The Innocents

by Riley LaShea

  “Why haven’t you eaten?”

  It was the same question Auris and Gijon asked days before, when they realized how long it had been since Haydn last replenished. She’d felt no need to answer. Intimate as she was with them, in the end, she still only had to answer to herself.

  “It’s important to me…” And, she realized, to Delaney, even if answering to Delaney was what she dreaded most. “How you see me.” She couldn’t say why, or that it made sense, but it was true, and it had colored everything Haydn had done and been since the moment they met.

  Silence falling deeper than before, Haydn was too weak to flee it, too subdued by the hand that wasn’t holding the scarf in place as it moved through her hair.

  “You have to eat.” It sounded painful just for Delaney to say it. “I can take you downstairs.”

  “No.”

  “You have to eat.” All revulsion Delaney harbored gave way to insistence.

  “There’s no one down there,” Haydn said, and when Delaney’s hand stilled, Haydn yearned for the continuation of her touch. “I realized they were more a matter of convenience than necessity.”

  “Clearly, they weren’t.” Delaney’s hand clenched in her hair. “I can take you to land.”

  More bothered by the offer than Delaney was extending it, Haydn realized she didn’t like it coming from her. She wanted Delaney aghast and disapproving of those parts of her that made her a danger to humans. Because it made Delaney human. It made her her.

  “It’s not safe,” she said. “When they get back, Auris and Gijon will take me.”

  “When will that be?”

  “It won’t be long.”

  “Are you going to hurt until then?” Shivering as the question fell over her, it occurred to Haydn, with Delaney, she was unmasked. Delaney needed no enhanced senses to see everything. “Do you think I can’t tell you’re in pain?”

  Haydn didn’t know what Delaney could tell. She didn’t know why Delaney was sitting there with her when Kiara lay dead in another room, or why she, herself, felt unmotivated to rise and feed as long as Delaney’s hand stroked her hair.

  Was she really so easy to tame?

  “It won’t be long,” Haydn said again.

  Grip slipping to Delaney’s wrist, her thumb landed against the strong, steady pulse there, and, off-tempo since Brooks’ came for them, Haydn’s heart finally found its beat.

  30

  Haydn wasn’t wrong. Auris and Gijon were back fast. Within an hour of Jemma appearing with a cup of tea for Delaney, and leaving them alone in the parlor once more, Auris and Gijon came in with the rest of the deraphs trailing after. As if they could sense Haydn was in need.

  “Haydn.” Auris shook her head as she inspected the wound beneath the fabric of the scarf.

  “Brooks,” Haydn cast the blame where it was due, and, watching her gaze drift to Gijon, Delaney thought he looked stricken. “He’s dead in my room.”

  “Let’s get downstairs.” More than happy to cast Delaney aside, Auris pulled Haydn to her feet.

  Cold settling in where Haydn had been warm against her, Delaney got up too, a purposeless pillar, already in place, but no longer necessary. Until Haydn’s arm slid across her shoulders, and the bulk of Haydn’s weight pushed in on her.

  “Help me.”

  Not sure if she was being chosen, or if Haydn didn’t want Auris and Gijon knowing how weak she truly was, Delaney disregarded the look of guilt on Gijon’s face, and the irritation on Auris’, as she hobbled Haydn toward the landing.

  “Is she a doctor?” She couldn’t help but question a few minutes later.

  Watching Auris pull equipment from cabinets in the surprisingly modern medical facility, they looked rather treacherous in her hands.

  “When you live a long life, you become many things,” Haydn replied, which Delaney took to mean, ‘Not really, but close enough.’

  “Could I get a moment?” Having stood twitchily at the side of the room since Delaney helped Haydn onto the table, Gijon came forward at last, no sign of the cocky arrogance that seemed his most defining trait anywhere.

  “You can stay.” Haydn caught Delaney by the hand as she started away. “You did, after all, almost die too.”

  Though the words were directed to her, the point was clearly aimed at Gijon, and he accepted it with reluctance, gaze cast downward as he sunk to his knees on the sterile white floor.

  “While we were out, Brooks found us,” he said, and, though Delaney jolted at the name, Haydn seemed little surprised by it. “He wanted me to convince you to let him come back home, that he would do no harm to the girl.”

  Eyes closing at the mention of Kiara, Delaney swallowed thickly, not sure if Haydn’s hand tightened on her own or she was simply more aware of it.

  “And?”

  “I told him I couldn’t,” Gijon returned. “Not now. But he could see you weren’t with us.”

  “So, you told him I was here.”

  “Yes.” Gijon’s gaze fell further.

  “What else did you tell him?”

  “I told him you hadn’t eaten. I was just trying to make him understand how different things are with them here.”

  Only ‘them’ in the room, Delaney glanced to the wall, refusing to be held responsible for Brooks’ sick obsession, their near death, or even her presence when she was the one plucked out of a graveyard without her permission.

  “I told him, maybe when they’re gone,” Gijon uttered, “things would go back to how they were before.”

  “Did you intend for him to try to kill us?” Haydn asked.

  “No. God.” Gijon looked sharply up, disbelief on his face proof of his sincerity. “I knew he was upset. I never, ever imagined he would betray you. He knows the consequence of that. I guess he knows it quite literally now.”

  Voice tightening, Gijon stared into empty air, and something about the void behind his gaze made Delaney inherently uneasy. Gravitating closer to Haydn, she felt a measure of solace as her side bumped Haydn’s thigh.

  Arm unsteady as she reached out, Haydn beckoned Gijon to rise, and he pushed to full height, posture rigid as he stepped up to accept the repercussions.

  “There’s a man who goes out in a rowboat every day from Sandvik.” Haydn’s hand alighted on Gijon’s chest, drawing his gaze up. “I know you must have seen him. He often comes close, but he never comes ashore here. He lives in a cottage just off the coast.”

  “I know who you mean.” A weak smile pressed the dimple into Gijon’s cheek. “Never catches anything. Just loves to fish.”

  “Bring him here,” Haydn said.

  Slight confusion passing over his face, Gijon seemed to recognize at the same time as Delaney that there was only one reason Haydn would make such a request.

  “He’s old,” he uttered.

  “More like ancient,” Auris interjected, equipment in her hands no less intimidating as she brought it closer.

  “He has lived a very long life,” Haydn declared. “So, I assume his blood is good.”

  Glancing toward Auris, Gijon looked averse to following the directive as given, but remorse made him obedient.

  “Whatever you say.” He turned away to do his penance, and his frustration was replaced by Auris’ as she moved into his place.

  “All right. Let me look.” Auris shoved Delaney aside to put her supplies on the table next to Haydn, and as she wiped the blood from around the knife’s entry point, the thick red line became more pronounced, framed by swollen pink skin like an abstract work of art. “Good news,” she said, tipping Haydn’s head up as she cleaned the blood from her face, revealing, though many cuts and bruises still marred Haydn’s skin, the damage wasn’t quite as extensive as the copious blood made it appear. “You’re already healing. Looks like Slade’s magic formula is finally starting to wear off. I guess I won’t be needing these.”

  Glancing to the pile of sadistic-looking tools when Auris tipped her head to them, Delaney was relieved at the proclamation.r />
  “Unless you’re jonesing for an infection, though, you are going to need some help. Do you want her around for this too?”

  Not sure what she saw in Haydn’s eyes as they glanced her way, Delaney assumed Haydn decided, with everything that had already happened that night, she could handle whatever.

  She was almost right.

  The slit in Haydn’s neck splitting back open slightly as Haydn tilted her head, Delaney could handle. Even the blood that gurgled to the surface to slip once more down Haydn’s skin, she could endure. When Auris glanced to her, though, smirk twisting her lips, before they closed around Haydn’s wound, Delaney realized there was only so much one person could take.

  Hand slipping from Haydn’s when she realized she had managed to hold on, despite Auris’ attempts to push her out of the way, she crossed her arms, looking toward the door on the other side of the room. It was impossible, though, to completely ignore the pleasure Auris took in the task, or how Haydn’s eyes fluttered closed, trusting and complicit.

  When Auris pulled Haydn’s swollen lip between her teeth, tongue running across it, Delaney looked to them again. Wave of fury a product of both anger and arousal, she wasn’t sure which she felt more. Though, grabbing one of the metal tools from the table and clocking Auris with it seemed like a good way to remedy both.

  “That’s good.” Haydn pressed Auris away, but Delaney could see it wasn’t easy for her, could hear it in the low tremor of Haydn’s voice. “Thank you.”

  “Any time,” Auris uttered, and, drifting away from the conversation, for the first time since she came downstairs, Delaney felt like a trespasser. “Just stop making such a habit of it. I prefer playing with these things with you, not having to use them for their intended purposes.”

  Sucker punch right to her place of envy and resentment, Delaney felt only slightly pacified when Auris’ blow ricocheted back on her.

  “Why don’t I just leave you two alone?” she grumbled when Haydn didn’t respond to her, tossing the equipment onto the metal counter and Delaney a heated glare before she marched out.

  Left alone in the quiet with Haydn, Delaney could just make out the crash of the sea meters beyond the door and wasn’t sure if she wanted to be there anymore. Though, she could think of nowhere else she wanted to be more.

  “They really hate me,” was all she could think to say.

  “They’re used to having all my attention,” Haydn returned. “They would hate anyone who occupied it. Don’t take it personally.”

  Delaney wasn’t sure how else she was supposed to take it. She was, after all, a person.

  “Do you want to go back upstairs?” Forced to witness the fact that Auris and Gijon could do things for, and take things from, Haydn she couldn’t, the seclusion of the lab felt suddenly insufferable.

  “I don’t think I can,” Haydn uttered. “You go, if you want. I’m sure Auris left the door open.”

  Statement stymying her urge to get away, Delaney could see how weak Haydn was as she turned around, how much Haydn still suffered. Because she had taken the brunt of the attack for both of them. It showed in every wound on Haydn’s face, in the red line in her neck that could have turned deadly, even for a deraph, with the right twist of the blade.

  All other thoughts overruled, Delaney went back to the table, lifting herself up next to Haydn, and, eyes moving over the gash to make sure it looked as if it was going to stay closed, she pulled Haydn’s head down into her lap.

  Knees curving toward her chest to fit up onto the table, Haydn’s hand slid onto Delaney’s bare thigh, cheek resting against the hem of the shirt Delaney wore, and, shivering, Delaney realized how cold it was in the room.

  “How do you work?” Situating the blanket Haydn had worn down back over her, she tried to suppress the chill in her own veins. “Your body? I know your heart beats. Harder at times than at others. I know it keeps you warm.”

  “You expected me to be cold.” Soft smile coming to Haydn’s lips, Delaney swept dark hair back from Haydn’s face to better see it.

  “I know your mouth is still moist, that your skin is surprisingly soft. I know you still get wet, that you shiver. But everything else has ceased to function, right? How? How does the blood work in you?”

  “I can show you.”

  Not the answer Delaney was expecting, exactly what Haydn meant by it was left in limbo as she grew heavy against Delaney’s thigh. Usual telltale signs of life not there to monitor, Delaney was convinced Haydn was still with her only by the soft sounds Haydn made in sleep, and the fact that she, herself, continued to breath.

  Letting the feel of Haydn’s hair slipping through her fingers lull her into a trance, Delaney was aware of nothing else until the door opened a while later and she looked up to see Gijon peering in.

  “Haydn.” Delaney prodded, working Haydn upright when she could only open her eyes.

  Nodding weakly, Haydn slid down from the table with her help, unsteady gait carrying her toward the door and Gijon offered his arm to take her the rest of the way out it.

  Another thing she didn’t want to think about, Delaney dismounted from the table too, moving around the ill-fittingly high-tech room, picking up the instruments Auris had flaunted, most of which she didn’t recognize, and putting them back down again before she could injure herself.

  When Haydn returned a few minutes later, she was considerably more robust. Standing without aid or effort, her gaze slipped away as Delaney’s tried to meet it.

  “Do you still want to see?” Haydn asked, but it felt more like a test. What happened now that they both knew she just walked out of the room to consume a person, to end someone’s life, because it was her nature, that was what Haydn wanted to know.

  Walking over to her, Delaney slid her hand into Haydn’s, leaning closer and feeling Haydn’s body press back against the layers between them, not sure if she passed or failed.

  It was only as they passed through the door next to the window at the back of the room, though, that Delaney realized what Haydn meant by showing her.

  “You really do have everything, don’t you?” she uttered, looking to the circular x-ray at the back of the room, before turning her attention to the goliath of a machine that dominated the space. “What’s this?”

  “Samuel,” Haydn said. “He built it. I… well, I don’t know what it does exactly, but I’m sure it’s brilliant.”

  “He was your sire too?” Delaney questioned. “Like Auris and Gijon?”

  “No.” Haydn didn’t seem all that surprised that she could figure out why Auris and Gijon held such elevated places in her household, why they were closer companions to Haydn than the others. “Only Auris and Gijon. Auris sired Samuel. I just… I liked him.”

  There it was again, that echo of grief deraphs weren’t supposed to feel.

  “This was all his?” Delaney asked.

  “He brought most of it here,” Haydn answered. “He made all the adjustments. Our skin is thicker than humans, so most required some modification. It’s somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t know how I worked myself until Samuel came along.”

  “Is that where Auris learned?”

  “Yes. He taught her,” Haydn responded, but Delaney was admittedly distracted from the conversation by the sight of her removing her shirt and letting it fall to the floor. “Just use this switch.” Haydn directed her to the other side of the observation wall to show her the lever. “And you’ll see.”

  Moving to the x-ray table, Haydn proved herself far lither than earlier as she crawled atop it, despite all her body had endured, and, inclined toward other things, Delaney clamped down on her other desire to satisfy her curiosity.

  Eyes dragging from Haydn’s form, she flipped the switch as directed, and the machine went to work, ratcheting the table through the circular opening, and sending the image of Haydn’s interior structure onto the screen.

  Formed of everything she was used to seeing - brain, bones, muscle and vein - it was only as
Delaney got deeper into Haydn’s skeletal workings that the differences became stark.

  “You have no other organs,” she uttered, realizing, while on the outside Haydn could easily pass for human, inside she was all brain and heart, connected by a network of blood vessels that crowded every place her other parts used to be.

  “We have no need for them.” Delaney didn’t consider the fact that Haydn would hear her easily, even from the other side of the wall and over the noise of the machine.

  More living transformation, she marveled. A body that existed on blood alone needed nothing more. Yet, she could still see the signs of Haydn’s former existence, small tags left behind where her lungs and liver and stomach used to be, remnants like the fulcrums and pivots of Haydn’s former wings made clearly visible by the x-ray.

  “What are these dark spots in your veins?” Delaney’s finger followed a blob down the screen.

  “The blood rots, remember?” Haydn responded. “When it does, it leaves residue.”

  “This is because you didn’t eat?” Watching the invaders move through Haydn’s blood, Delaney couldn’t fail to recognize that they tainted a design so perfect it was hard to imagine it wasn’t created by a master.

  “It’s like bacteria. It will clear up over time.”

  “How?” Delaney questioned. “What happens to the blood when you get new?”

  “It dissolves as it’s replenished, just as yours does when it replaces itself.”

  “And if you continue not to eat?” Delaney asked.

  “The blood continues to rot,” Haydn returned. “Then the veins, the heart, the brain, the skin.”

  “So, it will eventually kill you.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Haydn said, and, the hum of the x-ray working against her composure, Delaney flipped the switch, suffering the ratchet of Haydn being returned from the tube and back into the open.