Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) (4 page)

THE FOLLOWING
NIGHT
, Michel greeted Gabriel and Nathaniel at the door with a smile. The pianist was dressed in a black, high-collared shirt, oriental in style, with matching pants. The wide sleeves nearly covered his hands. Against the dark cloth, his pale, smooth skin looked almost radiant. He ushered Gabriel and Nathaniel through hallways and chambers over rosy-hued, lush carpets. Giant tapestries with scenes of barefoot, oriental women robed in lilac silk draped the walls. In one of the many rooms, an enormous chandelier gleamed with gold and crystal. Gabriel had to admit that their host blended in nicely with the décor.

Michel opened another set of doors. “Please,” he offered with a slight bow and a graceful wave of his hand, “enter and dine with us.”

Nathaniel stepped inside while Gabriel lingered behind, looking into a large room with a low table at its center. He entered, stepping over giant pillows spread across the floor. Several man-sized torches in metal holders formed a circle around the room, glowing and casting shadows. The furniture and overall ambience created an exotic and somewhat erotic mood, like walking into a story from the Arabian Nights. Perhaps an entourage of scantily clad, dancing women would come in to entertain.

“Are you not fond of the Orient?” Michel asked, his tone soft and playful.

Gabriel shrugged and began to answer when he heard giggling behind him. He turned around to see Genevieve and Adele. The two sisters stood there, holding hands and staring at him. While Genevieve had light hair and eyes, Adele’s brown hair and eyes possessed a softer, quieter beauty set in a pale round face. They were dressed in kimonos with wide, flowing sleeves and long trains. The cut of Genevieve’s scarlet outfit was a little less modest than her sister’s. The revealing square décolletage left little to the imagination. The clothing looked like garments one would wear to bed, but definitely not to sleep in. He appraised them from head to toe, staring until Genevieve looked away.

Adele had the grace to blush. “Michel, no one is as fond of the Orient as you,” she commented, a nervous trill in her voice.

A soft laugh spilled from Michel’s throat. “There’s a certain tranquility about it that I admire. The people of Japan are most intriguing. I’d love to go back, but I fear that I might stay, and I don’t think they’d like a permanent foreigner.”

“You’ve traveled abroad, Monsieur?” Gabriel asked.

Michel laughed and told him not to be so formal. “Why, yes,” he went on, “haven’t you?”

“No, I haven’t had the luxury.”

“Luxury?” His dark blue eyes glittered with humor. “Money is an object meant to be used, my friend. And what better way to use it than by travel? By the look of you and what Sevien has told me, you come from an affluent lineage. Don’t be what you English call a Scrooge—especially when it comes to yourself. I don’t know about you, but just talking about money piques my appetite. Let us eat.” Stepping to the side of the dining room’s entrance with an elegant wave of his arm, he bid Gabriel enter.

Gabriel walked in after the two girls. Nathaniel was already ensconced amongst the floor pillows, looking as comfortable as a cat with cream, stretched out on his left side and propped up on one elbow. The other hand fingered the fringes of a beaded cushion. He had placed a violet flower in his long, blonde hair.

Gabriel sank onto a pillow. “Don’t you look content.” He made his tone as flat as possible with a stab of sarcasm.

Nathaniel’s expression remained blank. He stopped rolling the glass beads between his thumb and forefinger. “Hungry. That’s all.”

Servants came in with trays of food. No, the dishes that they served on silver trays were too beautiful and decadent to be called food. They were masterpieces of rich images and delectable smells. Art that should not be devoured, yet it would be sacrilege to let it go to waste. So, Gabriel ate and drank, tasting curry and other spices. He felt detached from the conversation, which focused almost entirely on the Whitechapel Murderer. But like all other fads, the murders by the “ripper” would dull and be forgotten—until someone either mimicked or surpassed the killings. As Gabriel had observed, history had a way of repeating itself, but few cared to take notice and learn from it.

“Stop,” Nathaniel ordered suddenly. His voice echoed for a moment. It was one of the few words that he had spoken during the course of the long night. Gabriel glanced at the guests who were no longer talking or eating or . . . 
anything
. It was unnatural, like the scene from
Sleeping Beauty
when a sleeping spell fell over the castle. Time itself had stopped at Nathaniel’s command. He wondered if the others were aware of their state.

“Watch.” Nathaniel rolled over onto his back and levitated into the air before descending feet first onto the floor. He floated, glided—certainly not walking. He stood beside Michel and waved a hand in front of his eyes, which had a glassy stare.

“Come, Gabriel, closer to me,” Nathaniel demanded.

He hesitated, reluctant to get a closer view. As he drew nearer, he wished that he hadn’t.

Nathaniel lowered his lips to Michel’s ivory throat, fixing his pale, icy eyes on Gabriel’s. Those eyes, how they sparkled with pleasure as Nathaniel drank from Michel. While Gabriel watched, he saw Michel’s youthful beauty begin to fade. His skin dried and stretched over the delicate bone structure of his face, wrinkles deepened around his beautiful, blue eyes, and his lustrous, black hair begin to blanch.

“No,” Gabriel protested with an outstretched hand. “No—what are you doing? Stop!”

Nathaniel wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. “I can’t,” he replied.

He swallowed hard. “What do you mean
can’t
?”

“I can’t reverse the hands of time, Gabriel. Every second, every fleeting moment, mortals slip closer into the clutches of death.
But you
. You’ve conquered it. You’ve taken hold of your divine right of godhood. Would you deny others their divine right?” His long fingers played through the gray and white strands of Michel’s hair.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes with contempt. “Divine right, huh? If you think that people deserve to live forever, you’re madder than I thought! And if you want me to be their leader, then you’d better think again because I guarantee that you won’t like my demands.”

Nathaniel didn’t reply, but instead moved onto Genevieve, feeding from her in the same manner. In an instant, she too wrinkled and became old—no—ancient, as old as time itself. Gabriel feared that if he touched her—any of them—they would crumble into dust. Dust. Wasn’t that all that humanity amounted to?

Nathaniel moved closer to him “Think of the world as you know it. You are born; you live a little, only to die. The world, I’m afraid, is nothing like it used to be. A time when the comely daughters of men danced with the Bright Ones. In those days, the Tower spiraled into the heavens with its turrets and gables as a tribute to mankind’s great work. A time when all men learned the secrets of the Divine. It can be like that again, Gabriel. You, my prince, can usher it in. You are their conduit. Their hope.”

Gabriel stood up. “Who cares what the world had been like before? I live in this present one. Immortality isn’t the answer.” He slashed the air between them with his hand. “There are some people that deserve to die.”

His friend smiled. “You mean murderers and their ilk?”

Gabriel nodded, well aware Nathaniel had set one of his traps. Their arguments were oftentimes like fencing matches with quick jabs and fast retreats before lunging in to feign a strike in order to catch the other off guard. He could feel another touché coming, and he sensed he wouldn’t be the one calling it.

“If that’s the case, then you should be dead,” Nathaniel said. “Your demands may be obnoxious and self-defeating, but you are still their only hope. I find no error in that.”

“Their hope,” Gabriel replied bitterly. “You contradict. You confuse. You once told me that I wasn’t the Prince of your fairy tale, and now you say I’m humanity’s only hope.” He threw his head back, laughing hard and long before cutting it off with a curse under his breath.

“That Prince is merely symbolic. You’re better than that Prince. You’re what this world needs.”

“What this world needs, eh?” he echoed matteroffactly. “And what would that be?”

Nathaniel’s pale blue eyes were tinged with a cold sadness. He sighed. “Well, Gabriel,” he whispered, “that’s your choice, isn’t it?”

A popping noise, like a wine cork being pulled from its bottle, broke the silence. Michel, Genevieve, and Adele reverted to their young, beautiful, and ignorant selves. Gabriel sank back to the floor, perplexed and a little shaken.

“Monsieur Lennox,” Michel called, “does our chatter bore you?”

Gabriel shook his head and mumbled an apology. His host’s and his other guests’ eyes were fixed on him. He glanced at Nathaniel, who sat with a wide grin, his eyes like crescents.

“Tell me, Monsieur Lennox,” Michel went on, “do you like poetry?”

“Certainly,” Gabriel replied, “but I’m partial to those of the British vein.” He smiled then, but he knew that it hadn’t reached his eyes. He couldn’t shake the image of Michel, haggard and old.

Michel laughed, his fingertips brushing at his lips. “My wife is a lover of verses and the like. Genevieve, recite a poem.”

She arose, all grace and loveliness. She curtsied low to Gabriel and recited the first few lines, a poem Gabriel had heard before. They painted an image of a woman mourning her lover who had been buried under a willow tree. The words rose from his heart and he recited it with her:

“Black his cryne as the winter night, White his rode as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, All under the willow-tree
.” Gabriel paused, tilting his head to the side. “Chatterton’s ‘Song from Aella.’”

“You, too, are fond of Chatterton, monsieur?” Genevieve asked.

“I suppose I am.”

“Good. Then we’re similar creatures.”

“Come to think of it,” Adele said, “he rather resembles Milais’s Chatterton. Don’t you think so, Genevieve?”

Gabriel caught Genevieve’s quick, furtive glance. He reasoned that she couldn’t look at him long, unless she wanted to give herself away. How ironic that her actions screamed the obvious: I want you, Gabriel.

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.

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 senses, 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?”