Chapter 46
Nicholas
The dogs had been overly excited at seeing Nicholas, but blood was his priority. He’d rushed for the basement while Gabriel ushered them upstairs, returning his brother’s multiple missed calls.
Nicholas waited in the living room, eyeing Gabriel’s return in the reflection of the glass wall. The closer he drew, the more stable Nicholas’s world felt.
“Are you sated?” Gabriel asked, settling onto the corner of the dining table.
“Mostly.” He’d saved room for more. “Hamza?”
“He’s been updated. I relayed everything you told me.”
Nicholas tried to stare at the ocean, to gain some clarity from it, but that only came when he turned his attention back to Gabriel.
Nicholas still wore his suit jacket. It reached the tops of his bare thighs and smelled like rain, pine, and smoke.
He inhaled deeply, unabashed, needing as much of Gabriel as possible right then.
“Marcus would’ve called by now if it hadn’t worked, right? I mean, he would know by now, right?”
“Yes. If he hadn’t been able to get enough of his blood inside your priest before his heart stopped, we would’ve heard by now.”
Nicholas nodded. “Okay. Good. That’s good. Do you think he needs help? Did you need help?”
“No one can get near them right now. If it were anything like when I turned you, Marcus will be protective. Volatile.”
Nicholas bit down on his thumbnail. “I can’t feel him. Can you? Why wouldn’t he have his doorways open, knowing we’d be worried?”
Nicholas had never felt his connection to Marcus. Gabriel’s friend kept himself tightly leashed. But if there was ever a time for him to let someone in, Nicholas believed it should’ve been now.
“All we can do is wait,” Gabriel said gently.
Nicholas sighed, getting lost in the following silence, still unable to shift his gaze from Gabriel to the ocean. He gave up, turning to him.
“What does rouhi mean?”
“My soul.” His voice was rough, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“He’s still your friend, Gabriel.”
“We don’t know that.”
Nicholas supposed they didn’t, but he hated imagining otherwise.
“I’ve been thinking about the man from the church. What if he used mind control on the men with him?”
“I was wondering the same thing. You said you felt something pushing at your mind when you arrived.”
“Yes. I thought it was the thing inside me, my beach, but now I’m not so sure. If it was him, it didn’t work.”
Gabriel folded his arms, brows lowered in concentration. “What if it only works on humans? But then, why didn’t it work on your priest? I’m sure he would’ve tried it on him.”
Nicholas thought back on something Hamza had said to him once.
“Hamza said it had been hard persuading Liam to believe that I’d gone on that spiritual retreat. His exact words were, ‘Something about his mind isn’t right.’ So maybe only weaker minds are susceptible to it?”
“It would make sense why he left Kyrin’s storehouse with only some of his men in tow, the rest of them dead.” Gabriel had filled him in on how he’d spent their time apart, on his days keeping track of Kyrin.
“It would also explain the missing,” Nicholas whispered.
Children wouldn’t get their fathers back, and wives would never see their husbands again. Siblings, mothers, friends… Nicholas had taken that from them tonight.
Images of Muharib on his murder spree in Saraad came to mind. They were more alike than different now.
“They were already lost the moment he got his hands on them, Nicholas.”
He nodded, knowing that was true. It didn’t stop him from hurting for the people who’d mourn them.
“It would also explain why Kyrin is dead,” Gabriel said.
Nicholas snapped to attention. “He’s dead? You saw him dead?”
“No, but I’m sure of it.”
That was all Nicholas needed to know. He’d never doubt Gabriel again.
“Do you think he’s a vampire? And that mind control is his gift? Shielding too?” Nicholas didn’t forget the absence of heartbeats when he stood outside the church, nor that he couldn’t wrap his ice around the hooded man.
“He would have to be. Aside from the dawari, Saraad was only home to blood suckers and witches. He’s lived too long to be a saahir.”
The man had said Nicholas was like The Guardian, which he took to mean a vampire. If he, too, were a vampire, wouldn’t he have included himself in that comparison? Unless he didn’t want to reveal anything about himself—anything more than what he’d already put on display.
“So he made it out.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand.” He sounded as perplexed as Nicholas felt. “If that were the case, it would pose too many questions and not enough answers.”
Like, how had he made it out? How had they not seen him? How had he survived the sun, which was at its zenith when Gabriel, Hamza, and Marcus passed beyond the veil of Saraad?
Nicholas reached into the suit jacket pocket, withdrawing the sketch from Gabriel’s artifacts room. The monster on the parchment paper looked exactly like his beast.
“Blood suckers, witches, and dawari weren’t the only things in Saraad.”
He held Gabriel’s steady gaze.
“My claws were the length of daggers. They cut through skin and bone with just a whisper of force. Those men might as well have been made of paper.”
He glanced at his hands and feet.
“I couldn’t see my markings. My skin turned black and leathery. And my arms.” Nicholas held the sketch up. “They looked like this.”
Gabriel pushed up from the edge of the table, and Nicholas stepped back. Not because he didn’t want his touch, but because once Gabriel laid a hand on him, there’d be no stopping what came next, and Nicholas wanted answers first.
“I know where your mind has gone, Nicholas. We’d never witnessed hybrids in our time. There was Zayn, but his life after transition had been brief. Maybe this is just another element of being a mix-breed that we were ignorant of. It doesn’t need to mean that you are evil.”
Nicholas exhaled. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“We’ll figure it out. Rayyaan will give us the answers we seek.” His words rang like alarm bells.
“We don’t know that he’s The Guardian. His only crime could be not telling you about his connection with Liam.”
He wanted that to be true, for Gabriel’s sake. For his sake as well, because an enemy of Gabriel’s was an enemy of his. And he’d come to love Marcus. They were a family.
Gabriel grunted. “We’ll see. As soon as the priest is done transitioning, we will see.”
Nicholas appreciated that he spoke as though Liam would survive, although survive might not have been the right word.
“He’ll hate me for this.”
“You can blame me.”
“No.” Nicholas snapped at Gabriel, fury at himself lighting his tone. “No more of that.”
Blood caked Gabriel’s clothes and smeared his face, yet he’d never looked more stunning. His looks made him attractive, but his vulnerability would always be what made him beautiful. Nicholas got to see that. He got to experience the unconditional parts of him.
No matter how many times Nicholas must have hurt him, Gabriel was still capable of letting him in. It seemed almost out of his control, like maybe his heart belonged to Nicholas, and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he wanted to do about it.
“I thought I was better than you,” he whispered, biting down on his quivering lip.
“You are, Nicholas. You are better than all the great souls this world has ever known.”
Nicholas huffed, vision blurring.
“A great soul wouldn’t have sat in judgment of you the way I did.
I wore what I am like a curse, when getting to love you forever is the greatest gift.
I wanted to hate you because I was scared of what it would take for me to love you.
I held on so fiercely to the one thing that I believed would always make us different.
The one thing that would always give me the moral high ground. ”
Gabriel waited patiently for him to get his bearings.
“You took away my choice. You turned me against my will, and I saw it as the most selfish, deplorable thing you could do.” The quiet things hurt less when he started to say them out loud. “And then I never let you forget it.”
He shook his head as though seeing how stupid he’d been.
“I didn’t understand why you didn’t let me die because I didn’t want to.
I told myself that if our roles were reversed, I could never do what you did.
I told myself I was nothing like you, but then the moment I found myself at a similar crossroads, facing the same decision, I didn’t even blink.
Letting Liam die… Letting him remain unchanged was never an option for me. I loved him too much to let him go.”
Nicholas laughed, blinking away his blood-tears.
“I’m sorry. For that, and everything that came after. Can you ever forgive me?”
Gabriel closed the distance, brushing the back of his hand down Nicholas’s grimy cheek.
“There is nothing to forgive, Habibi.”
Nicholas made a breathy sound of comfort, of emotional weakness at hearing the endearing term he hadn’t heard for so long. It wrapped him in its warmth, in acceptance, and in strength.
“And yet you call me the greatest soul.” He nuzzled into Gabriel’s touch. “I’ve missed you so much.”
He would tell Gabriel everything, reveal all that his soul had suffered while they were apart, holding nothing back.
“Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you, and not a night passed without me touching myself to memories of your hands on me.
I was sick with the loss of you, even while believing it was everything I ever wanted.
I thought wanting you should’ve been my choice, but you were never a choice that needed to be made, Gabriel.
You were always a matter of fact. My obsession with you, my need for you, was something that couldn’t be erased. I just wasn’t brave enough to see it.”
Gabriel exhaled, a rush of yearning and heartache seeping into Nicholas’s bones. He’d unlocked his door again.
“You never have to close it again, Gabriel. Not with me. I’ll hold your feelings like they were my own. I’ll carry it all—for you and with you. I’m stronger now. I’m sure.” He was no longer a delicate flower dirtied by blood.