“Are the angels noble? Are they merciful?” she asked, her tone accusatory. “Can you honestly say that? Are you truly that deluded?”
The tree was silent.
“Well?” Regina demanded. “Say something. I want an answer; I want to know just how far down this rabbit hole I need to dig to reach you.”
You are angry with me, personally, when I have nothing to do with the problem you wish to address. It was changing the topic, and for a moment Regina couldn’t help but to think of a small child, closing its eyes and covering its ears and shouting, ‘YOU CAN’T SEE ME!’
“Because I want to keep billions of people from dying,” Regina returned, stressing her words carefully, “and you want that to be a bad thing. You can’t say you have nothing to do with it when you’re standing between me and something that could help me save them.” She leaned forward, jabbing a finger at the bark. “You don’t get to pretend to be innocent just because you don’t care what happens; apathy is sloth, and you know what that is.”
There was a sound like shifting stones as branches rustled and ground together. Your purpose here is to convince me that you are worthy of the Bough, not to point out how you find me lacking.
“Then you shouldn’t have brought mercy into the equation,” Regina reasoned sharply. “Mercy is what I intend. Not the backward, us-or-them mercy of your creators, but true mercy, to permit the world to keep existing, even if it means they may fuck up from time to time.” Her hands clenched at her sides for a moment before she sighed out a breath and relaxed them. “You are the one who claimed to know what mercy is, and yet you’re blind to where it’s missing.”
You cannot see where something lacks, it tried to defend itself.
“But if you look into an empty room, you can see that it is empty,” she returned simply.
There was silence, and if not for the fact that the tree had no eyes, Regina would think that it was staring at her. It didn’t move. It said nothing. Save for the fact that it was still balanced on its roots, it looked for all the world like an ordinary tree.
It had been struck speechless, and that was a very satisfying feeling.
Regina cocked her head expectantly to one side. “Do you have anything else to say?” she asked sweetly, linking her hands together behind her back and rocking back and forth on her heels once. The tree offered her no answer.
Like a tarantula backing away, the tree edged back toward its grisly mound of earth, very carefully resituating its roots in the soil. Chips of bones shifted beneath it as it moved, but Regina paid it no mind.
One branch moved, reaching out toward her carefully. It froze within a few inches of her, and cautiously, Regina lifted a hand, her fingers curling around the end of the branch.
Startled though she was, she barely flinched when the tree erupted into light, save for the branch in her grasp. That, instead, was overtaken by more of a slow seepage of light, and when the tree vanished, it left the branch in her grasp behind, the light dying away.
Curiously, Regina inspected the Bough. It was a wooden staff, perhaps as long as she was from her collarbones to her knees. It was not particularly broad—it fit comfortably in her hand—and a blade as long as her forearm and hand extended from one end of it, gleamingly bright silver. From the other end of it, an equally bright hook protruded, bent at sharp angles, so it almost resembled a three-sided square. It contrasted nicely with the dark, knotted wood of the staff.
She traced one finger along the edge of the blade, but she hardly dared go near the edge of it.
Regina gave it an experimental swing, and it moved through the air as easily as a shark might slice through the ocean. Eying the hook at the end of it, she could just imagine catching it through an angel’s wing and dragging them back to the ground, and she felt a bizarre stab of satisfaction at the idea.
Light engulfed her as the blade came to a halt once again, and within a heartbeat, she found herself once again standing in the sand. Siobhan, Jack, and Gabriel were more or less where she had left them, though they all looked considerably more discontented with their lots in life. They also looked as if a sandcastle had exploded on them.
“You had company, I’m guessing?” Regina mused, leaning the Bough casually against her shoulder.
“Can the next angel fight be in a cave?” Siobhan asked plaintively, clutching at her hair with both hands. “Maybe against a principality? Something we can actually kill without it being a fluke, maybe? Or at least someplace without any sand?” Her voice was taking on a slightly hysterical edge.
Regina patted her sympathetically on the shoulder, and Jack sighed morosely, “I’ll take that as a no.”
Well, they were reasonably good sports about it, at least, though Regina was beginning to suspect that they would need a break in the near future.
*
“So, how many siblings do you have, anyway?” Siobhan wondered, heedless of the fact that Gabriel was half a step away from sulking as she aimed the hose at his wings. She was distracting him, she reasoned. From his soggy fate. And distracting herself from the feel of grit caked along the part in her hair. It was a multi-purpose conversation.
“Archangels were crafted in groups of seven,” he returned, ducking his head to the side when she very nearly sprayed him in the ear.
There was a moment of quiet before Siobhan asked carefully, “So, which ones did Jack and I…?” She trailed off and cleared her throat meaningfully.
His tone bland, Gabriel returned, “The archangels you killed in the past were not members of my family. I said that we were crafted in groups of seven, not that there were only seven of us.”
“Who are the others, then?” Siobhan asked, kinking the hose before she reached toward the spigot to turn it off.
“Michael and Anael, of course,” he answered, stretching his wings and giving them a shake. Siobhan ducked to avoid the worst of the spray. “Raphael. Samael. Oriphael. Remael.” There was a beat. “And me.”
“What about seraphim?” she wondered. “Do they have names?”
“They do,” he confirmed. “The Vampire Lords killed Jehoel and Cherubiel. On Earth to try to get a lay of the land, I suspect. Their deaths likely spurred the destruction of Chambersburg into happening sooner than it ordinarily might have.”
“Which one was blond, with blue eyes and gold wings?” Siobhan asked slowly, idly tightening and loosening her hold on the hose repeatedly.
“Jehoel,” Gabriel answered. “Why?”
“He’s the one who nearly killed me,” she replied, shrugging one shoulder with a casualness that was largely feigned. “Just before Jack found me and turned me to save my life.”
“…I see.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment, until Siobhan shook her head quickly, shaking off the melancholy mood.
Dropping the hose to the ground, she reached out to pat his shoulder before she ruffled his hair. Ignoring the affronted look he shot her, she assured him, “If Anael’s the reasonable one, then I’m sure she’ll come around. You don’t have to spend the rest of forever stuck in the vampire pit.”
He seemed slightly dubious about the reassurance, though most of the mood vanished, and he rolled his eyes as Siobhan decided, “Now, there’s a bag of B positive in the fridge, practically calling my name. Maybe even cake.”
As she loped back toward the manor, he called after her, “I find your dietary habits questionable.”
She waved pleasantly over her shoulder as she left.
CHAPTER SIX
“Do we have time for such…diversions?” Harendra asked blandly when Regina informed the rest of the Vampire Lords that they would be taking a few days off from the rest of the trials.
Regina gave him an unimpressed look. “All of this may not be much of a problem for us, but we all only do one trial each. Jack and Siobhan have been fighting angels for days now. They’re tired.”
Harendra opened his mouth to object, but Osamu leaned around his shoulder to interject, “Don�
�t complain, Harry.” He smiled placidly. “If we wish to do what is best for our people, we cannot take what they give us for granted. Besides, you are fonder of them than you let on.” His smile turned sly at the edges as Harendra scowled at him. “You think the girl has pluck.”
Harendra didn’t deign to grace him with a response, but he stopped arguing. For the time being, at least.
“Besides,” Regina assured him, her tone distracted as she eyed the Bough in her hand and the Scale strapped to Allambee’s arm, “things have been quiet lately. A few days off won’t kill anyone.”
Listening from just around the corner, Siobhan reflected that it was a good point. Things had been quiet. With a thoughtful look on her face, she set off toward the library to get some answers out of Gabriel.
It was funny, in a strange sort of way, how that was turning into her fallback plan for any occasion. ‘Something confusing? Ask Gabriel.’
*
As it typically happened, Siobhan found Gabriel on his own. Though he was more or less allowed to wander where he pleased within the manor and on its grounds—there was nowhere for him to go, and minimal risk of him leaving—few within the manor were particularly willing to spend time with him. He didn’t seem to object to his relative isolation as long as he wasn’t stuck in a storage cupboard anymore, so Siobhan supposed she didn’t have any cause to worry.
If nothing else, he never seemed to object to her company whenever she barged in on him.
“So, how come none of the seraphim have just swooped down on us to kill us whenever we’re at a trial gate?” Siobhan wondered out of nowhere, leaning casually in the library doorway.
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose as he turned away from the shelf. “Hello to you, as well,” he replied, though he held a hand up to stave her off before she could make her demand again. “Seraphim come in limited numbers,” he answered. “No more will be crafted. If one is killed, another will not be made to take their place. And they already know that enough angry Vampire Lords in one spot is enough to kill a seraph. A Lord with a Piece of Eden could most certainly kill a seraph. There is no way to tell if a trial gate is being opened until it is open, by which point whichever Lord is undergoing the trial is gone. A seraph could kill you, Jack, and me with ease, but then the Lord would simply show back up and dispatch them.”
“And they want to conserve their numbers,” Siobhan guessed, waiting just long enough for Gabriel to nod before she asked, “So why haven’t they tried attacking en masse, then?”
Gabriel paused, looking faintly bemused as he put the words together. “Things get…strange, when you have more than one seraph in the same place. They are not designed to be front line fighters. They are designed to be commanders, to be spread out among their underlings. So unless they are doing something drastic, there is not supposed to be more than one in one place. If there is, then…reality shifts, slightly, around them to facilitate whatever the drastic measure will be. So we will likely not see any of them until they are about to make another move of that magnitude.”
“Will it always involve wiping a city off of the map and killing over a hundred thousand people?” Siobhan asked, her voice low as her thoughts drifted back to Chambersburg. The shooting star still sat on a shelf in her room.
“Not always,” Gabriel answered simply, shrugging one shoulder. “Sometimes it is destruction. Sometimes it is a flood. Sometimes it is even a miracle. It can take many forms. Though I admit, miracles have stopped occurring since Heaven lost faith in the mortal world.”
Siobhan nodded slowly in reply. “I’m glad you found yours again, at least,” she offered after a moment. “Your faith in us ants down below.”
The smile he offered in return seemed slightly unsteady, but she didn’t question it. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty of reasons to have something on his mind, and she could respect that.
“I am glad, as well,” he added quietly as Siobhan was turning to go.
*
News of their day off spread quickly, as it turned out. Siobhan was going to assume Alistair was the cause.
When Siobhan returned to her room, Barton was prancing on his front feet, and Jack was sitting on the end of the bed with a bag in his lap, looking expectant. He hopped to his feet before she even had a chance to get two steps into the room, caught her hand, and began towing her right back out of the room with the bag over his shoulder. Barton trotted cheerfully behind them as Siobhan followed, bemused but willing to play along as he led her down the stairs and outside. She climbed into the passenger seat of Jack’s pick-up truck without complaint as Barton climbed into the back, and she waited until Jack was behind the wheel before she asked, “What the hell is going on?”
Jack pressed a finger to his lips and grinned, turning the key and starting the car.
They talked, during the drive. Not about wherever they were going—Siobhan’s attempts to learn more were all rebuffed—but about everything else that came to mind. Eventually, Jack told her to close her eyes and to keep them closed, before he carried on with their conversation.
Her eyes stayed closed for quite a while. At a guess, she had been wherever they were going, and Jack didn’t want her to recognize the area before they got to the actual destination. She nearly vibrated with curiosity, not helped at all by his own anticipation, prodding at the mental bond like an excited child as he did nothing to keep the feeling in check.
When at last the truck slowed to a halt and Jack said, “Alright, you can look,” Siobhan opened her eyes and gasped.
In front of them, sitting quietly and exactly as she had left it, was her cabin. It had been weeks since she had last seen it, and her hands flew up to cover her mouth as she gaped.
Eventually, the driver’s side door opened, and that spurred Siobhan back into motion. She opened the passenger door and flung herself out of the car, bolting toward the front door of the cabin. She stumbled to a halt, though, as she recalled that she didn’t have her keys with her. It had been weeks since she’d had a need to carry them with her.
Jack dangled them in front of her face, his indulgent amusement contagious, even without the mental bond.
It was nice to have the bond open again, she couldn’t help but think. It was always so battened down and quiet at the manor, where they had to be more in control around everyone else. They had to maintain a certain level of professionalism there.
“I figured if you felt at all like me, you were getting ready to tear your hair out to get away from everyone,” he offered as Siobhan curled her fingers around the key. As she plucked it from his hand, she turned and planted a kiss against the side of his nose, before she turned to face the door again.
Inside, everything was as she remembered it. There was a layer of dust, true enough, but that was easy enough to ignore as she flipped the light switch.
It was not an especially large cabin. Counting the bathroom and the loft at the top of the ladder as separate rooms, it was only three rooms in total. But they were her three rooms. Her balcony off of the loft. Her window seat. Her telescope.
Jack closed the door behind her, and she whirled toward him, launching herself at him and throwing her arms around his neck with enough force that his back slammed into the door, making the wall rattle. Their mouths met so quickly that their teeth clicked together and their noses bumped, but they tilted their heads and leaned into the kiss near instantaneously.
The kiss was hurried, but deep, tongues exploring as Siobhan stood up on her toes and shoved Jack back more firmly against the door. Throughout the whole kiss, she could feel his own affection for her at the back of her mind, spurring her on to even greater urgency.
Eventually, though, they parted, panting slightly as they put just a fraction of an inch of space between themselves. Barton huffed out a breath and whined, before he leaned his head against Siobhan’s hip.
She supposed he was right. If she was back, then she didn’t want to waste too much time just fooling around. She wouldn’t be able to
stay for long, and she wanted to reacquaint herself with as much of her forest as she could.
“I’m hungry,” she decided after a moment, still close enough to Jack that her lips brushed against his with each syllable. “I think it’s about time to go hunting. What do you say?”
Jack smiled crookedly in return. “Sounds like a good plan to me,” he agreed easily. “Anything in particular in mind?”
*
The thing was, Siobhan had only ever really hunted rabbits before. And even then, it had been in Australia, where they weren’t exactly difficult to find. She had never hunted anything more challenging than four pounds of frightened lagomorph, and even that had tripped her up the first time.
In light of that, she wasn’t sure why she had decided that a deer was the best choice for dinner that night. Why pick one of the biggest animals in the area when she could have gone for a raccoon or an opossum? She would never truly know. What she did know was that she had made her choice, and she wasn’t backing down.
The Vampire's Bond 2 (The Bonded Series) Page 9