Gabriel (29 page)

Clearly the crystals were worth something to his father, and I was curious to know what Darwin did. He had no idea what or who I was, other than a girl he'd made an acquaintanceship with one evening. I might be able to get some information out of him.

“Actually, I could spare five minutes.” I smiled.

“Wonderful.” Darwin was pleased, and he encouraged me to walk with him. As we passed the paintings on the wall, a particular portrait caught my attention.

Bodies lay strewn across a grassy verge, which was saturated in a thick red paste. In the background, a figure—entirely antithetical to the rest of the painting—looked onto the scene with bright-green, upside-down triangles for eyes. The figure's frame was boxy, and its head was too large for its body, painted as just a large white circle. The being's hands were dressed in black gloves, which were placed forward in front of its chest, palms spread wide. It was some sort of strange-looking robot, set among images of mankind, in what looked like a depiction of the apocalypse.

Most harrowing of all was the image at the center of the portrait, where a beam of white light shot up high into the sky, expelled from an indistinguishable blazing ball. The heinous painting made me halt.

“Awful, isn't it?” Darwin said. “It's been in the family for centuries. Despite the garishness of it, my father won't have it taken down. Story has it that a seer had a vision so disturbing it brought him to his knees. He said it foretold the end. He gouged pokers into his own eyes and then painted that blind.”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “Does your father think this depicts the end of all days? Is he particularly religious?”

Darwin shrugged. “More so than I am. He sees signs in things, hidden messages, or so he says. He believes in Heaven and Hell.”

“And you don't?” I couldn't remove my attention from the canvas.

“I think everyone is so busy looking at fluffy clouds, they ignore the stars,” he answered mysteriously.

“So no, then. No Heaven, no Hell—”

“In a way…” He cut me off, placing his hand to the dip in my back. “I'm a physicist, so what you call Heaven and Hell I like to think of as different worlds—dimensions, perhaps.” He paused, exerting a little pressure where his palm rested, encouraging me forward.

I wasn't expecting Darwin to say that. Did he actually know about the dimensions or was his suggestion just the theorist in him?

He continued, “Either way, something is going on out there on a far bigger scale.”

We drifted away from the painting.

Was he suggesting that beyond the dimensions, there was something
more
?

I asked slowly, “What do you mean?”

“The universe is infinite. Worlds, and the existence within them, simply reside in a small pocket of it. But even if the universe—in all its infinity—is the jacket, say, to which the pocket belongs, there is still something bigger walking around wearing that jacket.” He hesitated for a moment to check his phone, which had beeped twice, before continuing, “The universe itself is a logical enough place. It doesn't give without taking; all things within it must be equal. I could go on and on.… It's mankind who are illogical and unable to comprehend infinity in the first place, lacking the ability to process the very nature of it, let alone the meaning of it all.”

I found myself captured by Darwin's theory. “Do you think it's that impossible to comprehend? Do you think we will ever know the meaning?”

“I believe there is one perfect moment of clarity, when our minds become truly free. Where we see, hear, and know
everything
we were blind, deaf, and ignorant to. Where we find order in the entropy of infinity.”

Darwin stopped. “My office.” He pulled a key out of his pocket.

Stepping inside, there was an L-shaped desk that wrapped around the right-hand corner, only breaking to allow access to the terrace. A single bed was at the other end, perhaps for when he got too tired to make it to his actual room, assuming there was one; I couldn't imagine him entertaining women of his own creed in here. Beside it was what looked like a laboratory table, covered in cutting equipment, clamps, pliers, and a large microscope. The tiles around a log-burning fireplace were littered with books with titles referencing theoretical and experimental physics and string theory. Yet, despite the room having such a grown-up feel to it, there were framed posters of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
dominating the wall space, making the diploma and degree certificates barely noticeable amid all the sci-fi pictures.

“Have a seat. I'll fetch us a drink,” he said with a smile. “Don't you go anywhere.”

“I'll be here,” I replied, tottering into the middle of the room.

He leaned in over my shoulder and said, “I've heard that before.” And then he left, leaving me to amuse myself.

I noticed Darwin's certificate was crooked, and so I pottered over, straightening the frame. It read “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” in a large elaborate font across the top, conferring “Darwin B. B. Montmorency” a master of science in physics below, accompanied by a red stamp and various signatures on either side.

He was certainly a smart cookie.

I swept my gaze over the mahogany desk, where papers were strewn over every available inch. I pawed my neck, as an irritation rode over my skin. Curious, I walked over. Most of the documents were on letterhead displaying the CERN logo. I had heard of CERN; I remembered seeing something about it in a newspaper once—something to do with particles, underground caves, or some such. I hadn't understood it so had paid little attention.

I scanned the letter on the top, addressed to Darwin, and rather impolitely began reading the text. It talked about the Higgs boson and something called a singlet particle. None of it meant anything to me—it was über genius stuff—but what I did understand was the “thank-you” at the bottom of the letter: a thank-you for providing yet another crystal sphere for the collider, and a password made up of numbers 1.008/4.003—an access code to some sort of report. Was Darwin giving them crystals from Styclar-Plena? And if so, why?

“Here we go!” Darwin called out. With two champagne glasses in his hand, he kicked the door shut.

I took one and he tapped the top of my glass lightly with his, saying “Cheers!” and I necked the bubbles in one go, desperately needing something to coat my throat. As long as I had only one or two glasses at a time, and then left a sufficient gap, I could ease the pain without getting tipsy.

“You're eager. I should have perhaps brought the tray,” Darwin said, gripping the stem of his flute with his thumb and index finger.

“Perhaps you should have. What's all this? It looks terribly official.”

“Have you heard of the Hadron Collider in Switzerland?” he asked, sipping champagne. “You must have seen it on the news a few years ago. You know, lots of boring scientists smashing together particles in search of the elusive Higgs boson?”

I shook my head.

Darwin drew a breath. “The Higgs boson is a particle; it gives mass to matter. For years and years, the best minds in the world have been trying to prove its existence. The press that was released explained that they thought they had in fact now found it using the collider.”

“Oh, okay, very good.” My mind whizzed, trying to connect what he was telling me with the mention of the crystals Darwin had donated to CERN.

“No, not very good—phenomenal!” He threw his hands in the air. “Okay, what if I told you that, in all these years no one could find it, prove it, let alone harness it? What if I told you that I have
helped
by providing CERN with, well, objects that they wouldn't otherwise have known about?”

“Right…” Crystals.
You gave them crystals from another world, another dimension, but why?

Darwin pulled out his desk chair and gestured for me to sit. Thinking that perhaps I was completely inept and wanting to impress me with his cleverness, he continued, “They tested them in the collider, and they found the Higgs boson.”

His gaze once again drifted down to my chest, eyeing my own crystal.

My mind spun as he finished with a dramatic flair, “They found Higgs boson—or the God particle, if you will—within the object.”

The God particle? In the crystals?

“You want to know something even more special?”

“Yes,” I said.

Darwin pulled around an additional chair from behind his laboratory table and stalled for dramatic tension. “They found the singlet particle.”

I didn't know what the singlet particle was or how it related to the gems from Styclar-Plena.

He pushed his glasses to the top of his nose. “The singlet particle, if harnessed, can allow an object, perhaps even a person, to travel through space and time. We're not ready to go public yet, not until we can stabilize the particles.”

I tried to make sense of what Darwin was telling me. The Arch Angels were born organically from the crystal's light; they could travel through the dimensions and retain their abilities on Earth without the need for a crystal. The crystals only aided them in commanding the rifts to form. But the Descendants needed the crystals, and I was created as a Descendant. Yet I glowed just as the Arch Angels would in the sun's presence, without the gem around my neck. Did that mean that these particles Darwin was referring to existed within them, and for some reason within me? Was that why we could pass between the dimensions—the worlds—that existed at a different rate of time and in a different state altogether?

“So what exactly are you saying?” I asked carefully.

Darwin tipped back the last of his bubbles, and raising the glass in the air, he said, “It means we have found a way to travel through time, through different dimensions. The possibilities are endless, Cessie.” He clinked his glass with mine, and I remembered that he knew me by that name—the one I thought was mine when I met him.

“And that's what they're doing, experimenting?” I wondered aloud.

“No. The—” He hesitated. “The objects I've provided them with only had residue elements. They were able to identify the particles, but they were not strong enough to remain in an active state for more than a fraction of a second. I'm looking for more of them and hoping to find one that has more active elements present. If I could find one that was fully charged, there's no telling what we could do.”

No telling what we could do indeed … Take a fully loaded working crystal, extract the particles, and we could potentially open the rifts to the first dimension and then disappear into white light as we walked through. Worse still, we could cause some huge explosion in caves under the earth and what—have the dimensions overlap and wipe out humanity?

My mind continued to reel, swirling with these dangerous thoughts. Azrael had said that I could keep my form in all three dimensions—the Arch Angels couldn't; neither could the Purebloods. I was a one-off commodity. So, how long would it be before these humans found out and made me their guinea pig? How long before they plonked me in the middle of this Hadron Collider and tried to split me open to see what might spill out?

I smiled. “Well, I wish you lots of luck. Would you mind if we went back down to the party? I'm here with a friend, and I'd like to check on her.”

Darwin looked a little crestfallen, as though I was nowhere near as excited as I should have been to hear such information, such a secret. It was best for him to think I hadn't understood or didn't care—safer, even.

“Of course, but we must come back. I'd love to have a look at your necklace, if I may?”

“Sure,” I lied, now having no intention of letting him near it.

As we trundled down the winding staircase, there was a loud clapping of hands, and the hum of voices died away as footsteps made their way into the drawing room. Darwin grimaced, and I hovered midstep. “What's wrong?”

“Speech time. My father's opportunity to be ostentatious about his sons—something he never misses.” His expression showed boredom.

“Sounds like he's proud of you; that's a really nice thing,” I offered. I had on countless occasions wished I had a family who cared about me enriching my life.

“Yes, well. He's proud of the family name. One thing he and I can agree upon at least: the importance of family.” Placing his luxurious specs on the top of his head, Darwin's bright-green eyes shimmered against the lighting from the chandelier as he took my hand and helped me hop down the last step.

The entranceway was now cleared, and I shooed Darwin on. “I'll follow you; I just need to use the ladies' room,” I lied again.

 

TWENTY-FIVE

T
HE MOMENT DARWIN WAS
out of sight, I rushed over to a table outside on the patio, where plenty of wine sat poured out and additional bottles rested in buckets of ice.

I reached for a glass of red wine, and though it matched the color of blood, it might as well have been water.

“Hurts like hell, doesn't it?” Jonah's prickly voice jabbed me from behind.

I ignored him.

Jonah tugged my arm gently, turning me to face him, and I squirmed as my Play-Doh-like skin absorbed his fingertips. He did a double take, his eyes swiftly sweeping the length of my dress. He trailed the lace red and white roses growing up between the middle of my legs, blooming across my breasts. But his gaze fell back down to my midriff, where the scars he had left me showed through the transparent material.

He'd also come dressed for the occasion, wearing smart trousers and a dress shirt, which he hadn't managed to do up all the way. But, Jonah being Jonah, he had thrown on a black jacket over the top and had pulled the hood only halfway over his head. I didn't need Brooke to tell me that every inch of his outfit was couture—even down to the hoodie.