That long. Time had escaped him; he had thought it only July. "Six months."
She drew in a quick breath, swore, and then just as suddenly stopped. "Hey." She sat up. "Why are your eyes glowing like that?"
Gabriel turned his head. "I am happy to be free."
"Not that kind of glow. Like fire, if it were green. Very spooky. Wait." She hunted in her pocket and pulled out something that she held in front of his face. "Here, look."
He caught her wrist out of reflex. "I believe you, Nicola."
"Can't you see when your eyes light up like this?"
"No matter what they do, I cannot see anything." He closed his useless eyes. "They blinded me."
Nick forgot the pounding at the back of her head that felt as if Father Claudio were still whacking her. She dropped the little square mirror that she always kept in her pocket. She forgot that the man sitting beside her was a starved, scarred vampire. She forgot the world as she got on her knees and turned his face toward her.
The strange green glow radiating from his eyes had disguised the fact that they didn't move, but remained still in a fixed stare.
Gabriel was blind.
"The holy freaks did this? Deliberately?" She didn't wait for an answer. "What about the tattoos? Did they do that, too? To mark you or something?"
"These?" He touched the hard places on his skin. "These are places where they burned me."
Burn scars? Up close, the curious marks looked something like fern leaves. "Why are they green? Are they infected? Is that why you're running a fever?"
"No. I am not ill, and I have caused trouble enough for you." He stood. "All that matters is that I am free. I thank you for everything you have done, Nicola."
She didn't have to dump him, Nick thought as she got to her feet. He was more than happy to pat her on the head and send her on her way. It would have been fine with her—she'd left the others to cope on their own—but the others hadn't been blind.
Maybe he didn't want her sympathy, but there was no way she was ditching him, not blind and lost. The holy freaks would just scoop him up with a butterfly net.
"I want to know more about you and the other vampires." At least that much was true. "You owe me, right? So you can fill me in."
"We are not important." He pulled her close, resting his cheek against the top of her head. His scent, like Christmas morning, comforted her as much as his embrace. "Do not mistake my meaning. You saved my life, and I am grateful. But you must forget about me, and this place, and what you know about my kind. Go back to your home. Avoid us. Forget us. Be happy, Nicola."
"That's a very sweet, brave farewell speech, your lordship, but I'm not going anywhere." How could such a brave man—vampire—be so stupid? "Think about it. You want me to leave you here, in the middle of the forest, where that crazy old man could find you and do worse? Besides, you're hurt and maybe sick."
"I will heal." A muscle in his jaw tightened.
"Not from blindness, you won't." She pulled away, backing out of his arms. "Are you mental? Jesus, I didn't bust you out of there so that you could get caught again."
His scent changed, growing deeper and almost smoky, like an evergreen log tossed in a fireplace. "I am dangerous to you."
"To yourself, maybe. Let me worry about me." She pulled away from him and went to the stream to splash her hot face with water. The moonlight showed her dark stains on one side of her T-shirt. "Is this my blood?" She saw smears on his face and neck and absently touched the side of her throat, but felt no wounds. "Did you bite me somewhere while I was out?"
"No. I only took Claudio." He came to the water and began splashing his face and chest with it, washing away more blood.
Nick felt no sympathy for the old man, but she was responsible for what had happened to him. "Did you kill him? The old guy?"
Gabriel shook his head.
He was shutting her out. She hadn't expected him to talk much—like she'd ever hung around to have a conversation with a vampire—but there was something different about him. He had the same noble, rather snotty manner of speaking, but he didn't scare her the way the others had. Sure, he had a scary stillness about him that made him seem as if he were partly disconnected from what was happening, but the guy had been locked up and tortured. He had a right.
That he wanted to wash muted the last of her doubts. If he had meant to try to drain her dry, he'd have gone after her first and cleaned up later.
"Here." She pulled off her T-shirt, soaked it, and handed it to him. He handled it gingerly. "It's my shirt. I forgot to pack a washcloth."
"Thank you."
She finished washing up as best she could and sat on the bank to watch him. He didn't act prissy but scrubbed at himself slowly and thoroughly. The grime and dirt on his skin washed away, but the moonlight made his burn scars appear almost black. When he tried to reach his back, he staggered a little, but he didn't ask for help.
He wouldn't. She'd bet good money that he'd been alone too long to ask for anything. Pride is all you can rely on.
"Let me." She went to him, took the shirt, and nudged him around. The fiery tinge to his scent had vanished, but the cool water didn't seem to affect the heat of his skin. The scars felt cooler, but were hard, almost scaly. Two huge, healed gouges just below his shoulder blades caught her attention. There were others, not as deep, farther down at his waist. "Do you know that you've got some pits in your back the size of my fist?"
"They hung me from hooks for several weeks." He said it with no emotion in his voice. "When they tried to take me down, they found that my flesh healed, so they had to tear them free."
"Assholes." Nick's throat tightened as she gently washed the accumulated grime out of the deep depressions. "You're a lot braver than I am."
"I am…" His shoulders tensed. "You need not do this."
She didn't want to do it, not when every wipe revealed more green burns and healed-over gouges. How could he have survived such things?
He's a vampire. They survive anything.
He reached for the cloth, but Nick bumped his hand away. "Nope. You can't see how dirty you are. I can. Soap would be a huge help, but I didn't exactly plan on you and me taking a bath." She stepped around to see his front, and he promptly moved away from her. Pity and compassion made her eyes sting. "Gabriel, if I wanted to hurt you, I'd have done it in the basement."
"Pain comes in many forms."
In that instant Nick knew precisely what he was thinking and feeling. Afraid to be touched, wanting to be touched. Hating hunger as much as the fear. What they'd done had changed him inside, damaged him in places where the scars didn't show. Imagining what he'd gone through plowed into her, a fast, hard fist to the belly.
The moonlight softened, adding new shadows to Gabriel's face, and suddenly Nick knew why he had seemed so familiar. She'd seen him a hundred times. She'd drawn his profile on napkins in cafes and in the sand with a stick of driftwood and in fine, indelible lines of love in the hidden places of her heart.
My Green Man. My dream man.
"I won't hurt you," she said, a little shaken to be standing face-to-face with what had been until ten seconds ago a figment of her imagination. "I swear I'm not like them."
"You are human."
He might be entitled to some bitterness, but she wasn't taking this snide shit from him. Even if he was her fantasy forest lover. "I'm the human who cut you loose, vampire."
"My name is Gabriel, not vampire." He bent to splash his face again before he straightened and turned to her. The water streamed down his chest, winding through the maze of dark green scars. "Each moment that you are with me puts your life at risk. That is what I know. You must leave me here. Now."
He didn't sound angry. All the emotion had vanished from his voice. They were good at that, giving orders, not feeling anything. Nick knew that, and still she didn't care. "Okay, Gabriel. Before I go, would you tell me one thing?"
"If I can."
"Why have I been dreaming about you for months?" She waited for him to answer. When he didn't, her face burned. "Right." Now he thought she was crazy. "Never mind."
He took her arm and turned her around. "What about your dreams?"
The scent of lightning-struck evergreen burned Nick's nose. "Well, for one thing, I keep meeting you in them. You're different in them; all green, like you were a jade statue. You also had pine needles for hair, and you weren't this thin. But it was you. Your face, your hair, everything is the same."
"It is night. You cannot see me properly."
"I can see you fine." She rested a hand on his chest—she couldn't seem to stop touching him—and bumped his right hip with her left. "It sounds stupid; okay, I know that. I've never seen you in real life, and yet here you are, glowing green eyes, green scars, and you smell like a Christmas tree. Dream man come true."
"Coincidence." He gestured around them. "We are in a forest of conifers. I may resemble other men you have met in the past."
Again with the noble act.
"I know about the great smells you guys all have, but I haven't exactly run into that many green-eyed, green-scarred vampires." She took a step back to check him out from head to toe. "Actually, so far, you're it."
He began to reach for her, and then turned it into a dismissive gesture. "Whatever your dreams have been, they do not make you responsible for me, Nicola."
"Sometimes dreams are just reality turned inside out." she murmured. "I know you can't see me, but did you ever dream about a girl you'd never met? About five-seven, on the thin side, black leather jacket?"
"I do not dream." His scent grew thick. "Go. Now."