Embrace the Night

Page 123



"That story you told me, about the young man who traded his soul for another chance at life, that was you, wasn't it?"

He nodded, too ashamed to speak.

She sat down on the foot of the bed and studied him through wide, guileless eyes. "How old are you, Gabriel? You would never tell me before."
"I was born in the winter of 1502."

She frowned a moment. "But that would make you…"
He nodded. "Three hundred and eighty-four years old." It was impossible, inconceivable. And yet she knew it was true.

"You always said you were too old for me," she mused, and then she began to laugh uncontrollably.

Gabriel watched her from beneath hooded lids, his emotions in turmoil. He had made love to her, had given her his blood and taken hers. Though he had not taken enough of her blood to initiate her, they now shared a bond that could never be broken.

Sara looked at him, helpless, as her hysterical laughter dissolved into tears. And then he was holding her, his face buried in her hair. She felt his shoulders shake and she knew he was crying, too.

"Gabriel?" She drew away, her own tears forgotten in her need to comfort him.

A single tear hovered in the corner of his eye. A tear tinged with blood. Very carefully, she wiped it away with a corner of the bed sheet.

She stared at the bright red stain on the white linen and realized, for the first time, the full horror of who and what he was.

Vampire.

The undead.

Creatures who slept in coffins by day and prowled the darkness at night, preying on the weakness, and the blood, of others.

Gabriel was a vampire.

He saw the knowledge in her eyes, saw the realization that came as she recalled incidents from the past.

"That's why I never saw you eat," she said tonelessly. "Why I never saw you during the day. Why the burns on your face healed so quickly…"

She gasped as another startling realization came to the fore. He was the monster who had plagued her nightmares not so long ago.