The Vampire's Bond 3 (The Bonded Series)

by Samantha Snow

  Consequently, the suite was largely a place where Osamu slept for a couple hours each day, bathed, changed his clothing, and not much else.

  Instead, he was drawn to the library by the smell of old pages and ink and dust that never went away no matter how often Alistair cleaned. It was quiet and comfortable and just a bit quirky and offbeat, and though he knew he couldn’t claim it as his own, it was his favorite room in the manor regardless.

  If meditation was what he needed to do, then doing so in the library seemed like the most logical choice.

  Osamu closed the door to the library, locked it more to let anyone else know that they weren’t welcome than because he thought the lock itself was in any way helpful, and made himself comfortable on one of the beanbags, holding the Apple of Eden in one hand. It was inert and cold, little more than a silver sphere. It was pretty but nothing more. It seemed like a waste, were anyone to ask him.

  But that was a gripe for another time. He had business to attend to just then. Laying back on the beanbag, he held the Apple up to take one last look at it before he lowered it to his stomach and cupped both hands around it. He shifted his shoulders to make sure he was as comfortable as he was going to get before he let his eyes drift closed.

  He centered his thoughts on the Apple in his grasp at first, and then on the feeling of getting others to bend to his will. He had to admit, even to himself, he found it slightly unnerving. There was a reason most of his use of it had involved him simply stopping people from doing things, rather than forcing them to do other things, unless it was necessary that he do so. There were some lines even a Vampire Lord wasn’t entirely comfortable crossing. It had been necessary, though, he supposed. Otherwise, a swathe of Belleview would have been rubble, like Chambersburg before it, and no one wanted that to happen. (Save for the angels, but that was rather the point of Osamu using the Apple at all, wasn’t it?)

  From there, his thoughts drifted to his trial keeper. Eve, assuming that was her name. She had resembled a woman, and she gave him the Apple of Eden, so calling her that had felt natural, and she hadn’t objected to it, so he felt no need to try to call her anything else. It seemed fitting, after all, though he couldn’t say he was enthusiastic about having another chat with her. She had been… unsettling. Like a robot that was trying to mimic a human while only having the barest understanding of what a human was or how one might behave. The inability to truly pick out any of her features had not made her any less uncomfortable to be around. But if there was one thing Osamu had always been skilled at, it was keeping his feelings to himself.

  Besides, she had been reasonable in the end. She had allowed him to pick the Apple of Eden, and when he truly thought about it, her arguments hadn’t been so extensive. He supposed the trial keepers, perhaps, did not actually want to see life on Earth end, despite how difficult they could be. He let that thought bolster him and concentrated harder on what it had felt like to undergo his trial.

  Gradually, he realized that he could smell flowers, though, with his eyes closed, he could see none of them. He shifted, and it felt as if he was resting in the grass. Though everything was dark behind his closed eyelids, he could still see the garden perfectly in his mind’s eye. He wondered if it was still just as extravagant as it had been when he’d truly visited it. It certainly smelled as if it would be.

  Footsteps approached, bare and nearly silent, and he heard a high, chiming, bell-like laugh. “Welcome back,” she greeted, and she sounded as if she was leaning over him. “A bit of a surprise, I will admit.” Her voice was closer to the ground when she spoke next, and when he prodded outwards with one hand, his arm hit her knee. He felt the Apple shift in his hold, and he could only assume she was touching it. “I gave you that to take care of,” she reminded him in a voice that sounded like she was pouting, before she sighed out a slow breath. “But I suppose it’s not your doing.”

  “I would’ve rather kept it, had it been up to me,” he assured her quietly. Even with his reservations about the Apple, he couldn’t deny that it was useful, after all, and squandering it willingly would have been a heinous waste of a resource. “And this isn’t even a half of what’s happening now.”

  “I know.” There was something flatter about her voice then, as if, for a moment, she had put aside the human costume. The Apple left his hold for a moment, and he heard her hum thoughtfully before it was returned to his hands once again. “You’ve come to ask for my help, haven’t you?” Life had returned to her voice.

  “I’ve been informed that you can get me into Heaven,” he told her by way of confirmation. “I have some rather powerful incentive to go there. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It won’t bring back my Apple,” she sighed, and there was something wistful in her tone. “But I suppose I shan’t fault your goal. I’m rather unhappy with him.”

  “Only for the Apple?” Osamu wondered curiously.

  Eve laughed delicately. “That’s a part of it,” she agreed. “But if you recall, I came to agree with you last time we spoke. I came to support your goal. And he’s rather opposed to that goal.”

  “So you do disagree with him,” Osamu mused. “Here I just thought you sided with whoever is best at arguing.”

  “If you’re good enough at arguing, would it not make sense for me to come to agree with you?” she reasoned in return. “So I suppose it is both. I do disagree with him because your argument was more compelling.”

  “So you’ll help me, then?” he wondered cautiously. “You will help me get into Heaven, and help pull him out once we get there?”

  For a moment, there was silence, and then there was a quiet, gentle sigh. “I will help you,” she returned. “When the time comes, and the rest of you have had this discussion, then you will have my aid.”

  Osamu sighed, a line of tension he hadn’t even been aware of gradually easing. His part was done, then. He just had to count on the others.

  That was all it took. His thoughts hardly even drifted, and yet he could feel the beanbag beneath him again, rather than grass, and the smell of the gardens was gone. Slowly, Osamu opened his eyes and sat up, looking down at the Apple of Eden, still cupped in his hands.

  As unnerving as its power had been, its loss was a pity. He supposed it could be for the best, though. He wasn’t so arrogant as to say he would never take advantage of it. If there was a way for them to win without it, then it was, perhaps, for the best. When one was as powerful as he was, it was always important to be realistic about it, lest he fall off the slippery slope and become what he was trying to fight against.

  It was not a cheering thought, but it was a realistic one, at least.

  He sat up, got to his feet, and unlocked the library door. That was two trial keepers down. They still had three to go, but Osamu was…hopeful. He supposed that was a good word for how he felt about their odds.

  Assuming Harendra and Dask’iya could be charming, at any rate. And even Allambee, to a certain extent.

  …Perhaps he shouldn’t get his hopes up too much, he reflected with some amusement. But he would keep that thought to himself unless he wanted to cause a scene. (Perhaps he would save it for a particularly slow day sometime down the road.)

  *

  “What was she like?” Siobhan wondered, hoisting herself up to sit on the balcony railing. She spared Anael a glance before she tipped her head back to look skywards. The moon was full, and if she squinted, she could see the glimmering specks that she knew were other planets. “Oriphael, I mean. What was she like before all of this ‘let’s kill everyone’ business?” She curled her fingers around the balustrade. “Was she always so violent?”

  It took a few moments for Anael to reply, kneeling on the deck and absentmindedly running one hand along Barton’s back over and over, as if she had fallen into some sort of trance. When she finally answered, her voice was quiet.

  “Not always violent, no,” she answered carefully. “But she was always very dedicated to whatever she set her mind to, and eve
n more so if a task had been assigned to her, presumably by a higher-up that she didn’t want to disappoint. I don’t believe she ever had anything against mortals herself, but as far as she was concerned, they were irrelevant. She had a job she was supposed to do. Failing to do so would mean disappointing the one who gave it to her.”

  “I thought the other angels you and Gabe talked to had decided that leaving ‘the mortals’ alone was the best course of action, for self-preservation’s sake?” Jack wondered, reclining loosely against the balustrade on his elbows. “Why the change of heart?”

  Anael was silent, her expression vaguely bemused. It was Gabriel, perched on the balustrade, who suggested, “She may have viewed that as… a lapse, I suppose. A failure on her part to do her job. The Metatron taking control of her is both a reminder of what she thinks she should be doing, and a punishment for failing to do so.”

  Siobhan wrinkled her nose. “Creepy,” she supplied succinctly.

  “A bit,” Anael conceded, still running her fingers through Barton’s fur. He was splayed out on his belly, tail wagging lethargically and looking like he was entirely at peace with the world just then.

  “Are the others like that?” Jack wondered. “I mean, Michael seemed pretty fucking dedicated.”

  Anael’s expression screwed up just slightly in indecision. “Not… quite,” she replied slowly, before she trailed off as she thought.

  “It was more that they hadn’t ever considered an alternative,” Gabriel added eventually, shrugging one shoulder. “Why would they have? They had never had a reason to. By the time there was an inkling that something was off, they were too content to keep thinking they were better and that they were right.”

  “So what about you, then?” Siobhan asked, looking down at Anael curiously. “We didn’t kidnap you, but you never seemed keen on fighting us.” She cocked her head to one side, hair falling across her face. “So what was your reason?”

  “Honestly, I’m just glad to hear you admit it was kidnapping,” Gabriel sighed as Anael stared down at the decking.

  “Only kind of kidnapping,” Siobhan amended. “Only in the beginning. We grew on you.”

  “As fungus is wont to do,” he deadpanned in return. He didn’t even bother to dodge the punch she aimed at his shoulder.

  They fell silent as Anael began to speak. “It was no longer simply a matter of fighting outsiders at that point,” she settled on. “Michael was asking me to fight my family.” She glanced briefly at Gabriel. “Realizing that everyone else were still people came… secondary,” she admitted.

  Siobhan snorted and waved it off. “Secondary, tertiary, eighteenth place, I don’t care, as long as you aren’t trying to kill us.”

  Jack flashed a thumbs-up as if to silently say ‘right on,’ and Gabriel observed blandly, “That does seem like the ideal situation.”

  Admittedly, nothing about anything was particularly ideal lately, but they were making things work as best as they could.

  If Siobhan could just convince her head to stop hurting, then things would be even better, but she was going to take things one step at a time.

  Otherwise, everything was just too damned complicated.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Having a mental bond with Gabriel was… an experience. He wasn’t belligerent about it, and, if nothing else, the speed with which he figured out how to control his side of it made Siobhan believe that angels also had some sort of similar bond naturally. But an angel’s feelings felt a bit… strange when compared to what Siobhan had come to expect.

  (Granted, she supposed she didn’t exactly have an amazing pool to draw experience from. She knew what Jack’s feelings felt like. That was about it. Presumably his feelings felt like any other human’s would, even if they had likely been colored by the fact that he was rather older than the standard model of human.)

  There was something deep and dark and murky about Gabriel’s feelings, as if there was constantly a layer of ocean water obscuring them. Siobhan prodded at the bond occasionally, just to see if she could identify what he was feeling at any given moment. He humored her sometimes, but he was still a private man, and more often than not, he simply closed her out. She thought about being offended the first few times he did so, but when she remembered her own outrage at Jack when she found out about the bond, she got over it. Privacy was something she had chased like a rabid dog at first. She wasn’t going to begrudge him his.

  Not that it stopped her from prodding at him occasionally, like tapping the glass of an aquarium to see what the fish would do. His feelings were old to the point of seeming eldritch. She couldn’t quite help herself. He didn’t seem to mind most of the time. It probably wasn’t so different from letting her quite literally climb all over him. It was no more or less of a blow to his dignity, at any rate.

  She wondered how his bond with Anael felt. Presumably he could read it far better than Siobhan could read his, considering their shared lifespan and species.

  Granted, that brought up another question that she hadn’t really thought of until then.

  “What do a human’s feelings… feel like to you?” she wondered, splayed out on her back on the balcony. Beside her, Barton noisily cleaned a bowl of every last drop inside it.

  Gabriel peered down at her from his perch on the balustrade, head cocked to one side. “What brought that on?” he wondered, quietly bemused.

  Siobhan shrugged as best as she could while lying on her back. “I fell down a rabbit hole in my head.”

  He snorted, but his expression turned thoughtful for a moment as he contemplated the question. “Colorful,” he settled on, though he sounded dissatisfied with his own answer. “You feel everything about everything. I’m not sure we were really made for that.”

  Siobhan wasn’t sure she believed that, given everything she had seen of him up until that point, but she nodded and accepted the answer.

  *

  “What’s it like feeling another angel’s feelings, then?” Siobhan asked, apropos of nothing. It had been quiet until then.

  Gabriel glanced at her sideways, quietly bemused. “Not appreciably different from feeling my own feelings,” he replied, sounding as if he thought the answer was obvious. In fairness, it sort of was, albeit not very helpfully so.

  “But how’s it different from a human’s?” Siobhan wheedled, stretching a leg up to prod at him with her toes. She couldn’t be bothered to sit up and poke him properly.

  “Angels’ are more muted, I suppose,” Gabriel replied, swatting her foot away with the tip of one wing. “Not like a sound, but like a color.”

  “Like there’s a filter over it?” Siobhan suggested, linking her hands together behind her head and squirming her shoulders to get more comfortable.

  “I suppose,” he agreed easily enough. “It can take a great deal of work to remove the filter and see what the color actually is.”

  Siobhan hummed thoughtfully as she pondered that before she asked, “Do angels have bonds like that naturally?”

  The look he shot her was bewildered. “No,” he replied easily, brow furrowed slightly. “Why?”

  Siobhan shrugged, awkward as it was while lying on the decking. “I don’t know, you just seemed to get the hang of it really fast, is all,” she reasoned.

  Gabriel huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It wasn’t particularly different from trying to tune out the signal,” he replied. “It can’t control me, true, but I still don’t want to hear it. It’s not exactly an enjoyable sound. From there, learning how to tune out you and then later Anael was fairly intuitive.”

  Siobhan hummed again, nodding slowly, her hair getting mussed against her hands. “Got it,” she mused, trailing off as she thought. Gabriel watched her quietly, his expression expectant, until Siobhan asked, “Does it bother you? Since my feelings are apparently super loud and colorful, I mean.”

  “Not especially,” he answered, shrugging. He stretched his wings absentmindedly before he folded them close once
again. “‘Loud and colorful’ doesn’t mean… unattractive, I suppose,” he added. “And like I said, I’ve gotten rather adept at tuning it out, regardless. Unless you decide to go poking at the bond, I tend not to really notice your presence.”

  Siobhan nodded, and they lapsed into silence again until Gabriel asked slowly, “And what about you? Do you find the bond troublesome?”

  “Not troublesome, no,” she replied carefully. “I mean, it’s sort of… weird,” she added, her expression screwing up in distaste as she tried to find the words to describe it. “Not bad, but just… weird.” At Gabriel’s look of quiet confusion, Siobhan carried on, trying to figure out what she wanted to say. “Your feelings are really old,” she settled on. “Or at least, they feel really old. A lot of the time, I don’t even know what they are. Like, I’m aware you’re feeling something, since it’s hard to just feel nothing, but I can’t always pinpoint what it actually is.”