The Innocents

by Riley LaShea

  “Ow. Too tight.”

  “I’m sorry, Honey.” Delaney stared at the doorway until she was convinced the deraphs were gone. “What were they doing in here?”

  “They just wanted to get to know us,” Vicar Bryce responded. “That’s what they said.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “I don’t know. You said they don’t mean us any harm.”

  True. She had said that. She really just meant, though, the deraphs weren’t going to suck them dry. It was in no way meant to be a suggestion they try to make friends.

  “Did you see Haydn when she came in?” She realized, at once, what a hypocrite she was being. She couldn’t wonder why the others would let the deraphs come around when the past hours in Haydn’s presence still ran, like wine, though her system.

  “She called Auris and Gijon away,” Vicar Bryce said. “The blonde and the biracial man with the dimples.” He clarified when Delaney shook her head, and, glancing to the door, Delaney wondered where exactly Haydn had taken them.

  “You have something to show us,” Jemma reminded her.

  “Yeah.” Clearly, Delaney was in need of the distraction. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Head tilting its way, she turned with Kiara, leading the assembly through the door and across the landing.

  Jemma hugged the giant bottle of lotion to her chest like it was a long-lost friend.

  Rupert grinned broadly once he got the batteries into a torch the right direction and its bright beam shined across the room.

  Kiara clutched the cloth doll Delaney slipped in with the pile of clothes, which she was sure Haydn had seen, looking as if she would never let go again.

  It was their own Epiphany, a day of unusual gifts for an unusual situation.

  After celebrating with tea and the cake Delaney picked up at the bakery, mostly to test Haydn’s proclamation she could buy whatever she wanted, they made their list, incorporating both requirements and wishes, and it felt imperative to get it to Haydn while her promise to provide for them was still fresh in her mind.

  It wasn’t just curiosity as to where Haydn had gone, or what lay on the floors above, that drew Delaney’s foot to the first stair.

  Making her way up the rest in silence, Delaney suffered her, Haydn, more intensely with each step, knowing she drew closer by the southward migration of the butterflies in her stomach.

  When she reached the third floor, the deraphs were, apparently, in a celebratory mood too. Music thumping behind a door in one direction, Delaney could feel the exuberant spirit, but could tell Haydn wasn’t a part of it. The sensation of her drawing Delaney the opposite direction, she gave up the relative safety of the landing to move down a dark hall that was similar to the one downstairs, only longer with doors spaced further apart.

  Stopping in front of one, the presence on the other side was a veritable force, trying to pull Delaney through its wood surface. Away from the beat that had drowned them out, though, came new sounds. Vociferous. Raw. Near animalistic. Recognizing Haydn’s moan the first time she heard it, Delaney fell forward a shaky step, hand pressing against the door when the hum stroked every over-stimulated spot on her body. She wanted to flee the scene, return to the obliviousness of the second floor, she knew she needed to, but convergent flashes of desire and envy wouldn’t let her move.

  “You can almost sense it…” Sounds beyond the door taunting her, Delaney didn’t hear those in the hall, near enough to pose a threat. Glancing toward the blonde, her eyes instantly averted when they discovered her naked. “That little piece of Haydn we haven’t had yet.

  “So, what’s your poison, Haydn’s Innocent?” Coming closer, heat emanated off the blonde’s skin, and seduction wrapped around Delaney, powerful, but not the same. Want not nearly as pressing, there was desire, but no need. “Do you like the powerful penetration of a man, or a little feminine mystique? Bet we can make you like both.” Turning her head as the leather whip in the blonde’s hand brushed her cheek, Delaney wondered why she had come up the stairs, what she thought she would find when she found Haydn. “Do you want to come in? I know Haydn won’t mind.”

  Laughing when she could do nothing but vigorously shake her head, the blonde pushed the door open, and Delaney was powerless to keep her eyes from following her into the room. Over her shoulder, she could see the bed, and Haydn in it, perched in the lap of the man, legs wrapped around his waist as she moved against him. Completely immersed and paying no mind to what she was doing at the same time, Haydn’s eyes found hers, and Delaney throbbed with the same ache that, if she were honest with herself, had carried her up the stairs in the first place.

  Blonde turning into her line of vision, she smiled at Delaney’s state of helplessness, before shutting her out into the hall. Not sure what she felt, or that she wanted to give it name, Delaney moved numbly back down the dark corridor and down the stairs. Reaching the second floor landing, she couldn’t stand the thought of facing anyone else, so she continued to the only place she thought she could be alone, the entry hall on the floor below.

  Trying to find her breath, and some sense of control, she leaned against the massive wooden door that led out to the ledge above the sea, so heavy, she knew, she could never get it open, even just to get air. Hearing the sound of water, as the pounding in her ears came to a stop, she opened her eyes and looked to the door across the foyer, the one that led to the dock and the freedom of the outside world.

  Knowing she wouldn’t get far, it was still worth the trip down the steps when she found the steel door at the bottom ajar and cold air filled her lungs, dispelling the hedonism that clung from the third floor. Stepping onto the rocky terrain at the bottom of the outside stairs, voices echoed down the dark tunnel that led into the main cavern and turned Delaney around.

  Searching for someplace else to go, she saw the metal door she had passed each time she entered or left the castle. Unable to think clearly, the lesson that curiosity may not be in her best interest failed to sink in, and Delaney climbed the shorter set of stairs, surprised when the door opened with relative ease.

  The world inside strange - half natural, half man-made - Delaney took in the weakly-lit cave walls and the metal door that led off the back.

  “Is someone there?” Stumbling back into rock, she looked to where the sound echoed out from behind a wall across the room.

  “Just shut up, Man,” another voice responded. “What does it matter?”

  Silence falling after that, a part of Delaney felt compelled back toward the door through which she’d come, to escape back into the known. Another part, though, was drawn to the unexpected, the fear she had heard in both voices, though it sounded markedly different in each.

  Cautious steps carrying her toward the shadow of the wall across the cave, Delaney made it, at last, to the curved end, body arresting as she looked around the other side of the wall and saw the heavy metal gate that blocked the passage.

  Light filtering into the tunnel, a tall man with spiky blonde hair emerged from an opening off to one side, and Delaney’s feet scuffled over loose stone as she treaded backward. The unmistakably Nordic man turning instantly, his hands gripped the bars as he stared down the dark passage.

  “I can see you,” he said, and Delaney realized her place with the deraphs only felt like incarceration.

  “Shut up, Man,” the other voice snapped.

  “She’s not one of them,” the Nordic man returned, before his pleading gaze turned back to Delaney. “Can you help us?”

  Feet moving automatically forward, they came to a stop again as the second man emerged from the same doorway, two young women stepping together from a doorway further back, and a third man appeared a moment later. Realizing the number of prisoners in the cage should be making her move faster and not slower, Delaney shook off the shock and rushed at the gate.

  “Don’t touch the -”

  Seemingly simple lever on blatant display, she couldn’t help but reach for it. Lightning floo
ding through her hands, it seized Delaney’s entire being for a moment, until, legs turning to putty, she collapsed to the rock floor.

  “Are you okay?” The Nordic man dropped down to her side. “Sorry. I tried to warn you.”

  Hands on her through the bars, he helped Delaney get back to her feet, and she looked to the lever with apprehension.

  “There’s some sort of electric field,” the Nordic man said. “It only works on us. It doesn’t do anything to them.”

  Mind and body equally shaky, Delaney grasped the bars, trying to figure out how she could get through a gate with a lever she couldn’t touch when she could barely stand.

  “Maybe if you find a -”

  Thought already occurring to her, Delaney steadied herself against the wall as she went back to where the stones had shifted beneath her feet. Finding one large enough to serve as an insulator, she returned to the gate, arm trembling as she touched the stone to the lever, relieved to avoid a second shock.

  As soon as she started pushing, though, it became clear it was more than just electricity that held the people behind the gate. The lever as heavy as the castle doors, Delaney couldn’t budge it, and, fury - at her discovery, at her circumstances, and at her intolerable fucking desire – giving her a burst of strength, she slammed the stone against the lever, feeling it move and glancing over as the gate lifted an inch off the ground.

  “That’s it,” the Nordic man encouraged. “You’re getting it.”

  Stone pounding the lever again, the gate rose an inch more, and, at the support and pleas that poured from the passage behind it, Delaney was even more determined make the gate move.

  It was six inches off the floor when something slashed the back of her wrist. Winding fully around it, pain yanked her arm back, jarring the stone from her hand, and Delaney looked back to see the deraph who had been talking to Ellis in the parlor earlier step from the shadows.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Refusing to be enchanted into complacency and inaction, Delaney avoided the deraph’s siren gaze, reaching for the rock that had fallen at her feet with her free hand, and felt the fishing line cut deeper into her skin as she was shoved into the gate.

  “If you can’t stay where you belong, perhaps you should be in a cage too.”

  Fear vanquished by the other presence in the room, Delaney hated that she felt that way even as she watched Haydn come into the light.

  In the next instant, the deraph sensed Haydn too. Distress transferring to her, it manifested in the woman’s gaze as she glanced over her shoulder.

  “Let her go,” Haydn said, and Delaney was instantly relinquished to her own feet and the gate at her back. “I don’t recall giving you permission to reprimand anyone.”

  “She was trying to -”

  “I don’t care.” Head tipping, Haydn wordlessly ordered the woman out, and, fishing line left dangling from her wrist, Delaney unwound it, holding it against her chest as blood trickled down her forearm.

  “I’m sorry.” The deraph paused by Haydn to say, but, Haydn’s eyes never leaving Delaney, it was clear to both of them Haydn didn’t want to hear it.

  “Are you all right?” Haydn came closer at the sound of the deraph’s exit. Instead of retreating, though, the people in the cage pressed closer to its bars. Reaching through them, Haydn touched the neck of the Nordic man, and he gave into his lot with a sigh of fabricated contentment, undoubtedly the same sentiment that had gotten him there in the first place.

  “Let them out,” Delaney said.

  “No.” Haydn made her way down the line, stroking the face of one woman, who fell happily under her spell.

  “This is cruel.”

  “The conditions in there are better than what you see.” Haydn moved on to the next eager woman. “They have everything they need. They’re fine.”

  “They are not fine. They’re brainwashed.”

  “There are worse things.”

  “Let them out,” Delaney demanded, and, done rendering the people in the cage fully submissive to her, Haydn’s hand fell from the last man’s chest.

  “Does it hurt?” Her eyes moved to Delaney’s wrist, and Delaney crossed her arms to shield herself from the preferential treatment.

  “Let them out,” she said again.

  “No,” Haydn was every bit as obstinate. “I will protect you, but I have to protect my clan too.”

  Mind not wrapping, in even the crudest of ways, around how keeping five people locked up helped keep the deraphs safe, Delaney realized she didn’t want to know.

  “So, it’s all right for you to keep food on hand, but not us?”

  Amazed she could feel such fury, such irrepressible rage, Delaney lunged at Haydn, but Haydn easily stopped her, hand shifting when Delaney cried out at the pressure on her wrist. Exhilaration tinged with anger, Delaney hated herself as much as she hated Haydn, and, unable to do anything else, she spit, watching Haydn’s head turn as the insult sprayed her cheek.

  “You’re not human.” It didn’t matter that Haydn never claimed to be, that she was the one who wanted to see something in Haydn that wasn’t there.

  Jerking free of her grasp, Delaney stumbled around the cave wall, out the metal door and up the flights of stairs to the second floor.

  “Delaney?” The surprise of another person on the landing turned her wild eyes Heidi’s direction. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Delaney tugged the sleeve of Haydn’s shirt, the one she suddenly felt so wrong for wearing, to cover her wrist.

  They didn’t need to know. It was better if they didn’t. She told them the truth about the deraphs. They knew they were dangerous. They didn’t need to know that, as they slept and ate like human beings on the floors above, there were others who weren’t as lucky, who had less generous conditions and whose final days had been decided for them.

  Delaney didn’t want to know herself, but, perhaps, she needed to know. Perhaps, she needed the reminder more than the rest of them. After her day with Haydn, maybe she’d gotten a little too comfortable with the idea of her, had let herself buy into the ridiculous notion they could ever exist as equals.

  Haydn was a queen. If she hadn’t known that before, Delaney would know by the way the other deraph deferred instantly to her. Delaney was only a subject in her kingdom, given privilege for a time. It didn’t change their true natures or what they were to each other. That was the reality of the situation, and the reminder Delaney needed that she should stop trying to know the unknowable and keep to her own kind.

  21

  There hadn’t been any prodding. Nobody needed to poke at him to see what he was made of. The people in max security were his kind, and they were pretty quick to recognize Slade as one of their own.

  Hardly his first stint, it was the first time Slade considered he might be an old man by the time he got out. All the people he’d done in, and he’d only ever been caught at petty offenses, mostly through his own fault. So much time spent on major jobs, the small ones always felt trivial and he got careless.

  Like he did with Sean.

  Still, no one had ever caught him at anything he’d done with premeditation. While he didn’t want to knock the lovely institution that provided his meals and the wafer mattress on which he slept, it was a pretty piss-poor record on their part.

  “That fine-ass woman in there waitin’ for you?” One of Slade’s most trusted allies, Rob, went by on the way to the visitor’s room. On the inside, at least. Outside, Slade trusted the man would put a knife in him for a carton of smokes. “Shite, no wonder you went vigilante.”

  “Soak it in,” Slade boasted. “Just don’t touch.”

  “Would take a crazy fucker to do that now,” Rob said as the guard prodded him down the hall.

  It helped that they all knew what he had done. Every man in there was there for good reason. Guys didn’t get to this cellblock by taking simple wrong turns. The only way in was to throw it into high gear, put the pedal to the floo
r, and barrel through sanity. Putting a bullet through his best friend for fucking with his girl was a respectable enough reason to be on the block. It was the first time in a long time the truth served Slade well.

  As they went through the door of the visitor’s room, Slade saw her instantly. If he was to wager a guess, he’d say most the prisoners did. That silky brown hair, those eyes, the ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude radiating off her like perfume, she was pretty difficult to ignore.

  “Hey, Fiona.” Slade indulged himself in a long, slow look as he sunk into the chair across from her. Separated from the other inmates by only the partitions, he had no trouble pretending they were alone. That was the thing about prison. People adjusted - they had to adjust - and they all knew how to find privacy where it didn’t exist. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

  Perfectly capable of hearing the last time they were together, Fiona’s utter lack of reaction sat rough with Slade. “Got nothing to say?” he asked.

  “What do you want me to say?” Her voice low and cold, it went perfectly with the gray walls, and he realized the silence was almost better. “Were you expecting me to say ‘thank you’?”

  He knew she would never make this easy, but Slade realized then why she was making it so hard. Hostility pummeling him since he entered the room, he should have known she would expect something like that out of him, do a borderline decent thing and arrange his own recognition.

  “Not hardly,” he uttered. “I imagine, if there weren’t a solid barrier between us, you’d have kicked me so hard on sight I’d be choking on my testicles.”

  “I hadn’t really considered it.” Fleeting trace of amusement crossing Fiona’s face, it was like that touch his world had been missing, the spark of beauty that turned everything around it just a little less miserable. “But now that you mention it, it does sound therapeutic.”

  “Well, I’d let you have at ‘em,” Slade said. “But no touching allowed.”

  “What do you want, Slade?” Fiona couldn’t pretend anymore, couldn’t act like there was still a bridge between them. “It’s been a rough few days. I really can’t take any bullshit right now.”