Gabriel stayed high in the fog, carefully examining the area for one of the undead. Brice was shuffling over the uneven ground, stumbling like a drunken man, muttering to himself, and constantly batting at his body as if he still felt the crawling of bugs over his skin.
Gabriel had withdrawn that illusion as soon as Brice was off the property, but one of the vampires controlling the doctor must have picked the memory out of his head and used it to punish his failure to obtain Skyler. Gabriel felt the malevolent presence of one of the vampires. Not an ancient, more likely one recently turned, running with a pack to learn as much as he could as fast as he could. They thought they were banding together for protection against the hunters, but more often than not, the ancient vampires used the lesser ones as pawns, to be sacrificed.
Had Lucian joined this group? The question nagged at Gabriel. He shook the thought away. It was much more likely that Lucian would control those around him from a distance so that they would never know what was happening to them. Gabriel had seen him do it often enough. His voice alone was one of the most powerful weapons Gabriel had ever encountered. Lucian had never allowed anyone else to intrude on their battles, he had disposed of other vampires in the areas where Gabriel had chased him. He never left evidence any other hunter would recognize. Lucian was not messy about his kills.
Gabriel streamed to earth, the tiny droplets coming together just out of sight of Brice. For a moment the large frame shimmered and sparkled like crystal before it solidified. Then Gabriel was striding through the cemetery to cut Brice off before he could make his way to the caverns where the vampire waited.
Gabriel could feel the compulsion the undead was using to call his victim to him. Brice was muttering to himself, his clothes disheveled and dirty. There were long scratches on his skin where he had attempted to dislodge the illusory bugs crawling on him. Gabriel tried to feel sorry for the doctor because he knew Francesca would be so horrified. But Brice had opened himself up to the vampire’s compulsion through his own jealousy, and Gabriel could not forgive him for aiding the undead in his attempt to ensnare Francesca and Skyler.
Brice kept his head down as he hobbled determinedly forward. He didn’t seem to notice Gabriel standing solidly in his way. Gabriel waved his hand to put up a block, one invisible to the eye, but strong enough to interrupt the compulsion in the air. Brice’s blood had obviously been tainted by the vampire, so he continued to shuffle his feet although he was unable to move beyond the boundary Gabriel set for him.
The doctor’s eyes were dilated, fixed, and staring. He was far gone under the spell. Gabriel entered his mind to counteract the compulsion and give the human some relief. Brice’s face went slack and his muscles relaxed so that he stopped attempting to move toward his destination.
Gabriel very gently eased him into a sitting position and Brice complied like a lost child.
From somewhere close, Gabriel heard a shriek of rage. Vampires didn’t like interference with their chosen victims. The puppet master was not going to let Brice go so easily. Gabriel smiled and turned his face up to the sky. The clouds were darkening to an angry black above his head, and small veins of lightning leaped from cloud to cloud. He shook his head slightly, and as the electrical charge began to build where he stood, he raised his hand and swept it in a small semicircle.
Anyone watching would hardly have noticed the gesture, but the lightning in the clouds reacted immediately, slamming to earth just beyond the gently rolling hill, out of sight. The clap of thunder was deafening, as was the bang as the bolts scorched earth and shattered gravestones. A scream of hate and vengeance rose with the whirling wind. The trees began to shake under the onslaught, first twigs and then branches shaking loose to hurtle through the sky toward Gabriel.
He blew softly into his palms and stood tall and straight, unconcerned as debris rained down around him. Brice sat at his knees, unknowing, uncaring of the danger. There was no warning as the wind suddenly reversed itself. The sky rained leaves and dirt and branches over the small hill. Gabriel leaped into the air with the largest branch, camouflaged by its bulk.
He was on the vampire before it had time to realize it was in deadly peril. Gabriel blasted out of the sky like a missile straight at the gaunt figure standing on the charred grass. Around him were broken headstones, shattered by the lightning bolts and the branches and wicked wind. The vampire stood frozen, trying to decide his next move even as he attempted to protect himself from the flying objects coming at his body, Gabriel came in behind the branch, hitting the vampire so hard, the blow drove the creature backward with Gabriel’s fist embedded deep in his chest cavity. He gripped the blackened, pulsing heart and extracted the thing, separating the organ from the body. Even as he did so, he leaped away to minimize his contact with the tainted blood.
The vampire’s shriek of despair echoed through the cemetery so that the bats rose up into the air in great clouds. The undead simply folded in half and sank in a heap to the bloodstained ground, flopping, dragging its body toward Gabriel, toward the dark, ugly thing he tossed upon a rock just out of the vampire’s reaching claw. Almost without conscious thought, Gabriel built the charge of electricity and directed it at the horrible organ straining to return to its body. The thin white-hot lash incinerated the heart and leaped to the body of the undead, reducing it to ashes. At once Gabriel bathed his hands in the heat, removing every trace of tainted blood before checking that the ground was clean of all infection. The vampire couldn’t have turned very many years earlier; he’d been unskilled and slow. He couldn’t have been the one to put Brice under such a well-hidden compulsion. The darkness in the doctor ran deep, it tainted his blood and was eating up his will and rotting him from the inside out. He wasn’t a ghoul, feasting on the flesh of human dead and living for the vampire’s blood, but the one controlling him was a powerful being.
Gabriel couldn’t see Lucian’s hand in Brice’s corruption. Lucian would consider it beneath him to do such a thing. He might harm Brice, or kill him outright, but he wouldn’t use the man to entrap Skyler and ultimately Francesca. He would not need to stoop to such a thing. Lucian was a true genius. He possessed a powerful brain that constantly thirsted for knowledge. Lucian needed difficulties for his mind to work on. Intellectual challenge was what kept him from going completely mad.
Gabriel shook his head, exasperated with himself. Lucian
had
gone mad; he had chosen to lose his soul many centuries ago. If Gabriel was going to protect his family, he could no longer think of Lucian as being part of him.
Francesca was his heart and soul now. He couldn’t take the chance of Lucian harming her. Gabriel made his way back to Brice. He needed to take the man back to the house and put him under a strong safeguard to prevent the vampire from harming him further. Brice was so far gone, Gabriel wasn’t certain the doctor could be helped. Obviously the vampire had been working on Brice subtly for a long while.
The doctor was huddled in a ball on the ground, oblivious to his surroundings, deep within Gabriel’s spell. Gabriel knew no one but Lucian could break through the safeguard keeping Brice’s mind intact. It was a gamble bringing Brice into Francesca’s home. They would have to take him to the underground chamber so Skyler would not be frightened by the sight of the doctor. And if he couldn’t be healed, it would be up to Gabriel to show him mercy; it was not something he thought Francesca would thank him for.
Gabriel lifted the man as if he were no more than a child. Under the strong hypnotic trance Gabriel had put him in, Brice was completely trusting. He lay passive as Gabriel took to the air with him. The cloud cover was heavy enough to prevent prying eyes from seeing more than a blur moving fast through the night sky.