Lailah (The Styclar Saga) (15 page)

I was sitting once more atop the haystack, hiding in the far corner. Gabriel sat behind me, my back lying flush to his chest, resting in his arms.

The white king lay horizontal and the other characters were scattered in a small heap next to the thick wood. An overwhelming sense of joy filled me and I realized that I was starting to feel what Gabriel had felt in that moment. I was suddenly intensely aware of a sensation of desperate longing. Had he joined in, so I could feel how he had felt and experience this the way he had?

I wasn’t sure, but I became, in that split second, more certain than I had been about anything else. He had loved me!

I homed in on us, Gabriel weaving his fingers through the ends of my long hair, my eyes closed. Skimming his hands down my arms in front of him, he tickled them, grazing his fingertips along my pale skin.

He breathed into my neck as he nuzzled into me lovingly. I viewed him stroking my face, engulfed in light and happiness. My former self opened her eyes and I knew that I had been pretending to sleep. As he gazed adoringly into my eyes, a tremendous ache gripped my heart. He had pined for me so deeply.

The tips of our noses brushed together before finally our lips met. It was a deep lingering kiss. The kiss of two lovers. It was so strange experiencing the emotion of our first embrace from Gabriel’s perspective, but not at all unsettling. I was elated by it on every possible level. As our lips parted the memory froze, suspended in that last image.

Lailah.

Time to go back. I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to see what happened next.

Lailah.
He was calling me out, back to the now. But I preferred it there, in the past. By all accounts, it seemed far less complicated.

It’s time to come back.…

I still held on, staring at that last image.

Lailah …
He called my name differently this time, reaching and pulling me out.

I found myself back in the library, hand still cupping the pawn, Gabriel’s still resting on top. I flicked my wide eyes to his.

Entirely enchanted by him, I couldn’t stop smiling.

TEN

“
W
E WERE A COUPLE BACK THEN?”
I asked finally.

Removing his hand from off the top of mine, he shifted in his chair, taking his time to respond. “Yes and no. The first time I met you, I was completely and utterly captivated and intrigued by you.”

“By me?” I found that difficult to believe. I had never considered myself anything special and Gabriel was so unique and beautiful.

“Yes, by you. Don’t seem so surprised! You were innocent and so full of life. Everything about you captured me. I manufactured ways of bumping into you, and reasons for us to spend time together. But even back then there were … complications.”

His smile fell away and the creases in his forehead made a reappearance.

“What complications? That you were an Angel?”

“Well, that was an issue in itself, but you didn’t know I was an Angel. I was going to tell you, tell you everything, but I was too late.” His face dropped and his body tensed.

Perhaps it was wrong but I tried to connect to him; I hoped he was still open from what we had just seen together. He instantly seized up.

“What are you doing?” he asked. I could tell he wasn’t happy, but his words were still soft.

“I just want to understand. Why don’t you show me what happened?”

“There are some things I never want you to see, and I won’t be the one to show you.”

He seemed to be trying to protect me, but I couldn’t help feeling frustrated. This had been my life as much as it had been his. I was entitled to know all of it, not just the bits he deemed appropriate to share.

His expression cooled as he gathered himself. “There were a number of situations that made things difficult. I don’t want to go through all that now. I just wanted you to feel the happiness we shared back then. You need answers, but that’s enough for now.”

I screwed up my face to protest, but I knew Gabriel meant what he said, and if that was all he was ready to reveal today, that was it. Instead, I tried to be grateful for the memories and feelings he had given back to me.

“That said, I think I should teach you to play again.”

The grin returned to his expression and he nodded at the soldiers who were prepared for battle in front of us. His face lit up brightly again as I conceded.

“Ruadhan will take you for a tour of the village at twelve, so we have a couple of hours.”

“You kept this all those years?” I asked quietly as I concentrated on the pieces in front of me.

I was immediately drawn to the knight.

“I hid it for all those years, yes.” Gabriel unbuttoned his cardigan and rolled up his sleeves. He meant business.

“Let’s start with the characters, shall we?”

He spent the next hour naming each chess piece and explaining how they could move and what the rules of the game were. Although it all seemed new to me, I found myself moving some of the pieces instinctively.

As he continued the chess lesson, my mind wandered and his words echoed around it. I was mortal when he met me. Then I had died and returned, a different girl than who he had fallen in love with all those years ago. I was changed forever and I couldn’t be sure myself if any remnants of the innocent Lailah were left.

I watched how delicately Gabriel handled the pieces. I could barely bring myself to take my eyes off him. Finally, checking his watch, he signaled that it was time to finish our game for the morning.

He began packing the characters up and I cradled the knight in my hand; the cold ivory was so smooth to touch. I hid it carefully in the box and Gabriel placed it back under the floorboards.

He wrapped his arm around my waist and whisked me from the library to a patient Ruadhan, who was standing at attention in the kitchen.

“Hi, Cessie, you ready to go for a walk?” he said.

“Yes, that would be lovely.” I grabbed my jacket and looped my satchel over my shoulder before turning to say good-bye to Gabriel. “What will you be up to while I’m gone?” I asked.

I wondered if he would follow on this particular outing.

“Ruadhan will take good care of you. Michael and I have some things to catch up on.”

I took that to mean that he trusted Ruadhan, unlike Brooke. And I had to remind myself that he was working to make sure the Purebloods and their Vampires were not hot on our heels.

“Okay,” I replied, sending a grateful look his way.

As we left the kitchen, Gabriel called, throwing me an apple.

I caught it one-handed.

“A late breakfast snack?” he suggested.

I actually wasn’t hungry, I’d never had much of an appetite, but I tucked it away in my handbag anyway.

As we stepped onto the driveway I could sense Gabriel’s reluctance to let me go, but clearly he thought it was good for me—even if he didn’t like it. And he needed time to strategize with Michael.

We made our way down the drive and onto the road. It was a long walk to the village; I was quickly learning this group liked to maintain its distance and privacy. I took the opportunity to take in Ruadhan properly. In his late forties in human years, he was certainly very elegant, wearing a tweed jacket over pressed trousers and leather shoes. His dark hair had flecks of gray running through it at the temples and he had bushy eyebrows of the same color. His pale skin had faint freckles across the cheeks and over his nose, and he had a small bit of stubble on his chin.

We made idle chitchat until we eventually reached the local church and cemetery. Guiding me around, he explained his Irish Catholic heritage.

“Do you still believe in God, after what happened to you?” I asked as we moved slowly down the church aisle. Ruadhan was admiring the images in the stained-glass windows.

“If anything I believe now more than I ever did. The Purebloods came from Hell, and Gabriel came to us from Heaven,” he said.

He bent his head in silent prayer at the foot of the altar before we ventured back outside.

Drifting through the cemetery in winter was eerie, but Ruadhan took his time, reading the inscriptions engraved into the headstones. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? To think I am more than a hundred years old, but yet here I am, and here they are.” He looked down at me. At over six feet tall and burly, he was quite impressive.

“But that is the normal order of things, Cessie. You will grow older and you will die one day, and that’s how it’s meant to be.”

He seemed humbled. Little did he know, I was actually far older than he was, and as far as I knew, I could never have an end of any kind.

We left the cemetery and walked down the narrow street, passing by a wide property that looked as though it dated back to the Tudor period.

“That was used as a school in the nineteen hundreds. It’s been converted into a house since,” he explained.

I could tell. It was an old-fashioned one-story building from a bygone era, with windows stretched from the bottom right to the very top. I could almost hear the excited children running and giggling as they stood in the playground waiting to go inside.

Opposite was a row of terraced cottages; they were all painted white with a short picket fence running the length of them. They were small, but looked very cozy. The properties were more clustered along the main road, but you could see farther back that the houses got bigger on the streets that continued off this one. We approached a tall sign that swung and creaked in the chilly wind; it featured a picture of a horse’s head surrounded by the words
THE WHITE HORSE
.

“Local boozer,” Ruadhan said.

We neared the entrance and the prospect filled me with pleasure: another single-story brick building, which looked more like someone’s home that had been converted than a purpose-built public house, with its old-fashioned black and white beams and array of benches outside sheltered by enormous umbrellas. Of course, no one was actually using them because it was freezing, but inside you could hear that the place was brimming with people.

Ruadhan offered to take me in and treat me to a Sunday lunch.

“Sure. That would be lovely, thanks,” I said as he chivalrously held the first of two doors open for me. I still didn’t have much of an appetite, but I wanted to go in and escape the frost for a while.

Stepping inside, I was suddenly reminded of the life I had been living up until recently. While the building and the thought of the families inside enjoying their Sunday dinners had initially made me feel warm inside, that sensation was quickly replaced with the cold reminder of the loneliness that I had come to associate with my existence in these places.

It was tightly packed and ahead of me was a large wooden bar with an overworked barman trying desperately to attend to five raucous customers at once. There were logs burning in an open fireplace, heating the whole room, which instantly took the edge off the chill. The room felt even more snug thanks to the low ceilings, and I noticed Ruadhan wasn’t far from hitting his head on the thick beams that ran the whole length of the room.

“If you walk down and to the right, there’s a set of double doors. They have another seating area out there covered by a tent with heaters; we’re more likely to get a table in there.”

“Okay, great.”

“What would you like?” he asked.

“I’m happy with anything, I’m not that fussy.”

“Aye, and what about to drink?”

“Just a juice, please,” I replied, and began squeezing through the standing patrons to reach the double doors.

Sure enough, a table at the far end was available, so I ventured over to claim it. I peered out of the clear plastic of the tent onto the sloping gardens at the back and glowed as I watched the children playing on the swings and running about with their dogs. It was charming and rustic; just how an English pub should be.

Ruadhan spotted me at the end of the tent and, joining me, placed a pretend saltshaker that said
TABLE 6
on it. Drinks in hand, he passed me a cranberry juice and plonked a pint of Guinness in front of himself.

I noted it curiously before asking, “Do you eat and drink normally?”

“Drink, yes; eat, no. Being a, well, you know … alcohol is actually far more intoxicating than it is to normal folks like you. Food, well, you know the score there. Luckily for you I have had years of practice on this stuff!” He laughed heartily as he guzzled his pint, leaving a frothy white mustache on his top lip. I giggled and wiped it away for him with a napkin.

“So tell me, Cessie, where are you from? Where are your parents?”

I hesitated a little before I replied. I had instantly liked Ruadhan, and I felt guilty for being dishonest with him. So I tried to stick to the truth as best as I could, just omitting some of the detail. “Well, not much to tell. I was orphaned, if you like. Always been on my own as far as I can remember. I was working in a pub in Creigiau when I came across Jonah on my way back home. You know the rest.…” I trailed off, taking a sip of my juice.

“Home? I went back there; it was more of a shell if you ask me. What’s a nice girl like you doing staying somewhere like that?”

I’d forgotten that he had gone back in search of my things.

“Well, I don’t have any family. I wasn’t making much money, and that house was just sitting there.…” I said. “And what about you? I bet you have a much more interesting story than mine.” I wanted to change the subject, but he seemed unnerved as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I’m from the Emerald Isle originally. ’Course you probably gathered that.” He paused for a moment, slurping his beer while he considered the rest of his story. “I wasn’t a young man when I was turned, and served for over ten years before Gabriel found me. He saved me from my Gualtiero and he helped me rediscover my humanity.”

His face became drenched in regret and sorrow; I would have thought being saved would evoke a different emotion. I leaned in, hoping he’d tell me more.

“Gabriel saved me, but I had trouble adjusting. When I was changed, I was taken away from my wife and daughter. Gabriel told me I couldn’t risk returning to them. He said I wasn’t ready. But I didn’t listen.”