“You have a good time?” he asked, dropping the bag on the floor of their room as they strolled through the doorway. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
Siobhan rolled her eyes, turned to face him, and reeled him into a kiss with her fingers cupping his chin. “A very good time,” she confirmed afterward, nudging the tip of her nose against his, “and I enjoyed myself very much.”
Even with the mental bond more or less closed off, she could just barely feel the outer edges of his enthusiasm. In that moment, she felt like she could take on a seraph on her own and win.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Enjoy your vacation?” Regina wondered mildly. Her expression was even, but there was something almost impish in her eyes.
“We didn’t get up to what you think we did,” Siobhan informed her primly, her hands on her hips.
Regina held her hands up as if in surrender. “I didn’t make any insinuations as to what you did,” she pointed out before she linked her hands together behind her back. “But—“
“We went to my cabin,” Siobhan informed her, rolling her eyes.
“Ah, yes. Remote. Far away. Hidden in the woods. Private. I’m sure everything that happened there was entirely innocent.” To say Regina sounded skeptical was to do her a disservice.
“It was entirely innocent,” Siobhan insisted, shifting her weight to one side. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you care if we were getting up to anything indecent, anyway? We’re grown-ups, and it’s not like we’ve never done it before.”
“No details, please,” Regina deadpanned good-naturedly before she tipped her head to one side. “I don’t care. I just would like to point out that if you didn’t take your little vacation as a chance to have some private time with him, then perhaps your priorities are a little out of order.”
Siobhan blew a raspberry at her. “We have sex right here in the manor, all the time. My priorities are well-sated.”
Regina feigned a scandalized gasp, covering her mouth with the fingertips of one hand. “How obscene.”
“Oh, yeah, we go crazy,” Siobhan carried on cheerfully, with a flippant wave of her hand. “We’re going to shake the entire manor down one of these days, just you wait. It’s going to be epic.”
Regina huffed out a breath of laughter and shook her head. “You’ll have to get to it before the seraphim try to kill us all, just in case,” she pointed out wryly, before she turned and carried on down the hall. Siobhan watched her go for a moment before continuing along her own path toward the kitchen. She wasn’t quite hungry yet, but she knew she was going to be in a fight soon enough; it would be best to be at her peak.
Siobhan would always be wary of them, most likely. She knew that. On some level, it bothered her, but she thought it would be crazier still to let her guard drop around them entirely. But even so, it was nice to just get the chance to talk to some of the Vampire Lords on occasion.
*
Of course, all good things much come to an end, and soon enough, it was time to resume undergoing trials.
They wound up in the mountains next, snowy hills and peaks on all sides turned silver in the moonlight. Siobhan dragged in a breath and sighed it out, relishing in the crisp air and the way it seemed to coat her lungs. She couldn’t help but pull out her phone and take a picture of Gabriel with snow caught in his feathers, and of Jack with his hands outstretched with his palms pointing at the sky and his eyes closed.
And then Harendra cleared his throat, reminding them all that they were not there on vacation. “If you’re quite finished…?”
Siobhan couldn’t help but roll her eyes, though the gesture was followed by immediate horror, and then relief when it seemed that Harendra hadn’t noticed.
“Today’s target?” he wondered, sounding as if he was already getting quietly impatient with the situation.
“The Serpent of Eden,” Gabriel replied. “Its name is slightly misleading,” he added. “Be ready to think on your feet.”
Harendra nodded once, though his attention already seemed to be drifting elsewhere. “Shall we get this over with, then?” he asked musingly, sparing Gabriel a glance over his shoulder. He dragged a hand through his hair as he turned away again, knocking snow loose, though it accumulated all over again almost immediately.
Gabriel nodded once and adopted the, by then, familiar pose. Harendra linked his hands together in the small of his back and waited as Siobhan rolled her shoulders and loosened her joints and Jack boxed at the air a few times in preparation for the fight they knew was going to follow as soon as Harendra disappeared.
Heavier clouds began to build, and the snowfall rapidly increased, until Siobhan could hardly see any of the others around her. She reached a hand out to the side, and Jack’s fingers brushed hers a moment later.
When the lightning struck, the snow seemed to swallow up most of the light, and once Harendra declared, “I come seeking the Serpent of Eden,” Siobhan could barely hear him and she could hardly even see the light that swallowed him up. Everything had been dimmed and muffled, like a sheet had been thrown over her head.
“I don’t like this,” she grumbled, mostly to herself. If Jack and Gabriel even heard her, they gave no indication.
There was no shadow to watch for. It was too dark, and the snow was falling too heavily, slow to dissipate after building up to such an extent. Instead, Michael’s arrival was announced when he body slammed Jack face first into the snow.
Jack went down with a yelp, most of his voice swallowed by the snow. Siobhan bolted toward his voice, only to nearly collide with Gabriel as he did the same. Thankfully, after only a moment of fumbling, they found where Michael and Jack were scuffling across the snow like a pair of children having a spat in the schoolyard.
Gabriel grabbed Michael by a wing and by his hair and hauled him away, and Siobhan reached down to grab Jack’s hand and help him back to his feet. After that, it was slightly difficult to tell what they were supposed to be doing, as Michael and Gabriel were going at each other like feral cats without much input from Jack or Siobhan, if only because Michael seemed to be having the exact same visibility issues as them in the snow and so seemed reluctant to put any distance between himself and them and chance losing track of them.
So Siobhan and Jack took up positions on either side of the scuffle. At some point, someone was going to have to give and the scuffle would have to break up. And if Gabriel got tossed aside, they were near at hand to defend him, while if Michael tried to make a break for it, they were also close by to make sure he wouldn’t get very far.
It was a good course of action, all things considered. When Michael heaved Gabriel away, Jack caught Gabriel before he could go sprawling, and Siobhan latched herself around Michael’s middle, tripping him up just long enough for Gabriel to lunge at him and drag him right back into the fray by one of his wings.
They fought like hungry dogs, grappling with each other and carving trenches in the snow as they heaved each other back and forth. There was nothing graceful or beautiful or even particularly angelic about the fight, which had rather quickly turned into little more than a particularly perilous shoving match.
After one particularly fierce shove as Michael heaved all of his weight forward, Gabriel stumbled back. Siobhan caught him by the shoulders as Jack practically bounced forward to latch an arm around Michael’s neck, distracting him before he could go anywhere. A moment later, Gabriel surged forward again. Jack darted out of the way just in time for Gabriel to crash into Michael like a freight train, and the drawn out scuffle continued as the archangels carried on battering each other back and forth, like buoys in the surf.
Gabriel had a hand around Michael’s neck. The wind picked up for a moment, pelting snow against their faces. Gabriel lifted his free hand to shield his face, his grip on Michael going slack, just slightly.
Hurriedly, like a startled jackrabbit, Michael tossed himself backward, breaking himself out of Gabriel’s hold. He launched himself into the air, but only for a
moment, unwilling to lose his line of sight on them in the snow, and he landed again a moment later, behind Gabriel.
Gabriel turned too quickly, tripping in the snow, and his hands came out to his sides slightly to catch his balance. It saved him from toppling face first into the snow, though it was not the most ideal way of catching his balance, given the circumstances.
For a moment, Michael seemed to get the upper hand, his hands wrapping around Gabriel’s elbow to toss him off to the side. Unfortunately for him, Gabriel only stumbled a few steps to the side, and Michael lost his balance just as much at the massive shift in weight—possibly lost his balance even more so—and it was Gabriel who regained his composure first.
Gabriel slammed an elbow back into Michael’s chest, just at the base of his neck, hard enough that Siobhan could hear the impact, and she and Jack cringed in tandem.
(Admittedly, vicarious pain was far preferable to actual pain, and there was something rather novel about just being an audience for a change. She was completely okay with feeling slightly superfluous, and with the way their luck worked, if they weren’t there to offer back up, then Gabriel would actually need their help.)
Michael tumbled aside, and Siobhan went leaping out of the way before he could crash into her. She had been attacked with wings often enough on purpose; she didn’t need to let it happen accidentally. Not that it spared her dignity at all, as the snow tripped her up. She twisted at the last second to land on her butt instead of on her face.
Michael had no time to recover before Gabriel slammed into him again, throwing him down into the snow. For a moment, Siobhan lost track of what was happening entirely, as the entire scuffle was obscured by falling snow, flapping wings, and snow getting kicked up off of the ground by the flapping wings. It was almost comical, if not for that fact that she caught a glimpse of their faces, lit by their eyes and just barely visible, and it was not a pretty picture. Gabriel looked furious, his anger spurred on by the previous attacks, and Michael looked close to terrified, unaccustomed to being so thoroughly outmatched in a fight.
Finally, though, he got in a proper strike, both of his feet landing squarely in the middle of Gabriel’s chest and heaving him back and away. Gabriel landed on his back in the snow, flakes rising up all around him like an explosion.
Michael, to their surprise, took to the air and fled, disappearing before he even landed a proper hit on any of them. Tucking his tail and fleeing, Siobhan supposed, so he could spare whatever he could of his dignity. She supposed being bested and killed in the snow on some random mountainside would be rather embarrassing, if word of it got back to the other archangels.
The sudden departure left the rest of them blinking at the sky, Gabriel getting back to his feet as he did. He gave the tips of his wings a flick, and Siobhan scratched the back of her neck.
It took a few moments for the three of them to stop staring blankly at the sky, as if Michael was going to reappear and coming plunging down on them once again, shouting ‘And another thing!’
No such reappearance happened, of course. Siobhan felt oddly cheated, though she made no mention of it.
“That went better than expected,” Jack remarked eventually. “We, like…actually won that one.” He sounded faintly bemused by the observation. “Generally he just gets sort of sick of not winning as much as he would like and bails before the Lord gets back.”
“It doesn’t snow in Heaven,” Gabriel stated dryly. “I’m not certain he has even seen snow before; he was never the most curious of us.”
“So who was the most curious?” Siobhan wondered, shaking snow out of her hair as the snowfall finally began to lighten enough for it to be a moderately worthwhile endeavor. As it was, her scalp was going numb.
“It was a tie between Anael and me,” he answered wryly. “We enjoyed at least seeing this world, even if our interactions with it were…minimal.”
“That wasn’t frowned upon?” Jack asked, setting his hands on his hips and arching backward until his back cracked.
Gabriel cocked his head to one side. “…No?” he replied, bemused. “Save for when a seraph was directly commanding us to do something, we largely had free rein. Misbehavior wasn’t something that was expected. I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t even occur to most of us; you had to kidnap me to make me consider it.”
“It stopped being a hostage situation like halfway through,” Siobhan argued, feigning a pout.
“Whatever you must tell yourself,” he returned blandly. He leaned to one side, ducking out of the way of the handful of snow she scooped up and chucked at his head.
*
As Harendra walked through the darkness, he already couldn’t help but wonder if the locations of the trial gates were purposely chosen to clash with where the gates actually led to. He could see nothing yet, but he could already feel that the weather was mild and pleasantly warm, and the more he walked, the more apparent it became that he could feel a breeze. It carried with it not a hint of snow, but rather the smell of grass, and with each step, he became more and more sure that he was on some sort of farmland, until finally the world around him began to dissolve into focus.
He was standing in a field, with grass beneath his feet and a farmhouse and a barn in the distance. If he squinted, he could see a fence surrounding the field, hazy and indistinct, as if it wasn’t actually there. He got the impression that if he tried to head toward it, he would never actually reach it. For a moment, he felt an absurd urge to try anyway, just to prove whomever had made the facsimile of a farm wrong. It was a ridiculous notion, though, and rather counterproductive. He shrugged it off.
Instead, he carried on walking, and soon enough, sheep began to appear. One at a time, at first, but soon enough, he found himself wading through a herd of dozens of them. If any of the sheep even realized he was there, they gave no indication of it. Instead, they paced and grazed placidly, oblivious to the rest of…wherever they were. Watching them was, in fact, a little bizarre, as they all moved in the exact same ways, the exact same patterns, just a touch out of sync with each other, as if whomever had made them knew what a sheep was but hadn’t cared to put any effort into their creation.
Standing just a few yards off, a shepherd watched over the flock, his crook over his shoulder. He, too, showed no reaction to Harendra’s presence, but he was the only other creature around, save for the sheep.
It seemed reasonable enough to assume that the shepherd was the one who Harendra needed to speak with, but as he got closer, something…unusual happened. The shepherd’s crook seemed to melt, slithering from the man’s hand and down his back, until it reached the ground. The shepherd, for his part, didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t move a muscle, in fact, instead just watching the bleating, glazed-eyed flock with the same placidly fond expression on his face, one hand still raised as if the crook was still there.
The shepherd’s crook slithered through the grass, rustling each blade as it passed, until it got to Harendra’s boots and began to slither up his leg. By the time it got to his shoulder, it was apparent that the crook had become a snake with scales patterned like wood grain. Unlike the snakes Allambee and Dask’iya had spoken of, the snake draped over Harendra’s shoulder was not enormous. It was, in fact, no longer than the shepherd’s crook had been, and it wasn’t particularly thick.
It curled its tail along Harendra’s shoulders and leaned forward until it could turn its head to peer at Harendra’s face from right in front of his nose.
One eyebrow arching slowly, Harendra lifted a hand. The snake hissed out a quiet, startlingly deep, “Much obliged,” before slowly coiling itself around Harendra’s arm like some sort of absurdly large bracelet. Once it was comfortable, it lifted its head, turning to peer back at Harendra.
“You’ve come for me,” it observed quietly in its voice that rattled the field, though the sheep seemed unbothered by it. Unnervingly, the shepherd still didn’t even blink.
“Pay no mind to him,” the snake advised, cocking its
head slowly to one side. “He is unimportant. A prop, if you will, to complete the scene.” It was equally as unnerving to watch it speak, as a mouth that had never been designed for speech shaped words.
“Is completing the scene really so important?” Harendra wondered blandly. “I am here to complete the trial, not to appreciate some conjured scenery.”
The snake’s tongue darted out quickly before retracting once again. “There is always time for showmanship,” it protested gently, as a teacher might correct a young student. “I appreciate it, even if you do not.”
Already, Harendra’s patience was beginning to wear thin, and he sighed out a slow breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers of his free hand. “Might we just get on with the word games?” he wondered dryly, his hand falling back to his side once again. “I don’t expect you to simply ask whatever you wish to know, but I do expect you to at least speak on something resembling a relevant topic.”
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