Immortality

***
Seven

They checked into a small lodging house, unwilling to risk the larger hotels for the fear that they might be followed, or implicated in two murders. The rain had washed the blood from Gabriel's boots but the bullet holes in Dorian's clothes were hardly likely to wash away; he pulled on a heavy black cloak and held it to him tightly from the moment they stepped into the carriage to the moment they were safely ensconced in Gabriel's room. Then he cast it off over the back of an armchair and took a seat in it, fingering the holes over his chest.

"Ruined," he muttered, plucking at a piece of loose fabric. "My second best shirt, ruined."

Gabriel frowned, sitting down on the edge of the bed, not taking his eyes from him for an instant. "I'd be somewhat moonceoncerned about your chest," he said in a dark tone, narrowing his eyes just a little as he watched.

"I don't suppose that you would believe he missed?" Dorian asked; Gabriel had seen the bullet holes in the back of the man's coat, and shook his head. "I was rather afraid that you wouldn't."

"So he hit you." Dorian nodded. "And you're not dead. You're not even wounded?"

Dorian proceeded to pull at the buttons of his jacket then his shirt, as Gabriel looked on. He held the shirt open; there wasn't even a bruise on his pale skin. He wasn't injured at all. He was... flawless.

He pulled off his necktie, followed by his ruined jacket and his shirt while Gabriel frowned to himself and watched without really watching. Dorian opened his bag and extracted a new shirt, one minus the bullet holes, and pulled it on over his perfect white shoulders, buttoning it over his slim waist. He was so vibrant even in those simple movements, especially there in that small, shabby room with its thin layers of dust and worn furniture, its threadbare rug and musty, damp smell. Dorian was indeed quite something to behold. More so with this most recent development. It seemed that Gabriel's gut instinct that first night had been correct; there was something of the monstrous about him. But he couldn't tear his eyes from him.

Dorian looked up and caught him watching, rewarded him with a small smile and a look that on any other man would have been almost sly. He smoothed one hand down over the spot on his chest where he'd been shot. Gabriel wondered idly if it hurt.

"What are you?" he asked without fully meaning to, frowning anew. It annoyed him that he didn't know, hadn't known.

The smile dropped from Dorian's face, but only for a moment. "I'm complicated," he said.

"Invulnerable to harm?"

"It would seem so, yes."

"I've never met anyone like you."

Dorian's smile intensified for a second, with a brief flash of white teeth. "Oh no," he said. "I'm quite sure there's no one in the world quite like me."

"How did this happen?"

Dorian shrugged, standing suddenly, moving to the window. "A very good question," he said, tucking his hands behind his back. "I wish that I could give you a good answer." He sighed, resting his forehead against the pane of glass. "I am afraid I can't. Perhaps this is the reason, though, why I fascinate your brother so."

That he could believe. Dorian, even before he'd known of this peculiar gift, had been intriguing, almost entirely due to his exquisite good looks; now he seemed a wonder. But really, when he examined the situation with a little more clarity, this apparent invulnerability was just one more reason to distrust him, much as he wanted to believe in his sincerity. He knew next to nothing about the man; it was simply that look of openness on his pale, striking face that so tempted him to believe he could trust him.

He pulled off his coat and hauled himself up to sit there cross-legged on the bedspread. Then he emptied his pockets of the papers he'd collected from the dead man in Frau Kurtzenauer's office, and began to scan through them. Dorian moved, sat completely unbidden on the end of the bed and idly picked through a few of the papers himself. Most of them it seemed were meaningless, receipts, a shopping list, Frau Kurtzenauer's address. But on one of them was a description, written in German, of the small black book that Gabriel had found in his brother's desk in Paris.

"He wanted the book," he said, showing Dorian the note; he just frowned briefly, the look alien to his creaseless face, apparently not too adept at reading upside-down. "It's a description."

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

"Then we've come to an impasse. We came here for nothing."

"Perhaps."

"We're not closer to finding your brother."

"Except that we knew someone has an interest in this book. It might help to find out what it says." He paused, considering whether he should continue, to tell Dorian his plan without knowing if he could trust him. It seemed petty thehis his inclination toward distrust, considering that without the assistance of Dorian Gray he would not even have found his brother's house, and of course there was the small matter of him having saved his life in that office. It was the odd feeling he gave him down in the pit of his stomach that kept him from trust, and that feeling could be explained, he imagined, by Dorian's peculiar gift. It was ridiculous really; he was so accustomed to killing off each example of the supernatural he came across that he couldn't trust Dorian Gray because of it. And besides which, he even *looked* trustworthy.

"I have a friend who can help," he said at last, almost forcing himself to speak. "I'm leaving for Rome in the morning."

Dorian nodded. "And I'm going with you," he said. Gabriel did not protest.

***