The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  It surrounded her; she shook with pain but did not utter a word through her clenched teeth. Then the light was gone. Archaic writing was burned into the skin of Daniela’s chest, arms and face. “You tell everyone you meet from now on that there is a new rule in New York City: No hunting Innocents. They are now under my protection. She is under my protection. Anyone who has a problem with that will have to face me.”

  Cristien pulled her to her feet. The girl took a knife from her shirt, plunged it toward Cristien’s chest. In a flash, the knife and her hand were gone. She screamed in agony as Cristien tossed her out of my window.

  Then he stumbled back, holding his right shoulder. I saw blood on his fingers.

  “What should I do?” I asked, running to help him. “What I should do?”

  “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine,” he groaned and sat on my bed.

  “But you’re bleeding.”

  “It’ll stop soon.”

  I sat by him, watching him, helpless. He pulled his shirt from around his waist and began blotting the blood. Then I had to ask, “What are you?”

  He glanced at me, “A man. A monster. You choose.”

  I looked at him. He was hiding his face from me by looking straight ahead. It seemed like he was scared of what I might see or say.

  “How can I tell when you haven’t chosen yourself?” I asked him. Then I took the shirt from his hand. I balled it up and began applying pressure.

  “Why do those things keep coming to my room?”

  “They want your life force.”

  “My what?”

  “You’re changing, Alexa,” he said, slowly.

  “What do you mean?” Then I added, “Into what?

  “Into something like me.”

  I stared at him with his wings and his wounds and shook my head. I was not like him. He wasn’t even human. “No.”

  He just stared at me, his green eyes grim. His whole body was saying ‘Yes. You are’ only his lips didn’t move.

  “You’re lying,” I told him.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” he said, facing me finally.

  I let his shirt drop from my hand. I sat back from him, angry that he was telling me these terrible things.

  “You’re doing this to me,” I cried, “You’re turning me into a monster.”

  He shook his head sadly. “No. I’m trying to help you, to save you.” He reached out to me. “I’m the only thing keeping you alive, Alexa. Besides fighting off those who want to eat you, I’m also stabilizing your energy, which will spiral out of control and kill you if you don’t sleep with me.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “I have to give you points for originality,” I told him. “Usually guys just say they love you or that it isn’t against Jewish law when they’re trying to get some.”

  “You think this is about sex? I could get sex more easily from anyone else on this entire planet! Fine,” he said, angrily. “Just remember, I tried to be honest with you. Forget. Sleep.” I fell into a dreamless slumber.

  Next morning, I woke up to the sound of my cell ringing. I barely knew where I was. What time was it? I put on my glasses. The light was dim through the window. And why didn’t the call go to voicemail? I answered it just to stop the ringing. My brain realized too late what I had done.

  “Good morning,” Cristien said.

  When did I put the phone on my pillow? When did I turn off the voice mail? But those were unimportant questions. The real question was what I should say now. My mind raced.

  “Alexa?”

  Maybe if I hung up quietly . . .

  “I’ll keep calling back,” he said, like he was reading my mind. “Besides, I’m sitting outside your door. You won’t be able to leave your room all day. All day. I had plans to spend it with you. So, I can sit and wait for you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I finally said, covering my head with the sheet.

  “Oh, so you’re speaking to me now?”

  “I never stopped speaking to you.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said.

  “I just thought we had nothing left to say,” I told him, twisting the edge of my sheet.

  There was silence for a moment. “And why not?”

  “I told you. I’m not the kind of girl you want.”

  “What kind of girl are you then?”

  I took a deep breath. I’m a girl searching for true love, I thought. But it was too embarrassing and stupid sounding to say out loud, so, I hedged. I pulled the sheet down and looked up at the smooth white ceiling of my room.

  “Well, you know. Some people are like wolves, and some are like bears. And bears and wolves don’t go together. You don’t see me trying to convince you to be a wolf? So, why are you trying to convince me to be a bear?”

  I could hear him blinking on the other side of the line. “Can you translate that into English?”

  “Wolves mate for life. Bears hit and run.”

  “And?”

  “I’m a virgin, okay?”

  There was a moment of silence while I assume he was struggling to understand the connection. Then he spoke.

  “I’m not prejudiced against anyone.”

  Ha. Ha. “I’m not going to give it up until I’m married to my B’shert, my soulmate. It’s a Jewish thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I don’t have to. I only have to respect your choice. I can promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. Like Lance said, I won’t bite unless you say so.”

  I didn’t know what to say. A part of me said I shouldn’t trust him. A big part. I should stay away from him.

  “Don’t you trust me, Alexa?” he asked.

  “Not as far as I can throw you.”

  He chuckled. “I think you don’t trust yourself.”

  “Maybe I don’t. All the more reason not to see you again.”

  “I was teasing. You’re a very strong girl.”

  “Young woman.” You Neanderthal.

  “Sorry. Young woman,” he said with a smile in his voice, “a young woman I find fascinating. A young woman I want to see, I need to see. Tell me what you want me to do to make this all right?”

  That last part made my stomach clench. There was nothing he could do to make this less frightening, to make me feel safe. I wanted to hang up the phone, but he would call back again. He would keep pushing.

  “Just leave me alone,” I said, shutting my eyes.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I looked at the phone.

  He kept quiet a long time then said, “Because of the way I feel about you.”

  “And how do you feel about me?”

  “I don’t know what to call it. It’s like some kind of compulsion. I can’t seem to stay away from you. Maybe … I’m falling in love with you.”

  “Don’t say that.” My mother said my father told her he loved her on the first date. It meant nothing. He still abandoned us. That is what she taught me.

  “What do you want me to say?” he asked.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Just give me a chance.”

  “Please, go,” I begged. I was mostly begging myself, begging myself not to feel this thing, this cord that attached us even now.

  “What do you have to lose? We date. We dance. You go home at the end of the night. Nothing has happened that you haven’t wanted. What have I done to make you not trust me?”

  “Nothing,” I admitted. It wasn’t him. It was all the men who had come before him and failed me. I had seen the future. My mother had lived it with my father. I did not feel like repeating that agony.

  “Who hurt you?” he asked then waited for me to answer, but I said nothing because my throat had swollen shut. “He isn’t me. I’m someone else. I’m Cristien. Nice to meet you.”

  I closed my eyes. That was a low blow. But it was true. We all got hurt. Dating hurt. The end of it hurt. The consequences hurt. Not having a father hurt. It hurt watching my mother wondering why he d
idn’t see what a treasure he was giving up when he walked away from us. And a lot of times afterward, we women would open the buried chest of our souls and peer inside and wonder if all we saw was fool’s gold.

  “Alexa,” he went on. “I wouldn’t be pushing like this if I didn’t think there was something special about you. I would give up, but I can’t. I don’t want to. Won’t you give me a chance? You can always dump me later.”

  I smiled a little at that, but something in me knew I was beaten. “Okay.”

  “Okay, you’ll give me a chance?” he said, sounding genuinely happier.

  “No. Okay, I’ll dump you later.”

  “Are you’re coming out?”

  “What time is it?”

  “7:20."

  “Drop dead.”

  “Not a morning person?”

  “Nope,” I said, closing my eyes.

  “I’ll see you at eight then.”

  “No.” I turned over on my side.

  “Nine o’clock, downstairs.”

  “Ten.” I fluffed my pillow.

  “You need all that time to get ready?”

  “No, I need that time to sleep.”

  “You think you can sleep now?”

  I thought about it. My pillow was stone cold, and I was wide awake. “Give me a half hour.”

  “Sure. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

  “Bye.” I hung up the phone and dropped back on my bed.

  What had I done? I had broken my word to myself that I wouldn’t see him again. I searched for solace. All I could think of was an old Hebrew saying, “Ha kol l’tov.” It’s all for the best. Even when things seemed doomed, when you were facing your darkest hour of defeat, you never knew what good might come from it.

  She came downstairs like a doe stepping into a clearing on the first day of hunting season. I had used every trick in my book to get her to come to me. I realized then that I’d do anything to keep her alive and safe, even burn down her dorm just to have her run toward me out of the flames. She had to date me to keep healthy, yet the relief that flowed through me upon seeing her was so real. It was akin to what a man must feel when he finally finds water after crawling for a week in an endless desert.

  Alexa would make an excellent succubus. She could make any man hers whether she wanted to or not. She could draw me like blood from a vein, tears from an eye. She was so beautiful, yet her fear of me made her appear cold. And I wondered if I would win. I might be able to trick her but only for so long. In the end, she would turn from me, her heart frozen against me forever. It was inevitable.

  With chagrin, I remembered Edmund Spenser’s poem:

  My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great is not dissolved through my so hot desire, but harder grows the more I her entreat?

  Or how comes it that my exceeding heat is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold, but that I burn much more in boiling sweat and feel my flames augmented manifold?

  She stopped in front of me, and I took her into my arms, let my chin rest on her head. She felt so precious to me. This moment was so fragile, so hard won. I didn’t want to let it go. If any of my powers included stopping time, I would have used them at this moment and frozen us both here, never to go forward.

  It had taken all day for Lance to calm me down after she had left me again. I kept roaring “what the hell is wrong with her?” We all said no. We were all innocent at first. I had held onto my chastity for hours while Lily danced naked in front of me, tempting me minute upon minute from my sacred pledge. But this was the twenty-first century. Abstinence was obsolete. And I wasn’t any lover. She was getting the best. Besides, no woman had ever refused me before.

  “Take it easy, dude. Take it slow,” he said, dragging his hand through the air as though he were caressing a woman’s form. “You’ve got to take your time. You don’t throw her into the pot of boiling water and expect her not to scream. You have to turn up the heat slowly. You have to get her to trust you more than she trusts herself. You keep gulping down the wine, dude. Sip. Sip. Enjoy it a little. You may never feel this way again.”

  “Good,” I spat.

  But I didn’t mean it. What was that saying? It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I had never believed the last part about losing, but now the part about never loving felt right. I would never feel this way again about anyone. She was my Innocent. I might not get another. My life would never light up like this again. I would never feel so alive, so vulnerable, or so strong. I would go slowly.

  I stroked Alexa’s hair. It smelled like night-blooming jasmine.

  “Hungry?” I asked, not letting her go.

  “Not yet,” she said in muffled tones against my shirt. “My stomach isn’t awake yet.”

  “Let’s go eat anyway. If it complains, tell it it’s all a dream.”

  She looked up at me. I knew exactly what she was thinking, that my holding her was a dream, and it was. She most likely guessed that she would wake up screaming, but I knew we both would. When she transformed, her appetite would turn to human males who would die in her arms. Then I would have to kill her.

  She would have to learn to control herself, quickly. My law allowed for no mistakes or leniency. Even while she learned there would be danger. Most likely, I would have to intervene. That would be awkward, watching her with other men. The way I felt now, I could only imagine killing them myself and Alexa having to stop me. I couldn’t wait till the Compulsion was over, when we disconnected, and I stopped wanting her endlessly.

  Unfortunately, that thought brought me face to face with the emptiness of my life when Alexa would be gone. She was the only woman in the world for me now. The rest were mere shadows. I dreaded her hatred when she turned from me, after I exchanged her humanity for immortality and death. I dreaded the idea of never seeing her again after she changed. I dreaded her wrath if I did.

  Maybe she would want to kill me as I had wanted to kill Lily. The way I felt now, maybe I would let her. I didn’t know. I looked down at her. Slow and enjoy, Lance had said. I pushed her hair from her face and kissed her nose.

  “Do you like waffles?” I asked. She nodded.

  I took her to one of Lance’s favorite restaurants. It served breakfast all day. That’s how he found it. When you woke up at sunset with a craving for bacon and waffles, a place like this was invaluable. It was simply called Daybreak. Its logo was a sunny-side-up egg rising or setting, whichever you liked, over a painted horizon. Alexa devoured breakfast.

  We eat, but energy is our real food. God’s bones. When she transformed with my help, we’d become a supernova, and I would get the experience of a lifetime. But for now, energy radiated from her skin when she was near me. She was a roman candle most of the time. Her energy was an orange-yellow, like a sexy sun. It was the thing that had brought me to her, the light.

  “Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” she asked, embarrassed about eating alone.

  I opened my lips. She was surprised, but then she took a piece of waffle, leaned forward and put it into my mouth. I bit the fork. It scraped my teeth as she pulled it out.

  “I thought you didn’t bite,” she said, brows rising.

  I smiled a little and said, “More.”

  Her eyes widened, but she forked up another piece. I leaned forward to take it then kissed her instead.

  “Your lips are sweeter,” I told her and watched her blush. Blush. Red mixed with the cream of her skin, like clay and gold dust. I wanted to remember her like this forever. I wanted to stamp this time in my memory, steel it against the ravages of forgetfulness, so I could relive all of it again and again forever.

  I took her out Saturday night and all Sunday. I kept us away from my place except for a short planned pit stop. Lance suggested it to prove I could be good, that I could take her to my apartment and not do anything. We spent most of our time in my car.

  It was not the most perfect spot for romance, but I managed. I took it slow.
To build trust you had to trust, Lance said. You had to expose yourself, which I’d never done before--I hit and run--but then when I was in her arms it was not difficult. Maybe it was because Alexa was so guileless. She kissed me in novel ways and places. I think it was because she didn’t know what to do or not to do. She had no previous experience. She was trying out things to test my reactions. I didn’t know either what I would like or wouldn’t.

  She surprised me a lot. Her hands stayed above the belt, and so did mine. Unfortunately, there were places above the belt that brought me to the verge of ripping her clothes off more than once. Then at the end of the night she always slipped away. Her lips were usually still glued to mine when she backed out of my car, pushing my hands away while I tried to pull her back in.

  “Good night,” she’d say.

  “See you in your dreams,” I’d tell her.

  “You mean in your dreams.”

  I’d smile as she closed the door. She’d take the elevator up, and I’d drive down the block, park, and sit in my car waiting for her to fall asleep. I’d turn the satellite radio channel to the Early Music station.

  How times had changed. I was dating. I used to laugh at the poor human males who had to go the long way around to get some. All that courting, currying favor with her family, and even marrying just to get to the point. Now that I was dating though, I had to admit it had its moments. Being recognized, remembered, known, was something I could get used to fast. I loved the way her face lit up when she saw me again, and how she looked back and waved as she left. It warmed me to know that I would be on her mind even when I was out of sight.

  I always knew the moment she finally fell asleep. I’d surge into the alley by her dorm, yank off my shirt, sprout my wings and take off toward her window. I’d land on the lip and slide the glass up. She always whispered my name when I entered as if in greeting. Her closed lids would flutter at my entrance, and my heart jerked in my chest in response.

  Oh, how things had changed, and I had changed too. Poetry came to my lips at the sight of her. I was inspired by her in so many ways. Then I’d take my seat at her desk, turn it to face the window and put my sword across my knees and wait.