by M. L. Desir
He obeyed. “As long as you assure me that you won’t harm yourself.”
She rewarded him with a cold stare through her tears. A bitter laugh ripped from her throat. “Go away with your threats.”
Without saying another word, he shrugged and walked out of the room. As he walked down the hallway and outside into the garden, he heard the splintering of crystal breaking against a wall. He took a deep breath.
In the Delechevalier’s garden, fountains and flowering shrubs created a beautiful and peaceful ambience. Fruit trees filled his eyes with brilliant color and his nostrils with the most deliciously sweet fragrances. Within three heartbeats, he felt calmer. What was it about gardens that soothed the mind, body, and spirit? The relationship between man and gardens still remained a mystery to him. One day, he would attempt to unlock those secrets by having a garden of his very own. It would have more fountains and statues than Michel’s, and he would share his time and the scenery with a virgin completely unlike Genevieve.
He envisioned the ideal bride, the ideal companion—beautiful, pleasing in every way, so much a complement to him that she must’ve been fashioned out of his side, from one of his very ribs.
Yes, “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” Adam’s words to his Eve. So strong were Gabriel’s desires for such a companion that once he had daydreamed that he could fantasize her into a flesh-and-blood reality until one day, she would finally appear to him.
But Nathaniel had demanded that he not think of such things. Love, he had said, was the most dangerous emotion. And mortals always had a tendency to be seduced by what threatened their ephemeral existence.
With some hesitation, he acknowledged that even he wasn’t immune to such tendencies.
CHAPTER 11
Share It With a Kiss
DAYS PASSED, AND GABRIEL heard no word from Genevieve or Michel. He had meant to follow through with his threat to tell Michel about his wife’s transgression, but he wondered how he could approach Michel without feeling awkward. Impossible.
So, he couldn’t help but feel glad that the opportunity hadn’t arisen.
Of course, Nathaniel always had a way of ruining things. When Gabriel saw him standing in the doorway, he knew with certainty that Nathaniel had terrible news. He greeted him with a sour good evening and eyed a sheet of paper in his hand. It looked like a letter.
“Genevieve is dead,” Nathaniel announced in a singsong voice.
He blinked at the words. Had he heard correctly? “Genevieve. Dead?”
Nathaniel handed him the paper. “You sound upset. Why would this trouble you?” He strode over to stir the fire in its hearth as it prepared to die for the third time that evening.
Gabriel skimmed over the letter from Michel, announcing the grim news. “Why shouldn’t it trouble me? It’s shocking when someone so young dies.” He tossed the letter away, as if its distance would make a difference.
“But people die every day. Yet her death matters to you—yes?” He drew out the word so that the “s” resembled the hiss of a snake.
“If I am to be the prince, shouldn’t I care about a potential victim—or I should say, member of the Chosen?” Gabriel lowered his head to avoid Nathaniel’s penetrating gaze. Her death has nothing to do with us, he repeated silently to himself. Nothing.
His friend laughed and crept closer. He tilted Gabriel’s chin and peered into his eyes. “What are you hiding?”
“Genevieve threatened to commit suicide.”
Nathaniel’s eyes widened. “Why?”
Gabriel told him.
“But since Michel is still in the dark—so to speak—about you two, her killing herself doesn’t make much sense.” Nathaniel paused. “It must be something else.”
Gabriel crossed his arms against his chest. “Just let it be.”
“You’re so naive. Don’t you know? Don’t you see?” Nathaniel fell silent. “It’s a warning, silly boy.”
“This is ridiculous,” he replied. “A warning for what?”
“You know that Lilith is after you. You know what she wants. Don’t play coy. She sees through it.”
“So what you’re saying is that Lilith is responsible for Genevieve’s death?”
“Must I spoon-feed everything to you?”
He frowned. “Lilith is still a mystery to me. You never told me that she could twist time and space. That night when I passed out in the alley, she appeared in the perfect likeness of Abigail—the voice, the mannerisms. And somehow, she pulled me into the countryside where I grew up. What’s more, she gave Genevieve a dream about me . . .” He felt his face growing hot and paused. “Why didn’t you tell me she had the power to weave illusions?” And to drain souls, but he didn’t say that out loud.
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know?”
Gabriel shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind of this new and disturbing development. “She’s more powerful than I thought. I don’t like this. Not one bit. I don’t know what troubles me more, her weaving of illusions or her power to kill me. Tell me plainly, Nathaniel—can I die?”
He shrugged. “When you were Enlightened, Lilith told me that she had fed you from the Tree, so I suppose not. Yet, being immortal won’t solve all of your dilemmas.” He sighed, shaking his head. “What if immortality is true and so is pain? Remember Prometheus.”
Gabriel found it hard to swallow. The thought of suffering immortal pain, as Prometheus had, nauseated him. “So what would you have me do to appease her?” He flashed a wry smile. He wanted to do anything but appease her. “If I’m truly immortal, then why should I have to bow to her? This is ridiculous. I have a good mind to resurrect Genevieve—in retaliation. To teach Lilith a lesson, but I’m not that powerful. Ha! Imagine it—me, raising the dead!”
Nathaniel’s eyes grew wide, and he stared at Gabriel with a strange expression, as if his heart had stopped. He looked . . . afraid? Of him? No, that couldn’t be right. Afraid, for him? After a few more frozen moments, Nathaniel finally blinked, as if breaking himself out of a reverie. “Bring . . . Genevieve . . . back?” He dragged out each word long and slow.
“It was a joke. A stupid joke. But I won’t be led by the nose. I shall do something to retaliate. Something . . .”
Rubbing his chin in thought, Nathaniel snapped his fingers, as if he had seized an idea from the air. “Cross the musician over, Gabriel! Enlighten Michel, which should ironically both please and displease Lilith and for the same reasons—she is quite fond of beautiful men.”
“Out of the question,” he replied. “It’s not my style to Enlighten a man.”
“Did Zeus wince at Ganymede, his cupbearer?”
“By Jove! Who cares? Soon, you’ll be asking me to kiss Colin. Speaking of which, where is he?”
“Don’t change the subject. What will you do, Gabriel? You don’t have many choices. You must make Michel one of us. Genevieve‘s death served as a warning. Whom else must she kill before she deals with you?”
“Let me think. Enlightening Michel isn’t something to rush into.”
Nathaniel laughed. “You’ve been thinking about Enlightenment for centuries. I would rather you think too little. That way, there’d be fewer consequences.” He raised a fist, shaking it in the air, like a melodramatic actor. “To be or not to be. To act or not to act: that is the question.”
Gabriel glared at him. “Don’t quote Shakespeare to me.”
“I won’t have to if you continue on like this. You’ll be living the tragedy soon.”
Nathaniel turned on one heel and left, fist still clenched. Over his shoulder, he called back that he’d have Colin prepare a room for Michel.
* * *
Gabriel stared at the sky, watching the sun in the overcast sky resembling the moon, luminescent and white. He opened the front door of the Delechevalier house. No one greeted him. He s
miled at the deadly quiet of the mansion. The absence of others would make his work much easier.
In idle, languid steps, he ascended the stairs of the northern hallway, which led to his destination: Michel’s open bedroom.
He stood in the doorway, observing Michel. The musician sat in a red velvet chair with a high back. The sun bled through gossamer curtains. Michel poured himself a glass of wine. Over the glass, the pianist’s blue eyes widened. He stared at Gabriel. His long, willowy fingers trembled around the crystal stem. “So,” he said, “you’ve finally come.”
Gabriel nodded and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him.
The pianist downed the red liquor. “How long have you been there? Watching me?”
“Moments.” Gabriel walked over to the window next to Michel’s chair and sat on its ledge. “Nathaniel told me about Genevieve. My sympathies. I don’t know how something so terrible could happen.”
Michel drained his wine glass. “How surprising. You. You of all people to claim to have sympathies.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re very arrogant to think that I didn’t know about you two.”
Gabriel sighed. “It’s not what you think.”
“Shut up! You not only seduce my wife, but you feign not to understand what is going on!” Michel glared at Gabriel, his blue eyes glittered with an angry heat. “I found her,” he continued, his voice tight, strained. “Yesterday morning. The authorities think that she died from some wasting disease. But they’re wrong. The night before, she told me about a peculiar dream. A man with emerald eyes. To her face, I belittled the entire matter, but in my heart, I knew that she dreamed of you. When she returned from visiting you, we had an argument. She came to me later that night and told me she was sorry. I kissed her good night and told her that we’d discuss our future in the morning. I fell asleep soon after.” He stood up and filled his glass with more wine. A peculiar smile formed on his lips. “The details are futile, Gabriel. What I am feeling now is what matters.”
“I suppose so.” He sat there, thinking of how he could explain to Michel his offer—Lilith’s demand—without sounding like a raving lunatic. However, if Michel was drunk . . .
“When I saw Genevieve’s corpse,” Michel continued, “I no longer feared death.” He paused. “Would it anger you if I were to say that I felt a kind of pleasure?”
Gabriel stared at him as Michel drained his glass in order to fill it again.
“If not anger you, would it frighten you, Monsieur Lennox?” Michel chuckled when he didn’t reply. “Gabriel,” he said, “please sit. That window sill couldn’t be as comfortable as one of my chairs.”
Gabriel slipped off the windowsill and sat across from Michel. He crossed his arms against his chest. “Why don’t you fear death? Tell me. I would really like to know.”
Michel tilted his head to the side, smiling. “When I was a young boy, my mother used to beat me.” Unbuttoning the front of his shirt, he slipped out of it. He stood up and bared his back to Gabriel, laced with off-white scars. “She told me that she hoped that the scars would never fade so that I would remember the pain, which is nothing compared to the pain of Hell, a fire that can never be quenched. Fire reserved for the devil, his angels, and sinners. So, I learned to be good. Well, as good as I could be, so that I wouldn’t go to hell and be tormented. But if I can’t die, then there’s no hell or heaven to go to! There is only the eternal now.”
Gabriel uncrossed his arms. “So you know. Who told you?”
He shrugged back into his shirt. “My fear of death has vanished because it can be conquered. Genevieve was a warning for me. I could’ve shared her fate.” He leaned forward. “You hold the keys to lock death away, so that it’s nothing but an afterthought.”
Gabriel let out a heavy sigh. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’ve had dreams, Monsieur Lennox. About you. I remember you. And a chalice of red liqueur, a rose, and a dark lady with eyes as black as the universe.” Michel’s lips parted into a white-toothed grin. “You boasted about a key to immortality, said it flows in your veins. That you’d share it with a Kiss. Can you? Will you?”
“Kiss you? No!” Rising from his chair, Gabriel stepped backward until he was standing at the door.
“Leaving so soon?” The voice that spoke sounded as dark as night and as cold as ice. The window’s curtains billowed and stirred in an unnatural wind, against the closed window.
Lilith appeared before the curtained window. She rested her hands on Michel’s shoulders. His blue eyes glazed.
Gabriel flinched, seeing again Michel’s startling resemblance to his father.
In a mocking English accent Lilith chanted, “How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again.”
Her words were a rhyme that his mother had often recited about reincarnation, a doctrine both his parents believed in. “Very funny, Lilith, but my father is dead. Don’t tell me that Michel is my father’s reincarnation. I won’t believe you.”
Lilith’s black eyes flashed. “No. Your father is nothing but dry bones and rags now. But . . . do you want him back?”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. Did she have that power? To raise the dead? Gabriel blinked, as if blinking away the sight of the dead stalking from their graves. Whatever she raised couldn’t be pretty.
Michel sank down into the seat at the touch of Lilith’s fingertips. His head drooped forward, his eyes closed.
Lilith lifted her eyes to meet Gabriel’s. “Why do you struggle, my prince? Why fight the tide that carries you?”
“Because it’s the tide that means to drown me.” Gabriel cast his eyes to Michel. He had fallen into a trance, oblivious to Lilith’s presence, his wine glass still clutched in his hand.
Lilith took the glass, waving her hand over it. “Come here, my fair prince,” she called. “Come and see what more I can do.”
Gabriel moved reluctantly toward her and studied the glass, filled with a red liquid deeper in color than wine, resembling blood. He sensed Lilith staring at him, but he wouldn’t give her the pleasure of returning her gaze. Jesus Christ had turned water into wine but she, this fallen angel, had transformed wine into blood. It scared him.
“This blood represents your father’s spirit. If Michel drinks this, he’ll become the reincarnation of your father.” She placed the glass back into the pianist’s hand. “Or you can give him your blood. Make your choice.”
Gabriel remembered his father, a man who would sooner kill than forgive. One poor soul had met such a fate. A villager had stolen one of their sheep. His father had each wiry mastiff pick up the man’s scent. “Pursue him,” he had ordered in an amused voice, and away the five hounds went. He and his father had run after the pack, and when they finally came upon the man, they found him backed up against a tree, face streaked with grime and tears begging for Gabriel’s father to forgive him. But his father only laughed, and with a wave of his hand, he gestured for the dogs to move in for the kill. They came down hard on the thief, knocking him down.
They tore into the man’s arms and neck with their sharp teeth, growling and jaws tearing, dripping with blood and saliva. Gabriel wrenched his eyes away from the appalling sight, wanting to vomit, but he couldn’t shut his ears to the man’s screams. After the man died, his father stalked toward the corpse and knelt beside it, as if in prayer. He dipped his hand in one of the man’s open wounds, lapping up the blood that stained his fingers. “The world is ruled by devils,” he had stated, with the merry air of a priest, “and in order to survive, you have to become a devil yourself.”
Fear, like long fingertips, skulked along every inch of his body, causing him to tremble. Still shaking, Gabriel slapped the glass out of Michel’s hand. The blood splattered the front of the pianist’s shirt; the glass shattered on the floor.
“Don’t you ever mention that to me a
gain!” he shouted at Lilith. He leaned forward and took Michel’s face into one hand. Slowly, with the other, he took hold of Michel’s hair and pulled until his neck bent in a perfect arch.
Lilith stepped back and watched him in the shadows.
Michel’s eyes snapped open. “What are you doing?” His eyes widened while Gabriel gave him a wry smile. “Giving you the gift of eternal life,” he replied.
“But,” Michel started, beginning to struggle.
“Be still,” he commanded, “your mortal neck is so delicate. It would be a pity if it snapped.”
The pianist gasped, but didn’t move.
Gabriel smirked. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you. Much.”
The man swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
He bit into his neck. In the span of three heartbeats, he felt Michel struggle beneath his fingers. He drank and drank until he could drink no more. He rose from the pianist’s limp body. He slit a thin gash in his own wrist, and fed Michel the blood that flowed from it.
Michel’s blue eyes snapped open wide—wide with fear and something else—before rolling back into his head. His limbs loosened, falling limp. Only his mind would remain alert. Then, the dreams would begin.
He turned to Lilith. She stared at him with a feral look in her black eyes. Her unreadable expression, yet intense and threatening, like a tiger’s before it pounces onto its prey, didn’t deter him from scowling at her. Lifting his head, he stared her down. He wouldn’t let her break him. Not completely.
“It’s amazing what someone will do,” Gabriel said, “under torture.”
Lilith had the sense to look shocked. “Torture. Whatever do you mean?”
“You tortured me. You forced me to do this. And what more—he thinks that I’m responsible for Genevieve’s death. He’ll hate me. I did what you asked, and I get no benefit from it. A Principality isn’t made up of enemies. Am I to have subjects who hate me?”
Lilith gave a small bow of her head. “He may have some animosity toward you for a while, but you’ll have an eternity to get rid of it.” Then she laughed. “Besides, this man if he’s like any other human, will rejoice. All humans would choose to live forever.”