Lilah by Gemma Liviero

he was bound, to exist for eternity.
    ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    I was angry at her. At
the way she gave up so easily and lost the fight. I told her this.
    ‘You saw everything then,’ she said.
    ‘Yes.’ She was ashamed then and I put it down
to such human and witch condition where trauma weakens their spirit and clouds
their judgement.
    I grabbed her hand and led her to the horse. It
was time to take her to a place where she would be safe. When I told her this she
began to panic, her former instincts for survival returned.
    ‘Emil,’ she begged. ‘I must check on him.’
    Emil? She would soon learn that her concerns
are wasted on many such as these. They would turn on her in a heartbeat if they
knew of her origins. But she was young and not to know. We mounted the horse
and I nodded my agreement. I thought it was a slight deviation to a much larger
cause and so humoured her. We rode fast through the trees and she sat closely
behind me, her breasts pressed against my back, her arms tightly around my
middle. Her body was warm against my back, and I enjoyed the sensation, even
the sweet human smell of her; marred only by a faint male stench. I recognised
the heinous defiling and regretted not arriving earlier to prevent it, instead
pursuing my own indulgences.
    As we neared the house, she pushed at me to get
down from the horse quickly then ran to the young male.
    ‘Emil,’ she called. He did not turn his head
but managed to murmur something and I thought what sort of father beats his son
and then leaves him in the cold of night to die a slow and painful death.
    ‘Evie,’ he rasped.
    ‘I will go to her but first we must get you
help.’
    She began to put her hands on him.
    ‘No,’ I said and pulled them gently away. ‘You
will have no strength if you do this. Do as the boy says. Find the girl and
make sure she is safe and I will look after him.’
    ‘But you can’t…’ And then she stopped. ‘Are you
a healer too?’
    ‘I can be,’ I said, though this was only the
very tip of my skills and not applied to humans. Of course, it was not the time
to tell her this now.
    She looked at Emil reluctantly and then at me.
    ‘I love you, Emil,’ she said and kissed his
forehead. ‘I will return to see you soon.’ She turned from us then and
disappeared into the house. I stood there looking at the boy, whose eyes met
mine, and for some strange humanly reason felt the slightest twinge of jealousy
that this girl should have eyes for someone else. The best thing to do would be
to feed from him so that his blood was not wasted in vain. It was not in our
code to cure humans. If they wanted to kill one another it was their choice.
    I had watched a father batter his son with such
deadly intent to expose the marrow of his bones. You might ask why I didn’t
intervene in such a simple thing as healing. But the strigoi are not to interfere with the laws of humans. The mess they make of themselves is
theirs to own.
    I did what was necessary and followed her into
the house. I could smell the repulsive human father long before I reached him.
His fetid stench was easy to find. I had even heard their conversation.
    When I reached the bedroom of Evie I saw the
small girl cringing in a corner with bruises on her cheek. Istavan stood over
Lilah kicking her on the floor. Such unmatched acts of violence made my own
task so much easier. There were nail marks on his wrist where Lilah had fought.
The smell of his infected blood consumed me then and I walked menacingly
towards him.
    He warned me to keep away, and I caught
atrocities and corruption in this man’s eyes in the seconds before he pulled
his dagger to lunge at me. It took but a moment to snap Istavan’s wrist and
twist his other arm so tightly behind him that it tore from his shoulder. 
He shrieked and I dropped him to the floor to writhe in pain. Urine soaked the
front of his trouser while he lay helplessly whimpering and pleading for mercy.
With the tip of