. There were no awards, no competitions, and I realized that all my honors meant nothing to the rest of the world. And they were no longer a comfort to me either.
“I do not believe that any being capable of conscious thought is above accolades,” Stela said, hand moving over my shoulder to cup the side of my neck. She drew her thumb down the edge of my jaw.
“Hope,” I said. “I hope more now than I ever have. That this stagnancy is temporary. That I’m still meant for more.”
Stela nodded gravely. “As do I.” She spoke too softly for me to doubt her sincerity. Stela pushed me onto my back, her fingers finding the edges of the still-red scar on my bicep. She circled the raised ridge with her thumb before bowing her head to press her lips to the wound. The blood thundered under the new flesh, as though answering her call, like the blood she gave me the night I was injured remembered where it belonged and desperately wished to return. Sadness washed over Stela, and rushed through me as though it were my own. Stela has repeated that action many times: a hand on my arm, a finger tracing the raised skin with a forlorn expression.
Last night, after a horrendously long shift at the hospital, I came home to a mountain of dishes. Upstairs Stela was draped along the foot of my bed and as exhausted as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to leave. I wasn’t sure I wanted her go. My distraction lingered as I shed my scrubs, until Stela’s hand ran lightly over my mangled arm.
“Do you regret what you are?” I said. Is Stela capable of remorse? She withdrew her touch and eyed me with suspicion.
“Only that I might have outlived my usefulness,” she replied, still as stone. “That I have no place in this new world, or worse, that I cannot find contentment in what I have. Never that I was turned. Does that disappoint you?” she asked with an amused tilt of her head, as though the answer mattered little.
I honestly don’t know what answer I’d been gunning for, or why. Stela has existed this way for ages, far longer than she lived as human. She has an unusual perspective of duty, and weirdly, what she believes to be a strict moral code. The cruelty, the bloodshed, the horror she’s wreaked doesn’t touch her. But I can’t reconcile the Stela that kisses the ache from my arm, with the monster that has no doubt murdered thousands of unsuspecting people, and that is a problem for me.
I knew in that moment that she would never apologize for what she is, no matter the fallout. My distaste for her diet, though not directly voiced, dropped like an iron curtain between us. I marveled that of all the people I have ever known I am closer to Stela than any of them.
How much of that infatuation has to do with the physical reaction her proximity elicits? And are my feelings for her genuine, or is it chemical? In such moments, her eyes disgust me. Magnetic as they manage to be at all other times, they twist into empty pools. But I can only hold on to the disgust for as long as it takes her to coax me into the void, and I begin counting the seconds between the last time she touched me, and the next. Which is how we ended up facing each other, my body only half clothed, and then bare. We stood, silent, staring each other down, and then she was above me in bed. Everything in between is a blur.
It was late when Stela stirred. She lifted herself from the bed in a stretch as graceful as a pirouette. Her long limbs glowed faintly blue in the moonlight. She tumbled into the armchair. She’d spent hours with me and though she didn’t say it, her departure from bed was an unspoken instruction for me to sleep while she kept watch. She draped her legs over the arm of the chair, and stared at the street below my window.
I lay down with my head at the foot of the bed so that I could watch her until I fell asleep, and pulled the blanket around my torso. Her body leaches the heat from mine until she’s as warm to the touch as anyone else, and I’m left grasping for the comforter, a few degrees cooler than I should be.
Her face was obscured by the sharp cut of her hair, which gleamed like silver in the light. She looked like a porcelain doll, her skin polished and hard.
“Surely, it must intrigue you,” she mused. “What would you give in exchange for everlasting life, Elizabeth?” I had no answer prepared, though I’d asked myself that question many times. Stela continued, as though she was asking herself the same thing. “What morals, what convictions would you compromise? Could you harm? Could you kill for it?” Had I scoffed at the question, Stela would have seen right through me. If I deflected with a joke, she would press.
“Why didn’t I turn when you gave me your blood?” I asked, leaning up on my elbows.
She drew one foot down to the floor, and swiveled the chair to face me, crossing her legs again. She folded her hands against her bare belly, and with the light from my window shining in around her, her hair caught fire and the reflection illuminated the outer edges of her eyes.
“More is required to turn someone,” she explained with a wave of her hand. “The blood must be cleansed, if you will. Had I also fed from you, had I taken your blood into myself, and then opened my veins to save you, well, I would not need to ask what you would give for eternity.”
I stayed quiet. She was in a rare sharing mood. I didn’t understand what had changed. “It is a dangerous dance for both parties,” she continued, staring at th
e floor, though I knew this only because I could not sense the cloying presence of her eyes on my skin. “If I gave too much to you, the thirst would consume you, and I would descend into slumber. Akin to a coma. Likewise, should I drink too deeply from you, you would die,” she trailed off “You would slither right out of my arms, and drown in the dark hereafter. I have never attempted to turn another.”
I finally realized what Stela had been leading me toward all along. The implications took my breath away, and though I was still lying down the room rocked, as though a train had barreled through it. Dread, like icy fingers, ran from the base of my neck up to the top of my head. Drown in the dark hereafter…
Fearing and knowing are two completely different things.
“There’s nothing after this life, is there?”
Stela didn’t respond. I suppose there’s no way to pacify someone as they reconcile their brevity of existence, as they struggle to accept that death is absolute. This was something I believed I’d made peace with, because there was always the possibility—however slim—that I was wrong. And that possibility is the reason people get out of bed in the morning. The sting of tears burned my dry, sleep-deprived eyes, but they were not for my inevitable end. They were for my mother, who I could not imagine slipping quietly into emptiness. They were for my father, who—if this is the truth—never watched me graduate, wasn’t there when I was shipped off to college, and wouldn’t be with me in spirit on my wedding day, because he simply wasn’t anymore.
“Are you sure?” My voice was small.
Stela slipped out of her chair and lay in front of me, perfectly still and straight on the edge of the mattress. Her long fingers brushed my tear tracks dry, combed through my hair. “I can tell you only what I have seen,” she said, “from my own death, and the death of the victims I followed to the end of their journeys. There was no bright light. No chorus of angels to sing them home. Only blackness.”