by Angela Foxxe
He paused all of a sudden, holding the doorknob to his study, that nearly ancient familiar feeling running through his veins again, almost like his heart had suddenly pumped blood through every part of his body. It almost felt like he was alive.
It was here, he could feel it, and it was in London. It was close to him. He had never thought he would feel this again, not after a hundred and twenty-five years. Someone had found it, wherever it had been hidden. Many had been looking for it. He swallowed some saliva, knowing the others must have felt it, too, and would stop at nothing to get it. Gabriel shook his head, feeling light-headed and restless at the same time. He would have to look for it now.
There was no time to waste. If only Lily was alive, she could have helped him. He was on his own now. No one else would help him, no one that was the Sire at least. Everyone would be out looking for this, the moment they felt it.
He had given it to her for safekeeping so many years ago, only to lose it and lose her as well… he shuddered at the memory of it. It still haunted him, there wasn’t a week that went by that he didn’t dream about that night and the nightmares intensified with every year that passed by.
“Lily, run!” he shouted to her. “Run!”
Lily’s eyes widened, seeing his eyes redden and gleam in the darkness, and if she thought she had seen terrors in the night, this man in front of her was terror’s master.
There was laughter, maniacal, devilish laughter from the opposite end, from a dark haired man who had hated him and whom he hated in return. Lily was trapped in between them and he wanted her to run, but she was rooted to the ground, mesmerized and in fear with what was happening.
No, no, run! His mind screamed, feeling the agony course through his body.
“Where is it?” the man hissed to them, “where is it? I need it! Give it to me!”
Lily screamed.
Gabriel shook his head, trying to stop it from flooding his thoughts. It would never go away and he could never atone for it. A life for a life was impossible, she was dead and he couldn’t reach out to her grave, a nonexistent grave. No one deserved to die like that, lying on that forest path. He couldn’t forget her eyes, how they stared wide open and unseeing at the night sky. He almost felt the coldness of her body creep up to him.
That feeling of blood rush suddenly stopped. It had been sealed once more. No, no. He had to keep it. He had to get it and keep it safe from everyone else like him. Only a minority had this, it was so rare, even humans couldn’t get a hold of this so easily. It had taken him two years to covet this for himself back in the day, and he held what was set on his ring, unconsciously rubbing two fingers over the unpolished cut stone. His eyes widened all of a sudden, realizing he should have considered this first. Isla.
*
Isla had just put the watch under lock and key, when she felt a pain on her neck. She had bent down for hours, examining the other little objects they had found buried with the skeletons. The excavation would take months, owing to the size of the mass grave. A break would do. And maybe, just maybe he was browsing through the displays again.
Just in time for her four o’clock break, she thought. She quietly walked for the Victorian Exhibit, and her heart almost skipped a beat. He was here. She hid her smile as best as she could.
He heard her footsteps, but he didn’t turn around yet, for fear she would see relief on his face, a relief he was sure would be misconstrued as something else.
She mustered her courage and decided to take a seat beside him, careful to keep a good few inches away from him. He looked sideways and smiled at her.
“I see you’re on another break?” he began.
She nodded. “I was hoping to see you here.” Did I just actually say that? “Well, you’re one of those few people really interested in this exhibit,” she added quickly.
“And you’re interested in this, too?”
She nodded earnestly. “I’m writing a paper on this. It’s the ‘Ideologies of the Victorian Era on Dying and Death’.”
“Curious subject.”
“My mother worked on that years ago and never got to finish it.”
“Your parents are here?”
“They died in 1999,” she admitted.
Her voice didn’t flinch. She had accepted their deaths, he thought. He felt empathy for her. It wasn’t easy when someone you loved died. Especially her, she must’ve been a child…
“Don’t get all sympathetic on me,” she told him with a grin, “I was fifteen when they died. Here, in England. We got into a car accident.”
He said nothing.
“I guess that’s why I’m keen on making this paper. It’s pretty good mileage for my portfolio.”
“How young are you anyway?” he asked her.
“Twenty-two,” she replied. “You?”
“Twenty-five. Aren’t you a little too young to be working in a museum? And so far away from American relatives.”
“I don’t have any American relatives,” she told him. “My parents were from here. Well, my mom’s Puerto Rican but she grew up here. My dad’s from Kent. My parents met at Uni, while he was taking up his masters in Heritage Studies. It’s basically everything a museum does. That’s probably what I’ll do, after I finish my course.”
“Which would be?”
“A double major in Archaeology and Conservation.”
“How do you manage?” he marveled.
“I just really like doing this. It keeps me grounded, literally and figuratively.”
He grinned. “So you enjoy digging around dust?”
“It wasn’t dust yesterday.”
“Oh, you invaded some garden to take a look at pottery?”
She laughed. “No. We invaded an embankment. Off Kingston. It was amazing, I hope you aren’t squeamish. A mass grave of sorts from the 1880s by the looks of it. You won’t believe how many we’ve found, the skeletons. We’ve dug around twenty so far. We’ve found interesting things, aside from tattered clothing. The buttons were made of ivory, so I thought this could have been a hurriedly made grave. No one buries the rich like that, well according to history records. Sorry, I’m talking too much.”
“No, no. Go on. Unless this is classified.”
“I’m just repeating whatever’s on the news, except for the buttons,” she smiled.
He enjoyed hearing her prattle on. It was clear she loved what she was doing. There wasn’t a day she didn’t live and breathe her passion. It was something many lacked nowadays. It was something he lacked in his youth. She was refreshing, almost like how he felt when he first met Lily. Almost.
“Have you always wanted to do this whole archaeology thing?”
She nodded. “I guess I was born into it. And my parents didn’t need to prod me into their interests. I watched discovery channel, history channel. I enjoyed books far better than malls and hanging out with friends. Wait, I’m talking too much about myself, what about you? What do you do?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Well, I’m into real estate. It’s been in the family for centuries, so I carried on with it.”
“In other words, you don’t work.”
They both laughed at the same time.
“I do work,” he said sincerely, “It just isn’t your usual nine to five.”
“I don’t have a nine to five, either. I have from sunrise till moonrise. As long as it takes.”
“You need to rest, you know. You look tired.”
She knew it was true. Ever since she had started with the excavation project, her body had been restless. She woke up at odd hours. It had intensified since she had cracked that pocket watch open. She felt like she had been half awake and half dreaming for the past two nights. There were dreams, blurred dreams, voices she hadn’t heard before. Had the dead from that grave come to mess with her for messing up their final resting place? She was no superstitious person. It must’ve been all those long hours. That was the only explanation for it.
“It’s just work,” she r
easoned. “So are you hiring?” she joked.
“I didn’t see you as the talkative type,” Gabriel mused.
“What do you mean?”
“I had felt you were an introvert, trying to be an extrovert. I might have been wrong.”
She was silent for a while, clasping her hands as they rested on her lap. “Well, I really am. Believe me, approaching you took a lot of courage.”
“How so?”
“I just wanted to get to know you better,” she told him, reddening a little.
That was too bold, wasn’t it? He would look at her funny, he would judge her. She came off as too strong even if she wasn’t. No, she came off as desperate, actually.
“So do I,” he responded, without looking at her. “That’s why I keep coming here. Chances of seeing you increase.”
Is he flirting with me? “Because I’m as interested in this period as much as you are,” she said. That was lame, that was beyond god-awful. She sounded so inexperienced. Not that she was, but she sounded childish and this Gabriel guy was far from it.
He smiled at her. “You could put it that way. But just to be sure, I’d like to invite you out for dinner.”
“Now?” she squeaked. Okay, that was childish.
“Whenever you’re free. Now would be good, if your peers don’t mind.”
She took a breath and shook her head. “I forgot, I still have work. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Museums close, you know,” he reminded her.
“I just need to finish some stuff,” she told him.
“Like what stuff?”
“Between you and me,” she began, “I also found a little trinket, a pocket watch.”
He nodded. “I guess the pocket watch is taking your time away.”
“That was horrible,” she laughed, scrunching up her nose.
The way she did that reminded him of Lily. “I’m not really good with puns. Although I appreciate them.”
She sighed and stood up. “I have to go. I’ll see you?”
“You didn’t give me your number. Or a yes.”
“What makes you think I’ll say yes or give you my number?”
“I made you laugh. It’s the best sign that you’re interested in me as much as I’m interested in you,” he grinned, standing up.
She nodded, and he gave her his phone. She typed in her number and he smiled after she gave it back.
“I’ll text you, yes?” he told her.
She nodded. “I’ll see you.”
He waited for her to leave and then he sat down. He had asked her out on a date, and he was sincere about it, it was something he hadn’t done in a while.
Gabriel felt uneasy the moment she mentioned the pocket watch. Actually, his senses were on full alert now. Was it possible? Had she found something he had lost, something Lily had lost many years ago? He needed to see it, just to make sure… he was at his best, though, he was utterly composed. Years and years of observing normal human behavior had made him good at reading them.
There was a part of him that didn’t want to deduce Isla completely, he wanted to leave some mystery for himself, and he hoped he could block his judgments for their first date.
It was as easy as that, asking a woman on a date nowadays. When he met Lily, he had to be introduced twice to her, even if they knew each other already, all for decorum’s sake. She also had her governess along, as a nineteen-year-old woman of her status couldn’t be seen in the company of a gentleman she had just met. She had fallen for his sob story, as they walked around Hyde Park that fine afternoon.
“You’re an orphan.” She sounded sad.
He nodded. “They all died two years ago. From consumption.”
Her eyes looked upset, genuinely upset for him. She had such a good heart, he thought…
He didn’t lie. His family did die, killed by his sire. He had wanted them to join him in an immortal life, wanted them to taste the gifts that normal humans could not see or do. And when his sire had turned them one by one, it proved too much for his family, and they all succumbed to the poison that ran in every nightwalker’s veins. Not everyone could become like them, not everyone had the human strength, the genetics that defied dying and being reborn.
So the consumption was a perfect ruse. His family had coughed up blood, slowly and painfully dying with the full knowledge of the eldest son. They all died a week after being bitten, and he had been touted by London society as the lucky son. He had been racked with guilt for a year. His intentions, although innocent, became malicious in the end. It was as painful as losing Lily.
He had lost everyone he loved in a span of two years, all for being a nightwalker. It was a blessing and a curse. Everything happens for a reason, he told himself over and over again, to assuage the losses in his life. It was a sad thought, a thought someone had when they were in denial. He dreamed about his family often, too. He hadn’t seen their ghosts, and it was a consolation. At least he couldn’t be haunted by their physical likenesses. He hadn’t seen Lily’s either. He didn’t know why, when there were so many ghosts at Highgate.
Isla’s face compelled him to ask her out. It was too good to be true and it frightened him a little that he rushed into a decision like that. It was so like his young and immature human self. He had been brash and too adventurous as a member of British society, a source of his father’s headaches and his mother’s constant worry.
“You’re the heir to a family fortune that even your sixth generation can live off of,” William sneered, “what’s wrong with enjoying the life you’ve been fated to have?”
He could still hear William’s voice, like it had only been yesterday. His sire had been persuasive, it was part of their charm, to be utterly convincing. Gabriel knew he was a human with many weaknesses, and he wanted those to go away. It was poor planning on his part. A hundred and twenty-five years later, here he was, alone and drinking donated blood at least three times a week to keep him sated.
He shook his head and stood up, telling himself that the past was the past, and he had a date to look forward to – possibly within a fortnight.
CHAPTER FOUR
He picked her up at her place, in a plain BMW sedan, at half past six in the evening. He had successfully convinced her to leave work on time. He had even bothered to ask for her address, even though he knew where she lived.
Inside the flat, she was hurrying, nearly stumbling from all the hurrying she had to do. The temperature had dropped drastically this Saturday night, and instead of wearing a skirt, she decided on ankle length skinny jeans instead and ballet flats with a black off shoulder top.
“Don’t forget your coat,” Amanda said, slightly amused.
Amanda felt like she was looking at a college roommate about to go on a hot date. She wondered who the young man was, and why he had taken a fancy to the more often than not quiet Isla Morgan. She had heard there were quite a few gentlemen at the museum office who had taken a liking to her. Isla and all her awkwardness, and she wasn’t an extraordinarily pretty girl. Why, in her younger days, she had been prettier than Isla…
“I’ll see you,” Isla told her, waving with the keys in one hand and a coat in the other.
She nodded and watched the younger woman leave. She quickly bolted up and headed for the window, trying to see if she could catch who the date was. All she could see was a tall man, with his back turned to her, standing beside a car as he greeted Isla.
“You’re looking rather pretty tonight,” Gabriel told her as he resisted the urge to kiss her cheek.
She couldn’t help but smile a little. “Thank you.” She eyed the car and he noticed this.
“It was the plainest car I have,” he told her sheepishly, opening the passenger door.
“Because a black BMW won’t attract attention?” she said. She realized this wasn’t such a nice thing to say. “Sorry, I’m just not used to these dates. Well, dating in particular.”
He grinned as he pulled away from the curb. “I find that hard to beli
eve.”
“Which part?”
“Not being used to dating.”
She shook her head and smiled a little. “It’s true.”
“I’d like to think you avoided these dates.”
“You said I was pretty, ‘cause I combed my hair today and put on some cheek tint,” she told him wryly.
“You had messy hair the first time I saw you. Like you just got out of bed.”
She cringed, embarrassed. “I was really busy with work.”
“I could tell by your hair,” he laughed.
“Where are we going?”
“Dinner, of course.”
“I mean where.”
“Like you’d know.”
“I could have passed by it.”
He smiled. “You’ll see.”
“I hope it isn’t fancy, I didn’t dress nicely.”
“Well, I’m not in a suit, now am I? Besides, I think you really do look lovely,” he told her, remembering how he stared at her vein pulsating with blood. He knew she was nervous for this date with him. It was a good thing he had had his fill of Type B yesterday. That could stave off his blood lust for a few more days.
She didn’t say anything, letting the words sink in. He wasn’t giving compliments for the sake of it. It did sound sincere, but then again what did she know about him? For all she knew, he could have been a serial dater or a serial killer… she almost laughed at that thought, but bit her lower lip.
He wondered what she was thinking of. He was no mind reader, unfortunately. So few of them had gifts like that, and he wasn’t one of them. Around thirty minutes later they drove up to a modern looking establishment, with dark exteriors and a lit pathway, leading to an entrance with a small awning over it, with the words ‘The Ledbury’.
She suddenly felt apprehensive. This looked like expensive dining. Was he the kind of guy to split the bill 50/50 on a first date? She had dated a guy like that, who had the audacity to invite to her a pricey restaurant back in Washington. At the end of the date, he asked for her to pay half, with him ordering the expensive meal.
