Well, I suppose before I get more into the past of Gabe and of Faruq I'd better explain who they are and why you should care.
Gabe and Faruq are two vampires who lived in Perth for an undisclosed period of time until the present. Well, Faruq didn't quite manage to get to the present; he was ambushed and killed by vampire hunters in early 2010. Gabe and Faruq were lovers, and so they were very close and rather devoted to one another.
Gabe is a tall slender man, with pale skin, blue eyes and long, white hair. He does not look wiry, despite being thin; it's all lithe muscle. He moves with an astonishing strength and dexterity that is only appropriate for a supernatural being. In his long life, Gabe has seen a great many things and done a great many things, not all of them good. He has an easy-going nature and revels in sarcasm. He's wily and intelligent, preferring to use his brains over his brawn, but he's as good a shot as anybody. He just knows the right time to shoot and the right time to ask questions.
Following the death of Faruq, he became a lot more cynical, particularly because Judith - the leader of the vampires and his 'boss' - blamed Faruq not only for his own death, but for the death of Fiona who he was charged with protecting. Knowing Judith would not authorize the vendetta Gabe so sorely wanted to pursue in an attempt to kill the vampire hunters responsible for Faruq's death, Gabe went off on his own and started seeking out any vampire hunters he could find. There were no surviving witnesses to Faruq and Fiona's massacre, so Gabe was going to do it the old fashioned way - by killing everyone who it could have possibly been and calling it a day.
The death of his loved one of course caused his psychopathic streak to reassert itself. This was an asset of his when used in interrogation - though he tended to play good cop to Faruq's bad cop, but it was not being well-supervised here. It was untamed and wild as he was cruel to his victims, but in his mind, at least, they deserved it.
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It goes without saying that Faruq was one of Gabe's great allies. Faruq, himself, was rather short - five foot seven or so, dwarfed a little by Gabe's six foot frame. But you would never know he was that short by looking at him - he was stocky and well-built, rippling with muscle and power. When he punched someone down, they stayed down.
Physically, Faruq had dark skin (though not black), dark eyes, and dark hair that was styled in dreadlocks. He wore simple clothes - dark t-shirts with tribal designs on them, jeans with chains coming off of them, sometimes spiked collars and wrist cuffs. He looked like a thug, and he owned it, even playing it up a little.
He was dumb, but had street smarts. He knew from watching his brother - who held a high position in Vampire society - as well as from watching other Princes and Archbishops, that being the leader was more work than it was worth. It made you a target for assassination. It put you in danger from being usurped by your own people. What was the point, when you could live a perfectly serviceable life by being the hired muscle of the leader? It kept you relatively safe, after all, and gave you control of the guns.
~~~
Unfortunately, Faruq didn't benefit from this; he was killed by four young, wiley vampire hunters and had no way of knowing about it. At least, that's what Gabe kept telling himself. Gabe knew, of course, that there are security measures a vampire can take against having their car set alight - dousing it in water periodically, for example - but they had no way of anticipating that an attack would come.
Now Gabe was on guard, of course. He wouldn't make the mistake - yes, he had to admit, Faruq had made a mistake, even if he couldn't anticipate it. He wouldn't allow himself to be killed. He needed to find Faruq's murderer and avenge the death, regardless of the risk he'd be taking.
Gabe knew a few things: firstly, the murderer was probably not a vampire, as it takes a very strong vampire to keep his cool in the presence of a bonfire like the one that killed Faruq. No vampire would willingly go near such a thing; the risk would be too great. However, it had to be someone with connections to the vampires; who else would know where Faruq was going to be enough to lie in wait?
He also knew that it probably was not someone sympathetic to the Sanctum or the Invictus because of how they were aligned. This left the Carthians. And the Carthians, hiding away in their stupid little graveyard, they had their fingers everywhere in the human world.
That's what the Carthians were - stupid, misguided vampires that thought they were still human. Idiots!
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