Gabriel (17 page)

He bent down, reaching for the bottle on the floor and discarding his glass. Sitting back straight, he moved his hand from my waist and unscrewed the bottle cap before taking a swig, half of it missing his mouth.

“They'll find out anyway. It's only a matter of time,” I insisted.

“And you need all the time you can get. I'm not going to take that from you.”

He took another gulp, but his body rejected the vodka and he spat it out. The bottle fell from between his fingers and bounced noisily, spilling its contents across the floor as Jonah struggled to find any air.

“Jonah!”

Panicked, I took my wrist, and for the first time in this new body of mine I willed my fangs to appear. I tore a strip down my wrist and, pushing the skin together, I helped my blood to bubble to the surface. I hoped his senses were not so far gone that the smell of my blood wouldn't cause a reaction. I needed it to overpower his desire to protect me.

Still straddling him, I felt his brittle bones strain under my weight as I thrust my hand to his mouth. At first he didn't react; he remained perfectly still and I thought for a moment that he was already gone.

But then his hand slapped over my wrist and he clutched it tightly. Finding some strength, he drew me close so that I was nose-to-nose with him. I nodded encouragingly as he held my arm suspended in the air.

“I can't risk you. I would never risk you.” Slowly, one by one, he uncurled his fingers, and moved my palm against his cheek. He nuzzled it, straining to breathe in my fragrance. “There is only one thing I want you to do for me, Lailah.…”

I suddenly couldn't speak; a huge lump had formed in my throat.

“Let me die on your lips.”

He molded his mouth to mine.

It was the sweetest form of torture: an impossible kiss, born brilliant but doomed to die.

Who was I to Jonah that he would ask this of me? Trying to join the dots in my mind with this line of thought only caused more creases, but then they seemed to iron out as his trembling body held mine.

Finally, I just stopped thinking altogether and began feeling instead.

I was overcome with emotion as my lips pressed to his, my breath rasping in the back of my throat. I felt that if I parted with my own breath, it might replace his last and keep him alive.

Every tear that now gushed rained the forgotten memories of his touch. As though he had been a melody playing in the back of my mind, his lips against mine now shaped the words that I hadn't been able to remember.

His laughter surfaced through my mind. The way his kiss had once tasted sweet. And, though he wasn't wearing it, I could almost smell his sultry fragrance of woods in summertime. And then an image of his face; his bad-boy exterior crumbling away as his lips curved into a seldom-seen sincere smile; the glimmer in his eyes offering me a light in which to see him through the darkness, revealing who he really was to me.

And just as I recognized him, he was preparing to once again become only a distant memory.

I wasn't going to let that happen.

I broke away. “No. You're not going to die. Just this one day, nobody dies.”

 

FOURTEEN

I
LAUNCHED MYSELF OFF
Jonah's lap and flicked on a lamp next to the window. I had to persuade him now.

“Jonah, just breathe,” I begged.

“I always get the last word in the end. Stop fighting me.” He argued through gritted teeth. He grabbed me by the elastic in my shorts and tried to use my lips as the white flag of his surrender to death. And then he stopped.

He tilted his head, letting the glow of the lamp illuminate the side of my face. “W-w-what happened to your eye?” he said, panting.

Struggling to sit up, he gently stroked his thumb over my lashes before placing his index finger under my chin and nudging my face back up.

“When?” He was practically whispering, and I knew that every word he used on me was a wasted breath.

I didn't want to answer him; my mind was reeling, knowing that there was nothing I could say that would make him take my blood willingly. I was lost, caught in my own rising desperation, when the door started banging angrily.

Brooke.

Jonah jerked forward in alarm and reached for his knife. I got to it first.

Then I knew what I had to do.

“There was something outside the house; it attacked me,” I lied, gesturing toward my eye. “I think it got in. I'm going out there. I'm going to protect you.”

I made my way to the door and I heard him fall to the floor.

“N-n-no,” he stuttered, clawing his way across the hardwood as I raced away from him.

I flew through the door, slamming it firmly behind me. Brooke stood alone; there was no one else in sight.

“Who's here?” I whispered.

“No one. It felt like he was slipping away and I had to know what was happening.”

I remembered then that Jonah had created Brooke; she was connected to him through his blood and fed on him to survive.

“Where's Gabriel?” The words left my lips so fast that no human being could have understood. I whipped Brooke's sunglasses from off her head, chucking them across the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Speedily, I pulled out her hair clips, which were pinning back her bangs, and parted the curls over her shoulders. “I said, where's Gabriel?”

“He left, went to join Ruadhan on patrol. He said he wanted you to say your good-byes in private. Seriously, what are you doing, he's dying in there!”

“Shhhh…” I put my finger on her lips and signaled for her to remove her top.

I reached out for Gabriel in my mind, but sure enough he'd put up his sheet of light. I decided it was probably best if I took a leaf out of his book. With what was about to unfold, it would be better if he couldn't sense me if he did try to tune in.

“I need you to swap your clothes with mine and, in a minute, I need you to run into that room. I'm going to chase and then attack you. Do you understand?”

“No. Explain.”

“No time. Do you want him to live?”

She didn't ask any more questions.

We changed clothes at lightning speed.

“Hair. Cut it off above my neck. Now,” I instructed, sliding the blade from its holder.

Brooke bounced back a little, realizing that it was cast in silver. I passed it to her so that she was touching only the steel base, feeling a little woozy from its proximity now that it was free from the sheath.

She did as I asked, tugging it through my thick hair. As my long, confused waves cascaded down to the marble floor, I frowned. I didn't have time to feel upset over such a stupid thing; it was just hair. Yet I knew, in that moment, that I was taking yet another step away from being able to recognize the reflection in the mirror.

Ready, I tucked my crystal gem inside Brooke's hooded top, now on me, and nodded to her.

She stood in front of me in the skimpy pajama set, her jet-black curls bobbing down nearly as far as her belly button.

If she ran fast, he wouldn't know it was her; he would think it was me.

“Don't let him see your face.”

Brooke did as I asked. Taking a run-up to the door, she burst through it, lumps of wood crashing down to the floor. I bolted after her and careened around the room in pursuit, deliberately knocking over the bookcases and creating chaos.

It was only then, as I slammed into an antique writing bureau and broke it clean in half, that I saw my chess set on a table in the corner of the room. The heavy ivory pieces stood poised, ready for a new battle on the checked board. I felt breathless as the unthinkable occurred to me: Only ever for the briefest of moments could Gabriel and I be in the same space, at the same time; and only ever when one of us was taking something from the other.

My attention refocused as Jonah whimpered my name. He was now halfway across the room, struggling to stand. He tried to push himself up off the floor, only to fall back down to his knees.

I growled and hissed and allowed a sharp shriek to escape my lungs.

I hoped I had done enough to convince him that I was a Vampire intruder, wishing that his impaired senses would aid me in my deception.

I needed him to believe that I was about to end Lailah.

I grabbed Brooke by the back of her hair and threw her out of the doorway, Jonah's blade falling from her grip and plinking off the floor. The sight of it falling from her hands provided yet more assurance to Jonah that she was me.

I stepped over the strips of the caved-in door. Bending down slowly, I reached for a sharp piece of wood and knelt with my back to him. I made it appear as though I were about to spring up and rush after her, ready to stab her in the chest.

I took my time scooping the piece of wood from the floor, trying to listen to see if I could hear him breathing—praying that he still was.

Relief washed over me as I felt Jonah's arm wrap around me from behind, pulling my back into his chest. Thinking that it would be his last stand, he found one final bout of energy.

I hadn't accounted for him picking up the silver blade, and I wished for a moment that I'd had more time to consider it as he plunged it into my side.

His arm over my shoulder, he used me in part to hold himself up, thrusting the knife repeatedly through my skin. My body convulsed, jolting forward each time it left me, bile rising up my throat. But with each strike he kept me held firmly against him, and it felt like acid was coursing through my body. I didn't dare scream or shout; I couldn't afford to give him any indication that I was me.

It felt like I had become the outlet for the last of his unspent wrath as he assaulted me with lashings of loathing, perhaps for what he was. He was hissing with hatred, presumably meant for the Pureblood that had made him this way, and he was raging at the recklessness of his inner demons that perhaps, through his existence, he had struggled to silence.

But no matter what he did, he couldn't cause me any greater pain than making me witness his end.

I think that was the moment I truly knew it.

I wasn't just trying to save a member of this family, a protector, or even my best friend.

No. Only love hurt like this.

I held on to that very thought while my insides burned, my skin blackened, and my body writhed against his chest.

Finally he stopped. No more indignation left, he was ready to end me.

He dropped the blade, grappling now for the sharpened piece of wood that I was still barely clinging to. He grazed my skin as he wrenched it from my grasp, and automatically I reached for his hand, my own quivering as he knocked it back.

He raised the stake in the air, high above my chest, and at the same moment he bit into my throat, his fangs splitting and tearing the skin of my neck. I coughed and spluttered, my blood bubbling over my lips and dribbling down my chin. But, just then, I heard the most wonderful sound in the world: Jonah swallowing my blood.

I wasn't sure whether he had recognized my taste or whether, as he glanced up, ready to ram the stake through my heart, he'd caught sight of my damaged eyelid. Either way, his straining fingers released the piece of wood and it fell, clattering to the floor.

His fangs started to loosen, as though he was trying to let go, and so I reached for the back of his head and summoned any remaining strength to rise up. I tilted my face so that my free-flowing blood would continue to meet the back of his throat.

He became a passing tide, lapping up the sands of my shore, taking part of me with him. Forming a cherry opal gem, he would wear me, a dead weight around his neck, for the rest of his existence—or mine.

He wouldn't be able to stop now; it was too late for that. And I was glad.

I allowed a small scream to escape my lungs, shrill and agonized. Crimson tears stained my cheeks.

My blood had already merged with his and entered his system. He moaned next to my ear, and I was sure it wasn't out of fulfillment; it was pain, realizing that it was me who sat in his lap. Anguish sounded in his sobs as he registered what he'd done—aware now that I had fooled him into doing the one thing he would have died to avoid doing.

My legs went numb, my chest was tight, and the world around me was dark. Then, what felt like an upsurge of electricity suddenly sparked through me to Jonah. A short, sharp shock of white light passed between us, and he released me.

This wasn't the first time I had experienced that sensation. Jonah needed to feed off the dark energy in my blood to be able to heal himself, and somehow he was able to take only what he needed from me. The spike of white light had stopped him from drinking me to an end the first time we'd met, and it had stopped him now. I didn't know how or why it came, but I was grateful for it. But this time I was different. And the price of saving Jonah would end up costing me far more than I had imagined.

My face met the floor, and I saw, though at an odd angle, Brooke, cross-legged at the end of the hall. She was frozen to the spot like a beautiful little Buddha.

Everything was quiet. No one shouted for help, no one moved, and I listened now only to the rise and fall of Jonah's chest somewhere behind where I lay.

I was oddly serene. Only I could have saved him, and I had. He couldn't fight, so I had done it for him. I had to tell death, “Not today; never today.”

And, for once, death had obeyed.

*   *   *

I
DIDN'T KNOW HOW
long Gabriel had been with me, but I found myself now enveloped in his arms.

I could see why images of Angels were depicted with perfect porcelain faces surrounded by bright light, guiding the souls of humans in death; we could have been a painting. His glow raced around me, gliding over every inch of my aching body.

It didn't heal me completely.

He couldn't take away the fiery affliction riding up and down my torso. It had been caused by silver; his light couldn't repair it. And so he carried me as my arms fell limp and my fingers drifted toward the floor.