our pace was quickened to her floor

Gabriel de le Poer · 01-22-2011, 05:05 PM

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Though fear had long been erased from his being, Gabriel lived in a world of suspicion. He saw enemies in shadows and where they ought not lay. He saw heredity as a fault. Conor would never be an ally of his. Any of Haku’s children would be considered flawed. Even Jefferson, whom had stood against his brother, still bore the shame that came from such a beast. Gabriel would not forget this. He could not forget the things that had been done to his family. Paranoia had kept him alive this long, after all. Had he been like this sooner, he might have destroyed Andre before the boy had touched his daughter. That was something he would never forgive himself for.

From the day he had first laid eyes on Itachi, Gabriel had disliked him. There was something dangerous in the way his eyes looked, something sinister in his stillness. Despite his mother’s reassurances, Gabriel had not been able to shake his doubt. Halo had all but abandoned the boy, which further drove the Aquila to believe there was something wrong with him. No mother would willingly abandon her child unless given reason. So Gabriel had watched from a distance, as patient as his father before him, and waited. The boy had never given him reason for this doubt to linger, but it had.

It was an odd and almost supernatural sensation that connected him to his mother. Gabriel had watched her leave her home, something outside of her pattern, when he had first felt something was wrong. This was not the first time he had sensed such a thing. His mother was not unpredictable. The Aquila had lingered only for a moment before he had begun to follow her. Once a spy, the halfbreed knew how to move without being heard, knew how to track and how to trace. His knowledge of the land only increased this skill, for he soon realized where she was going and broke away.

The pair was outlined by rock, one gold and one silver-black. Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Downwind, he could only catch whispers of their words—it was the bodies he read. So when the boy drew back, Gabriel realized with one horrible breath what he meant to do. The Aquila charged up from the mountainside, closed the distance as his mother’s form began to scramble against the face of rock and air, and grasped the back of her neck with jaws that were most certainly wolfish in their nature. He tasted blood.

She was not heavy, so much was the adrenaline that rushed through his body, and as soon as he was certain she was on solid ground the Aquila turned on his would-be nephew, hair all on end. The snarl that tore apart his face was horrendous; not since the truth of Haku’s assault had he been in such a fury. Ivory teeth stained by his own mother’s blood gleamed against a black maw, and his breath came in heavy bursts of steam. He would kill the boy. That much was certain.

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