Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) (11 page)

“Seth,” Gabriel said, “I’d like to have a word with these two.” He gestured toward the humans.

Seth looked at him and stared at Bela until she stepped away from Gabriel’s side. She avoided eye contact with Seth, but stood next to him, her hands clasped in front of her. Seth merely chuckled, took Bela by the hand, and led her to the other side of the ballroom.

Gabriel looked after them for a few minutes. He felt foolish as he watched Seth playing his fingers along the long column of Bela’s white throat. He turned his attention back to the mortal man and woman.

No, boy and girl were more appropriate titles. They looked no more than seventeen.

“Why are you gracing us with your presence?” Gabriel asked.

They both stared at him before glancing at each other in confusion.

“Don’t you know?” the boy asked. The girl wrapped her round arms around him.

“Yes, but I don’t know how you came to know of us. I’m curious. Amuse me with an answer.”

The boy sighed. “Well, at first,” he began, “I thought it was just superstitious nonsense. Some juvenile conspiracy. You see, there’s a bar in Bristol that I frequent often, and one evening, a young man captivated a growing audience, telling a peculiar story of blood, oaths, and favors by a cloakanddagger group of individuals. I had run into trouble and needed a quick solution. So, I became obsessed with seeking help.” He blushed then. “And really, I think I wanted to believe it, so I waited for him outside and asked him for proof of your existence. I learned that he’s a middleman for your coterie. His illusions were enough to win my mind.” He jabbed a thumb in Seth’s direction.

“The same man?” Gabriel asked. “You could tell that he was the same, although he used illusions as a disguise?”

The girl nodded. “Robert is very good at reading people. He can see things that others can’t. That man, Seth, he tried to tell him that he wasn’t the same man, but Robert pointed out his mannerisms.”

Gabriel smiled. “So not even illusions can change who one really is.” He cast a dark glance in Seth’s direction before looking down at the girl. “Your name?”

She lowered her head. “Katherine. Katherine Beardsley. Robert and I decided to come here so that we can be happy. Seth promised us happiness.”

“Hmm. I never heard of anyone dying and coming back to tell of how happy they were. Have you?” Gabriel smiled at her. “I would definitely like to meet him or her,” he added to vex her. Vex her out of her stupidity.

“Well, no. But you don’t understand.” She broke into a soft sob.

Robert kissed the top of her head and held her tighter. “There, there,” he murmured. “Don’t cry, darling.” He glared at Gabriel.
Your fault she’s crying
, his eyes accused.

“I’m not trying to upset her. I just want to understand why you would choose something so final. Your problem couldn’t be so enormous that death looks like the only way out. It’s not like you’re Romeo and Juliet.”

Katherine stopped crying, but a frown still marked her face. “That’s not funny,” she said icily. “
Not
funny.”

Gabriel smiled. The girl had some fire in her after all. “No. I’m being quite serious.”

“Romeo and Juliet,” Robert whispered. “You’re closer to the truth than you think, sir. This is the only way we can he happy.
Together
.”

Gabriel wanted to roll his eyes, but stopped himself. He remembered how he had been at that age when he thought he knew everything, as if he were as omniscient and omnipotent as God himself. The young could be so willful, so sure of themselves.

So stupid.

“So you want to marry this girl,” Gabriel said after some thinking, “but your parents won’t allow you to. Is that what this is all about?”

Robert nodded, his eyebrows knit in a grimace.

Katherine began to cry again. “I deserve to die. I’m nothing without him!”

Gabriel ignored her, still staring at Robert. “You don’t really believe that, do you? That she’s worthless.”

Robert’s scowl softened, his eyes glazed over with unshed tears. He shook his head, swallowing. “No, no, I don’t. I love her with all my heart.”

“Then there must be another way,” Gabriel offered.

“Is there a problem, Prince Elect?” Seth asked, suddenly behind him.

“Not anymore. Robert and Katherine have decided not to receive your . . . services.”

Seth’s forehead wrinkled. “What?” He turned to Robert, his hands open in a questioning shrug. “But your plans—”

“Have changed,” Gabriel finished with a pleased smirk.

“How? Why! When the situation
has not
?”

“You don’t want to die any longer, do you, Katherine?” Gabriel placed a hand on her shoulder and clouded her mind with his influence.
You don’t want to die
, he thought into her mind.
Say it: I don’t want to die.

Katherine shut her eyes tight and shook her head. “No, I don’t want to die.”

Seth brought a hand to his head, looking more irate than confused. His eyes flashed—the amber one looking like the eye of a wolf and the green one flashing like an emerald. “I don’t believe this. Just because you have no taste for blood doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.”

Gabriel held up a warning hand. “Go and feed off of someone else, if you must. Besides, you don’t
need
to kill to quench your thirst. Such practices will have to come to an end.”

Seth laughed and walked closer to Katherine. He snapped his fingers, and Bela sauntered over to Robert. He whispered to Katherine, “When we slip our teeth in your neck, your dainty wrists, and that little bit of skin near the junction of your thighs, it will feel like paradise—didn’t I promise you that? You shall sail on a boat of absolute pleasure. And just think—at the end of that journey, your darling Robert shall be waiting.”

Robert swallowed hard. Whatever Bela whispered into his ear had been no different than what Seth had tempted Katherine with. He looked at Bela, but she had the grace not to return his gaze.

Katherine looked up into Seth’s face with a peculiar expression. He wasn’t sure whether she wanted to spit in Seth’s face or kiss him. She had become very pale.

“But I have to die,” Katherine said, “to feel it. I have to die to be with him forever. Right?”

Seth opened his mouth to speak, but Gabriel shoved him out of the way. “No, Katherine. Forget what promises he’s offered you. You don’t have to die to make them real.” He leaned forward so that he met at her eye level. “I can’t assure you that living will guarantee you and Robert being together, but dying? Is that what you really want?”

Her eyes shined with unshed tears. “My life is meaningless without Robert. I’d rather die.”

“Meaningless? Who told you that?” Gabriel asked.

Robert put his arms around her. “What’s with that foolish question? You know! As an aristocrat, you know. From birth to grave, whether rich or poor, we’re slaves to our class. Her life has no worth.” His face had turned red when he finished speaking.

Gabriel shrugged. “You’d be surprised at what I know and at what I actually believe.”

Robert took a deep breath. “They told us that if we came and died, we’d wake up in another world, a dreamy world where we’d be forever happy together. They told us that dying would be the only way to accomplish that. Seth told us that the real world won’t allow such wishes.”

Gabriel turned back to the girl. “What do you really want?”

She looked at Robert and seemed to grow empowered. “I don’t want to die. I want to live.” She stroked the side of Robert’s face. “To live with you.”

“I can’t hear you. Say it with some passion,” Gabriel whispered close to her ear.

“I want to live. I want both of us to live.” She covered her eyes, shaking. “Please,” she cried, voice low, “don’t let them kill us!”

“Louder,” Gabriel commanded, his voice rising. He knew he had made a scene, but he didn’t care. He could feel eyes on him, hating him for what he was doing.

“I want to live!” She threw back her head chanting the words in a scream and sank to her knees, trembling with tears. “I want to live! I want to live!”

Gabriel turned to Seth, grinning from ear to ear. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I think she made her point quite loud and clear.”

Someone snorted. “Certainly loud. Since when did our nourishment get so high and mighty?”

“Gabriel, it’s been quite a night.”

Gabriel looked over his shoulder and saw Nathaniel. Colin now looked wide awake, but uncomfortable, too. “I’ll walk with Colin to the carriage.” He leaned forward and whispered. “Are you trying to get yourself torn to pieces? What’s this nonsense with the humans?”

“You want a Prince. You want a leader, but you don’t want his demands,” Gabriel replied in a loud voice. He hoped that anyone within earshot would hear and take notice. He was his own man. Not a toy. Not a puppet. “I pity you for thinking that you could have it both ways.”

Nathaniel chuckled deep in his throat. “Your stubbornness makes life so interesting. That’s why I like you.” He sounded happy, even looked happy, but Gabriel could feel his anger rising from him like heat.

Colin hesitated a few seconds before turning around to follow Nathaniel. “Be careful, Master Gabriel,” he called over his shoulder. He hurried after Nathaniel without looking back.

An image of Mikel in trouble flashed in Gabriel’s mind. Where was the musician? He had been forced to Enlighten him, forced to add him to his life, and now some strange union started to form between them, as delicate and strong as the threads in a spider’s web. He didn’t have time to worry or be concerned about him. Gabriel closed his eyes and pushed the thought aside. He had to focus on one thing at a time.

He opened his eyes and looked at Robert. “You may leave,” he said to him. “Take care of your Katherine.”

Robert knelt beside Katherine and hugged her.

“Go then, if you like,” Seth said. “If memory serves me well, aren’t you the son of a rich gentleman who will disown you if you marry this common-born woman? Life is cruel. What’s there to live for?”

Robert paled. “But if you would make us like you—”

“Ha! Fool! If you were meant to be like us, then you would be. Our namesake has a reason. We were Chosen, and you were simply . . . 
not
.”

“I told them that they could leave. Stop this grandstanding,” Gabriel demanded.

Seth shrugged. “Fine. Let them go, but who’s to say that they won’t meet a bad end on the way home?”

Gabriel drew back his hand and backhanded him across the face.

A bruise rose like an angry red stain on Seth’s pallid face. Seth touched the side of his face, a look of wonder in his mismatched eyes. “You struck me.”

“Of course,” Gabriel answered with a smile. “You stated what sounded like a threat. It had to be rectified.”

“You should side with your own kind, Gabriel. You’re not Prince yet, and—“

In one second, Seth moved from standing right in front of Gabriel to lying several feet away. “I don’t have to touch you to punish you,” he said, glaring at Seth. He dragged his gaze in one long stare across the room, meeting the eyes of those who dared to look at him. Some hated him. Some were spellbound, and some didn’t know what to feel for him. “Any of you,” he added, waving his hand through the air. “If I am to be your prince, there will be a lot of changes. Accept them or suffer the consequences.”

GABRIEL TURNED
AROUND
to see Robert and Katherine creeping toward the door, the soft pitter-patter of their bare feet the only sound against the tiles. He told them to wait and gave them some money. “This will help you on your journey. If you can’t find contentment here, why not go somewhere else?” He didn’t dare speak of happiness. Finding happiness was a lie.

Katherine smiled, her brown eyes widening at the money. “We’ve always wanted to run away to the New—”

Gabriel sealed her lips with his index finger. “It wouldn’t be wise to share your plans.”

Alexander stepped beside him. “My Prince, may I have a word with you?”

My Prince
. Gabriel flinched. “What is it?”

“Perhaps you should wipe them of their memories,” he whispered into Gabriel’s ear. “Once our sustenance is captured, it’s never released in such a fashion, unless you want to draw attention to us.”

Gabriel gave a lazy shrug. “Would you care to do the honors?”

“It’s my pleasure and an honor,” Alexander replied, bowing low before turning to the task.

Gabriel made his way toward the winding stairwell. His escape. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bela tending Seth. The illusionist slapped her hand away as he rose to his feet. She stepped back a few feet from him. He kicked at the tiled floor, his pale face twisted with rage. Most of the Chosen had already left. This silent mass exodus had probably been spurned once they realized there would be no added benefit of a meal. The cold departure didn’t surprise him. And when no one bid him a good night or a farewell, he laughed, pleased with himself.

Gabriel placed his hand on the rail of the staircase and ascended it, skipping every other step.

“I won’t hold that against you, my Prince.” Seth suddenly appeared on the top of the steps, smiling.

Gabriel flinched, not necessarily surprised that Seth had appeared in front of him. Definitely annoyed, though. “Out of my way.”

Seth obeyed, stepping aside, still smiling. “Aren’t you going to ask how I managed to cut you off?”

“I already know,” Gabriel replied. “You cloaked yourself with time and space.”

“Yes. It’s something that you should do more often. But maybe you’re not able to because you don’t have the right levels of energy?
Blood
,” he said softly, intimately. “You need it just as much as the rest of us. Why are you so ashamed? Do you think us beastly, my Prince? Do you think us evil?”

Gabriel walked up the last three steps and stood next to Seth. “You don’t want to know what I think.”

Seth nodded, his full lips pressed into a grim line. “To thy fair flower, add the rank smell of weeds. But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, the soil is this, that thou dost common grow.”

“What the bloody hell is that?”

“Shakespeare. The world is a garden of wildflowers and weeds. It would be good if you learned your place.”

“Let me guess. We’re the weeds, correct? That’s obvious. We feed off of those around us.”

Seth looked genuinely surprised. Appalled. “No. We’re the Beautiful Ones. Humans are the weeds.”

Gabriel shook his head, exasperated.

“I understand you now,” Seth said, his eyes wide with a sudden passionate glimmer. “You want a world that’s worthy of your sovereignty. In order for that to be possible, the world will have to be purged. I shall purge the world for you. I’ll purge it of the weeds and leave only wildflowers.” He stared at him, his varicolored eyes flashing with a strange look that Gabriel could only describe as madness. “You have to pluck the weeds up and destroy them in order to save the flowers,” he declared in a sudden fierce tone.

“Seth,” he replied, “This is really unnecessary.”

Seth shook his head, one hand up in the air, and eyes shut in solemn reproach. “Yes. I’ll cleanse the world. I shall make it into a world fit for your rule. Nothing but flowers. You’ll see.”

He’s off his head,
Gabriel thought as Seth descended the steps.
Did I make him so?

Downstairs, Seth took Bela by the hand.

Gabriel lifted his eyes toward the mirrored ceiling and watched Bela weave through the diminishing crowd. He expected to see Seth dragging her along by the hand, but in the mirror, she moved alone. Something inside him twisted at the sight.

Seth had no reflection. One of his illusions, clouding his mind.

This bastard was . . . good.

* * *

Once outside, Gabriel encountered Mikel leaning against one of the marble statues in the garden. The surreal scene looked like a twisted replay of the first night that they had met. Before blood, before dreams.

Mikel stared at the bed of red geraniums in front of him. He dug the tip of his shoe into the earth beneath him. “Sevien is one of you. I mean, one of us.” His voice came out too flat to be asking a question.

Gabriel wondered why he had even bothered stating the obvious. “So it seems.”

“Then why do we dream of him? Why do we dream of Lilith?” He paused, his dark blue eyes meeting Gabriel’s. “Why do I dream of music I’ve never heard before? And who is the man dressed in white?”

“You’re full of questions tonight. “Why is that?”

Mikel flinched as if Gabriel had struck him. Hard as diamonds? No, as fragile as glass.

Gabriel smiled.

“It was you who told me to start accepting my plight, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

The wind swept through the garden stirring up the seductive intoxicating scent of lily of the valley, roses, and . . . something else.

Gabriel frowned. “Do you smell that?”

The fine nostrils of Mikel’s slender nose quivered. “It smells coppery. But it’s sharper, more intense. Blood?”

“And freshly spilt.” The sweet, metallic scent smelled unmistakable. He followed the scent with Mikel close behind.

It led him to a grassy field where sheep stood grazing. About twenty-five feet in, Gabriel found Robert and Katherine lying on their backs, their empty eyes staring at the cloudy sky. The faint odor of death rose up from their bodies like a macabre perfume, and the grass beneath them stained red with blood appeared black in the darkness.

Gabriel didn’t have to touch them to know that they were dead.

Mikel kneeled beside Katherine. “There’s something in the girl’s hand.” He pulled back her fingers in a gentle manner, as if unfolding the petals of a rose. In the center of her hand rested a black knight chess piece. Mikel took it and handed the object to Gabriel. “What does it mean?”

“If they’re playing chess, they had better kill the king,” he said. “And quickly. That’s what it means.”

He crushed the black knight into dust and opened his hand, letting the wind carry the debris away. He stared at the dead bodies of Robert and Katherine until he felt the sudden coolness of water spill on his face and slide down his cheek. He lifted his eyes to the sky.

Rain.

How appropriate.

* * *

“The girl held a chess piece in her hand,” Gabriel mentioned to Nathaniel when he returned to the carriage with Mikel a few minutes later.

Nathaniel glanced at Gabriel’s empty hand as if expecting it to be there. “Well, where is it?”

“Gabriel crushed it with his bare hand,” Mikel replied in his musical voice.

“What was it? The King? A pawn?”

Gabriel told him.

Nathaniel leaned against the side of the coach. “Interesting.”

Gabriel’s eyes shifted to Mikel. “Where were you when this happened?”

“Inside,” Mikel said, “looking for you. A lot of commotion inside deterred me from leaving for a while. We didn’t leave on the best of terms.”

“That chess piece you pried from that dead girl. A knight. Your last name translates to ‘of the knight’ in English.” Gabriel stopped talking and met Mikel’s eyes.

Mikel shook his head, one eyebrow cocked. “You can’t be serious. You think that
I
killed them?”

Gabriel mimicked the smile of a priest, saintly and patronizing. “And why should I believe otherwise?”

“Because I’m telling you the truth!”

“But you also said that you love me.
Me.
How can you have love for someone who has been so cruel to you? You and I both know that you must hate me regardless of what you say.”

Mikel wouldn’t look at him, but instead looked past him toward the horizon. “That’s beside the point. My feelings for you are irrelevant. They have nothing to do with their deaths.” His midnight blue eyes burned. “Nothing,” he repeated through clenched teeth.

Gabriel laughed. “Don’t be stupid. Hatred this deep, this dark would be quite capable of murder. Just admit it, Mikel, and we can put an end to this farce.”

His beautiful face twisted into an angry scowl before it broke away into what looked like fear. He clenched and unclenched his hands, pacing back and forth, his lips moving, but no audible words came out.

“Gabriel?” Nathaniel’s tone rose up gentle, cautious, as if he treaded over broken glass and might get cut if he ventured further.

Gabriel ignored him and signaled that he be silent.

Mikel breathed in deeply. “Yes, let’s put an end to this,” he said in a hot whisper. “I may not know you, Gabriel, but I
know
you. You have no heart. You’re a demon! A fiend. If I had known that you’d care about those people, I would’ve done something to them to get a rise out of you.” Mikel shrugged, his gaze cast down to the grass. “
Something
. But murder them? No. No, that I did not do.” And then he smiled and started laughing. His laughter sounded musical, rising like some lovely melody, and the nightingales and crickets stopped their singing, as if enchanted by his merriment.

Gabriel glanced at Nathaniel and raised a questioning eyebrow.

Nathaniel simply smiled and turned his eyes up to the sky.

Mikel must also have noticed the eerily strange silence that his laughter had caused. He stopped laughing. His hands rose to his face, and he broke into tears. Shoulders trembling, he sank to his knees. “What have you done to me?” he whispered, fear and outrage souring his voice.

Gabriel stepped in front of him. “Improved you. Now even creation yields to the beauty of your voice.”

“What?” Mikel looked up at him.

He shrugged. “With Enlightenment comes mastery of your mortal gifts. That aside, I want you to know that I believe you. I believed you as soon as you claimed your innocence. I just wanted to know how you would react when accused of lying. Likewise, when you do lie, I shall know because your emotions will betray you.”

Mikel looked at his hands, splashed with tears that should’ve been as clear as the rain that had fallen. Instead, they were as red as an autumn sunset. Blood tears. “You’ve made me a monster. That’s what you have done! W-Why?
Why
?”

Gabriel raised one hand, palm up. “A monster?” he echoed in a mockingly sweet tone. “Come now. It isn’t all that dreadful.”

Mikel’s sobs rose louder.

Gabriel remembered the first time he had cried after his Enlightenment. He had cried because Nathaniel had stopped him from taking his own life. Perhaps from ever taking it. Crying couldn’t bring Abigail back. Crying hadn’t undone who he was.
What he was.
Crying was useless.

So, since that night, Gabriel had promised himself to never cry again. He hoped Mikel would do the same. The sight of other people crying struck him as pathetic and useless. It rather sickened him.

“Stop blubbering. It’s a waste of energy. Get up and board the coach. I want to go home.” He stalked away from Mikel and Nathaniel and stepped inside the open door. He folded his arms against his chest, waiting, staring at his shoes covered in mud. He kept seeing himself walk into the pasture, kept seeing Katherine, her neck cut from ear to ear, her throat lathered with blood. Before he arrived, he imagined that she had been bleeding profusely like a slaughtered lamb. He had arrived too late. Her hot blood, now cold, had been such a waste.

A waste
.
Oh God . . .

His eyes hurt as if someone pricked them with needles. He closed them tight to stop the stinging. By the time the pain passed, Mikel sat across from him, and Nathaniel sat in the front rousing Colin from sleep.

Oh God . . . and he had thirsted for her blood. Coveted every drop.

Gabriel stared out the window at the fading darkness, searching for a star, something of beauty in this world of weeds and wildflowers.

But the stars were so far away.

* * *

Seth smoothed his finger over the irregular surface of the crystal pin. Rubbing it got a response, like Aladdin rubbing the enchanted lamp. But what lived inside of the crystal was far better than any genie. He remembered the day he found the crystal sparkling in the moonlight, wet with his blood. Just a boy of eleven years. His blood had oozed out of a wound on his knee and seeped into the earth. The black soil seemed to drink it, and a crystal emerged from the place where his blood had spilt. He picked it up with the tips of his fingers. It was warm and multifaceted like a diamond. It vibrated. He had known there was something mystical about the crystal even before the spirit trapped inside it started speaking to him in its deep, lilting voice. It glowed brighter, like a star, as it went on asking him his name. Startled, Seth had flung it far from him, as if it had bitten him. The crystal had dulled noticeably as if in offense to his actions. Seth crawled on his hands and knees toward it. He reached out his hand, then paused, afraid, but excited, before finally snatching it up again. He held it up to the light of the stars. It looked like a star itself, fallen to the earth. He examined it from all sides and noticed a face within it. A beautiful face with serene eyes gazed back at him. The face possessed a kind of compassion that he had never seen on the faces of fellow people. A terrible desire filled him. He wanted to give his life for this face. And when the face smiled at him before vanishing, Seth had gasped with delight and clasped the crystal to his neck. That night, he took it home with him, clutching it against his chest, as if it had become an extension of him, and it hummed and vibrated like a content kitten.