It had taken less time to grow accustomed to the change in men's attire. His clothing was sadly outdated, his flowing cloak no longer in style. He glanced down at the black T-shirt and snug-fitting jeans he now wore. He had to admit there was a certain comfort to these clothes that he liked, though they seemed shoddy when compared to the fine wools and linens he had once been accustomed to.
Yes, the world had changed. At first, he had been sorely tempted to go to ground again, certain that a 493-year-old vampire would never be able to adapt to such a fast-paced life.
But then he had discovered there were hordes of homeless people living on the city streets, men and women who would never be missed. A human buffet of sorts, he mused with a wry grin. Had he been so inclined, he could have killed and feasted every night without fear of reprisal.
He turned his back on the view and stared through the sliding glass door that led into the dark house beyond. Dark, he thought, like his life.
She had been dead for more than half a century, yet he felt her loss as keenly as if she had passed away only the day before.
Sara Jayne. If she had ever regretted her decision to spend her life with him, she had never admitted it.
As the years began to take their toll, he had begged her to accept the Dark Gift, but she had steadfastly refused. He had watched her grow old, watched her hair turn gray and her eyes grow dim while he stayed forever young, and yet he had loved her till the day she died, loved her wholly and completely. Toward the end, when he knew she had only hours left, he had begged her to pray for him, to ask whatever deity she believed in to be merciful to him.
They had shared 54 years together before she died in his arms. Even then Sara's last thought had been for him. Remembering how alone he had been when he first came to her in the orphanage, she had implored him to forgive her for leaving him behind, had urged him to find someone else to love.
He had buried her in the small graveyard behind the castle, in the coffin he had never used. And because he could not bear to leave her there, alone in the darkness, because he could not bear to face the world without her, he had taken care of his financial affairs, sold all his property save the castle, and then burrowed into the ground beside the casket that held her remains. He had slept there for over fifty years, sleeping away the years in the hope that the pain of her loss would have lessened when he emerged again.
It had been a futile hope; he had risen to a changed world, but his grief remained the same.
Now, gazing up at the stars, he imagined his Sara in heaven, smiling and serene, forever young, forever beautiful.
More than once, steeped in loneliness and despair, he had considered ending his existence; had he believed he had any chance at all of being reunited with Sara, he would have walked out into the sunlight years ago.
But he knew that nothing good awaited him when his existence finally ended. The best he could hope for was eternal darkness; his worst fear was that he would meet Nina in the bowels of an endless, fiery, unforgiving hell.
Upon rising from the earth, he had spent a month in the castle, but the emptiness, the loneliness, the knowledge that she was forever gone, had weighed heavily upon him. It had been torment of the worst kind to walk through the rooms she had brightened with her laughter and know she would never return, to know that she would never again be there, smiling to greet him when he rose each evening. He had arranged with a lawyer to handle his financial affairs as needed, and closed the castle.
He had spent his last night in Salamanca kneeling at Sara's graveside, bidding her a silent farewell as he relived the precious years they had spent together, and then he had fled Salamanca.
For a time, he had wandered from country to country, marveling at the changes that had taken place in the world while he had rested in the earth. Empires had crumbled, civilizations had disappeared, countries that had once been enemies had become allies. There had been much to learn, and for a time he had managed to bury his grief in the need to know. But the emptiness remained.
With a sigh, he shook his morbid thoughts from his mind. It was getting late, and the hunger was gnawing at his insides.
That, at least, had not changed.
She was there again, sitting alone on the gray stone bench, with only the moon for company. He had seen her in the small neighborhood park located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac every night for the past week, felt himself drawn to her without knowing why. Perhaps it was the golden color of her hair, or simply the knowledge that she looked as lost and alone as he felt.
Tonight, she was crying. Silent tears washed down her cheeks as she stared at the swings silhouetted in the darkness. He noticed she made no move to wipe the tears away, only sat there in the dark, looking forlorn.
Before he quite realized what he was doing, he found himself walking toward her.
She looked up, startled, as he sat down beside her. He saw the sudden panic that flared in the depths of her dark brown eyes as she started to rise.
He placed a restraining hand on her arm. "Don't go," he said quietly.
She stared at him, her heart pounding wildly.
"Please," he said.
She shivered at the sound of his voice. It was deep and sexy and inexplicably sad. "Who are you?" She stared at his hand, alarmed by the strength of his grip. "What do you want?"
"I mean you no harm."
"Then let me go."
He held her a moment longer, then released his hold on her arm. "Stay a while," he urged.
"Why?" She glanced around, reassured by the presence of other people nearby. "What do you want from me?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. I saw you crying, and… you reminded me of someone I knew a long time ago."
She made a soft sound of disdain. "That's the oldest line in the book."
"So it is," he agreed with a wry grin. "It was old even when I was young."
She sniffed, wiping the tears from her eyes so she could see him more clearly. "You don't look so old to me."
"I'm older than you think," he replied ruefully. "Tell me, why do you weep?"
"Weep?" She laughed softly. In all her 23 years, she'd never heard anyone use that word except in books.
"You're crying," he said persistently. "Why?"
"Why do you care? You don't even know me."
He shrugged, bewildered by his attraction to this strange woman. And yet there was something about her that drew him, some indefinable essence that reminded him of Sara Jayne.
"I've seen you sitting here every night for the past week," he said with a shrug.
"Oh?"
He nodded. "I like to walk through the park in the evening," he said, his gaze lingering on the pulse throbbing in her throat.
"Don't you know it's not safe to wander around after dark in L.A.?"
"Don't you?"
"Maybe I'm hoping some pervert will come along and do me in," she retorted.
"Do you in?" He frowned at her as he sought to comprehend her meaning. Language, too, had changed drastically in the last half-century.
"Kill me," she said bluntly.
"You're not serious?"
She shrugged. "Maybe I am. Maybe I'm tired of living."
"You're so young," he muttered. "How could you possibly be tired of living?"
"Maybe because I've got nothing to live for."
She stared at the concrete path beneath her feet, wishing she had never been born. Everyone she had ever loved was dead. Why hadn't she died, too? What was there to live for now? A rainy night, a drunk driver, and she had lost her parents, her husband, her baby daughter.
"What's your name?" he asked. But he knew, knew what it would be even before she spoke.
"Sarah. What's yours?"
He hesitated a moment. "Gabriel."
"Well, Gabriel, it was nice to meet you, but I think I'll be going now."
"Will you be here tomorrow night?"
"I don't think so."
He watched her walk away, felt the pain and the despair that engulfed her, the all-encompassing sense of loneliness.
"Sarah, wait."
With an impatient sigh, she turned around, waiting for him to catch up with her. He was a tall man, with long black hair and dark gray eyes. He had the look of a foreigner, she thought, though she had detected no accent in his voice. Spanish, or maybe Italian, she decided, but she didn't really care.
"What do you want now?" she asked.
"Let me walk you home."
"Listen, Gabriel, I guess you're trying to be nice, but I'm really not in the mood for company, so why don't you just go away and leave me alone?"
"Very well," Gabriel said. Taking her hand, he bowed over it. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."
Sarah stared after him as he walked away, bewildered by his old-world courtliness. She took a few steps, then turned back, intending to apologize for her rudeness, but it was too late. He was gone.
She glanced around, wondering how he had disappeared so quickly, and then, with a sigh, she walked home, back to the quiet four-bedroom house that had once symbolized everything she held dear; a house that was empty now, as empty as her life.
Inside, she sat in the front room, sitting in the dark as she had every night since she got home from the hospital. She couldn't make herself sleep in the king-size bed she had shared with David, couldn't make herself go into the nursery. She didn't answer the phone, didn't open the mail, didn't turn on the television. She slept during the day so she wouldn't have to remember how full her life had once been.
Before the accident, each new day had been brimming with promise. On weekday mornings, she had spent a quiet half-hour with David before he went to work, packing his lunch, eating breakfast, kissing him good-bye. Shortly thereafter, Natalie would wake up, eager to be held. She'd been such a happy, contented baby, always smiling, her chubby fingers reaching out to grasp at life, eager to explore…
Sarah shook her head, willing the images away, not wanting to remember, unable to forget. She closed her eyes and the memory of a tiny white coffin resting amid three larger ones rose up to haunt her.
The tears came then, and she huddled in a corner of the sofa, steeped in misery, wishing the stranger she'd met in the park had been the depraved killer she had read about in the paper a few days before the accident. The woman in the story had claimed that a monster with red eyes had attacked her in an alley and bitten her in the neck. "Just like Dracula," she had claimed.
Sarah frowned. Perhaps, subconsciously, she'd been hoping to run into the blood-sucker when she started walking in the park at night.
Just before sleep claimed her, she found herself thinking of the strange man in the park. There had been a world of sadness in the depths of his dark gray eyes, but she had been too caught up in her own misery to spare a thought for his.
Now, on the brink of sleep, she wondered if he, too, had lost a loved one. If
he, too, had been wandering in the dark, searching for oblivion.
She dreamed of him that night, odd, fragmented dreams that made no sense upon awaking, but then, dreams never made sense in the cold light of day.
For a little while, she stared up at the ceiling, trying to remember what the dreams had been about, but all she could remember was the sound of his voice, lost and alone, whispering her name, and the sadness in his eyes, a sorrow that went beyond grief, beyond pain. An endless eternity of sadness, she thought.
Sarah glanced at the window, saw that it was almost dawn, and drew the covers up over her head, shutting out the light, turning her back on the memories that crowded in on her.
She went back to the park that night. Sitting on the hard stone bench, she stared at the swings, wondering why she did this to herself. On one level, she told herself she didn't want to remember, yet she came here every night and stared at the swing, remembering the sound of Natalie's laughter as her grandmother pushed her in the swing, higher and higher…
She knew he was there even before he appeared beside the bench. Looking up at him, she refused to admit that she had come to the park that night hoping to see him again.
"Good evening," Gabriel said. He gestured at the bench. "May I?"
She shrugged. "It's a free country."
He was wearing black again. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black cowboy boots. Somehow, she couldn't imagine him in any other color. He was dark and mysterious, like the night, she thought fancifully, and black suited him very well.
"How are you this evening, Sarah?" he asked, and his voice was warm and thick, like sun-baked honey.
"I'm all right."
Gabriel shook his head. "I don't think so."
"You don't know anything about me," she snapped.
"I know you're grieving."
"How do you know that?"
"I can feel your pain, Sarah, your sorrow."
"That's impossible."
"Is it? You've lost loved ones who were very dear to you. A husband, a child."
She stared at him, her dark brown eyes mirroring her confusion, her anxiety. "How can you possibly know that?"
He smiled faintly. "I have a talent for reading minds."
"I don't believe in that kind of thing."
"You lost your parents, too, and you feel guilty because they died and you didn't. You come here in the evening because your house is empty, and the nighttime hours are too long and too lonely."
He had frightened her now. He could see it in the sudden tensing of her shoulders, in the way she held herself, rigid and poised for flight.
"How can you know that?" she demanded, her anger overriding her fear.
"I told you, I have the ability to divine your thoughts."
"What am I thinking now?"
"You're wishing a policeman would come by."
Sarah laughed softly. "Not likely at this time of night. They're all at Winchell's having donuts and coffee."
He laughed with her, the first time he had laughed in years, and it felt good.
The smile transformed his face, and for the first time Sarah realized that he was quite a handsome man. Feeling as though she were being disloyal to David, she quickly put the thought from her mind.