The Vampire's Bond 3 (The Bonded Series)

by Samantha Snow

  Anael crashed to the ground, tucking and rolling at the last second, a few loose feathers scattering in every direction as she came back to her feet. Angels, when being controlled, were evidently less fastidious and less careful about the state of their wings.

  She turned on her heel and lunged for Siobhan, who snapped her eyes open in time to see Barton tackle the archangel to the side. His jaws snapped mere millimeters from her face, until Siobhan snapped, “No eating!” He reared back to a safer distance, and then scampered sideways as Anael tried to toss him aside.

  She clambered back to her feet, only to get tackled sideways again as Jack slammed into her, and she met the pavement with an audible grunt, squirming fitfully beneath him. Siobhan clamped her hands over her ears and did her best to tune the ruckus out.

  Gabriel landed and curled his arms around Anael, simply holding her in place. Lightly—well, compared to how tightly he would hold her if he wanted to actually hurt her—but with enough force that all she could do was squirm and kick. Eventually, though, as her squirming increased until she was thrashing like a snake being hoisted by the tail, Gabriel had no choice but to let her go or she was going to hurt herself. If she didn’t feel like cooperating once she could actually think again, then that was a different story. But until then, none of them were particularly interested in maiming her (except maybe Barton).

  Anael made another lunge for Siobhan, only to be slammed into the ground once again by four paws and a considerable amount of protective instincts, and then Barton sat on her. Admittedly, that plan didn’t work particularly well, as being a vampire made him considerably stronger, but he didn’t actually weigh any more than he had as a standard dog. Anael simply tossed him aside, and with a yelp, he tumbled. He bounced back to his feet and returned to Siobhan’s side as Gabriel scooped Anael up once again.

  Siobhan squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her ears, focusing as hard as she could. Finally, the signal stuttered a few times, like a fitful heartbeat, and then it halted.

  Anael froze, going still and rigid as she looked around. She stared up at Gabriel and then down at Siobhan. She dragged her gaze back to Gabriel again and wondered unsteadily, “How…?”

  “I’m a very strange breed of vampire now,” he replied, watching Siobhan carefully so he would have an idea of when the signal would return. “The Metatron can’t control what is no longer an angel. Thoughts on that?”

  There was no hesitation before Anael’s answer. “Turn me.”

  Gabriel ducked his head towards her shoulder and bit her without any preamble. As he lifted his head again, bringing a wrist to his mouth, he cautioned, “This is going to be very uncomfortable,” before his fangs sank into his wrist and he let his blood drip down into the bite wound.

  “Temporary discomfort is preferable to losing all bodily autonomy,” Anael drawled in return, though her expression screwed up slightly in distaste.

  It was then that Siobhan dragged in a shuddering breath and sighed it out unsteadily. “Losing it,” she announced tersely, followed immediately by, “Never mind, lost it.”

  Anael spasmed once, twitching from her eyes to the tips of her wings to her toes as the signal returned, shooting back to its full strength immediately. She tumbled out of Gabriel’s hold as she began thrashing again, and her wings flared open behind her. Siobhan yelped and ducked before she could take a wing right to the temple.

  Barton snarled and lunged, jaws clamping tight around Anael’s arm. Legs braced apart, he planted himself as she tried to wrestle her arm free.

  And then, at last, the signal abruptly died as Anael’s eyes rolled back into her head and she tumbled to the ground like a flat of bricks.

  Siobhan remained upright for a moment, long enough to make sure Anael was out for the count, and then she whined and toppled over backwards. “Why does this have to suck so much?” she moaned, rubbing her knuckles in circles against her temples. “I’m a good person. I don’t deserve this.”

  Jack ran his fingers through her hair and then offered his hands down to hoist her back up to her feet. “You can take a nap at the manor,” he assured her. “Let’s get back before something else decides to come crawling out of the woodwork.”

  With a groan, Siobhan grabbed his hands and let herself be hauled off of the asphalt. Already, people were beginning to creep back out, drawn by the sudden quiet to see if the chaos was over.

  Gabriel scooped Anael up off of the ground and vanished with her, leaving Siobhan, Jack, and Barton slinking out of the limelight to wait for him to get them.

  “This was a lot more convenient when there were more people to transport us,” Jack mused blandly as they ducked into an alley, away from prying eyes.

  “I mean, it’s weird either way,” Siobhan pointed out, “but yeah.”

  In a perfect world, drinking an archangel’s blood would have made her as fast as an archangel. Though just based on everything else going on around them, she was going to assume she was not living in anything even remotely approaching a perfect world. Alas.

  *

  Technically, the room was Gabriel’s. That only seemed fitting, since it was the room he had been left in to sleep off the change. Angels didn’t actually need to sleep, though, so it seemed most practical to hand the room off to Anael. They left her there to sleep it off.

  Siobhan fed Barton, making very sure he knew that he wasn’t actually allowed to have the bowl until she gave him permission. And once that was done, she passed out on a beanbag in the library, where she could properly nest and get comfortable in a way that beds typically prohibited. In a technical sense, she didn’t lock anyone out of the library, but she left Barton gnawing his way through a bone by the door as a deterrent.

  Everyone else could sit and contemplate when the next angelic problem was going to crop up. Siobhan was going to sleep until her head stopped hurting.

  She woke up an hour later to find Jack curled around her, and she was awake just long enough to squirm to comfort before she fell back to sleep.

  *

  Regina was not a stranger to meditation. It was not a common practice of hers, but it was helpful from time to time, when she needed to center herself if the rest of the world was grinding on her nerves too much.

  She got herself comfortable on her bed, sitting cross-legged with her hands on her thighs. She needed quiet, which meant barring the rest of the Vampire Lords from her chambers for the time being. (Truthfully, she wasn’t sure why they had to spend that much time down there anyway, when they were free to spread out throughout the rest of the manor. Eventually, she supposed, she would have to literally lock them out, provided she could find a way to actually do so.)

  The Bough of Eden was across her lap, behind her arms, in two pieces. It had snapped cleanly in half after meeting Dask’iya’s Fang, and the Fang’s blade had chipped. Regina doubted she needed the Bough close by to accomplish her goal, but she thought having it might help her get into the right mindset.

  Though she supposed a mindset of aggravation might be a bit counterproductive to the goal of meditating, it was inevitable. Her trial keeper had been… trying, when last she had confronted it. To say that her trial keeper had gotten on her nerves would not be doing the situation justice. Though her trial keeper had been a tree, or at least something that resembled a tree, there had been nothing peaceful or soothing about it, and it had rankled at Regina’s nerves something fierce until she convinced it that she was right.

  She supposed that was the important part, though, wasn’t it? She had convinced it that she was right. She had won. She could have been used as fertilizer in its plot of dirt, but instead, she was granted a weapon, and, at least for a little while, that weapon had been beyond her imagination.

  She had won.

  And that, at least, was a calming thought. She let her fingers trace over the broken halves of the Bough, fond despite herself. Although she had only had it for a short while, it had been a good weapon. She would keep it, she su
pposed. It would be a shame to get rid of it.

  Finally, she let her thoughts drift away, curling her fingers around the halves of the Bough to ground herself. She thought of her trial keeper and its single plot of earth in the midst of so much water. Her eyes were closed and, though she could see nothing, soon enough, she could swear she was sitting in several inches of ice cold water.

  She heard a sound coming towards her, a sort of creaking, slithering sound, and she felt the spidery tendrils of a tree’s roots prodding at her.

  You’re back, it observed. In a manner. It tapped at her curiously, and it curled a root around the broken Bough. I had rather hoped he would leave us out of it, it lamented, drawing its root away from the Bough once again.

  Why are you here? I’ve no desire to debate with you today, and I cannot fix the Bough of Eden.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Regina returned, her voice low and level.

  Explain.

  “You agreed with me in the end, last time,” she reminded it. “You let me take the Bough. So you must agree that the Metatron can’t be allowed to carry on, especially when he’s dragging others in against their wills.”

  You wish to stop him, it surmised. You won’t be able to do so on your own. Even weakened, he is mighty.

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll have help.” She smiled slightly to herself. “But will I have enough help?”

  I can only speculate. She could hear it circling her in the water. Should any of your peers fail to convince their trial keepers of the necessity, then no, you will not have enough help.

  Regina was quiet for a moment before she wondered, “But if all of us succeed?”

  Then, perhaps you can win, it conceded. But only if it is before he returns to his full strength.

  “Will you help me get to him then?” Regina wondered, absentmindedly tightening her hold on the halves of the Bough. “I’ve been told you can do that.”

  When the time comes, I can, it confirmed. But be warned; Heaven is not a world that accepts all. You will only be able to be there for so long before you are expelled. If you linger, the expulsion may very well be enough to kill you.

  Regina was silent for a moment. That meant they had to kill the Metatron quickly, then. Or…

  “If we leave quickly, can we bring him out of Heaven with us?”

  The tree did not respond for a few moments until, finally, it offered, If all of us are in agreement, then it could be done. You would still need to act quickly before he returned to his domain, but it would not be harmful to you.

  Regina nodded slowly, though she wasn’t even sure if the tree could see her, or if it simply knew she was there in the same way she knew it was there. “I understand.” She hummed thoughtfully to herself and tipped her head back as if to look up at the tree, even if her eyes remained closed. “Does that mean you’re agreeing, then?” she wondered. “You’ll help?”

  I will help, it confirmed with something like a world-weary sigh, though its voice was not actually a sound, so much as it was simply the impression of a sound against Regina’s mind. Your previous point still stands, and, as I said, we had hoped to remain… disengaged.

  They were attached to the weapons, Regina realized. Like a craftsman, she supposed, assuming they had an input in the making of the weapons. Or perhaps it went the other way, and they were made from the weapons. Either way, it meant the trial keepers were displeased. Regina wasn’t going to be upset about that.

  “Thank you,” she offered, dipping her chin towards her chest. “Do you suppose the other keepers will be similarly inclined?”

  Perhaps. She was pretty sure trees couldn’t shrug, and she couldn’t see it regardless, but it sounded as if it wanted to. Your peers have proven persuasive in the past. Time will tell, will it not?

  Regina nodded distractedly. “Will that be it, then?” she asked, her voice neutral as her thoughts began to drift. That was all it took, evidently, as she got no reply, and all she could feel beneath her was the fabric of her bed.

  That was it, then, she supposed. Her trial keeper had agreed to help her. It had been… far less aggravating than their last conversation together, truth be told, though she supposed the context was rather markedly different. The Metatron had offended them.

  A powerful tool, that. Regina made a note to mention it to the others. If their keepers were less agreeable, the Lords could always try appealing to their wounded pride, after all.

  She opened her eyes, looking around her room as if it was going to be changed in some way. It still looked the same. Everything still smelled the same. Her clothing and her bedding were all still dry. There was no sign that her conversation with the tree had even happened.

  Did she feel different? She pondered that thought for a moment as she set the halves of the Bough aside and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up and stretched, reaching her arms over her head and arching her back until it cracked.

  She didn’t think she felt any different. But the conversation with the trial keeper had felt too real to have simply been an involved daydream. It had happened. She knew that. Or at least, she refused to believe otherwise, and she supposed that was good enough for the time being.

  The others, hopefully, would be equally as capable of winning over their trial keepers. But she had faith in them, and she had faith in the keepers’ wounded dignity.

  She spared a moment to trace a hand over the halves of the Bough before she picked them up and returned them to the box she was keeping them in. It was an elaborate, wooden chest, carved intricately and decorated with various stones, some precious and some semi-precious. It was a nice reminder of what the Bough had been before it was robbed of its power.

  She locked the chest and tucked it under her bed before she made her way out of the room to inform the others of how her chat had gone.

  *

  When Anael began to wake, Barton was resting just outside the room. He heaved himself to his feet at the first sign of movement and trotted away to bark insistently at Siobhan and Jack until they fetched Gabriel, grabbed whatever they needed, and headed to Anael’s room. (Or maybe it should just be called The Angel Room if it was just going to be used by each angel consecutively.)

  When her eyes opened, they glowed bright red. Having seen it once before, it was a bit less jarring that time, though Siobhan still found it uncanny. Anael had hardly even sat up before a plastic bag was being pressed into her hands. She eyed it distastefully for a moment before Jack pointed out dryly, “It’s not going to bite you.”

  “Rather the other way around,” Gabriel added blandly. “Just get it over with. You’ll feel better afterwards.”

  As she drank slowly, they filled her in on what she would need to know about the manor and its occupants (“Generally there aren’t that many, so if you just get to know Alistair and Myrtle, you should be fine,” Jack explained.), the Vampire Lords (“Everyone else seems to think Harendra is the most alarming, but personally, I find Osamu rather unsettling,” Gabriel stated flatly.), and the general goal that they were trying to achieve (“I mean, we mostly just want to collect whatever archangels start cropping up again, but I think the Lords are planning on killing the Metatron? They haven’t really explained it to us,” Siobhan offered bemusedly.).

  When at last they finished explaining, Anael seemed a bit like her head was spinning and she was trying to figure out a way to put it back on straight. Whether or not she actually heard any of what they were saying or if she was still in the ‘processing vampirism’ stage remained unclear.

  Eventually, she asked, “Will I have to help with the other archangels?” She looked up slowly, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “I don’t think I would be able to fight my siblings.”

  “Do we even know they’re all going to be your siblings?” Jack wondered, scratching the back of his head with one hand. “Gabriel said there were other groups.”

  “We were—” Gabriel paused to search for words. “…Not the best, but the mos
t combat capable,” he settled on. “So the Metatron will likely rely on us until he can’t any longer.”

  “Hopefully, this mess will be over and done with by the time that might be a concern,” Siobhan sighed, before she shook her head and dragged her attention back to the actual question at hand. “But, uh—no. You don’t have to. We can handle them just fine.” She shrugged. “Honestly, with Gabriel’s strength boost, not hurting anyone too badly is more of a concern than anything else. Mostly, your job is just… not being controlled.”

  “I can still hear it,” Anael pointed out, her tone mostly even, though slightly morose.

  “It’s an annoyance now, and nothing more,” Gabriel assured her. “I can hear it, but it is harmless. Eventually, you will learn to ignore it.”

  “And it will go away once the Metatron’s handled,” Siobhan supplied helpfully. “But, uh…” She trailed off and cleared her throat. “You need anything? Or just want anything? I know everything’s really weird right now.”