Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) (5 page)

“I don’t understand,” Colin replied, tears glistening in his eyes.

Gabriel gave him a gentle smile. “You don’t have to.” Without looking at (an unusually quiet) Nathaniel, he told the boy to pay the driver for his vehicle and the promise of more money in the morning and to tell him of his dismissal from future services.
And
unusually, Nathaniel hurried off without comment to his errand.

“You’ll need to put on more clothes, Colin, unless you’re the kind of boy who likes to make a scene.”

He sniffed. “I’m not a boy! I’m nearly twenty and one years.”

“Oh, but you look no more than sixteen. Be glad for such youthful features.”

Colin shrugged at the comment. “I’ll put on this one’s clothes. Not that he’ll miss them, eh?” he asked, his voice absent of humor or even sarcasm. A serious and solemn mood fell over the boy as he stripped the body of clothes and put them on. The shirt and pants hung loosely around Colin’s lithe figure, but once he tightened the belt and slipped into the coat, one could hardly notice.

“This man’s clothing could be traced back to you. Are you sure this is wise?” Gabriel asked.

“You got a fireplace? I’ll burn them.” Colin gave a weird one-shouldered shrug. “Besides, he’s not a nob like you, so there’s no reason for me to be worried—
yet
. But I’ll leave the money. Not that I’ll need it anymore. You seem as wealthy as one of them Arabian princes my ma used to read to me about.”

“And why do you think I’m a part of the nobility?”

“Come now, man. It’s
so
obvious.”

Gabriel blinked at him, and told him to come along.

* * *

Back outside, after learning Gabriel’s name and the directions to their home, Colin began addressing him as “Lord Gabriel,” and “Master Gabriel” after every comment. Gabriel asked him if he meant to be cheeky.

“I’m simply feeling out which title I like best for you is all,” Colin replied, “Lord Gabriel,” he added quickly, mimicking the clipped dialect of an aristocratic Londoner.

The boy stood a little over five feet, much shorter than he and Nathaniel, but since they were both well over six feet, his stature wasn’t abnormal.

Colin climbed into the seat of the carriage, taking the reins into his hands, smiling from ear to ear. He didn’t look at all promising dressed in borrowed clothes and covered in a patina of filth, but Gabriel knew that he could bring about a . . . transformation in the boy.

“Murder will no longer be necessary,” Nathaniel told the boy, “and no stealing either. Think of this as Christmas each and every day.” On the way back to their home, Nathaniel murmured in the boy’s ear how they would dress him in fawn-colored sack coats, lavish him with expensive gifts, and provide shelter as if he were their very own child. Gabriel could only imagine the wry look on Colin’s face as he deftly steered the horses through the cobblestone streets. The boy must’ve thought the promises Nathaniel told him absurd, ridiculous.
He
certainly would have.

“And in return,” Nathaniel said, his murmuring rising louder. “You must serve us till the day you die. Right, Gabriel?”

Gabriel didn’t answer, but instead watched the boy’s shoulders slump forward as if the weight of Nathaniel’s demand had landed on them.

“Perhaps I should turn myself in, Master Gabriel?”

“So, you’ve settled on that as a proper title for me,” Gabriel replied, ignoring his wretched question. “Hmm. ‘Master Gabriel,’ I must admit I rather like the sound of it.”

Snickering a little, Colin’s back straightened. He snapped the horse’s reins, and the clip clop of their hooves sounded against the street.

Gabriel crossed his arms against his chest and leaned his head on the window, smiling. “But you won’t live long enough to do much of anything if Nathaniel doesn’t stop distracting you from driving. Bloody hell.”

“You’ll want me to bathe, kind sirs. Unless you’re the kind of men who don’t mind fucking a dirty boy.”

That again, Gabriel thought, sighing in his mind.

Nathaniel’s pale blue eyes flickered to Gabriel.
The boy
 . . . he thought to him . . 
. is obviously confused
.

Gabriel gave a nod, but remained silent.

Colin, oblivious to the supernatural discussion, continued to drop sexually charged verbal tidbits: “What do you like? Me on top? You? It doesn’t matter to me. Just as long as I get a bath . . . and a bite to eat before
and
after the act. I’m famished!”

Gabriel rolled his eyes.
I thought that my silence would be an obvious answer that sex isn’t my intention
.

Nathaniel curled one corner of his mouth in a smirk.
How adorable
.
He doesn’t understand. He thinks we want . . . favors. Yes, he’s confused . . . and for the sake of argument, I’m confused as well. What are your intentions, Gabriel? Blood? Pleasure? Both?

Gabriel closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He knew that Nathaniel meant to aggravate him, get a rise out of him. When he opened his eyes again, he graced his face with the smile of patience itself.
Blood, I have no desire for.

No desire for?
Nathaniel asked.
Don’t you mean won’t allow yourself to have?

Gabriel ignored him and went on
, and this boy is missing certain anatomical parts necessary in pleasing me.

Nathaniel sighed.
Well then, don’t spoil my fun just yet. Let us keep him in ‘the dark,’
even for just a little while longer.

“Master Gabriel, are you listening?” Colin called over his shoulder.

He frowned. “Listening and thinking, young Colin.”

“Care to share . . . your thoughts?” His voice had dropped an octave in a husky whisper that a woman would most likely have found quite arousing. Gabriel just found it disturbing.

“Drop the seductive stance and just drive, Colin.
Drive
,” he ordered. “I don’t need the kind of company you’re thinking about.”

“Aha! So, you’re saying you can read my mind?” Colin asked.

“. . . Something like that,” Gabriel answered, putting as much hostility in his voice as possible, but Colin paid it no mind and burst into golden laughter, which filled the quiet night with something near to beauty, until Nathaniel spoiled it by adding, “Reading minds? Would you like me to demonstrate, darling Colin?”

When Colin shuddered, Gabriel knew the cold had nothing to do with it. He sensed that Colin knew it, too.

WEALTH HAD
COME EASILY
to Gabriel, and with it, although he could’ve acquired one of the finest mansions in London’s West End, Nathaniel thought it better that they stay aloof and out of the hawkish eyes of aristocrats. And servants were always an afterthought. As a child, his parents occasionally had one or two, to help with cooking and cleaning. Now that he had grown older, he couldn’t stand the thought of people always hovering around him like gnats that needed to be swatted. So, they resided in a two-story flat near the city. Compared to the homes of Sevien and Miche
l, the interior décor of his home may have been Spartan, but it belonged to him, and he called it sanctuary.

Gabriel took his keys out and opened the door. He rushed upstairs leaving Colin and Nathaniel behind. He wanted nothing more than a bath after his visit to the slums. And then sleep. He didn’t need to sleep, but he often used it as a convenient and easy way to endure the slow passage of time.

He should’ve lingered in the parlor to show Colin around, go over his duties, but he preferred to leave Nathaniel to see to those tasks, and that way, he wouldn’t be left open to another of his lectures on Enlightening others. Even though that hadn’t been brought up, he knew Nathaniel would mention the topic soon. He wanted to close himself away in his room to postpone it.

Gabriel moved in a blur through the mirrored hallway that led to his room. Once there, he shut the door and went into the bathroom. He plugged the bath’s drain and turned on the hot water faucet. The tub filled up, and when the steaming water reached halfway, he turned it off and stripped. Taking a box of powdered soap, he poured its contents into the porcelain tub, then sloshed his fingers in it to produce suds. He stepped into fragrant, steaming water, and the warmth on his skin was delicious. The soap smelled like lavender, a soothing scent. He took a washcloth from the railing and scrubbed himself clean. Dunking his head into the water, he rubbed shampoo into his hair, working it into a good lather before rinsing it. Once he finished, he decided to linger a little longer, pleased that the water still retained some warmth. Closing his eyes, he leaned back to soak and to think.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Gabriel’s eyes snapped open to behold Nathaniel. “Go away. I’m trying to relax.”

Nathaniel sat on the floor by the tub, smiling.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Since you’re obviously not going to leave me in peace, then you might as well converse with me. Where’s Colin? Did he try to escape yet? He probably knew that it was you who made him tremble with your voice. What a foul trick.”

“
Ahh
h.
I daresay that you just complimented the human’s perception. Well, our Colin, he took a quick,
much-
needed bath and is now sleeping in one of the guests’ bedrooms. With the dirt gone, you’d be amazed with how pretty he is.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Pretty? It wasn’t impossible, but he found it unusual for a man to be called pretty. But then again, Colin wasn’t quite yet a
man
.

Nathaniel’s smile grew. “Listen.” When his pale blue eyes lit up, and he tilted his head to the side, like a coquette, Gabriel knew that he was beginning another part of the fairy tale:

“Two gods had revealed themselves to the land: face to face. Lucifer, god of light and good. Adonai, god of evil and darkness. But the two gods were really just different sides of the same coin.

“Long before the prince existed, his parents had worshipped the former openly and brought down fire and death to anyone who opposed them. In time, they brought forth two children with crimson hair and emerald-green eyes. The girl will not live to see her twenty-second year, divulged their god. Such a pity; but the boy would live much longer—so long—their beautiful and two-faced god told them that his existence would seem like an eternity doubled. That was only if . . .”

“If what?” Gabriel wrung the length of his hair into his hands, and the water that trickled from it left little ripples.

Nathaniel spread his lips in a bitter smile. “If the prince never opposed the god of his ancestors.”

“And what if he does? What an idiotic story,” he murmured under his breath.

The bitter smile lingered on Nathaniel’s lips, and he brought his hand up to his neck and made a cutting motion across his throat. “Off with his head.”

Slowly, Gabriel’s free hand found its way to his throat, as if shielding it.

“You’re afraid, my prince.” A cold, flat statement without comfort. Nathaniel came to his feet and handed Gabriel one of the towels from the linen closet. He stepped out of the bathroom, and over his shoulder, told him to follow.

Gabriel rose and stepped out of the tub. He dried himself off quickly, wondering about his friend.

Probably another trick or riddle.

Feeling himself growing a little angry, he walked from the lavatory and into his bedroom, putting on a robe before stepping into the mirrored hallway.

Dawn had come so soon. The sun’s pale rays streamed in from the adjacent room, bouncing off the ceiling-to-floor mirrors, giving the impression he stood in the middle of an enormous rectangular prism. Behind and in front of him, fragmented rainbows made from light and glass shimmered and danced.

“Would you like to behold the faces of Adonai and Lucifer?” Nathaniel asked.

Ah. Now he understood. “You want me to look at my reflection,” Gabriel replied, no longer interested. “Is that it?”

Nathaniel smiled. “Humor me.”

Gabriel stared and saw what others saw: a young man with thick, loosely curling red hair, not orange or auburn—but a dark red, rich like the color of blood. Arresting dark green eyes gleamed like two emeralds in a face identical to his father’s. The same image repeated in multiple reflections. “Adonai and Lucifer.” Anger slipped through his voice.

Nathaniel’s hand rested on his shoulder. “If there’s a god or a devil, Gabriel, you’re both. Your parents were unwittingly worshipping themselves. Remember that. And tonight, by taking in Colin, you made a step in the right direction. A small step, naturally, but a step nonetheless. I’m proud of you.” With those words, Nathaniel left him alone.

Gabriel stared at his reflection seeing nothing to be proud about. He retreated into his bedroom, dressed into a shirt and pants, before lying down on the bed. He fell into a reverie brought about by Nathaniel’s words.

He remembered the night his parents died. Witch hunts had peaked, and the Lennox family suffered similar fates of other victims. The witch hunters fell upon them in the night. His mother’s and father’s many commands to their dark god proved fruitless. Gabriel had watched without horror, without any feeling, as the mob impaled both his parents with wooden stakes and burned them to ashes.

The mob pulled his sister out of their beautiful, burning home, keeping him at bay with swords, but the threat of being stabbed didn’t stop him from trying to protect her. He moved toward them, but someone struck him in the back of the head. Stunned, he sank to the ground.

As they beat him and his sister with stones, a sudden piercing cry rose up bursting into a howling tuned by the full moon. Horror rushed through the crowd like a gale, leaving them petrified.

A pack of wolves stalked toward them.

Like phantoms, surreal and strangely silent, with bloodchilling grace, they leaped toward the petrified mob. They couldn’t be real, for wolves had been extinct from the area for years, and yet their razor-sharp teeth glistened in the moonlight where their bodies cast gangly shadows on the grass.

Some screamed: “The Devil’s work. He fights for his own. Flee.
Flee!”

The hunters not only heard the voice, but heeded it, leaving him and his sister bleeding on the ground. The wolves came closer, moving in beautiful stealth. Their red-pink tongues lolled out of their mouths, licking over their white, sharp teeth.

They looked ravenous.

The boy Gabriel gasped and fell down, down, down into the dark apex of unconsciousness.