Written by Erana Zeitler, Thu 11/9/00 5:23 PM
Prologue
Grace Nakamura stared down at the newspaper on her desk at St George’s Books and found herself unable to repress a frown. This was not good. Not good at all. Nibbling on the inside of her cheek (a habit she’d found far preferable over biting one’s lip, after all, no one could see what she was doing *inside* her mouth), she debated internally with herself. She imagined two sides fighting with one aonther over the question. No, not the devil and the angel. It was the side of her that knew what was right for the world, and the side of her that knew what was right for one man in particular which warred with one another.
Much as she hated to admit it, she knew in her heart that it was not the world that was going to win this time around.
Folding up the newspaper, she at first was going to throw it out in the trash, but reconsidered when she remembered just who she’d be dealing with. So instead she headed towards a box of books in the back, a set of lovely leather bound classics, and tucked it between ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘Cather in the Rye’. Satisfied that the news was safely hidden from prying eyes, she headed towards the room furthest into the back.
Gabriel’s room hadn’t changed much in the renovations, but one major difference was there was now a large screen TV in the corner. He’d asked her to have it put in, rather ironically, in her opinion, since not once had he been home to see it. Walking around to the back, she found her teeth drawn again to her cheek. She didn’t want to break it completely on him, but there was no other way to keep him from seeing the news reports. Sighing, she bent the wires on the insides halfway down, managed to pry another two off completely, and disconnected all the rest.
The next step in her mission of Gabriel proofing was to get on the telephone and cancel her subscriptions to the Picayune. Unfortunately, it was already nine o’clock at night; there was no one there to hear her demands. Which meant she’d have to get up at the crack of dawn to intercept the latest news.
It seemed rather silly, when she thought about it. But it was beyond necessary; it was downright urgent. And if she had to lock Gabriel inside the book store to keep him from finding any kind of case at all, she would. Whatever powers that were trying to contact the Shattenjagger this time were just going to have to find someone else to do their dirty work for them.
Because Gabriel Knight was *not* well.
The Gabriel she cared about, the Gabriel she had finally been able to admit to herself, although not to anyone else, that she loved, had gone missing. And in his place was someone she didn’t know at all, but still felt an overwhelming sympathy for. About the only thing familiar in the new and un-improved Gabriel Knight was his sarcasm, but instead of being directed to the outside world it was directed to himself.
The most frustrating thing of all was she had yet to figure out why. Whatever thoughts were going on in his head, he wasn’t sharing them with anyone, not even his journal which she’d been continually scanning for clues. Sure, it was an invasion of privacy, and normally she would never even consider such a thing, but this was different. This was *strange*.
She wanted to be able to say that such and such had happened, and that was why he was being moody. That would make SENSE. Unfortunately, it would also be inaccurate. The changes in him had been gradual, subtle, that she hadn’t even realized it at first. But finally, one day she’d woken up, gone downstairs to speak with Gabriel, and realized that she’d been speaking with a stranger.
Grace didn’t like it. And she was determined to fix it. No matter what it took.
And so the powers would just have to deal. They’d certainly been using Gabriel enough in the past three years. He’d gotten a year break after the Voodoo Murders, and then... nothing. Two days after the Wolf Killings there was something new to investigate, and so on and so forth. He was overworked, underpaid, and at the very least deserved a vacation, a break from all things supernatural.
Hopefully, that would be enough to cure the depression that seemed to have settled like a shroud around his soul. Because if it didn’t...
If it didn’t, she had no idea what would.
~~~~~~
Gabriel Knight knew he was expected elsewhere at the moment. Yet almost as soon as the plane landed he’d known exactly where he was going to go when he got off, and it wasn’t St. George Books, it wasn’t the police station, the bar, or even Jackson Square. Those places would be welcoming, familiar in a comforting way.
Unfortunately, he’d pointed his car in the direction of the cemetery instead.
Now, standing in front of the Gedde family tomb, he found his mind wandering to Malia, which was unusual. She wasn’t someone he’d given a lot of thought to since leaving New Orleans. So many things had come after her death... he really hadn’t had time, as horrible as that sounded. Before long she’d been all but forgotten, lost in a sea of cases, replaced by visions of others he had failed along the way.
But standing here now, in front of her family tomb, a tomb she hadn’t even been buried in, he realized there was a connection she had over him, still; a connection that could never be broken. Because she was the first. Malia had been the first he’d loved, and the first he’d failed to save.
In a way, that first case, that first failure, had set the tone for his entire life as a Shattenjagger.
It was because of thoughts like those, which had been going around and around in his mind for logner than he could remember, that he’d returned to New Orleans. He needed a vacation, a break from fighting. He needed to regroup.
More than anything, he needed to forget.
There had been a time, what seemed like ages ago, when all he would have needed to do to exorcise his demons was write. Somehow the process of fictionalizing what he’d experienced... it had a way of healing him. Or at least, it used to. He still had yet to have a case that didn’t become a Blake Backlash mystery, and all of them had hit the NY Times Best Seller’s list. It figured, the less useful writing became for him, the more the public loved him.
Gabriel was well aware that his mood of late had been far from the best. And if he’d ever been uncertain, Grace’s almost daily suggestions that there were some great psychiatrists in the world would have been reminder enough.
Yeah, he was sure Freud would have just LOVED to analyze the always graphic Shattenjagger dreams.
It had been his friends’ suggestions that he leave Rittersberg for a while, on something other than a case. And at the time, he’d thought it might be appealing to see New Orleans again. Now that he was seeing it, however, he knew their idea had been about as idiotic as they came. Returning to the town where it had all began didn’t seem like the best way to snap anyone out of a depression.
The best way to have gotten them off his back, he knew, was to just deny their theories altogether. But he couldn’t do it. He knew himself well enough to know that whoever he was right now, it wasn’t Gabriel Knight. It was, instead, some guilt ridden, drepssed, self-loathing guy that he didn’t recognize, and was already incredibly tired of.
So, New Orleans it was.
Gabriel had a feeling however that if Grace knew exactly where his first stop had been in good ole New Orleans, they’d reconsider the destination for this little retreat.
The tomb reminded him of Malia, but not in the way it should have. Because she wasn’t there, of course. She was no where, really. Gone forever without any place to rest in peace, without any real sign that she’d ever lived at all. It was almost as if she’d never existed. Hell, maybe she never had. Maybe this was all some weird dream he was having, a hallucination from his very own room at the loony bin.
Sighing heavily, Gabriel turned around and headed out of the cemetery towards his car. Instead of going straight to Gracie, who was no doubt by now getting impatient, he stopped at a coffee shop to pick up three very large bags. Lately if there was no case-related dreams being sent to him, his own subconscious felt obliged to pick up the slack and send some straight from his own imagination. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that being back home was most definitely not going to stop that particular trend.
“Yeah, coming back to New Orleans was *really* a great idea,” Gabriel muttered sarcastically to himself as he finally headed off to the book store where Grace awaited.
~~~~~~
With the pleasantries and low-key flirting, which neither one had yet to admit to doing, Grace finally showed herself out to head back to the hotel room she’d rented, and Gabriel lay in his bed reading one of his old, non-best-seller, non Shattenjagger books. He’d tried to find the paper, but Grace had apparently already thrown it out or something. So old writing it was.
Unfortunately, there was a good reason his old books hadn’t exactly flown off the shelves, and he found his eyes not just growing heavy, but tearing with exhaustion. He knew he’d finally reached the point where no amount of caffeine was going to keep him going.
Putting the book down on his night table, Gabriel stretched leisurely and crossed his fingers, hoping not for a nice, pleasant dream, but for no dream at all.
He knew there was no chance, though.
Sighing, he closed his eyes.
Within two seconds he was sound asleep.
And then the dream started...
~~~~~~
Blood.
There was blood everywhere, running through every vein, dripping off the lips of the crowd, pouring from the necks of victims.
Vampires was the first thing recalled in Gabriel’s subconscious mind, but was ruled out when the people were glimpsed at more closely. Because they were children... none older than 17, and some as young as a year. And though the blood was everywhere, filling the air with its nauseatingly sweet scent, the ones he saw were not drinking, they were screaming. They were crying.
They were dying.
And the darkness in the air was so far gone from anything remotely human that he knew beyond doubt if it ever had been, it was no more, nor could it ever possibly have a form of the physical nature.
Then there was chanting. The sounds of a spell being summoned, of a group of fellow warriors of the light trying to break the chant, to stop the fiend from being called. And the warriors were the children. And they were no longer screaming, nor were they crying.
They were already dead.
And whatever had been awoken would not rest, and the men who had called it were rejoicing. And the parents of the warriors of light, the parents who had sent their children to battle in a fight so far over their heads it was nearly unimaginable, were the ones crying.
~~~~~~
Normally when a dream ended, Gabriel shot out of bed, a typical response to seeing horror; trying to get away.
But this dream had held no fear. The only emotional imprint that had followed him into the waking world was the parents agony, although why they had allowed their children to be used to fight a creature no one could even touch physically was beyond him.
Taking a few deep breaths to try and push the pain of those mothers and fathered away, Gabriel did sit up, although slowly, and calmly. Shaking his head, he could think of only one thing to say.
“So much for my vacation.”
In the meantime, return to the main Fan Fiction page...