Part 19 (2/2)
”No.”
He gestured toward the ruin of his house. ”You may take the money and the diamonds-”
”No.” She knocked the sword out of his hands. ”I don't want your money, or your diamonds, or your sob story. Your life has sucked; okay, I get that. But you can't put this on me. I'm not cutting off your head. Go to Iraq. They love doing it over there.
Just stand in the street and yell out that you're an American oil company executive. Or Jewish.”
”I understand. I forget that you are human, that such things are abhorrent to you.” He reached for the blade. ”I will find another-”
”I don't think so.” She threw his sword into the brush.
He felt his blood run cold. If she would not release him, then the torment would never end. ”Have I not suffered enough? Is my humiliation not complete?””Run the part about your humiliation by me again.”
She did not care for him, could not love him. He understood her reasons: The Brethren had reduced him to a blind, unfeeling ruin, and he had badly frightened her. He had pushed her too far. But he would not make her feel responsible. She would never carry the burden of guilt over him.
”You read the letter Dalente wrote,” he said. ”Angelica, my own sister, was the one who betrayed us. She put me and her husband and her own son into the hands of our enemies. She knew about this place, and sent them here to kill Dalente. How can I live with what she has done?”
”You didn't do it; she did. She has to answer for what she's done.” She stepped closer to him and jabbed her finger into his chest. ”Maybe you should quit whining and go find her. Stop her from hurting other people.”
”I'm too tired.” His shoulders sagged under the weight of his sorrow. ”Tired unto death of this ugliness, this horror. It never ends.
How much more pain and humiliation must I endure before I have earned my rest?” And how many lonely centuries more would he live without her?
This time her hand connected with his face, her palm shockingly hard as it struck his cheek.
”You shut up,” she snarled. ”Pain and humiliation, my a.s.s. You keep talking like this and I'll clean your clock so hard you'll wish that you were back in the torture chamber.”
”Nicola.” Gabriel felt appalled by her threats.
”I mean it,” she insisted. ”I didn't save you to listen to your b.i.t.c.hing and moaning and watch you kill yourself. I did it because...
because if I can keep going, then so can you.”
She did care for him. ”Tell me how.”
”Well, for one thing you can stop trying to be so G.o.dd.a.m.n n.o.ble about everything,” she snapped. ”The Renaissance days or whatever it was like when you were human? They're over. If you want to survive in this day and age, then you have to toughen up and be smart. You deal with the murderers, thieves, and liars. Yes, it's awful, but that's the way it is. The world's full of them.
You have to think the way they do. For all you know, I could be one of them.”
”I do not think I am strong enough.” Gabriel could taste her tears, hear the swallowed sobs beneath her sharp words. That seemed far worse than the blow she had given him. ”They didn't break my body, Nicola. They broke my heart.”
”You're breaking mine now.” Her voice trembled. ”Don't you know that? I know you're blind, but can't you feel it, what's happening between us?”
Gabriel kept his hands at his sides. ”What I feel is wrong.”
”Giving up, that's wrong. I lost everything that mattered to me ten years ago, along with everyone I loved, and I haven't thrown in the towel yet. I've still got a heart, don't I? It works, most of the time. Jesus, I hit you. You're making me nuts. Come here.” She put her arms around him and pulled him down so that their foreheads touched. ”I'm not giving up on you. There's a reason we found each other. Let's find out what it is.”
Hopelessness dragged at him. ”I did not intend to make you angry.”
”Guys never do.” She slowly rolled her brow against his. ”Look, we can be strong together, right? We're survivors, you and me.”
”Survivors.”
”Exactly. So the world f.u.c.ked us over; who cares? It doesn't have to be all about that. We're free.” She grabbed a handful of his s.h.i.+rt. ”Once I find the Madonna and take care of that, we can go wherever we want. We can get away from the holy freaks and the Kyn. We can live. We're good together, aren't we?”
He was infecting her with his despair. She was healing him with her dignity. Which one of them would succeed?
”I think,” he said, very slowly, ”that of the two of us, you are the n.o.ble one.”
”You're crazy.” She brushed her mouth over his in one of her quick, startling kisses. ”And you're shaking.” She turned her head and drew his down to the wound in her neck. ”Take it.”
Her blood-wet his lips, sweeter than any honey, more tempting than any wine. ”I fed on one of the shooters.”
”So don't take much.” She pressed her slim body against his. ”I like it. It felt good when you do it in the forest. I want to feel that way again.”
Her embrace and her softness proved stronger than his self-disgust. He drank from the bleeding wound, tasting her, savoring her as he felt the violent coldness inside him retreat. Madness and sorrow evaporated, replaced by a grinding, demanding need for more of her flesh. That hunger became so intense that his c.o.c.k swelled between them and pressed into her flat belly.
He put her at arm's length. ”If you despise me as much as I do myself, you should go now.”
”Not going to happen. We need each other.” Her hands slipped under the edge of his s.h.i.+rt, and she rubbed herself subtly against the ridge of his p.e.n.i.s. ”Every time I'm near you, I don't know whether I should kiss you or jump on you. I couldn't help myself in the shower. You feel it too, don't you?”
He gave his heart to her in that moment. Loved her, a human woman, as he would never love another. And as he stooped to pick her up in his arms, he found that he didn't care.
”h.e.l.lo. Blind man.” Her arms went around his neck. ”You're going to walk into a tree.”
”I know where I am going.” He carried her back to the oak where he had found her, and lowered her onto the bed of moss there.
Gabriel wanted to rip her clothing apart and feast on her body, and feared he might do just that if he fell back into the darkness.
He reached out with his talent, dismissing the moths and summoning the quietest creatures in the forest, the patient watchers who formed and wove their hungry threads into silken traps.
”Do spiders frighten you?” he asked as he stretched out beside her.
”No, I...” She went still. ”Uh, Gabriel?”
He followed the bridge of her nose with his finger, gliding over the curves of her lips and chin and sliding down the slope of her throat.
”Did you ask me that because there are about two hundred spiders hanging over us?”
He nuzzled her hair. ”I want to see you,” he murmured against her ear. ”Through their eyes, I can.” He sent for a very specific forest dweller, calling them from their burrows in the ground and under the tree bark.
”Does this seeing-through-them thing involve their crawling on me?”
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