My, my, my, the Irish and the Russians certainly had gotten their hands dirty tonight.
Presently, Gabriel found himself scaling the perimeters of the party, not for the sake of running away, but for finding a better vantage point. Lucy referred to him as a cat: Fine. He would scale the rafters like a predator in search of prey. Gabriel had been caught unawares and made a victim once before, but never again. Never again. He was making his way towards the upper level, which would lead to the second floor balcony of the party, when he nearly barreled into a man making his way towards him. The one from earlier; the one he’d given the finger to at the party. The one he’d recognized as a mobster attempting to wear sheepskin.
“Where do you think you’re going, pretty boy? We need to finish what we started earlier--I saw you talking with one of them. The Corsicans never did know how to play nice, did they?” There was a growl that rumbled in his voice, a snarl indicative of a streak of vindictiveness and violence, and as he reached for his hip (and the gun likely concealed underneath), Gabriel grabbed a walking stick among several canes and umbrellas tossed inside a stand nearby--long, made of blackwood and bearing a silver and emerald-encrusted snake head and refined to a rounded silver-tipped point. He tested the weight of the stick in one hand, then rounded on the man in a swinging arc, cracking him aside the head. The stranger staggered, swearing, yanking his gun out of its holster. Pity. He really was still going to try and shoot, wasn’t he? Gabriel stalked forward, his suit jacket billowing behind him as he hoisted the walking cane, twirling it in his hand. At the same moment the man squeezed the trigger, Gabriel jerked forward and impaled him through the throat with the cane. The bullet grazed Gabriel’s arm, causing him to hiss as the man slumped back against the wall, sliding to the floor and clutching at his throat as blood sprayed across the walls and the front of his suit.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said quietly, gazing down at his clothes and then at the man twitching below him. “You’ve gone and ruined my suit.”