The Vampire's Bond 3 (The Bonded Series)

by Samantha Snow

  “I’m not contesting that,” he soothed, squeezing her hand. “But even if he hates you, he’s not dead, and he’s not being controlled, and that was the goal, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Siobhan agreed with another, quieter sigh. “It’d be nice to know he won’t be miserable, though. But I’ll take what I can get for now.”

  Jack tugged her closer and kissed her cheek. “That’s my girl.”

  Siobhan bumped her forehead against his temple before she began to extricate her fingers from his. She leaned in and stood up on her toes, waiting for him to dutifully duck his head slightly so she could press a kiss to his forehead. With that done, she informed him, “I have enough excess energy to take me to the moon and back. I’m going to go jog a few laps of the manor before I explode.”

  “If you explode anyway, make sure you do it where we can film it,” Jack returned, ushering her forwards with a flourish and a bow.

  Rolling her eyes, Siobhan punched his shoulder as she passed, and then she zipped her way down the stairs and out the door of the kitchen.

  It happened, from time to time. Bad things happened, and she worked herself up into such a state that she just had to burn the anxious energy off. It gave her time to think, at least, about what she would do if Gabriel decided he hated her. She didn’t actually come up with any sort of course of action, but she did at least try to think of one.

  And she thought about what she could do when they inevitably encountered other angels that were being controlled.

  She was pretty sure she had, for just a split second, interrupted whatever had been controlling Gabriel during the fight. Maybe, just maybe, she could use that to her advantage.

  Granted, she didn’t have any sort of concrete plan by the time she finished her jog. She decided she could think on it more later, before she detoured to the kitchen and headed back to what had recently become Gabriel’s room.

  *

  “You can kick my ass now,” Siobhan sighed, dropping down to sit beside Gabriel on the bed. She offered a bag of blood without commentary and silently hoped his eyes would go back to their usual shade of purple.

  “I could do that before,” he pointed out, accepting the bag from her. With some distaste, he bit through the plastic and began to drink.

  With a snort, Siobhan punched his shoulder. “Yeah, but you would’ve had to try before,” she argued. “Now you can just kick my ass without even thinking about it. It’s not fair.”

  He pulled his attention away from the bag long enough to point out, “You’re the one who turned me,” before he resumed drinking.

  Palms up, Siobhan shrugged, conceding the point to him. She sat quietly for a moment, waiting until he had emptied the bag before she asked, “Are you mad? That I turned you, I mean.”

  Gabriel was quiet at first, absentmindedly crumbling the plastic bag up in his hand. Siobhan took the moment to watch his eyes gradually shift back to their typical purple glow, though it was slightly muted by the expected filter of bronze.

  “It’s not the sort of thing I ever would have expected to happen,” he stated after a moment, choosing his words carefully, “but I’m not angry.” He slid her a sidelong glance. “The other option was to kill me, and dying is something I’ve been trying rather hard to avoid doing. You would not have been able to simply snap me out of it by shouting and telling me to remember who I really am.”

  “What was that, anyway?” she asked, turning to draw one leg up onto the bed, sitting sideways to face him. “After I bit you, I could hear it. Like…a carpenter bee decided to make a nest in my skull.”

  Gabriel looked bemused for a moment. “That…isn’t how it sounds to an angel,” he replied after a beat. “To us, it’s just words. It’s our language.” He offered her a contemplative look. “It stopped for a second before I blacked out. Was that you?”

  “Maybe?” she hazarded, shrugging. “I really emphatically wanted it to stop, and it sort of stuttered for a sec. Also, my eyes glow now. I’m assuming that’s also because of the whole angel blood thing.”

  “A considerably smaller concern than the others,” Gabriel deadpanned in return, and he snorted when Siobhan punched his shoulder again.

  They sat in silence for a short while, until eventually Siobhan pointed out, “You know, if I could disrupt the…signal, or whatever you want to call it, for longer, we could probably talk other controlled angels down. You know, give them an option between ‘tame vampire’ and ‘dead.’” ‘Untamed vampire,’ of course, was not an option because they would still need to be dealt with for causing trouble. “Can you still hear it?”

  Gabriel’s chin dipped in a brief nod. “To some extent,” he confirmed.

  Knowing that, Siobhan closed her eyes and focused, reaching out for that same feeling she’d had earlier when she’d heard it. Her expression scrunched up as she concentrated, and without thinking, she lashed out, punching Gabriel’s shoulder yet again when he observed blandly, “You look constipated.”

  She tuned him out after that, concentrating intently until she could just barely hear the noise buzzing stubbornly at the edges of her senses. She latched onto that feeling, memorizing it, storing it so she could find it later. And then, with a force of will, she commanded it to be quiet.

  It stuttered once, then twice, and then a third time before it carried on buzzing.

  Well, that was a bit anticlimactic, but she supposed it was better than nothing, especially for her first purposeful attempt.

  When she opened her eyes again, Gabriel was watching her curiously.

  “Think we can work with that?” Siobhan wondered, rubbing one of her temples with her knuckles. She had a headache all of a sudden.

  “I don’t see why not,” he returned, one side of his mouth quirking up slightly in the barest hint of a smile. “It’s a place to start, at least.”

  Siobhan grinned. Because, really, ‘a place to start’ was all she ever really needed. She could go some very impressive miles if given the slightest inch, and she intended to put that skill to use as much as she could.

  Maybe she could get some of the others to help out.

  *

  They started simply. First, they had to see if Gabriel could interrupt the…well, they still weren’t sure what to call it, but they settled for calling it a signal. It seemed like the term that would cause the least amount of confusion, and it was less of a mouthful than ‘that strange inner-brain Metatron noise that controls the angels.’

  They had a spot on the balcony that they liked to use, since hardly anyone else stepped onto what had been dubbed the Lords’ Floor unless Alistair was cleaning, and the Lords used the balcony infrequently. Besides, Siobhan liked to be under the stars while they worked, if ‘work’ was even the correct term.

  After several bouts of intense conversation and mounting irritation as Siobhan tried to put the feeling and the experience into words, they decided that the answer was no, Gabriel could not disrupt the signal.

  “It’s supposed to control angels,” he pointed out after they made that decision. “Even if I’m now too dissimilar for it to properly control me, it could be that I’m still too similar to influence it, considering that’s the exact opposite of what it’s meant to do.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Siobhan conceded glumly. “I guess disrupting the tone is just up to me then?”

  “Unless someone else decides to partake of some angelic blood at some point,” Gabriel returned dryly, “then it would seem that’s the case.”

  Siobhan heaved a sigh and tipped over backwards onto the decking, slinging an arm over her eyes. She lay unmoving for a moment before she thrashed, kicking her feet and flailing her other arm.

  When she fell still once again, she peeked out from under her arm to see Gabriel watching her with a wry sort of amusement.

  “Are you quite finished?” he wondered, eyebrows rising. “Or do you need another moment?”

  Siobhan’s arm fell away from her face so she could ins
tead toss her hand out to the side, sprawling there as if she wanted to create a snow angel on the balcony, despite the lack of snow. It was hardly even autumn. She couldn’t even make a leaf angel unless she stomped a decent ways into the woods, and that seemed like a bit too much trouble to go to.

  Just to be dramatic, she continued flailing her arms and legs out for a few more seconds, just to get Gabriel to laugh. She sat up again afterwards, and for a short while, they simply sat there in silence.

  *

  If Gabriel couldn’t interrupt the signal, then all that was left to do was for Siobhan to practice doing just that. Consistency came first. It wouldn’t be particularly helpful in a combat situation if she needed twenty minutes of silence and intense concentration just to make the signal stutter for a heartbeat. Oh, sure, she didn’t need to be able to stop it permanently—she doubted that would even be within her capabilities—but she did need to make it stop long enough to feasibly have a conversation with whatever angel they were dealing with at that point.

  At first, just focusing enough to hear the signal left her with a migraine. It was nowhere near as loud as it was the first time; she suspected it had to do with Gabriel technically not being an angel anymore, or at least not strictly an angel. While confronting any other archangel or principality, hopefully the signal wouldn’t be so loud that just hearing it sapped a lot of Siobhan’s concentration.

  Even with that difficulty, though, Siobhan improved. Faster and faster, she could pick out the buzzing of the signal. Faster and faster, more reliably each time, she could silence it.

  They decided they were ready for things to get a bit more complicated when she could reliably keep the signal quiet for about a minute before she couldn’t dampen it any longer.

  The headaches were more than a little aggravating, but Siobhan was glad to improve. If nothing else, she was content in the knowledge that the headaches were temporary. Once the Metatron was out of the way, the signal would stop. And if the Metatron was as high as the heavenly ladder went, then that meant that once he was handled, all of their angel issues would be over and done with.

  *

  “Can you tell where other angels are?” Siobhan wondered, sprawled on her back on the balcony after practice one night. Her head hurt, but that was nothing out of the ordinary anymore. “Like, can you sense them somehow? Since you all seem to be really good at finding each other.”

  “To an extent,” Gabriel replied, shrugging one shoulder. “We can ordinarily find each other well enough, but the…signal obfuscates it to some extent. It gets too loud.” His expression twisted with mild discontent. “So I could get close to them, but I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint an exact location.”

  Siobhan blew a raspberry and made a show of flipping off the sky with both middle fingers.

  “That will surely show him,” Gabriel deadpanned. He curled one wing forward to block the punch she aimed at his shoulder.

  *

  After consistency came distraction. Siobhan and Gabriel moved their practice sessions down into the yard, and then Gabriel, Jack, Alistair, Myrtle, Viktor, and Charlotte would carry out very intense sparring session free-for-alls around her, making sure they were as loud and as thoroughly distracting as they could be.

  When she could reliably silence the signal even with all of them at their most distracting, she joined the sparring sessions herself. After all, in an actual combat situation, there was no way to tell if she was going to have the means to simply sit on the side lines and focus, especially since some degree of close proximity was still a requirement.

  Even if Gabriel was now stronger than any other archangel, that was little help in a nonlethal fight. Besides, underestimating an angel was never a good idea, even if victory seemed like a sure thing.

  It took time. An annoying amount of time, if anyone asked Siobhan, but Gabriel and Jack both seemed convinced that she was progressing at an admirable rate. Eventually, though, she could silence the signal and still hold her own in the sparring sessions. She doubted she would be able to win any of those sessions, even ignoring the fact that Gabriel could walk through them all like a series of dried-out sandcastles, but she was willing to accept that.

  *

  No one quite knew what was happening when everyone in the manor was gathered together to meet with all five of the Vampire Lords at once. Everyone’s confusion only grew when the Lords greeted them with their respective Pieces of Eden, save for Regina, who was curiously unarmed.

  It was Regina who began to speak, stating in a voice that carried, “Whilst sparring earlier, we learned that whatever took control of our resident archangel has also affected our weapons, or at least that is the only explanation we can think of.”

  In demonstration, Allambee held up the Scale of Eden, and Harendra slammed a fist into it with all of his strength. There was a loud, bell-like ring, and the shield dented inwards, landing Allambee on his back in the grass.

  Everyone flinched back as one. Typically, the shield simply repelled forces backwards, like throwing a rubber ball at a cement wall. In all of the Lords’ practice bouts, no one had ever seen the Scale take damage.

  As Harendra reached down to help Allambee up, Osamu stated plainly, “They’re useless now.” He sounded about as close to annoyed as any of them had ever heard, and he lifted the Apple. The silver orb had stopped glowing. “I can’t control anything with this. The rest have turned into regular weapons; they can’t hold up to our strength, and they grant us no powers. The Bough snapped in half earlier.” That did at least explain why Regina was unarmed.

  There was silence for a moment until Gabriel volunteered, “The Metatron created the Pieces of Eden. It would stand to reason that he could deactivate them.”

  “Why didn’t he before?” Dask’iya asked pointedly. “We killed the seraphim with them.”

  Gabriel held one hand up in a ‘one moment’ gesture as he thought over the question. “I think,” he began slowly, “it’s the amount of power he needs to expend. Creating the Pieces of Eden, like creating us, was costly,” he explained carefully. “He would be reluctant to expend that amount of power unless he thought he had to. Before eliminating the seraphim, he would not have thought it necessary. But with them gone, there is literally nothing else he can throw at you that you can’t overcome.”

  “But why the reluctance?” Regina wondered. “Why would it be such a big deal to use that much power?”

  “He will need to recuperate,” Gabriel answered simply. “It will take time.”

  Regina’s expression turned thoughtful. “Long enough for us to get to him?” she wondered carefully.

  “Potentially,” Gabriel returned. “If you work quickly.”

  Regina hummed a low note. “Food for thought,” she mused quietly.

  *

  Being surrounded by Vampire Lords was not a place Gabriel especially wanted to be, but that was where he was, standing in Regina’s chambers with the five Lords clustered loosely in front of him.

  “How would we go about finding the Metatron?” Regina asked, wasting no time with pleasantries or small talk. “I’m assuming we won’t just trip over him somewhere.”

  “The trial keepers will need to help you,” he replied, folding his wings tightly to his back and linking his hands together loosely. “You’ll need to form a series of pacts with them, so they’ll help you get into Heaven.”

  “Will we find them the same way we did last time?” she asked, moving along quickly.

  Gabriel shook his head briefly. “No. You have the Pieces of Eden, even if they’re inert. You already have something of a bond with them. Contacting the trial keepers is…more of a matter of meditation.”

  “And while we do that,” Regina mused slowly, “you and some of the others can deal with the other angels I imagine are going to be controlled.”

  “Once we figure out a reliable way to track them,” Gabriel agreed reluctantly. It was a rather large gap in the plan, but it was just one that they would need t
o fill.

  *

  No one was going to like Siobhan’s idea. In fact, she was rather sure that, if she actually broached the idea with anyone, she would be very thoroughly talked down. But they needed a way of tracking the angels. If angels tended to smell reasonably distinct from humans to Siobhan, then she could only wonder how easily they could be tracked by smell by something with a much better sense of smell than hers.

  What was that saying? Better to ask forgiveness than permission?

  She clicked her tongue, and Barton trotted after her obediently, his claws clicking on the floor as she led him out of the manor and onto the grounds. He bounded off of the porch behind her and loped along at her side as she jogged down to the woods.

  She knew it was risky. She wasn’t stupid. But she knew what was at stake. And she knew Barton. He was smart as a whip—smarter than anyone else was giving him credit for—and he would do anything for her. If she had to train him to only eat when he was specifically being fed, then she knew she could train him to do that.