Old Habits Die Hard.

Chapter Eight.

"Someone knows, Kathryn. Someone knows what we did!"

Gabriel paced back and forth in front of the fire before him. He hadn't stopped shaking, and the fire wasn't warming him whatsoever. It repelled from his body and he believed he wouldn't burn if he threw his hand into it's flames. His hands were clamy and his face was pale and fragile.

Kathryn sat cooly on a Daybed before him, leaning backwards on her hands with her legs crossed. She remained in a posture of calm and steady, but her eyes were darting unusually quick in thought.

They sat in one of the study rooms in Gabriel's manor, in darkness which was parrallel to the topic at hand.

"Come off it, Chorley." Kathryn stood up and strood over to the window, heavily curtained in thick layers of material. She pulled them apart and the harsh light of day sliced through the room causing Gabriel to recoil from it and shield his eyes as he slumped down into a chair holding a thick long glass of brandy and tried to steady his nerves.

"S-s-someone knows!" He stuttered behind her, fearfully.

Kathryn cast her glare across the grounds below her and turned slowly to face him.  "Evidently, that is probably true. But we will find the rat and we will-"

"KILL THEM?" Gabriel cut across her. He pinned half of the glass. "Is that what we have become, Kathryn? Beasts?"

"We will do whatever actions are nessessary, Gabriel. We hush their lips, whatever way nessessary." She swirled her fingers along the rim of the wine glass. "It has always been the way."

Below them cried the mourners of the servant that had been grotesculy murdered, including his wife. They were having a Wake in which Gabriel had permitted and offered to pay for his buriel. It wasn't his own lips saying it, but the snake of guilt. Kathryn had tutted and laughed spitefully, and hissed at him taking pity.

"What if someone doesn't know?". Gabriel whispered from where he stood at the hearth and looked into the flames.

Kathryn circled the room with the air of most utter unimportance to the murder scene they had stumbled upon earlier. "I think it's safe to say that someone does know if they have mentioned our names with the word 'poison' in the sentence. It's too much of a coincidence for two other comrades called Gabriel and Kathryn."

The image of the message flashed across Gabriel's eyes once more. The deep embedded message carved into the pale flesh. The crimson red and black of the congealed blood trailing down the man's torso and limbs like ribbons.

"What if it was Him?"

kathryn whipped around to see behind her and turned back holding the glass tightly. Her red hair fell thick and curving like the trails of blood across her porcelain features. Her green eyes were wide and perplexed as she looked for the "Him" Gabriel spoke of.

"Who?" She raised an eyebrow in question etched with confusion.

"Christian Wythers-Holt"

Kathryn rolled her eyes and waved a hand in frustration. "How many times must we reinact this conversation? Come off your bed-time stories, Chorley. Folk tales. Do you believe in everything the idiotic and less educated believe in? Werewolves, fairies, Father Christmas?" She forced a fake laugh towards the cieling.

"Christian is dead. Pale faced and rotting away where he belongs. He is finally as stiff as his nether regions always seemed to be." She purred.

She had dropped her clothing to her undergarments of a short white dress that came to her thighs and a pair of stockings. This clothing was when she felt most comfortable in, but would cause screams of horror from other people who weren't Gabriel or servants.