The Innocents

by Riley LaShea

  “I don’t prefer it, no.” Haydn made the mistake of looking up. Delaney’s dark gaze studious upon her, she wanted to stop talking about gods and demons and searching for solutions she wasn’t ready to find. “Nor do I prefer the never-ending nature of things. I don’t feel many of the things I think I’m supposed to.”

  “What do you feel?”

  Softly-posed question proof her feelings were not in alignment, nor entirely within her control, what Haydn felt defied her ability to reason. “Conflicted,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  Panic flaring in dark eyes, Haydn realized they still couldn’t talk about it as Delaney moved away, settling back into her original position and pulling the book she’d been looking at before becoming distracted by her own curiosity back into her lap. It was a rather volatile state they were in, and, Haydn was free to think in her head, utterly ridiculous. Delaney could spend day after day in her bed, night after night by her side, providing no explanation as to why she had altered her sleep schedule or wasn’t going back down the stairs with nearly as much frequency. They could lie for hours in the serenity of each other’s presence, as long as they didn’t admit it was serenity.

  “The more I find out, the more I feel like I don’t know anything,” Delaney uttered a few minutes later.

  “You know things,” Haydn said. “Too many, some might say.”

  “Some have,” Delaney returned, and it took only a few seconds of silent staring to make Delaney look to her again. Barring extreme circumstances, Haydn would never use her powers on Delaney. She wasn’t, however, above using the other thing between them, which, in many ways, was stronger than any deraph touch.

  “Why are you so obsessed with this?” she asked. “With daemonry. Why do you want to know everything?”

  “You said yourself, we are meant to fear,” Delaney gave her a stock answer.

  “But you don’t fear,” Haydn stated. “You seek. You’re curious.”

  Watching her burrow deeper into the book, Haydn expected Delaney to not respond, to determine the line of questioning too intimate for the detachment they were trying so hard to maintain. Which meant it was as personal for Delaney as Haydn had come to suspect.

  “My father,” Delaney chose, at last, to answer her. “It was his obsession. He said there were things in the world we humans couldn’t explain, that we failed to see. He saw them as a kid -”

  “Sibylline?” Haydn carefully questioned, afraid of halting Delaney’s explanation.

  “I don’t know.” Delaney shook her head. “He never saw anything after he was very young. I think that’s why he couldn’t stop looking.”

  “Well, I’ve heard, in modern society, Sibylline children face such ridicule, are told so many times they can’t possibly see what they see, they, in turn, stop seeing,” Haydn said. “It’s a true detriment to humanity. The Sibylline are the only means people have of knowing when daemonry is amongst them. It’s good for us, of course.”

  Indeed, it was about the same time those with powers of sight became unacceptable to society that the witch hunts and scourges came to an end.

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Delaney asked.

  “I don’t know,” Haydn returned. “Tell me more.”

  When Delaney sighed, Haydn feared she’d pressed too hard, until Delaney turned to more fully look at her, pulling her legs up into the chair, and Haydn felt oddly relieved at being let in on any part of a life Delaney kept heavily guarded.

  “He was intent on proving what he saw as a kid,” she said. “When I was young, he would go on these trips, looking for clues, trying to find anything he could show people. He always wanted us to come, he thought maybe I would see them too, but my mother wouldn’t let me. She thought it was a waste of time and money. So, we would go somewhere like the beach, and he would go off alone.

  “When I was thirteen…” Gaze drifting downward, pained, Delaney was utterly breathtaking in her sadness. If Haydn had breath to take. She had noticed it before, the way Delaney changed in sorrow, but it was most striking then, as Haydn was given a glimpse into what lie beneath. Humans always wanted everyone to smile. They had such difficulty finding the beauty in misery. “He went to Iceland. He came back really excited. He’d seen them, he said. He had so much to tell me. By the next morning, though, he couldn’t even get out of bed. He had a raging fever. He just kept going on and on about the elves.”

  “Huldufólk?” Haydn guessed.

  “He said he’d been with them,” Delaney confirmed. “That he found one of their dens. That, at first, they were scared of him, but then they gave him food and let him stay. He fell asleep, and when he woke up they were gone. He told everyone, but no one believed him. He was sick and he sounded crazy. The doctor said he had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Where is he now?” Haydn asked.

  “He’s been in a hospital ever since. A danger to himself and others, the doctors say. But I know that he’s not.” Delaney’s eyes rising with conviction, her tears were scarcely dammed, and Haydn felt something inexplicable. Compassion. Or like compassion. “Something happened to my dad while he was there. I don’t suppose there’s anything in here that can tell me what that might have been, is there?”

  Watching Delaney’s hand swipe her cheek as she looked out at the volumes of information, Haydn wished the old man’s poor eyesight had come with a dose of advanced wisdom.

  “No,” she uttered. “At least, nothing that would make sense to us.” Nothing in any of it made enough sense to provide answers, and Haydn had reached a point of acceptance she could no longer avoid. “I do, however, know someone who might be able to tell you.”

  “Really?” The hope that came to Delaney’s face almost made it worthwhile.

  “Really,” Haydn returned with a slightly sinking feeling. “I need to see him anyway. If there are any answers, they aren’t here.”

  And if there were answers, she realized, forcing her gaze from Delaney, they weren’t going to be any she wanted.

  32

  There was exhaustion in the constant watching of one’s back. As long as Cain had been in it, the position demanded it. It had been so long, though, since last he spoke to Lilith that, when he heard the jingle of the door, he was no longer expecting her to appear at any moment.

  No longer expecting Haydn either, Cain shot from his seat at the sight of her coming through his door.

  “Calm down,” Haydn said, but, the place at which they left things not exactly resolved, she may as well have told him to grow breasts. “I haven’t come here to hurt you. As much as you may deserve it. In fact, I want to give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

  Sounding like yet another compromise he would have to make, Cain watched Haydn take in the room, exactly as it had been upon her previous visit. And the one before that. As went his eternity. Aside from the marks in his books, and sometimes on his body from angering the wrong demon, not much changed in Cain’s world from day to day.

  Apparently satisfied nothing was amiss, Haydn stepped one foot back out the door to motion someone else inside. Watching her appear, hair lighter than Haydn’s, skin a light brown that made Haydn’s appear even starker white by contrast, Cain recognized at once the woman was not one of his.

  “You found her.” He could imagine no other reason Haydn would be in concert with a human, and his assumption was proven true when Haydn’s hand slid onto the woman’s back as if by reflex.

  “Delaney.” Gray-streaked hair whirling slightly as Haydn turned her head, Cain noted the new wound that jutted upward out of the collar of her shirt. “This is Cain.”

  Nodding tentatively his way, the woman was clearly aware his wasn’t just a general name out of the population, and, stepping around his desk, Cain knew it was in his best interest to make Haydn’s synjument feel welcome.

  “I take it, you’ve heard of me.” He didn’t bother to look reproachfully to Haydn when it was obvious the synjument Delaney was reluctant to shake his hand. It was never
a good idea, giving humans too much insight into the daemonic world, but if Haydn gave a shit about that, she wouldn’t have done it.

  “You could say that.” Delaney took his hand for only an instant, but, when Haydn shifted closer to the synjument’s side, protective streak in her a hundred kilometers wide, Cain wasn’t sure if it was the stories told in texts, or what she had been told by Haydn, that made Delaney so reluctant to make his acquaintance.

  “Don’t look so scared,” he said. “I’m not the monster you’ve been led to believe.”

  “Or perhaps he is,” Haydn countered. “It’s often difficult to tell.”

  Forcing a laugh at the unapologetic slander of his character, Cain retreated back behind his desk, marginally further from Haydn’s reach.

  “Can I assume this is about the disappearance of Brooks from my roster?” It was almost hopeful to think that may be why Haydn had come. “In a most unfortunate manner. Care to tell me what happened?”

  “I killed him,” Haydn declared. “To be fair, he did try to kill me first.”

  “So, Brooks did betray you,” Cain uttered.

  “I consider trying to kill me a form of betrayal, yes.”

  “I imagine the relegators will as well.” Quiver forming just behind his ear, it felt like a plague of insects loosed down Cain’s neck to feast upon his spine. “What happened?” he asked when he shrugged free of it. “Why would he make such a grave choice?”

  “Because he was drunk,” Haydn returned. “And exiled.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “Because I deemed it necessary, and that’s all you need to know,” Haydn reminded him of his place.

  “And his innocent?” Cain questioned, wishing he’d thought better of it when it brought tears to the synjument’s eyes and subsequent anger to Haydn’s.

  “Has Lilith come to you?” Haydn chose not to answer him, and Cain was just glad she let the subject go without penalty.

  “Not yet.”

  “But I trust you told her what you know?”

  “Not everything.” Cain tried to make it sound better than it could possibly be.

  “Enough,” Haydn uttered.

  “I had to give her something,” he said. He might grovel, bargain and beg with the worst of them, but he would never apologize for protecting his own skin. There sure as hell wasn’t anyone volunteering to do it for him. “She knows you found out, that you dealt with Garcia, and that you have your synjuments. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Haydn didn’t even trust him with the truth.

  “Yes, that’s all,” Cain declared, finding it more difficult to stand there with each moment Haydn just kept staring, expecting him to be more forthcoming when there was nothing left to divulge. “Is that it then?” He hoped to hasten her exit along. “Did I redeem myself?”

  Prompt, dry laughter indicating it would be many years before he came anywhere close, Haydn dragged back one of the chairs that sat before his desk.

  “Aren’t you going to at least offer us some tea?” she asked.

  “You don’t drink tea.”

  “No, but she does,” Haydn said, and Cain’s jaw grew hard. So, it wasn’t her own feet Haydn wanted to see him fall before. Of course not. Despite his title, which erroneously indicated he had some sort of power, kowtowing to daemonry was just the way of things. The entirety of his post-human existence he’d been captain of a mutinous crew, allowed to remain aboard only because he accepted that he was not truly in charge. To be made to bow before a human, it was a disgrace.

  “Would you like some tea?” Much to his irritation, Cain found he could do it without argument, and the pleasure Haydn took in reminding him he was still one of them - human - just a good deal older and with more ulcers, showed on her newly-lined face.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.” At the realization Delaney was going to let him off the hook, Cain considered there were, perhaps, worse things he could be.

  “Get her some tea,” Haydn said, and, with a shaky sigh of acceptance, Cain went to play fetch-boy to her human. “Two minutes, forty-five seconds should do it,” Haydn called after him. “Don’t squeeze the leaves. And Cain?” She forced him back around in the doorway. “It better be just right.”

  Growl so low there was a chance Haydn might not have heard it as he turned into the kitchen, Cain struggled not to kick anything and give her more of a performance. Regard for her seriously wavering, his thoughts went to Lilith, and how he might turn this situation to get onto her good side once and for all. That was making the far-reaching assumption, of course, that Lilith possessed a good side.

  He could incapacitate the innocent, put a little something extra in her tea. A sleeping tonic, perhaps, that only he knew how to cure. That would give him a bargaining chip with both of them. Then, he could trade Delaney to whoever offered the best deal with the most sufficient protection. It was beginning to look more and more like he was going to need it.

  Stores in the other room, though, along with Haydn, whose obvious attachment assured Cain she would tear him a new one, or two, were he to do anything to bring the woman harm, Cain had no choice but to accept that the spanking he was getting from Haydn, not at all the kind for which he had long hoped, was because he’d already been a very bad boy.

  Back in the front office a few minutes later, tea in hand, Cain was unsurprised by how comfortable Haydn looked in the chair before his desk.

  The innocent far less so as she took the saucer from his hands, producing a slight smile of thanks, Cain suffered an instant of due guilt, promptly eradicated as Haydn reached for the cup and lifted it to her nose.

  “It’s safe to drink,” he declared, thankful he hadn’t carried through on his thoughts of subversion, and Haydn nodded to Delaney as she placed the cup back on the saucer. Though, Cain noted, Delaney looked disinclined to drink after that, simply taking the cup in her hands to warm them in his poorly-insulated office.

  “Now…” Spreading his arms wide, Cain invited Haydn to relay her needs in what he hoped would be the quickest, simplest possible manner. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell Delaney your story.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Afterwards,” Haydn tacked on, “she may have a question or two, and you will answer them as thoroughly as possible.”

  Waiting for the ‘gotcha’ moment, the real demand, the call for his head, Cain wasn’t sure what to do when Haydn insisted on carrying through with the charade of civilized conversation.

  “Very well,” he said. “Where to begin?”

  “Just correct the high points,” Haydn instructed, and Cain tried not to growl again at her interruption of the great tale he was about to spin for the woman with looks nearly on par with Haydn’s, but no way near the prickly attitude.

  “I assume you know the biblical account of my brother and me?” He asked, and, letting out a sigh that sounded prematurely disbelieving of anything she was about to hear, Delaney nodded. “It’s not entirely accurate. It is also not entirely untrue. The moral, as you might say, though, is completely wrong.”

  “So, you really wanted your sexier sister?” Delaney asked, and, at Haydn’s rumbling laugh, Cain decided the woman might be equally thorny after all.

  “It was a different time,” he declared, no longer anxious to talk about himself, but, knowing well his status with Haydn was highly dependent upon how well he met her demands, he sucked it up. As always. “She was promised to my brother by order of birth. I thought that an unfair means of deciding. Aletha was not only more beautiful. She was kind. She was gracious. She was caring. My other sister, Calesa, she had… different attributes.”

  “Like a mind of her own,” Haydn uttered.

  “She was insufferable.” Cain refused to let her discount the agony he would have endured given years tied to the vile creature that was his oldest sister. “She was not kind, nor gracious, nor caring. Of course, the saga of humanity now tells us there was a first everything, and I long a
go came to the conclusion that Calesa was the world’s first narcissist.

  “When I complained of my lot, my father told me to make an offering. Not to God. To him.” Cain wanted to make the point clear. He always did find that particular alteration to history particularly annoying, as if the fate of individuals was determined by some distant entity, instead of those who held their binds on Earth. “It was a dowry. My father controlled the hand of both of my sisters.

  “So, in accordance with his demands, I planted my garden and tended it carefully. It grew into a bounty, not just sustenance, but the most beautiful harvest I have ever seen. As I awaited time to present it, though, it fell victim to a raider. So, I watched and discovered the raider was Abel, sneaking in under cover of darkness to let his flock graze on my garden, which, in turn, made them fat and healthy.”

  Perhaps, it was brotherly rivalry that still made the rub so raw.

  “As we presented our offerings to our father - Abel’s robust, mine meager - I told my father why, what I had seen, that Abel had cheated. I thought my father would see that Abel was wrong, that he had been unfair. Instead, my father taught me one of life’s great lessons, a lesson all humans learn at some point, in one form or another. It did not matter how one came out on top. It mattered only who had the greatest spoils. If I truly wanted Aletha, he said, I would have found a way to best my rival at any cost, and he declared Abel the victor.

  “But I did want her.” Cain could still feel it, the primal fury that erupted inside of him that day when he realized sin was committable and life had no real rules. “And I still had time. If there were no rules, there was no deadline, no offering to beat. I could still defeat my rival.”

  “So, you did kill your brother,” Delaney uttered.

  “Yes, I did.” It was sin Cain wasn’t ashamed to admit. Clutching the desk’s edge, he could feel the grip of the scythe in his hand. Historians always did get that detail wrong, writing the gore out, as if his brother had been slayed without a field full of blood. “And, as a result, I got everything. Calesa. Aletha. My harvest. His flock. As you might imagine, bestowed with such reward, the wrongness of my actions proved difficult to see.