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

by Samantha Snow

  They stared for a few seconds before they slowly began to relax once again, content in the knowledge that he was likely out cold for a little while.

  “You think it worked?” Jack asked warily, prodding the unconscious archangel with the toe of one shoe.

  “I guess we’ll know once he wakes up again,” Siobhan sighed, bending down to grab one of his arms and hoisting him up off the ground. She realized pretty quickly that there was a bit of a flaw with that plan. “You want to give me a hand? He’s like six and a half feet tall, and I’d rather not trip over him.”

  Jack stepped forward to help, only for Harendra to sigh and simply pick the archangel up. Jack and Siobhan scurried after him as he headed back towards the manor. If they were lucky, they could all convince him to give them another tap with the shepherd’s crook.

  *

  “Your eyes are glowing,” Jack remarked, leaning one shoulder on the doorframe of their bedroom.

  With a startled jolt, Siobhan looked up from her book. She hadn’t really been reading it, though. Her eyes had traced over the same paragraph a dozen times in the last fifteen minutes, and she still had no idea what it was saying. Her thoughts were stuck elsewhere, as she tried to piece together what might happen if turning Gabriel into a vampire didn’t work as well as she’d hoped it would, if he was still being controlled by whatever it was she had heard earlier.

  (Well, realistically, she knew what would happen: one of the Vampire Lords would kill him, and they would all have to go right back to killing every angel they came across. It was a routine that Siobhan was getting rather tired of.)

  She had been sitting in silence for too long, and Jack was watching her expectantly. Siobhan shook her head slightly, jarring herself back into the present.

  “Are they?” she wondered faintly, holding a hand up to her face as if she would be able to see the light reflecting off of her skin.

  “A bit,” Jack confirmed. “Green. It’s really light, though. I doubt most people would notice unless it got really dark.”

  Siobhan’s hand dropped to her lap, and she set her book down, giving up on the charade. She was quiet, and her thoughts drifted. She snapped back to the present again when Jack asked, “So, you feel alright? It doesn’t feel like the angel blood is melting you from the inside or something? You’re not going to blow up?”

  She huffed out a laugh. “I feel fine,” she assured him. “But…” She held a hand up in a pacifying gesture when he very abruptly looked worried. “Nothing horrible,” she assured him. “Just—whatever was controlling Gabriel, I could hear it after I swallowed some of his blood. It couldn’t control me, though. It’s geared towards controlling angels.”

  “What was it?” he wondered, head tipped to one side in his curiosity.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied with a helpless shrug. “Some sort of communication, I think?” she hazarded, though she didn’t sound even remotely sure of that guess. “But your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it was, I couldn’t actually understand it; I just knew that it was there.”

  “This all just keeps getting weirder,” Jack huffed, reluctantly amused, despite himself. “We were so sure this angel stuff was mostly done with, what? Just a few hours ago?”

  “You mean while we carried on a lovely conversation with the archangel that just unwittingly tried to murder us?” Siobhan returned dryly. “Here I figured that was all perfectly normal.”

  Jack snorted and flopped down onto the bed beside her. He rolled towards her and propped himself up on one elbow, leaning his chin in his hand. “You’re sure you’re alright?” he asked, and though he did an admirable job of keeping his voice level, Siobhan could still hear the anxiety in his words clear as day.

  She leaned up on her elbows to peck the tip of his nose, and then to plant a kiss on his lips. “Right as rain,” she agreed, still close enough to him that her lips brushed against his.

  Jack kissed her in return, and when he pulled away, his smile was soft at the edges and fond. “Good,” he murmured gently, bumping his forehead against hers. “You know me; I have to worry.”

  With a snort of laughter, Siobhan poked the tip of her tongue out at him. “Trust me, I know.” She grinned impishly. “Good thing I think it’s cute.”

  When she flopped back down flat on the mattress, she pulled him down with her. After all, their nap had been interrupted, and Siobhan planned to get the rest of it in.

  The rest of the day, thankfully, was comparably dull, save for a moment when Alistair threw a bucket of mop water at them. They both figured he had earned that right, though.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It took two days for Gabriel to wake up. For those two days, he was monitored constantly, and once he began to stir, the Lords were fetched and Siobhan and Jack slipped into the room behind them. They had no doubts that the Lords noticed them, but at that point, they seemed to have given up on attempting to convince either of them not to do anything that wasn’t immediately dangerous (and, even then, they likely weren’t guaranteed to offer more than a token protest).

  Gabriel stirred slowly, eyes blinking open. They glowed a hellish shade of red, and Siobhan felt herself recoil slightly before she gathered her composure again.

  Gingerly, he sat up, cautiously stretching his wings out, his feathers rustling. They were in a rather impressive state of disarray from him laying on them for so long. He glanced up through his lashes, eyes darting from one Lord to the next and the next, until finally he simply held his hands up, as if in surrender.

  As if a collective breath was released, the tension in the room began to seep away.

  “You’re back to normal, then?” Siobhan asked before she could help herself, before any of the Lords could even say anything.

  “Other than the most obvious difference,” Gabriel returned, sounding like he was somewhere very far off in his thoughts. Siobhan could understand. She had only been turned a few weeks ago; she still remembered the shock of waking up and realizing she wasn’t human anymore.

  “What happened?” Regina asked, her voice sharp enough to drag him back into the present moment. He looked up slowly.

  “The Metatron is taking control of us,” he stated, and while he sounded more present, he still sounded as if he wasn’t entirely there. “He’s the one who created us, and he’s decided that enough of us have grown complacent that he needs to intervene directly.”

  “He can just take control of any angel whenever he wants to?” Dask’iya asked, her expression pinching in distaste.

  “Perhaps a seraphim could have resisted to some extent?” He didn’t sound like he was particularly sure. “But I don’t know. As it is now, yes, he can take control of any remaining angel whenever he pleases.”

  Allambee groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “Great. Wonderful. Are we ever going to get a break from all this shit?”

  There was no answer to his question, though, and after a moment of thick, heavy silence, Gabriel wondered faintly, “Might I have a moment?”

  “Of course,” Osamu assured him, putting one hand on Allambee’s shoulder and the other on Harendra’s, and he gave them both a hearty shove towards the door. Regina and Dask’iya fell into step behind them, leaving just Siobhan and Jack in the room with Gabriel.

  “Are you alright?” Jack asked, his voice quiet.

  It took Gabriel a few seconds to respond. “More or less,” he finally offered, though it was not the most reassuring answer. “I’m not going to be controlled again, at any rate.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Jack returned, voice still low.

  Gabriel huffed out a breath that didn’t quite succeed at being a laugh. “I know,” he replied, finally looking up at them properly. His eyes were like a punch in the gut. “I’m alright,” he assured them. “It’s just…a lot to take in. Everything is very loud.”

  “You get used to it pretty quickly,” Siobhan told him, trying for a reassuring tone. “You, uh…you just take a little while to yourself, and
one of us will swing by later?”

  Gabriel nodded, though, beyond that, he gave no indication that he had even heard the words that came out of her mouth. He was staring at a point on the wall, looking like he was attempting to reorder his entire worldview.

  Jack grabbed Siobhan’s hand and led her out of the room. She waited until they were down the hall before she hissed urgently, “What if he hates me now?”

  “Then that’s still better than him being dead,” Jack pointed out.

  Siobhan’s mouth closed with an audible click. She opened it again to try to retort, paused, and closed her mouth once again. Finally, she heaved a sigh and her shoulders slumped. “True,” she conceded. “But it would still suck.”

  “I’m not contesting that,” he soothed, squeezing her hand. “But even if he hates you, he’s not dead, and he’s not being controlled, and that was the goal, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Siobhan agreed with another, quieter sigh. “It’d be nice to know he won’t be miserable, though. But I’ll take what I can get for now.”

  Jack tugged her closer and kissed her cheek. “That’s my girl.”

  Siobhan bumped her forehead against his temple before she began to extricate her fingers from his. She leaned in and stood up on her toes, waiting for him to dutifully duck his head slightly so she could press a kiss to his forehead. With that done, she informed him, “I have enough excess energy to take me to the moon and back. I’m going to go jog a few laps of the manor before I explode.”

  “If you explode anyway, make sure you do it where we can film it,” Jack returned, ushering her forwards with a flourish and a bow.

  Rolling her eyes, Siobhan punched his shoulder as she passed, and then she zipped her way down the stairs and out the door of the kitchen.

  It happened, from time to time. Bad things happened, and she worked herself up into such a state that she just had to burn the anxious energy off. It gave her time to think, at least, about what she would do if Gabriel decided he hated her. She didn’t actually come up with any sort of course of action, but she did at least try to think of one.

  And she thought about what she could do when they inevitably encountered other angels that were being controlled.

  She was pretty sure she had, for just a split second, interrupted whatever had been controlling Gabriel during the fight. Maybe, just maybe, she could use that to her advantage.

  Granted, she didn’t have any sort of concrete plan by the time she finished her jog. She decided she could think on it more later, before she detoured to the kitchen and headed back to what had recently become Gabriel’s room.

  *

  “You can kick my ass now,” Siobhan sighed, dropping down to sit beside Gabriel on the bed. She offered a bag of blood without commentary and silently hoped his eyes would go back to their usual shade of purple.

  “I could do that before,” he pointed out, accepting the bag from her. With some distaste, he bit through the plastic and began to drink.

  With a snort, Siobhan punched his shoulder. “Yeah, but you would’ve had to try before,” she argued. “Now you can just kick my ass without even thinking about it. It’s not fair.”

  He pulled his attention away from the bag long enough to point out, “You’re the one who turned me,” before he resumed drinking.

  Palms up, Siobhan shrugged, conceding the point to him. She sat quietly for a moment, waiting until he had emptied the bag before she asked, “Are you mad? That I turned you, I mean.”

  Gabriel was quiet at first, absentmindedly crumbling the plastic bag up in his hand. Siobhan took the moment to watch his eyes gradually shift back to their typical purple glow, though it was slightly muted by the expected filter of bronze.

  “It’s not the sort of thing I ever would have expected to happen,” he stated after a moment, choosing his words carefully, “but I’m not angry.” He slid her a sidelong glance. “The other option was to kill me, and dying is something I’ve been trying rather hard to avoid doing. You would not have been able to simply snap me out of it by shouting and telling me to remember who I really am.”

  “What was that, anyway?” she asked, turning to draw one leg up onto the bed, sitting sideways to face him. “After I bit you, I could hear it. Like…a carpenter bee decided to make a nest in my skull.”

  Gabriel looked bemused for a moment. “That…isn’t how it sounds to an angel,” he replied after a beat. “To us, it’s just words. It’s our language.” He offered her a contemplative look. “It stopped for a second before I blacked out. Was that you?”

  “Maybe?” she hazarded, shrugging. “I really emphatically wanted it to stop, and it sort of stuttered for a sec. Also, my eyes glow now. I’m assuming that’s also because of the whole angel blood thing.”

  “A considerably smaller concern than the others,” Gabriel deadpanned in return, and he snorted when Siobhan punched his shoulder again.

  They sat in silence for a short while, until eventually Siobhan pointed out, “You know, if I could disrupt the…signal, or whatever you want to call it, for longer, we could probably talk other controlled angels down. You know, give them an option between ‘tame vampire’ and ‘dead.’” ‘Untamed vampire,’ of course, was not an option because they would still need to be dealt with for causing trouble. “Can you still hear it?”

  Gabriel’s chin dipped in a brief nod. “To some extent,” he confirmed.

  Knowing that, Siobhan closed her eyes and focused, reaching out for that same feeling she’d had earlier when she’d heard it. Her expression scrunched up as she concentrated, and without thinking, she lashed out, punching Gabriel’s shoulder yet again when he observed blandly, “You look constipated.”

  She tuned him out after that, concentrating intently until she could just barely hear the noise buzzing stubbornly at the edges of her senses. She latched onto that feeling, memorizing it, storing it so she could find it later. And then, with a force of will, she commanded it to be quiet.

  It stuttered once, then twice, and then a third time before it carried on buzzing.

  Well, that was a bit anticlimactic, but she supposed it was better than nothing, especially for her first purposeful attempt.

  When she opened her eyes again, Gabriel was watching her curiously.

  “Think we can work with that?” Siobhan wondered, rubbing one of her temples with her knuckles. She had a headache all of a sudden.

  “I don’t see why not,” he returned, one side of his mouth quirking up slightly in the barest hint of a smile. “It’s a place to start, at least.”

  Siobhan grinned. Because, really, ‘a place to start’ was all she ever really needed. She could go some very impressive miles if given the slightest inch, and she intended to put that skill to use as much as she could.

  Maybe she could get some of the others to help out.

  *

  They started simply. First, they had to see if Gabriel could interrupt the…well, they still weren’t sure what to call it, but they settled for calling it a signal. It seemed like the term that would cause the least amount of confusion, and it was less of a mouthful than ‘that strange inner-brain Metatron noise that controls the angels.’

  They had a spot on the balcony that they liked to use, since hardly anyone else stepped onto what had been dubbed the Lords’ Floor unless Alistair was cleaning, and the Lords used the balcony infrequently. Besides, Siobhan liked to be under the stars while they worked, if ‘work’ was even the correct term.

  After several bouts of intense conversation and mounting irritation as Siobhan tried to put the feeling and the experience into words, they decided that the answer was no, Gabriel could not disrupt the signal.

  “It’s supposed to control angels,” he pointed out after they made that decision. “Even if I’m now too dissimilar for it to properly control me, it could be that I’m still too similar to influence it, considering that’s the exact opposite of what it’s meant to do.”

  “I guess that makes sense
,” Siobhan conceded glumly. “I guess disrupting the tone is just up to me then?”

  “Unless someone else decides to partake of some angelic blood at some point,” Gabriel returned dryly, “then it would seem that’s the case.”

  Siobhan heaved a sigh and tipped over backwards onto the decking, slinging an arm over her eyes. She lay unmoving for a moment before she thrashed, kicking her feet and flailing her other arm.

  When she fell still once again, she peeked out from under her arm to see Gabriel watching her with a wry sort of amusement.

  “Are you quite finished?” he wondered, eyebrows rising. “Or do you need another moment?”

  Siobhan’s arm fell away from her face so she could instead toss her hand out to the side, sprawling there as if she wanted to create a snow angel on the balcony, despite the lack of snow. It was hardly even autumn. She couldn’t even make a leaf angel unless she stomped a decent ways into the woods, and that seemed like a bit too much trouble to go to.