The Innocents

by Riley LaShea

  “I need to tell you something.” She wasted no time on pleasantries as they looked up from their dinners. They seemed rather phony when things hadn’t been pleasant between them for a while. “There may be a way for us to leave. Don’t get too excited,” she interjected when the declaration put some life into the occupants of the table she hadn’t seen since in the days before Kiara died. “The only way we can do so safely is if we change our identities.”

  “Change our identities?” Jemma said.

  “These people…” Delaney faltered for a moment when she remembered that wasn’t what they were up against. “They won’t stop coming for us. Haydn thinks there will be more. If we just return to our lives, we won’t survive long.”

  “So, they kidnapped us, and we have to give up everything?” Akun questioned.

  “If they hadn’t kidnapped you, you would likely be dead already.”

  “So, your girlfriend says,” Ellis uttered.

  “That’s pretty ballsy coming from someone who’s been balls-deep in Layla the majority of the time we’ve been here.” Expecting to be attacked, Delaney hated that she was prepared for it.

  “That’s enough.” She felt sufficiently adolescent when Vicar Bryce put his hand up to halt whatever Ellis was about to say back to her.

  “We can’t just leave our lives.” He let it fall back to the table, his sigh encapsulating the sentiment of all of them.

  “You will die if you just go back.” Delaney didn’t know how she could make it clearer.

  “I would rather that.” Vicar Bryce just had to be a martyr. “Than to abandon my wife, my parishioners.”

  “They’re not going to let you just go back,” Delaney imparted the reality of the situation, and it sunk over them all with the immensity of death.

  “So, you’re here to negotiate for her?”

  “I am trying to negotiate for us all,” Delaney said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t you think I want to get back to my life?”

  “I don’t know,” Jemma returned. “Do you?”

  “You know what?” Delaney had a few choice words for her too, like how it wasn’t her fault Jemma had a husband to cheat on, but she bit them back, recognizing arguments between them were wasted breath. “Haydn asked me to talk to you. I talked to you. You know your one option. Take it or leave it.”

  Out the dining room door before she could hear anything else, she looked instantly up from the landing. Surprised to see Haydn waiting halfway up the stairs, Delaney knew she had to have heard everything and wondered if Haydn was there looking for her. Realizing she was about to go in search of Haydn as well, she was just grateful she didn’t have to go far.

  Fiona had taken a foot off with a fishing line. While Garcia used to think it wasn’t his style, it was actually rather gratifying to watch his prey suffer.

  It was easier, this job, child’s play. Far from the biggest offenders, it was still evil off the streets, and it was something to do until he got back to full health, like taking out low-level drug dealers until he was ready to go after the kingpin.

  Following the vamp’s bloody trail into a corner, Garcia watched it turn, yellow eyes shifting as if it might try to run again. He sort of wanted to wait and watch it try, laugh as it jumped into the air and fell back to the brick with a thud of justice, or clothesline it as it tried to rush by him. Once they withered into upright maggots, they always did think they had more deraph left in them than they did.

  The vamp taking too long to decide, though, Garcia got tired of waiting. Dropping one bolt into a tattered shoulder, it pinned the vamp against the wall. Another in the vamp’s opposite arm held it in place. Hacking off the decaying hand that swung at him, Garcia buried his knife into the vamp’s ribcage, tuning out its shriek as he worked the handle up and down until he felt weak ribs break apart and had space to carve.

  A thousand quid a pop. Garcia didn’t even want to know how Fiona found buyers, or what people did with them once they had them, but vampire hearts were big business on the black market, and a man had to make a living somehow. Bounties coming in on a nightly basis, he wondered how different things might have gone if he’d known about this source of income from the start. If the shriveled organ he held in his hand was so valuable, he could only imagine how much a deraph heart must be worth.

  “Nice work.” Garcia recognized the voice with a tic as the vamp slumped against the bolts like Jesus on the cross. “A bit labor intensive.”

  Not even pausing to put the heart safely in his bag, Garcia turned with it in the hand that still sported a soft cast, good hand holding the modified gun on Slade.

  “Hey now.” Slade grinned, and Garcia noted, with some satisfaction, the gaping space in his front teeth where that platinum monstrosity used to be. “No need to get cranky. I’m just here to talk. I like that, by the way.” He nodded to the gun. “Bit domestic, but clever. I am curious as to what you’re planning to do with that.”

  If it weren’t worth more than Slade, Garcia would have thrown it at him. “Get out of here, or I’m going to shoot you.”

  “There’s no reason to be mad,” Slade tried to wheedle his way out of getting dead. “I just need to know were Fiona is.”

  “Slade?” Her voice suddenly close by, Garcia turned his head just enough to watch her appear by his side.

  “How’s it goin’?” He was glad to see Slade’s attempt at laidback charm only hardened Fiona’s jawline.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Got an early release,” Slade said. “So to speak.”

  “We heard about your early release,” Garcia informed him. “Three guards dead, and your cellmate.”

  “Yeah, it’s a long story,” Slade uttered. “Whatever it takes, right Garcia?”

  No desire to be Slade’s compatriot, Garcia went to the task of securing the heart inside the sculpted carrier while Fiona was there to provide him cover. Annoyed enough already, he wasn’t about to let Slade cost him the profits.

  “I could use a little help,” Slade went on when he realized he was on his own. “I’ve got a new project.”

  “You need a little help on a project?” Fiona returned.

  “Yeah.” Slade sniffed. “Got some deraphs to kill.”

  Statement drawing his gaze up, Garcia was more than shocked to hear Slade was going back into the field. His heart never really in it beyond the kill, he had to have found some serious incentive to plan such an escape and come to them.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Fiona said, but, knowing what it was Slade was after, Garcia wasn’t as sure.

  “Well, then I hate to have to do this,” Slade responded. “But I’m going to need my equipment back.”

  “What equipment?” Garcia’s eyes shifted from Slade to Fiona, narrowing at the clear comprehension on her face.

  “Oh, Fiona didn’t tell you?” Slade turned the conversation back on him. “She’s got the goods in the deraph-hunting business. Has for a couple of months now.”

  All concern with anything Slade might do overshadowed by what Fiona might have done, Garcia turned his attention fully on her.

  “I hadn’t decided what to do with it yet,” she declared, and, falling back, Garcia didn’t know why it made him feel so weak. After everything, after starting to believe Fiona might be a true partner in this, an ally, it felt like he was in the wind again.

  “Well, now you know,” Slade said. “Where is it?”

  “You really going to use it to kill deraphs?” Garcia asked.

  “Garcia,” he heard Fiona say, but he was through trusting her. He was through trusting anyone. People couldn’t be trusted. All he needed was a cause.

  “That’s the plan,” Slade said.

  “I’m in,” Garcia returned.

  “How about you?” Slade’s dulled grin turned to Fiona, and it didn’t matter how she answered. Whoever he had to work with, whatever they had to do, it was cause enough for Garcia.

  36

  Haydn wasn’t sur
e what she was still doing there. It required no faith in Cain to know he was telling the truth. Written history had corroborated again and again that human beings were an unconcealable species, too damn determined to live their lives on their own terms to ever stay hidden under cloaking spells for long.

  Of course, giving them new identities was going to require some line-toeing on the parts of the innocents as well. Wherever they ended up, Haydn knew they would never be able to lose track of them completely, to stop watching out. It wouldn’t just be their lives on the line, after all.

  Glancing over as Delaney slid her mug back onto the table, she looked fragile to Haydn, legs folded under her in the oversized chair. Too fragile to endure a lot of things the world flung at a person.

  Yet, Delaney had. Over the course of a few weeks, she had endured a lot, more than most people would in a lifetime, and that didn’t even tap into her past, pockmarked by trials of its own. She was a lot stronger than she looked, and, perhaps, Haydn considered as Delaney lifted her head to meet her gaze, she was just a little weaker.

  Watching as Delaney’s eyes fell back to a page in the massive leather-bound book she tilted against the table’s edge, it occurred to Haydn why she was there. No answers to be found, she didn’t need to keep searching. Delaney liked it, though, the research, learning from resources she would never come across on the bookshelves of public libraries and universities. With little else to do, and unable to stay in bed all the time, it was where Delaney wanted to be, and, bafflingly, Haydn wanted to be where Delaney was, even if it was only to bide their time.

  Shuffle of footsteps drawing her eyes from her own intense study, Haydn watched Auris and Gijon come through the doorway. Glancing up at them, Delaney grew slightly less at ease, using the pretense of going back to reading to pretend they weren’t there.

  “Is something wrong?” Haydn asked them.

  “No.” Auris shook her head. “We’ve just been thinking.”

  Last of their brainstorms in direct opposition to everything she could abide by, Haydn wasn’t sure she wanted to know the flashes of insight that had come from their most recent session, especially where Delaney could hear.

  “What if we move?”

  Question unpredictably bland, she could only stare for a moment.

  “Obviously,” Gijon added. “Lilith has an idea where we are.”

  “Cain, I’m sure,” Haydn said.

  Lilith had to have known for some time. As much a part as Cain had played in her strategy, it couldn’t have been coincidence that he ended up within a few hundred kilometers of The Rock upon his relocation from Prague in the thirties when the Nazis were closing in and the menace of another Scourge loomed over them as the Holocaust loomed over humanity.

  There were eyes everywhere. It wasn’t surprising Haydn had been linked over time to North Atlantic cities.

  “What if we move?” Gijon asked again. “We know she’ll find us eventually, but it will make it harder temporarily.”

  “And when she does find us?” Haydn hadn’t even bothered with the possibility, knowing temporary was all it could be.

  “We’ll deal with that then,” Auris said, and, while it wasn’t exactly a solution, Haydn took consolation in the fact that Auris and Gijon had at least abandoned their notion of siring an army.

  Occupied with thoughts of how long that might give them, if they hid the innocents back among the human population and relocated across the world, Haydn didn’t hear the others coming until the knock came upon the open door.

  “We’re sorry to bother you.” She looked up to see the vicar in the doorway with a small delegation. “We were just wondering, if we have to go into hiding, could we have some concessions?”

  “What kind of concessions?” Haydn asked.

  “Could I bring my wife?” he returned, and Haydn realized she should have anticipated it, what they would want. Fifty years she was on her own before she sired Gijon, and, even for her, it wasn’t easy.

  “I…” Sudden influx of cooperation making it difficult to think, she didn’t know how to respond to that.

  “Why not?” The fact the question came out of Auris even more disconcerting, Haydn glanced over to find curious blue eyes upon her, and realized, for the first time, she couldn’t predict what Auris might say or do next.

  “What if she’s being watched?” It occurred to Haydn there were things to think about.

  “I can get her here without being followed,” Auris said.

  “And my husband?” Gijon’s pretty innocent jumped on the provisional agreement.

  “And my son?” the blonde requested.

  “We didn’t ask for any of this,” the vicar stated when Haydn was slow to agree. “And we don’t think this is too much to ask.”

  “Is that what you want?” Haydn questioned. “To be given new lives, on the condition you can bring someone with you?”

  “Do we have any other choice?” the vicar returned.

  The only other choice to remain under their protection, forever in captivity, Haydn assumed from the innocents’ appearance in the library they didn’t want that.

  “And you think your wife will agree to go with you, knowing she can never contact anyone else again?”

  “I would certainly hope so,” the vicar said.

  “All right.” Assuming he could come to his own conclusion about what would have to happen if they got his wife there and she didn’t agree to the terms, Haydn didn’t bother to enlighten him. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Demands conditionally met, the vicar and his delegation didn’t seem to know what to do next.

  “Do you mind?” He gestured to the books, and Haydn waved them into the library, watching them move in a cluster to a nearby shelf.

  Gijon and Auris going to mingle amongst them, a laugh came out of the assembly a moment later, and Haydn tried to reconcile what she saw and heard with the very long history of discord between daemonry and humanity.

  Room feeling suddenly overrun, she wanted to escape, but, she realized, she didn’t want to escape alone. Gaze going automatically to Delaney, she got to her feet when Delaney’s eyes met hers, walking past Auris and Gijon as they socialized with the innocents, and felt Delaney behind her as she reached the hall.

  Not stopping until they were through the bedroom door, it was partly in regard to Delaney’s sense of modesty, but more in regard to The Rock’s open door policy. Anything taking place behind an unclosed door, or in communal spaces, invited others to join. From the very beginning, Haydn had wanted Delaney to herself.

  Not sure if Delaney felt the same, if she wanted her with nearly the frequency or intensity, or if she was only catering to her needs, Haydn was still grateful Delaney was no longer docile or uncertain.

  Delaney’s lips drank from her as Haydn drank from them. All distinctions fused into sense. All power was shared. They were not two warring needs coming together in a clash. They were a singular yearning, and, inside it, Haydn felt like she could be all things - dominant and defenseless, outlaw and hero, darkness and light.

  Lips pressing to Delaney’s shoulder, Haydn smelled the blood that ran through her veins, scent nearly as sweet as its taste.

  “Can you come with me?”

  The question rousing her from languor, it occurred to Haydn how dangerous it was, to feel so calm in these moments when there was a wolf pawing at the door. “If I have to leave and change who I am anyway, can you come with me?”

  “What about your mother?” Haydn’s heart skipping, and skipping again, she knew Delaney didn’t really want that, that she was only asking because her life and choice had been ripped away from her.

  “I’m not going to ask her,” she said, and it confirmed Haydn’s theory, that Delaney only wanted her because she would encumber no one else with a life of seclusion and secrecy. “You have some sort of protection, right? Or Lilith would be able to feel you and know where you are?”

  “It’s called an overcast.” It was the only t
hing Haydn could answer with anything close to confidence.

  It was the perfect solution, what Delaney suggested. It would eliminate every problem they had, excepting the insoluble conundrum of Lilith. If they were estranged from her, Lilith would have no cause to go after her clan. No genuine cause at least. Haydn trusted she would still desire some sort of retribution. If they were unfindable, though, if their innocents were unfindable, she wouldn’t search for the others forever.

  Not as she would for Haydn.

  “She’ll keep coming.” And Delaney, by proxy, if she was with her. “Eventually, Lilith will find us.”

  “You can protect me.” Delaney’s answer was so simplistic, Haydn felt a flush of something perplexing. Perhaps, even, impossible.

  Her proposal the best so far in terms of getting everyone out safely, it would also relegate Delaney to a life of darkness, and Haydn couldn’t protect her from that.

  “I can’t love.” She didn’t know what possessed her to proclaim it, and she regretted it instantly when Delaney shifted away, pulling the duvet up between them to shield herself from view.

  “You know just what a girl wants to hear after you’ve been in every orifice of her body, and she’s let you make a few of your own.”

  “I can’t love…” Haydn grabbed Delaney to stop her from further retreat, and, stubborn gaze rising to her own, Haydn doubted her own certainty. “But I can feel.”

  She didn’t know what else to say, how to describe that which scorned all rationale and felt resurrected like the shadowmen, but she didn’t need to say anything. Barrier of the duvet holding for only a moment before it fell from between them, Delaney pressed warm and willing against her, and Haydn knew she could read her mind.

  Mouth pleasantly engaged, she didn’t have to worry about any more startling declarations leaking out as fragments floated across her mind. Auris and Gijon were willing to move the clan… The vicar’s delegation accepted the unavoidable price of their affiliation… Delaney… in a way, Delaney had offered herself. Flung into conflict together through no fault or desire of their own, they were willing to do what it took to reach the best possible solution for all involved.