Chapter 27
Gabriel
“What’s down there?”
It took a second for Gabriel to answer, distracted by finding his scent on Nicholas. He closed the front door, setting down his bag.
“I wondered when you’d ask.”
He’d seen Nicholas glance at the door more than once in passing and recalled walking in on another occasion to find him standing in front of it as he was now.
“Come. I’ll show you.”
He should have done it weeks ago, but thought it might have triggered his bloodlust, among other things.
Nicholas stepped aside, allowing Gabriel to open the door. The stairwell was pitch black and went too deep for the foyer light to follow. They didn’t need light to see by, though, so Gabriel descended with Nicholas several paces behind.
The drywall gave way to rock the deeper into the cliffside they went.
They were met by a steel door at the bottom, requiring facial recognition to gain access.
Gabriel stepped up to the scanner, and the door groaned open after a series of beeps.
Motion sensor lights flickered to life with each step down the long, dark corridor.
“Blood,” Nicholas said. “There’s a lot of blood down here.”
His voice turned thick, but his heartbeat remained even.
“I keep my reserves down here.”
Cool air drifted from the gap at the bottom of a heavy door. Gabriel placed his palm against a screen, and the door clicked open.
More than a dozen medical-grade refrigerators containing bagged blood filled the room.
Nicholas peered through the glass door of the largest one, running his tongue across the tips of his fangs.
It was an instinctive reaction for their kind when faced with something pleasurable, similar to a human licking their lips over dessert, or when aroused.
Nicholas clearly hadn’t meant it suggestively, but he was even more alluring in this new body—even if he still didn’t know it.
He hadn’t lost that one particular innocence about him.
Gabriel watched him with quiet regard, the tight hold he normally kept on himself slackening.
Nicholas’s nostrils flared, thunderclouds rolling over his expression. He flattened Gabriel with a look.
The blood room hadn’t affected the speed of his pulse, but Gabriel’s desire had.
“I may do a good job of hiding it, but I’m not immune to you, Nicholas.”
He’d never purposely make things harder for Nicholas, but none of this was easy for Gabriel either. His body yearned for Nicholas in the same way that Nicholas’s body cried out for him. He may have had a two-century advantage when it came to restraint, but even he faltered sometimes.
Nicholas dropped his chin, tension flooding his jaw as he worked to leash his reaction to Gabriel.
“There’s more O-negative than anything,” he noted minutes later, sexual hunger restrained. “Why?”
“Blood consumed directly from a living source provides more strength and sustenance. If it has to come from a pouch, and the goal is strength, then O-negative is the more potent option.”
Nicholas considered that. “Is that what I’ve been drinking?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t tasty,” he complained, making Gabriel’s lips twitch.
“No, that would be AB-positive. The combined antigens offer a richer taste.”
Nicholas perused each fridge until he found a bag of AB-positive. He finished two in under thirty seconds, dragging the back of a hand over his mouth before licking it clean. He was still learning how to eat without making a mess.
“This is what I’ll be drinking from now on.”
His tone left no room for debate, so although strength should’ve been his top priority, Gabriel nodded.
“As you wish.”
Nicholas strolled through the aisles of blood, shoulders drawn back as he faced reminder after reminder of who he was now.
“What’s in there?” He gestured toward a side door.
“That’s my weapons room.”
Gabriel expected scorn and judgment. What he hadn’t anticipated was Nicholas’s next request—or more like a demand.
“Let me see it.”
“You want to see my artillery collection?”
“Isn’t that what you want? For me to see you?” His tone held no mocking edge. It seemed to say he was ready to live with eyes wide open.
This room was even bigger than the blood bank. Shotguns lined the left wall, some as long and as thick as Gabriel’s arms, with enough firepower to take down a grizzly.
Transport cases loaded with explosives ran the perimeter of the room, enough to take down a whole city, if need be.
There were shelves loaded with ammunition, racks stocked with handguns, assault rifles, and sound suppressors.
The room smelled sharp, acrid, and smoky. It reeked of metal, burning sulfur, and aluminum powder, to name a few.
Nicholas absorbed it all, even stepping into the cage filled with rocket launchers.
“Have you had to use one of these before?”
“Yes, I have.”
Nicholas’s emotions were chaotic, a fast-paced montage of feelings—although his expression remained blank. Gabriel frowned, unsure of what to make of it, for once unable to read him.
He slowly approached the revolvers, seemingly unable to tear his gaze from one in particular.
“A gift from Marcus,” said Gabriel, lifting the lid on the glass case. “A collector’s item.” He grazed a finger over the jade stone embedded in its jeweled grip. Nicholas seemed immovable.
“Do you want me to teach you how to use them?”
“No.” He hadn’t hesitated, but something violent swirled behind his brown eyes.
“Learning how to shoot doesn’t mean you need to kill anyone, Nicholas. Just like fencing—”
“What else is down here?”
Gabriel took the hint, leading him to his artifacts room. His emotions leveled out as soon as they entered, causing Gabriel to look back at the weapons room with curiosity.
“Are these all from Saraad?” He sounded pleasantly pleased by the idea, pausing near one of the climate-controlled display cases.
“Yes. Many of them were stolen, acquired while on my warpath. I’m unsure of their origins, or why I felt compelled to take them. Some of them are meaningless trinkets that belonged to my parents.”
“They aren’t meaningless if they belonged to someone you loved.”
Gabriel’s heart thumped, loud and warm, at the kind sentiment.
“I just mean there’s no real history behind them. I was able to collect them before leaving, when I went back for Marcus and Hamza.”
“You mean Rayyaan and Hamza?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel was so used to protecting their identities that he forgot he no longer had to with Nicholas.
“It’s okay. I’ll probably always refer to him as Marcus, too.” His lips curved upward for the briefest of moments before he turned serious again, as though realizing he’d slipped.
“Why didn’t you go back for Zayn’s mother?”
“They’d already killed her.”
“Did Zayn…”
“No, he never knew.”
Nicholas crouched for a closer look at the brass goblet on the bottom shelf.
“Can I?”
“Of course.”
He slid the cabinet door open, carefully pulling the chalice free and admiring the sun engraving.
“Were the other hybrids immune to sunlight?”
Gabriel leaned against the doorjamb, thinking of all the times he’d wondered that himself.
“I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say no. Otherwise, the council would’ve had a whole stable of them chained in their dungeons. They would’ve truly been gods-among-men.”
Nicholas moved on to the hair comb made of cattle bone, resting on a velvet cushion.
“This belonged to your mother, didn’t it?”
“She mostly wore her hair braided down her back. The length made it an annoyance when free. It was coily like yours, thick like Hamza’s. My father carved her a set of combs to help tame the woolen strands, but they were no match for it. She held onto them, though. She was sentimental in that way.”
An archival frame stood on the bottom shelf, out of reach of any direct light. It contained a fragile sheet of parchment paper. Nicholas lifted the frame with care, tracing a finger over the plexiglass protecting the charcoal sketch beneath.
“What is this?” he breathed.
The creature was tall, with skin made of black, long arms, and overexaggerated claws hanging near its pronounced knees.
“I don’t know. I found it in one of the council members’ chambers. Perhaps the inner workings of some child’s imagination.”
Nicholas brought the faded sketch closer, dissecting every inch of it.
“Yet you kept it.”
Gabriel had no response to that. The truth was, he’d been drawn to it just as Nicholas was now.
“Is this… is this a hybrid?”
“This wasn’t Zayn, and it isn’t you. You’ve seen what you are already. You’ve seen him.”
Nicholas set it down, seemingly satisfied with Gabriel’s reply.
He wanted to know the story behind every relic in the room, and Gabriel wished he could go back in time to gather all the facts for him. Anything to keep him talking. Nicholas hadn’t spoken to him this much in weeks.
He’d always been introspective, and while his gaze contained more wisdom than self-pity now, his pensiveness grew with each passing day—and so did his unrest.
Their kind needed an outlet for their intense emotions. Keeping them leashed only made them more volatile over time. Learning to control themselves didn’t mean they couldn’t find release of all kinds. It just meant that the release wouldn’t have dominion over them.
He straightened off the doorjamb, suddenly anxious to show Nicholas the final room.
“I want to show you something you may enjoy.”
Nicholas gave him a dubious look, but followed him down a third hall and through another heavy door.
“A sword room?” Nicholas whispered, brushing past Gabriel to enter.
“Marcus and I still like to indulge in swordplay from time to time—more so him. It reminds him of when we were children.”
Once in a while, Hamza would join in, but that usually ended with him and Gabriel scuffling, and Marcus exasperated with them both.
Nicholas scanned the numerous swords mounted along the wall, removing the biggest one. He weighed it in his palms before unsheathing it.
“It’s heavy.” He traced the black horse cast onto the crossguard. “This is Ameen.”
“Yes,” Gabriel confirmed, thinking fondly of his beloved horse. “My father gifted me both. The sword and the horse.”