Gabriel (32 page)

I panicked, knowing I was dying, and knowing Gabriel wasn't here.

With no way to connect to him in my mind, I was alone and out of time.

I tried to squeal but the noise that escaped me was but a strained rasp. I lifted my heavy arm in the air, but it seemed to dip in and out of focus. Existing halfway between life and death, I no longer belonged here.

The fear of what was about to happen hit me, and even though my body felt like it was on fire—my very skin melting into my bones—still I didn't want the end to come. I would rather burn like a thousand suns for all of eternity than simply not exist at all—than be alone, trapped in the nowhere.

The delicate fabric of my dress tore as my head fell between my legs, and unruly, crimson tears streaked down my cheeks. It only furthered my disintegration; I couldn't even cry without losing part of myself.

And as I drained away along with my bloodied tears, the words of Gabriel's and my song became no more than a gentle whisper. The world seemed to fold in on me like a black envelope. My blood formed the melting wax. But before death could impress its mark and seal me away, the rhythmic thump of a drum creased the design. And the sound was getting louder, moving closer, and becoming stronger.

“Lailah.”

A thumb and forefinger pressed into my cheek, shaking my face from side to side.

I caught only glimpses of his face as the world tipped upside down. As though I were on a fairground ride, I could only see his features each time the big wheel turned over.

“Look—here.” His voice was stern, commanding my obedience. He pointed two fingers at his eyes as I tried to stabilize my sight, and for a moment I saw the hazel stars of the butterfly girl fluttering back at me.

Only they didn't belong to her, they belonged to Jonah.

“Focus, Lailah,” he said. His strong arm lifted me from the trunk, and I was leaning back on a firm chest instead. Sitting in his lap didn't stop my head from falling or my body from limply flopping forward.

“Breathe through your nose, not your mouth,” Jonah further instructed. He wrapped himself around my chest and positioned my face in the crevice of his shoulder. I could hear the beat of the drum stronger than ever, and I tried to use it as a way of leading me back.

“What d-does
el efecto mariposa
mean to you?” I stuttered, recalling what he had said to me at the bonfire, confused as to why his eyes seemed to match the butterfly girl's.

Although Jonah's attention was fixed on his left wrist, which he was slicing open with his fangs, for a fraction of a second, he stalled. “A sign to me that gives meaning to the chaos.” He ripped a second strip down his vein. “You didn't respect the decision I made, so I'm not going to apologize for taking away your choice now.” He tipped my chin up, trying to force-feed me the blood he had gathered on his skin.

I spat it out, struggling to breathe, my mind whirling once again.

Furious, his body became rigid beneath me. “Do you think that Gabriel would rather you were dead than have you take my blood?”

I shook my head; he had misinterpreted my reason for refusing him. Either way, Gabriel was about to lose the one he loved—Gabriel was no longer the reason why.

“I didn't know it before, but I do now. I'm the one who is meant to save you,” he begged, once again bringing the inside of his wrist to my mouth. In this state, I couldn't even detect his scent, and I was glad. It eased my struggle.

I brought my hand up to where my cheek rested on his chest. It flickered in and out of focus like a weakened candle. I slid my palm underneath his shirt, placing it on top of his heart, feeling the thud of the drum, and I closed my eyes softly. The vision still didn't make sense, but somehow the butterfly girl was connected to Jonah, not Gabriel as I had thought.

I stroked his smooth skin, my bloodied fingers sticking to his flesh. “I believe you.”

He pushed his wrist back to my nose. “Then take my blood.”

I refused.

“I don't understand,” he said.

I stifled a dry tear and whispered, “Who will save you from me?”

If I drank from Jonah, I wouldn't be able to stop.

He pressed his hand to my hair. “I'm not supposed to be.
Not beyond you
.”

If I weren't nearly withered away, I would have hit him. I couldn't trade his life for mine, and I wouldn't.

As my mind became set, the beat of the drum faded, and I tensed, knowing what came next: the nowhere.

“Don't you dare make her death count for nothing!” Jonah shouted, though his voice—just like the thought of him—was becoming distant. I didn't have it in me to ask him whom he was talking about.

“Look at me.” Jonah gripped my waist, tightening his arms around me, and I submitted, gazing at the fierce fibers of red glowing through his hazel eyes.

He shook his wrist once again under my nose as he said, “You won't end me.”

His words all blurred together as my gaze dipped back to the ground, my eyelids heavy. I was listening, but it was only when he finally murmured, “Please, Lailah, don't leave me in the darkness all alone,” that I really heard him.

I rolled my eyes back to his, knowing what I had done to him. I had imprisoned him there, sentenced him to the very thing I myself feared most. He didn't love me, but perhaps any company—even mine—was better than none at all.

I conceded.

And then I succumbed.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

I
TRIED TO CONSUME
Jonah's blood, but as the first droplets spread across my tongue, the part of my brain that controlled the signal—the compulsion—to swallow had gone.

He pressed his wrist harder against my lips and though my mouth filled with blood, I coughed, and none of it remained.

It was hopeless. Azrael might have been dead, but his words to me were very much alive;
not even if your life depended on it
was embodied in my inability to take from Jonah, my willing victim.

Jonah hovered over my ghostlike body, his words sounding like china smashing as he said, “Kiss me.”

His lips pressed to my own. A warm liquid trickled across my tongue. He'd cut his lips and he was feeding me his blood, disguised in a last good-bye.

These lips that he once tried to use as a white flag of surrender, he now coated in dangerous red. I was still unable to reach for his neck, but his thumbs pressed down on my cheekbones and his fingers threaded through my short hair.

Darkness descended over his face, and as his blood sat in my mouth he withdrew. “Breathe, Lailah.”

I wasn't aware that I was holding my breath. But he knew what he did to me. My automatic reaction was to gasp, and as I did, the air took his blood to the back of my throat.

Jonah's essence seeped through my system. At first I was calm. The stars overhead reappeared, one by one. Then I was back in his lap, and his wrist was once more under my nose. He eased it to my lips, and I nuzzled into his cold skin, cautiously lapping up his offering.

Initially, his blood was bland, but then with every purposeful swallow he became sweet. He was delectable, and I wanted every last drop of him.

I yanked his arm farther into my chest so that there was no gap between us, and I dug my fingernails into his skin, causing contusions that offered me yet more of him.

The sounds around me—the rumble of cars speeding down a highway somewhere in the distance, the rustle of each individual feather of a bird flapping its wings somewhere close, and countless other cracks and taps and whispers—roared in my ears. But, then, the Vampire moaning beneath me cut through all the other noise.

I crashed into his body hard. The oak tree yawned and stretched as it uprooted with the force, cracking in two and falling with an almighty boom.

Still I was guzzling his blood, and all I knew was what he was: a Vampire. Beyond that, I didn't care.

Hungry, hot, and hysterical, I flipped over, tearing his shirt apart, the buttons plinking free as they became detached.

His heart would provide me with so much more.

Splatters of crimson smeared around his lips. His eyes were weak and fading. Still, all I saw was a Vampire.

I ran my tongue down his neck, tasting the beads of sweat dripping down his skin. Around his collarbone, his pores oozed a strange summerlike scent, and I stopped. But then, in an instant, my greed overtook my hesitation.

I pressed my cheek to his firm chest. I scraped my nails over the outline of the muscles running up his torso until I finally brought them over his heart.

“Finish it,” the Vampire uttered through pained rasps. His voice sparked no recognition. But just then, the skip of his heartbeat pulsed beneath my hand.

I cricked my neck and listened to its rhythm.

The beat of the drum.

I might not have been able to see him through the darkness, but I could hear him.

Jonah. My salvation.

Horrified, I dragged myself across the grass on my bottom, desperately trying to put some distance between the two of us.

I brought my knees to my chest and curled into a tight ball. I watched silently as his skin began to restitch, and I heard the breaths he struggled to take as he came back to himself. I'd ravaged him; the streak of my clawlike marks trailed his torso where blood still soaked his skin.

I trembled, and my hands shook with violent vibrations. I looked to the night's sky and wailed, sickened by what I'd done to him.

Incoherent, muddled emotions rushed through me. Anguish, disgust, and then a strange sense of lust as his fragrance drifted on the soft breeze.

Jonah stared blankly as he tried to prop himself up against what remained of the fallen tree. I had desecrated it; one of the only things that Gabriel and I had shared that was still left. And I had defiled Jonah in the process. How quickly love had turned to hate, how easy it had been to obliterate. I was consumed with ferocity—everything wiped away by my darkness.

Seeing what I had done to Jonah, I had never felt so small, so weak, so overwhelmed by my impulses. But physically, my body had never felt so strong. The surroundings felt similar to the way they had the morning I'd woken in France. My ability to see in the dark was fully restored. The texture of each blade of grass beneath me, every fragment of dust that hung in the air—everything appeared sharp and detailed.

But I had only been in demo mode before.

It was as though when I had woken in the clearing and absorbed the sun, my body was awaiting the dark energy to finish charging my battery.

And now I was in full play.

Connected to Jonah through his blood, every ache as he healed traveled through me, as though they were my own wounds. This must have been what it was like for him, too, when he was attached to my physical decline.

His presence made my insides burn. I had to fight the urge to rush over and drown in him in order to extinguish the blaze.

Was this what it felt like for him, too?

And if it was, how had he resisted it all this time? It was my love for him that had stopped me, that was stopping me still, but I knew now that he didn't feel the same. So perhaps it was the idea that he had held on to, that he was meant to save me; that “her life” would count for nothing if he didn't, as he had said. Though I had no idea who the
she
was.

As Jonah got to his feet, he cracked his dislocated shoulder back into its socket, and I flinched as the sting passed through me. I bowed my face into my folded arms—hiding from him, from what I had done.

*   *   *

J
ONAH'S HAND RESTED ON
my spine, and his breath skimmed the back of my neck as he crouched beside me. His touch caused a confusing knot to form in the pit of my stomach and the muscles of my inner thighs to contract.

“Lailah,” he said calmly.

Still I could not bring myself to look at him.

He slipped his hooded coat over my shoulders and tried to pry open my hands, which were wrapped around my knees.

“It's okay.” He pulled me into his arms.

Desperately trying to subdue a rising dizziness, I said, “I'm sorry.”

He didn't answer me.

My words were not enough. I unclasped my hands and let my knees fall, frantically bringing my palms to his chest once more and tickling his skin with my fingertips.

Seizing the opportunity, he moved the sleeves of his jacket around my arms, bending my elbows inside, and then played with the zipper that sat below my hips. He brought the material together, grazing my outer thighs as he did. He was deliberately averting his eyes from my near-naked body as he began to slide the zipper up to my collarbone, where for the briefest moment he rested his fingers gently.

A lustful, fiery affliction struck me repeatedly at the smell of his intoxicating fragrance. I was overcome with a sense of want, and I bit down on my bottom lip. I shifted to my knees, clawing the skin of his chest, and I nudged my nose to his and hurriedly found his lips. I kissed him, but he didn't respond. Frustrated, I tried again more urgently this time, but still his lips wouldn't part for me.

I whipped the zipper back down to my belly button and snatched his hand, pressing it underneath what was left of the thin material across my chest. I leaned in once more, encouraging him to meet me.

Jonah flexed his palm over my skin, exerting a tender squeeze before skimming the curve of my breast with the back of his hand, but then he stopped. He broke away, refusing my kiss for a final time.

“Jonah—” I pleaded. I was sure he could feel the compulsion, the need, pulsing down my form; the overwhelming desire to have him—somehow, anyhow.

In a flash, he'd done up the hoodie. He pressed his thumb into the middle of my lower lip. Assertively he said, “The feeling will pass.”

Disappointment filled me. I knew I was being selfish, but if he could feel my body yearning for him, why would he yield and offer me a release, when I had never offered him any in all this time—when I had refused him, only hours ago?