Gabriel (34 page)

“Yes, tell you what?” she said.

I caught her eye and whispered quietly, “
Do they know where my mother is?
”

Brooke opened her mouth, but then paused, and finally she wiggled her nose. “No. I'm sorry.”

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

G
ABRIEL WAS WITH IONA,
and so I took myself down into the depths of the grounds and awaited the sunrise. Every inch of my body now felt awake, alert and ready, but now there was an inner turmoil in the mix.

It had been hours, and I had rehashed countless times what had happened with Jonah.

I was bonded to him through his darkness, and I was connected to Gabriel by light. Both of their footprints were stamped across my soul. And somewhere in there was me. But I was too busy hiding in Jonah's shadow or basking in Gabriel's glow to truly find myself.

I was so deep in thought that I barely noticed the sunrise—not until Gabriel's hand squeezed my shoulder. Together, we began to twinkle. But like the last time, Gabriel did not shine with luminosity as I had witnessed in the past. His glow was dull, the struggle between his skin and the warm rays only too easy to see.

He stopped shining and patiently waited for me to do the same. It took me far longer, but eventually, the white stripes filtering into my being stopped.

I turned to Gabriel, who—now changed—was wearing a more casual white polo shirt and khakis. His pale skin appeared even paler against his collar, and the veins running down his neck were a light gray.

“I'm worried how quickly you stop absorbing the sun,” I said.

Before, I had put it down to what he had said about saying good-bye to Hanora—thinking that somehow his sadness had stopped him from shining as bright—but I knew, from the darkness showing in his veins and the thin creases forming around his eyes, that something wasn't right.

Gabriel sighed heavily. “Lai, I have done some things, things that needed to be … done.” He paused. “An Angel Descendant becomes mortal here if an Arch Angel removes their crystal. But that is not the only way an Angel Descendant can fall.”

I looked at him, perplexed.

“I told you, using our gifts here in the wrong way could be detrimental. My crystal is failing because the things I had to do were acts of darkness.”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

He looked down to the ground, and then finally met my eyes. “I already told you; you just didn't hear me.”

What did he mean he'd already told me? I was about to question him, when I panicked at what he was implying about his crystal failing. I reached for his arms, scanning his body. “You're not fallen. I can still feel your light.”

“No, I'm not. I haven't done enough to cause my crystal to completely fail; it's just weaker than it was. I will be fine, I promise.” He squeezed my elbows. “I don't want to talk about it, not right now. Please, just come with me.”

I considered his request and nodded. He was being honest and upfront, so if he needed some time, I would give it to him. Gabriel took my hand in his, leading me toward the tree line. We walked in silence until we reached a weeping willow tree, which he gestured for me to sit beneath. “I wanted to do this under our tree, but when I arrived there it was no longer standing.”

I crossed my legs and looked to the ground, wondering if he was now going to ask for the details of what had happened.

Did he know that was where Jonah and I had been? That I had caused the tree to topple over? But the questions I was expecting never came. Instead, Gabriel pushed his blond hair behind his ears and delved into his trouser pocket.

He knelt down in front of me and took my left hand. His beautiful eyes never leaving mine, he placed something cold in the center of my palm.

I stifled a gasp. My crystal gem was encased in a shiny platinum band.

“I know we are not of this world,” he began. “But you, Lailah, have never known Styclar-Plena. You have only ever known Earth. This is your home; the ways and the customs of mortals is what you understand. And so I would ask of you today, what I would have asked nearly two hundred years ago, if I hadn't been too late.”

He gently removed the band from my palm and slid it down my ring finger.

“I want you to marry me.” He kissed the back of my hand.

My mind raced.

I loved Gabriel. No words could describe the way he made me feel, because it was just that, a feeling.

I considered him. Gabriel had fallen in love with me all those years ago, when my form was human, before our lights had sewn us into each other. He knew I had drunk Jonah's blood, that by doing so I had revived myself with dark energy. If he saw me for who I was now, he would know the girl he had loved was gone, so perhaps that was why he still didn't acknowledge what I had done. And without Gabriel, the part of me I had been clinging to would exist only as a memory—one that belonged to him. And then I would be someone else. And I was afraid of her, because she would go to war.

She would die alone.

“Do you have my chain?” I asked quietly, sliding the ring from my finger.

Gabriel's shoulders slumped as he searched my eyes, but he nodded and took it from his pocket. It dangled from his fingers. I smiled tightly and took it from him, unclasping it and looping the band back through. I finally placed it back around my neck, moving the gem to the center of my chest. “I, just, prefer it on a chain,” I mumbled.

I didn't say anything more. I feared what might tumble out of my mouth if I started, so instead I placed my hands around his neck and kissed him. It was all the indication Gabriel needed to assure him of my positive answer, when in fact I had deliberately avoided giving any answer at all.

He enveloped me within his arms, lifting me up and into his lap. He held me as though I were the prize at the finish line of what he had thought to be a never-ending race. And a white sheet surrounded me now, as I let his light stretch and wrap me inside its impenetrable safety.

“When did you … how did you?” I reluctantly pulled away, looking down at the band and wondering when he had had the opportunity to have the crystal reset.

“Ruadhan … He was a goldsmith, once.”

Gabriel hadn't left Iona's side until now; I don't know why I thought he would have. “How long until we leave?” I asked, slipping off his lap and standing before him.

“Iona is still transitioning, but it's not safe here for you anymore. Not after last night.” He put his hand to the small of my back, encouraging me to walk with him.

“You should stay until it's over. Have you spoken with her yet?”

We moseyed through the gardens. “No. She's in no state. I was waiting, but it's taking longer than I had first thought.” He placed his hand around my waist lightly, pushing my T-shirt up so his skin was against mine.

“She needs to know. When she does, we can leave.”

Gabriel considered it. “If I stay, you can't be here. You'll go with Ruadhan; he can take you away for a few hours. If you even remotely sense that Vampires are near, I want you to travel by thought to the cottage on the grounds of the Hedgerley property and wait there until I get to you.”

I screwed up my face. “Why? That's the last place I'd go. It can't be secure.”

“If they were to come for you, the cottage is the best place you could be.” Gabriel took my elbows with his hands. “Hold my arms. Travel there by thought with me.”

Before I had a chance to protest, Gabriel's eyes were closed, and the world spun around me as we traveled through a tunnel of light.

It took a moment for the blur of my vision to come back into focus, for the light to stop twirling, but when it did, I was inside the entranceway of the cottage.

“I really don't think it's safe to be here,” I said, homing in on the sounds surrounding us.

“Lai, look at the tiles in the floor.” Gabriel's fingers trailed down the outside of my arm and he took my hand.

I glanced down to the beautiful sun in the marble flooring. I had thought the artwork to be mesmerizing the first time I had seen it. Now, however, there was a layer of ash coating the bright colors, and I wondered if Gabriel had lit the log-burning stove when he had brought Hanora in here.

Gabriel interrupted my thoughts. “This cottage was my safe house. The design in the tiles of the floor isn't decoration.”

I furrowed my brow, not understanding.

“At each point of the sun's rays, and at the center, placed in the marble, is a crystal.”

“More crystals?” I asked.

“Yes. They originally came from the necks of Angel Descendants that had asked to fall, and Orifiel gave me plenty. Nearly void of light, they were of little use to him in Styclar-Plena. I didn't sell them all; six are disguised within the design.”

I looked to Gabriel, puzzled.

“The same as any crystal found on Earth, they have an optical property known as birefringence. Meaning, when a ray of light hits them, the light refracts and beams back out in strobes. But, unlike Earth's crystals, Styclar-Plena's are more special. If you shine a light on them, hundreds of beams of light will be created—like lasers, Lai. And the sort of light—the energy—that we can produce can end Second Generation Vampires and can at least hold back a Pureblood.”

His words took me back to the night I had crawled my way across these tiles with a piece of glass lodged in my navel. Light had engulfed and soothed me. Perhaps the moon had reflected off the crystals embedded in the marble and found the gem around my neck.

“But you can just create a sheet of light to end a Vampire if you had to. I don't get why you'd need to have a safe house.”

“Here you only have to concentrate on projecting your light toward the tiles. The light that refracts will keep you in a nebula of strobes. We know the Purebloods are commanding the rifts to open, but they wouldn't be able to create one here among the light.”

Something still wasn't sitting right. Gabriel didn't struggle to end more than one Vampire at a time, and he only recently knew about the Purebloods commanding the rifts. “I don't understand.…”

“It doesn't matter. All you need to know is that, for the next few hours, if you get any sense that trouble is nearby, you travel by thought to this room. If a Vampire were to somehow follow you, you end them with your light here, where it's safest. The walls are sealed with lead that will contain your light. No one will be able to see it outside of these walls,” he told me firmly.

“No one, as in Arch Angels?” I pondered, recalling how my little display with the trees had caught their attention.

“Exactly.”

A cold silence surrounded the two of us as I thought over what Gabriel was telling me. “You took Vampires in here to end them, unseen. Not in self-defense, but because you had chosen to take away their existence.” I paused, and Gabriel's aura becoming anxious told me that I was right. “You didn't build a safe house, Gabriel; you created an execution chamber.”

My words hung in the air.

Eventually, he met my eyes and simply said, “Sometimes there is a need, Lai. Sometimes it's a necessary evil.”

I stumbled backward, realizing that he wasn't offering me an explanation—it was a confession. “Hanora…”

Gabriel's gaze fell away from mine, but he barely flinched. My arms swayed down by my sides. As my hand loosened in Gabriel's, he clamped his fingers between my own. Hurriedly he said, “I had to, Lai. She wouldn't have let me go; she would have discovered that you were still alive, and she would have told the Purebloods.”

I tugged my hand, but Gabriel clutched it even more tightly—still he was unprepared to let me go.

“You said…” My thoughts tumbled. “You said that you reminisced with her, that you said good-bye. You lied to me?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I told you the truth. You just didn't hear it, when I spoke it.”

“A final good-bye,” he'd said, one that cost him a little of his light. I hadn't realized what he had meant because I couldn't conceive the notion that Gabriel would be able to do such a thing.

“They found out anyway.” My voice was flat. “They were always going to. You ended her existence to protect me from something outside of your power to prevent.” An unconscionable crime had been committed in my name.

“I know it was a terrible thing, but you can understand why I did it. You ended Azrael's life to protect Brooke.” Gabriel's voice was raised. He hadn't wanted to end Hanora's existence, and it must have been painful to bring himself to execute an act that went against his very nature. But he had done it—for me. This was the darkness he'd been talking about committing. The reason why his crystal was starting to fail.

“I … Gabriel, you shouldn't have.… It's different.…”

I hadn't killed Azrael under some delusion of protecting a greater good; I had done it in cold blood, because I had wanted to. I realized then that Gabriel would never be able to accept that of me. And I would never be able to come to terms with knowing that he would end another life and risk his own immortality to keep me from harm.

I rehashed the conversation I had overheard between Gabriel and Hanora outside the cottage. He had tricked her into entering. “Why was Hanora wearing a scarf around her head? In Neylis, she had burn marks across her skin.…” Gabriel had asked Hanora if she had forgiven him. What had he done?

Gabriel's chest tightened, and I felt giddy as his anxiety swelled through me.

“When I walked into the motel room, she was … I reacted badly,” he said simply.

Gabriel's body was rigid and I brought myself in closer to him, observing the thin fissures around the edges of his suffering eyes. I brought my thumb up over his eyebrow and stroked the fine lines contemplatively.

“You hit her with your light, didn't you? That's why, on the phone, you asked me how much I had seen. You would have rather I thought something romantic was happening between the two of you than tell me that you had felt anger, that you had committed an act of darkness.”