Embrace the Night

Page 128



"No," she said quickly. Too quickly.

"You're a terrible liar, Sara Jayne." "That's what Gabriel says."
"Where is he?"

"I don't know. When I saw him last, he said he was leaving Paris." "Are you sorry he's going?"

"I don't know." She looked at Maurice, her gaze unwavering. "But I know I shall miss him every day for the rest of my life."

Gabriel walked slowly through the castle. It was an amazing piece of work. Built over four hundred years ago of stone and wood, it was a sight to behold, from its turrets and towers to the moat and drawbridge. At one time, it had housed a hundred knights. Now its high stone walls sheltered a monster.

He moved through the Great Hall with its tapestries and long trestle tables, through the kitchens that hadn't been used in over three hundred years. Climbing the winding stone staircase, he wandered from chamber to chamber, pausing now and then to stare out one of the windows into the darkness.

Removing a key from his inside coat pocket, he unlocked the door to the dungeons and walked down the damp stone steps. Ancient instruments of torture lined one wall; a score of iron-barred cells bore mute evidence to a less civilized time. The walls were damp; the air was musty.

Returning to the Great Hall, he sank down in the thronelike chair that had belonged to the lord of the castle and stared into the enormous fireplace at the far end of the room.

The silence of the castle was absolute. The Hall was in utter darkness, as black as his soul.

He closed his eyes, and Sara's image came quickly to mind, her beautiful face framed by a wealth of honey gold hair, her eyes now filled with laughter, now shining with love, now cloudy with desire. Sara…

He saw her dancing the part of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, an ethereal creature of beauty and light as she pirouetted across the stage during the Rose

Adagio; he saw her as Giselle, lamenting her lost love… With a mighty curse, he forced her image from his mind.

Determined to pretend for a while that he was a mortal man, he decided to hire some men to come out and replace the rotting wood he had noticed on the drawbridge; he would hire a couple of women to sweep and clean.

In a week or so, Necromancer would arrive, along with the young man he had hired to act as stableboy. Gabriel grunted softly. Perhaps he'd buy a couple of mares and raise horses. It would give him