Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) (7 page)

“Why, Lady Genevieve Dele-something-or-other. She has a message for you.”

Gabriel’s heart sped up.

Out of his pants pocket, the boy slipped an envelope sealed with a red wax insignia. “Here you are, my lord.”

He took it and stared at Genevieve’s invitation before thanking her messenger and sending him on his way with a generous tip.

The envelope smelled of perfume, and the words were scrawled in red ink upon white paper. The word “urgent” held his attention. The ink had smudged before it dried so that it looked like blood. She had signed it with an elegant “G.”

Urgent? What could she possibly need or want? Gabriel tucked the letter into his frock coat.

“What is it?” asked Nathaniel at his back.

“I don’t know yet.” He began walking back toward the direction of her home, a series of suspicious thoughts steering him closer to a confrontation he didn’t look forward to. The sooner he arrived, the better. What did she want from him?

He told neither Colin nor Nathaniel where he was going, and they didn’t ask.

He traversed several streets before he heard a voice calling his name. He stopped and turned around to see Genevieve standing beneath a tree, her lacy, gloved hand beckoning to him. It seemed as if she wasn’t the only impatient one. He assumed she had rushed out of her home to meet him along the way. How lovely she looked, her blonde hair brushed back in an elegant chignon and her blue-green eyes large and innocent.

She almost looked afraid.

Afraid of what?

Eve must have looked this way when she tempted Adam to taste the Forbidden. All Genevieve needed to make the image complete was a piece of fruit. And she should not be clothed.

He had once thought Adam foolish. Now, he wasn’t certain.

He closed the space between them.

* * *

The setting sun looked like a dragon’s eye twinkling in a haze of clouds. Genevieve took Gabriel’s bare palm in her gloved hand.

“The mist,” she said, “is beautiful.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t understand why she thought that the heavily contaminated yellow-brown fog looked beautiful. A perfect example of looking through rose-colored glasses.

“I hoped I’d see you.” She smiled. “Come with me.”

In silence, Gabriel let her lead him to her home. While passing through the hallways and rooms, Gabriel concluded that he and Genevieve were the only ones present. Why? Had she sent everyone away?

Naturally.

“Where’s Michel?” he asked, adding curtly, “your husband.” He slipped his palm out of the warmth of her hand, stepping away to gaze at her from a distance. Her eyes were shadowed, as if she had been crying or had been deprived of sleep.

Genevieve raised and lowered her shoulders in a sigh. She walked over to a glass cabinet filled with crystal, wines, and various liqueurs. “Would you like some wine, Monsieur Lennox?” she asked, already pouring a glass.

He refused.

She sauntered over to the sofa with the full glass in her hand, a smile on her face. She traced her fingers over the fabric before sitting down on it. Her smile deepened when he sat down beside her.

“Your letter expressed an urgency,” Gabriel said. “I insist that you tell me the nature of it.”

At once, she drained her glass. Her eyes glazed over. Without saying anything, she sat there, holding the glass with both hands, and then lowered it to her lap.

Only then did he notice that her hands were trembling.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and watery. “I had a dream about you.”

Gabriel leaned in closer, not wanting to miss a single word. “About me?”

“You came to me in the night. You—
you
ravished me.” She paused. The glass slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. The delicate stem broke off; the red wine soaked into the carpet. “I want it to be real. Love me, Gabriel. Please.” She slid closer to him and held his face in her hands. She brought him close and kissed him full on the mouth. “Just once.”

Gabriel took her hands and placed them back in her lap. Rising from the sofa, he walked over to the window, shaken. She tasted sweet as honeydew. He wanted her—yet something held him back. Something more than her marriage served as a wedge between them. “A fantasy. Nothing more .Besides,” he continued, “how do you know that it was I?”

“I saw
your
eyes. As green as emeralds.” Her voice became softer with each word. “The dream; it’s difficult for me to describe and explain. I have never dreamed something so vivid. So real.” She shook noticeably and held herself.

“But, madam, you are Michel’s wife.” Gabriel kept his tone carefully nonchalant, rejecting what she had offered.

Her mouth spread into a devious smile. “And he is my husband. What of it?” Then she laughed, low and deep, uncrossing her legs.

He tilted his head to one side, one hand propped underneath his chin, as if poised in deep thought.

Genevieve sauntered over to him, slid her hands down the column of his throat and chest. When Gabriel tried to dodge her advances, her long nails grazed him. She murmured an apology and something trivial about him making her clumsy. She raised her fingers to his face, showing him her nails stained with his blood

“You drew blood.” Gabriel’s casualness edged away into warning.

Her eyes widened, looking like drowning blue pools. “Blood. Does it arouse you?”

Gabriel roughly took her hands, pulling them down to her sides. He gave her no time to consider her inhibitions and laid her down on the plush, carpeted floor. Her pink lips parted in a look of astonishment, as he began to kiss the backs of her hands and the side of her face. She closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against his, laughing. He left a trail of warm kisses on her collarbone and the shallow crevice between her breasts. He slipped the top of her gown off her breasts, and with the pointed tip of his tongue, licked the nipples into erect points. As she whimpered with pleasure from the back of her throat, he felt the sharpness of his fangs sliding out of their sheaths.

He slipped away from her.

Her eyes snapped wide open and filled with disappointment. It couldn’t have been anything else.

He felt the sensual spell he had touched her with break into pieces and dissolve in the span of a breath, after he pulled away.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her breathing ragged.

Gabriel’s heart beat faster, he had to take some time to catch his breath. Did her body ache to continue, to climax, to be alleviated? His teeth tingled; he swallowed hard, willing his fangs to retract.

“I’m leaving, Madame.” He couldn’t risk remaining longer. It must seem to her that the intimate encounter hadn’t affected him in the least. If only she knew.

She stood up and pulled her dress straight. “Why must you be this way?” Her whisper came out high and shrill. “No man has ever denied me.”

They weren’t men, Gabriel thought. What kind of man seduces another man’s wife? “Perhaps,” he said, “I should apprise your husband of this matter.”

The rosy color in Genevieve’s face drained immediately. “Please. You mustn’t. If he finds out, he will leave me. I’ll be destitute.” Breaking into tears, she covered her face. “I would be better off dead!”

He stepped forward. To comfort her—to do something. But when he touched her, she screamed. “Don’t you dare touch me now!”

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.

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 smiled 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 again!” 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.