Embrace the Night

Page 172



wring the breath from her body. But the same tokens against evil that kept Nina out of the apartment also served to keep him in.

The sound of her laughter, filled with knowing, burned his ears like acid. "Soon, Gianni," she said, "soon she will be nothing but dust, and then a memory."
"Nina!"

She tilted her head to the side, a devilish smile playing about her lips. "Will you beg me again for her life, Gianni? Will you come outside and grovel at my feet?"

Rebellion mingled with a strong sense of pride rose up within him. He had begged her once before to no avail. But he would do it again, if she would only swear to leave Sara alone.

With a defiant lift of his head, he met her gaze. "I would come to you if I could, bella," he said with a wry grin, "but I fear I cannot leave this house."

"But you would if you could? You would come here to me, now, and beg me for the little mortal's life?"
He swallowed the revulsion that rose in his throat. "Yes."

"And what would you say?"

"Whatever you wish to hear," Gabriel replied.

"Get down on your knees, Giovanni," she said, "and let me hear what words you would speak to me."

Swallowing his pride, Gabriel dropped to his knees in front of the window. "I would tell you how lovely you are, that your beauty outshines the sun, that your lips are sweeter than nectar…"

"And you would not mean a word of it," she exclaimed, her anger evident in her tone, in her expression.

"I will say whatever you wish to hear," he repeated. "I will do whatever you ask. If you need to take a life, take mine."

"You would die for her?" Nina asked incredulously. "You would give up hundreds of years of living for that puny mortal female?"

"Yes."

"Then you will suffer even more greatly than I had imagined," she remarked thoughtfully, and amid a swirl of black skirts, she disappeared into the darkness. Gabriel watched her disappear and then, swearing softly, he rose to his feet, quietly cursing the holy water and the invisible barrier it created that prevented him from following her.

"One of us has to go out," Sara said the next evening. "You may be able to go for days with nothing to… to sustain you, but Maurice and I have to have something to eat."