Inception (The Marked Book 1) (22 page)

“It’s not as simple as that, Jemma.”

“Yes, it is. You’re either lying to me or you’re not.”

“Of course there are things you don’t know. A lot has happened over the years, but those things aren’t only mine to share.” 

“What does that mean?”

“It means you have to talk to your sister.”

“So basically what you’re saying is, you can’t answer any of my questions because of Tessa.”

Isn’t that precisely what Dominic said? That Gabriel was covering up for her. That he would always put her first. Maybe Dominic was capable of telling the truth after all.

“She’s only trying to protect you, Jemma, and this is the only way she knows how to do it. You may not always understand what she does, but she has your best interest at heart.”

“I don’t need her to protect me. Not if that means being lied to all the time. I deserve to know the truth. Whether or not you and my sister want to admit it, I’m already involved in this. Dominic involved me.”

He knew I was right—I could see it in his eyes. I also saw that it didn’t matter one bit. His loyalty was to her and it was clear that he was going to continue protecting her...but for what reason? What could Tessa possibly have done that was so bad that she couldn’t even tell her own sister? Tessa who’d always done everything perfect and right since the day she was born.

It was becoming painfully obvious that if I was expecting the two of them to tell me the truth, I’d probably be waiting around until the end of days.

“Dominic offered to tell me everything.” I put it out there mercilessly, hoping it would raise the stakes a little. It scared me to think that I’d be desperate enough to take him up on his offer, that I was even considering it.

“You can’t trust him.”

“I know,” I agreed, meeting his somber eyes. “But I don’t know if I can trust you either.”

And that scared me even more.

26. BREAKING BREAD

A light drizzle peppered the windshield as Gabriel and I turned onto the main thoroughfare after leaving the Carnival. We hadn’t said a word to each other since we left the boardwalk and that was perfectly fine with me. I had no desire to hear another word from him unless that word was birthed from the truth.

I reached forward and turned up the volume to an ear-bending level to drive home the point.

He tipped forward and turned it back down. I could feel his eyes appraising me as though he were trying to decipher a puzzle. “You’re angry with me.”

“I’m surprised you were able to figure that out without Tessa’s direction.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither is being lied to all the time,” I shot back, watching plumes of fog spiral in and out of view outside my window. “I trusted you, Gabriel. You were the only one I trusted and now I don’t know if I can believe a single word you say.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“If you were sorry, you’d tell me the truth. I don’t know anything about you; how you
changed
, if you
chose
it, how long you’ve been this way. I don’t even know how old you are! How do you think that makes me feel?”

A heavy silence pressed down on us as the windshield wipers swooshed back and forth methodically.

“You need to eat,” he said without looking.

“I don’t need to eat. I need to hear the truth!”

“I’m a Revenant.”

“I’m aware of that.”

He looked down at my stomach, his eyes mapping my torso. I reflexively covered up, hugging my abdomen with both arms.

“I can hear your stomach,” he said, bringing his eyes back up to mine. “You’re hungry. You need to eat something.”

He heard my stomach noises?
How freaking embarrassing
.

Before I could confirm or deny the fact, he had already made the decision and was pulling into the parking lot of an old diner that overlooked the highway.

Might as well, I figured. I was two stomach growls away from starvation anyway.

The old diner was lit up like a Christmas tree—if your Christmas tree was decorated with white florescent sky lights, a neon blue
open
sign that flickered something terrible, and the kind of red banquet seats that made you wish you carried protective eye-wear on you. The only saving grace was that it looked to be about as lively as a morgue at midnight, which at least meant we could talk freely and not have to worry about slipping up in front of nosy patrons.

We walked to the back of the diner and sat down opposite each other in a booth by the window. A young, busty blond in her mid-twenties rushed out of the back-house wearing a fitted yellow uniform that looked as though it had just rode into town straight out of the fifties.

“Can I get you guys a drink to start with?” she asked, smiling as she dropped a set of menus on the ivory table.

“I’ll have a Coke.” I turned to Gabriel who was sitting perfectly straight in his seat, both hands planted on his lap. It was almost unnerving how
proper
he was.

“Just water, please.”

“No problem. I’ll be right back with those,” she smiled and walked off.

“Four years.”

I looked up at him and blinked. “Four years
what
?”

“I’ve been a Revenant for four years,” he said calmly. “I was twenty-one when I
turned
, and that was four years ago.”

“Four years. That’s it? I thought you’d be something more dramatic. You know, like a century or two.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said evenly. His eyes seared into mine, waiting for another question.

I was happy to oblige. “Did you choose it?”

“I would never choose this,” he said, every word slicked with repugnance.

“How did it happen?”

The waitress cut through with our drinks and placed them down on the table in front of us.

“Are you ready to order?” she asked, oblivious to the epic conversation she’d just interrupted.

I realized I hadn’t even looked at the menu. Unwilling to suffer the extra wait, I went with the tried and true. “Cheeseburger and fries.”

“Perfect.” She jotted down my order on her pad and turned to Gabriel. “And for you?”

“Nothing for me, thank you.”

“You sure?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as she smiled at him. It seemed like a flirty gesture.

He nodded, resolute and unaware of it.

“Okay. Well, if you change your mind, just give me a shout,” she said, pointing to the nameplate on her bust that read
Lana
.

I waited for her to disappear behind the counter again.

“Will you tell me how it happened?”

He ran a hand over his face and nodded. I guess I finally wore him down enough to spill the goods.

“It happened four years ago,” he began, glancing out the window as though the pictures were replaying for him in the distance. “I came home after being out of town on assignment and found my brother entertaining Revenants in our living room. True Revenants, not Descendants like us.”

My eyes widened.  

“Seeing them there in my home,
invited
, where my family lived...” I could see the fury settling in over him like an old familiar friend. “I did the only thing I knew how to do. What I’d always been trained to do. I
reacted
.”

“Meaning you vanquished them?”

“Without question.” He glanced out the window again, his eyes sweeping the parking lot carefully. “Later when the dust settled, so to speak, I’d learnt that Dominic had been involved with one of the female Revenants from the coven,” he said turning back to me. “And that he fancied himself in love with her.”

“Are you saying Dominic was in love with a Revenant when he was still Anakim?” I had no idea why I was so surprised, this sounded exactly like something he would do.

He nodded, his expression undisturbed. “Dominic has always taken pleasure in breaking the rules. He’s always gravitated to the dark side but nothing like what he became after that day. It was as though something in him had switched off. He vowed revenge on me for what I’d done, though as it turned out there wouldn’t be much time for retribution since ironically, both Dominic and I were fated to die anyway. Or so we were told.”

“What you mean
fated
to die?”

“On the
Paradigm
,” he answered plainly. “The grand scheme of things—of all things. There is much we can manipulate in this world, things we can prevent or alter, though death is not one of them. It’s a Cardinal Law. If you’re ordained to die—if it’s your time to go—Death will come for you until the debt is paid and the balance is restored.” 

I felt a prickling chill slide down my back. There was something about the way he described death, like it was a living breathing entity, and it made my skin crawl.

“Dominic, being the nonconformist that he was, refused to accept this fate and instead chose to spend every waking moment he had left looking for some kind of loophole—a way to cheat death. And indeed, he found it.”

“By Turning,” I realized aloud.

He tipped his head once. “You must
die
in order to become a Revenant, thus satisfying the Paradigm, which in turn left him free to reanimate without any consequences—cosmically speaking.” His moss-green eyes gleamed as he stared back at me from across the table. “And through that discovery, he’d also found the perfect way to make me pay for what I’d done. By turning me into the very thing I hated most. The thing I was raised to hunt and kill.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “
He
did this to you? He’s the reason you’re a Revenant.”

“And I’ve had to carry that guilt with me ever since. For both of us. For my family.”

“Why would you feel guilty?” I asked, confused by his admission. “He’s the one who did this, not you.”

“Yes, but he did it because of me,” he said blinking slowly. “If I hadn’t vanquished them…if I would’ve heard him out first, found another way, none of this would have happened—”

“You don’t know that for sure,” I interrupted, shaking my head. “And besides, you can’t make people do things that aren’t already in them to do, Gabriel. You taught me that, remember?”

He looked up at me, his expression somewhat surprised.

The waitress returned to our table with my order and placed the plate down in front of me. “
Bon Apetit
.”

“Thank you.” I skimmed a French fry off the top.

“Have you changed your mind?” she smiled at Gabriel, wiping off the area in front of him with her dishrag. “A lot of people get an appetite after smelling the food.”

I tried not to laugh.

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Another glass of water maybe?”

He shook his head. She hadn’t noticed his glass was still full. Or that mine was almost empty.

“Could I get another coke?” I asked, shaking my glass.

“Sure thing. I’ll be right back with that.”

“So, how does my sister factor into all this?” I asked when she was gone.

“I think I should let Tessa tell you that part herself. It isn’t my place to speak for her,” he said, pushing his untouched glass of water to the side.

“Okay, fair enough.” I took a mega bite of my burger and smiled as the flavor exploded on my tongue. “How about your father? Is he still around?” I asked through a mouthful of food.

His taut expression tightened. “He’s alive, however, he’s chosen not to be a part of our lives anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Jemma.” He regarded me as though I'd lost my mind. “Dominic and I are Revenants. The Huntington bloodline has ended because of us. We’ve disgraced our family—our lineage, our entire race. How could he not renounce us?”

“But the Council…you still work for them, and the Magister said you were one of their best—”

“That may very well be, but it doesn’t change what we are. I can still work for the Order, though I will never be anything more than a foot soldier to them, and I’m okay with that. Had this happened even a decade ago, I would not have been allowed to live, let alone step foot inside Temple, regardless of whether I was a danger to them or not.”

“What changed their minds?”

“I suppose the realization that Turned Anakim could be of use to them since our bloodlust can be controlled. We are strong, nearly indestructible, and most importantly,
expendable
. As long as we operate in the shadows and do as we’re told, we are permitted to exist.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, though not wholeheartedly. “But I understand their reasoning. They don’t want other Anakim seeing this as an acceptable alternative though I don’t see how any Anakim worth their Mark would ever choose this. It’s a disgrace; the lowest form of existence.”

The hatred he felt for Revenants was palpable. He was raised to hate them, to hunt their breed and kill them without so much as a second thought, and now he was one of them. I could only imagine the mental anguish this caused him. My heart ached for him in ways I couldn’t even articulate.

“Here’s your coke,” said the waitress as she set it down in front of me and then sped off to answer a ringing phone. I barely noticed her that time.

“Well, I think he’s missing out,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “Your father, that is. My life’s only gotten better since you came into it, and I can’t imagine anyone feeling differently about you. It’s his loss.”

Gabriel smiled back at me. It wasn’t a toothy grin by any stretch of the imagination, though for Gabriel’s standards, it might as well been a full Cheshire smile. And that was enough.

We chatted quietly for the rest of my meal, mostly keeping to lighter subject matters until it was time to pay the bill. I still had a lot of questions though for now I was satisfied in what I’d learnt. The most important thing was that I felt I could trust him again. Paradigms and Fated deaths would have to be revisited again some other day when my brain wasn’t completely fried and overloaded.

“By the way,” I said as we stood up from the table to leave, my curiosity getting the better of me. “How did you know you and Dominic were fated to die anyway?”

Gabriel paused. Something about the look on his face made me hesitant to stick around for the answer. “A Time Keeper,” he said finally. “From the future.”