Gabriel Elder book II of the Warlock Series

Both Breena and Gabriel looked up and saw the tiny man standing before them.

“Oz, you’re alright!” Gabriel exclaimed as he ran to the little man.

“I am sorry if I worried you. You took me by surprise the last time we talked,” Oz said.

“You’re sorry? I was sure I had killed you! I am so sorry, I never meant to do it,” Gabriel began.

“Where are the rest of the mercenaries?” Breena interrupted.

“They are also resting, just not so comfortably,” Oz replied.

As he spoke, he stepped back out of the doorway and there on the ground was a pile of nine to ten men, it was hard to tell how many, the way they were piled on top of each other. All of them were unconscious and several had some severely broken bones but they all appeared to be alive. Sitting on the ground next to them, watching them, was Apollo.

“I saw something else in the house, it was huge and moving around the upper floors,” Gabriel added.

“No, you must be mistaken Gabriel, I was the only one moving around upstairs and I hardly think anyone would me call huge,” Oz answered, looking very innocent.

Gabriel wasn’t buying it, he knew what he saw, but he wasn’t going to push it either. Oz was back and the mercenaries had been stopped, it was enough for now.

“How is Zeus…where is he?” Gabriel asked.

“As I said, he is resting comfortably enough for now. Do you know what happened to him?” Oz asked.

Gabriel looked at the floor and then at the little man. He might as well tell Oz everything, at least as much as he could, since he would probably find out anyway. With a deep sigh, he began.

“After we thought we had killed you… that I had killed you, Apollo and I decided to leave the compound for good. I never realized Zeus was a shifter and the shock of all of it was more than I was prepared to deal with,” Gabriel began.

“But you didn’t kill me, and Zeus was trying to tell you the truth about what he was and how it came to be. I know it took you by surprise, but now you must talk to the master warlock, while there’s still time,” said Oz.

“Is it bad,” Breena asked.

Oz looked at her for the first time. He knew what she was and her presence here put him in a very precarious position. He would have to deal with her very carefully, especially until he found out exactly how involved she was with Gabriel and the current situation.

“Oz, this is Breena. She’s a…well, she’s my…she’s,” Gabriel tried to explain, but he wasn’t sure how.

“I’m the reason he came back,” Breena interjected, “We live in a village northwest of the compound and we had some trouble with both shifters and mercenaries last night. Gabriel and Apollo helped drive them away, but Zeus was there in his shifted form and he saved Apollo. That’s how he got injured. We are here to see how he is doing.”

Oz noticed the young woman hadn’t really said who she was, where exactly she was from or even what her involvement with Gabriel was. Her ability to tell the truth without really saying anything confirmed she was indeed a Scythian. Oz had first encountered the shape shifters in the mountains of Tibet and Nepal. They lived in small, very isolated villages and never accepted visitors. He had watched one such village for weeks until he was able to figure out exactly what they were.

“Come,” was all he said as he led them down the hall, and underneath the staircase.

Apollo stayed behind to keep watch over the mercenaries. If they were lucky, they would remain unconscious. If one of them awoke and decided to take on the wolf, it might be the end of all of them. Gabriel wished he could say he felt some bit of pity for them, but it would be a lie. He simply nodded to Apollo as they stepped around the corner of the landing.

Gabriel watched as Oz pushed on one of the panels and it clicked and then opened to reveal a short hallway. It was not a traditional door, this one slid into the wall like a pocket door, but it seemed much heavier. As soon as they entered, the door quickly and quietly slid closed behind them.

Gabriel had long suspected there was a secret section to the mansion he had not yet seen. He knew Oz had a room here at the compound, but in all the years he had been here, he had never seen him use this door. In fact, he’d never heard the little man even mention a personal area. After years of trying to find it, he had given up the search and had started to believe Oz lived in the kitchen. That’s where he always seemed to be.

At the end of the short hall there was a door and it was massive. It appeared to be made from some sort of wood, but neither Breena nor Gabriel, could identify what kind. It opened to a set of steps which led downward. As they followed Oz inside, Gabriel grabbed the edge of the door and attempted to close it. The thing was more than five inches thick and must have weighed several tons! It must have been installed with a crane

Oz turned back and using one hand pushed the door closed. Gabriel just stared at the tiny man and marveled. With Oz, the secrets never stopped and his ability to amaze never ceased. As they stepped into the room, Gabriel was once again surprised. He wasn’t quite sure what he expected of Oz’s living quarters, but this was not it. To call it bare and ancient was an understatement.

The room was very large, probably over five hundred square feet. It looked like it had once been an ancient wine cellar or storage area for the compound. There were no rugs or decorations anywhere. In the entire room, the only real furniture was a massive stone slab against one wall. This must be Oz’s bed but it looked like it would hold at least six of the tiny men.

Across the room, on the opposite wall, was a workbench. At least that’s what Gabriel was going to call it. It looked more like a potting table crossed with an alchemist’s lab. There were different kinds of plants, some dried, some fresh, and glass vials containing many strange looking liquids and elixirs. There were several mortar and pestles and a variety of clay pots. There even appeared to be several ancient jars carved out of jade or gemstone.

Beyond that, the room was bare. How could Oz live like this? He could have any of the known comforts just by asking. Gabriel found himself feeling sorry for the ancient little man. Whatever he thought of Oz and his living quarters quickly faded away when he saw Zeus laying on the stone table. With his arms at his side and a simple sheet draped over him, he looked more like a sacrifice on an ancient alter than an injured man. He also looked frail and old.

Gabriel had never seen Zeus when he was vulnerable. Gone was the façade of the stern, master warlock. Now, there was only a weak, injured old man. He could be someone’s grandfather, not one of the most dangerous men in the world. He couldn’t help but think this would be him one day if he continued in the service of the warlocks.

Breena went to the master warlock and began looking at his wounds. It was a mystery to her how he was even alive. Oz had packed several of his wounds full of ointment and gauze and the bleeding was stopped, but it would take some serious skin grafts to close those wounds.

As she looked him over, she became aware he was awake and watching her. She looked up and locked eyes with his.

“I’m Breena, thank you for helping us last night,” she said.

“And where is Gabriel? And the wolf, is he okay?” Zeus asked quietly.

Breena simply turned and looked at Gabriel. The young warlock walked quickly to Zeus’s side. He wasn’t sure what to say, or if he even needed to speak, but he tried.

“I’m here, and so is Apollo. I might have lost him if it weren’t for you,” Gabriel said.

“What is a grandfather to do?” Zeus replied.

Breena looked down suddenly and stared into the old warlock’s eyes. He was telling the truth. It took Gabriel a minute to grasp what his mentor had just said. He looked from Breena to Oz and back at Zeus. Was he delirious?

“He has been trying to figure out how to tell you this for a very long time,” Oz said quietly.

“But how, I mean…how is this possible,” Gabriel asked.

“Normally I would stop you there and tell you he needs his rest, but you need to hear the truth from him. In a few hours, the moon will rise and he will not survive the shift,” Oz said bluntly.

Gabriel’s mind was reeling. He had just lost one grandfather and now he was finding out his other grandfather had been here all along, but he was going to lose him too! Why hadn’t Zeus told him before this? How long had the master warlock known?

“Why?” was all Gabriel managed to ask, looking into the master warlock’s eyes. He was trying hard to understand and to keep from crying, something he had only recently learned to do.

One tear slowly fell from the corner of Zeus’s left eye as he looked up at the ceiling. How to explain his shame, his many failures, to his only living relative? How to admit all of this was his fault? Even now, so many years later, the guilt was almost enough to destroy the old warrior.

“Gabriel, I let my ego get the best of me. I did the one thing a warlock should never do. I fell in love. I loved my wife with all my heart. I loved her like nothing I had ever loved before. It didn’t help when I did the second worst thing a warlock could ever do, I fathered a child. A beautiful, bright, wonderful, little girl. Oh, how I loved my Stazia. She was determined to follow in my footsteps. For quite a few years, we were happy.

Then one night, I was assigned to check on a gathering of shifters. They were reported to be planning a hunt in the city. It was a ruse. While I was gone, the compound was attacked by a large contingent of shifters led by an enormous, white Alpha. They destroyed my wife, they tore her to pieces, and they did even worse to my Stazia, your mother,” Zeus revealed.

“Worse?” Gabriel questioned, “What’s worse than that?”

“They infected her! Stazia tried to save her mother, she killed more than a dozen of them, but she was badly injured. She was bitten, cut, and torn in dozens of places and they left her for dead. Somehow, she managed to survived the attack. While she was in the hospital I had her tested for the shifter virus and it came back positive. She had become one of them.

She rejected me then. She blamed me for what happened to her mother and herself. The truth is, she blamed herself for not being able to save her mother and took it out on me, as I well deserved. Her lifelong goal of being a master warlock was over. Her mother was dead and her father, the great Zeus, was nowhere to be seen during the attack.

The entire incident drove me to madness. I took on the entire world of shifters and it almost cost me my life. Deep down, I was hoping for just that. It was going to be ‘suicide by shifter’. But, instead of the death I deserved, I got myself infected.

I thought my life was over. Then Oz saved me. He helped me see I could still have a purpose, I could still make a difference. I could still try to mend my relationship with Stazia.

I drove her away Gabriel, I treated her like a child and she ran away. I never knew what happened to her, but I never stopped looking for her. I never knew she was pregnant or she had a child. In fact, as you know, shifters aren’t supposed to be able to get pregnant, or at least that’s what everyone thought.

You’re proof though, somehow, there is a way for it to happen. You are here and I know without a doubt you are my grandson. I was sure long before we got the DNA tests back, but they confirmed you were indeed the son of my dear Stazia.

I know I should have told you all this the day we arrived here at the compound, but I felt you were too young to understand it all. I kept waiting for the right time, but it never came. The truth is, there were many times I could have told you and even more when I should have told you.

I just wasn’t ready to admit how weak and foolish I’d been. I wasn’t ready to look into your eyes and tell you I had caused your situation. I’m sure your mother left you with the church because it was the only chance she had to keep you alive. I believe she had somehow found the location, or the identity, of the white Alpha and she was being hunted. With a newborn, she would have had no chance at all to escape. If she had kept you, you would have both died,” answered Zeus.

Gabriel thought about it, he wasn’t sure if he believed Zeus or not, but he wanted too. All these years he had always wondered why his mother had abandoned him. Could it be she was saving him?

When he found out he was different, and all the tests were being run on him, he had assumed there was something inherently wrong with him. He thought she had abandoned him either out of shame or because she couldn’t afford to pay for any treatments he might have needed. The story Zeus was telling was very compelling and he wanted to believe it.

“He is telling the truth,” Oz said, “He has spent a fortune and every spare minute following each lead to Stazia and the white Alpha. After years of looking for her, we found out a pregnant woman, matching her description, had been seen at a gas station, less than thirty miles from the church where you were left. It was the same night you were born.

It didn’t seem possible, but after all the other leads were exhausted, Zeus began to believe there might be a grandchild of his out there somewhere. The church tried to hide you in case your parents, shifters, ever came looking for you. It took time, and many, many resources before we were able to locate you.

Once he believed you existed, Zeus began experimenting with the silver nitrate and steroid compounds, to make sure they were safe. He was determined to find you and to protect you from the shifter virus. It almost killed him. As a shifter, he had to use much smaller doses of the silver than you received, but in the end, it helped him gain a small measure of control. He was convinced it would protect you in case you were attacked and injured by a shifter.”

Gabriel looked down, but Zeus was fading into unconsciousness. He looked at Oz who shook his head and motioned for the young warlock to move with him to the other side of the room. Breena followed them, keeping close to Gabriel and steering clear of Oz.

She had never been afraid of any living creature, but she was innately afraid of Oz. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew to listen to her instincts. There was something very wrong with this little man. It was taking all her concentration to avoid shifting to her elemental state, which was where she always felt the safest.

“I have given him something to make him sleep, it’s all I can do for him. When the moon rises and he shifts, it will be the end for him,” Oz explained, “I’m sorry Gabriel, there is nothing I can do.”

Gabriel was numb. He found out about Grandfather and then lost him all too soon. Now, he finally found out Zeus was his other grandfather and he was going die within hours and there was nothing anyone could do about it?

The white Alpha had destroyed his family, infected his mother and caused his grandfather to be infected. Now, it looked like Zeus was going to die because of the actions of the white Alpha as well. Gabriel was seething. He wanted to destroy something, to make someone or something pay for all of this!

“Gabriel,” Breena whispered sternly, “get control of yourself. We don’t know what the energy Grandfather left us will do when we use it, until then you must be careful.”

Gabriel looked at Breena and then Oz, both were looking at him in a strange way. He looked down and realized he was glowing blue. The energy within him was emanating from every part of him and he wasn’t touching Breena. It was feeding off the anger and emotion within him. As soon as he calmed down from the shock of it, the blue energy disappeared.

“Why would an elder of your kind do this?” Oz asked Breena.

She was shocked! How could the little man know about her ‘kind’ and how did he have knowledge of the elder’s abilities and their energy? Whatever he appeared to be, this was no ordinary little man.

“It’s not her fault, it was Grandfather, my other grandfather, he gave me this…gift,” Gabriel explained. “My father came from Breena’s village. According to the village elder, it was his son who had fallen in love with my mother. He never knew about me, but he was sure I was his grandson.”

Oz simply stared at Gabriel. He realized his theory had been correct. He had always known there was something very different, almost unexplainable about Gabriel and now he finally confirmed what it was. The young warlock was indeed the first of his kind. A new hybrid, a melding of the shifter and the human and the Scythian. Amazing!

When Stazia had fled to the deep woods she had somehow met and presumably fallen in love with a Scythian. He wondered if she had known what she was dealing with? Would it have made a difference? No, not with Stazia. She was as stubborn as Zeus. Once she made her mind up, it was impossible to change it.

“And what power does your energy give you?” Oz asked Gabriel.

Gabriel looked at Breena, not sure how, or even if, he should answer the question. Breena nodded to him and walked away so the two could speak alone. There was no use denying it, Oz had already seen him light up like a neon light.

“I…I don’t know. Not yet anyway. I haven’t tried to do anything with it, I don’t have the slightest idea how to use it. It just seems to pop up on its own. I’ve been told it’s different for everyone. Grandfather used it to heal people. He healed me after I had been attacked by the white Alpha, that’s how he knew I was his grandson,” Gabriel explained.

“Arghhh,” Zeus moaned loudly.

Both Gabriel and Oz looked at him on the table across the room and saw he was not alone. Breena was standing over him and her hands were glowing with the same blue energy. She had her eyes closed and she was shaking from the effort she was putting into trying to heal the master warlock.

Gabriel ran across the room; Oz followed him. Together they watched as Breena poured her blue energy into the master warlock. Whatever she was doing, it was definitely affecting him. Breena’s entire body was now shaking and Zeus was starting to convulse with her. Gabriel reached for Breena, but Oz stopped him.

“You do not know what your energy will do when combined with hers, perhaps it is best if we let her finish this alone,” Oz said.

Gabriel obeyed, but he wasn’t sure he agreed. It was possible he might increase her power and make the healing much easier for her. He was also smart enough to realize it could just as easily cancel out what she was doing, or even worse, make it deadly to Zeus. He didn’t like it, but he would refrain from trying to help, for now.

After several intense minutes, Breena collapsed. Gabriel caught her before she hit the floor. He gently lowered her to the ground and checked her breathing and her pulse. She was fine, she had just fainted. He looked up at Oz who was checking Zeus’s wounds.

“She has managed to close his wounds, but I have no way of knowing if she was able to fix the internal damage. Only time will tell,” Oz reported.

With only an hour left to go before moonrise, it was only a matter of time now. Gabriel carried Breena to the stairs leading out of the room. By the time he got there, Oz had already opened the heavy door. Gabriel took Breena up to his own room and laid her gently on the bed. He carefully covered her and kissed her softly on the forehead.

He sat in the chair next to the bed and stared at her for over an hour. He had no idea where his life was headed, but he couldn’t imagine a minute without her in it. He was torn between his duties as a warlock and his duties as a clan leader and he wasn’t sure how to choose between the two. One thing he was sure of, he would choose the one which kept Breena by his side.

He remembered Zeus saying that falling in love was the one thing a warlock should never do and now that he felt true love for the first time he understood how powerless the master warlock would have been to resist it. If it felt anything like what he felt when he thought of Breena, there was nothing Zeus could have done.

Gabriel considered what it would be like to lose her to the white Alpha, the way Zeus had lost his wife and he could understand how the master warlock could lose his mind. He tried to imagine it, but he couldn’t. That much pain just didn’t seem possible.

Finally, with Breena resting comfortably, Gabriel heading back down to the main hall to check on Zeus. When he got to where the pile of bodies had been left, they were all gone! Apollo was still sitting where he had been, but the mercenaries were gone, all of them.

“Oz,” Gabriel heard in his head.

“Thanks,” he said as he reached down and stroked Apollo’s neck.

He saw the wall panel beneath the stairs had been left open. As Gabriel entered the small hallway, he saw the massive inner door was open as well. It was a good thing; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to open the door by himself.

As he reached the doorway and started to step inside, he was confronted with a massive, white shifter. Instinctively he reached for his katana. How did the creature get in here without him knowing? Surely Apollo would have seen it enter the main floor. Now was his chance to destroy the beast! Wait…if this was the Alpha from the cemetery, he’d be changing as well.

As he looked closely at the enormous shifter in front of him, he saw it wasn’t attacking. It was staring at him, but it wasn’t attacking. In fact, it wasn’t acting violent or out of control in any way. This werewolf was enormous, but it was still smaller than the white Alpha from the cemetery. How many of these white shifters were there?

While he was looking at it, the shifter walked up to him and simply stepped right passed Gabriel. He turned and looked toward the slab where Zeus had been laying. It was empty! Then the white shifter was Zeus. Gabriel turned and quickly followed the beast. He kept his distance, but he watched carefully as the giant man-wolf walked past an alert Apollo and went up the stairs.

The two warlocks followed. They watched as the shifter entered Zeus’s room and went to the cell designed to hold the master warlock in his shifted state. The shifter bent over and grabbed the badly bent cell door and pulled it into place as it entered the cell.

Gabriel noticed the white shifter had a thick, dark black strip of hair running down the back of its head, to well below its shoulders. As they continued to watch, the creature went to the built-in bed in the cell and laid down and closed its eyes. In a matter of seconds, it was resting comfortably.

“I’m sorry,” Oz said, startling the young warlock. “I was taking care of the men from the foyer, I just returned.”

Gabriel started to ask where he had returned from, but decided against it. Where he took them, however he took them, Gabriel didn’t want to know.

“Whatever she did, it worked. He survived the shift,” Gabriel commented.

“More than that, she gave him peace. He has never been calm after the shift before. I can sense Zeus within the beast now, I have never been able to do that before either,” Oz replied.

“I know it’s early, but I am tired, very, very tired and right now I just want to sleep,” Gabriel said.

“I will have food ready for you when you wake,” Oz said.

Gabriel nodded and watched as Oz sat down and crossed his legs. It looked like he intended to stand guard over the shifted Zeus. Whether it was to protect the master warlock or to make sure he didn’t harm anyone else, Gabriel wasn’t sure.

Apollo led the way up to the next level where he and Gabriel’s room was located. Gabriel took off his boots and hung his katana from the corner of the bed. Then he crawled into the bed beside the sleeping Breena. He didn’t bother pulling the blankets back, he didn’t want to disturb her and well, he didn’t want her to think he was trying to be…well…Gabriel almost chuckled aloud.

They were both considered adults and they had spent much of the last twenty-four hours fighting, killing and trying hard not to be killed by both shifters and mercenaries, and yet, here he was afraid to act inappropriately. The whole thing just seemed humorous to him.

Stifling his laugh, he simply rolled to his side, draped his arm gently around the beautiful young woman sleeping next to him and tried to sleep. He was tired, very tired, but his mind refused to shut down. For the first time since he was a child, he allowed himself to think about his parents.

He wondered about his mother. What was she like? Was she still alive? If she was, did she ever think about him? What about his father? What animal and elemental forms did his father assume? Would they have anything to do with Gabriel’s? For that matter, would Gabriel even have other forms?

Gabriel was starting to think his father may have much bigger impact on him than he’d ever imagined. Unfortunately, he knew even less about him than he did his mother. He needed to rest, but his mind kept wandering. Who was the white Alpha? Where was it, and could it be stopped? He was trying to imagine what his grandmother would have been like when he finally drifted off to sleep.

Apollo laid at the foot of the bed, but he never slept. Gabriel didn’t seem to be able to see the blue energy whipping back and forth between the young couple, but Apollo could. It fascinated and worried him. He had seen a little of it when it was in Grandfather, but it seemed contained and under control then. Ever since the elder had passed it on to these two, it seemed on the verge of being out of control. Perhaps it was the two of them which were on the verge of being out of control. Either way, Apollo would look out for them.

He was going to keep watch over these two all night long. If anyone, or anything, thought they were vulnerable, they would find out differently. Apollo had learned much in the last few days. In his training, he had been taught many ways to disable and even kill if necessary, but he was beyond that now. He had become much more and he knew it.

In the fight with the mercenaries he had grown by leaps and bounds. He had allowed the things he had been trained to do to be guided by his own natural instincts. By combining the two, with his enhanced strength and speed, he had discovered even more efficient ways of dealing with mercenaries and shifters alike. He was now a much more refined and polished version of the wolf-warlock he had been trained to be. During the fight, he could hear the thoughts of both Breena and Gabriel and it gave him another advantage over his adversaries.

Apollo had no way of knowing exactly what Grandfather had done to him, but he had made him promise not to tell either of them. Whatever it was, it was vitally important to the survival of the clan. Apollo was sure it had something to do with his new abilities and his clear understanding of the young couple’s thoughts, but he had no way of knowing for sure.

There was one thing he was sure of, if anyone threatened Breena or Gabriel, they would have to go through him to do it. He was also sure they would pay a very heavy price for trying to hurt either of them. Yes, he could see the energy passing back and forth between the sleeping pair, but he couldn’t see the energy within himself. As he sat there guarding the couple, the wolf’s eyes glowed a deep, cobalt blue.