Leaving the Cecil Hotel, or whatever was left of it took hours. The easiest part was the physical aspect of it. Gabriel froze a path of ice in front of them, making it easy for them to walk back to the shore, and they walked, and then began to run as the twinkling stars faded, and the morning began to break against the horizon. They hid in an old subway tunnel once the day broke.
Gabriel, The Misbehaving Pet waited in the abandoned tunnel, for Carlos to return with food, and they could finally go home once the sun fell again.
Carlos and Gabriel had proven themselves, but at what cost?
Two policemen had died, the third was left mentally scarred and it hadn't gotten them much closer to Carlos' goal of finding a cure.
The only thing they had gained was a hint.
Back at Chiusui, during the dead of night, Gio came to the room that both Carlos and Gabriel shared. They were both surprised that he had come to them. Gabriel opened the heavy wooden door, let him in, and silently stood to the side, expecting the worst. He drank from his "juice box" and eyed him warily.
"Thank you for your hard work," Gio said. "We have considered employing you full-time."
"We aren't temp workers from an agency! You sent us out to something completely different than what we expected," Carlos complained.
"The world is filled with many dangers. Some more precarious than others."
"An entire building was alive! We're leaving!"
Carlos went back to packing their things, but Gio continued on.
"We have found some information that might help in your quest to seek redemption. We have found... this..."
From Gio's pockets, he took out a vial. It was dark red blood, older than time itself, but it slightly sparkled in the dark, with a slight golden hue. The vial itself was quite old, with an ornate golden design, winding around it, and a tiny metal clasp on top.
Carlos looked at it like he had won the lottery, and that it was his winning ticket.
"We have reason to believe that this is the blood of an original," Gio announced.
"Where did you find that," Carlos asked in awe.
"Our peacekeepers found this at the site of that horrid mass grave of those children....an odd place to find such a thing."
"May I?"
Carlos tentatively reached his hand out, and Gio gave it right over to him without hesitation, much to his surprise. While looking at the vial, something strange and deep overcame him. It was like he no longer missed something that had been gone for so long. Gabriel came closer, inspecting it as well, both of them unsure what to do with the liquid gold they have been given. He held it close to his chest, protectively, still believing that the gift could be rescinded at any time.
"We can really keep this," Carlos asked. "Why don't you want it?"
"It can't give me the answers I seek. Maybe for you, it can."
Gio sighed and took a piece of paper out of his pocket with written instructions, a crudely made dossier for their next mission. Carlos quickly read it over, and then again, and chuckled.
"We are going to the middle of nowhere to chase an urban legend," Carlos said with a smile.
"Legends and myths always have a hint of truth to them," Gio replied with confidence. "Many would say that your kind doesn't exist and yet here you are."
Gabriel nodded quickly in agreement and Carlos sighed. He knew Gabriel wanted to get outside more often and would agree with anything that would do so. After a few seconds, Carlos acquiesced.
"Fine, we'll go, but on our own terms."
"Your own terms? Your own terms," Gio asked.
They both nodded, simultaneously, and Gio did not ask. He figured it wouldn't be lying if he didn't learn whatever misdeeds they would get up to as long as he was closer to the task of finding his other half. He excused himself and left. The moment the door closed, Carlos gave Gabriel the job of protecting the vial.
"Protect it with your life. Don't let anyone who isn't trusted have it."
Gabriel The Misbehaving Pet was now Gabriel The Guard Dog, and it was a slight improvement.
Next, Carlos fished out a cell phone from the pile of clothing on his bed and made a phone call. He needed help from someone more experienced in what they sought to do.
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Gabriel and Carlos were meeting up with someone at a park in the dead of night, during the witching hour. Their guest was late, and Gabriel was hungry, so once again Carlos left on a mission and told him to stay put.
After a few minutes, a familiar smell in the dark was a welcome and abrupt change.
It wasn’t Carlos, but it smelled like him, all of the family having the same distinct smell, the smell of smoke, the same distinct feeling when you looked them in the eyes, and Gabriel felt her arrive before he could see her, her presence louder than her small frame.
Momo was finally in view when she stood underneath a street lamp, across the path from him. She wasn’t happy to see him. Carlos had gone against what the older siblings had done, he had brought attention to them with their stunt that was now on almost every major website.
Gabriel could feel her murderous aura as she slowly approached him, and she knew he was hungry, so she brought in something he couldn’t resist. A nice "juice box", just for him. Momo’s glow-in-the-dark fingernails gave off a neon pink hue, and she shook the juice box in the air, waving it like a toy.
Gabriel froze, weighing death against a moment of pure pleasure.
Momo was not the oldest of all the siblings, in fact, she was a grandchild, the daughter of Kato, at only ninety-seven. She was turned around the age of fourteen, and when she spoke she still sounded like a teenager, her composure, however, was that of an adult, and it frightened the meat suits whenever a well-meaning one approached her during a weekday asking her why she wasn’t in school.
She wasn’t in school, she never returned, nor did she like to play pretend like the others and sometimes return, because there was no use in pretending to change things that could never be undone.
They stared each other down until one made a move. In a flash, she ran up to Gabriel and pushed him off the park bench, and he snarled, squirming in the dirt, enraged and confused. Carlos arrived with several blood bags he stole from a nearby hospital to see Momo pushing Gabriel repeatedly to the ground, as he writhed all over the floor and snarled like a wild animal.
Carlos whispered to himself again that this was another test, but the tests were now ridiculous, and he was starting to prefer the more obvious ones, such as the demon from the night before.
They stopped squabbling when the food arrived. Food, the international peacemaker, secondary to the gun, quieted the arguments, and they ate quietly in the dark. The air was still and heavy, and Carlos was the one who pushed it with his voice, apologizing to Gabriel.
"I’m sorry about earlier, I should have been there to protect you," Carlos sighed.
Gabriel glared at Momo with intense hatred, his eyes never leaving hers, and she glared back, their staring match eternal, because neither had the need to blink.
"I’m not sorry, he needs to die before he kills you, Father," Momo replied.
" What? No, he’s not going to kill me! I meant earlier, at that horrible tourist trap!"
Gabriel’s gaze finally left Momo’s, and he leaned to the side to look past her, and at Carlos who was sitting on the other side of the bench. He was a deflated balloon, a shell of the former monster he was, and Gabriel believed he had failed him as well.
"You did fine, don’t worry about it," Gabriel reassured him.
Momo was afraid, as she was already too late, smelling Gabriel's obsession, and tried to hide the disgust and venom in her voice.
"How long have you been feeding him your blood Father," she asked.
"Please don’t call me that."
"Answer me."
"For three months," Carlos hissed. " Does it matter? He won’t stop!"
"Yes it does," Momo screamed.
She got up from the chair, as it was now somehow poisonous.
"Carlos, you can’t just block yourselves off from the entire world! It’s not fair," she whined. "This is unnatural!"
"I don’t want to hear about nature from a girl with pink hair," Gabriel snapped.
"I am an astral, like you, dumbass, of course, my hair is pink. "
The squabbling between the two continued, and Carlos tuned them out thinking about what she said. How it was unnatural. Nothing about them was natural. If Gabriel and he weren’t the only ones wrapped up in each other, then they would be wrapped up in the rest of the family bound to their own delusions as well.
What poison was best to choose?
"You’re jealous of our special bond," Gabriel exclaimed.
"I tried warning you, I am not jealous! I’m trying to help you, Carlos!"
Gabriel was now quiet, as he could feel Carlos’s fear, and it made him afraid of being alone again, and his fear amplified Carlos’s and they were both afraid of themselves of each other, and what a simple mistake would do to the two of them.
No one argued with Momo as she warned them of the very same mistake she had made.
Many years ago, when she was young and dumb, at the prime of her youth at forty-four, Momo had her own child as well, a man she had turned to who went by the name Joaquin.
Joaquin was hired by Momo because she needed to move freely, tired of the fact that she could not even pass for eighteen with her short stature, young fresh face, and voice. Eternal youth had its downsides, and it was easier to blend in than to fight the meatsuits, as they were the majority, and she would be a lone soldier fighting the rising tide.
When she met Joaquin it was in Sao Paulo. He was forty-two, a very concerned man walking home from work late, very concerned that at night as to why a young girl was with a disheveled man, holding hands, who did not seem to be her brother, father, and was clearly too old to be her boyfriend.
Joaquin ruined his nice business suit as he fought off the man, believing that he was protecting a young woman and her virtue from a predator, when the young woman was using her youth to eat predators, the easiest to ensnare, their lust clouding their logic.
After a lot of explanations, a lot of arguing, and some undeniable proof that Momo was much older than she seemed, Joaquin let the pervert go, and he ran off, more afraid of the girl with fangs than the man who almost snapped his neck in half.
Thus began the very long relationship between the two.
The years came as quickly as they went, and Joaquin was not long for this Earth.
Joaquin did not take good care of himself, a large man, and he did not listen to his mother’s nagging for years that he should slim down a bit. So when she offered to turn him, he gladly accepted. Joaquin was an oddity of a man turned at the age of seventy-five, but they all adored him just the same.
Carlos started to remember.
How could he have forgotten the oddity of an old man, turned so late in his years? It was a joke he had heard many years ago, about a man in the tropics who was too slow to catch his own dinner, and his mother had to catch it for him.
His mother stood in front of him now, crying, saying that in a very silly attempt to make him stronger, she gave him more of her blood after she had turned him. That in her own silly ways she ignored his obsessions with her and assumed his familial love had turned into something cruel. That she had to stop being silly when his obsession turned strange.
So, she had to do more than bury her son but kill him as well, and nothing was silly anymore.