by M. L. Desir
Gabriel fell to his knees beside him. “How did this happen?” he asked, unnerved by the composed softness in his voice.
“You were here killing the others. Colin tried to stop you and—”
Gabriel lurched to his feet and took Faron by the throat. “That wasn’t me, you fool! Seth. It was Seth!”
He threw open the door of his mind, shouting, screaming at Seth through the bond’s recess: “You’re dead! Dead! Do you hear!”
Shaken by his outburst, he waited—listening for a reply and to his pleasure, heard nothing.
“Colin,” he whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loud and still didn’t get a response, the terrible truth would sink in that Colin had died.
Truly dead.
Gabriel dipped his fingers into the pool of blood beneath him. Still warm. He drew in a sharp breath of . . . hope?
Nathaniel rested a cold hand on his shoulder. “You could bring him back. You could,” he hesitated, “make him undead.”
“No!” Gabriel raged.
“Why not?”
“Because. And you know why not. Because—” Gabriel stopped. He didn’t want to speak it, didn’t want to say it. He would leave the truth unsaid, let silence bear the weight of his fear.
“Then come away from him. Mourning is useless,” Faron said.
“Colin,” Nathaniel whispered, “isn’t like your sister. Well, was not . . .”
Gabriel closed his eyes and draped himself over the boy’s body. “Leave me alone,” he ordered. He rested his head so that his ear pressed against Colin’s chest. He couldn’t hear the beat of his heart. “I won’t let you die,” he said, but his own voice sounded miles and miles away. He dipped into that place inside of himself. He felt a burning, a tingling travel all over his body and flow through his fingertips, his lips. He pressed his mouth against Colin’s throat.
Surprise evaded him when Colin’s fingers began twitching to life. Relief flowed through him, warring with his worry and regret even after he heard Colin’s voice cry out a confused and troubled, “Master?”
“Yes, Colin. I’m here.” He sat back on his heels so he could get a good look at his face, his eyes.
“Did you? Did you save me?”
Gabriel rose to his feet and told Alexander to carry the boy inside. “He’ll need rest.”
He turned to Faron and Nathaniel. “Clean this place up.” He turned on his heels and walked away. He needed to be alone. To think. To digest all that had happened. But he wasn’t alone. Sevien chose to follow him. He ignored Sevien and continued walking until he reached the other side of the garden. In its center, stood a grove of oak trees. He leaned against one and crossed his arms against his chest.
“What do you want? Go help clean up or do something useful instead of stalking me.”
Sevien looked at him. “You don’t fear me, do you, Gabriel?” he asked, apropos to nothing.
“That’s a bloody random question. What is it that you really want to know?”
He chuckled. “I was curious what a man like you would do when fear pushes him against a wall. Now, I’m wondering what you would do to be rid of your blood bond from Seth. I would like to know what you cherish most.” He paused, flashing a sweet, white-toothed smile. “So that I can make it mine.”
Gabriel remained silent.
“Would you, could you,” Sevien asked in a rich, sing-song voice, “give me Colin?”
“Is this some jest? You can’t be serious.” He took a retreating step backward. Then another, preparing to run. To escape. But how far could he go when a devil—perhaps the devil— stalked at his heels? No, he wouldn’t flee, like a coward. He planted his feet firmly in place and stood his ground.
Sevien moved toward one of the tallest oak trees and stood in front of it, no longer smiling. A hard, serious look twinkled in his jeweled eyes. “Spill your blood near the roots and after that, listen for the wind.”
Gabriel walked just enough so that he stood directly beneath the tree’s branches, but a good distance away from Sevien. He slit one of his wrists. The blood made a small pool at the base of the tree. He glanced over his shoulder to look at Sevien, but he had already gone. Where to?
The wind sighed, blowing his hair into his face and shaking the trees’ branches.
“Give me what you hold most dear. Give me what you cherish most,” said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Give me Colin. He is something that you cherish. In exchange for a soul bond, give him to me, and I will assist you. Bring him here, Gabriel, and cut his throat, and once he’s dead, his released soul can quench my thirst.”
The voice could’ve been speaking directly into his mind or from the tree. Gabriel wasn’t sure, but it sounded familiar. Achingly, beautifully, and cruelly familiar. “Then and only then,” Sevien went on, “can I give you a soul bond. Then and only then, can you defeat Seth. Otherwise, you will die.”
Gabriel clenched his hands into fists. He could feel rage—cold and deadly—rising up in him. “No, Sevien,” he replied without hesitation. “I don’t need you. Or your bonds. Once I’ve destroyed Seth, I shall destroy you. And the rest of your kind, Sthenius,” he added, voice full of malice.
Sevien let out a low chuckle.
Yes, laugh. Laugh while you can, Gabriel thought, as he strode out of the garden without looking back.
CHAPTER 35
Dream Snatcher
ANOTHER DREAM. ANOTHER MURDER. A quick cut of a woman’s throat from ear to ear that didn’t even allow her to cry. Had Seth killed another in order to torment him?
Gabriel bolted up in bed, at the sound of a low, muffled cry coming from inside the house. The sound did not fade, but rather crescendoed into the sobbing of a woman.
He followed the sound to Nikolai’s room, expecting to find Bela weeping at Nikolai’s side with a dagger in her hand ready to thrust it into his chest. The death dreams were warnings, threats to the heart of the matter: his authority, his sovereignty.
Protection. Honor. That’s why I have come here.
Gabriel dashed to the door of Nikolai’s bedroom. Once inside, he shut the door behind him. He glanced around the room and saw nothing from where he stood. The crying rose again, coming from near Nikolai’s curtained bed. He stood still. He heard the rustling of the wind caressing the flowers in the garden below, which could only be explained by the open window. Unfortunately, Nikolai’s enormous bed blocked it from view. He’d have to have Colin do something about that.
He glided inches across the floor, as silent as mist. Using tact and stealth against the intruder would give him the upper hand. He moved toward the bed to draw the curtain back, but something on the windowsill caught his attention, and it wouldn’t let him go.
The girl in his dreams. Not a flesh-and-blood image, but clearly a transparent phantom of her. Five feet away, she drew in her breath deeply, sobbing. After a few moments, her cries became soundless. She merely sat there staring out of the window, with her beautiful, dark, eager eyes unaware of his presence while the tears streamed down her face in clear rivulets. What was she? An apparition of the past that he could never know? Or an omen of the future?
He could endure her being the latter. For the first time, finally, he could see her face to face. But why she had appeared in Nikolai’s bedroom, he didn’t understand. It reminded him of the phenomena revolving around mediums during séances. Sometimes, spirits were said to pour from the medium’s mouth looking like tendrils of milky fog. But this encounter surpassed these.
What was her name, and why did she weep? He longed to hold her in an embrace and comfort her.
Gabriel couldn’t tear his eyes from her face and figure, which were of a rare beauty—elegant, softly voluptuous, and petite. He reached out with trembling fingers to touch her, afraid that she would fade away, but more afraid that he would go mad if he couldn
’t at least try to—
“Is that wise?” Nikolai asked. He had pulled back the curtains of his bed. He kneeled watching Gabriel with his enormous eyes.
Gabriel wondered for how long the boy had been watching him. He drew back his hand with some difficulty, but the phantom had already vanished. A second didn’t pass in between the time Nikolai woke up and the girl vanishing. An obvious connection. Certainly not a coincidence.
Gabriel spun around and glared at Nikolai. He balled his hands into restraining fists. “What have you done?”
Nikolai bowed his head. “Helping you. I know how you feel about her. So I borrowed her from you.”
“Borrowed her?”
“You didn’t believe me when I told you about my ability to eat dreams, did you? Well, I didn’t devour her, but I did take her away from you to protect you. To protect your memory of her.” Nikolai tilted his head back to look him in the face. “And I guess to protect her. She is, this phantom of yours, quite beautiful.”
“And it was your mother,” Gabriel replied, “who taught you how to eat and snatch away dreams.”
“Yes. She’s very pretty too, my mother. Do you know who she is?” Nikolai asked.
Gabriel frowned at the know-it-all expression on the child’s face. The way adults looked when they asked questions that they already knew the answers to. “She who? Your mother . . . or?”
Nikolai shook his head in a demure show of apology, the long bangs of his black hair falling in his face. He blinked, and Gabriel could sense some tiny gale. Though his eyes were a similar shade to Nathaniel’s, within the contrast of his black hair, Nikolai’s eyes held some kind of warmth. “Sorry. I meant the girl. Your dream girl.”
“Never mind that. Go back to sleep.”
“Yes,” Nikolai said flatly, “and you need to figure out a way to stop Seth.”
Gabriel chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
He shook his head, doubting that a child could see the humor in this situation. This is farcical, he thought. Ridiculous, an eleven-year-old giving me advice.
“Really,” Nikolai went on, “this isn’t funny. You must let me save him. He’s just a lost soul. Likewise, killing him will only lead to the beginning of more problems.” Tears trembled on the rims of his enormous eyes before spilling down his face. “My heart hurts,” he whispered, “whenever I think of him. I wish that I didn’t have a heart. I wish I didn’t have anything that causes me pain.”
Gabriel stopped laughing. “What makes you say such things? What do you see in Seth that I don’t?”
Nikolai didn’t answer, but clenched his hands into fists and pummeled Gabriel’s chest. He threw his head back and screamed again, eyes shut tight, and face red. A loud, wordless scream.
Gabriel closed his own eyes, willing Nikolai to be still, silent. He even hummed a melody he had heard Mikel playing on the piano. He supposed Mikel’s gift for music had a purpose after all.
Moments later when he opened his eyes, he realized that Nikolai had fallen asleep wrapped in his arms. His face glowed with the perfect peace that only privileged children must be blessed with. With some bitterness, Gabriel didn’t recall ever being able to succumb to sleep so quickly.
He drew back the covers and laid Nikolai down. The child snuggled into the soft sheets, giggling in the deep sleep of children, dreaming of raindrops turning into lemon drops and God knew what else.
A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Gabriel’s mouth. He tried rationalizing this tender occurrence with the boy merely being an extension of his power. Protection. Honor. That’s all there is to it, he told himself. Unconvinced, he knew this feeling sprung from a place more than one of duty.
For a few seconds, the rumble of thunder drowned the rhythmic music of Nikolai’s beating heart and his steady breathing. A burst of blue light pulsed into the room seconds after that. Gabriel sat on the window sill and watched the sky pregnant with clouds, emptying itself of rain. The sun would rise in a few hours. He wondered when the little girl had died. He could still feel the essence of her fear. It lingered upon him like a shadow. Torment. Definitely torment. He knew that he wasn’t killing these people, but he couldn’t help but feel responsible.
Fear. That was why Nikolai had cried.
Gabriel stood up and knelt beside him. He reached out his hand and feathered the long, black bangs spread across his high forehead. As he worried over him, he noticed that the child looked slightly altered. His face looked harder around the jaw line and the dimple in his chin was more defined. No mistake. He had grown . . . older. Gabriel’s fingers hovered above the boy, close to rousing him, but after debating what little good it would do, chose otherwise. His quarrel was with Lilith and Faron. Especially Lilith.
He would send for them. Immediately.
Yes, something would have to be done.
He hurried down the stairs.
CHAPTER 36
Illusions
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Seth felt something close to fear. And the sweaty reaction his body had succumbed to, made denying his mortality impossible. His heart raced, and the uninvited terror (he enjoyed stirring in others) felt foreign and unreal as it squirmed inside him like an insidious serpent. He needed some leverage, needed to feel powerful again. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he wondered if Bela had failed her mission. She had been gone for more than an hour. How hard was it to coax a young boy from his bed? How hard was it for the naïve child to say no to beauty? But Nikolai wasn’t just any child, but a golden child, descended from the lineage of the ancient Grigori. The Nephilim. Eyes of the Night.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt compelled to reach out for the crystal.
Only it had been taken.
“Looking for this?” A honeyed, German-accented voice asked.
Seth turned in the direction of the voice. Nikolai stood in the doorway, holding the crystal in his small hand. “You! Give it back.”
Nikolai shook his head, a gentle smile on his lips. “Aren’t you wondering where your Bela is? I shall have you know that she’s safe and sound. I sent her to a much-needed sleep.”
Seth eyes widened slightly. “You came willingly? Why—”
The boy’s smile deepened. “You’re such an adult, the way you ask questions that you already know the answers to. You know why I’ve come. You want a soul bond. You know why I’ve taken this—though it glows with light, it is a light that is really darkness. Neither of those things is for you.”
“Oh. So you came willingly to save me, have you, little one? And how did you plan on doing that?” Seth laughed. “By destroying the crystal to purge me of this said darkness? No? Or did you have something else in mind?”
“I cannot destroy the crystal,” Nikolai said sadly.
Seth took a step forward. “Then you most certainly have something else in mind. Is it,” he said in a forced whisper, “that you want to give me a soul bond? Is it?”
Nikolai shook his head for the third time. “I’m not old enough. I don’t have that kind of power yet. And even if I did, I wouldn’t. Believe me when I say that the soul bond will bring you anything but happiness, Seth. And by saving you from such a terrible fate, I accomplish so much more.”
Seth took another step forward until he was an arm’s reach away from Nikolai and stopped himself. He could easily grab the boy and bleed him. So why didn’t he? What was stopping him? “I could kill you,” Seth whispered. “I could kill you and sacrifice you to Beautiful Light. That would please him. And then he would give me what I want.”
“What you want is a soul bond, yes? But is that what you really want, Seth? Besides, you don’t cherish me or anyone else for that matter. Thus, killing me would be a wasted effort. Your heart is empty. Is a soul bond really possible for someone like you? Besides, after you make a soul bond, you would no longer be you . . .”
&nb
sp; The crystal glowed in Nikolai’s hand. It rose into the air and floated toward Seth.
“Why do you entertain such nonsense?” Tipereth asked. “Kill him, Seth! Kill him before he speaks another word.”
Seth stared at the refulgent crystal in between him and Nikolai. He snatched it from the air and tucked it into his pocket. “No. No, I won’t.”
The crystal glowed impossibly brighter. “Yes. Kill him.”
Waiting, Nikolai stared at Seth before casting his gaze to the floor.
Seth shoved the boy out of his path and fled from the room. He slammed the door shut and struck his forehead hard against it. “Don’t leave this room, stupid boy. Don’t you realize that some people don’t want to be saved? At least not in the way you may think.”
“You’ll regret this,” came Nikolai’s gentle reply.
“You’re wrong. I never regret anything.”
CHAPTER 37
The Grigori
“NIKOLAI. IT’S ABOUT NIKOLAI,” Gabriel said, once Faron and Lilith were comfortably seated on the sofa. Colin offered to take Lilith’s parasol and shawl, which she gladly gave up, but Faron held onto his cane with a gold knob shaped like a lion’s head.
His sea-gray eyes darted around the room. “Where is he?”
“Asleep in his bedroom. He shall rise soon for his lessons. He’s . . . growing.”
“Growing?” Lilith asked, her voice tinged with what he could only describe as mock shock.
Faron cast his eyes to his hands and fondled the cane.
“So, it’s true.” Gabriel paused a moment, thinking. “He’s never been Enlightened, has he?” He rose up and paced the room. “Why is he here? If he’s not a victim of our nature, why was I sheltering him? I demand an explanation. Now!”