Gabriel

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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For Liz Szabla—Thank you for being “a shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon.”

 

The night is darkest just before the dawn.

And I promise you the dawn is coming.

—District Attorney Harvey Dent,
The Dark Knight

 

INTRODUCTION

T
ICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
Tock. Tick.

The hands of the invisible clock rolled over and over.

This was nowhere. But time did indeed subsist in this place. The sound of the clock reminded nowhere's company of the inescapability of nothingness. A form of torture to know that time continued to move forward for everything else—and everyone else—in a place where they still existed, while those who had gone lay lost, wrapped in the fabric of the unknown.

Thoughts, only thoughts, here at the center of a room. Only there were no walls, no floor, and no ceiling. No longer possessing a physical form, all that was here were my erratic, barely conceived thoughts.

Thoughts that wondered if this was nature. If this was what happened when everything you were just stopped and no other worldly force intervened.

But then, someone had put that clock in here.

All thoughts were fragmented and stifled, but they struggled on regardless—anything to block out the sound of the maddening
tick tock
by concentrating on the faintest smudge of an imprinted memory.

A strange image of an object—small and thick with a jagged edge around its top—flashed into thought.

Focusing on
it
, and yet no comprehension as to what
it
was.

The object started to fuzz and blur, but this mind wasn't going to release it so easily. Think and remember.

King.
A word. Recognition.
King.
It had a name.

Now it existed.

The
tick tock
filtered back in and made it harder to concentrate. And, somehow, the sound of those malevolent hands was getting louder.

King. King. King.
Its name now resounded in time with the strikes—balancing it, holding the image steady.

Check.
A new word forming.
Check.
My king was in check. My king.

Me.

Me. I. I wasn't me. I wasn't anything. I didn't exist. And then the idea started to dissolve.…

Lailah …

The word almost whispered into life, and repeated:
Lailah …

A name. Things that didn't exist didn't have names. But I had a name. One I swore I would never forget again.

Lailah …

Strange … at the end of the room, a circle appeared.

The
tick tock
quickened.

A window. A glass window with an image locked inside—someone beautiful sat at the foot of a bed. I knew him. On a table before him sat a chess set.

I concentrated on the king, and a spark of light flowed through my mind. Though I began to feel something, whatever it was quickly receded as the face before me dulled with a shadow of sadness.

“No.” My voice bounced off the sides of the room that were now forming. “No!” I shouted again. As I did, the king moved for me; it moved itself out of check.

Command the choice to decide.

Command the choice to decide.

As the familiar words looped themselves in my mind, a chill crept up from below.

The room had a floor, and I had feet.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock
 … The clock sped up, booming with every strike, almost deafening my mind into silence once again. And with every turn of the big hand, it was as if my head were being pounded and smacked against the newly formed wooden walls.

I was locked inside a grandfather clock. I was a nonexistent prisoner of time. But I was beginning to exist once more, so time would have to halt long enough to release me.

I could see my hands now, and as the floor started to fall away and the ceiling began to cave in, I placed my palms against the window in desperation, watching him.

The glass shattered as the space bounced and rocked from side to side, and his image left along with the shards, shortly to be replaced with a new window, a way back to the world.

Heavy chunks of wood came crashing down around me. I squeezed myself through, staring down into oblivion. I stood straight and teetered on the ledge of its gold pane.

Three perfect spheres lined up in a row. One was a luminous white. The second was an amalgam of sapphire blue and emerald green. The third was a black ball with gray clouds that swirled as though a storm was trapped inside.

I cast my gaze to my right, and as the prison broke apart, I saw a number: 9. Debris rained down from above, and I struggled to retain my balance. I snapped my attention to the left. Another number—3—cracked and fell away.

My head thumped and throbbed. I kept my balance, but the clock's hands twirled at an incredible speed, so fast everything was spinning.

I had commanded the choice; now I had to decide.

“I want to go home! I want to live!” I shouted at nothing and no one.

The heavy brass pendulum swung as the hands finally slowed and hovered at 12. The casing that had enclosed me broke away as the clock chimed for its last time, sounding the beginning of a new day.

I remembered his face as I closed my eyes. His name formed at the fringes of my consciousness, and I fell from the ledge of my prison.

The clock stopped ticking.

Every clock in every world stopped. Just for me.

 

PROLOGUE

LUCAN, IRELAND
FOUR WEEKS AGO

A
LTHOUGH IT WAS THE
onset of a deeply bitter winter, a deceptive sheet of sunlight fell over the Emerald Isle—nothing but crystal-blue sky above.

Reverend Cillian O'Sileabhin noted this with annoyance. On a day such as this, the rain should have lashed down and the heavens should have cried. It was the least his son Padraig deserved.

O'Sileabhin carried the white lie on his shoulder, bearing the coffin's weight without flinching. He looked to his other—and now only—son, Fergal, who was struggling to balance the heavy wood on the opposite side. Fergal was weak compared with Padraig; perhaps he should have beaten Fergal as a child. It certainly seemed to have made a man out of his eldest.

Though O'Sileabhin had, on countless occasions, raised his hand to his youngest son, he had never been able to bring it down upon him. Fergal would cower, kneading his fingers through his messy blond hair around his temples, and peer up through the wayward strands with fear. And in Fergal's wide eyes, O'Sileabhin would see his wife's staring back at him. He would once again hear her whisper “good-bye” the night she had fled. And with Padraig only too willing to receive a beating on his brother's behalf, he had borne the brunt of O'Sileabhin's retribution.

But now, with Padraig gone, he would need to be harder—more stringent—with Fergal. An upbringing with a good balance of faith and discipline—that was what made leaders. Though Fergal was younger than Phelan, the son of O'Sileabhin's brother, Diarmuid, Fergal was still the offspring of the eldest O'Sileabhin brother, which meant he would become leader when the day came, even if Phelan happened to be better suited to leadership than Fergal. This was the way it had always been.

The task of protecting this town—this congregation—from the Devil's brood, as O'Sileabhin's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather would have expected, demanded nothing short of valiant and intrepid servants of God.

And Reverend Cillian O'Sileabhin led by example.

As the men approached the gated entrance to the long path that led to the coffered panel doors of the church, the sun rose just over the peak of the church turret and momentarily blinded Cillian.

Refrains of “Danny Boy” softly called them inside the place of worship. As the arched doors swung open and the sweet song sang down the long aisle, the coffin was carried through on a freezing breeze that swept its way over the silver hinges and fastenings, causing them to clank and clatter.

Cillian passed his beautiful daughter, Iona, who sat waiting for him in the pews. Her plump lips strained in a sorrowful smile and wistful tears fell from her gray-blue eyes as Cillian acknowledged her with a small nod.

Diarmuid delivered the service, though Cillian barely listened to his brother's words about the righteous who had fallen in the Lord's name. How Padraig had been an honorable and fearless young man. Words would bring little comfort on this darkest of days.

As the service drew to a close and the song replayed, Cillian took Iona's hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “'Twas a grand choice, munchkin. Padraig would have liked it.”

Once the church had emptied, he allowed his daughter to guide him from the pews. She hesitated, and Cillian waited for her to speak. Instead, she unfastened her clutch purse and pulled out his gold cross.

Cillian had removed it, feeling disillusioned after Padraig had been lost to the Devil's servants. But despite his daughter's sadness, she had shown strength, and now she was asking him to do the same.

Iona dropped the gold cross into his palm, and he placed a kiss on her forehead in reply. Satisfied, she stepped into the aisle. The reverend considered the necklace and chose to tuck it in his pocket. He would wear it when he was ready to speak to the Lord once more.

Cillian took a moment to glance back, to see Fergal with his hand spread over the face of the closed casket, sobbing. Cillian shook his head in quiet irritation. Making a man, let alone a leader, out of Fergal would not be an easy task.

*   *   *

A
S WAS CUSTOMARY, THE
solemn service was followed by a wake at the local public house before the sun set. Cillian leaned against the wood-paneled wall and sighed. They had been here too often over these last few years.

Stories of Padraig's bravery and tales of his antics—his way with women, his loyalty and friendship—were swapped among the brave men that were still left. But with every story told, there was fear deeply set in the eyes of these soldiers as they, perhaps, recognized that it could be any one of them next.