All Together Stranger by Lara Hayes

Author:Lara Hayes [Hayes, Lara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642471199
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2020-06-02T22:00:00+00:00

VIII

The Inviolable Truths of Immovable Objects

I believed it in the moment. I had recited that speech to myself many times: We do not belong to each other. We are not our own. A mantra that served to remind me that no matter the depth of my connection with my reticent fledgling, she was not mine to keep. The look she gave me…crestfallen, then bleeding into contemptuous. I had not seen that side of Elizabeth since the evening I showed up uninvited to Claire’s sickroom.

Naturally Elizabeth shut me out, as she had before, as she will certainly do again. I trailed her at a respectful distance to ensure that her anger did not cause her to act rashly. I watched her storm out of her laboratory and walk down empty streets, courting traffic, disappointed when none came. She knew I was there but kept her face forward, her arms crossed.

A block before she reached the subway platform her right arm shot out to seize the lapel of a sharply dressed gentleman in his early forties. From the cut of his suit and the slicked back hair a banker of some kind. Elizabeth wheeled him around the corner of a theater without even bothering to cover his mouth. She feasted until the screaming stopped.

The body was left in a crumpled pile and I could follow her no further, which I suspect was the point behind abandoning a kill. She knew I would be forced to cover up her mess. What was strange was the blood spatter, if you can call it that. There was a black pool beside the body, as though she had spat several mouthfuls upon the ground. She was furious with me, that much was obvious, but furious enough to waste her only decent meal in three days? For one so young, it hardly seemed possible.

It took me far longer than it should have that evening to dispose of three kills instead of two. I had to return to the lab after Elizabeth gave me the slip and finish off the young man I had brought back for her. He wept unprotestingly through the shoulder of my sweater until the blood stopped. A pitiful kill that left me sluggish and gorged.

Mr. Carrington certainly had his work cut out for him, and to his credit he did not bat an eye when I told him that the third corpse had been for research. Not the truth, but a lie disconcerting enough to squash dissension.

When I descended into the tunnels around dawn I did so with a sigh of relief. The atmosphere changes when Elizabeth is close—the air grows heavy like the heat of summer, subtle and electric. I could sense her immediately.

I sat in the corridor above our chamber door, listening for sounds of life from below. The candles over each hatch had long since been extinguished for the night and the tunnel smelled of warm wax. Elizabeth was safe in our bed with no movement to give her away.

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