Myrtle nodded sharply and bolted to Harendra’s side. The nugget of dread increased to a stone as Harendra appeared at her side, only to relax when he simply tapped her with the end of the shepherd’s crook in his hand.
As one of the five Pieces of Eden—the Serpent of Eden, specifically—the deceptively plain-looking shepherd’s crook had the curious ability to heal those it touched. Harendra vanished back to a reasonable distance again, but already the burn and the tightness of Siobhan’s skin had vanished. It would be back—the sun was only going to get higher and brighter, after all—but it wasn’t a concern anymore.
With a shout that rattled Siobhan’s thoughts like a rockslide, Gabriel finally tossed her aside. Before Siobhan could hit the ground, Myrtle caught her under her arms, and an instant later, Jack threw himself on top of the archangel, slamming him right back down to the ground. They tumbled a few times before Jack grabbed hold of one pair of wings and pinned Gabriel to the grass.
“What’s the idea you mentioned?” Myrtle asked as Siobhan straightened back up.
“No one is going to like it,” Siobhan informed her plainly. “We need to keep him still for a minute.”
As if on cue, Gabriel tossed Jack aside and prepared to launch himself back into the air. He would have managed it just fine if Siobhan hadn’t lunged at him and latched onto one of his ankles, hauling him back to the ground with enough force that she unbalanced herself and wound up in a tangle in the grass with him.
She grunted and wheezed when he kneed her in the sternum, but before he could disentangle himself and make a break for it, both Jack and Myrtle threw themselves into the tangle to pin him to the grass.
“Okay, why?” Jack demanded, leaning back and out of the way of one furiously beating wing.
“If whatever’s controlling him is geared towards angels, then what if he’s not an angel anymore?” Siobhan asked, planting a hand on Gabriel’s forehead and forcing his head back to bare his neck.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Myrtle demanded, her grip going loose just enough that Gabriel managed to toss all three of them aside and hoist himself up off of the ground with a few heavy beats of his wings. Siobhan’s back hit the ground, and she rolled aside before Myrtle could land on her, only to run into Jack where he landed beside her.
“You can’t turn an angel into a vampire!” Myrtle hissed, shoving herself up onto her knees.
“If it doesn’t work out, then Harendra can kill him,” Siobhan reasoned sharply, and she drew her legs up, rolling towards her chest. She used her feet to ward Gabriel off as he made a lunge at her, until Jack hopped to his feet and wrestled the archangel right back down onto the ground.
Fighting an angel—even an archangel—was something that Siobhan and Jack had a good amount of experience with. Fighting an angel with intent not to kill, however? That was an entirely different experience. Unlike them, Gabriel was not making any sort of attempt at pulling his punches.
At times like these, Siobhan missed her quiet, isolated little cabin in the woods. Just then, though, it wasn’t a great time for reminiscing, and she shoved the thought out of her mind to ponder it later.
Even if he wasn’t pulling his punches, though, much of his finesse was gone. Gabriel moved less like a gymnast, as Siobhan was accustomed to him doing, and more like a linebacker. And if there was one thing Siobhan had gotten decent at in the weeks since Jack turned her, it was not being hit. Oh, sure, she would get roughed up, but if just avoiding his attacks was going to be the hardest part, then it wasn’t such a big deal.
With a startled squawk, Jack was tossed aside. He tucked and rolled, springing out of his impromptu somersault at the end and all but bouncing back to his feet. Siobhan spared him a glance to make sure he was alright, before she and Myrtle surged forward, both of them trying to land a solid punch. Gabriel blocked most of their attempts with his forearms and his wings, though he grunted when Myrtle landed a punch against his ribs and Siobhan managed to kick him in the ribs immediately afterwards.
As Gabriel stumbled back two steps at the duel impact, Jack landed a punch between Gabriel’s wings, and the archangel stumbled forward a short step. He caught his balance and his wings flared out. Siobhan and Myrtle both ducked so he couldn’t scalp them with his feathers. They straightened up again cautiously, but it was short-lived.
“Shit!” It was a startled shout as Gabriel turned in a sharp circle, clotheslining Siobhan across the chest with one forearm. Siobhan’s ass hit the grass, and she grunted and toppled over backwards from the momentum. Gabriel lunged for her, but he didn’t get a chance to actually make contact with her.
Myrtle and Jack threw themselves at Gabriel, lunging for his middle and taking him out at the knees respectively. They crashed to the ground in a heap after that, limbs in every direction. Myrtle took an elbow to the sternum and tumbled aside, and Jack bore his weight down on the archangel. A feather flew loose in the struggle, drifting down to the ground, and Siobhan lashed out and grabbed it. A moment later, Gabriel yelped as the end of it sank into the back of his hand. Using his surprise to her advantage, Siobhan tossed the feather away and grabbed his head with both hands, her knuckles blanching with the force of her grip.
Finally, Siobhan managed to wind her fingers in Gabriel’s hair, and she tugged his head back. His throat bobbed and he struggled like a scruffed cat, but Siobhan’s grip held out and she dropped her face towards his neck, just above where his armor ended. It was an inconvenient spot, but it was better than trying to waste time figuring out how to get his armor off of him without losing her hold on him or getting hurt.
(As much as it pained her to think about it, Gabriel was fully capable of killing her, Jack, and Myrtle, and she suspected he wouldn’t even feel bad about it while he was still being controlled. Well, assuming he was, in fact, being controlled, but that thought pained her even more.)
Gabriel thrashed as Siobhan’s fangs sank into his neck, the wound ripping open wider, and his blood flooded into her mouth and down her throat. It tasted, peculiarly, like air, but with the dry quality of an oven as it rose to its proper temperature. It felt like licking a battery.
And as soon as she swallowed it, she could hear… ’a noise’ didn’t quite seem like the right word. She could hear it, yes, but not with her ears. It was more like she could hear it in her brain. It sounded and felt as if a swarm of bees had been set loose inside her skull and all of the bees were buzzing around. She couldn’t make any sense of it, but just based on timing, she could only assume it was the same thing going on in Gabriel’s head just then. She wanted it to stop, and for just an instant, it did, but it began again almost immediately. She didn’t have any time to truly speculate about what it was or if she had caused the stutter, though.
Siobhan grunted and stumbled back as Gabriel’s shoulder slammed into her, but Jack caught her with a hand between her shoulders and propelled her forward once again. She crashed into Gabriel with enough force to heave him back down onto the ground, and Myrtle slammed into him next, her knees pinning two of his wings and her hands on his shoulders.
Siobhan straddled the thrashing archangel’s chest, lifted her arm to her mouth, and sank her fangs into her skin. As blood began to flow over her arm, she grabbed Gabriel’s chin and turned his head sharply to the side, baring the already healing wound on his neck. She poised her arm over it, and Gabriel flinched as her blood dripped downwards into the wound.
For a few drawn-out moments, he continued to fight, struggling and thrashing like a feral cat. Gradually, though, his struggling slowed, and his expression shifted to one of terror for a brief fraction of a second before his eyes rolled back and he went limp.
As soon as he did, the sound rattling between Siobhan’s ears abruptly stopped. Not as if it had been coming from Gabriel, but more like it had been targeted at him and she was just a hapless bystander to the racket.
For a long moment, no one moved. And then, as one, Siobhan, Jack, and Myrtle scrambled back and away, as if Gabri
el was suddenly going to leap back to life and go right back to trying to kill them. They had no proof he wasn’t going to, so some caution (or paranoia, as the case may have been) seemed perfectly warranted.
They stared for a few seconds before they slowly began to relax once again, content in the knowledge that he was likely out cold for a little while.
“You think it worked?” Jack asked warily, prodding the unconscious archangel with the toe of one shoe.
“I guess we’ll know once he wakes up again,” Siobhan sighed, bending down to grab one of his arms and hoisting him up off the ground. She realized pretty quickly that there was a bit of a flaw with that plan. “You want to give me a hand? He’s like six and a half feet tall, and I’d rather not trip over him.”
Jack stepped forward to help, only for Harendra to sigh and simply pick the archangel up. Jack and Siobhan scurried after him as he headed back towards the manor. If they were lucky, they could all convince him to give them another tap with the shepherd’s crook.
*
“Your eyes are glowing,” Jack remarked, leaning one shoulder on the doorframe of their bedroom.
With a startled jolt, Siobhan looked up from her book. She hadn’t really been reading it, though. Her eyes had traced over the same paragraph a dozen times in the last fifteen minutes, and she still had no idea what it was saying. Her thoughts were stuck elsewhere, as she tried to piece together what might happen if turning Gabriel into a vampire didn’t work as well as she’d hoped it would, if he was still being controlled by whatever it was she had heard earlier.
(Well, realistically, she knew what would happen: one of the Vampire Lords would kill him, and they would all have to go right back to killing every angel they came across. It was a routine that Siobhan was getting rather tired of.)
She had been sitting in silence for too long, and Jack was watching her expectantly. Siobhan shook her head slightly, jarring herself back into the present.
“Are they?” she wondered faintly, holding a hand up to her face as if she would be able to see the light reflecting off of her skin.
“A bit,” Jack confirmed. “Green. It’s really light, though. I doubt most people would notice unless it got really dark.”
Siobhan’s hand dropped to her lap, and she set her book down, giving up on the charade. She was quiet, and her thoughts drifted. She snapped back to the present again when Jack asked, “So, you feel alright? It doesn’t feel like the angel blood is melting you from the inside or something? You’re not going to blow up?”
She huffed out a laugh. “I feel fine,” she assured him. “But…” She held a hand up in a pacifying gesture when he very abruptly looked worried. “Nothing horrible,” she assured him. “Just—whatever was controlling Gabriel, I could hear it after I swallowed some of his blood. It couldn’t control me, though. It’s geared towards controlling angels.”
“What was it?” he wondered, head tipped to one side in his curiosity.
“I’m not sure,” she replied with a helpless shrug. “Some sort of communication, I think?” she hazarded, though she didn’t sound even remotely sure of that guess. “But your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it was, I couldn’t actually understand it; I just knew that it was there.”
“This all just keeps getting weirder,” Jack huffed, reluctantly amused, despite himself. “We were so sure this angel stuff was mostly done with, what? Just a few hours ago?”
“You mean while we carried on a lovely conversation with the archangel that just unwittingly tried to murder us?” Siobhan returned dryly. “Here I figured that was all perfectly normal.”
Jack snorted and flopped down onto the bed beside her. He rolled towards her and propped himself up on one elbow, leaning his chin in his hand. “You’re sure you’re alright?” he asked, and though he did an admirable job of keeping his voice level, Siobhan could still hear the anxiety in his words clear as day.
She leaned up on her elbows to peck the tip of his nose, and then to plant a kiss on his lips. “Right as rain,” she agreed, still close enough to him that her lips brushed against his.
Jack kissed her in return, and when he pulled away, his smile was soft at the edges and fond. “Good,” he murmured gently, bumping his forehead against hers. “You know me; I have to worry.”
With a snort of laughter, Siobhan poked the tip of her tongue out at him. “Trust me, I know.” She grinned impishly. “Good thing I think it’s cute.”
When she flopped back down flat on the mattress, she pulled him down with her. After all, their nap had been interrupted, and Siobhan planned to get the rest of it in.
The rest of the day, thankfully, was comparably dull, save for a moment when Alistair threw a bucket of mop water at them. They both figured he had earned that right, though.
CHAPTER TWO
It took two days for Gabriel to wake up. For those two days, he was monitored constantly, and once he began to stir, the Lords were fetched and Siobhan and Jack slipped into the room behind them. They had no doubts that the Lords noticed them, but at that point, they seemed to have given up on attempting to convince either of them not to do anything that wasn’t immediately dangerous (and, even then, they likely weren’t guaranteed to offer more than a token protest).
Gabriel stirred slowly, eyes blinking open. They glowed a hellish shade of red, and Siobhan felt herself recoil slightly before she gathered her composure again.
Gingerly, he sat up, cautiously stretching his wings out, his feathers rustling. They were in a rather impressive state of disarray from him laying on them for so long. He glanced up through his lashes, eyes darting from one Lord to the next and the next, until finally he simply held his hands up, as if in surrender.
As if a collective breath was released, the tension in the room began to seep away.
“You’re back to normal, then?” Siobhan asked before she could help herself, before any of the Lords could even say anything.
“Other than the most obvious difference,” Gabriel returned, sounding like he was somewhere very far off in his thoughts. Siobhan could understand. She had only been turned a few weeks ago; she still remembered the shock of waking up and realizing she wasn’t human anymore.
“What happened?” Regina asked, her voice sharp enough to drag him back into the present moment. He looked up slowly.
“The Metatron is taking control of us,” he stated, and while he sounded more present, he still sounded as if he wasn’t entirely there. “He’s the one who created us, and he’s decided that enough of us have grown complacent that he needs to intervene directly.”
“He can just take control of any angel whenever he wants to?” Dask’iya asked, her expression pinching in distaste.
“Perhaps a seraphim could have resisted to some extent?” He didn’t sound like he was particularly sure. “But I don’t know. As it is now, yes, he can take control of any remaining angel whenever he pleases.”
Allambee groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “Great. Wonderful. Are we ever going to get a break from all this shit?”
There was no answer to his question, though, and after a moment of thick, heavy silence, Gabriel wondered faintly, “Might I have a moment?”
“Of course,” Osamu assured him, putting one hand on Allambee’s shoulder and the other on Harendra’s, and he gave them both a hearty shove towards the door. Regina and Dask’iya fell into step behind them, leaving just Siobhan and Jack in the room with Gabriel.
“Are you alright?” Jack asked, his voice quiet.
It took Gabriel a few seconds to respond. “More or less,” he finally offered, though it was not the most reassuring answer. “I’m not going to be controlled again, at any rate.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Jack returned, voice still low.
Gabriel huffed out a breath that didn’t quite succeed at being a laugh. “I know,” he replied, finally looking up at them properly. His eyes were like a punch in the gut. “I’m alright,” he assured them. “It’s just…a l
ot to take in. Everything is very loud.”
“You get used to it pretty quickly,” Siobhan told him, trying for a reassuring tone. “You, uh…you just take a little while to yourself, and one of us will swing by later?”
Gabriel nodded, though, beyond that, he gave no indication that he had even heard the words that came out of her mouth. He was staring at a point on the wall, looking like he was attempting to reorder his entire worldview.
Jack grabbed Siobhan’s hand and led her out of the room. She waited until they were down the hall before she hissed urgently, “What if he hates me now?”
“Then that’s still better than him being dead,” Jack pointed out.
Siobhan’s mouth closed with an audible click. She opened it again to try to retort, paused, and closed her mouth once again. Finally, she heaved a sigh and her shoulders slumped. “True,” she conceded. “But it would still suck.”
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