Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1)

by M. L. Desir

  She sighed. Blood rushed from her face to her throat. “There are striking similarities between them.” Her eyes moved swiftly to her husband, whose face wore an expression as blank as Gabriel had made his own. “But,” she added, “Monsieur Lennox is ten times more beautiful than the deceased poet.”

  A smile lit up on Michel’s face, which made the woman frown.

  Gabriel’s mouth curved into a small smile. Hmm. Not what she had expected.

  Michel stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “My wife is quite the flatterer. A lot like Aphrodite who instigated a war.” With the same brilliant smile, he turned to her.

  Gabriel saw a dark twinkling in Michel’s eyes, but as soon as he observed it, it died away. What could it have meant? Jealousy? Anger? Amusement?

  If the look meant the latter, Gabriel figured that Genevieve had underestimated her husband.

  CHAPTER 7

  Gods or Devils

  GABRIEL GAVE A SMALL BOW of his head to Genevieve, then to Adele. “Thank you, Madame and Mademoiselle. But you must be flattering me in jest. Any man would prefer to be more attractive than a corpse.”

  Michel laughed. “Oh, Gabriel. It is you who jest. You know very well what my wife and her sister were speaking of.”

  Nathaniel sloshed the wine in his glass. “He always did know how to turn a compliment on its head. Pay him no mind.”

  “Perhaps it’s the wine. I’m not feeling like myself,” Gabriel replied.

  Nathaniel glanced at him and then looked away with a knowing smile.

  Michel raised his glass. “Like everything else, drinking too takes practice.”

  Genevieve rolled her eyes. “You would know,” she whispered.

  Gabriel turned to her. In his ears, her words had been loud and clear. It seemed as if no one else had heard, though. If her husband or sister had, they paid no mind. Strange that. It seemed as if trouble had trespassed in their paradise. Unsurprising. He knew how much she wanted him, but what did it matter? How did he know that she didn’t desire any other man? Every man? And then of course, she was married.

  Throughout the remainder of the evening, she loosely commented on Gabriel’s resemblance to George Meredith as Chatterton, again and again saying that he was much easier on the eyes, although she couldn’t look at him for long when she said so. And when he and Nathaniel exited the Delechevalier residence, Genevieve’s eyes were not the only ones he felt. He sighed as he entered the carriage. He hadn’t come here to make enemies.

  Nathaniel sat across from him while the carriage moved, at once, into the night.

  “Who will you Enlighten first?” Nathaniel asked. “Genevieve?”

  Gabriel remained silent.

  “Don’t act like a petulant child,” Nathaniel persisted, “or else Lilith may take you by the hand and treat you as such.”

  “Genevieve is married.”

  “And Voltaire is a vampire.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Nathaniel smiled. “My sentiments exactly. Genevieve wants you and anything you have to offer. Besides, it’s been nearly three hundred years, and you haven’t crossed anyone over. And you wonder why Lilith wants to kill you.”

  Gabriel sat forward. “What will she do? Stake me?” Abigail flashed into his mind, and he leaned back into his seat, sullen.

  “What do you think that we are, Gabriel?” his friend asked, changing the subject. “We live, and yet we prey on the living.”

  “Are you insinuating that we’re vampires?”

  “If not vampires, Gabriel, what do you say that we are?” He paused. “We drink blood on occasion. We avoid the sun as best we can. And it seems we can never die.”

  Gabriel smiled. “Seems. Then why does Lilith threaten me with death?”

  “As a mortal, you feared it.”

  “But we’re nothing like the legends,” Gabriel countered. “The legends speak of blood-sucking creatures whose reflection cannot be seen in mirrors. They are vulnerable to garlic and the herb wolf’s bane, thorny roses, wooden stakes and mallets, weapons made from silver, sunlight, holy water, crucifixes and other such relics, fire and even water from a moving stream. In some legends, they’re foul in form and odor. And in all the legends, they need blood to survive. Slaves to the red, liquid heat. Vampire. That is certainly not what we are. There is no name for who we are.”

  “Perhaps, but these legends, these myths remain as such for you and I. We do not need to drink blood for the sake of sustenance,” Nathaniel said. “But other Chosen would viciously disagree.”

  Blood. I could do without it, Gabriel thought, but I choose not to. I suppose the drinking of it gives me some kind of pleasure.

  The other man smirked. “So what would you have us call ourselves?”

  “Gods?” he replied with a mocking grin. Then he thought of Nathaniel’s fairy tale. It veiled a more sinister story, which reflected a macabre truth.

  “Gods—or devils?” Nathaniel asked.

  Irritated, Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “If we are devils, on what would you blame mankind’s wickedness?”

  “Ga-bri-el,” Nathaniel sang, “I’m disappointed in you. On self-love, of course. Think of your own parents.”

  He remembered the secrets hidden in his parents’ eyes at the dinner table, where his sister failed to be present after her body had begun to blossom and mature.

  He stared at Nathaniel, but his pale blue eyes were expressionless. Gabriel closed his eyes, not wanting to see more of the memory. In a little while, it would pass.

  To his horror, he opened his eyes to see himself in a room, lying in a bed without linens. Abigail wasn’t dead, but rather lying beside him and telling him how he completed her, perfected her. Made her whole. A dark, jagged discoloration cut across her fair throat. Remnants of her hanging.

  “They’ve locked the door again. The third night they’ve done this,” she said. They. She spoke of their parents. Third night. Not like the night before when he could hear chanting and the howling of wolves and saw a strange silvery-blue glow seeping underneath the bedroom door.

  The third night. No. Not again.

  “I know that you said we should fight what they want,” Abigail remembered. “But I can’t any longer. Let’s just go through with it.”

  “You’re dead,” he stated.

  She smiled. “Then we should flee from here.”

  “Abigail,” he cried, “don’t do this. Don’t torment me.”

  Reaching out for his face, the scent of peaches rose from her white skin and voluptuous red hair. She shook her head. “No, it’s clear that they would find us. Even in death. Kiss me, Gabriel. Show me how much you love me, dear brother.” She snaked her arm around his neck and kissed him full on the lips.

  Gabriel tried to open his mouth to protest, but before he could say a single word, her tongue twined with his. He tasted blood and screamed.

  When he woke up, he found himself lying on the couch.

  A dream. Yes. A nightmare.

  Or a memory?

  “You fainted.” Nathaniel sat at the other end of the couch. “You’re still weak. You’ll need to drink soon.”

  Gabriel shook his head like Abigail had in his dream. “I don’t need it. I told you I’m not like that. Blood isn’t necessary.”

  “Why do you lie to yourself? Would you like me to do so, too? You know I won’t. Probably.” Won’t, Gabriel thought. Not can’t. Lie to me, then. Lie to me, he pleaded silently. But Nathaniel had said probably . . . the enemy of certainty.

  “You worry me, Gabriel.”

  “And you annoy me, so leave me, and both our problems will be solved.”

  The other man just smiled. “You know I can’t do that. Can you stand up?”

  Gabriel rose to his feet, an ephemeral wave of dizziness assaulted his se
nses, before disappearing. He gave a sigh of relief. “Yes. Are we going somewhere?”

  His friend nodded. “Now be a good schoolboy, and come with me. Let me teach you something.”

  He listened and followed Nathaniel outside their home, wondering where they could get a ride so late at night.

  “I thought we’d ride the air tonight. But in your drained condition, I don’t see how that’s feasible.”

  Gabriel remembered the first time he had “ridden the air.” It was an exhilarating and frightening experience when he had to rely on the rushing, invisible air to hold him aloft like the birds soaring overhead, and as graceful and smooth as fish darting through water. No, he didn’t have the energy for it tonight. He yawned. “Where are we going, exactly?”

  “To the East End. Lately, I’ve been watching someone who could be of priceless assistance.”

  “Tomorrow. Please tomorrow.”

  “No, it must be tonight.”

  Gabriel looked up at the sky that outlined the black trees with chartreuse light. His eyes lingered on the luminescence of the moon. In a few hours, it would be morning. “Night is fleeting. It’ll be full morning soon, and our driver has most likely retired for the night like a sensible man.” He shrugged. “Besides, I’m not in the mood for walking.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ve already supplied us our usual driver and carriage,” Nathaniel replied. “Old man Hobbs is angry with me, but when I showed him twice the amount that I usually pay, he couldn’t help but acquiesce.” He grinned. “Your fainting spells cause you to miss how wonderful I am.” He pulled out his watch from his coat. “He should be here any minute. I went to get a bite to eat while you ‘slept.’” He snapped the pocket-watch shut and laughed.

  By the time Gabriel descended the steps from their two-story flat, Nathaniel was already waiting by the curb where the carriage pulled up and came to a halt. They boarded it and were on their way.

  * * *

  Even before the Whitechapel Murderer had begun his career of horror, the East End embodied a microcosm of Hell on Earth saturated with hopelessness and violence. Death lurked in every alley. It manifested itself in the prostitutes’ red smiles, painted like freshly spilt blood on corpses; in the way young boys no older than twelve who stole to survive, stretched their slender necks trying to escape from the vice grip of the law, a foreshadowing of how their necks would stretch in the gallows’ noose. Pregnant women strolled along the streets, their swollen bellies a signal that it would soon be time to bring their babies into the world. Some infants were clever—the stillborns—who must have willed themselves to die in the safety of the womb after hearing the awful sounds that floated through their portable world.

  Gabriel walked through the dimly lit alleys alive with the squealing of rats, their beady eyes glittering in shadows like rubies. The smell of excrement and refuse should have made him nauseous, but his own sweet scent somehow overpowered it all. He was there, but above it, feeling like Nathaniel’s fairy tale prince. Where he trod, the streets should have turned to gold, hyacinths should have bloomed, and the dead should have resurrected. Should have. After he taught them, showed them what they could do, how they could live, they would probably light torches and sharpen the stakes. People were like that—ungrateful and destructive. A disappointment.

  They entered a tenement, a warren of households. No one questioned him and Nathaniel, but the people watched them as they stepped into a room without knocking, intruders in the guise of nobility.

  Four women and six children huddled around a table. An older woman with a scarf around her straw-colored hair blessed herself with the sign of the cross as she clutched a small child to her chest.

  Without stopping, Nathaniel led the way through several similar rooms and upstairs, leaving gasps and weeps in his wake, like an angel of death, for no blood sanctified the doorposts, only the stain and stench of detritus over which he gingerly picked his way. Nathaniel didn’t linger but rather moved on with determination in each swift step.

  He stopped at a closed door, opened it, and motioned to Gabriel to enter. In the secluded room, a boy knelt over a sleeping, fully clothed man and dropped the pillow he’d been holding.

  The boy, shirtless, with his pants unbuckled looked no older than sixteen, but something in his eyes seemed older. Prostitution could age one in such a way. In his shaking hand, he clutched a money pouch made of fine silk too expensive to be his, close to his chest. A thief, too.

  Gabriel moved toward the boy and noticed that the man on the bed didn’t move—no sign of breathing—obviously dead.

  The man’s eyes were wide open, the whites lined with red veins while his lips were tinted a pale blue. Suffocated.

  Gabriel kicked the pillow on the floor. He stared at the boy. The man on the bed was nearly twice his size in bulk. The boy most likely had used some poison to assist, to subdue him while he held the pillow over his face and waited for the morbid stillness and silence. Or did the boy power himself with sheer will alone?

  No matter.

  The boy stared at Gabriel with his wide, doe-shaped eyes, and the ribs of his slender torso showed through his young, smooth flesh. He breathed in a long, terrible sob, and the sound that rose from him sounded inhuman—a howling like that of an animal. Gabriel could hardly believe that it had come from this boy’s delicate frame. Tears spilled onto the boy’s cheeks gray with soot, revealing a pallid face.

  Falling to his knees, the boy hold of Gabriel’s hand.

  “Please,” he sobbed. “I beg your mercy, milord. Please, don’t send me to th’ gallows. I don’t want to die. I’ll do anything.” His voice, surprisingly deep, had the sound of rolling, country hills.

  Gabriel felt pity for him. When the boy stared up at him, held his gaze, and whispered “anything” again, his pity turned to empathy. He had experienced such desperation centuries ago. A time when he would’ve given his very life, his very soul to undo what had been done to him and his sister. Anything. And he knew the despair thereafter because nothing he had offered, nothing he would’ve sacrificed, changed the inevitable.

  He couldn’t relinquish this boy into that pit. No.

  “Anything?” Gabriel echoed.

  The boy stopped sobbing and nodded, his eyes widening in anticipation. The silence settled so strong that Gabriel heard the sudden wild beat of the boy’s heart, the blood singing in his veins, his readiness to either fight or flee to survive.

  Survival. The reason why he had killed.

  “Are you able to steer a horse and carriage?” he asked the boy after a long pause.

  Nathaniel let forth a peal of laughter.

  The boy’s face darkened. “Yes, milord, but—”

  Gabriel held up a hand willing him to be quiet. “Marvelous. What’s your name?”

  “Colin. Colin Black.” He released Gabriel’s hand, frowning.

  “You’re disappointed.”

  Colin stood. “Turn me into th’ bloody authorities, you daft toff! Have them kill me. I don’t want to be played as th’ bloody fool for yer pleasure.”

  Gabriel shook his head, glancing around the room. “You’re no fool, Colin. And I don’t think that you’re a liar, either. You did say you would do anything, and I’m in need of a driver and a special kind of servant, which would fall under the classification of anything. Am I right?”

  “I don’t understand,” Colin replied, tears glistening in his eyes.

  Gabriel gave him a gentle smile. “You don’t have to.” Without looking at (an unusually quiet) Nathaniel, he told the boy to pay the driver for his vehicle and the promise of more money in the morning and to tell him of his dismissal from future services. And unusually, Nathaniel hurried off without comment to his errand.

  “You’ll need to put on more clothes, Colin, unless you’re the kind of boy who likes to make a scene.”

  He sniffed. “I’
m not a boy! I’m nearly twenty and one years.”

  “Oh, but you look no more than sixteen. Be glad for such youthful features.”

  Colin shrugged at the comment. “I’ll put on this one’s clothes. Not that he’ll miss them, eh?” he asked, his voice absent of humor or even sarcasm. A serious and solemn mood fell over the boy as he stripped the body of clothes and put them on. The shirt and pants hung loosely around Colin’s lithe figure, but once he tightened the belt and slipped into the coat, one could hardly notice.

  “This man’s clothing could be traced back to you. Are you sure this is wise?” Gabriel asked.

  “You got a fireplace? I’ll burn them.” Colin gave a weird one-shouldered shrug. “Besides, he’s not a nob like you, so there’s no reason for me to be worried—yet. But I’ll leave the money. Not that I’ll need it anymore. You seem as wealthy as one of them Arabian princes my ma used to read to me about.”

  “And why do you think I’m a part of the nobility?”

  “Come now, man. It’s so obvious.”

  Gabriel blinked at him, and told him to come along.

  * * *

  Back outside, after learning Gabriel’s name and the directions to their home, Colin began addressing him as “Lord Gabriel,” and “Master Gabriel” after every comment. Gabriel asked him if he meant to be cheeky.

  “I’m simply feeling out which title I like best for you is all,” Colin replied, “Lord Gabriel,” he added quickly, mimicking the clipped dialect of an aristocratic Londoner.

  The boy stood a little over five feet, much shorter than he and Nathaniel, but since they were both well over six feet, his stature wasn’t abnormal.

  Colin climbed into the seat of the carriage, taking the reins into his hands, smiling from ear to ear. He didn’t look at all promising dressed in borrowed clothes and covered in a patina of filth, but Gabriel knew that he could bring about a . . . transformation in the boy.

  “Murder will no longer be necessary,” Nathaniel told the boy, “and no stealing either. Think of this as Christmas each and every day.” On the way back to their home, Nathaniel murmured in the boy’s ear how they would dress him in fawn-colored sack coats, lavish him with expensive gifts, and provide shelter as if he were their very own child. Gabriel could only imagine the wry look on Colin’s face as he deftly steered the horses through the cobblestone streets. The boy must’ve thought the promises Nathaniel told him absurd, ridiculous. He certainly would have.