A/N: I'm upping the rating on this chapter to R (M for Mature Audiences Only) because I was seriously grossed out by my research into the history of capital punishment. And because of the scene where you find out what ultimately happens to Derek Hastings. It is not pretty; consider yourself warned.
(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(
Gabriel had only a little time to himself before Carl came looking for him. Gaspar had kept the friar for only a short time, explaining to him what had occurred. Lamar was ensconced for longer, and what the two spoke of behind closed doors was a mystery to the friar. His mind was otherwise occupied.
"So he's guilty."
The voice did not come as a surprise to the hunter, heralded by the noise of a door yielding and footsteps tracing a path over smooth marble. Gabriel was sitting in quiet contemplation in a small, unused chapel. It had been the one where, many months ago, Piotr had approached him with a knife and false confession. The one where his memories, eons of recollections and remembrances, had gently slipped back within his grasp.
"Yes," the hunter sighed, turning to face his friend.
Carl's face was intensely conflicted, confusion shining in grey eyes. He ruffled his hair agitatedly. "How?"
"He manipulated everyone," Gabriel revealed tiredly, hoping that in time his friend would be able to understand. "He put the mistakes into the incantations purposely, ensuring that his father would take the fall for the summoning and at the same time guaranteeing a blood sacrifice for the demon. Ancell posed a threat to him, and so he set student against teacher, knowing that at least one would be eliminated. Anthony Austin and Warren Gray both suspected him, and so had to die."
Carl had dropped into the pew directly across from the hunter, the aisle between them a gaping chasm that swallowed their words whole. "It is a miracle that the Widow Austin and Tanya were spared," he said at last.
"I suspect that was Anthony Austin's doing," Gabriel offered quietly. "The effect of his pentacle, bumbling and maleficent as it was, acted to negate the power of the confining pentacle. It turned the Widow's home into the only truly protected, safe haven in the town."
"And you knew all this, and said nothing to me?"
Gabriel's gaze turned away then. There was fault enough for both of them in this. "Not all, not right away. But I suspected. No, I didn't tell you. You have the right to form your own opinion – and I wasn't certain until I saw Hastings' reaction today."
"His reaction?" Curiosity sparked, dim and low but there, in Carl's eyes.
"He tried an incantation. He wanted to kill everyone in the room, I believe."
Carl whistled lowly. "That explains it, then."
"Explains what?"
The friar looked as if he wished he could swallow his tongue. He flushed uncomfortably, but muttered, "His sentence."
"Death?" Gabriel was too worn down by recent events to care for things like tact.
"Well, yes," he responded, surprised. It was clear to the friar that the judges must have held a personal grudge against the man to be so unyielding in their judgment.
"Don't fool yourself, Carl," Gabriel snorted. "Hastings earned that sentence with the blood of innocents." But he looked sideways at the friar, reaching out with a sense that mortals lacked, and knew the real reason for Carl's stubbornness on this issue. A compassionate man with an innate sense of faith, Carl had never lost his belief in justice. His dedication to that ideal, and all the stubbornness he would devote to seeing it through, was being delicately played on.
Gabriel had wondered if something had occurred in the clearing before the drugs had faded enough for him to wake. He had not sensed it then, so surrounded by evil were they, but it stood out clearly in the spiritual cleanliness of the Vatican. Miniscule threads of a wispy grey were twined about Carl's figure. A small binding, probably set with gestures alone, sitting gently, negligently, upon the friar. It had little power, except to exert a soft, twisting tug on the friar's emotions at certain points. It was harmless, would disappear with Hastings' death. But in the meantime, Carl would feel a disproportionate pity for the mayor, and a sense of injustice about Hastings' fate. The binding was not responsible for his actions – no binding had that power. Free will was a gift that could be relinquished or stolen, but not forced.
But it would help the more telling factors about Hastings' guilt slide away from his mind, and toy with his emotions enough that Carl would seek innocence where none existed.
"What did you say before, about forgiveness?" Carl asked him softly.
Gabriel's gaze hardened. "Derek Hastings has not sought it," he responded. He could remove the binding. As if it sensed his thought, the tendrils twisted harder about the friar.
"How do you know that?" Carl asked sharply.
Removing it might do more harm than good, he realized. Examining it closely, he could see that it was already faint, disintegrating. A glimmer caught his eye – and he smothered a small smile. The change in Carl was eating away at the binding, a small protection but valuable nonetheless. Hastings' death would destroy it. "A man seeking forgiveness does not try to deliberately kill those who would offer it," he explained gently.
Carl sighed, scrubbing his hands down his face. A muffled, "I'm sorry," emerged from behind work-roughened fingers. "I must be more tired than I thought," he shrugged it off. "I don't know why I reacted like that."
I do. "Don't worry about it," Gabriel brushed the apology off easily, but something seemed to fall flat between them, and they were again gripped in an awkward silence.
"I'd like to ask you something." Gabriel reached out, hoping that he would not be rebuffed, and uncomfortable with the question he was posing. He felt damnably awkward, and kept his eyes focused just over Carl's left shoulder. His hands, clenched into fists, were buried in his pockets where no one would discern the small sign of his anxiety.
Carl tilted his head inquisitively at him. "What is it?"
"Don't go to the execution," Gabriel asked simply.
Carl's face drew into a frown, and he sat back. Gabriel tensed at the motion, and waited for the friar to speak. "Why not?"
"I have a bad feeling," was all he could say. It was not enough. He forced himself to relax, though he felt anything but.
"I'll think about it," was Carl's response, slow and ponderous.
The silence came between them again, heavy and stifling. It was minutes only before Carl excused himself.
The next few days were all like that. Gabriel, unsettled by the strangeness in his friend which he could do nothing about, at first sought the friar out. It was made clear to him, however, that Carl preferred to avoid him, and so he returned to his usual routine. He spent the days working with Bharat and the new trainees, honing his skills. He spent the nights sorting through his own memories – something that he had had little time for in the recent past. Thousands of millennia of recollections could not, after all, be absorbed in the month or two he had been given before being sent to Massachusetts.
The hunter spoke with Lamar, and found to his surprise that the Jerusalemite had asked to be sent back to Massachusetts with a large team. Lamar was to head the team, and take joint control of Boxborough with Alicia Hastings. What had happened in the isolated outpost must never be allowed to happen again. Lamar himself seemed at peace with his decision, in a way that was obviously new to him. His inner struggle had quieted, and he had come closer to finding his own answers. Gabriel caught Lamar staring thoughtfully at the scar tracing up his arm from his thumb, and a question was answered for him.
And so the days passed, the minutes racing and the hours dragging, until the execution.
When Gabriel entered the small, subterranean room, he was unsure of what to expect. There were several necessary members of the Order here; the entire panel of judges, himself, Lamar, and several scribes. There were individuals who were vaguely familiar to him from the trial, including one man whose nondescript features nonetheless stood out in the hunter's memory. This man was a supporter of Gaspar, one of the crowd who had insisted that Gabriel be removed from the Vatican during the debacle with the Spear months ago. More than that, however, the hunter remembered him for the astonishing expression of hatred on his face when Carl had spoken up in Hastings' defense three days ago.
Luckily, the friar was not there. Something that had been tensely coiled within the hunter eased at that knowledge.
The room was bare and small – the only item in it was something that had been undisturbed during the Beelzebul's rampages through the catacombs. That was not at all surprising, Gabriel thought sourly. The creature would be loathe to destroy such a toy as this, and had probably taken obscene enjoyment in seeing it here.
It was a sturdy, well-built wooden chair, heavy enough that it did not need to be bolted to the floor. Electric cables ran along the floor to it, and heavy straps were affixed to the arms, legs, seat and neck. Looking at it made the hunter shudder in revulsion, reviving memories of deaths too horrible to contemplate for long. He understood completely the need and the justice behind the execution. He supported it, had little problem with the killing of a murderer. The philosophy of "an eye for an eye" had been long-held among humanity, and he had accepted it completely.
But he had always had trouble understanding the human urge to cause pain. It had begun with such tortures as sawing and scaphism, burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel. As technology advanced, so did humans, refining their means of killing one another. Each method was supposed to be more painless, a better way to kill, than the last.
In a moment of weary truth, Gabriel wished that humanity would stop deluding itself. Death was an absolute punishment, completely necessary when justified beyond doubt. But death was never painless – and the attempts to make it so were often worse than a simple bullet would be.
He turned from these thoughts as Hastings was brought in. The man was wearing the barest of clothes, barefoot and chained. It was beginning, then.
"Do you have any last words?" Gaspar asked him coldly.
"Yes," Hastings responded, oddly serene for a man about to go to his death. He looked about him, a strange curious pride in the amount of people who had shown up. His eyes rested on Gabriel with a particularly vengeful spark. "My name is Derek Hastings," he said coolly, standing tall and straight and ignoring his own messy and rumpled condition. "You execute me here today for the unthinkable crime of dabbling in the dark magicks that you so spurn," he sneered. "I tell you now, that despite the imminent death looming before me, I do not regret a single action! I would do it all again, and my death here will be an example and lesson to those who would follow in my path. They will look on me forever as the sacrifice to your petty ideals. Know that in the hour of my death, you will have created for yourselves enemies beyond reckoning!"
The man's chest was heaving, spittle flying from his mouth as his eyes burned with a fanatic fire. "I will be forever remembered as a martyr to my cause – and you will have created me!" he laughed loudly. "Knowing we can no longer rely on the Vatican, my followers will strike out on their own, creating such things as you have never seen! We will use fire to fight fire, take the enemy's own weapon and turn it on him – something that no one in this room has the courage to dare to do! And we will wipe all evil from the face of the Earth – and you, for your betrayal of our cause, will be among their number! So, go ahead," he shouted triumphantly. "Kill this shell of flesh. You will free my soul to continue its good work! I will be rewarded for my deeds, when I arrive at the gates of Heaven!"
A cold chill settled over the hunter as the fanatic finished. There was a long silence, as each person in the room waited for him to continue. Breathing hard, a cocksure and cruel smile on his lips, Derek Hastings moved of his own volition to sit in the electric chair. He made himself comfortable, a smile of patient expectation on his lips as several men secured the straps around his body. He accepted the dousing with water, the placing of the electrodes, with an aplomb that was sickening to see.
"For your crimes," Jinette said grimly, "You are sentenced to death in the electric chair. Electric current shall pass through your body until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul."
With a nod of his head, it began.
Gabriel knew the switch had been thrown when Derek Hastings' eyes slipped closed. His body jerked against the restraints, stiffening in the chair. Muscles moved uncontrollably under his skin, twitching and roiling ineffectively.
The sound and feel of electricity filled the air; the room began to reek of the stench of burning flesh. The man's body spasmed, the sight both horrifying and satisfying to those watching.
When Hastings' eyes flew open, the hunter tensed, though many in the room seemed to write it off as a random muscle tic, induced by the ever-increasing current flowing through his body.
When Hastings' mouth began to move, however, impossibly chanting and hurling forth words of a final incantation, concern grew. Murmurs became shouts, and the panel of judges looked helplessly to one another – unable to stop the execution, but equally unable to stop Hastings. Power built in a roaring crescendo, screaming in the panicked hubbub as it waited to be released -
A shot rang through the air, and the light in Hastings' eyes died as the bullet pierced his heart. Lips slackened in death, but the body still moved and jerked, batted thoughtlessly about by the relentless electricity coursing through dead flesh. Blood grew, an ever-spreading stain that colored the front of the man's shirt. The electric current died as someone, somewhere, gathered their wits enough to throw the switch.
Gabriel returned his gun to its concealed holster, a slight frown marring his features. "Requiescat in pace," the hunter murmured. He stepped forward, the first in the room with the courage, or the will, to check the body. A look of revulsion, barely realized and quickly dissolved, shot across his expression like quicksilver. But he laid his fingers against Hastings' neck, searching for a pulse.
"He's dead," he announced to the room at large. Gabriel turned expressionless hazel eyes on the panel of judges. "But I suggest you cremate him. Immediately."
It was a safety precaution rarely employed, but the worried expressions of Bharat, Ceslovas and even Jinette were enough to ensure him that it would be done.
He surveyed the room then, and to his relief saw nothing that sparked his instincts; there was no sign that the magics Hastings had attempted to call up had been properly harnessed or released. He had killed the caster before the proper words had been said, thankfully. The power had dissipated, bleeding back to its source as Hastings bled out his lifeblood onto the stones.
Even more happily, there was no sign that Carl had been there at all, profoundly relieving the hunter. He didn't want his gentle friend to have seen that, especially with the binding influencing him.
Turning, Gabriel left and began to walk the corridors, blessedly free of the stomach-turning odor of burning flesh. He made his way upward, with only one desire – to wash, and change clothes, leaving the last remnants of Derek Hastings behind.
His feet took him out of the catacombs and into the light of the Vatican complex, as his mind took him down other roads.
Derek Hastings. The man's belief had been so extreme, it ultimately became a betrayal of everything he purported to stand for. His faith was a fanatic quest, fuelled by burning desire and complete conviction in his principles. It was pitiably sorrowful – but not enough to excuse the man's actions. Murder was never excusable. Other instances, similar circumstances, floated to the top of his mind and he frowned with the remembrance.
Hunter and destroyer, he was known among man. But Derek Hastings had been a true Destroyer, seeking to annihilate his enemies while becoming one of them himself. It was a convoluted enigma, a twisted puzzle of human existence that proved the struggle presented to each person, each day. To uphold oneself, one's beliefs, without deteriorating into mindless violence simply because it was possible, and increasingly acceptable, to do so. Gabriel shook his head. When God gave mankind free will, He had knowingly relinquished all control over man's fate into the hands of mankind itself. It was a gift of love that saw the inherent faults of the flesh, and loved not despite or because of those faults, but in complete acceptance of them. For ultimately all that was done to man was done by man, by free will, and choice. It was a choice of being either true or perfidious. It was a blessing and a curse, and for all his time among them, Gabriel had yet to see how mankind would use the gift.
He found himself in front of the false wall that concealed the entranceway to his chamber. Looking around carefully, he tripped the mechanism and proceeded to his room. After washing and changing clothes, he proceeded to the kitchens. It was early, but there would be food prepared for the evening repast. Taking what he needed without being seen was ridiculously easy.
Wearing nondescript clothing and a short jacket, following an inner sense that tugged on his soul, Gabriel left the Vatican and proceeded once more, unarmed, into the city.