“Would you even notice?” Jack wondered, arching one eyebrow. “You weren’t exactly slow to begin with.”
Gabriel shrugged in a conceding manner, as if to silently say ‘a fair point.’
“What about strength?” Siobhan wondered, propping herself up on her elbows. “How much has that increased?”
“How exactly am I supposed to quantify that?” Gabriel wondered dryly. “Is there a scale I’m supposed to use?” At Siobhan’s less-than-impressed scowl, he added, “It’s increased enough that I can kick your ass without trying, as you pointed out.”
Siobhan stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry at him before flopping back down onto her back.
“Do you even get anything out of those sparring sessions?” Jack wondered wryly. “Or is it more like playing with a pet you don’t want to hurt?”
“Not a pet,” Gabriel protested. “More like a pack of delicate gremlins.” He made an attempt at looking innocent. He did not succeed. Jack threw a shoe at him, only to pout when Gabriel simply ducked and his shoe tumbled down to the ground below.
There was a beat of silence, and then Gabriel pointed out, “I’m not sure what you were expecting to happen there.”
The second shoe at least managed to clip one of Gabriel’s wings before it joined its partner in the grass below. Gabriel folded his wings in tightly to his back and turned away, making a show out of ignoring Jack from that point onwards until he forgot that was what he was doing two minutes later.
*
“So, I’m taking bets now.” Siobhan dropped down onto the bed with enough force that Jack bounced and nearly dropped his book. He pouted at her over the top edge of it, which Siobhan cheerfully ignored.
She stared at him expectantly until, finally, he relented and asked, “Taking bets on what?”
“How long it will take me to snap and murder someone,” she returned pleasantly. As Jack slowly arched one eyebrow at her, she added, “Headache-induced rage. It’s a thing. Or at least, everyone else seems to think it’s a thing, so I’ve decided to make it a lucrative thing. I’m taking bets.”
“I don’t think you can take bets on yourself,” Jack pointed out reasonably. “You could just decide to hold off on your murderous rampage until it would get you the most money.”
Siobhan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “While I’m glad you think I’m that conniving, I said I’d snap and murder someone, not multiple people. Why do you have to jump straight to me being a serial killer?” She folded her arms and straddled him so she could scowl at him over the top of his book. “That’s rude.”
“You’re ambitious,” he returned, shrugging one shoulder. “I have faith in you.”
Siobhan rolled her eyes and shoved his book towards his chest with two fingers against its spine. “You’re an ass,” she informed him plainly. “Did you know that?”
“Well, I do now. Thanks. Self-reflection is an important skill to have.” He made a half-hearted effort at lifting his book back to where he was originally holding it. “If the headaches are getting that bad, maybe take a break for a few days?” he suggested. “You’ve already proven you can manage. I don’t think you’re going to forget how if you take two days off.”
“Probably not,” she conceded with a sigh, squashing his book against his chest as she flopped forward against him, her chin leaning against the book’s back cover. “But I just want to stay at the top of my game, I guess.”
“Shocker,” Jack deadpanned in return, and he snorted out a laugh when Siobhan reached up to flick the tip of his nose.
“Rude,” she repeated. “I’m taking a nap now.” She began to shift to get comfortable, informing him, “So are you,” just before she closed her eyes.
Well, there were definitely worse ways to spend an afternoon, even if he hadn’t quite been planning on it. Carefully, he wiggled his book out from under her, closed it, and set it aside.
He had known her long enough to know that, if he left his book there, it would not only be flattened but also covered in drool. No thanks.
He couldn’t even be surprised when Barton hopped up onto the bed with them about twelve minutes later. The mutt didn’t seem to have ever gotten the memo that he didn’t need much sleep anymore.
*
“There’s an angel on the attack…somewhere,” Gabriel observed quietly, his voice so sudden that Siobhan nearly fell off of the bed as she looked up at him. He was leaning in the bedroom doorway.
She blinked slowly and stood up. “How can you tell?” she wondered, running a hand through her hair and rubbing the back of her neck.
He knuckled at his temple with two fingers. “It got louder.”
“You can get us within a general area?” she asked, and she waited just long enough to get a nod in return. With a sigh, Siobhan slumped towards the door. “I’ll go grab the boyfriend and the dog.”
*
“Leave it!” Siobhan’s voice rang out clear and crisp and loud nearly the instant they arrived in the general area of the angel attack. Barton, midway through taking a step towards the nearest person, ground to a halt. Turning his head, he blinked up at Siobhan, his head cocked to one side. “No eating,” she added, her hands on her hips. Barton heaved a great sigh, like the most world-weary of creatures to have ever existed.
The hapless bystander didn’t even seem to notice, as he was very busy running in the opposite direction as more people screamed in the distance.
Siobhan didn’t know what the town’s name was or even the particulars of where it was, other than ‘someplace reasonably warm.’ She didn’t care particularly much about any of that for the moment. What she cared about was getting to where the shouting was. Everything looked reasonably calm from where they were, but the distant screaming rather belied that initial appearance.
Gabriel crouched down in front of Barton and held a hand out. Barton buried his nose in Gabriel’s palm, waited until he got a scratch behind the ears, and then began snuffling at him vigorously. The mutt pranced backwards a few steps, sneezed twice, and then whirled on his hind legs and took off down the sidewalk like he had been launched out of a slingshot. Gabriel followed easily, leaving Jack and Siobhan to bolt after them like a pair of startled jackrabbits.
It wasn’t long before they stumbled upon the angel in question. Barton jigged back and forth on his front paws on the ground beneath her, barking uproariously as Gabriel rose into the air to meet her.
They were on a residential street then. A tree had been uprooted and thrown as if to play the most aggressive game of fetch ever played, and a series of streetlights were downed along both sides of the street, sparking through shorn metal. Half of the cars on the street had been flipped upside down and tossed aside, and every house had broken windows. A fair number of them had more extreme damage than that. There was even smoke pouring out of a break in one house’s roof. There was blood dripping off of the porch, through the open doorway, and Siobhan could only assume the archangel had simply smashed into the house and wrecked everything in sight. Siobhan’s thoughts darted back to Chambersburg for a moment before she dragged herself back to the present moment. This was different. She could actually help here.
The street was eerily silent, though. Most of the sounds of people were fading into the distance. Everyone—or nearly everyone, at least, as she had no doubts that at least a few people were still hiding in their homes—had fled to escape the rampage. That was a relief. She was never going to argue with there being fewer people around to hurt.
There was a sound of feathers in the air.
Siobhan spared a glance upward, and then did a double take as she realized the archangel above them was Anael. But she shook her head quickly, ignoring it for the moment. Instead, she sat down, right there on the sidewalk. As she closed her eyes and began to focus, Barton planted himself in front of her, and Jack readied himself for whatever was going to happen next.
Already, the signal was louder, now that it was reaching an angel it could actually have
an impact on. It took Siobhan only a moment to be able to hear it loud and clear.
After that, though, things began to get complicated.
Not only was the signal louder, but it was also stronger. The Metatron could tell that someone was trying to disrupt his broadcast, and he was rather displeased about that. Pain lanced through Siobhan’s head as the signal increased, and she could hear herself whining like a small child. Fingers stroked through her hair, and she leaned into Jack’s hand for a moment before returning her attention to the task at hand.
Of course, it wasn’t simply as easy as deciding she had to get serious. She had sparred with the others, true enough, but there had been no real sense of danger then. They weren’t going to hurt her. Before she made it to the point of joining the sparring sessions, they hadn’t even touched her.
Anael—or the Metatron puppeteering Anael’s body—had no such compunctions.
Anael crashed to the ground, tucking and rolling at the last second, a few loose feathers scattering in every direction as she came back to her feet. Angels, when being controlled, were evidently less fastidious and less careful about the state of their wings.
She turned on her heel and lunged for Siobhan, who snapped her eyes open in time to see Barton tackle the archangel to the side. His jaws snapped mere millimeters from her face, until Siobhan snapped, “No eating!” He reared back to a safer distance, and then scampered sideways as Anael tried to toss him aside.
She clambered back to her feet, only to get tackled sideways again as Jack slammed into her, and she met the pavement with an audible grunt, squirming fitfully beneath him. Siobhan clamped her hands over her ears and did her best to tune the ruckus out.
Gabriel landed and curled his arms around Anael, simply holding her in place. Lightly—well, compared to how tightly he would hold her if he wanted to actually hurt her—but with enough force that all she could do was squirm and kick. Eventually, though, as her squirming increased until she was thrashing like a snake being hoisted by the tail, Gabriel had no choice but to let her go or she was going to hurt herself. If she didn’t feel like cooperating once she could actually think again, then that was a different story. But until then, none of them were particularly interested in maiming her (except maybe Barton).
Anael made another lunge for Siobhan, only to be slammed into the ground once again by four paws and a considerable amount of protective instincts, and then Barton sat on her. Admittedly, that plan didn’t work particularly well, as being a vampire made him considerably stronger, but he didn’t actually weigh any more than he had as a standard dog. Anael simply tossed him aside, and with a yelp, he tumbled. He bounced back to his feet and returned to Siobhan’s side as Gabriel scooped Anael up once again.
Siobhan squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her ears, focusing as hard as she could. Finally, the signal stuttered a few times, like a fitful heartbeat, and then it halted.
Anael froze, going still and rigid as she looked around. She stared up at Gabriel and then down at Siobhan. She dragged her gaze back to Gabriel again and wondered unsteadily, “How…?”
“I’m a very strange breed of vampire now,” he replied, watching Siobhan carefully so he would have an idea of when the signal would return. “The Metatron can’t control what is no longer an angel. Thoughts on that?”
There was no hesitation before Anael’s answer. “Turn me.”
Gabriel ducked his head towards her shoulder and bit her without any preamble. As he lifted his head again, bringing a wrist to his mouth, he cautioned, “This is going to be very uncomfortable,” before his fangs sank into his wrist and he let his blood drip down into the bite wound.
“Temporary discomfort is preferable to losing all bodily autonomy,” Anael drawled in return, though her expression screwed up slightly in distaste.
It was then that Siobhan dragged in a shuddering breath and sighed it out unsteadily. “Losing it,” she announced tersely, followed immediately by, “Never mind, lost it.”
Anael spasmed once, twitching from her eyes to the tips of her wings to her toes as the signal returned, shooting back to its full strength immediately. She tumbled out of Gabriel’s hold as she began thrashing again, and her wings flared open behind her. Siobhan yelped and ducked before she could take a wing right to the temple.
Barton snarled and lunged, jaws clamping tight around Anael’s arm. Legs braced apart, he planted himself as she tried to wrestle her arm free.
And then, at last, the signal abruptly died as Anael’s eyes rolled back into her head and she tumbled to the ground like a flat of bricks.
Siobhan remained upright for a moment, long enough to make sure Anael was out for the count, and then she whined and toppled over backwards. “Why does this have to suck so much?” she moaned, rubbing her knuckles in circles against her temples. “I’m a good person. I don’t deserve this.”
Jack ran his fingers through her hair and then offered his hands down to hoist her back up to her feet. “You can take a nap at the manor,” he assured her. “Let’s get back before something else decides to come crawling out of the woodwork.”
With a groan, Siobhan grabbed his hands and let herself be hauled off of the asphalt. Already, people were beginning to creep back out, drawn by the sudden quiet to see if the chaos was over.
Gabriel scooped Anael up off of the ground and vanished with her, leaving Siobhan, Jack, and Barton slinking out of the limelight to wait for him to get them.
“This was a lot more convenient when there were more people to transport us,” Jack mused blandly as they ducked into an alley, away from prying eyes.
“I mean, it’s weird either way,” Siobhan pointed out, “but yeah.”
In a perfect world, drinking an archangel’s blood would have made her as fast as an archangel. Though just based on everything else going on around them, she was going to assume she was not living in anything even remotely approaching a perfect world. Alas.
*
Technically, the room was Gabriel’s. That only seemed fitting, since it was the room he had been left in to sleep off the change. Angels didn’t actually need to sleep, though, so it seemed most practical to hand the room off to Anael. They left her there to sleep it off.
Siobhan fed Barton, making very sure he knew that he wasn’t actually allowed to have the bowl until she gave him permission. And once that was done, she passed out on a beanbag in the library, where she could properly nest and get comfortable in a way that beds typically prohibited. In a technical sense, she didn’t lock anyone out of the library, but she left Barton gnawing his way through a bone by the door as a deterrent.
Everyone else could sit and contemplate when the next angelic problem was going to crop up. Siobhan was going to sleep until her head stopped hurting.
She woke up an hour later to find Jack curled around her, and she was awake just long enough to squirm to comfort before she fell back to sleep.
*
Regina was not a stranger to meditation. It was not a common practice of hers, but it was helpful from time to time, when she needed to center herself if the rest of the world was grinding on her nerves too much.
She got herself comfortable on her bed, sitting cross-legged with her hands on her thighs. She needed quiet, which meant barring the rest of the Vampire Lords from her chambers for the time being. (Truthfully, she wasn’t sure why they had to spend that much time down there anyway, when they were free to spread out throughout the rest of the manor. Eventually, she supposed, she would have to literally lock them out, provided she could find a way to actually do so.)
The Bough of Eden was across her lap, behind her arms, in two pieces. It had snapped cleanly in half after meeting Dask’iya’s Fang, and the Fang’s blade had chipped. Regina doubted she needed the Bough close by to accomplish her goal, but she thought having it might help her get into the right mindset.
Though she supposed a mindset of aggravation might be a bit counterproductive to the goal of meditating, it w
as inevitable. Her trial keeper had been… trying, when last she had confronted it. To say that her trial keeper had gotten on her nerves would not be doing the situation justice. Though her trial keeper had been a tree, or at least something that resembled a tree, there had been nothing peaceful or soothing about it, and it had rankled at Regina’s nerves something fierce until she convinced it that she was right.
She supposed that was the important part, though, wasn’t it? She had convinced it that she was right. She had won. She could have been used as fertilizer in its plot of dirt, but instead, she was granted a weapon, and, at least for a little while, that weapon had been beyond her imagination.
She had won.
And that, at least, was a calming thought. She let her fingers trace over the broken halves of the Bough, fond despite herself. Although she had only had it for a short while, it had been a good weapon. She would keep it, she supposed. It would be a shame to get rid of it.
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 37