Book 2 Gabriel - Sneak Peek (Patreon)

I found him like I always did these days. Like all the times before, he was on patrol. Wandering the markets with a vigilant gaze. Except, now the walls were different. Something in my body was out of control and the streets kept shifting as if they were old bones, stretching with aching pops and groans.  Tonight, Gabriel was making sure to light the waxy candles that were stuck to the walls. The only source of light within the market anymore.  They were easily blown out by groups of people wandering by, some by accident and some on purpose.  Each night they regrew, the cream-colored drips that cascaded down the stone receding in a mimicry of passing time before relighting again come ‘morning’.  Gabriel had taken to making sure the main roads were constantly lit, walking up and down them several times a day.  There were bags beneath his eyes and his normally dark skin was taking on a greying tone as his hands and arms were shot through with paper thin cracks where the last of his grace leaked from him like beads of sweat.

“Oh, Gabriel,” I sighed.

He looked over his shoulder, just as I knew he would.  It hadn’t taken him long to see me.  Something about his celestial nature let him view past the veil that usually hid secrets from the view of the public.

“You should be resting,” he told me gently. There was supposed to be a firm undertone in there somewhere but he had lost all sense of it in the last few weeks.  The unrest of the market had completely beaten him down.

“I’d say the same for you,” I told him, falling into step by his side.  “You do not have to do this. I can take care of this, you know.”

It didn’t hinder his steps. Instead, he walked towards a candle that looked as if it were failing and fed it a small bit of soot. The flame sputtered and bloomed before settling, its light spreading across the district in steady waves.

“You cannot take care of everything.”

“Neither can you,” I told him. It was the standstill that we had been at for some time now.  Gabriel wishing to do the market's work. Me wishing to as well. Working together may have actually achieved the goals we both desired, but the problem with that was my time in the market was in flux still and the further Gabriel descended into his madness, the further away from reason he drifted.

“I am merely lighting candles,” he told me. “You are brighter with each flame I maintain.”

“That’s what is frustrating me, Gabriel. I fear you are not lighting flames to keep the people who live here safe. You are lighting them to see me.”

He frowned. “I am lighting them to keep the market safe.”

“I am the market.”

I saw the way he twitched. A flinch of his head, like a nervous tick, his skin glowing for a momentary second before falling away as if it had never been there at all.  Before, Gabriel’s placid expression had been the mask in which hid every emotion. Now, it was breaking, revealing just how much he felt and kept from the world.

Sighing, I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere. It always ended this way. He was becoming more and more agitated lately. Reaching out, I brushed my hand against his. I had perfected holding him without my form sinking through his own.

“Would you like the company tonight?” I asked.

He nodded resolutely. “Yes. I have several routes to cover and then I need to go and check on the dissipation of the mists.  There have been reports of vampires hunting in the absence of the candles and I will have to take care of that situation.”

“You could ask Belladonna to take care of it,” I suggested. They were her people, after all.

“I do not need others taking care of my problems,” he snapped. “Besides, Belladonna needs to focus on being a Baron and getting her district in line. Something she has failed to do.”

“I think she is doing what she can,” I said.

“What do you know? You are not here. No one else can see you. Do you know the needs of the market or are you merely projecting what you think needs to be done.”

“I think I may know the needs of the market far better than you,” I told him.

His footsteps were becoming uneven, his body jerking down the streets, sword clanging against his hip with a loud crash.  “You do not see,” he said feverishly. “What lurks. What is waiting. Only I can see. I am the one who can purge the sickness from this realm.  It was why the Knowing sent me here.”

I paused. “You fell, Gabriel.”

He shook his head. “Did I? Or is that what I was made to believe?” Stopping, he fed another flame, this one flickering across his eyes in such a way that made my stomach flip in terror. The voidless black of the cosmos was reflected in his gaze. “I believe I had it wrong. I had a vision, no long ago. A vision where I avenged this realm. Cleaned it of its murk.  The Knowing blessed me as one of its strongest warriors and my calling is now.”

“Gabriel….”

“And then you can come home.” Reaching out, he took my hands within his. My fingers sunk through his skin and yet he didn’t even flinch. “Once I clean this realm, you can come home and we can be together. You will be my reward.”

I felt tears prick my eyes and my throat close. Somewhere, behind my belly button, I could feel the pull of the grave. It wouldn’t be long now but I didn’t want to leave him. Not in this state.

“Gabriel, I don’t think…”

My eyes popped open in a grey and monochromatic world, the streets empty and the candles nothing but watery images.  I sighed.  A conversation for another time then.