L.L. Foster - The Kindred

“Not on your life,” Luther told him.

“He stays,” Gaby added.

“Fine.” Fabian stood. He moved to a cabinet, touched a flower pot holding an overflowing, glossy philodendron. “The talents you have are symptomatic of a special breed of person. A higher power, if you will.”

“Let me get this straight.” Gaby smirked. “You think you’re a god?”

Fabian snapped a leaf off the plant. Sizzling with fury, he turned to face her. “You have a knack for running with amazing speed while not tiring. You see extremely well in the dark. You have remarkable reflexes, better hearing, smell, and taste than the pathetic majority that chokes our streets. You, Gaby Cody, are superior. And so am I.”

Gaby sat up, but said nothing.

Fabian took his chair again. With hesitant daring, he traced his fingertips along the fresh bandage wrapped around Gaby’s arm. “It was confirmed for me when I saw your increased recuperative ability.” His voice went soft with awe. “It’s almost as if you’ve bathed in blood and taken the healing properties of it.”

Luther wanted to rip the nutcase out of his chair and well away from Gaby. But this could be the confession they needed. “Have you bathed in blood, Fabian?”

With Gaby’s attention now focused solely on him, Fabian ignored Luther. “You are not meant for the peons of this world, Gaby. Please believe me.”

“What do you suggest?”

Luther knew Gaby baited Fabian, but he was so wrapped up in his recruit of her, he didn’t appear to see through her tactic.

“I know that you hurt, Gaby,” Fabian said. “I share that pain with you. But you see, I can explain it, teach you how to marshal it, control it.” He held out a hand to her. “The truth is, my dear, you and I are more alike than you know.”

“That doesn’t flatter me, Fabian.”

Luther shifted his gaze from Gaby to Fabian and back again. Gaby sounded fine, but he sensed her gathering pain and rage. Before much longer, she would break—one way or the other.

“Well, it should.” He drew a breath, let it out, and stated, “You’re a psychic vampire. Do you understand what that means?”

Luther spoke up. “You’ve been watching too much late-night television.”

If looks could kill, Luther would have been thoroughly slain by Fabian’s stare.

Gaby tipped her head as if curious. “Why don’t you tell me what you think it means.”

Keen to do just that, Fabian grew bizarrely animated. “A psychic vampire feeds off the life energy of others—those who are unimportant. It’s harmless, really. I can partake of your energy without you ever realizing it. That is to say, you, Gaby, would know, because you’re one of us. But he”—Fabian tossed his head toward Luther in clear disdain—“would be clueless. Those such as him are emotionally susceptible and can be easily left drained and lifeless, to sleep for days.”

Luther laughed. “Yeah, right.” He gestured with a hand, praying Fabian would redirect his focus from Gaby. “C’mon, Fabian. Drain me.” And then with a taunting smile, “Dare ya.”

Fabian snarled. “There is a propensity in the lesser specimens of humanity to oppose anything that tests preconceived notions. Those narrow-minded attitudes are why we superior beings are often forced to live in secret, instead of celebrating our unique qualities.”

“Your insanity, you mean.”

Gaby raised a hand to quiet Luther. “Fact is, Fabian, I’m not whatever it is you think I am. Trust me on that.”

He composed himself with effort. “You hurt, Gaby, I see that even if he doesn’t.”

Luther bristled, but kept silent. Gaby wanted to handle this, and he trusted her to do so. No matter how hard this might be, she would always be strong.

She would always do the right thing.

“The pain is caused by your need to take, to absorb energy from those weaker than you. The agony can be alleviated that way.” Fabian braced himself. “But it can be obliterated altogether . . . by drinking and feeding.”

Red flags went up for Luther, but again, Gaby didn’t react at all.

“Most times, Fabian,” she told him, “I don’t think of food. What I do, what calls to me, isn’t sated that way.”

Fabian relished the close confidence, the way she shared with him.

He closed the space between them. “Only because you haven’t sated it properly. By taking from others, you fulfill yourself and enhance your abilities.” More vivacious now, he snatched both her hands. “I alone understand this.”

“Just you, huh?”

“Yes.” He went taut with expectation. “I understand everything about you, because you inherited your talent . . . from me.”

Time seemed to stand still.

Luther heard the wind stirring outside, the ticking of the clock on the wall, his own heartbeat. He felt the whirlwind of emotions gathering inside Gaby and put his hands on her shoulders to help ground her. He prayed that his touch would be enough to calm her.

“Just what the fuck are you saying?”

Luther started, unnerved to his bones by that whisper of sound from Gaby.

“I am your father.”

Luther’s heart dropped into his stomach. Gaby blinked, swallowed audibly. The unexpected bomb had thrown her; he felt it, but didn’t know what to do about it. In a show of subtle support, he squeezed her shoulders.

She didn’t notice.

Fabian removed an aged photo from his pocket. He laid it on the table and turned it toward Gaby, then slid it over to her. “The woman beside me is your mother.”

Hands folded over the counter, Fabian smiled at Gaby, magnanimous in his claim, heedless to the inferno he’d just ignited.

“As your own flesh and blood,” he announced, “as one equal to you in our elevated capacity, I’m inviting you to join me in my quest for divinity. Partner with me, Gaby, partake of life with me, share my conquests. Be my family.”

Eyes glued to that old, creased, and crumpled black-and-white photo, Gaby shook her head. Hand trembling, she traced the faded outline of a woman’s face.

Her hand dropped away.

“Join you?” Very slowly Gaby looked up, and danger crackled in the air. “Father mine, I will destroy you.”

Before Luther could surmise her intent, Gaby upended the heavy steel table and all the tattooing implements, sending inks, needles, alcohol, and more, crashing to the floor.

Fabian stumbled out of his chair and backed up in haste, but it was fury on his thin face, not fear. “You dare!”

Gaby held her ground, heaving. “If you think . . . ” She had to stop to draw air, to collect herself enough to make the words sound as more than a raw-edged growl. “If you think telling me that you’re the son of a bitch who left me behind will in any way ingratiate me to you, you’re even sicker than I thought.”

“I did not know your mother was pregnant when I left her,” Fabian rushed to tell her.

“Would you have cared?” Gaby whispered right back.

Luther saw it on Fabian’s face, the consideration to lie or tell the truth.

Truth won out.

“No, likely I would not.” He sniffed, brushing at a splash of alcohol on his sleeve caused by Gaby’s eruption. “Your mother, child, was a filthy whore, and a pathetic one at that.”

Gaby’s knife went through the air without warning, embedded to the hilt in the cabinet beside Fabian.

Fabian’s eyes widened as he finally experienced an appropriate dose of alarm for his current predicament.

In two big strides, Luther moved between Gaby and Fabian. Had she missed on purpose? If so, why?

Gaby snagged Luther’s arm and started around him with a heavy, deliberate stride. Luther tried to stop her, but this was Gaby at her most dangerous.