Embrace the Night

Page 151



him, her need to be with him, against her desire to continue dancing, to have a home and a family.

You'll never have a normal life if you stay with me, he'd said. But did she want a normal life if she couldn't share it with Gabriel?

How could she live with him, knowing what he did to survive? How could she live without him?

How would she feel as the years passed by and she grew old, older, while he stayed forever young? Would she hate him then? Would he turn away from her when she was no longer young and pretty?

She could become what he was…

She glanced at the bedroom door, and after a long moment of indecision, she did what she had been longing to do, what she had promised not to do.

One hand clasping the cross she had slipped over her head when she left the room earlier, she opened the bedroom door a crack and peered inside.

Gabriel had dressed and now lay upon his cloak, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes closed. His skin looked more pale than usual. She stared at him for a long moment, but he didn't appear to be breathing. He looked, she thought morbidly, like a corpse laid out for burial.

I'm not alive, he'd said, and for the first time she believed him.

A sound behind her made her start, and she whirled around to find Maurice standing in the doorway. "What are you doing here?" she whispered.

Maurice glanced at Gabriel, then shook his head. "I knew it," he murmured. "I knew he had come back. There was no other explanation for the way you've been acting these past few days."

Sara crossed the floor toward the door, but Maurice held his ground.

"Now do you believe me?" he said, nodding in Gabriel's direction. "The man's a vampire, Sara Jayne. He must be destroyed."

"No!"

She tried to close the door, but Maurice grabbed her by the arm and half dragged, half carried her into the room Babette had used. Taking the key from the lock, he shoved Sara inside and locked the door.

"Maurice!" Sara pounded on the door with her fists. "Maurice, let me out!"

"No, Sara Jayne. He must be destroyed, now, while he's helpless." "Maurice!" She screamed his name. "Don't!"

Ignoring her cries, Maurice went outside and retrieved the sack he'd left on the steps.

Reentering the house, he opened the sack, his hand clutching the cross he wore while he gazed at the contents, quietly praying for the courage to do what had to be done. And then, heaving a determined