otherways - 1462 - Romania - pt2

[i_vanquish_evil]

After this...


Gabriel hears a voice... a young woman telling someone to deliver a letter to the priest in town. The Order's priest - the town only has one priest. He hasn't washed the blood away from himself, but he, at least, grabs his pants on his way down the hall. He catches the woman and she looks... so much like Vladislas, so much like her father - she must be Vlad's sister. He snarls in her face, asking her what she's doing. She, in turn, snarls back and asks him why he did what he did. Why he killed her brother.

"Do you think I liked doing it? Do you think I would do it again, given the choice? He was evil."

The woman sniffles. "He was my brother!"

Gabriel frowns. "Do you know why? Why it was done?" He grabs the woman's shoulders and holds her firm, looking directly into her eyes. "Because your father asked it of me." The woman shakes her head furiously. "Yes, he did. He begged me to kill your brother, rid the world of his evil. He begged me."

"No. No. My father wouldn't do that. No." She scratches her fingernails over his face and tears away from him, running down the hallway.

He catches her, easily, and holds her in his grip again. "Where are you going?" he snarls.

Eyes wide, afraid of the fire and rage in his, she stutters, "To- to tell what you've done. S-someone should know. The-the Or-Order will learn... will punish you."

The rage burns deep, boiling up, taking over his entire being. "Indeed they might. But none will learn from your lips." Lightning quick, his hands move and the woman slumps to the ground at his feet.

It's minutes later when the haze lifts from his mind and he stares at his hands and the body at his feet, wondering what it is he's done. He hears voices, footsteps, and glances over his shoulder - remembering. "Azazel..." but nothing can be done. He leaves his clothing and leaves the house the same way he came in - through the narrow staircase and entrance he had been told of by Valerious the Elder. The secret entrance that none of the others knew.

He steps out into the biting cold, half naked, without boots and makes his way into the woods. He needs to, at the very least, clean some of the blood from himself before he finds the village. Though he'd rather find someplace else, as he's sure the only one who would take him in would be the village priest and he shouldn't be seen by him just yet - if ever.

In the village, he's taken in by a kindly old woman with bad sight and even worse hearing. She tends his wounds - such that they are - gives him hot food and a warm bed for several days. She inquires about his clothing, but he says he lost everything in the accident; he doesn't go into details, she can't hear them anyway. The old woman gives him new clothing and a pair of boots and tells him she has an old horse that he is more than welcome to take; he politely declines, but, at her insistence, takes the horse and heads back west; toward where he stared, toward the Order.

******

"Murder? Gabriel, how could you do... murder?" the Cardinal snapped in his face for the fifteenth time. Not that there was any need, Gabriel had been secured to a chair and stripped of most of his clothing. "We do not operate this way, Gabriel."

He growls. "You sent him to me! Sent him to make the request. He had been assured that there would be no problem."

"We never thought you would murder a man," the Cardinal states in disbelief.

Gabriel mumbles, "You don't know me very well, then, do you?"

The Cardinal wheels around, angry. "And then, to learn that you had killed another in anger? An innocent? My word, Gabriel. What were you thinking?"

He only glares. He's not even struggling to get free. He knows what is coming; knows that he will be sent away again, though he's already been separated from his beloved, from his Azazel.

The Cardinal turns away, stalking to the door. "Do it," he tells the Inquisitor. He turns over his shoulder to speak to Gabriel, "You will be punished for your crimes. The Order, however, still needs you, so you will not be put to death as is due. Good-bye, Gabriel."

As the Cardinal exits, pulling the door shut with the harsh sound of finality, Gabriel now begins to struggle in his bonds. He's painfully aware of what the Order is capable of, but he's never faced an Inquisitor before; he didn't even know the Order had anyone like that under their command. Making the situation worse is the Inquisitor's apparent enthusiasm for his task. Gabriel pulls at the bonds one more time and demands, "What will you do to me this time?"

The Inquisitor smiles back at him. "You won't remember it when I'm done, so why tell you?"

Gabriel doesn't have a chance to ask anymore questions...

...the next thing he remembers is being naked and in pain and crawling up the cold, hard stone steps of St. Peter's Basilica.