Through the buzzing of the many and the roaring in his head, Gabriel heard gunfire and a woman's scream. Into cold outrage poured hot fury. The swarm undulated around him, held by his will but undirected. He lifted a hand and parted them, sending half out of the room. Through their tiny eyes he saw men in black garments using the stocks of rifles to clear broken gla.s.s from the windowpanes before they climbed over them. All three wore night-vision goggles, and one of them crossed himself before he lifted his weapon and began a sweep of the room.

Brethren. Killing Gabriel's tresora had not been enough for them. Now they meant to murder the woman he loved.

"Sors de la," Gabriel whispered.

The many dispersed, reforming into a near-solid horizontal column as they poured out of the room.

"Fils de chienne," one of the intruders shouted, swatting at the stray wasps circling around his head. As the column drove him into the room, he turned and screamed.

The many swallowed the man and his fear, and brought him forward into Gabriel's hands. He bit deep into the man's neck, taking in the hot gush of blood and drinking deeply.

A man ran over the threshold and stopped, training his weapon on Gabriel. "Mais qui diable etes-vous?"

"Ange de la mort," Gabriel told him, letting the unconscious intruder drop to the floor. Around them, piles of garbage began to rustle. "Have you confessed your sins to your G.o.d?"

"Maledicti." The man began firing at him.

Gabriel pulled the many from the floor up in front of him, their black, hard bodies forming a moving but solid shield. He thrust his hand against the writhing ma.s.s of beetles and roaches. "Baise-toi."

The wall grew taller, stretching to the ceiling. On the other side the man stopped firing and looked up just as the wall fell on him.

Gabriel left the second man clawing his way out from under the mound of hungry beetles and walked back to the library. The many, excited by the blood they had tasted and wanting more, ma.s.sed behind him, an angry comet's thrashing tail. They showed him Dalente's cache and Gabriel's battle sword, still lying on the floor where Nicola had dropped them. Nicola had vanished- and then he heard the buzz of her motorcycle, heading into the forest behind the house.

Nicola.

A bullet struck Gabriel's arm but did not penetrate. Instead, it seemed to bounce off. A second whizzed past his face as he bent to pick up his sword. He did not have to check the slugs to know that the bullets were copper-clad.

"Allez a l'enfer" the third Brethren shouted hoa.r.s.ely, shifting his rifle and aiming for Gabriel's head.

Go to h.e.l.l. But he was already there.

"Tais-toi." With a sweep of his arm Gabriel threw the sword.

The blade deflected the shot meant for Gabriel's face and neatly decapitated the man. His body pitched forward as his head dropped and rolled out into the hall. The many descended in a blanket to drape the remains and to feast on them.

The many showed him one man carrying the other out of the house and to a waiting van. He could have sent them to batter the vehicle and devour the pair, but he could hear Benait's voice ringing in his memory.

Unlike you, I am no monster.

Now all you will know is darkness.

Then Nicola's voice, sharp and disapproving: Is that what Jesus would do?

He was no monster. He was lost, alone, and afraid. He no longer knew who he was or what he would do. Killing these men would not change that, or make him feel repaid for his suffering. It would only further horrify Nicola, who had shown him nothing but kindness and pleasure, who had risked her life twice now to save his.

Gabriel reined in the swarms and watched through them as the remaining Brethren escaped. As he did, the blood he had taken from the human hummed through him, healing the last of his wounds and investing him with new power.

He retrieved his sword and gripped the hilt in a hot fist as he searched the room. Moths fluttering around the flashlight Nicola had dropped, eagerly seeking the warmth promised by the light, came to him. He needed to find her at once and explain.

Take me to her.

Chapter 13.

Gabriel followed the moths through the tangled, overgrown ruin of his tresora's gardens and into the woods where he had spent so many peaceful hours over the last century. More moths came out of the trees, joining the ones he had taken from the house and adding their individual ommatidial vision until he could clearly see all around him.

He found Nicola's motorcycle by the smell of the exhaust and the bright orange glow of the still-warm engine. She had propped it between two trees and covered it with leafy branches stripped from young trees. Yet there was no sign of her anywhere near the bike.

Through the many's oval, compound eyes, Gabriel followed a trail of the very faintest reddish orange, some small, residual trail on the forest floor that Nicola's pa.s.sage had left in its wake. It wound in an erratic trail around the trees, through brush with broken branches and over fallen logs.

Gabriel tracked her for several minutes before the moths at last homed in on the dark shape of a woman. Nicola sat curled up against the black, gnarled trunk of a ma.s.sive oak. She should have been dark red, the color moths saw human forms, but her color was lighter and thinner, as pink and delicate as a blush.

"Nicola." He stopped a few feet away from her, and breathed in. "Dear G.o.d. You are hurt."

"I didn't... I'm not..." The shapes of her hands moved from her face to the ground, and her color darkened from pink to rose.

"I'm fine."

"I smell blood." Remembering the reddish orange trail, he went to her, ignoring her cringing and using the moths to see the shallow gash on her neck. "The men who broke in, they shot you."

"No. I got cut by a piece of plaster from a ricochet." She covered the wound with her hand. "Did you do that? That thing with the bugs? Make them come out of the ground and the walls and everything?"

"Yes, I did. It is my talent." He knelt before her. Shame for what he had done seemed a distant, untouchable thing, but he regretted terrifying her. "I was angry and I lost control of it. I am sorry that I frightened you."

"I thought you were p.i.s.sed at me, that you..." She turned away and her voice thickened. "You need to find someone else to be your tresora, Gabriel. I'm not the right person. I can't do it anymore."

"I understand." The last remnant of his heart died in his chest, and he went down on his knees. "Will you be so kind as to perform one last service for me?"

"I'll take you wherever you want to go."

"I have only one destination in mind." He extended the sword to her. "It is very sharp. If you swing it in the same way you do your baseball bat, it should go through my neck in one pa.s.s."

She took in a quick breath. "Axe you asking me to cut off your head with this sword?"

"I am."

"Really." Her voice sharpened. "And how do you feel about me shoving it up your a.s.s?"

"Vlad the Impaler may have thought otherwise, but that will not end my life," he told her. "I killed one of the humans who came into the house. Think of it as an even exchange."

"I'm not cutting off your f.u.c.king head, Gabriel." She stood up. "Stupid. This is so stupid, all of it; it's so pointless. Don't add to it."

"I agree." He would have to persuade her. "My life has been destroyed by murderers and thieves and liars. My own sister among them, feeding them information, betraying our kind. My friends are dead or indifferent to me. You wish to leave me, and you should. I have intruded on your life long enough. I have no wish to continue living in such a world."

"I'm not listening to this." She walked around him, heading back toward her motorcycle.

Gabriel followed and caught up with her, stopping her. "I don't have the strength to do it myself, or I would." He held out the sword again. "Please do this one last thing for me. I beg you."

"No."

He gestured toward the ruin of his house. "You may take the money and the diamonds-"

"No." She knocked the sword out of his hands. "I don't want your money, or your diamonds, or your sob story. Your life has sucked; okay, I get that. But you can't put this on me. I'm not cutting off your head. Go to Iraq. They love doing it over there.

Just stand in the street and yell out that you're an American oil company executive. Or Jewish."

"I understand. I forget that you are human, that such things are abhorrent to you." He reached for the blade. "I will find another-"

"I don't think so." She threw his sword into the brush.

He felt his blood run cold. If she would not release him, then the torment would never end. "Have I not suffered enough? Is my humiliation not complete?""Run the part about your humiliation by me again."

She did not care for him, could not love him. He understood her reasons: The Brethren had reduced him to a blind, unfeeling ruin, and he had badly frightened her. He had pushed her too far. But he would not make her feel responsible. She would never carry the burden of guilt over him.

"You read the letter Dalente wrote," he said. "Angelica, my own sister, was the one who betrayed us. She put me and her husband and her own son into the hands of our enemies. She knew about this place, and sent them here to kill Dalente. How can I live with what she has done?"

"You didn't do it; she did. She has to answer for what she's done." She stepped closer to him and jabbed her finger into his chest. "Maybe you should quit whining and go find her. Stop her from hurting other people."

"I'm too tired." His shoulders sagged under the weight of his sorrow. "Tired unto death of this ugliness, this horror. It never ends.

How much more pain and humiliation must I endure before I have earned my rest?" And how many lonely centuries more would he live without her?

This time her hand connected with his face, her palm shockingly hard as it struck his cheek.

"You shut up," she snarled. "Pain and humiliation, my a.s.s. You keep talking like this and I'll clean your clock so hard you'll wish that you were back in the torture chamber."

"Nicola." Gabriel felt appalled by her threats.

"I mean it," she insisted. "I didn't save you to listen to your b.i.t.c.hing and moaning and watch you kill yourself. I did it because...

because if I can keep going, then so can you."

She did care for him. "Tell me how."

"Well, for one thing you can stop trying to be so G.o.dd.a.m.n n.o.ble about everything," she snapped. "The Renaissance days or whatever it was like when you were human? They're over. If you want to survive in this day and age, then you have to toughen up and be smart. You deal with the murderers, thieves, and liars. Yes, it's awful, but that's the way it is. The world's full of them.

You have to think the way they do. For all you know, I could be one of them."

"I do not think I am strong enough." Gabriel could taste her tears, hear the swallowed sobs beneath her sharp words. That seemed far worse than the blow she had given him. "They didn't break my body, Nicola. They broke my heart."

"You're breaking mine now." Her voice trembled. "Don't you know that? I know you're blind, but can't you feel it, what's happening between us?"

Gabriel kept his hands at his sides. "What I feel is wrong."

"Giving up, that's wrong. I lost everything that mattered to me ten years ago, along with everyone I loved, and I haven't thrown in the towel yet. I've still got a heart, don't I? It works, most of the time. Jesus, I hit you. You're making me nuts. Come here." She put her arms around him and pulled him down so that their foreheads touched. "I'm not giving up on you. There's a reason we found each other. Let's find out what it is."

Hopelessness dragged at him. "I did not intend to make you angry."

"Guys never do." She slowly rolled her brow against his. "Look, we can be strong together, right? We're survivors, you and me."

"Survivors."

"Exactly. So the world f.u.c.ked us over; who cares? It doesn't have to be all about that. We're free." She grabbed a handful of his shirt. "Once I find the Madonna and take care of that, we can go wherever we want. We can get away from the holy freaks and the Kyn. We can live. We're good together, aren't we?"

He was infecting her with his despair. She was healing him with her dignity. Which one of them would succeed?

"I think," he said, very slowly, "that of the two of us, you are the n.o.ble one."

"You're crazy." She brushed her mouth over his in one of her quick, startling kisses. "And you're shaking." She turned her head and drew his down to the wound in her neck. "Take it."

Her blood-wet his lips, sweeter than any honey, more tempting than any wine. "I fed on one of the shooters."

"So don't take much." She pressed her slim body against his. "I like it. It felt good when you do it in the forest. I want to feel that way again."

Her embrace and her softness proved stronger than his self-disgust. He drank from the bleeding wound, tasting her, savoring her as he felt the violent coldness inside him retreat. Madness and sorrow evaporated, replaced by a grinding, demanding need for more of her flesh. That hunger became so intense that his c.o.c.k swelled between them and pressed into her flat belly.

He put her at arm's length. "If you despise me as much as I do myself, you should go now."

"Not going to happen. We need each other." Her hands slipped under the edge of his shirt, and she rubbed herself subtly against the ridge of his p.e.n.i.s. "Every time I'm near you, I don't know whether I should kiss you or jump on you. I couldn't help myself in the shower. You feel it too, don't you?"

He gave his heart to her in that moment. Loved her, a human woman, as he would never love another. And as he stooped to pick her up in his arms, he found that he didn't care.

"h.e.l.lo. Blind man." Her arms went around his neck. "You're going to walk into a tree."

"I know where I am going." He carried her back to the oak where he had found her, and lowered her onto the bed of moss there.

Gabriel wanted to rip her clothing apart and feast on her body, and feared he might do just that if he fell back into the darkness.

He reached out with his talent, dismissing the moths and summoning the quietest creatures in the forest, the patient watchers who formed and wove their hungry threads into silken traps.

"Do spiders frighten you?" he asked as he stretched out beside her.

"No, I..." She went still. "Uh, Gabriel?"

He followed the bridge of her nose with his finger, gliding over the curves of her lips and chin and sliding down the slope of her throat.

"Did you ask me that because there are about two hundred spiders hanging over us?"

He nuzzled her hair. "I want to see you," he murmured against her ear. "Through their eyes, I can." He sent for a very specific forest dweller, calling them from their burrows in the ground and under the tree bark.

"Does this seeing-through-them thing involve their crawling on me?"