The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series

by Samantha Snow

  They dressed in companionable silence, and afterward, Siobhan scratched her hands vigorously through her hair and shook her head. “A shower sounds good,” she conceded as she stepped into her boots and stomped them into place.

  She stretched her arms over her head once again, and Jack cracked his back before he reached a hand toward her. Siobhan linked their fingers together loosely and let him lead the way back to the manor.

  She was looking forward to a soak. Maybe she could convince Jack to join her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Siobhan took her nap the next day toward the end of the afternoon, curled into a ball in the bed with Barton draped over her like an unusually heavy blanket. Considering how late she fell asleep, she had the dubious honor of Jack shaking her awake at sundown, a shit-eating grin on his face as he practically sang, “Wakey wakey, sleepy head! The moon’s up, the weather’s clear, and we have places to be!”

  She could hear Marcus in the hallway, sighing, “I tried to convince him to give you another hour.”

  Siobhan waved a thumbs up in his direction and swatted Jack away before she reluctantly sat up and scrubbed one wrist over her eyes. “I’m up,” she grumbled, reaching down over the edge of the bed for her bag. “Not awake, but I’m up,” she added, digging through her bag to pull out some clothing.

  Jack waited by the door with his hands linked together in front of himself, an expectant half-smile on his face. She could hear Marcus leave eventually, presumably to go clean up after the final tour that had gone through the manor.

  “You are so annoying,” Siobhan eventually groaned as she stomped reluctantly toward the door.

  “Does that mean I’ve gone from a collie to a corgi?” he asked, schooling his features into something like an innocent expression.

  Siobhan scowled at him. “Corgis are cuter than you,” she informed him dryly, though she couldn’t help but to crack a smile when he brought a hand to his chest and hung his head, feigning melancholy.

  Finally, he caught one of her hands and began to tug her along. Yawning against her other wrist, Siobhan trotted after him. Barton joined them at the bottom of the stairs, a bone in his mouth. He gnashed his teeth into it contentedly as he trotted at Siobhan’s side, out the manor’s backdoor, where he dropped the bone with a huff. The three of them crossed the patio and took the stairs down the shallow slope until they could simply bound right into the maze of peppers.

  Surrounded by the plants, Siobhan threw back her head and dragged in a deep breath, only to cough immediately afterward, her eyes watering. Still wheezing, she glared halfheartedly at Jack as he stated blandly, “I told you it would get suffocating.”

  She punched his shoulder as she passed him.

  While she did appreciate her enhanced senses and the way she could smell the grass and the trees around her, it still took a bit of getting used to when their surroundings were more potent than just everyday life.

  (Even so, while the influx of pepper was a bit more of a kick in the chest, it at least smelled better than the average city or town, Siobhan had found. Those smells were just subtler.)

  “So, do you know the way through this?” she asked, turning to walk backward so she could look at Jack, at least until she backed right into one of the plants. Grunting on impact, she turned around and shook her head, shaking a leaf out of her hair. With a huff, she turned back around to face the direction she was actually walking in, like a sensible person was supposed to do.

  “I don’t,” Jack replied, to Siobhan’s rather evident disappointment. “But it’s a maze, and the solution’s not actually that hard,” he added, one eyebrow rising. “Just keep turning in the same direction the entire time, and you’ll make it through eventually, and that means you can find your way back out again afterward.”

  It was a solid enough plan, but of course, that wasn’t actually how it happened.

  They got lost twice. The first time, they tried to just shove through the walls of the maze, but the smell was so overpowering that they thought better of it. Siobhan supposed that was one such reason for the plants, even if was an unintended side effect. The second time, they had a disagreement about which direction they should go.

  “If we just keep turning the same direction every time, eventually we’ll make it,” Jack explained tersely, his patience strained. “We’ve already been over this.”

  “Uh, yeah, and we’ve already gotten lost once,” Siobhan pointed out sharply. “So your advice seems a little off.”

  “We only got lost because you wanted to take a shortcut!” Jack reminded her, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

  “Fuck that,” Siobhan scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m going this way.” With that said, she turned on her heel and stomped away down a different branch of the maze.

  Jack heaved an explosive sigh and continued along his original path, grumbling to himself enough that he lost track of which direction he was supposed to be going and got himself turned around.

  In the end, Barton had to track both of them down again, and they decided that following him was probably the better plan. Evidently, he thought so as well, as he started barking at them if they got too far away from him again.

  “You’re dog thinks we’re being childish,” Jack stated eventually, bewilderment clear in his tone. Barton turned just enough to look over his shoulder at them as he trotted, checking to make sure that they weren’t getting lost again.

  “Well, I mean, he’s not wrong,” Siobhan conceded, her palms facing the sky as she shrugged broadly.

  They continued on in silence for a time, at least until Barton ground to a halt and started barking, his head low as he glared ahead. He ventured forward a step, jerked to a halt, and then shuffled backward until he bumped into Siobhan’s legs. Turning to look over his shoulder at her, he whined, his ears flattening back against his head.

  Carefully, Siobhan bent down to pick up a rock, and she pitched it forward, toward the patch of ground Barton had started barking at. There was a grinding noise, the grass rustled, and all three of them leaped backward as spikes erupted from the ground with a series of clanking sounds.

  They were most definitely made of metal, but they were coated thoroughly in rust. Had she not been a vampire, Siobhan was pretty sure she would have gotten tetanus just from looking at them. There were six columns of them, each column extending backward for another six spikes. They were rather effectively blocking the path.

  Barton whined and slunk carefully toward the spikes, where he started barking expectantly.

  “I get the distinct impression that we need to go this way if we plan on actually making it to the center,” Siobhan sighed, her tone a lackluster deadpan. “Fun. I just need a whip and a nice hat and this would be a real dungeon crawl.”

  The spikes were packed close together and about hip height. Going between them wasn’t an option, and they were too tall to simply go over them without getting rather inconveniently impaled. Simply jumping over them might have been an option, but there wasn’t even space on the other side to avoid crashing straight into the wall of the maze, and Siobhan wasn’t feeling particularly keen on throwing up from sensory overload just then.

  She sort of missed when smelling strange was just a bit of an inconvenience.

  “First thing is first,” Siobhan sighed, breaking off a portion of the nearest plant. “Barton!” She clicked her tongue, and once the dog was looking at her, she waggled the piece of the plant back and forth like a stick. Captivated, Barton stared at it, his tail hesitantly beginning to sway as he crept toward her.

  At a sprightly jog, Siobhan headed for the spikes, and in a fluid motion, she pitched the piece of the plant over the spikes and dropped to all fours on the ground. With a surprisingly high-pitched yap, Barton bolted after the piece of the plant, using Siobhan’s back as an improvised springboard to leap right over the spikes. He landed safely on the other side, and by the time Siobhan was on her feet again, he had seized the thrown plant matte
r in his jaws and was vigorously shaking it back and forth like he was some sort of small, furry shark.

  “Well, that’s him handled,” Jack acknowledged, “but what about us?”

  “I mean, if worse comes to worst, we can just climb through the plants,” Siobhan acknowledged reluctantly, “but it’s not my favorite solution.”

  “The smell bothers you that much?” he asked, sliding her a faintly incredulous look.

  “Hey, my sense of smell as a regular human being? It kind of sucked,” she snapped, folding her arms defensively over her chest. “I got hay fever.”

  He held his hands up in a pacifying motion and wisely refrained from asking why she had lived in the middle of the woods, then, if that was the case. “Point taken,” he assured her. “I think I have an idea, though.”

  He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to Siobhan, and she blinked at it in confusion before she pulled it on, slipping one arm into a sleeve and then the other. “Okay?”

  “You wear that, zip it up, pull the hood up, and slip through the plants on one side. I’ll slip through the plants on the other, and then you can just hand the coat back to me,” he explained, already edging into the plants. “I’ve had decades to get used to how things smell, and it doesn’t bother me nearly as much.”

  With a huff, Siobhan zipped the jacket up and flipped the hood up, taking a moment to make sure all of her hair was tucked into it before she began edging around the spikes, halfway submerged into the plants, like they were trying devour her. Across from her, Jack was similarly consumed by the peppers, leaves getting stuck in his hair as he slunk along.

  They emerged on the opposite side of the spike patch almost simultaneously, and Siobhan wasted no time in unzipping the jacket, tugging it off, and handing it back to Jack. She scrubbed her hands off on her pants as he folded the jacket and draped it over his arm.

  Before they moved on, Siobhan paused, turning to look over her shoulder at the spikes. They really were horrific, now that she took a moment to properly observe them, still sharp enough through the rust to likely pierce right through someone, and she could only imagine the rust would make it hurt all the more. And toward the bottom, the spikes were nearly as big around as her wrist. She didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if she or Jack had stepped on the trigger to release the spikes.

  Wisely, they continued to let Barton lead the way after that. He seemed to have a better eye for when unpleasant things were waiting for them.

  “Is it really such a big deal if someone wakes a Vampire Lord up early?” Siobhan grumbled as they carried on walking once again. “Can’t they just go back to sleep? Are the death traps and the elaborate hiding spots really necessary?”

  “They aren’t for keeping people from waking them up early,” Jack pointed out. “I mean, like you said, they could just go back to sleep, even if it would take a little while. But once they’re asleep like they are, then they aren’t going to wake up until they get blood. So it would be pretty easy for someone to hurt or kill them if they were easy to get to.”

  Siobhan cocked her head to one side as she pondered that. “I guess,” she conceded slowly, “but what would that even mean? What would happen if someone killed the Vampire Lords?”

  “The Lords act as sort of…assured destruction for troublemakers,” Jack explained haltingly. “If a vampire starts breaking laws left, right, and center, then a regular human jail isn’t going to hold them. Regular police probably won’t even be able to take them in. So then it falls to the Lord awake at the time to track the troublemaker down and enact justice on them. Sometimes that just means making it very clear they’re being observed, but if they’ve done something bad enough, it can mean locking them up, putting them into a sleep similar to the Vampire Lords, or getting rid of the troublemaker entirely.”

  Before the line of questioning could continue, Barton ground to a halt and started barking. Once again, Siobhan picked up a rock and pitched it toward the suspicious patch of ground. She was expecting another bed of spikes, and she nearly leaped out of her skin when instead a portion of the ground simply dropped away entirely.

  Cautiously, she and Jack peered down the resulting hole, and they could only just make out the bottom in the darkness. “Deep enough that a vampire can’t easily get out?” Siobhan guessed.

  “Deep enough it might break even a vampire’s legs on impact,” he replied.

  Luckily, the hole was much less wide than it was deep. It was simple enough to just leap across it and carry on walking.

  Picking up the previous thread of conversation, Siobhan wondered, “Has Regina had to do anything like that before? The whole ‘enacting justice on assholes’ thing?”

  “Of course,” Jack replied, sounding slightly bemused that she’d had to ask. “She’s been awake for ages. And even if we aren’t monsters by default, vampires are still as varied and different as any humans; you’re going to get your fair share of assholes.”

  “What was the most memorable one?” Siobhan asked, absentmindedly scratching a hand down Barton’s back as he slowed to wait for them to catch up to him.

  “Some creep who kept attacking people,” Jack sighed, rolling his eyes at the memory. “It was back in the fifties, so it didn’t really become a well-known thing, but he still had a couple dozen attacks under his belt by the time Regina tracked him down. He calmed down for a while once he realized he was being watched, but then I guess he decided he was just too hungry to eat animals like the rest of us plebeians, so he started attacking people again.” He scoffed distastefully. “Regina decided locking him up for a while was the best course of action, since he hadn’t actually killed anyone, and he tried to attack her. She detached his head from his shoulders.”

  Siobhan wrinkled her nose at the mental image. “Ew.”

  Jack shrugged, unconcerned. “Bad things happen when super powers get involved,” he pointed out. “She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Siobhan sighed. “Still gross,” she added. “She pulled his head off.”

  “Point taken,” Jack conceded.

  They fell silent after that, as the maze came to a tight spiral and Barton slowed down drastically, his head and his tail low as he kept track of where they were going. Siobhan sort of expected to find their destination at the end of the spiral, but no, the maze continued onward from there.

  Siobhan glanced over her shoulder, wondering idly, “So, what happens when vampires need to get used to a new Vampire Lord being in charge?” she asked. “I mean, so far none of them really even seem similar to each other.” Ordinarily, she wasn’t particularly politically minded. One did not move into the middle of the woods with only a dog and a telescope for company if they planned on being particularly involved with the rest of the world. But if this was her world now, she sort of felt obligated to at least try to understand it, even if she doubted she would spend much of her time getting into trouble.

  Jack cocked an eyebrow. “Are you expecting me to say ‘oh no, no, everything is actually paradise’ or what?” he wondered wryly. “Some things aren’t ideal. But the changeover happens so infrequently that we all kind of just deal with it, I guess. I mean, I’ve only been around a few decades. I can’t exactly say I’ve had firsthand experience.”

  Siobhan huffed out a sigh. “I guess,” she mused. “Just…stuff I’ll need to get used to, I suppose.”

  “Do you really plan on causing enough trouble for it to matter?” Jack asked wryly. “Most vampires don’t have my job; most vampires live their entire lives without ever meeting a Vampire Lord. And considering we’re immortal, that’s a long-ass time to go without ever seeing them.”

  Siobhan held her hands up in a placating gesture. “Alright, I take your point,” she conceded. “I’ll refrain from taking up a life of crime, then.”

  “You should probably refrain from doing that anyway,” Jack pointed out. “A wolf follows you around like a duckling. You’re not exactl
y subtle.”

  “He’s a mid-content wolf hybrid,” Siobhan corrected him insistently.

  “He’s still the size of a bus,” Jack deadpanned, shrugging one shoulder. “He still blends in about as well as a flying toolbox. So do you, by association.”

  She schooled her features into a pout. “I’m feeling so attacked right now,” she sulked. “You’re doubting my ability to be stealthy.”

  “Well, you don’t exactly strike me as a ninja,” he returned dryly. “Ninjas wouldn’t live like dime store hermits.”

  “Hey!” she protested sharply, planting her hands on her hips and turning so she was walking backward and facing him. “I cost a quarter!”

  “My sincerest apologies,” he offered with saccharine sincerity, pressing a hand to his chest. “I didn’t mean to devalue you. That extra fifteen cents sounds very important.”