Epilogue

The Vatican, October 1881

Jinette stood by the stranger’s bed and watched the man breathe. His wounds had been cleaned and stitched and they had stopped bleeding almost instantly. The healers were amazed the healing rate, but Jinette remained silent. This man was a gift to them, that much he knew.

When he had been chosen to be the new head of the Knights of the Holy Order a chest had been passed to him. It contained a letter written in Arameac, the language of Christ, and it had spoken of a man that would come. He would bear great wounds and great power. He would have no memory and he was meant to be the agent of the Almighty. But he would be fallible like all men. And Jinette knew that the flesh of man was weak and corruptible. He knew he should feel thankfulness towards his predecessors, he should be grateful that this gift of God would not be wasted. Instead he felt chilled. There was something profoundly frightening in the other man, something etched into his body, something ancient and terrible that wished to break free.

As the man healed and quietly agreed to take work with the Order, Jinette watched him and could not help but feel dread. The man could feel evil like other men could smell garlic and the Order thrived on men like Gabriel. No, Jinette never missed that particular signal either; he merely did not discuss it. But all the time he felt like something was wrong, like the man was incomplete, as if he was without some vital part of himself. He had no memory, but men can make new memories, they can build lives after destruction, but somehow this man could not. He was frozen in place. Sometimes in the privacy of his thought Jinette thought him to be the sleeping beauty, forever frozen in time until a brave Prince would cut down the thorns and free the princess with a kiss. But who would free a man of violence and blood? Who could be strong enough to cut down the thorns pressed into his skin and mind? There was no freedom for men like them.

So Jinette used him. Gabriel took the dangerous cases and the blood thirsty monsters and always survived. He spilled blood and was discontent. Jinette knew the man was looking for his past, desperate for those missing years. But Jinette feared those memories, of what they would bring. Everything he could, he keep from Gabriel, hid away the trances of memory never to be seen again.