The Innocent Read online

  “She walks in beauty like the night,” I whispered, knowing Cristien wouldn’t recognize the quote. No guy was that perfect. It would shatter this illusion. It would wake me from this dream. “Of cloudless climes and starry skies. And all that is best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

  “Thus mellowed to that tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,” he whispered in my ear. I stared ahead in shock. “One shade the more, one ray the less had half impaired the nameless grace which waves in every raven tress, or softly lightens o’er her face where thought serenely sweet express how pure, how dear their dwelling place…” He paused, putting his hands on my shoulders, moving me to face him, so he could stroke my hair, my face: “And on that cheek, and o’er that brow so soft, so calm, yet eloquent, the smiles that win, the tints that glow, but tell of days in goodness spent a mind at peace with all below, a heart whose love is innocent.”

  Hoisted by my own petard. But the fact that he had used my poem to win me didn’t hurt at all because he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else reciting it so well or so completely. He was perfect. I knew it in my bones.

  I stared up into his clear green eyes, my heart pounding in my chest, and I realized I loved him. But why? I hardly knew him, but it seems when you fall in love you don’t know why at first—you make up the reasons later when you get to know the person. When you fall in love, when Love really does its worst, it gives you no cause. It swallows you whole. It allows no refusals. Like Jonah only after he had been inside the whale awhile, you may say, if asked, “Oh, this is why I am here.”

  Cristien pulled me closer. I waited to see a smirk, a glint of triumph, but there was nothing like that, only a depth to his eyes that I could not fathom. His gaze moved to my lips. An answering blush heated my face. It was an eternal moment before he bent his head. His lips were warm against mine when my girlfriends broke out in laughter above us. I jerked away from him. He stood up straight.

  “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” they chanted.

  My blood drained cold in one second and then rushed hot to my cheeks. Cristien looked up to the overhanging balcony above us. When he faced me again, I realized that he had lost his temper. Slowly, he regained some composure, but there was still a ruddiness to his cheeks and a sternness to his looks that had not been there before. He stroked my arms, weighing something; then he said,

  “Let’s go.”

  He slipped his arm around my back, and we strode a little further. He was leading me out of the sight of my friends. He took me under the second story balcony, into shadow. He stopped and put his arms around me again, leaning forward. I turned my face away.

  “I should go home,” I whispered.

  He stood not moving for a moment. His muscles were still and tense around me. Then he let me go.

  “Okay, I’ll take you,” he said, walking away.

  I followed him out to where my friends were.

  “It’s late. Let’s get these girls home,” he shouted.

  “Aww,” the girls cried.

  “Alexa wants to go home,” he said.

  Was that spite? I was quite sure I heard spite. Then he turned around and took my hand. He led me to the car, and I ducked inside. We drove home quickly. My girlfriends piled out with Lance and Abe, and I started to follow.

  “You’re not going to ask me up?” he said, sounding surprised and a little hurt.

  “Well, I… It was nice… but, I…I have a test I have to study for,” I said.

  “Oh… Can I have your number at least?”

  I panicked, typed a lie into his cell and gave it back.

  “Well, happy birthday,” Cristien said.

  I felt bad about lying to him after all he had done for me. I wanted to make it up to him.

  “Thanks for a great night,” I told him, honestly. “I really liked the cake. That was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  I put out my hand to shake his. Cristien took it. I felt a spark between us again as his palm swallowed mine. Then he leaned in slowly while tugging at my arm. His lips touched mine, pressed against mine. Then his tongue moved into my mouth.

  “Night,” he whispered, trailing his lips against my cheek up to my ear, until he finally let me go.

  “Good night,” I muttered, before stumbling away. It was my first French kiss. My first one.

  I floated into my dorm’s lobby. The elevator doors had just opened, and the others got in. I watched them kissing as the door closed. Awkward. I took the stairs to my floor.

  I opened the door to my bedroom, turned on the lights. I got my pink nightshirt and a towel and walked to the bathroom across the hall.

  I heard some distant moaning. Well, happy Valentine’s Day, Reese and Mikayla, I thought. I flipped on the bathroom light and stared at the stranger in the mirror. I washed the makeup from my face, pulled off my fake lashes.

  I was never seeing Cristien again. I was going back to my studious life. It was fun, a lot of fun, I thought as I tasted my own lips remembering his, but it was over. I turned on the shower and took off my clothes, and got into the shower.

  I let the warm water cascade over me. Cristien, Cristien, Cristien, my body started chanting, I love Cristien, his lips, his eyes, his touch. I leaned my head against the wall. This was not going to be as easy as I thought. I got out and brushed my teeth, trying not to think about him while I got ready for bed.

  CJ, my beige teddy bear, was waiting for me on the sheets. I could see him in the electric light that poured through my window from the factory next door. I took off my glasses, put them on the floor and lay down. I was still trying not to think about Cristien, but he was everywhere in my mind.

  For a long time, I lay on my back replaying the night over and over like I was sucking every bit of sweetness from the last watermelon of the summer, as if I were going blind and trying to memorize the face of my only love, as if I were trying to understand what this night meant to my life even though I was sure it meant nothing. I fell asleep, my mind still reeling.

  I fell asleep and had the weirdest dream. A guy with huge featherless wings climbed through my window.

  “My name is Sebastian. Do you accept me as your Protector?” He asked, putting out his hand.

  “Protector? From what? Who are you? What are you?”

  “There’s no time. Do you accept me?” he growled.

  Then Cristien appeared at my window. He had wings too. The striped shirt he had been wearing was tied around his waist. He barreled into the other guy, and the two of them flew past me. They landed with a crunch, smashing my desk, rolled off it on to the floor and crashed into my door.

  I thought Sebastian was dead until Cristien flew backward and hit my window, shattering it and falling to the floor. Cristien rose, but the other guy jumped, clung to the ceiling and kicked him in the face. Cristien fell back into the wall. Sebastian landed on his feet and turned toward me. This was a nightmare.

  I crawled into the corner of my bed, my hands searching the rubble of my destroyed desk for anything to defend myself. I felt a book behind me in the corner. My Literature of Love text. It was huge, over a thousand pages. I lifted it with both hands and hurled it at the other guy’s head. The book was so heavy it knocked him into my armoire, giving Cristien a chance to recover.

  Cristien spread his wings and charged. The guy leapt again. This time Cristien beat his wings, and he was flying above Sebastian. One punch and Cristien smashed him to the ground. I heard a nasty snap as Sebastian hit the floor. He lay crumpled by my bed. I looked down at him. Cristien pushed me back.

  “Do you yield to me?” he asked the other guy.

  “I’ll never let you take her life!” Sebastian lunged.

  Cristien caught him by the throat, “What do mean take her life? I’m stopping you from taking her life. I saw you climb up here.”

  “No,” he gasped. Cristien released him, so he could speak. “I thought she was an unprotect
ed Innocent. But if you are watching over her, then I am no longer honor bound. Oh thank heaven, this weight is not mine to bear. Good luck, my friend.”

  Sebastian got painfully to his feet, dragged himself to the window and flew away.

  Cristien turned to me. He swallowed, then quickly began touching the damaged and broken things and making them as good as new. It was magic. He was magic.

  “Cristien?” I called to him.

  In response, he just snarled at me and leapt out of my window right before it slammed shut.

  I woke up. Of course, I was alone in my bedroom. I sighed and dropped back to my pillow. Wow, that was so weird. Why couldn’t I have a nice sex dream like everyone else? I knew I couldn’t have him in real life, but why not in my dreams? Then I remembered the bread. I pulled it out, glared at it and tossed it across the room.

  I dropped to the concrete at Lance’s feet, smashing it to bits.

  “Dude, what happened?” he yelled, scanning the sky for enemies. He tore his coat from his shoulders, popping off the buttons then made for the weapons in the trunk. Abe ran for the car.

  “She’s an Innocent,” I said, rising. “An Innocent.”

  Now, I understood everything. When we are young, before our change, or what we call being Innocent, we emit a super-powerful attractant formulated to catch an elder of our kind, a Protector, to help us through our perilous transformation. This attractant was called the Compulsion. It was a type of energy only Innocents emitted. It was like ambrosia to us. It was the caviar of energy, the Hope Diamond, the crème de la crème. We all wanted a taste of it. It drove us mad. Evidently there were even those who would even kill for it.

  The Protector’s job was to stabilize an Innocent, then, through the act of sex, ignite her, changing her into a full-fledged succubus. All this effort to make a monster. A thing I despised more than anything else.

  “I can’t. I won’t,” I raged.

  “There’s nothing anybody can do,” Lance told me as he fumbled to close his coat.

  I glared at him. “You knew she was an Innocent?”

  “Of course, but Abe tried to warn you, and you almost killed him. Besides, you were already crazy by the time I came into the picture.”

  Lance would never understand the gravity of this situation. Everybody loved Lance. He would have been a better choice for Alexa. He had been voluntarily made. A child of the sixties, high on drugs, he thought El, his Protector, was another hallucination. When she offered him immortality, he grabbed it.

  My story was quite different. My wounds were a thousand miles deep. No, I couldn’t help Alexa, but my thoughts returned to her again and again. I wanted her, or, more correctly, I wanted her energy. That’s why I had chased her, danced with her, spent time with her.

  “If you don’t want her . . .” Abe suggested.

  I snarled at him. If she was not mine, she would never be his. I would rather kill him. Then I caught myself. What was I thinking? I dropped to my knees on the cement.

  “Come on. Can you stand?” Lance asked as he pulled me to my feet.

  I wasn’t hurt at all. I just needed Lance to help me stop myself from sprinting back to her room. My feelings for her had been so strong from the beginning. I was an idiot to walk up to an Innocent, to talk to her, to play the hero for her. There was still hope though. I had barely touched her, barely put my hands on her smooth, soft skin like silk and honey . . . my eyes turned up toward her room. I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do to her when I caught myself. There had to be a cure. And only one person would have it.

  “I’m going to the doctor,” I said, moving to the driver’s side door.

  “What? You’re just going to leave her to be eaten?” Lance called after me.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. I mean, how many times can she be attacked in one night?”

  He blinked at me. “You really don’t know? Where have you been? Under a rock?” he asked, then shook his head, “I forget who I’m talking to. Okay, long story short, about 1652 during the Upheaval in Belfast, as El tells it, a young, untrained incubus accidentally ate the Innocent he was trying to protect. He got even stronger and more powerful from it. Since then Innocents have been on the top of everybody’s menu.”

  “That’s why there have been so many attacks?”

  “That’s why there are so few of us.”

  I stared shocked for a moment; then I slumped. As abominable as the situation was, I had to stay. Lance was relatively young and could not fight all night. He would try but fail and get himself killed over the girl. Abe would not try at all. I had to go to the Doctor tomorrow. I would stay out here tonight, watch over her from my car. I hoped there would be a lot of killing to help keep her off my mind.

  Chandraswami and Shakespeare

  Well, I got my wish. Exhausted and bloated after three more judgements, I drove away from her dorm. She would be safe now after dawn. An Innocent’s energy levels peaked at night. I went home, parked my car and crawled into my bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My room was suddenly a chamber of suffering. I kept dreaming about her even though I don’t dream. At least, I never remembered anything I dreamt. Once that had disturbed me, as if it signified my lost humanity, but now I wished for that again.

  I kept returning to her in my sleep. I assailed her the way I had been assailed at the beginning of my change, ruthlessly and tirelessly. When she gave in to me, I would fall back in horror at my deed, only to see that we were not lying on a bed but a pile of human bodies. She would hiss at me, guarding them jealously, as she sucked the life from them. I always woke with a start, my light stabbing her in the chest until she lay limp and lifeless for breaking my rule.

  I would rise, wash my face, then go back to sleep only to have the chase start again and end the same way. I was exhausted. My sheets were crumpled and soaking wet.

  I gave up sleeping at eight and tossed my bedding on the floor. Sex and Death. Sex and Death. That’s all there would ever be for me. I blinked at the sunlight coming through the sliding doors of the balcony, stretching its cheerful arms toward me through the curtains. I felt violated. This was my sanctum sanctorum . She had no right coming here, slipping in while I was sleeping.

  I stomped to the bathroom, showered, shaved, put on cologne and dressed. I dragged myself to the kitchen, counting the minutes until the doctor opened his store at twelve.

  I padded around barefoot, getting my breakfast together. Breakfast? I never ate breakfast, or at least I ate it at six in the evening like a respectable incubus. What was she doing to me? I had little hope, yet I clung to it. Many people had gone to the doctor and gotten cured of all kinds of ailments: wing blight, impotence, sudden aging. I even sent the incubi I had de-winged to him, and they all had rave reviews.

  I ate my cereal without tasting it. Afterwards, I took my bowl to the sink. It was full. They were Abe’s dishes. We were turning into his maids. I ended up running the dishwasher. I put everything away and still had hours to go. So, I spent the time sharpening my old weapons on an ancient, screeching grinding wheel, heedless of the fact the others were sleeping. Lance came out finally, dressed and grumpy. I gave him a bowl of cereal. He glared at me.

  “You owe me,” he grumbled.

  “I know.”

  When the clock’s small hand touched the eleven, we got into my Aston Martin and sped toward downtown Brooklyn, Lance’s old haunt. He told me to take Flatbush Avenue. Everything was either denuded or gray and crumbling. There were no bushes anywhere. I could remember a time when there were. When the place was a woodland, and the Lenape people lived and hunted here.

  Lance told me to make a left off the main road and take a side street into a run-down neighborhood. I saw a little shop. The sign on it read, “Apothecary. Dr. Ram Chandraswami.” It was slanted and had yellowed with age. The two large windows that surrounded the door were protected by heavy iron bars. I tried to see inside the store but couldn’t. The glass was plastered with faded yellow signs.

 
; “69 cents for a quart of witch hazel. One dollar for a pound of Echinacea. Try our new Herbal Potency.”

  Next door were a bodega and a liquor store. I rubbed my chin. This was not heartening in the least.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Lance said.

  I turned off the engine and strode to the door just as Sebastian opened it and came out. We recognized each other immediately.

  “No hard feelings, old chap,” he said with a smile. He whistled as he walked away.

  Of course he was happy. He was free. I passed inside store and was completely taken aback. It was like entering another world. The store was vibrantly painted in orange, yellow and blue. It smelled sweet and warm, somehow tropical, as if winter had died on the doorstep. The shop was crowded with dark bookcases traced with shining brass metalwork and stacked with sparkling jars, boxes and envelopes in an insane disorder that defied any logic or system. Across from the door was a counter covered with sculptures of gods and goddesses. Incense was burning. Flowers were gathered before them. Beside all this was a small bell. I walked forward to ring it just as a young man stepped out from behind a brilliant purple curtain.

  He was too young and perfect: dark straight hair, dark chocolate eyes, a fine nose and thin lips. He wore a long white shirt that hung over his white pants. We both came to the same conclusion after assessing each other. We both relaxed at the same time.

  “So what’s your trouble?” he asked in a combined Indian and British accent. I would bet my last coin he was twice as old as me.

  “I met an Innocent last night and . . .”

  He tilted his head. “You know what you have to do, don’t you?”

  “I know,” I told him. “I just don’t want to. Is there a way out, a cure you can give me?”

  He blinked, “Is she ugly?”

  I shook my head.

  “Is she a man?”

  I shook my head.

  “You like men?”

  I shook my head.

  “I do not understand.”