Gabriel (31 page)

“
Gabriel
—” Iona seemed to beg.

“I will find Jonah,” Gabriel said. “Go, now,
please
.”

He didn't trust me to leave; he knew me too well. But I didn't get the opportunity to protest as Brooke scooped me up, and the next thing I knew we were on the opposite side of the black iron railings that surrounded the common in front of the house.

“Thank you,” I said with a weak breath.

The guests were gathering on the pavement, confused as to why the earthquake they had expected seemed to not exist outside of the house. But, the villa's windows still continued to shatter and cracks ran down the external walls of the property.

Whatever was going on inside, it wasn't good. But I didn't sense Zherneboh; I couldn't feel his presence within me or anywhere nearby. My mind reeled. Why, if Vampires had descended onto the house, were they not out here, trying to steal me away? Perhaps they didn't know I was here, or maybe it wasn't me they were here for.

Brooke stared at the front door. “I need to go back inside. Fergal's in there.”

“Fergal? What about Jonah? Are you not at all worried? You're connected to him. I thought … I thought that you
loved
him.” I rushed, as the thought of returning inside crossed my mind, too.

“Yes, of course I do. I do. But I dunno…” she said. “You know, Johnny Depp said that if you love two people at the same time, choose the second one. Because if you truly loved the first one, you wouldn't love another.”

Only Brooke could quote Johnny Depp at a time like this. Yet the words loomed over me like a shadow, as though I needed its darkness to see the light in my own choices.

“I'm going back in—” she began. I reached to hold her back, but my attention was drawn away as my gaze fell to a sole figure, marching through the crowd on the road.

He might have been wearing all black, like a thief in the night, but his eyes—although they appeared weaker and duller than the last time I had seen them—were impossible to miss. His hooded jacket hung out of shape around his shoulders and his shirt underneath was torn; he had been involved in whatever it was going on upstairs.

He darted across the road, knocking into a woman in a beautiful, slinky red dress. She yelped, but he continued, undeterred, racing toward the entrance of the common. I watched, unable to take my eyes from him.

Azrael.

 

TWENTY-SIX

M
Y FATHER, WHO HAD
tried to kill me in order to return to Styclar-Plena, was here, alive and kicking.

He moved past as though he hadn't noticed Brooke or me standing next to the railing. He was clutching the silk-wrapped packages Gabriel had sold.

Was he the acquaintance Sir Montmorency had spoken about? The one attending in person this evening to collect the crystals on behalf of a silent partner? If that were the case, then clearly the silent partner had no intention of exchanging any form of currency for them. A chill coursed through me and I wasn't sure if it was at the thought of who that silent partner actually was, or the fact that Gabriel had sensed something sinister was afoot but parted with the crystals anyway to ensure our future was nothing short of a wealthy one.

Brooke followed my line of sight and looked to me in confusion. “Is that—?”

“Go and get Gabriel, right now!” I told Brooke as I left to trail my father.

My bare feet stuck in the wet blades of grass as I followed him outside. If he knew I was behind him, he didn't let on. It was only as we reached the lamps bordering the opposite side of the common that he stopped. His back to me, he didn't move.

“What? Can't bring yourself to look at the daughter you made and then tried to murder?”

Stuffing the gems into his pocket, he turned around slowly; finally, he pulled down his hood and settled his washed-out eyes on me. “You are no longer my concern, Lailah.” He spoke smoothly, indifferently.

The very sight of his face caused anger to bubble within me. The last time I had seen him, he was towering over me, tauntingly witnessing my demise.
He was my father
. Or at least he had been—once.

“You're working for them now—the demons?” I demanded, stepping a little closer.

He didn't reply.

“Well, I'm guessing it's not the Arch Angels. Seems as much as I am no longer your concern, you are no longer theirs,” I goaded.

“No.” Azrael's eyes narrowed, his jaw locking as though I had touched a nerve. “Because of you, I am now fallen.”

“Yes, and that makes you rather mortal. I could rip you in half.” It was a lie, but one he didn't know the truth of. “So, you will tell me who you are working for and what they want with those crystals?”

He sauntered over to me. Looking me square in the eye, he raised his sleeve to my cheek and rubbed my skin. I knocked his hand away, but it was too late. He had seen the pallor beneath my mask.

With an arrogant tut, he said, “You couldn't even rip open a willing victim, not if your life depended on it. And it does depend on it, doesn't it, Lailah?”

He began to stride away.

My body stiffened, and for the first time in a while, I could feel my gums itching, as though my fangs might crack. I ran after him, grappling for his shoulder, but he pushed his weight into me, knocking me to the damp ground. He hovered above, with a defiant, irritated curl of his lips. Reaching down, he fingered my necklace, and in one swift pull he snapped the chain, stealing my crystal from around my neck. He imprisoned it within his palm.

“What? That's all you care about? Crystals? Why aren't you calling out for the demons? Why don't you tell them I'm here?” I demanded.

Why wasn't he trying to take me with him? He could see that at this moment I was no threat. If he were in cahoots now with the Purebloods, why was he walking away from me?

He stooped down. “They
are
coming for you, Lailah, but not this night. But don't you worry; they won't keep you waiting long.” He sneered. “Funny, I may be sentenced to an existence of mortality on this vile plane, but you…” He laughed. “Ah, Lailah, you will either end up Zherneboh's slave or Orifiel's prisoner. For you, the only true escape now is death. I suggest you find it before they find you.”

His tone oozed callousness and cruelty. His task this evening had nothing to do with me and everything to do with those crystals.

Azrael hadn't changed. If anything, my impending doom was the only thing that seemed to cause a smile to form on his hate-filled lips. I thought he was about to leave but instead he shoved me farther into the grass, as though he hadn't hurt me enough already.

Then, from the darkened common, Brooke appeared. I hadn't sensed her coming. She gripped Azrael's jacket and hurled him to the ground beside me; my necklace flew through the air. He moaned, and underneath his jacket he held his arms across his chest, as though he was in severe pain. He struggled to his knees, raising his palm to his eyebrow, where his skin had split from the tumble. Brooke loomed over him, brandishing her deadly fangs.

He gestured pitifully, shouting, “No, please!”

She looked to me for guidance, and Azrael took advantage of her hesitation. He launched his weight into her, searing her skin with a silver pocket watch concealed within his palm. I recognized it as belonging to Sir Montmorency.

Brooke's moan transformed into a scream as the silver met her chest. Azrael straddled her, freeing a silver blade from his back pocket. He might have been a fallen Angel now, but Azrael had come prepared, and neither Brooke nor I had counted on it.

About to strike her, he paused. “Know this, Lailah. When Zherneboh takes you, find no comfort in thinking your friends are safe. I will make sure the demons find them next, and I will make sure it hurts.”

His words were like a blow to my face, and my eyes clouded in a dangerous fog. It was one thing to despise, to degrade, and to disparage
me
, but to attack Brooke, to threaten my
family—
that was something else entirely. A rush of energy came over me, the very last of what I had left.

My fangs burst through my gums and my muscles became taut. I sprang to my feet, and Azrael's arrogant grin receded. I careered into him, landing beyond the railings. The blade and the watch were lost to the roadside.

I clutched his jacket and he wriggled free of it, rolling backward. I growled, flinging it far from sight, and circled him. It was only as his gaze fell to my hips that I allowed my attention to veer away. Inside my palms, ribbons of black smoke floated from my skin, and a terrible darkness stretched over me. Yet as I met his eyes once more, they remained cold; still they did not afford me the regret—the repentance—that I desired and deserved. Even as he stood, an inch from death, he would not waver.

“You're not worthy of a mortal existence.” I threw my hands up in the air and willed the smoke to levitate, to wrap itself around his throat. But this was not some dark power within me taking hold. While the threat he made on my family may have ignited my reaction, his death would be entirely for me. I wanted it to be slow. I wanted him to suffer.

He was phlegmatic as he said, “And you, my daughter, are no different from them.”

His words hit me, and I hesitated. The smoke stalled as it weaved a noose around his neck. My shoulders slumped, as though he were on trial and had just outed me as a witch—a confession that might save him from his execution. A sly slant of his eyes told me that he thought I wasn't capable.

He was wrong.

But I was too weak to control the smoke, and it evaporated.

Azrael's chest rose as he filled his mortal lungs with oxygen once more. Finally, he stood and bowed his head in some form of smug farewell. But he paused—perhaps waiting for me to break down, to part with some feeble drivel about being better than him, before he took his leave. I was quite certain he wasn't expecting the verdict that I delivered.

Weakly, I curled my fingers over his shoulders. On tiptoes, I brought my nose to his ear and whispered, “You're wrong. I will be different.…
I will be worse
.” My fingers molded around his throat and I took a moment to savor his gasp of disbelief. He was responsible for my last breath on the mountaintop; now I would take his.

Azrael's bones crunched as, with a sudden inhuman strength, I snapped his neck clean, breaking it as easily as a stick of chalk. I let go, and Azrael's limp body fell, lying motionless at my feet.

The surge of adrenaline fueling my form—the last of my reserve—ran dry. My insides stuttered like a car stalling in the winter, the throttle choking as my body convulsed. I swayed, searching for Brooke. She was already on her feet, staring at me, dumbfounded. Her dress was scorched, but her skin was fast healing underneath the burnt fabric, and I was relieved that she was okay.

I trudged over to her, every muscle in my legs aching as though I had run a marathon, but Brooke's gaze was not on me—it was behind me.

It was agonizing to turn my neck, but I did. My vision was blurring, but in the glow of the streetlamps, next to Azrael's body, a thin stream of black liquid dribbled vertically in the air. And through it, a thin, bony hand stretched out, its skinny fingers clawing as though it were playing the keys of a piano—looking, searching, for the notes it needed.

And then came a second arm, followed by a head and torso, emerging as though being born. The shriveled creature was clothed in translucent gray skin that highlighted its prominent rib cage. Now on all fours and bouncing like a deranged lemur, it prowled around Azrael's flesh, sniffing at his neck.

It was a scavenger—a being that existed in the third dimension and came through the rifts to claim dark souls; the same as the Angel Descendants who came here to claim the light ones.

A cloud of dark smoke billowed up and out of Azrael's form, gathering into one mass, and it floated until all the plumes had formed into a perfect swirling ball.

The scavenger collected it somehow in its deformed fingers. But it had no eyes with which to see. Only empty eye sockets, covered over by its skin. It sniffed the air once more and then stretched its sunken head.

Where a mouth should have been, the skin seemed to break, and flesh-colored tentacles spat from the hole like a star-nosed mole, jiggling as the breeze passed over them.

The tentacles hovered above the dark energy and guided the smoke into the scavenger's mouth. And when the last of it was secured, the tentacles suddenly popped back in and the skin reformed, locking them away. The scavenger's mandible drooped low.

On all fours, the heinous figure suddenly and dangerously twisted around. Weighed down by Azrael's darkened soul, the creature arched its back. Its hands and face low to the ground, it scuttled back toward the black crease in the air.

I didn't watch it reenter. The scene around me distorted as my vision blurred. The small dark spots of my irises stretched out in front of my sight, and the stinging sensation in my throat stabbed me with a brutal force. Only this time, it was relentless; it might as well have been a knife plunging over and over into the soft tissue of my throat.

I tried to refocus, to concentrate, but the world was tipped. There was no up or down; there was only rocking and a sickness rising within me.

As if the world had become mute, the rumble from the house and the sirens of emerging police cars all just stopped with the click of a finger. Inside my own head, there was only the thrum of harp strings, and every note that played Gabriel's and my song. One by one they snapped, as my memory plucked at them, and my mind drifted to the thought of the old oak tree.

*   *   *

I
SAT IN DIRT.
I could barely see, but the jab of tree bark against my back told me where I was. I hadn't intended to travel here by thought, but I no longer had any control over my body. I was under the old oak tree. Nearly two centuries since I had last visited, my old friend still stood tall here in the present.