Carpathian 08 - Dark Legend

the thing, separating the organ from the body. Even as he did so, he leaped away to minimize his contact with the tainted blood.
    The vampire's shriek of despair echoed through the cemetery so that the bats rose up into the air in great clouds. The undead simply folded in half and sank in a heap to the bloodstained ground, flopping, dragging its body toward Gabriel, toward the dark, ugly thing he tossed upon a rock just out of the vampire's reaching claw. Almost without conscious thought, Gabriel built the charge of electricity and directed it at the horrible organ straining to return to its body. The thin white-hot lash incinerated the heart and leaped to the body of the undead, reducing it to ashes. At once Gabriel bathed his hands in the heat, removing every trace of tainted blood before checking that the ground was clean of all infection. The vampire couldn't have turned very many years earlier; he'd been unskilled and slow. He couldn't have been the one to put Brice under such a well-hidden compulsion. The darkness in the doctor ran deep, it tainted his blood and was eating up his will and rotting him from the inside out. He wasn't a ghoul, feasting on the flesh of human dead and living for the vampire's blood, but the one controlling him was a powerful being.
    Gabriel couldn't see Lucian's hand in Brice's corruption. Lucian would consider it beneath him to do such a thing. He might harm Brice, or kill him outright, but he wouldn't use the man to entrap Skyler and ultimately Francesca. He would not need to stoop to such a thing.
    Lucian was a true genius. He possessed a powerful brain that constantly thirsted for knowledge. Lucian needed difficulties for his mind to work on. Intellectual challenge was what kept him from going completely mad.
    Gabriel shook his head, exasperated with himself. Lucian had gone mad; he had chosen to lose his soul many centuries ago. If Gabriel was going to protect his family, he could no longer think of Lucian as being part of him.
    Francesca was his heart and soul now. He couldn't take the chance of Lucian harming her. Gabriel made his way back to Brice. He needed to take the man back to the house and put him under a strong safeguard to prevent the vampire from harming him further. Brice was so far gone, Gabriel wasn't certain the doctor could be helped. Obviously the vampire had been working on Brice subtly for a long while.
    The doctor was huddled in a ball on the ground, oblivious to his surroundings, deep within Gabriel's spell. Gabriel knew no one but Lucian could break through the safeguard keeping Brice's mind intact. It was a gamble bringing Brice into Francesca's home. They would have to take him to the underground chamber so Skyler would not be frightened by the sight of the doctor. And if he couldn't be healed, it would be up to Gabriel to show him mercy; it was not something he thought Francesca would thank him for.
    Gabriel lifted the man as if he were no more than a child. Under the strong hypnotic trance Gabriel had put him in, Brice was completely trusting. He lay passive as Gabriel took to the air with him. The cloud cover was heavy enough to prevent prying eyes from seeing more than a blur moving fast through the night sky.
    Francesca was waiting on the balcony for him, an anxious look on her usually serene face. Gabriel hadn't attempted to keep the extent of the damage from her and she knew if she were to save Brice's sanity, they would have to work fast. "Thank you for trying, Gabriel," she whispered softly, her voice a velvet caress. Her eyes moved over him carefully, searching for any injury he might have sustained.
    At once he felt that curious melting sensation he was becoming familiar with. She was worried about him, checking to be sure he was fine even when he was bringing her a human friend whose mind had been damaged by the undead. Francesca thought of him first, and her concern meant everything to him. "I have directed Santino and Drusilla away from the kitchen so that we can take him safely down to the chamber. Skyler is asleep in her room. See to it that she stays there." His voice was a little bit gruff, made husky by emotion he couldn't control. She was so beautiful standing there in the night, tall and slender with her long hair in a thick braid and love shining in her eyes.
    Gabriel reached out to run his fingertip tenderly down her face. "I think there is a chance that he can be healed, Francesca, but it will be difficult. The poison is already