staring blankly into the darkness. Five years had passed since he'd sent Sara to France. Five years was but a moment in the life of a vampire, he thought ruefully, yet each day of those years had seemed an eternity.
He had found no joy in his existence with Sara gone from him. Reading held no pleasure; there was no solace in music. He haunted the ballet, torturing himself as he gazed at the ballerina and imagined Sara in her place.
He fed in spurts. He had no appetite and fed only when the hunger grew excruciating, clawing at his insides like a wild beast until he thought he would go mad. Only when the hunger grew unbearable did he leave the abbey, prowling through the back streets for nourishment.
Even then, he took little, only enough to sustain his existence, hating what he was because it kept him from what he wanted.
Five years... She would be almost twenty-two now, a woman grown. And suddenly he knew he had to see her again, just once, and then he'd go to ground and sleep until her life was over and she was eternally safe from his hunger.
She was starring in Giselleat the Paris Opera. The theater was an amazing piece of architecture, Gabriel mused as he made his way to his box. He knew the history of the opera house well. He had been living in Paris when Charles Garnier designed the building. Work had begun in the summer of 1861; the facade was unveiled in 1867. Work on the building had come to a halt during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the unfinished opera house had been used as an arsenal and a warehouse for storing food and wine.
Gabriel had left Paris during the siege. Not for him the ugliness and cruelty of war. Food had been scarce. Zoo animals had been killed and the carcasses sold to restaurants. The rich ate elephant meat; the poor had dined on dogs and cats and rats. Paris had been on fire, people starving; the streets had been red with blood.
It wasn't until January of 1875 that the grand staircase was thronged with the first of many distinguished guests.
Gabriel sat forward in his seat, his gaze riveted on Sara's face as she took the stage. It was amazing, what she had accomplished in five short years. The audiences wondered how she had come so far so fast. It was nothing short of a miracle, they said, mystified by her phenomenal rise to fame. But for Gabriel there was no mystery involved. It was the blood, hisblood, that had wrought the miracle, enabling her to accomplish in a few years what it usually took decades to achieve.
While waiting for the curtain to go up, he had listened to the conversations around him, an easy task for a vampire. Everyone had been talking about Sara, marveling at how effortlessly she danced. Her performances were impeccable, they all agreed, her interpretations inspired.
And now, as he watched, he could only concur. Her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor, so that she seemed to float across the stage, as fluid as water, lighter than air. Her face was radiant, her eyes glowing, as she danced, and he knew that for this short space of time, she was Giselle. She had perfectly captured every nuance, every emotion.
When the final curtain came down, he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. Her performance had been flawless. He knew then that she had been born to dance. What he had just seen could not be taught; it had come from within her heart, her soul.
You wanted only to see her, he reminded himself. Now you must go.
But his feet refused to obey the promptings of his mind, and he found himself standing in the shadows outside the stage door, waiting for one more glimpse of her face.
He sensed her nearness even before she emerged from the theater. At first, he saw only Sara, her vivid blue eyes sparkling, her long blond hair falling like a heavenly cloud about her slim shoulders.
And then he noticed the man at her side, the proprietary grip of his hand upon her arm.
A low growl rose in Gabriel's throat. His first instinct was to attack, to rip out the man's throat with his bare hands. And then he saw the way Sara smiled at the young man, the happiness in her eyes, and he felt as if someone had driven a stake through his heart.