The Innocents

by Riley LaShea

  Far from an expert, she could ascertain from the short time it had taken them to travel to Tórshavn, and the fact that the deraphs only came and went by darkness, lights always off, that they were near enough to inhabited land to be seen and didn’t care to be.

  “They won’t,” Haydn assured her, and, unable to contain her curiosity as to what waited at the top of the island, Delaney nodded.

  Still dark when they made it up the precipitous path carved into the rock by the side of the castle and emerged from a crevice into fresh, free air, Delaney accepted Haydn’s hand when she offered it, refusing to acknowledge the rush of illogical happiness when Haydn didn’t release her, but threaded their fingers together to guide Delaney across the precarious terrain of the cliff side.

  Wood shack coming into view, no more than an outline against the sky, Delaney inclined her head in question as Haydn dropped onto a ledge looking out over it and the sea, legs dangling as she tugged Delaney down next to her. Leaning back on her hands, Haydn’s arm was almost around her, Delaney couldn’t help but note, as their sides brushed and she felt it even through the heavy blanket Haydn correctly insisted she would need.

  “Why is this here?” Delaney tried to distract herself from the noninvasive touch that felt so overpowering.

  “Sheep herders,” Haydn said. “The people from town bring their flocks here to graze. I’m surprised they haven’t come back for the year yet. But look.” Tilting her head, Haydn indicated something down the slope, and, though Delaney couldn’t see anything but gray blurs in the equally gray world, she guessed they were some type of bird nesting on the island’s ridge.

  “The herders come to the island?” she questioned, and Haydn gave a small nod, her eyes locked on the deep blue starting to emerge on the sea. “How do they not know you’re here?”

  “I suspect they do,” Haydn returned. “We hadn’t been here very long when they first brought their sheep to shore. I don’t know that they know what we are, but I don’t think it was coincidence.”

  “You think it was an offering?”

  “Don’t you?” Haydn returned, and Delaney had to admit it made sense. “Superstition is alive and well in these parts. I suspect many still believe in the power of sacrifice.”

  “But you can’t survive on animal blood.” Half declaration, half question, Delaney didn’t know why it would make a difference if Haydn could.

  “No.” Haydn quashed her juvenile hope in an instant.

  Not yet able to distinguish the finer details as she cast her eyes to the world beyond Haydn, Delaney could just begin to make out the intimidating drop-off at the island’s ridge that gave way to a dangerously rocky pathway through the sea. Swallowing as she realized she would have been even more panicky if she could have seen the rock field through which they had to have traveled, Delaney assumed the perilous journey to and from the shore was why the island remained uninhabited. It would take some serious purpose to make humans take such risk.

  “What was your life like? Before?” She didn’t know why that mattered either.

  “That’s a good question.” Haydn looked to her with a small smile. “It’s been so long, it’s sometimes difficult to remember.”

  “Did you have children?” Delaney asked. “Is that why…?”

  “You don’t have to have children to have an opinion on how they should be treated,” Haydn said. “No.” Her voice grew so soft, it was nearly lost to the sea. “I didn’t have any children. I couldn’t.”

  “Were you married?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I did have a husband. We’d been friends all our lives. We baked, that was how we made our living. What?” Her eyes narrowed when the information brought an automatic grin to Delaney’s lips.

  “I’m sorry.” Light laugh taking her by surprise, she tried to picture Haydn in a kitchen, baking up broody cakes and bread. “I just really can’t imagine that.”

  “Well, I’ll make you a chocolate torte sometime, and you’ll never doubt me again.” Haydn leaned into her - gentle, playful - and Delaney forgot. Just for a moment, she forgot what they each were, the supernatural forces that tied them, and they could be anything, any two people, or not people.

  They could just be.

  “Were you happy?” Her smile faded as the reality crashed back in like the waves on the shore.

  Haydn’s laugh drowned out by a loud call off the sea, Delaney started, but the utter lack of reaction from Haydn assured her the unidentifiable noise wasn’t uncommon.

  “It’s a modern thing to have time to contemplate one’s happiness,” she said.

  Gaze returning to the sea, there was something hauntingly beautiful about her. Though she sat right next to her, and Delaney had spent several hours in her very tangible company, in the darkness that hung over the island, Delaney could see past Haydn’s modern clothing and attitudes to what Haydn truly was - a relic. Something leftover from another time.

  “It was all there was,” Haydn went on. “To many people, the world was flat. The gods controlled the weather and the harvest. It is strange, though...” Following her gaze toward the sea, Delaney could at last recognize the blurs Haydn had pointed out as gray seals, huddled together in the coming light. “Even in a world without any other reality, without books or the ability to roam far, you still yearn. If there’s one thing that’s constant over lifetimes, it’s a desire for more.”

  “How old were you?” Delaney asked. “When you were sired?”

  “Thirty-six,” Haydn responded. “The Normans had come, my husband died trying to prevent the inevitable takeover, and I had lived a relatively long life. Years were fading into years, and I had a toothache, which, in those days, was often a death sentence.

  “Then, one night, those who were left in our village came to my cottage to discuss how to best fortify the town, and there was a woman I didn’t know. I assumed she had come with one of the others, I assume they assumed she was with me. She stayed until everyone else left, and I was glad, because she was… exquisite.”

  Shivering, Delaney adjusted the blanket on her shoulders, though she knew it would do no good.

  “From the moment I first saw her, I wanted something from her I couldn’t comprehend. She told me the world was changing. That we were in a bubble on the verge of breaking. It was only on the other side of history that I saw how right she was, that I realized the rest of the world was not Anglo-Saxon England. Women other places had never seen the kind of comforts we knew, never had the kind of power we possessed.

  “She said she could give me power that would last, life like I never knew. Then she kissed me, and it felt like life. I didn’t know what I had been living before that. I wanted to know what she meant, I wanted to do anything she asked, so I let Lilith show me and I became someone else.”

  “Lilith?” World in all its most vibrant colors - orange and purple sky, myriad blues of the ocean - blinking from her consciousness, Delaney felt staggered by a single word. “You were sired by Lilith?”

  “I was.” Haydn looked to her.

  “‘Lilith’ Lilith?” Delaney felt it necessary to confirm.

  “Yes,” Haydn responded. “And I would appreciate it if you don’t tell anyone. My clan doesn’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way for now.”

  Delaney wasn’t sure who Haydn thought she would tell. Even if she weren’t confined with a group of people who were less than impressed by her knowledge of the daemonic world, Lilith was one of those words she could never, ever bring up. Christianity alluding to such a being’s existence, Judaism flat-out accepting her, Lilith was hardly a name that could be invoked in scholarly debate without being labeled a rogue theorist. She was a mythical creature for people, with no connection to modern philosophy.

  Not for Haydn, though. For Haydn, Lilith had to be… she had to be so much.

  “So, you were near the end of your mortal life, and Lilith gave you the gift of immortality?”

  “Immortality is not a gift, Delaney.” Though h
er tone grew sharp, Delaney was too shielded by the sound of her name on Haydn’s lips for it to cut. “I can’t walk in sunlight. I thirst, but I cannot drink. I crave foods I used to love, but, if I eat, I have to eat again. I see everything that goes wrong in the world on continuous repeat. And you think you’ve suffered gastronomic distress? Try having the plague off and on for two years. Life is not meant to be lived forever. All that you appreciate, you appreciate because it cannot last.”

  “But you still turn people,” Delaney said.

  “I turn those who show an inclination.” Haydn shook her head, as if it didn’t entirely excuse it. “Some people desire to live forever. Some want the extra time. They have something they yearn to accomplish, like Samuel, or to experience, or for which they are trying to make amends. Some people just can’t get enough of the pleasure they find on Earth, like Auris. I have never turned anyone without consent, and I am very clear about the costs. If one finds they no longer desire such an eternal existence, there are ways to end it. It’s a gray area, but it can be done.”

  “Why do you keep going?” Delaney was almost afraid to ask the question, to give Haydn the impression, once again, that she was plotting her assassination. “If you don’t think immortality is a gift and you can end it, why don’t you?”

  “The same reason you don’t,” Haydn said. “Human or demon, the majority of our time is burdened with things other than happiness. But there is always the hope you might end up with a beautiful woman on a cliff side at nautical twilight because she wants to be there with you.”

  Realizing Haydn didn’t need any superhuman power, because she was plenty swayed by a line, Delaney would have been grateful for her dark complexion if she didn’t know Haydn could still see her blush.

  “Like everyone else,” Haydn said as she looked back to the sea, “I would like to die at peace. I haven’t had a lot of peace in my thousand years of existence. And, though debate remains, there’s a fairly broad consensus that the afterlife for my kind isn’t someplace I want to be.”

  Statement sending an irrepressible tremor through her, Delaney wondered if that was true, if Haydn’s choices were really between eternity on Earth and eternity in some grim netherworld.

  “Why did you bring me up here?” she asked, and the boundaries blurred again as Haydn shifted closer, arm brushing Delaney’s back as if to shield her from the cold.

  “This is my favorite time of day,” Haydn answered. “Dawn and dusk. The moment the light breaches the horizon until the sun comes up, and the moment the sun drops below the horizon until its light dims, they’re the only times I can see the world in its own light.”

  Staring at Haydn as she watched the colors pour onto the sea, the last ramparts Delaney erected to keep her out crumbled beyond repair, and, when Haydn looked to her again, Delaney surrendered to the surrender. Lips pressing to Haydn’s, they found more than just the hum of desire incessant between them. What she should feel, what she shouldn’t feel, it all amalgamated into a single, inevitable sensation - the sensation of Haydn.

  28

  Insatiable appetite. A natural trait of the deraphs. True gluttony, the relentless thirst for blood, was really an anomaly, Haydn told her, but that ravenous hunger, Delaney discovered, could manifest in other ways.

  Having proven herself more than willing, Haydn came for her at all times of day, finding Delaney wherever she was, waking her from sleep, until she no longer needed to come at all, and Delaney knew when Haydn wanted her, the sudden forceful sweep of her desire impossible to ignore.

  Deraphs had insatiable appetites, and, linked as they were, it was logical, if any logic could be derived, that she would become Haydn’s greatest craving.

  It was her own craving that set Delaney adrift. Why, when Haydn came, she was always waiting. Why, when Haydn took too long, she would find herself climbing to the third floor, knowing any interaction between them would eventually give way to the uncontrolled sounds of them trying to get close to each other as quickly as possible.

  “I won’t be long,” she would always say as Vicar Bryce took to Kiara’s supervision without question, but the hours stretched longer and longer. Every time she went to Haydn’s bed, it was more difficult to leave it.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Delaney knew she needed to leave it. Time unmeasured, she was certain she’d spent the better part of the evening with Haydn. Downstairs, dinner was probably on the table, if not already eaten. She hated missing meals the most. It always felt as if her absence was more noticeable when they were all gathered in the same place.

  “No.” Haydn knew she wasn’t. Delaney assumed she asked only to carry on some impression of normality.

  Unable to get up with the feel of Haydn’s hand sliding up and down her back, Delaney realized they had missed dusk too. Many times over the past days, Haydn missed it, unwilling, or perhaps as incapable as Delaney, of escape from the strange calm of being wrapped up together in the cushy comforts of Haydn’s bed.

  Haydn’s free hand moving to her hip, Delaney wasn’t sure which way it was going to go. Slightly disappointed when it traveled up her side, she felt fingertips feather against the spot that bore its own kind of sensitivity. Though she had never asked, Haydn touched the scars often, generating an inexplicable, near erotic sensation as decade-old aches dissipated beneath her fingertips, and Delaney’s heartbeat found its way to the points where they caressed her skin. At a point, she realized that was Haydn’s way of asking, though she had yet to answer.

  It was easier when they didn’t talk. More prudent. Delaney had learned that lesson on the hillside. Talking only led to confusion. The less they talked, the less Delaney was forced to recognize how intelligent and contemplative and even tragically humorous Haydn could be, and the easier it was to pretend she was surrendering on a temporary basis, because there was nothing else for her to do.

  “Kidney transplant.” Not sure what possessed her to finally respond, unease gripped Delaney as Haydn looked up in the glow of the firelight.

  “When?”

  “I was seventeen.”

  “How long were you sick?”

  “No.” Delaney’s head shook automatically, though, still lacking any will to move, it ended up little more than the rub of her cheek against Haydn’s breast. “My uncle. He had cancer. His kidneys failed. I was a match.”

  “You gave your uncle a kidney?”

  “He’s in remission now.” Delaney glanced to the balcony doors as they rattled, trying not to think how hard the wind must be blowing to make it so deep into the cavern. Waves crashing all day against the rocks outside the castle, she tried not to think what a dangerous place they were in for a storm. Protected from above didn’t mean protected from below, and, in the time they had been there, the sea had never felt like such a threat.

  “Just a little more decent,” Haydn murmured, and the declaration was almost absurd.

  “I’m not.”

  “You gave your kidney to someone,” Haydn said. “You don’t consider that an extraordinary act?”

  “I had two,” Delaney fell back on her customary response, but when the joke failed to assuage Haydn’s conviction she was some paradigm of morality, she felt need to more firmly dispute. “He’s my uncle. He had two young kids.”

  “As a student of theology, you must know how many religions consider organ donation a selfless act of charity,” Haydn said.

  “Why would you know that?” Delaney knew it would offend her, insulting her intelligence and ethics in one fell swoop.

  “I’m sure other people let you know what an extraordinary thing it was.” It didn’t, unfortunately, stop Haydn from going on, though, as Delaney found the strength to push off of her, letting the duvet sink into a valley between them. “I’m sure plenty tried to talk you out of it.”

  Delaney wished she could tell her that didn’t happen, that people didn’t do that kind of thing. She wished she could go back and deny everything. Plenty had, though, told her it wasn�
��t worth the risk. She had her entire life ahead of her, they said. Her own brother’s life on the line, even Delaney’s mother had been opposed to the donation. Though, Delaney could hardly fault her. Everything she’d already lost, risking both her brother and daughter in a single exchange had to be terrifying.

  “He’s my only uncle,” Delaney said.

  “And that makes it less honorable?”

  “If he had died when I could have done something, I never could have lived with the guilt.”

  “Why does it bother you so much?” Haydn’s question stopped Delaney’s internal scan for more points to argue. “Knowing you’re just a little nobler than most?”

  “Because I’m not.” Realizing why it felt like such a lie, so utterly preposterous in the moment, tears pressed behind Delaney’s eyes. “Clearly, I’m not.”

  Statement met with silence, it felt so oppressive it was like a miasma had formed in the room. So thick, even Haydn’s eyes couldn’t possibly see through it.

  “Clearly.” Her hand firmed where it still rested against Delaney’s abdomen. “Because you’re here with me.”

  Saying nothing, it was the only thing Delaney could say. Whether Haydn was bothered by it or not, a decent person didn’t find herself shacking up with a demon.

  Or believe she had feelings for a demon that demon couldn’t possibly return.

  Cold rush of air hitting her skin as Haydn threw back the duvet, Delaney watched her cross the stone floor, but never could have guessed her intent until Haydn yanked the door open.

  “I wouldn’t want you to compromise your moral integrity.”

  Covers clutched more tightly against her chest, it took a few seconds for Delaney to accept that she was, in fact, being tossed unceremoniously out of Haydn’s bed, and she wondered if she should say something to try to make her position slightly less humiliating. Finding nothing to say, and her clothes with some difficulty, she pulled them on as she went past Haydn into the hallway. Door slammed at her back, she whirled to stare at it, replaying how she had ended up on the wrong - or was it the right? - side of it.