by Riley LaShea
Stepping onto the dock when it came close enough, she reeled Delaney in, and Delaney squeezed the leather armrest again, surprised the hit was so gentle as the side of the boat came flush with the bumpers.
“I can do it,” Delaney said when the boat was secured at the front, back and center, and Haydn offered her hand. Getting out wasn’t a choice. Accepting help from the woman who just ripped her out of her life to bring her to an unknown place and fate, however, was.
Pushing up from her seat, there was still enough movement under, and within, her that Delaney found it difficult to keep her balance. Her transfer onto the dock practically a crawl, it still felt like she was maintaining more integrity than if she gave into her own abduction.
When at last she made it to steady ground, though, the dock itself seemed to move. Certain, for a moment, she was about to toss backward into the boat, the hand on her back zapped her alert, and, scurrying away from it, Delaney tripped over a post, hip jarring as she landed against the wooden planks.
“Be careful,” Haydn demanded. “I do not want anything to happen to you.”
A rather ludicrous thing to be told, given her night thus far, once Delaney’s laughter started, she couldn’t stop it. Completely inappropriate, it at least dammed up her urge to cry, so she let it keep coming, not sure which was funnier, that she had been accosted by two different species in the same night, or that, at this point, that was the least of her problems.
“Come on.” Haydn’s grip was unexpectedly gentle as it pulled Delaney up from the dock.
Shaking the touch off once she was standing on her own, Delaney did as she was ordered, walking up the taller set of stairs, and tensing as Haydn reached around her to push the metal door ajar, before prodding her into a dim vestibule. Door closing with a bang at her back, Delaney jumped, realizing, despite how easy Haydn made it look, it would take some serious muscle to get it open again.
Flicking the light on, Haydn nodded Delaney up the narrow steps that continued inside, and, with only one way to go once she reached the top, Delaney pressed the perfectly manageable wood door open and stepped into a gray foyer.
Ancient stonework all around her, iron chandelier hanging from a high ceiling, she assumed from the massive wood and iron door that arched before her that they had to be in the main entryway of the castle.
“Let’s go.” Haydn gave her little time to soak in her surroundings, nodding Delaney up the wide stone staircase that led into the dark heart of the place.
Hearing voices above, and Haydn’s steps at her back, Delaney’s feet felt ten kilo heavier by the time she made it to the top step and went through the arch to the stone landing.
Decorative rug spread across it the first sign the castle was not completely bare bones, she hung back as Haydn moved in the direction of the voices and the pocket doors that indicated the castle had at least seen a few cosmetic upgrades since its original construction.
“Did everyone make it back?” Haydn asked the man who came to meet her in the doorway.
“All accounted for.” His dark gaze drifted past her. “You found her.”
Flicking back, Haydn’s eyes tried to hold Delaney spellbound, but, refusing to be manipulated, Delaney forced hers away, looking through the second stone arch across the landing at a dark hallway, just able to make out its line of closed doors.
Trying not to imagine what that might mean, that she had been sought specifically, she found it only made her imagination run wilder, musings heavily laden by too much data and Sister Jude’s counsel.
“Could you get me a glass of water?”
Not exactly the response she was anticipating, Delaney glanced to the doorway again as the man came through it. His eyes curious upon on her as he made his way past, she followed the path of his disappearance through the second archway and down the dark hall.
“Come in.” Haydn made it sound like invitation. As if Delaney was there by choice, and she was extending her hospitality.
Assuming it more of an order, Delaney did as she was told, stepping through the pocket doors, unprepared for the sheer number and contrast of the parties waiting inside. Struggling to get a grasp on the situation, she could tell many of those perched on the furnishings in the sitting room were like Haydn, but there were those like her as well. Looking as scared and uncertain as Delaney felt, she suspected they’d all had a similar experience that night, and felt a common dread over why they had been brought to this foreign place.
“What have you told them?” Haydn questioned a blonde woman, and in the pause between question and answer, Delaney heard a small sob from the corner of the room.
“Nothing,” the woman replied as Delaney took a step forward to see past her fellow abductees to the small red-haired girl who sat facing the wall, large curls bouncing with each hiccupping cry.
“That one’s mine,” one of the men - a deraph, Delaney was certain - stated when the girl’s next sob drew Haydn’s attention to the corner. “She won’t stop, hasn’t since I picked her up.”
“Maybe she senses what you are.” Delaney didn’t mean to say it. Amazed by the man’s ability to feel like the put-upon party when he had taken a little girl, most likely from her bed, in the night, she couldn’t stop herself.
“I thought you could tell.” Haydn turned around, and, feeling the other eyes in the room on her as she dragged her gaze from Haydn’s, Delaney fumbled with the cuffs of her coat. “How?”
“It’s obvious,” Delaney said.
“It’s not obvious to most people,” Haydn returned, and, unable to refute the point, Delaney wondered how she was going to backtrack out of her reckless proclamation.
“What are you?” A young man leaning against the arm of the sofa pulled the attention from her at last, and, seemingly entertained by the turn the discussion had taken, Haydn smiled Delaney’s way.
“Well?” she prompted, and Delaney considered the wisest thing she could do. If she said nothing, the others wouldn’t have to know what they were really amongst. They could keep their likely impressions that they had been taken by human captors, who might have slightly less disturbing objectives.
If she said nothing, though, the others might think they had a chance. Someone might try to escape. Her night had been rough enough already. The last thing she wanted was to see someone attempt a revolt that could only end in a bloody massacre.
“They’re deraphs,” she uttered.
“You do know.” Haydn looked mildly impressed. Dark gaze sweltering against her skin, Delaney wished there was someplace she could go to get out from under its intensity. “And that is not a common word. How can you tell we’re deraphs? We could be anything. We could be common dross.”
Huff of laughter escaping her at the notion they could ever be mistaken for dross, Delaney would know what Haydn was even if she hadn’t seen her reflexes and night vision on display, because, even with half the width of a room between them, she couldn’t stop feeling Haydn all over her, pressing inside of her, every fiber in her body forced into a fight against temptation.
“You’re too restrained to be anything else,” she answered. “Too regal.”
“Regal.” The blonde at Haydn’s side smiled. “I like that.”
“I like it too.” Haydn husked, and her hold over Delaney tightened.
“Is that supposed to mean something to us?” An attractive brunette leaned forward on the sofa. “What’s a deraph?”
“Aren’t you going to tell her?” Haydn challenged after several seconds of non-response. “And you may want to use more colloquial terms.”
Colloquial terms. She may as well tell her to tell them a campfire story. Experience had taught Delaney well that she could talk about deraphs, Huldufólk, visitations, and ESP all day long, but as soon as she started dropping words like elves, ghosts and psychics any credibility she had flew out the window. It didn’t make much difference to people that it was all the same.
Realizing she couldn’t just leave the question hanging
either, not when she was the one who brought the subject up, and not when Haydn was looking at her like that, as if she was so sure she wouldn’t say it, Delaney squared her shoulders and stared into the penetrating gaze.
“They’re vampires.”
The resounding silence that followed interrupted by a burst of laughter, one corner of Haydn’s lip quirked up. Exactly the reaction Delaney was expecting, though in more limited supply, it died quickly away when no one else seemed to find the announcement funny.
Several uncomfortable seconds later, the man Haydn sent off came back with the glass of water, and Haydn tried to give it to Delaney. Painfully parched, Delaney crossed her arms in refusal. Too much like a peace offering, she was in no mood to make peace.
“Why have you brought us here?”
Question drawing Haydn’s gaze away, Delaney was released from her scrutiny. Looking again to the girl in the corner, she realized she hadn’t moved at all since their arrival.
“I’m afraid you are all going to have to stay here for a while,” Haydn said as Delaney shuffled the girl’s direction. “Our lives, it seems, are entwined. Your well-being affects ours, so it has become of utmost importance to us.”
“We can’t stay here,” a man from the human sector spoke up. “We have families. Responsibilities. You can’t do this.”
“Three people just like you have recently been killed,” Haydn stated. “It is unlikely they will be the last. It may be difficult to believe, but this is the only place where you will be safe.”
“What about my wife?” the man asked.
“They care only about you,” Haydn said. “No one has cause to harm your families.”
“When can we leave?” one woman questioned.
“That’s difficult to say.”
Every word of the conversation coming through, even the part where they were there for their own protection, and not their detriment, Delaney let the majority skirt off her mind. For whatever reason they had been brought to this place, there was nothing she, nor any of the rest of them, could do about it. The belief that their lives had value only because of this purported connection to the deraphs’ not even thinly veiled, if anything changed in that regard, she suspected the protective order would turn into a free-for-all in an instant.
“I tried talking to her,” a blonde with a thick accent whispered as Delaney neared the sofa’s end, and, glancing over, Delaney watched the woman’s eyes cut toward the girl in the corner. “She won’t come out.”
Her own desire to pull up a section of wall next to the girl and pretend no one else was in the room strong, Delaney could hardly blame her. Not sure she stood any better chance of drawing the girl out than the woman, she knew she had to try. They were stuck there, in the lair of a deraph coven, subject to their whims, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about any of it. She could, however, still be human.
Sinking to her knees at the girl’s back, Delaney could feel the hard stone beneath the padded rug as she tried to tune out the hum of voices behind her.
“Say, say, my playmate,” she sang softly, “come out and play with me. And bring your dollies three. Climb up my apple tree.”
Red curls swinging just a little, Delaney wasn’t sure if it was real, or imagined, but it still gave her the will to press on.
“Slide down my rain barrel. Slide down my cellar door. And we’ll be jolly friends forever more.
“Say, say, my playmate,” she went on when the girl looked back, watching green eyes brim with fresh tears. “I cannot play with you. My dollies have the flu. Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo. Ain’t got no rain barrel. Ain’t got no cellar door. But we’ll be jolly friends forever more.”
Heartened when the girl didn’t turn back to the wall, Delaney held her arms out cautiously, teetering backward on her knees when the girl jumped and rushed into her, small arms closing so tightly around her neck that all the tears Delaney hadn’t had the chance to shed over her close calls that night pressed once more against her eyes.
“Okay.” Holding tightly to the girl, she wasn’t sure which of them needed the comfort more.
Small legs pulled around her waist so she could get back to her feet, Delaney turned from the wall, finding everyone’s eyes upon her, though none were as intent as Haydn’s, and Delaney wished she didn’t feel them so much.
“Can I have some juice?” the girl asked.
“I’m guessing you don’t have juice,” Delaney turned the question on Haydn. “Do you have any food?” Watching the deraphs look to each other, the answer was clear. “Didn’t really think this through, did you?”
Threat of harm off the table, at least for the moment, it was the other things Haydn could do to her that Delaney had to worry about as she came nearer, her gaze unbearably attentive. When Haydn took her hand, Delaney only allowed it so she didn’t further scare the girl as she shifted her weight to one arm.
“The water is safe to drink.” Pressing the cool glass into Delaney’s free hand, Haydn held it as her gaze held Delaney’s. “That should be sufficient for tonight. There are rooms off the back hall. I believe there are even some clothes left in them. A bit vintage, I’m sure, but I trust they’ll wear the same. Make yourselves comfortable. You’re going to be here a while.”
Leaving the water with Delaney, Haydn strode from the room, and the rest of the deraphs trailed behind her, like some sort of macabre parade.
Filled with antique furnishings and fabrics that hadn’t taken a beating in many years, the room was stuffy, to say the least. Items found in the closets not so much clothes of another time, but uniforms of another time, Delaney realized they had been relegated to the quarters the servants would have once inhabited. Though, room large, sheets beneath the dust-covered quilt clean, house warm, and two bathrooms on the floor in working order, she could hardly complain. They certainly weren’t the accommodations she had anticipated by night’s end.
“Drink this,” she encouraged the girl after testing the water herself, hand poised beneath the glass when it looked as if it wanted to slip out of the girl’s small hands. Eyes still puffy, she had at last stopped crying, and Delaney tried to imagine being so young and finding herself in the midst of such an ordeal.
“Lay down, Sweetheart.” Pulling the covers back once the girl drank down most of the water, Delaney leaned off the edge of the bed to put the glass on the bedside table, scratching again at her chest and cursing the itchy fabric. Though, she should probably just be grateful she found something to sleep in that didn’t require a corset.
“Will you tell me your name?” Lying atop the covers next to her, Delaney tried to ignore the smell of dust as she ran her fingers through red curls, watching the girl’s eyes flutter.
“Kiara,” the girl whispered, eyes welling again. “I want to go home.”
“I know,” Delaney said. “Me too. Just try to sleep, okay?”
Wiping a tear from the bridge of Kiara’s nose as her eyes fell closed, Delaney’s thumb stroked a soft cheek until her breaths grew long and even.
Sitting up when she was sure Kiara was asleep, she drank what was left in the glass, but it did little to appease the thirst she knew would only grow worse as night in the stale room wore on. Glancing to the door, apprehension held her in place, but, realizing any protection it provided was only illusory, she finally rose, hoping Kiara would stay asleep at least long enough for her to make it back to the room. Bond of trust delicate, the last thing she wanted was to unravel it by leaving Kiara to wake up alone and frightened.
Both bathrooms occupied when she made it to the hall, Delaney could deduce the general location of the kitchen, down the hallway away from their rooms, in the direction she’d seen the deraph go earlier to fetch her water. It didn’t occur to her she wouldn’t be able to see anything until she got far enough from the low-lit rooms and illuminated landing that their light failed to reach. Darkness so deep she couldn’t even see the glass in her hand, she accepted it was a hopeless endeavor, and turned back to her
original plan.
Bathroom doors still shut when she made it back, though, Delaney discovered she was too restless to patiently wait. Going back down the hall to check on Kiara, who slept soundly on, hoping, no doubt, to wake to a better reality, her pacing eventually carried her back across the landing and into the room where they had first gathered. Empty, the space looked considerably bigger, and, noticing the fixtures she had missed before - the fireplace with its ornate mantle, the large mirror that hung above it, the furniture that hadn’t been updated since the Victorian era - Delaney realized it was the parlor, designed for the primary purpose of welcoming guests.
It was almost satirical.
Gaze drawn to the pin-striped curtains that brushed the floor, she walked over to them, peeling them apart and discovered doors to a balcony. Promise of fresh air impossible to resist, she looked for a way to open them, finding one lock so high she could barely reach it, and a second securing the doors to the floor. Pulling both free with minor effort, she was surprised when the doors came open and the sea breeze rushed inside.
Air crisp and clean, it relieved Delaney’s lungs as she stepped onto the balcony, feeling the vertigo set in as she made it to the railing and realized why the deraphs needn’t worry about an unbarred door. Cliff face dropping off sharply beneath the balcony, any attempt at escape would prove a messy, if not deadly, undertaking. The house didn’t need to be a fortress. Both water and rock were veritable cages surrounding it.
Before she heard the first sound from the balcony diagonal above her, Delaney felt her, as consuming and alluring as before. Sensation shaking her harder than the cavern’s chill, she glanced up, eyes staring before her brain could direct them away. Through the posts, they watched Haydn peel away pieces of clothing, ears picking up each individual rustle as they fluttered to the floor.
Climbing to the balcony’s railing, Haydn stood for a moment like a gothic sculpture, cast between light and shadow. Then, she jumped.
Pressed forward against the railing, Delaney watched her fall through the night, breaking the surface of the water in a perfect dive. The depth clearly greater than Delaney would have guessed, it took many anxious beats for Haydn to resurface, and when she emerged above the water line, just visible in the lights from the house, Delaney could still see too much. Flush spreading from her face to her chest in a torrid rush, it took the chill from her skin as it made its way toward more sacred places.
