Death Takes Wing, page 8
She sat down next to him. “And the solan don’t have any conditions like that?”
He snorted. “No, they don’t, unfortunately for us umbren, unless, of course, you count an overinflated sense of self-worth. They’re the ‘good guys’, the umbren are the ‘bad guys’ and there’s no middle ground if you ask most solan. And you can bet that they love to remind us lowly umbren of that ‘fact’. Of course,” he continued, “that makes it easy when I’m trying to hide, because no one thinks to ask any of the solan if they know where a lone umbren is, and most wouldn’t care to know, anyway.”
“If a solan is such a ‘good guy’, why would they want to change a human?” she questioned, wondering about Vicki and Owen.
“Because of fresh blood,” he replied simply. “Or, rather, a wider gene pool. Or, because no one else would marry them within their own species, and barring sheep, a human was the last choice.”
“Sheep?” She paused, confusion written across her face. “Oh,” she said, a giggle rising in her throat, “so Owen wasn’t interested in sheep?”
“If you were a sheep, would you be interested in Owen?” he asked philosophically, a smirk rising on his lips.
She giggled again, feeling herself relax. “No, I can honestly say, that even as a sheep, Owen would repulse me.”
“Good to know,” he replied, a smile playing on his lips.
“So it’s all about the gene pool?” she asked, turning back to the previous subject with interest.
“Mostly,” he replied, reaching out and touching an escaped curl. He curled it around his finger, enjoying the silkiness of it.
“Mostly?” she confirmed, as she felt a pang of regret for Vicki choosing a painful transformation for Owen out of love, when it had been his inability to find a solan mate and a desire to widen the gene pool instead of love for her. She reached up and took Gabriel’s hand in her own.
He smiled and pulled back. With a shrug, he said, “I’m sure love is involved, at least a small percentage of times, but mostly it’s adding to the gene pool. Purely selfish on the angelus side. Probably mostly selfish on the human side, too.”
She shook her head at the latter, wondering why any human would risk dying for that miniscule chance of surviving to become an angelus. “What about the solan and umbren? If there’s no middle ground between most of them, how to they…get together? Matt was saying that his mom was a solan but his dad was an umbren,” she asked, not uncomfortable with the question, but blushing anyways.
Gabriel grinned at her, happy that she wasn’t having a complete meltdown over her new discoveries. Now unconcerned with hiding the fangs, they peeked out as his grin widened at the sight of the blush that spread across her face. She glared at him. “That’s not what I mean,” she said defensively. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about meeting, dating, and the relationship thing.”
“Same thing,” Gabriel replied with a shrug. “Gene pool.”
“So,” she said after a pause, “are you dating me for my genes?”
He stared at her, fairly sure he could see a smile hinting around her eyes. Narrowing his eyes at her, he said blithely, “of course. Why else would I be interested in a lowly human?”
She snorted. “I think you’re interested in me because you finally found someone willing to lower themselves to trade barbs with you.”
He grinned at that and nodded. “Well, I suppose that’s part of it. Not to mention, you’re actually able to defend yourself. In my line of work, the people I care about can be put in danger. A lot of danger. You, I don’t have to worry about so much.”
She laughed at that and ran a hand over her hair. “Well, there is that.”
“Of course,” he said after another short pause, “I have to make sure you’re armed. I don’t think you could take one of us down unarmed.”
She raised a cynical eyebrow at him before responding, “do you want to test that theory?”
Noticing the fire in her eyes, he quickly replied, “uh, no. I think that’s all right.”
She smiled slowly. “Of course it is.” Her thoughts flashed back to the solan lying on her kitchen floor, blood pooled around him. With a grimace, she asked, “What’s going to happen to the solan that attacked me?”
Gabriel glanced at Aleks before answering. Aleks ignored the glance, so Gabriel responded, “he’s been picked up by the Breakers. They’ll deal with him.”
“Breakers? Do I want to know what they’ll do? Is it even legal?”
He gave a dry smile and shrugged, reaching out to lay a hand on the table. “In the human world, no. But in the angelus world, yes, it’s legal. And that’s what matters. They’ll get all the information they want from him by the time they’re done. It’s just a matter of how long he holds out, and what they end up having to do to get the information. Hopefully he gives us information that can actually help up break this investigation wide open.”
She stared steadily at Gabriel, her green eyes fixated on his gray ones. “You might be bringing me in to this case for a new perspective, but I’m coming in to find Sam.”
“You going to leave if you find her without solving the case?” Matt asked amiably.
She shook her head. “No. But I’m here primarily to find Sam. I won’t – I can’t let what happened to Donovan happened to her. I can’t.”
“Donovan Walker,” Matt muttered, staring at her with bright blue eyes. “Your brother. That makes sense…”
“What does?” she snapped, hating to be so uninformed.
He quickly shook his head. “Just that you look a lot like him. I thought you looked familiar. Like I’ve seen you before. But that’s it. You look like him.”
“So what’s the story about solan and umbren marrying?” she quickly asked, trying for a less bloody subject.
Matt gave her a wide smile. The wound had healed completely, much to her surprise. Gabriel shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his face. She wanted to do that, to run her fingers through the thick ebony strands, but she barely refrained. Instead, she played with the hem of the tablecloth, rolling the lace in her fingertips.
Matt looked at her, giving her a cynical smile as he explained, “I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but no one’s family is happy about it – especially not the solan side – when something like that happens,” he paused, wondering if he should tell her the story about his family. With a shrug, he figured at the very least, she’d enjoy it.
“My mother’s parents didn’t talk to them for just over a hundred years. Basically, it’s like West Side Story – you know, Tony and Maria falling in love, and them being from completely different backgrounds.” With that, he paused again, collecting his thoughts about his family’s history. “According to just about every angelus, it shouldn’t happen, but it does. And Cassandra and Marcus’s – my parents, that is – their attitude was fuck everyone if they didn’t like it. Helped that my dad had money, but even if he hadn’t, I think they still would have gotten together, from everything I’d heard.”
With that, Gabriel cut in, “I’d expected that out of him. Never saw it with her, though. Cassandra was always the ‘good girl’. Never broke the rules until him. They tried their damnedest to make her leave him, but all it did was make her more determined to be with him. They eloped, went to Canada. Had Matt, and went back to see her family after they’d made a family for themselves…probably twenty years later,” Gabriel finished.
“And,” Matt added, “according to Grandma Nicolette, they were still madly in love. I know they still are. At least, judging on how they act, they are”
“Huh,” she said softly. “So what about a human and an angelus? More common or less?”
Aleks sauntered into the room and plunked down at one of the empty chairs at the table. He smirked at her, making her want to slap the smirk off his face. “More common than an umbren getting with a solan, but less common than them getting with the same race. Humans do have a chance - even if it’s a small chance - of surviving the change, whereas an umbren can’t become a solan, and vice versa.”
She glanced at Gabriel. “So, I was reading that the ruling couple are a solan and umbren? Are they…” She paused. He looked at her expectantly, wondering what kind of question she was asking this time. “Are they married? I assume that the angelus do get married, what with Owen marrying Vicki.”
Gabriel smiled and shook his head. “They can be, but they’re not always. Confusing yet?” he asked with a laugh. “The ruling couple must be composed of an umbren and a solan. They don’t have to be born angelus, either. It’s easier if they’re married, but there are so few mixed couples that it’s hard to find one that are willing to rule. Each reigning couple rules for at least two-hundred and fifty years. That gives them enough time to work on policies that usually take multiple human generations. The current couple aren’t married to each other. They both have separate families.”
“How did they get chosen?” she asked curiously, accepting the hot cup of coffee that Matt slid her way.
“Typically the current reigning couple groom a second, younger couple. Usually a couple with the same ideals. It doesn’t always work, though. When a couple has to step down, usually because of death or major mental disability, without appointing an heir, the council chooses the next ruling couple. That’s the only time the Council has any say in who the ruling couple is. Otherwise, they stick to their own business. Sometimes,” he continued, “only one half of the couple is groomed. Usually, when that happens, it’s because the reigning couple are still in discussion as to who the second will be.”
“So, going to back to an earlier topic, if Vicki hadn’t been with Owen, she wouldn’t have been allowed to change?” Amalia asked, mind quickly reverting, her thoughts flooding her mind with endless questions about the angelus.
Gabriel leaned back and steepled his fingers, resting his chin on the forefingers. “No, she wouldn’t have. One of the base laws regarding that whole process is that the human must be in a relationship – a romantic relationship, if you will, to change. And that’s not all. There are interviews, questionnaires, basically a bunch of red tape for a human to jump through before they can turn.”
“What if the human doesn’t want to change?” She continued, pressing for more answers.
He shook his head with a laugh, and then brushed the strands of hair off his forehead. “Well, no one is going to force a human to change. If they’re in a permanent relationship with an angelus, though, it’s easier for them to change. Not just the physical transformation, but there are other benefits, less visible benefits, that is.”
“Such as?”
Gabriel gestured towards Aleks to take over. Aleks shook his head, but when Gabriel glared, he sighed.
With a serious look at Amalia, Aleks answered, “other than the wings, the quicker healing, the former human picks up the rest of our benefits. Heightened senses, for one. We have better eyesight, better hearing, greater sense of smell, those type things. We’re a lot stronger than a normal human is, too.”
She continued to barrage them with questions, until Matt finally stopped the questions with an elevated eyebrow.
“What?” She challenged. “I’m a librarian. On a quest for knowledge and all that? I’m supposed to be inquisitive.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her with a smile playing on his lips. “Maybe we should make you research this all yourself. You know, find other people to question? Maybe ones that won’t answer them so easily? It would make it so much more interesting for us that way.”
She shot him a dirty look, and he grinned back at her, unrepentant.
Gabriel looked at her over his new cup of coffee that Matt had placed in front of him. Ignoring the spat between Matt and Amalia, he continued, “longer lives, resistant to more diseases and illnesses, healthier in general.”
“When you say longer lives, you aren’t talking a few years, are you?”
He shook his head, and then took a sip of his coffee. “No, and not decades, either. Centuries. On average, I’d say that the lifespan of an average angelus is anywhere from two to three thousand years. On average,” he reiterated, knowing she would understand that some would live much shorter, and some would live much longer. Hopefully she wouldn’t ask him how old he was, he thought, as he really didn’t want to admit that he was three-quarters of a millenia. If the wings and fangs didn’t freak her out, her finding out that he was about ten generations apart from her surely would.
She stared at him, then at Matt and Aleks. “So, you aren’t even close to my age.”
They all shook their heads. Matt looked around awkwardly. “I’m the closest, and I’m just over one-fifty.”
“Still a baby,” teased Aleks, who then blocked a punch from the younger solan.
“Then how…” she trailed off as she looked from Gabriel, to the blue checkered tablecloth, not sure if she really wanted to know how old the man was that she was attracted to.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, giving her a way out of knowing just how old he was, how many generations separated them, knowing the answer would probably scare her away, as it did many humans. Then again, he amended internally, she’d shown surprising fortitude in response to his other ‘characteristics’. He decided that if she truly wanted to know, he’d tell her.
She slowly shook her head. She’d learned a lot about Gabriel and the angelus in the last few days, but she was sure she didn’t want to know just how old he was. ”Not now, at least.”
He breathed a sigh of relief, glad for the reprieve, however brief.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gabriel felt a vibration on his hip as his phone rang. It was Sylvie, he thought in disgust as he frowned at the caller ID. Just what he needed: a call from ex-semi-girlfriend who was more annoying than listening to a Katy Perry concert in person. He’d pushed her away completely more than a year ago, and she was still hounding him. Maybe it was time to try a different tactic, he thought to himself.
“Yes,” he answered, sounding annoyed from the beginning. She began questioning him, asking him where he’d been, who he was with, what he was doing and why hadn’t he called her to let her know where he was? He sighed as the interrogation continued to sputter through the phone.
“Sylvia,” he cut her off from starting another harassing line of words, “I can’t talk. I’m in the middle of business. I’ve told you to stop calling. If you keep calling, I’m going to tell your parents.” That shut her up, he thought with relish, hearing just silence on the other end. Sylvie was a pain in the ass, but she listened to her parents. And he knew that the bitchy little solan didn’t want her parents to know that she was harassing him, let alone calling him at all.
To her parents, she was a prim, proper little solan girl and he knew they thought everything she did wrong was because of him. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t realize that they’d raised a blasted witch who was only concerned with money, sex and getting as much of both as she could. He guessed that they’d be extremely shocked to find out what she was hiding from them, and Sylvie knew Gabriel wasn’t above telling them about her exploits to get her off his back. Whether or not they’d believe him was another matter altogether, but for now it was a potent weapon against the insolent bitch.
He hung up the phone with a suffering sigh. He didn’t look at Amalia, dreading another question about either what he was, what they were searching for, and who Sylvie was. Somehow, he didn’t want her to know about Sylvie. Then the thought of Sylvie finding out about Amalia crossed his mind, unsettling him. He was pretty sure Amalia could take Sylvie in a fight, but he really didn’t want it to come to that. As interesting as it would be…
When his phone rang again, he almost didn’t answer it. After two rings, he did. It was work, thankfully, he thought happily. After answering the phone and scribbling down a few words, he stood up and looked at Matt.
“Well, we’ve got a new lead. One of the humans that went missing, Patricia, works at Bright Oak Stables. There’s a number of solan who have horses there, and I’d bet that at least one of them knew-knows,” he corrected, “her.”
“I’ll go with you,” Amalia said, standing up next to him.
“That’s unnecc-“
“Either you take me, or I follow you on foot. And I will. Don’t think that I won’t. Or, I’ll take one of the other cars. And believe me, I’m a much better snoop when you want me to be there,” she said sweetly, knowing that the threat worked in the books, and hoping that it would work in real life. “Plus, don’t you want to know the best part?” she said with a bright smile.
He ran a hand through his thick hair, not sure if he really wanted to know what she considered ‘the best part’. “Um,” he said, stalling.
She gave him a little glare, but only slightly damping the smile on her face. “I know people who work there.”
He raised his eyebrows. Now that could be a useful bit of leverage, he thought.
He sighed, and rubbed the back of his head. This was going to be another long day, he thought to himself. He gestured towards the cars, and she rewarded him with another bright smile that astounded him. He sighed and returned her smile, though not quite as brightly.
“You know,” he said persuasively, “I was going to ask you to come with me. Honest.”
She gave him a doubtful look as she pushed back a loose tendril of hair. “I’m sure you were,” she said sweetly, “and now’s your chance to make sure you don’t miss out on my expertise.”
With a slight expression of surprise, he realized she was right. Hell, he thought to himself, he had brought her into the investigation. Now’s as good a time as every to utilize the skills she’d learned.
