Terrible Praise Read online

  Once, the easiest marks to take were the drunkards, stumbling home down darkened alleyways convinced that they were saving themselves steps, inebriated to the point that self-preservation was little more than the motor reflexes propelling them forward. Now there are all manner of mind-altering substances, the new science of intoxication.

  Aware of security cameras in every corner I keep close to the stark white wall until the tiles underfoot gather into a blue and green mosaic in the center of the ground floor. There is a helpful map beside the elevator bank, detailing the wards. Long-Term Acute Care: Fourth Floor. The elevator opens and a nurse in green scrubs stops texting and looks up from her mobile. I adjust my sunglasses to suggest concealed tears and expend an empty sigh.

  “Which floor?” she asks.

  “Four, please.” I affect a tremble and lean heavily against the handrail.

  Our ride is a quiet one. I keep my eyes to the ground, my head turned away from the red blinking light of the camera above the control panel, the all-seeing eye in this brave new world. When the elevator dings, I step around my fellow passenger to disembark and the nurse gives my shoulder a companionable pat.

  “Hang in there,” she whispers. I watch her sad empathetic smile until the doors close between us, letting my mouth twitch just enough to appease her.

  The nurses station in the center of the room is manned by a skeleton crew too weary to take note of me. I slip quietly along the deserted halls searching for a darkened room. I find several, but each with at least one friend or family member slumbering stiffly in an uncomfortable chair. Despite all measures to counteract it, the ward reeks of death, disease, disinfectant, and human refuse. How any creature could heal in a place like this is beyond me.

  Then I see him.

  Alone in the last room on the hall. No nurses fussing with his monitors. No visitor sleeping half-slumped at his feet. I take the chart off the wall and slink inside. Protected from prying eyes, I remove my sunglasses and tuck them in the pocket of my waistcoat. I strip off my jacket, draping it across the arm of a green plastic recliner tucked in the corner. The light above the sink near his bed buzzes like an insect. I switch it off and return to the door. The hall is completely empty.

  “Just the two of us.” I smile at his warm, sleeping body and twist the lock. My eyes welcome the dark, soaking it in, and focus without pain for the first time in hours. I retrieve his chart from the end of the bed, and flip through the notes.

  “William Moore, twenty-eight years old. Multiple gunshot wounds.” Chart in hand, I walk around the side of the bed and silence the beeping machines. His body makes no protest as he rests comfortably in a morphine-induced slumber. “Traces of methamphetamines in your blood on admission.” William’s soft blond hair sticks to the side of his face. “Your poor mother.”

  The most endearing thing about humanity is its collective recklessness. With lives and hearts and bodies so fragile, one would think they would take more care to guard themselves against calamity and yet, the opposite is true. Human beings run headlong into danger, butting at the walls of their precarious existence with soft, fleshy skulls until life breaks in half and submits to them, or as in William’s case, they to it. I sweep his long sweaty unkempt mane away from his neck and tilt his head to the side. The blood surging in his veins calls to me, a part of him slowly becoming aware of the threat. I place my hand over his pounding heart and feel it gallop.

  My lips graze his ear. “It does not hurt for very long.”

  I wrap my hand around the back of his head and lift him away from the pillow. William grimaces in his sleep as I open my mouth and close my lips over the warm, thin skin of his neck. My perpetually white fangs descend from the ruby bed of my gums, and sink into his pitifully unprotected jugular as effortlessly as twin blades.

  Everything stops.

  Silence replaces the beeping monitors in neighboring rooms, the polluted stench that has ensnared my nostrils finally abates, and everything that William is, or was, or might have been comes flooding into my mouth—carried to the core of me by a crimson tide. His last coherent thoughts come to life through his blood, and play out behind my eyes. I see his parents’ eager faces at some school recital. William’s crushing self-loathing as he watched his graduating class walk into the next phase of their lives without him. William when he held his stillborn son in his arms for the first and last time, dripping with birth fluids.

  William’s body jerks in my arms and I hold him flush against me—careful not to jostle him, mindful not to spill a drop—and when the swoon hits me the wave sweeps William along with it. His body stills, I close my eyes and there is only this: the slowing of his weak heart and the waking of my own as he rushes inside, filling the empty, echoing chambers of my heart with warmth—with life.

  Reluctantly, I pull away before I have ended him. Holding his head in my hand, I bring my left wrist to my lips and score the skin. I place my weeping wound against the two perfect holes in his neck and the skin beneath awakens. William’s skin soaks up the offering and his flesh begins to mend. I keep count of the seconds as they trickle past and slowly pull my wrist away as the matching set of puncture wounds shrink to pinholes before they disappear completely.

  I take an indulgent moment to clean my wrist with my tongue and savor the last few drops of William that I find mingling with my own blood. Finally fed, finally whole again and sprightly with new strength, I retrieve a towel and a washbasin from the small en-suite bathroom. I resume my place at the side of the bed, and William’s body—noticeably lighter—rolls limply toward me.

  “Live to fight another day, my son.”

  I wet the rag and scrub the dried blood from his neck. He will not die tonight, but he will soon from the various traumas his body has sustained, as well as the significant blood loss. The darkness has him now. I cannot help but think his family will be better for it, assuming he has any left.

  I tuck William back into bed exactly as he was when I found him, and make quick work of washing my own face in the bathroom. I hide the rag in the medical waste bin and empty the washbasin into the sink, watching the pink water swirl once around the drain and disappear. I take a last look in the mirror, pleased with the blush William’s blood has lent to my normally sunken cheeks, and tuck the ends of my gray silk blouse back into place. I delight in the sensation of William rushing through my veins and remove an errant piece of lint from the leg of my dark trousers. Now that I feel better it is a shame that there was no time for a proper hunt.

  I grab my black blazer, settle it around me and reach for my sunglasses, but against my better judgment I do not fix them to my face. A feed always leaves me feeling invincible and besides, the hour is far too late to walk around in them inconspicuously. The interaction with the nurse in the elevator had been quick thinking on my part, and thankfully dimwitted on hers.

  The hall is blessedly vacant. I take one step toward the emergency exit before a voice stops me in my tracks. Hushed and frantic, a young woman caught on the losing end of a heated debate. Her impassioned pleas reach me from the open door of a small waiting room, one of those ill-lit oubliettes with horribly upholstered chairs and sticky end tables strewn with last year’s magazines. Her desperation is palpable, and I linger in the hall edging closer to the doorway than I should, snatching at the threads of half a phone conversation.

  “Mother…”

  The downside of a feed is that there is no such thing as enough. I always crave more, and this girl sounds so small, so furious, so full of life I cannot turn myself away.

  “Mother, please. She is trying to help you.” I press my spine against the wall beside the open door and listen.

  “No. Don’t you dare!”

  “Mother.”

  “Mom…”

  “Lis—no you listen to me. I’ll be home soon, okay?” Her weary sigh reaches my waiting ears, and the weight of her exhaustion threatens my freshly procured vibrancy. “If you don’t want to eat it, don’t. I’ll make yo
u something when I get there.”

  “I am not taking her side.”

  “Mother. Don’t you hang—” The abrupt end of the argument leaves her cursing. All the frustration melts away into silent agony, so potent I can taste the sorrow welling up inside of her. Her breath comes in shallow bursts as she steels herself against threatening sobs. I glance toward the red glow of the emergency exit and attempt to smother my own raging senses. I only manage to take two steps toward the stairs.

  “Hello?”

  My fists clench and my muscles tighten, preparing for a sprint. I do not need to be seen here. I am poised to run, ready to vanish, but instead I find the starved snarl melting from my features. I turn around with soft, understanding eyes and bowed shoulders. A different kind of seduction and one I do not often employ.

  “I did not intend to disturb you.”

  The girl answers my apology with a terse nod. “You’re fine,” she says. “I shouldn’t be in here anyway.” She shoves her mobile into the loose pocket of her scrubs. “I was just leaving.”

  I walk toward her. “Please, not on my account.” I make my way to the end table beside which she sits ramrod straight in the corner chair. Her hands grip the wooden armrests with white-knuckled frustration as I present her with a box of tissues. Clearly taking offense, she locks me in her stare and cocks her head.

  “No thank you.” She watches me set the offering aside like the lowering of a loaded pistol, and her reaction is so harsh and unwarranted that I find myself questioning what I know of strangers, and socially acceptable behavior. I turn to leave before either of us can begin again, but the girl continues in a softer tone. “There’s almost never anyone in this room,” she states. “It’s no excuse. I shouldn’t be using it for personal calls.”

  Not an apology, but certainly an attempt at civility. I take the chair opposite her, my eyes on the open door, compelled to linger a moment longer. There is much loneliness in this world, easy to forget when you are moored on your own island. The girl lets her head drop back against the bubbling ivory wallpaper, resigned to my presence and unable to resume her duties. She shuts her eyes and tries to steady her uneven breath. I seize the opportunity to examine her in earnest.

  Dark hair, richer than chestnut, hangs well past her shoulders in soft, twisting waves. The long line of her neck, graceful, almost regal. Her skin is warmed by some far-removed ethnicity, making her neither fair nor tawny. She has a strong chin, faintly cleft, and a clearly defined jaw though her face is too soft to be square. I want to hold that chin in my hand and admire her closely for as long as I can before she screams. They always scream.

  “Are you visiting someone?” she asks through her own distraction, picking at the tissue box. She does not look at me, I suspect too angry with herself. I fold my hands and rest my elbows against my knees, hunting for a response that will satisfy her curiosity and endear me to her in some way.

  “My mother…”

  It certainly gets her attention. She regards me with thoughtful eyes. The silence stretches out and she rises from her seat to settle wearily into the chair next to me. The shift in her mood and our proximity is sudden, not exactly predictable, but then, this method never is. Trust takes time, and we have so very little. I listen for the steps of potential witnesses and calculate the distance between this hospital and the Carrington Funeral Home. Regretfully, I admit that I cannot dispose of her body before Derek closes for the night, and yet I make no move to leave.

  “Why was she admitted?” the girl inquires with a soft voice, mellowed by genuine concern. Details, of course. She is a medical professional. This is becoming tedious as well as reckless. Someone will be making the rounds soon. They will find the quickly chilling body of William Moore and take notice of his silenced machines. Still, I maintain character.

  “An infection in the blood.” The girl’s interested brown eyes run across my face as I search for the word. “Sepsis,” I supply, and I swear I detect an edge of skepticism in her carefully controlled expression.

  “How long has she been here?” She shifts her legs toward me, craning closer in her seat, and my limbs respond in kind to match her posture, until I realize she is straining for a closer look at my eyes. “The hospital, I mean. We don’t have a septic patient on this floor.” A coolly delivered statement of fact. Naturally she knows the ailments of every patient in her rotation. I should have covered my eyes and kept walking. The last thing I need to worry about is concealing the body of a night nurse who noticed too much.

  “A few days now.” I do not meet her heavy glare, instead turning away in my chair and straightening my coat to say with small gestures that I must take my leave.

  “Is she conscious?” she presses, brushing a hand over the crook of my arm. Not to stop me, merely to slow me down as she angles closer to catch my eyes, which should be the last thing anyone sees.

  “No.” I reach for the sunglasses in my coat pocket and stand up. The girl follows suit, the youthful expanse of her brow furrowed in thought. I have already moved to the open door when my curiosity gets the better of me. “Your mother…” I begin. The girl uncrosses her arms and shoves her hands into her pockets. “Is it dementia?” My young friend offers no reply, and I slip the sunglasses back into my coat prepared to coax the answer from her if I must.

  “Parkinson’s Disease with dementia,” she relents in a faintly bitter and clinically dispassionate voice. “Some days…” the girl swallows thickly, “are worse than others, cognitively.”

  I do look upon her now—I cannot help myself. Even in that awful pale blue uniform she is quite beautiful. I recognize her anger, the fury over her own impotence, and glance out into the hall. No footsteps. No sound at all but the beating of her heart. I could have her. I could leave her body in the stairwell and retreat unobserved. But that would mean retiring this location for a long while, and where would that leave the rest of my family when they are in need? Soft fingers on my face startle me from my musings as she tilts my chin toward her. The fact that I did not anticipate the touch troubles me.

  “Your pupils are completely dilated,” she observes. “Are you taking any medication?” Those large brown eyes narrow as she stares deeply into mine. She is too observant for her own good. I close my hand over hers and fix her in my stare. Her fingers flex against my chin, just once, and then she sighs, wavers slightly like she means to pull away. Lost to our surroundings, to all the burdens of her heart and mind, her hand hangs limp in my grasp and a blank stare is all that she can muster. She looks younger this way, untroubled, almost happy. When I leave this place, she will remember me as nothing more than the most beautiful stranger she has ever encountered. I revel in the knowledge longer than I should. I push harder than I should.

  “What is your name?” I ask, brushing her hair back around the shell of her ear. She smiles warmly.

  “Elizabeth.” She leans into my hand, inches her body closer. The heat of her flushed skin is overwhelming.

  “That is a beautiful name.”

  Elizabeth, more in control than she should be in this state under my influence, asks for my name in return, much to my surprise.

  “Stela.” The truth tumbles from my mouth without a second thought, not a moment’s hesitation. For a second neither of us can move, Elizabeth beguiled into blissful silence, and I, mute with horror. That name is not mine to give. Furthermore, it carries a grossly unfair burden for someone with so much sadness strung around her heart. I know nothing of this woman aside from what I gleaned from a private conversation I was not invited to hear in the first place.

  “Stela,” she repeats with a wide smile that reaches her eyes and crinkles the skin at each corner. Those five letters wrap tightly around her tongue—she seems so pleased to receive them—curl their claws into the walls of her heart, and the deed is done. I lean forward because I can do no more damage than I have, and press a kiss to her warm blushing cheek. Elizabeth closes her eyes at the contact, and when I pull away to admire her face
once more, her stare is heated by the desire coursing through her.

  “Goodnight, Elizabeth.” I release her hand and take a step back. There is no trace of her icy exterior. She grins like a schoolgirl and I find myself returning that smile. For a while her troubles will be lost to her as she sits under the veil my stare has drawn around her mind. Perhaps when she awakens fully the world will seem less grim. It almost sounds like chivalry that way, but there is no altruism at work tonight. I want to see her again.

  “Goodnight, Stela,” she whispers as I turn away and slip down the hall to the exit.

  The stairs pass beneath my feet in blur—a fury of unspent energy—my movements too swift for the human eye. I shoulder my way out of a fire exit on the rear of the building and into the deserted parking lot, stopping only once to bring my fist hard against a lone steel Dumpster. The force of that blow sends the receptacle skidding over the asphalt on locked wheels, where it collides in an echoing crash with the concrete base of a streetlamp.

  My Mercedes lights up when I press the key fob in my pocket, and for the second time this evening I pull the handle harder than necessary. The door makes a sharp scream, threatening to separate from its hinges as I hurl myself inside and collapse with my forearms braced atop the wheel.

  I lean back in the driver’s seat and I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. The blood has already begun to slow inside me and my pallor is fast returning. My fingertips cool quickly against the steering wheel. Vacant black eyes stare resolutely back at me from the mirror, haloed with a feline sheen from the stark light of the parking lot lamps. I close them against the weight of my own foolishness.

  “What are you doing?”

  I hang my head at my own inability to answer the simplest of questions and contemplate returning to the vibrating hospital ward to hunt the girl down. I am not in the habit of operating without a plan, and I certainly do not like to leave loose ends. But I make no move to exit my vehicle. I slide my key into the ignition, fully aware that I will have to deal with this woman soon enough. Soon but not now.