by Riley LaShea
“That is a reasonable interpretation,” Lilith agreed. “Of course, with what you’ve just told me, it sounds like more than interpretation, doesn’t it?”
Question deeply unnerving, it shook Haydn to the core before it occurred to her why. For a thousand years, she had been immortal, powerful, and, apparently, utterly misled in her own strength. Because, for a thousand years, unbeknownst to her, she had still been as fragile as a single human being.
“How could they possibly know this?”
“I couldn’t begin to assume.” Lilith’s tone tender, almost loving, even knowing it was a lie, Haydn couldn’t help but feel cradled in it. “That’s the quandary, isn’t it? How do they know something we ourselves don’t fully understand?”
Needing to, but not particularly wanting to, find the answer to that question, Haydn stood helpless as Lilith shooed the human’s head out of her lap and came back down to her level. Serpentine walk bringing her close once more, she honed in on Haydn’s weakness, and, when finally Lilith stopped before her, Haydn couldn’t deny the comfort in the hands sliding up her arms.
“If you come home,” Lilith coaxed through her deep red lips, “perhaps, we can figure it out together.”
More tempted than she wanted to admit, Haydn knew it was because the last weeks had been so trying. She never wanted to be the leader, the one expected to have the answers. Lilith had always taken to leadership like a first skin, as if she was born into it. In a way, she had been.
When the highly persuasive touch moved from her somewhat shielded arms to the bare skin where the jacket opened too wide at her chest, it yielded far too much response, and Haydn could feel more of herself trying to break through.
“This is not my home.” She needed to remind herself why she left in the first place, and the slap that stung her cheek drove the point in like a hammer.
“Why must you be so hateful?”
Lilith’s hands returning to her arms, tighter than before, Haydn considered escape may not be as easy this time. Freeing oneself from a sylph was a surprisingly simple task. All she had to do was lie down and go to sleep, as she had that night in Cain’s shop, after she pled for her freedom and he helped her break her ties from Lilith. Now that Lilith, and every member of her clan, knew she was there, though, finding a safe place to rest was no longer an option. If forced to fight her way out, her soul would surely fuse with the sylph, and innocents and hunters would no longer be any of her concern.
Seeming to realize bullying wasn’t going to get her what she wanted, or perhaps remembering that forcing physicality was one way to ensure she would never get it, Lilith’s grip at last softened, one hand lifting to Haydn’s cheek, as if it could erase the handprint she’d put there. “You can bring them all with you,” she said. “Your entire coven. I will take them as my own. I can help you protect them.”
Haydn wasn’t sure how exactly Lilith thought she was going to do that. If their fatal flaw lived in others, there were no walls or armies that could provide them protection.
“Maybe you could,” she acknowledged that, if there was any way to do it, to ensure their species lived on and that the hunters failed, Lilith would find it. “From the outside world. What about the world inside these walls?”
Lilith’s growl of response was quiet, but sincere. “You are going to have to forgive me eventually.”
“How can I forgive you?” Haydn replied. “There is nothing to forgive. It wasn’t one offense. It’s a fundamental difference in our belief systems.”
“You believe like a human,” Lilith scolded.
“So, you’ve said for a millennium,” Haydn returned. “And there is no greater proof we will never agree than that you think that’s an insult. What you call morality, I call plain good taste.”
“You are unprotected out there on your own.” Accepting she wasn’t going to win the argument, and verbal debate wasn’t where her true talents lie, Lilith moved closer, body pressing against Haydn’s, and, much too aware of the feel of her, of the cleavage placed strategically in her line of sight, Haydn hated to admit Lilith stood a small chance. “I worry.”
“Don’t,” Haydn uttered. “I’m no longer yours to worry about.”
“What will it take to get you to come home?” Where she expected the return of Lilith’s anger, Haydn was wrapped up in her deceiving affection instead. Hand moving down the front of Aramen’s jacket, Haydn said nothing, certain, in her compromised state, she wouldn’t demand nearly enough. “Would it help if I kill Turk?”
Proposition so unexpected, and so appealing, Haydn didn’t stop determined fingers from pushing the bottom button from its hole and slipping inside the fabric.
“I will.” Lilith’s hand was like a brand on her stomach. Or on the sylph’s. Haydn had to remember she wasn’t herself. “I will kill him right now.”
“Good,” she said. “Kill him.”
“Will you come home if I do?”
“No,” Haydn managed, despite the roaming touch that tested her resolve.
“MacIntosh,” Lilith called, and the door swung open, one of Lilith’s brooding bodyguards filling its expanse. “Bring me Turk.”
Having no doubt listened in on the entire conversation, the guard looked reluctant to follow the command. Perhaps, he even wanted to flat out refuse. Lilith’s sway more powerful than any allegiance between her sires, though, he relented with a nod, pulling the door shut and leaving Haydn alone with Lilith once more. Except, of course, for Lilith’s human, who, for all the will left him, was little more than decoration.
Silence enveloping them as it once had, Haydn hated that it was almost a place of contentment.
“You’re really going to kill him?” she asked, but even the promise in play couldn’t completely distract her from the palm smoothing over her skin.
“I told you I would.” Lilith’s words meant little, but her touch convinced Haydn to believe. “I miss you, Haydn.”
Eyes closing, Haydn couldn’t block out the feel of Lilith, her sound, her scent. Slithering around her, they tried their hardest to pull her into Lilith’s everlasting embrace.
“You were my queen. Don’t you ever miss me?”
“Sometimes.” Haydn didn’t want to admit it, but, under coercion, she felt powerless to lie. Not that it mattered. Lilith would know if she did. Whatever happened between them, she would always be Lilith’s sire and Lilith would always be the woman to whom she owed her very existence.
“You don’t know how happy that makes me.” Opening her eyes, Haydn watched a smile curve Lilith’s red lips, vividly recalling the feel of those lips on her in places no one else ever bothered to seek out. “I would hate to think, after all we had, there is nothing left between us.
“I don’t want to make you feel too much.” Lilith’s hand slid up her torso.
“Then stop touching me,” Haydn said.
Exactly what Lilith wanted to hear, that it took all Haydn’s restraint, and some she didn’t know she possessed, to stand unmoving as she tried to lure her three hundred years back in time, Lilith’s smile changed to a smirk.
“I can’t believe this alone isn’t enough to make you want to come home.”
Skin tingling at the mere thought of her, Haydn wasn’t sure it wasn’t. Every shift of Lilith’s hand producing a nerve craving, a desire to be reminded how her touch felt in deeper, more responsive places, when Lilith’s fingers at last left her skin, it may have been the only chance Haydn had of getting out of the situation with her body and soul intact.
“Perhaps, once I prove my devotion,” Lilith suggested as the knock came at the door.
Astonished, as Turk was let into the room, shirtless, shoeless, and just recently back in his pants, at the level of hatred revived instantly inside her, Haydn wondered how so much loathing could lay dormant for so long. Pouring through every fleck of her soul and into the body that wasn’t hers, the sylph’s eyes burned at the sight of him, its hands clenching at Haydn’s desire to unleash her rage
.
“You called for me.”
When Turk glanced her way, arrogance chasing surprise from his face, as if he thought himself a victor standing triumphant before his opponent, Haydn realized why it still lived, the hatred. He wasn’t just repugnant. He wasn’t just conceited. He had taken Lilith’s favor from her, stood as a reminder of the moment Lilith stopped caring what she wanted, and cast Haydn’s desires in the pile with all her other sires.
“I did,” Lilith said, taking Turk by the hand, and Haydn cringed that she could touch him so naturally. Of course, Lilith wasn’t the one who took issue with Turk. Or his inclinations. It was Haydn who couldn’t just let it go.
Watching Lilith lead him to the marble altar that served a very different purpose only minutes before, Haydn saw the slight agitation come to Turk’s face as Lilith place her hand on the back of his head and bent him forward. “Clasp your hands behind your back,” she commanded when his chest and face were pressed against its surface, and, hesitating to meet the directive, Turk slid his arms slowly behind him, one hand looping around the opposite wrist.
“I don’t understand.” He didn’t speak until the satisfying scrape of Lilith pulling one of her prize machetes from the wall echoed through the room, and a smile came to Haydn’s face at the sudden realization that flooded Turk’s eyes. “Have I done something to offend you?”
“Child brides are verboten in this coven,” Lilith said.
“Since when?” Turk forgot himself for a moment. “I mean…” Trying to smooth the tide, he lifted his head enough to watch Lilith walk back toward him, the large, polished blade swinging at her side. “When did you make the decree?”
“Approximately five minutes ago,” Lilith returned. “What were you doing five minutes ago?”
All enjoyment of the situation fading when Turk’s lack of response provided a graphic admission, Haydn watched Lilith lift the machete to test its edge.
“How was I to know?” he asked.
“No way you could.” Lilith sucked her finger into her mouth when the blood from the cut ran fast. “It’s an unfair system. Now, now.” Pressing the flat of the blade to his shoulder, she pushed Turk back down when instinct urged him up. “This isn’t going to end well for you, but it doesn’t have to be ugly. If you keep still, it will be over before you know it. Move and, well, hack jobs are both painful and messy.”
“What can I do?” Turk turned to bargaining, but, when Lilith glanced her way for an answer, Haydn stared unwaveringly back.
“Apparently, there’s nothing,” Lilith relayed the sad news.
Flat of the blade sliding up his back, Turk flinched as it rotated, giving him an undoubtedly close shave as Lilith lined the sharp edge up against the side of his neck.
“Please,” Turk begged.
“Let me do it,” Haydn finished the plea.
“Haydn.” Lilith looked to her with near concern.
“Let me do it,” Haydn demanded, and, torn between the urge to meet her desire, and the knowledge of what it might cost her to do so, Lilith at last shifted her hand higher on the handle, holding the tip out for Haydn to take.
“Don’t take it too far,” she uttered, before releasing the machete into Haydn’s hands.
Weight of the weapon a test of her strength, Haydn could feel the ridges in the leather where it wound around the handle as if the skin was her own. It was a bad idea, she knew it was, carrying almost as much threat to her as to Turk, but, if she was going to have her soul leeched, she could think of no nobler a cause.
Not nearly as conscientious in lining up the blade, she relished Turk’s cry as it hacked a chunk of skin away, before hauling the machete back, impatient to see him in even greater pain before she sent him to a long, insufferable death. As she brought the machete down with a powerful arc, though, Haydn could no longer feel its grip in her hands, the floor beneath her feet, or the intensity of Lilith’s gaze, fixed upon her face.
Melting through the foundation, she became earth, then water, fire, then air. Screaming at the sudden onslaught of pain, its sticky burn was everywhere on her skin.
“For fuck’s sake, Haydn.” Recognizing Cain’s voice, his hands pushing drenched hair out of her face felt like hot irons against her cheeks, but Haydn couldn’t clear the lava from her eyes to find him. “What in the hell were you doing?”
Furious when she remembered what she had been on the verge of doing, the wrong she had been about to right, Haydn reached blindly out, finding Cain’s shirt and yanking him close with the strength she had left.
“You pulled me out?”
“You were almost gone,” he said, and, back in his dumpy shop in Dublin, all the certainty Haydn had that killing Turk would have been a worthwhile sacrifice fractured. If she hadn’t made it back, her clan would never know the danger they were up against. Cain wouldn’t even be able to find them to tell them what happened to her.
Bleed the body, steal the soul. That was the sylph’s only objective, and, with all the sensory input, her desire for both revenge and carnal reconciliation, it had come agonizingly close. She was the one, though, who had given it power, too absorbed in her vengeance to consider the true consequence.
“Blood.” She realized Cain had pulled her back from a horrendous fate. She didn’t even know that could be done. “I need blood.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Cain returned. “I’m fresh out.”
“Get me blood.” Haydn yanked him closer. “Or I will be forced to drink you.”
Recognizing Cain’s sigh as one of acceptance, she released him, knowing he would do as she asked, despite his reluctance. Listening to the sounds of him crossing the front office and going out the door, Haydn pushed to her knees, wiping the ooze from her eyes until she could finally see, and took in the literal bloodbath in which she knelt.
Crimson squeezing from the pillows beneath her, she realized she could probably draw enough fuel from them to make it out to the street if Cain made the mistake of not coming back. And if her body would retain it. The hundreds of lesions that marked her skin clotting too slowly, she lifted her hand with effort, licking the gashes on her knuckles, relieved when they, at least, ceased to bleed.
She had made it only as far as her forearm when she heard the cry, and, shaking her head, Haydn tracked the sounds of struggle all the way down the lane and through the shop door.
“Could you have made more of a scene?” she asked as Cain brought the woman into the back room.
“Forgive me.” His voice was strained by the continuing struggle. “I wasn’t exactly blessed with your je ne se quoi.”
Or a particularly decent grip, they simultaneously discovered when the feisty woman bit down on Cain’s hand, stomped back on his foot, and bolted for the door. Lunging after her, Cain grabbed the woman before she reached it, slinging her down by the arm, and Haydn caught her as she fell, fingertips going to the woman’s jaw to press her mouth closed and try to ease her desire to escape.
Essence depleted, she didn’t have it in her to make the woman want what was coming. She had only the strength to turn an unwilling head and sink fangs her throat as the woman continued to fight for her freedom. Absorbing the sobs, laden with both fear and pain, Haydn didn’t feel better until she drank enough to restore her palliative touch and the cries for clemency turned to mewls of pleasure.
Hand sliding to the back of Haydn’s head, the woman was no longer concerned with the blood that dripped from her hair to splatter her face and clothes. Needing all she had to offer and more, Haydn drank until the blood ran dry, lifting her head to look down at the serene face that had last been terrified of her.
“Better?” Cain asked as Haydn lowered the woman’s body to the blood-drenched pillows and rose carefully to her feet.
“I’ll live,” she said. Though, these days, it was difficult to say how long. “As I recall, you have a shower somewhere?”
“Upstairs.” Cain gestured to the doorway off the side of the room, and Ha
ydn recalled the staircase beyond it, the sad little apartment Cain hadn’t bothered to decorate in two centuries.
Dried blood already itching on her skin, she accepted it would have to do.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?” Cain trailed her across the room.
“Which part would you like to hear?” Haydn rotated back. “The part where Lilith was being serviced by a human slave upon my arrival, while Trayon fucked another human slave on her altar? The part where Lilith could have seduced me into sacrificing my soul just to have her fuck me one more time? Or the part where I had both the opportunity and machete to take Turk’s head off…” Straightening Cain’s shirt, still twisted from his scuffle with the woman, she tugged the collar just a little too tight. “But someone pulled me out before I could?”
“Could she tell you anything about the innocents?” Cain ignored her efforts at avoiding the more important discussion.
“She indicated we might share a rather unfortunate cosmic connection with these innocents,” Haydn relented. “If they die, so do we.”
“You really think these hunters of yours would kill a bunch of blameless people to kill you?” Cain’s lack of surprise at the connection proved to Haydn he knew everything Lilith knew, and could have spared her both the pain and the pleasure by just telling her.
“I don’t know, Cain.” There was no reason to punish him further for it. What was done was done. Lilith wanted to see her, and she had. Maybe Cain was right. Maybe now Lilith would finally let go. “Humans are fickle and full of passion, usually about the wrong things. Who knows what they might do?”
Gaze drifting to the body in repose against the pillows, the woman alone was proof that humans could take one by surprise.
“Burn her,” Haydn instructed. “Or, given the state of it, you may find it easier to just torch the entire room. Say a few words if it makes you feel better.”
Patting him on the cheek, if she had the energy to expend, she would have smiled at the snarl that appeared on Cain’s face as she left him to the clean-up.
