The sun was setting over the horizon in Chiusi, and Gabriel sat on his bed, excited, counting down the seconds until he could leave his room. He was vibrating, unable to contain his excitement, his razor-sharp nails cutting up the orange quilted patterned blanket.
He sat, vibrating like a phone in the dark, his eyes flashing a bright white as if he had an incoming call.
Gabriel closed his eyes, hearing and seeing everything Carlos did, and waited until the sun could be seen no more. The moment the sun vanished over the horizon, Gabriel left.
He ran through the hallways, like he was on fire, the cage of daylight gone.
Gabriel ran down the stone steps, but they were old and too small for his feet. He fell down many floors and grunted as his head smacked the wall and the cold floor. Confused and shocked, he twitched on the floor as everything went dark.
Carlos found him easily, as he had seen and heard Gabriel from afar, for once their telepathic bond used for good. Gabriel was knocked out, his head at a strange angle, and Carlos let out a heavy sigh.
He told himself this would be easier than Gabriel walking with him, all the newborns easily excitable and dangerous. He slung Gabriel over his shoulder, and walked to the other side of the monastery, near where Fiorino’s office was.
Gabriel’s body twitched, and slowly he came back to life, groaning and disoriented. As Carlos carried him to the bell tower, he scolded Gabriel on how he needed to be more careful.
"What if I didn’t find you," Carlos groaned.
"I would have woken up anyway," Gabriel replied.
Carlos knew Gabriel was right, and he said nothing. He was confused as to why he was always worried about Gabriel but hated having him around. Carlos was more than ready to get rid of him, but every time the passing thought came into his head, it left as quickly as it came.
By the time they arrived at the bell tower, Gabriel could wiggle his fingers and toes, and Carlos let go of him.
" You’re the best. "
"Please. Please don’t be weird around them," Carlos pleaded. "You used to be so normal. "
"Nothing about me has changed," Gabriel huffed.
Carlos shook his head and reminded himself not to argue with idiots and meatsuits. They didn’t know any better. With another hard push of an old iron door, they entered the bell tower. It had a singular staircase, that wound to the top on the sides of the wall, and Gabriel was unimpressed.
He put his hands inside the side pockets of his white hoodie with a blue tsunami decal that said Aloha and paced around the room. This was the meeting spot. No one was there, except for the bones of some dead rats and old hay.
"We’ve been ditched, and this is a trap," Gabriel said.
"No. No, it's not. They wouldn’t do that to us."
"Wouldn’t they?"
"They told us to wait, just be patient Gabriel."
"We’re waiting for a trap. They’re going to kill us."
Gabriel was on edge, it was almost time for him to shoot up again. Carlos knew it was time, as his thoughts were getting a little quieter, and the sounds of his other siblings were soft whispers, asking him if the food was spicier in Italy.
Carlos tried to create a teaching moment, seeing Gabriel’s anxiety, but it backfired.
"It isn’t so bad, having them all around us. I miss hearing them, don’t you," Carlos said.
He smiled and adjusted his red tie, and smiled nervously, hoping that Gabriel would come to his senses.
With the possibility of his new drug being taken away, Gabriel became crafty, thinking of all the different ways he could get Carlos to give it to him. He lied, and Carlos knew he was lying as he spoke, but went along with it anyway, hoping that he would come around in time. Pacing the floor, the sounds of his white sneakers echoing inside the empty tower, Gabriel rubbed his fingers over his lips as he spoke, missing the wet feeling on his lips.
"I miss them sometimes," Gabriel said.
He started with the truth, thinking that he could trick the man that had spent almost every hour of the past five months with him.
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"If you can’t handle it-"
"I can handle this!"
His voice bounced back and forth in the small building, echoing, and the moment he said it, Gabriel knew that he was lying to himself as well.
"I can handle being here. I can’t leave you, Carlos," Gabriel said.
Carlos gave him a pitying look, the same that Gio had given him, and this made Gabriel’s face hot. Every day he wanted to prove that he wasn’t reckless, that he wasn’t crazy, but the more he tried the more unhinged he became.
"It’s not your job to worry about me, it's the other way around," Carlos replied.
"I don’t need your help anymore."
"Really? So you won’t need my blood tonight?"
There was a brief pause.
" No, Carlos, I won’t ."
The moment he said it, the voices came flooding back in. They missed him, so very much. They told him about all the eating and fucking and of course, more eating, that they had been up to. Gabriel flared his nostrils and nodded rapidly showing that he didn’t help. Carlos worried he would break his neck again from how fast he bobbed it, up and down, up and down, eyes flickering rapidly and mumbling to others that he was busy.
They were curious as to what Gabriel and Carlos had been up to for the past five months, and pestered the both of them with questions, most of them ridiculous or just plain nosy.
Gio arrived to see Gabriel and Carlos standing in the dark, their eyes rolled back, flickering rapidly, and he shuddered, in the presence of demonic forces. Gio wore a white and gold robe with a hood, and it had the same strange emblem over his heart that Fiorino’s suit had.
Trying to show that he wasn’t afraid, Gio tried to come up with a witty one-liner.
"Tell them I said hi," Gio said.
Carlos and Gabriel were brought back to the present, and their reptilian gaze shifted to Gio, hearing the cheers of their siblings telling them to eat his liver, it’s one of the healthiest parts after all.
Gabriel looked Gio up and down and smiled. His creepy smile turned into a soft giggle, and then he started to laugh. Carlos laughed, even though he didn’t find anything funny, but because everyone else was laughing inside his head.
Why not join in as well?
The walls laughed, the world laughed, their demonic grins and cackles converging together, and Gio started to sweat, thinking he had made a mistake.
With a sudden halt, Carlos and Gabriel stopped laughing, turning stone-faced.
"You look stupid in that dress," Gabriel said.
Soft snickers and laughs boomed in his head, egging him on to eat the meatsuit. Gio told himself there was nothing to fear, but somehow, he was shrinking inside himself, feeling small underneath their hot gaze, feeling like there were hundreds of pairs of eyes on him instead of two.
Gabriel and Carlos could smell his fear.
They wanted it to be known so that they wouldn’t be taken advantage of.
Pretending that he wasn’t afraid, Gio walked past them, to the back corner, and bit the inside of his cheek, hard, until some blood seeped out. He stuck his finger in his mouth to get the blood out, but halted, once he felt Gabriel’s breath on his right cheek.
Gio never heard or saw Gabriel move until he felt the hungry rasps on his face.
"You shouldn’t do that around him. He’s hungry," Carlos said. "You’d be dead if I didn’t tell him earlier not to kill any of you."
Gio smeared his blood on the wall, hand trembling as Gabriel licked his lips, rubbing his fingers over them again, wondering what kind of blood type he was. Gabriel was too preoccupied to notice that Gio’s blood was not normal, but Carlos did. It sparkled in the dark, no blood a normal human should have.
He made a mental note to leave as soon as he got what he came for.
Gio whispered the incantation softly, voice trembling, praying that he would not die at the hands of a boy in a hoodie and khakis, his entire body vibrating, unable to contain his excitement.
Crassior sanguis foederis aqua ventris.
The smudge of blood glowed yellow and bright, and Gabriel gawked, finally still while conscious. Apprehensively, Carlos approached the shining light, and the bright smudge started to move across the wall.
It slid across the old stone walls, leaving a thin golden trail behind it, illuminating the room, and when it came full circle, it shone. The floor underneath them lit up, the bright light making everything go white.
Carlos grabbed Gabriel before the light blinded him, and never let go, now thinking it was, indeed, a trap. The sound of stone scraping could be heard, louder and louder, and the floor lowered down, deep into the depths of the earth.