The bodies were heavy. Leah shrugged off the nauseating sensation that churned her stomach. The sight of the dead had always been far from pleasant. Yet those, killed as the spawn of the devil, were now to be carried away as human beings of flesh and blood, and left to slowly rot.
It was her who pointed out that leaving the bloody corpses on the road would make things worse than they already were. Nothing had gone as planned. The presence of another bounty hunter had complicated everything. In a sleepy village, where the most exciting attraction of the twenty-four hour cycle of work and rest was an evening out in the only pub in thirty kilometers radius, the word of an event of such unusual nature as Van Helsing's arrival spread fast enough as it was. Having to deal with angry peasants who sought vengeance, a vent for their anger that had accumulated over time, was the very last thing Leah wished for that night.
The bodies grew stiff so quickly that it was hard to lift them from the ground. They seemed heavier, too; yet Leah suspected that it was her own body that grew weaker after the strenuous fight. Van Helsing didn't oppose when, sparing him the needless banter, Leah began removing the signs of their unexpected encounter, prodding him to help her with a wave of her hand.
They carried the four bodies off the main road, deeper into the woods where few ever wandered, save by chance. That the men used to live in the village, before prince Liam subordinated them to his will, was more an assumption than knowledge on Leah's part. It was long since she had last looked upon those lands, the lands of her young years. The passing of time had brought a change to it as it had to its people. The once familiar faces dissolved and blurred in her memory. She no longer remembered any of their names.
That the weavers of fate had led them to the vampire's gates against their will, leaving them no choice but to obey him, was out of any question. Once you encountered one of the Undead, you could make no mistake about it ever again in your life - if you managed to escape with it. Looking back in time, Leah still remembered the shadow of threat they had cast upon the simple people's homes, their children, their lives. She remembered waking up to the sound of her own heartbeat, to her breath chased away by a sudden fear, when the night echoed with the batting of wings just outside the door. In the morning, they would race to the village to find out which of their friends would join the army of the dead without a burial or a proper gravestone.
Sometimes they would find bodies. Some were twisted and bloody and torn apart beyond recognition. Leah could almost smell the faint scent of blood in the air every time she returned to that land that was her home. Other bodies bore no marks of the cause of their demise. Both would be burned with no exceptions, as though to vanquish the demons within them, on the hill just outside the village. The children would be forbidden to wander there at all times; the elders too avoided that area at all costs.
Many days after their burial the smell of burnt flesh would linger in the air, spreading over the village as if heedless of the direction of the wind. Some said that a curse had been cast upon the sleepy town, that the Devil himself had been unleashed to wreak havoc upon its people for their terrible sins as yet unknown.
Yet one day, during the fourteenth year of terror, suddenly as it had begun it had ended - with only occasional cases of disappearance from then on. Those who had not left the land returned to their semi-normal lives. Despite the ever fresh memories of what had come to pass, for a time they believed it was over.
Far in the village, the church tower bell rang twelve strokes of midnight when the last body disappeared under a thick coat of leaves.
Idly dusting off his coat, Gabriel let out a soundless sigh. She puzzled him; a huntress, seemingly dead-set on her assignment the same way he was focused on his, and yet not quite. She was no threat to him; at least not when, despite the growing soreness of his wounds and the fatigue that had gripped both his body and mind, he was prepared and watchful of her every move. She must have known he could part with her at will, as he had in the past; and yet he hadn't - curiosity claimed the better of him as Gabriel decided to let this game continue for a little longer. Her help had been surprising, yet somehow not unexpected. He found himself wanting to know the reasons behind such a sudden change.
He watched Leah as she sat heavily on the ground. Still seemingly heedless of him, she examined the damage the Ghoul had wreaked upon her. If this was a game, Van Helsing had chosen to see where it would lead.
The horses whinnied from afar, reminding the hunters that it was time to go. It would take bad luck for the peasants to learn of their pursuers' fates any time soon, unless the hunters spoke of it. What they had not done to remove the signs of the fight, the rain would do in their stead before the first light of the day.
Half-expecting her to leap to her feet with a gun in her hand, Van Helsing observed Leah out of the corner of his eye as he passed by her and vanished amongst the trees. The sound of soft steps behind him soon told him that Leah had followed, yet without needless haste. He turned back only once before they reached the road where their horses were, nearly causing the huntress to run into him as he came into a sudden halt.
He met her eyes, shining faintly with half-hearted amusement as she looked up at the taller man. He noticed how this time she took a step back, avoiding physical contact, yet she held up his gaze for just long enough to grow to be unable to resist a small smile. Gabriel stepped aside with a smirk, making way for her to pass by and continue in front of him.
Her brow furrowed slightly at him putting on such a front; surprised, Leah hesitantly obeyed the unspoken request. She slowly reached to her side where her gun was, only in the last instant deciding not to pull it. The idea of Van Helsing having an opportunity to strike her from behind had not yet been hushed in her mind, when Leah jumped slightly at the sound of his voice, faintly saturated with irony.
"Now that's a sign of trust."
"Is it, now," she slurred half-heartedly, yet at once she felt the rush of blood in her veins. She could tell there was a smirk on his face without looking back. She could tell the look on his face just by the tone of his voice. That strange, sudden certainty of what that man would say or do startled her for an instant.
Van Helsing watched her tense as she kept moving along, her steps now quickening ever so slightly. If she wished for a game, he would make sure that she got it. "I could stab you in the back," he said.
"You couldn't." Partly against her will, partly at its bidding, Leah's pace quickened even more, as if trying to keep up with her heartbeat.
Gabriel didn't linger far behind. "What makes you so sure?" he asked.
The open space of the road appeared now both welcome and most convenient. Leah halted in half-step and took a rapid turn to face the man. "If I'm wrong, prove it," she said, watching him with a challenging look.
Van Helsing cocked his head. "Perhaps not today."
Leah shook her head with a sigh, her eyebrows climbing into her hairline. She looked at him carefully; Van Helsing was there in front of her, the very same man she remembered from the past: weatherworn and weary, he still somehow kept his dignity. She could tell by his posture, bent only so slightly, that the toil of the fight had left its mark on him as it had on her. Yet even now, he could fight her and win as easily as at any other time. What games he was playing with her, she didn't know; yet she was more than sure that there was more to that man than met the eye. Now she hoped it was only a matter of time before she could at last find out what it was that really caused him to play.
The Ghouls' mounts had fled as their masters died; only now, Van Helsing realized how strangely the beasts had acted while they fought the possessed men. He could only suspect that the creatures had somehow been charmed as had been the men; a new form of sorcery he had not seen before.
They found their own horses not far away from the battleground. Still bewildered and at great unease, after a few failed attempts to calm them down, the beasts allowed the hunters to resume the travel.
Gabriel didn't look back as they urged their horses forth. He didn't find it particularly surprising that Leah continued heading South. Although briefly, he had considered turning away; yet the dull pain in his arm and the growing weariness had convinced him otherwise. As they distanced from the bloodshed site, Van Helsing could swear that a small voice behind him whispered slowly the word that was now like his given name, engraved forever in his mind. Murderer. You have come, and you have killed. Now go…
He could not look at those whose lives he had taken and see nothing but evil. At times they would return to him in dreams; the nightmarish visions of blood and fear, as his were the hands that mercilessly cut the lines of their lives. Sometimes their faces were blurred, other times he saw them sharp and clear. Behind the bloodshot masks there were still the men and women they once were. Few of them had hearts no more, few had rid themselves completely of their human traits. The evil that drove them fled as they passed away, returning to them the aura of hope that it had stolen. Only now, in those dreams he could see that upon their deaths, some shone with blues of despair. Others, with reds of wrath. Very few remained dark and grim.
Sometimes those nightmares were a blessing, despite their cruelty; deep down, Gabriel hoped that even dying evil had not damned those men to eternal burning in the fires of Hell. Sometimes the irony of the outcomes of his tasks angered him. Perhaps the world was rid of another creature of darkness as it died on his hands, yet the existence of evil itself had not at all been vanquished. Since his return from Transylvania, Van Helsing had come to believe that evil would only lurk in the dark corners of the world, patiently awaiting an opportunity to strike once more.
The moon had hidden its silver face behind the heavy clouds completely by the time the riders reached their destination. By the edge of the forest, where the land changed into wide, open plains, Van Helsing noticed dark contours of a house, drawn with shadows against the wall of trees. His vigilance at its peak, he studied the landscape with care for any signs of movement. In a tight embrace of gloom, the wind and the heavy downpour seemed to be the only reasons for the trees and the tall grass to swing and bend at an uneven pace.
If anyone lived in that lonesome house, embraced by long, black shadows of the forest at its back, it must have been a long time ago. The thick darkness did not help his study; what Gabriel could make out in the gloom behind the surrounding curtain of rain, was that the path leading to the house had long since vanished under the overgrown grass. The only sign of it ever being there were the big stones, lining the way up a small mound.
At night, a less vigilant passer-by could even miss the existence of the house completely. It was not much more visible than an old shed short ways away and behind; both buildings looked like great shadows against the trees. Brought down by the passing of time and the lack of human attention, the shed must have collapsed long ago. The house had yet to reach that same stage of decay, although it must have been long since its better times. With each blow of the wind, a shutter in one of the two front windows creaked sorrowfully.
Having slowed down significantly as they rode across the small plain, Leah briefly glanced back at Gabriel. Still in the saddle, she joined him in the watching out for any signs of unwelcome presence of any potential pursuers who valued their lives a bit too little to stay in the safety of the village. None seemed to have wandered that way; looking around once more, Leah dismounted her steed.
She did not look back again, as Van Helsing had subconsciously expected. Slowly, she paced towards the house. Gabriel frowned.
The huntress climbed the three stone stairs that led to the door. There she stopped and slowly reached up her hand. Running her fingers down the wooden frame, she turned around to her companion.
A little hesitantly, Van Helsing jumped onto the ground, regretting it immediately as he felt as sharp pain tear through him. Unstrapping his sack from the saddle, he swung it over his shoulder on the uninjured side, and took a few tentative steps forth. "What is this place?" he asked loudly, for otherwise his voice would have been lost in the rain.
Leah's face brightened a little. "My old house. I used to live here, a long time ago. Before this land became the graveyard it is today." The small smile on her lips faded with those words. Her hand dropped loosely to her side. She looked at Van Helsing with an arched eyebrow; his apparent indecision brought a rather wry smile back to her face. "You're not going to stand in the rain all night, are you?"
The perspective of spending the night under a roof instead of the cold outside was appealing enough. Or was it? "I have considered it," Gabriel muttered to himself, quite assured that the woman had heard none of his words. "That depends on what the inside has got to offer," he added, this time his voice loud enough to breathe through the noise of the storm.
"Besides shelter from rain?" Leah shrugged her shoulders and threw back her head. "I wonder about the same thing. Let's go and find out, shall we?"
As she motioned her hand towards the door, Van Helsing joined her up the stairs. Clearing his throat, he glanced at her with a smirk. "Ladies first."
Leah shook her head and pulled open the old door.
The wood smelt of dampness and decay. The long untouched hinges moaned in a loud objection to disturbing the peace of the house. The lock no longer protected the inside from unwelcome eyes. Between the doorframes, the spider nets spread an invisible trap. Soft threads brushed lightly against Leah's face as she crossed the threshold, placing one careful step after another.
If anything unwanted lurked in the darkness inside, it would already be alarmed and aware of the presence of the two hunters. Another step sent a hollow noise echoing in the walls. Pieces of shattered glass cracked under Leah's boots, prompting the huntress into a rapid halt. She could hear Van Helsing's steady breath just behind her ear, close, too close for comfort. Holding her own, Leah reached out her hand. To the left of the door, ever since she remembered, a shelf on the wall contained exactly what she needed.
At her back, Van Helsing countered her a little too rapid movement with one of his own. Taking a small step back, he fixed his eyes on the woman's hands, momentarily prepared for defense. He let out a long, soundless breath as Leah turned around. The crunch of the crushed glass mingled with the tapping of the rain against the roof as she moved, just to die out the instant she fell motionless again. In her hand she held a thick candle.
Her eyes darting from one corner to another, carefully tracing the faint shadows of the place that was barely familiar anymore, Leah took a few more steps inside. She wavered a little, blinking her eyes as she lit the candle.
The candle slowly caught on fire, revealing the contours of furniture in the room. The tall figures of the two hunters cast long shadows on the walls and the floor. Taught the hard lesson on trust by experience and life, as though in a silent agreement they slowly turned around, backs to one another, observing the dimly lit room for any signs of unwanted presence.
To his left, Gabriel noticed three cots, big enough only for a child, placed one next to another. No sheets lay on them save a blanket, cast carelessly in the legs of the makeshift bed. By the door, one of the two windows was broken. Only now, Gabriel could see that the pieces of shattered glass had scattered far; countless tiny bits glimmered across the floor and the cupboard just below the windowsill.
Behind him, Leah sighed quietly at the sight of the damage. With the glass cracking under her feet, it didn't take his sharpened senses and a trained ear of a hunter to know that she paced the room towards the corner to his right. Van Helsing turned around.
Pushed by a sudden blow of wind, the open shutter knocked lightly against the frame, forced into uncontrolled, irregular swing. Outside, the rain still poured down with no lesser intensity than it had upon their arrival. The quiet creak of the wood seemed enchanting in its eerie grouse.
The rain drummed its haunting melody against the roof. Its big droplets sat heavily on the sharp remnants of glass that remained in the frame, just to quickly trace their way down moments later. Suddenly, Gabriel found himself staring at their silent performance, heedless of all else. The soft glimmering had somehow reminded him of tears, mingled with rain on Anna's face. He shrugged involuntarily, unwilling to give in to that memory. Determined to rid himself of such images, he blinked quickly; of all bad times, memories would always choose the worst for their return.
Three more flames flickered shyly on a low cabinet in the corner where Leah had been just a while ago; yet the bounty hunter was no longer there. Gabriel turned to look at the new source of light; slowly, as the flames shot up, their brightness revealed the few possessions that had not yet been stolen or damaged in the house. On a wooden shelf sat a frame, one that must have been the effect of long hours of someone's handwork; tiny curls and rows of arching leaves rounded into delicately beveled edges, harboring an old pencil drawing. Gabriel paced the room and stood in front of it. The picture was that of the house; seven people stood and sat at its front: three adults, four children.
Looking at it, suddenly Gabriel felt as though he had treaded on something sacred, forbidden. A long time ago, he would have given everything to know if he too had once had a family, a home. Now, he had convinced himself that not remembering was his choice, that it made things easier. A part of him always knew that a day would come when he would fool himself no more. He knew that, one day, an inner call would push him to set out again, in search of the scattered pieces of himself he wanted to put together at any cost.
Leah's return pulled Van Helsing out of his reverie. The woman walked inside, carrying a bucket of water and placed it on the floor. She looked up, shaking rainwater off her coat. Gabriel realized that he must have been staring at the old drawing longer than he had thought. Lowering his sight, he cleared his throat and waved his hand towards the shelf.
"Who's that?" he asked. The sound of his voice seemed unnatural to him, as though he had not heard it in a long time. He saw Leah smile as she straightened herself and stepped forth to stand by his side.
"My family." She crossed her arms under her breasts. "This house, when it still remembered better times. Pieces of my past, if you will." She sighed quietly, but the small smile on her lips had not faded. She sent Gabriel a warm look, something he had all but expected. "One of those things that remind you of who you are."
Van Helsing nodded absently as Leah paced away and knelt in front of the fireplace. Slowly his eyes unfocused; his thoughts wandered, the woman's words echoing in his mind. Even as he no longer saw it, the memory of the picture still lingered clear in his memory. The image of Leah's face, her smile as she spoke of it; it all was so strangely haunting. He could only guess what she felt, and he knew that it would take a miracle for him to ever know or share that feeling. "Who am I, then, if I have no memory of such things?" he asked quietly the inner voice in his mind that told him once more that a man without a past was a lesser man.
In that moment, having realized that his thoughts had found their way out in the form of words spoken quietly - perhaps not quietly enough - he turned to the woman.
Leah returned the stare. As though the line of time had suddenly got cut, her hands rested lightly on a piece of wood, halted briefly halfway to where it would soon burn to ash. He tried to read her face, but the look he met was blank and told him nothing at all. He could only hope that she had not heard any of those words that had slipped carelessly past his lips.
A second, perhaps two had passed, yet to him it seemed like eternity before Leah resumed her work and looked away from his face. He found it hard to move, yet at last his eyes darted from the picture, and Gabriel walked away from the shelf. "The house of such a family shouldn't be abandoned," he said at length, sitting on a chair at the table short ways away from the huntress. He couldn't help but cast a brief glance behind; something in the drops of rain glimmering on the broken glass was still strangely inviting.
Leah didn't look at him as she spoke, unhurriedly kindling the fire. "It used to be different. When my parents lived. After they died, my brothers moved up north. Traded backwoods for streetlights." She winced slightly as she rose, betraying that she too had had a long day. "I've kept this place for occasions such as this."
Gabriel smirked. "You must often provide accommodation for Europe's most wanted."
Leah arched an eyebrow but sent him a wry smile. "Perhaps I should consider it." She took off her coat and threw it on the only other chair in the room.
Now he could see she traveled fully armed; one by one, three daggers, a pistol and finally her blade found their way to the tabletop. Gabriel's eyes wandered back to the picture on the shelf, almost against his will. A family. Would he ever come to learn anything about his own? He sucked in a breath as pain pulled him out of his eerie trance. Unpleasant as it was, this time he was thankful for it. "You didn't leave along with them?" he asked.
"No." Leah shook her head. "Let's say they've never grown to appreciate my profession."
Leaning back in his chair, Van Helsing sent her an amused look. "I can believe that," he said.
The wind darted inside, sweeping around the corners. Despite the fire that licked merrily at the wood in the fireplace, both hunters shivered and cast rather displeased looks towards the broken window.
Van Helsing got to his feet, wincing soundlessly as he did so. He was accustomed to pain, yet combined with weariness and cold, it began to be a little bothersome. He caught Leah staring at him as she contemplated something with a tilt of her head. She studied him for a short moment, then looked past him and back at his face.
"I can't do much about the cold, but I can make sure you don't bleed to death," she said lightly as she pointed to the torn sleeve of Gabriel's coat.
The man's brow shot up. "And why would you do that?" Leaning against the wall, he kept his eyes fixed firmly on hers. "You know, the posters say 'Wanted dead or alive.'"
Leah let out a quiet laugh. "You're worth a fortune alive." She looked at him critically with hardly feigned seriousness that didn't reach her eyes. "Your body's worth a half of it. Public executions in Dublin still gather quite a crowd."
The look of sheer irony painted Gabriel's face. "I bet they do," he said.
With a wave of her hand, the huntress pointed towards the bed to Gabriel's right. Hesitating a little, Van Helsing accepted the offer and took off his coat before he sat down.
The water had boiled by the time Leah gathered all clean cloth she could find and returned to him.
"You've been after me for six years," Gabriel said thoughtfully upon her return, shooting a brief glance at Leah's weapons on the table as he spoke.
"And you've been always a step ahead of me." She grimaced and, seeing what had drawn his attention, she tensed a little, yet remained calm.
Van Helsing continued. "Then why didn't you use one of those when you found me sleeping?"
Leah paced towards the table and lifted her blade; still stained with the blood of the Ghoul, it looked even older than it was. "I stay true to tradition," she said, slowly wiping the blade on a piece of cloth.
Gabriel watched her with a questioning look. "You didn't in Dublin," he said. Smiling wryly upon seeing the look on Leah's face, he let his memory travel back to their last meeting, when she had nearly succeeded in catching him. Afterwards he had wondered often what had stopped her from pursuing him that night. Yet even now, that he was given a chance to ask, he chose not to take it. He had yet to decide whether or not he still held a grudge.
Her eyes narrowed, Leah sat down next to him. Had she known before what she knew now, she mused, things would have gone differently for both of them. "Let's call it an exception from a general rule," she spoke at last. "Besides, we both know you saw me coming. Only I wonder, what took you so long to trick me this time." She watched him close, a faint hint of a smile playing in the corners of her lips as Gabriel took off the sweater he was wearing.
Once again, he found himself thankful that the wound from the werewolf's bite had healed without a scar. "Three years is enough time to forget the traits of your enemy," he said.
With a fluid movement, Leah slipped behind him and slowly tugged his shirt off his shoulders. "Four," she whispered quietly. The sleeve of his shirt was torn and stained with crimson blood. The wound on his left arm was but a scratch; Leah scorned inwardly at Ronan's aiming skills. She shifted her weight, and her hair brushed lightly against his skin. She studied his bare chest; among some apparently old scars, Van Helsing had several bruises and cuts from the fight with the Ghouls. Almost involuntarily, Leah pulled closer to his bare back as Gabriel freed his arms from the bonds of the cloth. "It was four years ago," she said softly against his hair.
Reluctantly pulling away, she reached out for a piece of white cloth and dipped it in the hot water. Squeezing it half-dry, she removed the strands of wet hair from Gabriel's face and tucked them behind his ear. "If it's true what they say about you, I wonder," she spoke as she moved closer again and leaned slightly into him. "Why didn't you kill me when you had a chance?"
Van Helsing winced as the damp cloth touched his sore skin. "For so much of a nuisance, you are not evil," he slurred through his gritted teeth.
Leah's hand paused as the huntress met his eyes in a long stare. She absently slid a gentle finger down his back. Suddenly she came to understand that the furious rhythm that had chased away her breath was her heart pounding in her chest at the sight of small pearls of sweat dancing on his face, in spite of the cold. She didn't feel it either; not when her hand strayed idly up his back, her fingertips studied delicately the skin of his neck.
She pondered his words; he found in her no evil, not even though she had spent six years trying to bring him down. Long gone were the days when she had believed that hunting him would rid the world of evil; the righteous purpose had long since been traded for pursuing him out of curiosity and pride. And there he was now, right in front of her, and he looked at her as though he could see right through her. Those dark eyes were so calm; the eyes of a man who had crossed the path of her life bore no sign of malice.
"I am many things, but evil is not one of them," she said at length, her eyes never leaving his. "The question is, are you?"
Gabriel held up her gaze. "Would you believe me if I said that I'm not evil? Would you believe if I told you that my job is to vanquish evil?"
Leah swallowed audibly, determined not to look away. The mask of indifference had broken, she knew. Did that man know it, too? Looking so intently into her face, could he read the confusion behind the gray eyes?
The cloth fell on the bed and her hand slid down Gabriel's back. He could feel her warm breath on his skin, she was close, so close that her scent danced all around him. He could feel her tremble slightly and in her eyes he saw a sudden flash of recognition, familiarity that had bothered him too since the previous night. Familiarity that reached beyond their knowledge of one another, that had no right to be. As though it had happened before, as if he had already known how it felt to shiver under her gentle touch.
All of a sudden she moved away, bringing him abruptly back to the present. "I'd either believe it, or not," she said quickly. "Does it matter? Pick one."
Bewildered at that sudden change of front, Gabriel frowned. "Why ask, if there is no answer you can believe?"
Leah feigned a smile and, rising from the bed, she looked away. "It's a habit."
She saw him shake his head slightly at her words, and a strange fear gnawed at her from the inside. Yet whether Van Helsing intended to retort to that or not was irrelevant. An instant later, she left him in haste, never looking back.
A small storage room at the back of the house was the only other place still intact enough; in the rest of the house, the long unattended roof was leaking and everything had slowly begun to rot. Leah closed the door behind her and sank onto the ground. She closer her eyes. In herself she found no comprehension at all; an image lingered in her mind of Van Helsing's face, and it was not the tired face with dark smudges under his eyes she had stared at but a while ago.
Letting her hand wander slowly to his face, she drank her own reflection from his dark, calm eyes. In their endless depths, no longer there was the glimmer of haste, and pain, and the long concealed longing that had once been their only light. The time and space were nonexistent, they had long since passed and joined with the eternity, encapsulated in his black pupils that now shimmered with peace.
Heedless of all, her fingers traced slowly the line of his cheek. With every inch they remembered the familiar curves, the feel of his skin under her fingertips that would always leave her shivering with glee. He closed his eyes, and she found herself smiling ever so slightly at the bittersweet irony of that act. She couldn't know; her touch might have awakened more than the primal desire to share warmth and safety of arms, on a windless night that chilled only those sorrowful and alone. It mattered little; the call of his lips rang loud and clear with a thousand silver bells, singing in unison somewhere deep within her heart.
He caught her hand as it slid down his face and onto the back of his neck, and held it down, gently. Letting her draw him nearer and nearer, slowly, she knew he felt the warmth of her breath on his lips that caused them to part in ravenous awaiting. She pulled closer, letting his hand run down her arm as she held him close, nearer and nearer until her breath and his breath became one, his lips and her lips two parts of one entirety.
Leah shuddered violently. No, it had never happened. How could her mind have played such games with her? In the thirty-three years of her life she had not yet come to learn how it felt to truly love someone, and Van Helsing, that man she had hunted for years, was farthest from having anything to do with it as he could be. Then why was she trembling so, trying as she might to chase away the image of him from her mind, the taste of him she never knew from her mouth, the sound of his voice from her ears?
She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as she breathed deeply time after time, idly rubbing her temples. "Go away," she spoke in hoarse whisper as she pulled herself up, leaning against the cold wall. None of this had happened, it must have been weariness and hunger and lack of rest in many days that had conjured up such false memories.
A run of cold shivers down his spine reminded him that he had yet to put his clothes back on. Having fixed a makeshift band-aid on his arm, Gabriel dressed up and made himself as comfortable as he could. For a short while he sat against the wall, his eyes closed as he tried to relax, but something had made him restless, uneasy. He rose and paced to the window.
The rain had stopped, though the night sky was still cast with dark, heavy clouds. It struck him how silence embraced all, now, that the only sound was that of the trees, moved occasionally by a stronger blow of wind.
He turned around to the soft sound of footsteps behind his back.
With a blank look on her face, Leah paced the room. She looked at him only once; all the emotion that had been so clear in her eyes was now gone. Without a word, she tossed a thick volume on the tabletop, and leaned against the chair. "I thought you might find it useful," she said when she met Gabriel's questioning look.
His eyebrows climbing into his hairline, Van Helsing sat down. "And that is?"
Scuffing her foot against the floor, Leah let out a small sigh. She bit down on her lower lip and sat down opposite him on the other chair. "Liam," she said, observing as the man tensed at the sound of the vampire's name, his eyes darting from her face to the book in an instant. "Our local prince nuisance," she added sarcastically, opening the book on the first page.
Was that where it had been heading all the time? His assignments never failed to remind him of the necessity to fulfill them, one way or another. "Now we're getting somewhere." Van Helsing shifted his weight and leaned forth. "Looks like I don't top your to-kill list, after all." He looked up swiftly, meeting a pair of cold gray eyes, and smirked.
"Not anymore," Leah sneered. Then she pointed her finger at the book, her eyes still locked with Van Helsing's. Her voice was saturated with sheer loathing as she said, "This one, he tops the list."
.
Verona Dracula: Whoa, two reviews at once =) That was a nice surprise. As you can see, it's taken me terribly long to complete this chapter, afterall. First a major case of writer's block, then trouble with some scenes here, but finally, here it is. I really do hope you enjoy this one =) Now that I've finished this chapter, I will finally have time to review your CarlGabriel story =) Have been reading all the time, only haven't reviewed yet. I will. That's a promise.
m31: Once again, thank you VERY much for your review. Your reviews are so helpful. I hope you'll get to read this chapter soon, and that you'll be back online soon as well.
ElvenPirate41: Alright, I think I can say now what the other reference was; If you've seen X2, you'll know: During Wolverine's fight with Deathstrike, when he fills her up with adamantium, it flows out of her mouth and her eyes [like tears; that's what it reminded me of] I did a similar thing with the vampire blood flowing out of the Ghoul's eyes as he died. Just a little attempt at creeping out my readers ::snicker::
Tigris T Draconis: I'm sorry it's taken so long, I really am. I do hope, though, that this chapter was worth the long awaiting. Looking forward to finding out what you think =)
