“I’m a bit surprised to see you with him, actually,” Siobhan remarked plainly. More often than not, angels and vampires wanted to kill each other, frequently by ripping each other into pieces. The fact that Siobhan could consider Gabriel a friend had taken a lot of careful work and coaxing on her part, and it had not endeared him to the rest of his kind in the slightest.
Anael offered something like a smile, tiny and hidden in one corner of her mouth. “He infrequently makes sense,” she ignored the scowl Gabriel leveled at the side of her head, “but in this case, I liked what he was saying more than the orders I was being given.”
“And the other angels?” Jack wondered, sliding his phone into his pocket.
“I’ve met with a few of my siblings,” Gabriel sighed. “So far, Anael is the only one I could really convince, though the others at least seem…non-hostile. Out of self-preservation, if for no other reason.”
“Better than nothing,” Siobhan conceded, one shoulder lifting in a lackadaisical shrug. “I’m just glad they aren’t planning on mobbing the manor.”
Gabriel snorted. “Your Vampire Lords killed every seraphim. The rest of the angels aren’t particularly enthusiastic about even being on the same continent as them.”
Siobhan sputtered out a laugh behind one hand, and Jack returned pleasantly, “I am perfectly okay with that.”
With a crooning pout, Siobhan wilted sideways onto his shoulder. “You mean you don’t want to take up angelic combat as a sport?” she sighed, hooking her chin over his shoulder.
“We basically did, though,” he pointed out dryly. “It sucked. We almost died.”
“Yes, I recall,” Gabriel returned blandly. “Regardless, it seems like it will be unnecessary.”
With a gleeful whoop, Siobhan pumped both of her fists into the air and toppled over backwards, landing flat on her back when it turned out that Barton had squirmed too far out of reach. Unconcerned, she stayed where she landed.
“It’s good to hear you’re doing well,” Jack offered after a moment, leaning back on his hands.
“For the time being, at least,” Gabriel agreed.
It was a brief visit. Fifteen minutes later, Gabriel and Anael bid both Siobhan and Jack farewell and left with a parting, “Next week?” from Gabriel.
“You better,” Siobhan returned, lifting a hand to wave from where she splayed out over the porch. She watched them rise higher into the sky before they vanished, and she levered herself up onto her elbows and then upright until she was seated.
“Think all this ‘Heaven wants to cause the apocalypse’ stuff is done for?” she wondered, running the fingers of one hand through her hair. She picked absentmindedly at a tangle in her curls until it relaxed and her fingers could pass through the strands smoothly.
“We can hope,” Jack answered easily, but he was more often the pragmatic one of the two of them. “There are still a lot of angels out there, though. We’re probably going to hear from at least some of them eventually.”
Siobhan groaned and let her forehead thump down against his shoulder. “Why does everyone have to be so pessimistic?” she whined, fully aware that she was being entirely too melodramatic.
She couldn’t see Jack’s face just then, but she knew he was rolling his eyes at her, and a moment later, he leaned over to kiss the top of her head. “We need to balance out your bursts of optimism,” he answered dryly. “We need to keep the cosmic balance and all that in order.”
Siobhan straightened up again and punched his shoulder lightly. “Dick,” she pouted before she climbed back to her feet. She stretched her arms over her head, arched her back until her spine popped and clicked her tongue so that Barton heaved himself back to his feet.
As Jack got up as well, Siobhan contemplated the sky for a moment before she decided, “It’ll be sun up soon. Let’s go play keep-away with Alistair’s cleaning supplies and watch him slowly go crazy trying to find them until then.”
“Yeah, alright,” Jack agreed, rolling his shoulders as he fell into step behind her. Alistair was one of the few vampires that lived in the manor fulltime even when there wasn’t any sort of angelic crises going on, and his primary job was keeping the place spotless. And of course, with both Siobhan and Jack being fond of Alistair, it meant they had to do their best to torment him periodically. It was a sign of their affection. And their boredom.
It helped that, for as cheerful and bouncy as Alistair was, he was still perpetually a seventeen-year-old boy and he was easy to fluster. They stole his glass cleaner, the bleach he used to clean the sink and the bathtubs, the polish he used for the various wooden surfaces scattered liberally throughout the manor, his duster, his broom, and his dustpan.
Osamu, one of the five Vampire Lords, caught them at it as they were busy stashing the bottle of glass cleaner in a half-full cupboard in the library. For a moment, the three of them stared at each other, and then Osamu shook his head, sighed, and decided, “Carry on,” before he turned on his heel and left the room once again.
Luckily for Alistair, it wasn’t long before the sun was coming up once again, and he was allowed to scour the kitchen for his supplies in peace as Siobhan and Jack headed to their room to sleep for a few hours.
They curled up together, legs tangled and arms haphazardly thrown over each other like a pair of overly affectionate octopi. A couple hours of sleep never sounded like much, but whether they slept together or at different times, they always looked forward to that daily catnap.
*
Siobhan woke up with a jolt when Barton clambered frantically onto the bed and bounded towards the head of it, stepping on Siobhan’s stomach in his haste. A glance at the clock told her she had only been asleep for about forty minutes.
With his front paws on the top edge of the headboard, Barton started barking. Siobhan glanced up at him to see his ears pinned flat against his head and his hackles raised from the base of his skull to the base of his tail. She felt her heart sink. She knew what that behavior from him meant. There was a hostile angel approaching.
She heard Jack stir beside her, but neither of them moved. There was nothing to do until it arrived, except to wait with bated breath and wonder what kind of angel it would be. It couldn’t be a seraph. According to Gabriel, all of them were dead. But what if there was another type of angel even more powerful than a seraph? Gabriel had also mentioned that the hierarchy of Heaven had not ended with the seraphim; there were things that outranked them still.
Outside, a shadow darted past the window, barely visible through the curtains. Accompanying it, Siobhan could just barely pick out the sound of something slicing through the air.
She flinched as she heard glass break in a different room, followed by shouting. By that point, Jack was blearily tossing himself out of bed beside her, and Siobhan stumbled to her feet to follow the sound of the ruckus.
“Go get one of the Lords!” Siobhan told him while she bolted down the hall.
She ground to a halt in the doorway of Myrtle’s room, where the older vampire tussled across the floor with a very irate archangel.
A very irate, very familiar archangel.
“Gabriel!” Siobhan shouted, throwing herself into the fray to pull him off of Myrtle. He didn’t even spare her a glance, but rather set himself immediately to the task of ripping himself out of her hold.
Siobhan tightened her hold on him and began painstakingly hauling him back to the window. Myrtle leapt to her aid once again, and between the two of them, they managed to tackle Gabriel back out of the manor before he managed to destroy anything else.
The sun wasn’t even fully risen, but already Siobhan’s skin was beginning to feel tight. And when Harendra appeared a few yards away, she couldn’t help the small nugget of dread she felt.
There was something almost dead about the expression on Gabriel’s face. Or rather, the complete lack of any expression on his face. He reacted to whatever was happening around him, and then his face returned to a mask of neutrality, as
if his soul had been wrenched out of his body and left nothing behind.
As strange as his behavior was, Siobhan could tell in an instant that he wasn’t in control of what he was doing. Something was controlling him, using him as a violent puppet. He didn’t deserve for Harendra to kill him. Not yet, at least. If there was a way to snap him out of it, Siobhan wanted to find it. If there was nothing she could do, so be it, but she wasn’t going to just give up without even trying. She owed Gabriel more than that.
She latched her hands around Gabriel’s throat and hurled her weight forward, throwing him to the ground. He thrashed, wings beating awkwardly against the grass, and Siobhan planted her knees on his upper arms. She wouldn’t be able to hold him for long, but she bought herself enough time to turn and shout at Myrtle, “Tell Harendra to stand back! Something’s controlling him, and I have an idea.”
Myrtle nodded sharply and bolted to Harendra’s side. The nugget of dread increased to a stone as Harendra appeared at her side, only to relax when he simply tapped her with the end of the shepherd’s crook in his hand.
As one of the five Pieces of Eden—the Serpent of Eden, specifically—the deceptively plain-looking shepherd’s crook had the curious ability to heal those it touched. Harendra vanished back to a reasonable distance again, but already the burn and the tightness of Siobhan’s skin had vanished. It would be back—the sun was only going to get higher and brighter, after all—but it wasn’t a concern anymore.
With a shout that rattled Siobhan’s thoughts like a rockslide, Gabriel finally tossed her aside. Before Siobhan could hit the ground, Myrtle caught her under her arms, and an instant later, Jack threw himself on top of the archangel, slamming him right back down to the ground. They tumbled a few times before Jack grabbed hold of one pair of wings and pinned Gabriel to the grass.
“What’s the idea you mentioned?” Myrtle asked as Siobhan straightened back up.
“No one is going to like it,” Siobhan informed her plainly. “We need to keep him still for a minute.”
As if on cue, Gabriel tossed Jack aside and prepared to launch himself back into the air. He would have managed it just fine if Siobhan hadn’t lunged at him and latched onto one of his ankles, hauling him back to the ground with enough force that she unbalanced herself and wound up in a tangle in the grass with him.
She grunted and wheezed when he kneed her in the sternum, but before he could disentangle himself and make a break for it, both Jack and Myrtle threw themselves into the tangle to pin him to the grass.
“Okay, why?” Jack demanded, leaning back and out of the way of one furiously beating wing.
“If whatever’s controlling him is geared towards angels, then what if he’s not an angel anymore?” Siobhan asked, planting a hand on Gabriel’s forehead and forcing his head back to bare his neck.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Myrtle demanded, her grip going loose just enough that Gabriel managed to toss all three of them aside and hoist himself up off of the ground with a few heavy beats of his wings. Siobhan’s back hit the ground, and she rolled aside before Myrtle could land on her, only to run into Jack where he landed beside her.
“You can’t turn an angel into a vampire!” Myrtle hissed, shoving herself up onto her knees.
“If it doesn’t work out, then Harendra can kill him,” Siobhan reasoned sharply, and she drew her legs up, rolling towards her chest. She used her feet to ward Gabriel off as he made a lunge at her, until Jack hopped to his feet and wrestled the archangel right back down onto the ground.
Fighting an angel—even an archangel—was something that Siobhan and Jack had a good amount of experience with. Fighting an angel with intent not to kill, however? That was an entirely different experience. Unlike them, Gabriel was not making any sort of attempt at pulling his punches.
At times like these, Siobhan missed her quiet, isolated little cabin in the woods. Just then, though, it wasn’t a great time for reminiscing, and she shoved the thought out of her mind to ponder it later.
Even if he wasn’t pulling his punches, though, much of his finesse was gone. Gabriel moved less like a gymnast, as Siobhan was accustomed to him doing, and more like a linebacker. And if there was one thing Siobhan had gotten decent at in the weeks since Jack turned her, it was not being hit. Oh, sure, she would get roughed up, but if just avoiding his attacks was going to be the hardest part, then it wasn’t such a big deal.
With a startled squawk, Jack was tossed aside. He tucked and rolled, springing out of his impromptu somersault at the end and all but bouncing back to his feet. Siobhan spared him a glance to make sure he was alright, before she and Myrtle surged forward, both of them trying to land a solid punch. Gabriel blocked most of their attempts with his forearms and his wings, though he grunted when Myrtle landed a punch against his ribs and Siobhan managed to kick him in the ribs immediately afterwards.
As Gabriel stumbled back two steps at the duel impact, Jack landed a punch between Gabriel’s wings, and the archangel stumbled forward a short step. He caught his balance and his wings flared out. Siobhan and Myrtle both ducked so he couldn’t scalp them with his feathers. They straightened up again cautiously, but it was short-lived.
“Shit!” It was a startled shout as Gabriel turned in a sharp circle, clotheslining Siobhan across the chest with one forearm. Siobhan’s ass hit the grass, and she grunted and toppled over backwards from the momentum. Gabriel lunged for her, but he didn’t get a chance to actually make contact with her.
Myrtle and Jack threw themselves at Gabriel, lunging for his middle and taking him out at the knees respectively. They crashed to the ground in a heap after that, limbs in every direction. Myrtle took an elbow to the sternum and tumbled aside, and Jack bore his weight down on the archangel. A feather flew loose in the struggle, drifting down to the ground, and Siobhan lashed out and grabbed it. A moment later, Gabriel yelped as the end of it sank into the back of his hand. Using his surprise to her advantage, Siobhan tossed the feather away and grabbed his head with both hands, her knuckles blanching with the force of her grip.
Finally, Siobhan managed to wind her fingers in Gabriel’s hair, and she tugged his head back. His throat bobbed and he struggled like a scruffed cat, but Siobhan’s grip held out and she dropped her face towards his neck, just above where his armor ended. It was an inconvenient spot, but it was better than trying to waste time figuring out how to get his armor off of him without losing her hold on him or getting hurt.
(As much as it pained her to think about it, Gabriel was fully capable of killing her, Jack, and Myrtle, and she suspected he wouldn’t even feel bad about it while he was still being controlled. Well, assuming he was, in fact, being controlled, but that thought pained her even more.)
Gabriel thrashed as Siobhan’s fangs sank into his neck, the wound ripping open wider, and his blood flooded into her mouth and down her throat. It tasted, peculiarly, like air, but with the dry quality of an oven as it rose to its proper temperature. It felt like licking a battery.
And as soon as she swallowed it, she could hear… ’a noise’ didn’t quite seem like the right word. She could hear it, yes, but not with her ears. It was more like she could hear it in her brain. It sounded and felt as if a swarm of bees had been set loose inside her skull and all of the bees were buzzing around. She couldn’t make any sense of it, but just based on timing, she could only assume it was the same thing going on in Gabriel’s head just then. She wanted it to stop, and for just an instant, it did, but it began again almost immediately. She didn’t have any time to truly speculate about what it was or if she had caused the stutter, though.
Siobhan grunted and stumbled back as Gabriel’s shoulder slammed into her, but Jack caught her with a hand between her shoulders and propelled her forward once again. She crashed into Gabriel with enough force to heave him back down onto the ground, and Myrtle slammed into him next, her knees pinning two of his wings and her hands on his shoulders.
Siobhan straddled the thrashing archangel’s che
st, lifted her arm to her mouth, and sank her fangs into her skin. As blood began to flow over her arm, she grabbed Gabriel’s chin and turned his head sharply to the side, baring the already healing wound on his neck. She poised her arm over it, and Gabriel flinched as her blood dripped downwards into the wound.
For a few drawn-out moments, he continued to fight, struggling and thrashing like a feral cat. Gradually, though, his struggling slowed, and his expression shifted to one of terror for a brief fraction of a second before his eyes rolled back and he went limp.
As soon as he did, the sound rattling between Siobhan’s ears abruptly stopped. Not as if it had been coming from Gabriel, but more like it had been targeted at him and she was just a hapless bystander to the racket.
For a long moment, no one moved. And then, as one, Siobhan, Jack, and Myrtle scrambled back and away, as if Gabriel was suddenly going to leap back to life and go right back to trying to kill them. They had no proof he wasn’t going to, so some caution (or paranoia, as the case may have been) seemed perfectly warranted.
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 34