Gabriel Wood

This roleplay character belongs to Grace, and exists in the Salem Witch Roleplay universe, created by Kelsi. He is roleplayed by Becky and can be found here 

"Kid, we're not the enemy any more; the hunters are. They don't care what kind of magic you practice, okay? My wife practised the same kind of magic as you, and you wanna know what they did to her? they burned her alive."

- Gabriel talking to a member of the Salem Coven

Gabriel Clement Wood (b. 2nd August, 1988) is a witch and a member of the "Dark Coven", and was recruited by Grace Anders to replace some of the ones lost before, and to bulk up their chances against the hunters. He is the son of Clement and Johanna Wood, and the elder brother of Anya Wood. Gabriel was the first to be recruited and probably the most notorious of the new Dark Coven members, having gained a reputation for killing Witch Hunters over the past two years in revenge for the death of his wife, Eveline, most notably, he killed every single hunter in the Lenox line.

Gabriel was born and raised in the small town of Riverwood, Pennsylvania where he lived until he was eleven, when his family moved to Lancaster, to live nearer to Gabriel's aunt and cousins, as they were having some "family problems" revolving around his couisn, Juliet. It was during this time he met Eveline. The two formed a strong friendship which over the years became a romance, and the couple got married in 2006, both aged 19.

They had two were married for 5 years before Gabriel came home to find Eveline tied to a chair, while trying to untie her, he was incapacitated with elder smoke. He himself was tied to a chair, and after questioning from Casper Mars about the rising coven of dark witches in the area, whom neither of them knew anything about, he was forced to witness Eveline doused in petrol and burned alive in their own home.

The flames caused the entire home to go up, with Gabriel alive inside it. Gabriel only survived because saved by a fire-fighter found him in time and reused him from the flames. He spent the following month finding out the names of the two hunters who killed Eveline, finding their names to be Thomas and Bradley Lennox and made sure they, along with their family who trained them, were the first to die.

He continued to hunt down, When Grace first arrived in town to ask him to join their coven, he refused, wanting nothing to do with any of them. That was until Grace mentioned that she was specifically out for Casper, at which point he agreed to work with her, even let her get a few shots in, as long as he got to deal the final blow.

Gabriel has shut himself off from most people, even his "allies" since he cannot stand many of may of the “Dark Coven”; he still wears his wedding ring, seeing himself as still married. Though Gabriel doesn't like to admit it, he still genuinely cares about people, he doesn't want to harm the Salem coven, in fact he actually finds himself wanting to help them, not wanting them to end up like Eveline, or himself.

He has several triggers that will send him back into the memory, most notably Gabriel can't be near an open flame or a lit match for very long before he'll start reliving some awful memories.

Early Life
"I was a different guy back then, okay, I was naïve. I thought if I stayed way from that stuff it would stay away from me, that the hunters would stay away. But back then I was just a stupid, hopeful, kid, and I was wrong. It doesn't matter to them, and I let Eveline pay the price."

- Gabriel, on trying to live a peaceful life with good magic.

Gabriel Clement Wood was born on the 2nd August, 1988 to Joanna and Clement Wood in the small town of Riverwood, Pennsylvania, where he lived until he was eleven, when his parents moved them to the city do deal with “family problems”. These problems came in the form of Gabriel's eldest cousin, Juliet Reed, who had been “dabbling” in the dark arts. Her parents had called in Gabriel's mother and father and the rest of the family, in order to try to get her off the dark magic, however she ran away from home before any progress was made.

During this time however, Gabriel was getting used to a new school. Not exactly being the coolest of kids, he would have had a hard time, if it hadn't turned out that the daughter of a family friend, Eveline Johnston, would also be going to the school. The two got on like a house on fire, and became very close friends, as they learned spells together in what they called their “mini coven”. Gabriel insisted on sticking only to very light magic, having heard a lot of what his parents had been saying about Juliet, and how addictive some forms could be.

During their junior year at high school, Gabriel and Eveline begun to develop romantic feelings for each other, both too shy to tell one-another, to the extent that it took until part way through their senior year for them to finally to get together. The two decided to marry very quickly, shortly after starting college, both at the age of just nineteen.

Over the next few years, Gabriel and Eveline lived a normal life; Gabriel did social work, while Eve worked as an elementary school teacher. The biggest disagreement they has was whether to place protective spells over the house, but Gabriel insisted that if they avoided all of that stuff, then they should be okay. Figuring that putting protective spells over the home was just making them seem suspicious.

Death of Eveline
Years later, Juliet's coven had started up again, this time the members were older and better at magic, while they, for the most part, managed to practice quite moderately, the accidental death of a young girl they hexed lead the hunters into town again. The hunters soon traced Juliet to Gabriel's family, and started watching them, looking for people who looked the right age to be in the coven. This led to Eveline and Gabriel deciding to avoid his family if they could help it, so as not to attract the attention of the growing horde of hunters in town.

A couple of weeks later, however, another of Gabriel's cousins was injured while trying to talk Juliet down, and Gabriel felt obligated to visit her, despite Eveline's reservations. However, the hunters saw them as they left his aunt's house, seeing that they were about the right age to be involved, they decided to question them on it.

Things went on as usual for a few days, until the day Eveline called Gabriel to tell him she had something tell him. Gabe blew off the tail end of work to drive home to see her, only to get there and find her tied up in a chair. When he ran over to try to untie her he caught the scent of elder smoke and soon found himself incapacitated, he felt himself dragged into another chair and bound like Eveline.

For the next few hours, the hunters, who later turned out to be Casper Mars and the two eldest Lennox brothers, Thomas and Bradley Lennox, questioned them about the coven. Despite both Eveline and Gabe vehemently denying any knowledge or ties to the coven other than Gabriel being related to Juliet. Gabriel explained that they'd avoided the dark stuff like the plague, knowing just how addictive it could be.

Not believing them, Casper decided to up the stakes, he doused Eveline in petrol as Gabe watched, telling him that if he didn't tell them everything he knew about his cousin, lighting a match, threatening that he would drop it if he refused. Gabriel begged him not to, telling him that he had no idea what his cousin was doing, assuring him again that he had nothing to do with her. When he still denied any involvement in this circumstance, Casper realised that he must have been telling the truth, therefore, seeing no further use for them tossed the match down and left Gabe inside as Eveline and the entire house started to go up in flames.

Gabriel would have died in the fire with Eveline, if he hadn't been rescued from the flames by a fireman. Gabriel spent a few days in hospital, having a few burns form the fire, but nothing major enough to endanger his life once he had been found. He was able to leave in time to go to the funeral, which he only was able to go to. It was only at the funeral that he realised fully that she was gone, causing him to break down during the service.

Hunting the Hunters
Over the next few months, Gabriel went about finding out who exactly it was that killed Eveline, intending at first only to kill him. He descovered from his family that the two that had been watching the house had been Thomas and Bradley Lennox, of the infamous Lenox line of hunters. He tracked them down, originally intending to ask them who helped them, so he could find him, however when he was attacked he was forced to kill Bradley Lennox, leading Thomas to ell him that it was Casper Mars.

However, when Thomas mentioned Eveline, in a rage, he killed the second brother. Still enraged, he found a bit of paper, saying were the other hunters were going to meet, deciding to show up himself. He ended up killing all eight of the hunters there, thus gaining himself a name in the hunting world as target number one.

However, throughout this time, Gabriel experienced constant and vivid nightmares about Eveline's death, leading him, as he developed his dark magic to help him track the hunters, to become able to make people see vivid visions of their own worst nightmares with increasing control. Leading to him being able to incapacitate a victim, placing them in a state of extreme distress or terror before killing them.

During this time, he did what hunters did, only in reverse, he would find rumour of hunters killing witches in a town and he would go there, track them down, and stab them though the heart, cold and methodically, without remorse, before disposing of the bodies. As a result of this, he stacked up a very high death count, with very few of his murders being picked up by police as anything other than “missing persons”.

"Recruitment"
By the time Grace Anders caught up with Gabriel, despite him being the first she looked for, he had stacked up a death count of at leas 42 hunters; all of which, he had mad sure, had killed at least one witch. He at first declined, not wanting anything to do with coven of psychopaths, having heard of the spate of massacres over the US the previous years, which were all said to all be connected to Grace's coven.

However, when Grace dropped Casper Mars's name in the conversation, as well as the group of innocent witches that were close to being caught in the crossfire, Gabriel, after confirming that Casper was, in fact, in town, agreed to join Grace's coven to take on the hunters, in the hopes of finally getting his revenge against Casper. However, news of Gabriel's arrival in town led to a number of other hunters, whose family members Gabriel had killed to come in to town.