Chapter 5.5: What is Love?

Gabriel entered the musty old room, filled to the brim with bookcases. Small and large jars filled with strange liquid took up some of the bookcases instead of books. There was a painting of an old man with droopy, sad eyes next to a small hearth. A little desk lamp lit up the back corner of the wall, and a pile of small red candles surrounding a praying candle for the Virgin Mary lit up the other side of the room.

"Who is that," Gabriel asked, pointing at the painting.

"That is Gabriele Amarth," Gio said. "A very important man…"

Gabriel didn't think much of him. The old man looked quite stern, and when he stared at it, the more he felt like it was watching him back as if to stay, stop staring already.

"It must be divine providence if you have come here, from the clan Dominus, with the same namesake as Father Amarth," Gio said. He smiled at Gabriel, and Gabriel was uncomfortable that he had no fangs. He had been around his family too long, and now people were just meatsuits.

"It's just a weird coincidence," Gabriel said. "This isn't even my real name. It used to be Dylan."

Gio walked over to the desk and pulled out the chair. He gestured to Gabriel to take a seat at the corner chair, next to the fire, and he obliged. "Why did you change your name, Gabriel?"

"I… wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be someone else. I thought it would make sense since I can control light. I wanted to emulate Christ."

"As we all should," Gio said. "Wait a moment. Let me find something."

He got up from the chair, and shuffled around a bookcase, looking for something important. Gabriel watched him intently, trying to not drool as a fresh meal was in front of him. They were alone.

The small blonde hairs on Gio's neck stood up as he felt Gabriel's intense gaze, and he breathed a sigh of relief once he found what he was looking for. He took out an old book that said Libro Sanguis . It was red and faded, its leather wore out, the golden yellow stitching fraying at the sides.

"Do you want to be human again," Gio asked.

Gabriel licked his lips and thought about it hard. He missed some aspects of being human, but he didn't miss some things either. He didn't need to sleep, he was rarely lonely, and everything always felt so much better.

"I'm not sure, but I do know that it's impossible to go back," Gabriel said.

"What if I told you there's a way," Gio said. "That you are not the only one who has tried. That someone has been successful."

Gabriel sat up straighter in his chair and leaned in. He thought that maybe Father Alvarez was smart not to eat Gio. Finally, a useful meatsuit.

"This book right here has been compiled for years. All of us, the Disciples, have tried many ways to cure the world of its unnatural ills. "

"I am not unnatural. Someone made me."

"It is not a natural state of being, Gabriel. If it was, why can you not walk in the day?"

"I can! I just need to wait 40 more years!"

"I had no idea," Gio lied.

Gio already knew this. He wanted to get Gabriel to slip out more information, but there wasn't much Gabriel knew about his family. He was a newborn, and he had cut them off except for Carlos.

"All of the Disciples decided that curing the world would be best. There is only so long someone wants to fight an unending battle against evil. If we could cure the people of deviance and sin, then there would be no need for us to continue down this path of damnation."

Gio placed the old and worn book on the desk, and he flipped through it, looking for the page he wanted to find. Gabriel walked over and watched as he meticulously scanned the pages for what he wanted.

Gabriel understood a few words, wanting to understand the sermons at Mass. His C-Chip made everything speech-related translated, but he couldn't read a lot of Latin.

Gio stopped at a page, with a few marks of dried blood on it. It was one of few pages that weren't in Latin, and Gabriel knew that it was done on purpose. It was another strange language, lost to time.

Gio sat down, and pointed at the page, explaining as best as he could.

"There is a tale of a man who was turned, but again became human," Gio told him. "There was little evidence, and everyone was sure it was a rumor, but after some investigations, we found it to be the truth."

"How… why did he change back," Gabriel asked.

"I don't know why he would return to his original state. Possibly he was done walking alongside the Devil and his lies. However, we do know some facts about how he changed back."

Gio flipped to another page, and Gabriel was horrified at the next picture he saw. There were several drawings of various faces on the page, but one of them was Santos.

"Why is he here," Gabriel shouted.

"I did not put him here, Gabriel. I'm only showing you what I know!"

"Ah… yes… sorry," he mumbled.

Gio tapped at each and every one of their faces and said with a heavy sigh, that years of work meant nothing, now that they were all dead. "It is purported that all of these creatures, they all have something in common, but we have been unable to find out what," Gio said.

"They all look so different. I don't see anything that stands out," Gabriel said.

"Yes, that's the thing. The only thing they have in common is that their eldest children called them the originals. Like blueprints, they passed down their curse to their children, genetic and turned alike."

"It's not a curse. You would never understand. For the first time, I have people that worry about me… a little too much, though."

Gio closed the book and looked at Gabriel with pity. "You have never experienced the love of family, except from monsters?"

"Yes. They have loved me, and they love each other, no matter what we do, how horrible we are. Their love is unconditional."

"Don't say that," Gio shouted. "Only God's love is!"

He got up from the chair, turning red and angry. A child was telling him something abhorrent .

"It's true," Gabriel shouted. "They love me! No one else has!"

Gio then calmed himself, and his pity for Gabriel returned. No one else had loved Gabriel, and even though he had left the nest, sometimes he missed them. They would check on him, and play games with him, they would teach him and scold him.

All the things a mother should do.

All the things his mother never did.

"Gabriel, you don't understand what real love is like," Gio told him. "I know it sounds mean, but it's true. How old are you? 17? 18?"

"Nineteen."

"That is not enough time to understand-"

"Yes, it is," Gabriel screamed.

He got up from the old chair and had enough. The first time he was having a real conversation with someone's thoughts he couldn't hear, barraging his mind, and the other person was insulting his family.

"Carlos loves me, my family loves me. How can you say that about them when you've never even met them!?"

"I have met your kind, and your love is unnatural. Like a vile obsession, you all surround each other in one another's sin. Don't you think that might be by design? That you are all caught up in each other, the more each other are around?"

Gabriel averted his eyes to the ground and knew that Gio spoke some truth. Inside the apartment, with his family, all his morals had jumped out the 7th floor once Gabriel arrived. He had never hurt someone, outside of self-defense, until he lived there.

He never thought about doing vile things, and snapping people in half, being encouraged by others, until he went there. The longer he was gone, the more he knew that being with the others was just another drug.

This one the easiest to leave.

"No," Gabriel whispered.

He left the room, and Gio didn't say anything, still pitying the young man who had never been loved by anyone except monsters.