Gabriel (36 page)

Impatient, Phelan took matters into his own hands as he directed himself to the band of soldiers. “Riley, call Jack; get him back. Time to lock and load, lads.”

Phelan marched over to me, taking up a position next to Fergal. “You're coming back to Lucan with us. And I suspect your
friends
are not going to be all too willing to let us take you so easily,” Phelan growled.

I looked to Fergal and back to Phelan. They really had no idea what I could do: I only had to think and I could disappear. “I'm not going with you, and it's me you would need to persuade, so tell them to put their weapons away, Phelan!” I hissed.

Taking a cigarette from behind his ear, Phelan lit up. The tip burned a bright orange as he tugged. “We were tasked to seek you out and save you, and that's what we're going to do. Traveling with demons and some sort of double-agent Angel isn't safe. Look at what that thing just did to Fergal.” He blew the smoke through his nose. “Fergal, go get Iona. We're going home.” He turned away from us.

“You get Iona,” Fergal said. “I need to speak with Lailah, alone.” He placed his hand across my back and encouraged me to exit the motor home with him.

As I strode through the room, Gabriel's words swirled around my consciousness.
Lai, is everything okay?

Yes
, I answered. I didn't know whether Gabriel had sensed my unease or whether Malachi had spoken with him before departing. Jonah and Brooke hadn't yet returned to the property. They were up ahead, and Jonah was still consoling Brooke.

Tell Iona what you need to and quick. Get the others out
—
it's time we were leaving.

As I communicated by thought, Fergal tried to lead me around the back of the motor home and I halted, watching Riley sling crossbows into the waiting arms of the young lads. Cameron—the last to receive his—struggled to catch it and bumbled nervously as he tried to grip it in his small arms.

It was definitely time to go.

“Tell them to wait inside. I'm not having a conversation with you while they attack my family, Fergal,” I barked.

“Aye,” he said, nodding. Shouting now to his group, he said, “Wait inside with that lot, yeah? Don't be forgetting who's in charge, like.”

Riley and Dylan exchanged silent glances, but they seemed to listen. Yelling back their acknowledgments, they further rustled around, but then one by one they filtered back inside.

“Let's take a walk,” Fergal said.

“No. Say what you have to say here, and do it fast,” I insisted, uncomfortable with the situation that was brewing.

Fergal shivered next to me and fingered his bloodied T-shirt, which he still clutched in his hand. Then he pulled it over his head, messing up his white-blond hair as he did. “I really do need for you to come with me. There's someone that's waiting to meet you.”

I offered him a weary smile. “I'm sorry. I really do have to go now, but
thank you
for coming for me. And I'm sorry about your father, for all of your family that lost their lives when he did.”

Phelan appeared around the side of the motor home. He shoved Fergal in the chest, and I stepped around them, preparing to travel back to the main house.

Fergal's hand found my bare arm, tugging me back toward him. “It's your ma, Lailah.”

My mother?

“I arranged a meeting place, a time … about half a mile away,” he said, pointing in the direction of the tree line. “I was about to take you—Brooke, but seems I'd have been taking the wrong girl,” he said smoothly.

Brooke's cries and ramblings about being sorry raced through my mind. She'd discovered that Fergal knew where my mother was, but she hadn't told me. No—she'd lied to me. And I knew exactly why. She'd have had no choice then but to reveal that she wasn't me, and clearly she was unprepared to do that for her own selfish reasons. I guess leopards don't change their spots overnight.

A new wave of hope flowed through me. I wanted to meet my mother, to see that she was still alive, and to seek guidance. Nothing had changed. “Take me to her now,” I demanded. Changing direction, I walked toward the forest. Fergal immediately followed.

Phelan trailed us. “What are you talking about? You don't know where the Angel is! I knew you were up to something. What the feck are you doing, Fergal?”

Fergal stopped only briefly to reply. “As much as my pa preferred you, seems yours favored me. He was the one who received the message, and he passed it to me before he died. The only thing I have been
up to
is fulfilling my duties as the leader of the Sealgaire, which don't concern you.”

I looked to Phelan over my shoulder, and for a moment he hung back, his face falling; but then his lips formed a narrow line, and he shook his head. “You're full of shite. Lailah—”

“Ignore him,” Fergal said.

I hesitated. Now fully fueled, I concentrated on Phelan, and a white-silver outline revealed itself to me, flickering around his form. He was a light soul, and disgruntled and hostile as his disposition was, he hadn't made any dark choices.

“You can trust me. You can't trust him,” Fergal said firmly. Taking my arm, he gave me a reassuring squeeze. Once again I was overcome with a sense of peace; there was no indication of anything untoward in Fergal's actions.

I continued on. I was going to meet my mother.

I wanted to reach out and tell Gabriel what was happening, but he'd made it abundantly clear that he trusted no one. He would never allow such a meeting. Hanora's fate only compounded my belief that Gabriel would take away my choice in a heartbeat, if he thought he was protecting me.

“I can't let you take her.” Phelan broke my train of thought as he whipped a revolver from behind his back, clicking back the safety in one flush movement.

Fergal sighed, placing his hand on his own back pocket, and I realized then that he had a gun of his own. But instead of brandishing it, he cocked his head toward Phelan. “
He
threw a silver net over you; I didn't.…
He
was the one that shot you in that field in Creigiau. Do we really need to waste time playing stick-em-up?”

I paused, turning back to Phelan, who looked up to the sky and back down to the ground, cursing under his breath.

I gulped in terrible understanding. “That's why you were asking about the scar on my shoulder. You thought I was the girl in the clearing that night?” Phelan had shot me, and in the back no less.

“I was trying—”

Fergal interrupted, not allowing Phelan to finish his sentence. “Lailah, she's waiting.”

The thought hadn't even fully formed, yet I was suddenly nose to nose with Phelan, my fingers wrapped around the end of the revolver, slinging it far into the distance before he could even blink. I growled a low and sinister sound.

“I didn't mean to shoot you; I was aiming for the Vampire,” he muttered under his breath, and for once he seemed unnerved by my actions.

A cloudy red fog appeared across my vision. “I'd say I trust you about as far as I could throw you, but believe you me, I could throw you very,
very
far. Stay away,” I hissed.

Phelan remained where he stood, and I marched back to Fergal, gesturing for him to proceed. This time, Phelan didn't try to come after us, taking off back toward the main house. He was going to tell Gabriel, but it didn't matter. By the time Phelan reached him, I would have already met my mother.

Fergal and I continued briskly through the land at the back of the estate, heading toward the tree line. I ran my eyes over Fergal's body; the scent of the fresh blood on his sweater permeated the air. “You couldn't have changed your top?”

“Naw, sorry.” He pulled the collar away from his neck and inspected the stains. “I'm gonna have to get it cleaned. It's Iona's gift to me for my birthday. She'll get upset if she sees it ruined.”

We were nearing the forest trees that bordered the fields, and as I looked for an opening, Fergal's words broke my concentration. “Your birthday?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding.

“I thought it was Iona's birthday today.”

“And mine, we're twins. We exchanged presents early; we always do. You're welcome to sing me ‘Happy Birthday' by the way.” He smiled, but I detected the elevation in his pitch.

If they were twins, then why was Iona transitioning but not Fergal? They had the same mother, a fallen Angel; they were both Of Elfi; and at midnight they both had turned seventeen.

Fergal straightened himself as he placed his hand to the small of my back, guiding me through the tall trees to a clearing. As his body came close to my own, my whizzing thoughts simply slowed, and I felt that sense of serenity that I had felt with him before.

I pulled away, unable to make sense of what I thought I knew, and lingered where I stood. Gabriel had said that if a child of a fallen Angel's soul was pure when they turned seventeen, then they transitioned.
Fergal was not transitioning.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

I put up my hand and took several steps away from him. “Just, stay there for a minute,” I said calmly.

I backed up, only stopping when my heels kicked into bulging roots protruding from the mud. A raven flew from a branch behind Fergal, whipping past my shoulder and momentarily distracting me. Fergal didn't shift and simply returned my stare.

I searched for the glow—for that white-and-silver pulse that should have been gently exuding from his form—but I couldn't focus on the outline of his body; my eye was continually drawn to the cross around his neck, which for the first time I noticed had a slight luminosity to it. Although it would be invisible to the human eye, the glimmer of pure white around the gold was unmistakably the same as the light I had seen stemming from my crystal.

“Where did you get that pendant from, Fergal?” I asked carefully, taking a moment to scan the clearing and the forest of trees behind him.

“What—this? Been in the O'Sileabhin family for generations. Passed down to each leader of the Sealgaire.” He paused. “It belongs to Padraig,” he said. Distracted, he peered over my shoulder, his eyes no longer meeting my own.

When I was near to Fergal I felt at ease, a sense of complete peace. I had never searched for the outline of light around his form; I hadn't needed to because of the way he made me feel. And there was light, but I realized now that it wasn't coming from him; it had come from the cross he wore around his neck.

I ran over to Fergal, snapping the chain around his neck and launching it far away from the two of us. He glared at me with dipping eyebrows as I shoved him away.

There was no glow.

I felt nothing.

In Fergal's company, Brooke had felt the same as me. He seemed to be a light soul, and she had assumed that to be the reason she hadn't felt the compulsion to drink from him. But he had been refastening his necklace when I had walked into the bedroom.

He wasn't wearing it when she attacked him.

Fergal wasn't a light soul. That was why he wasn't transitioning. Whatever that pendant was, or whatever had been done to it and whether Fergal knew it or not, it had camouflaged him well.

“Fergal, what do you mean, it belongs to Padraig? He's gone,” I said.

He didn't answer.

I took a breath. “My mother's not here. She was never going to be…”

Fergal's mouth fell open and his pupils swelled to twice their usual size. I mistook his shocked expression as being a reaction to my statement.

I shook my head, ready to disappear from here, knowing now that he had fooled me.

At the same moment that I closed my eyes, canines cracked and pierced the back of my bare neck. I couldn't prevent the paralyzing poison from entering my system before I had a chance to will myself away.

I hadn't seen a rift or heard the Pureblood creeping behind me. No, he had already arrived. He was already waiting.

I should have seen the sign, the warning—the raven.

I remembered this feeling.

 

THIRTY

T
HE POISON SWAM THROUGH
my veins, and my body stalled. My eyes were frozen open, fixed on Fergal's panicked expression as he tripped over himself, stumbling backward.

“You have her, now give me him.” Fergal's words shook, and they left his mouth with a whimper.

I heard the Pureblood's jaw crack before a ghastly screech left his lungs. I couldn't twist or turn my body to see him, but unlike the last time—when I had been poisoned by Eligio—my thoughts, though they dipped in and out, were at least coherent. It wasn't having the same effect on me as it had the last time. But my body was different now; it wasn't human—I was something else.

A figure strode past and finally stood between me and Fergal. A mass of unkempt, shaggy dark hair framed his flawless white skin. I recognized him as the boy from the photo in Iona's locket.

It was Padraig.

The Pureblood's screeching hisses echoed through the small clearing and ricocheted off the trees. He was laughing.

Fergal fell to his knees, covering his face with his hand. “No! I don't understand.…”

His brother stood before him, a Vampire.

I was a bargaining chip. Fergal was delivering me in exchange for his brother. He thought Padraig was still alive, and alive he was, but Fergal hadn't counted on them having changed him. But then, why would he have? The Sealgaire thought that Vampires came from Hell itself; they didn't believe that they had been human once. An unfortunate miscalculation for all of us.

Padraig was growling, his irises swirling a dangerous red, and his fangs cracked over the top of his lip. And while Fergal sobbed, all around us rifts were forming. Black slits opened up one by one, as though the scenery were a photograph through which someone was dragging a knife.