Finally, she let her thoughts drift away, curling her fingers around the halves of the Bough to ground herself. She thought of her trial keeper and its single plot of earth in the midst of so much water. Her eyes were closed and, though she could see nothing, soon enough, she could swear she was sitting in several inches of ice cold water.
She heard a sound coming towards her, a sort of creaking, slithering sound, and she felt the spidery tendrils of a tree’s roots prodding at her.
You’re back, it observed. In a manner. It tapped at her curiously, and it curled a root around the broken Bough. I had rather hoped he would leave us out of it, it lamented, drawing its root away from the Bough once again.
Why are you here? I’ve no desire to debate with you today, and I cannot fix the Bough of Eden.
“That’s not why I’m here,” Regina returned, her voice low and level.
Explain.
“You agreed with me in the end, last time,” she reminded it. “You let me take the Bough. So you must agree that the Metatron can’t be allowed to carry on, especially when he’s dragging others in against their wills.”
You wish to stop him, it surmised. You won’t be able to do so on your own. Even weakened, he is mighty.
“I won’t be alone. I’ll have help.” She smiled slightly to herself. “But will I have enough help?”
I can only speculate. She could hear it circling her in the water. Should any of your peers fail to convince their trial keepers of the necessity, then no, you will not have enough help.
Regina was quiet for a moment before she wondered, “But if all of us succeed?”
Then, perhaps you can win, it conceded. But only if it is before he returns to his full strength.
“Will you help me get to him then?” Regina wondered, absentmindedly tightening her hold on the halves of the Bough. “I’ve been told you can do that.”
When the time comes, I can, it confirmed. But be warned; Heaven is not a world that accepts all. You will only be able to be there for so long before you are expelled. If you linger, the expulsion may very well be enough to kill you.
Regina was silent for a moment. That meant they had to kill the Metatron quickly, then. Or…
“If we leave quickly, can we bring him out of Heaven with us?”
The tree did not respond for a few moments until, finally, it offered, If all of us are in agreement, then it could be done. You would still need to act quickly before he returned to his domain, but it would not be harmful to you.
Regina nodded slowly, though she wasn’t even sure if the tree could see her, or if it simply knew she was there in the same way she knew it was there. “I understand.” She hummed thoughtfully to herself and tipped her head back as if to look up at the tree, even if her eyes remained closed. “Does that mean you’re agreeing, then?” she wondered. “You’ll help?”
I will help, it confirmed with something like a world-weary sigh, though its voice was not actually a sound, so much as it was simply the impression of a sound against Regina’s mind. Your previous point still stands, and, as I said, we had hoped to remain… disengaged.
They were attached to the weapons, Regina realized. Like a craftsman, she supposed, assuming they had an input in the making of the weapons. Or perhaps it went the other way, and they were made from the weapons. Either way, it meant the trial keepers were displeased. Regina wasn’t going to be upset about that.
“Thank you,” she offered, dipping her chin towards her chest. “Do you suppose the other keepers will be similarly inclined?”
Perhaps. She was pretty sure trees couldn’t shrug, and she couldn’t see it regardless, but it sounded as if it wanted to. Your peers have proven persuasive in the past. Time will tell, will it not?
Regina nodded distractedly. “Will that be it, then?” she asked, her voice neutral as her thoughts began to drift. That was all it took, evidently, as she got no reply, and all she could feel beneath her was the fabric of her bed.
That was it, then, she supposed. Her trial keeper had agreed to help her. It had been… far less aggravating than their last conversation together, truth be told, though she supposed the context was rather markedly different. The Metatron had offended them.
A powerful tool, that. Regina made a note to mention it to the others. If their keepers were less agreeable, the Lords could always try appealing to their wounded pride, after all.
She opened her eyes, looking around her room as if it was going to be changed in some way. It still looked the same. Everything still smelled the same. Her clothing and her bedding were all still dry. There was no sign that her conversation with the tree had even happened.
Did she feel different? She pondered that thought for a moment as she set the halves of the Bough aside and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up and stretched, reaching her arms over her head and arching her back until it cracked.
She didn’t think she felt any different. But the conversation with the trial keeper had felt too real to have simply been an involved daydream. It had happened. She knew that. Or at least, she refused to believe otherwise, and she supposed that was good enough for the time being.
The others, hopefully, would be equally as capable of winning over their trial keepers. But she had faith in them, and she had faith in the keepers’ wounded dignity.
She spared a moment to trace a hand over the halves of the Bough before she picked them up and returned them to the box she was keeping them in. It was an elaborate, wooden chest, carved intricately and decorated with various stones, some precious and some semi-precious. It was a nice reminder of what the Bough had been before it was robbed of its power.
She locked the chest and tucked it under her bed before she made her way out of the room to inform the others of how her chat had gone.
*
When Anael began to wake, Barton was resting just outside the room. He heaved himself to his feet at the first sign of movement and trotted away to bark insistently at Siobhan and Jack until they fetched Gabriel, grabbed whatever they needed, and headed to Anael’s room. (Or maybe it should just be called The Angel Room if it was just going to be used by each angel consecutively.)
When her eyes opened, they glowed bright red. Having seen it once before, it was a bit less jarring that time, though Siobhan still found it uncanny. Anael had hardly even sat up before a plastic bag was being pressed into her hands. She eyed it distastefully for a moment before Jack pointed out dryly, “It’s not going to bite you.”
“Rather the other way around,” Gabriel added blandly. “Just get it over with. You’ll feel better afterwards.”
As she drank slowly, they filled her in on what she would need to know about the manor and its occupants (“Generally there aren’t that many, so if you just get to know Alistair and Myrtle, you should be fine,” Jack explained.), the Vampire Lords (“Everyone else seems to think Harendra is the most alarming, but personally, I find Osamu rather unsettling,” Gabriel stated flatly.), and the general goal that they were trying to achieve (“I mean, we mostly just want to collect whatever archangels start cropping up again, but I think the Lords are planning on killing the Metatron? They haven’t really explained it to us,” Siobhan offered bemusedly.).
When at last they finished explaining, Anael seemed a bit like her head was spinning and she was trying to figure out a way to put it back on straight. Whether or not she actually heard any of what they were saying or if she was still in the ‘processing vampirism’ stage remained unclear.
Eventually, she asked, “Will I have to help with the other archangels?” She looked up slowly, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “I don’t think I would be able to fight my siblings.”
“Do we even know they’re all going to be your siblings?” Jack wondered, scratching the back of his head with one hand. “Gabriel said there were other groups.”
“We were—” Gabriel paused to search for words. “…Not the best, but the most combat capable,” he settled on. “So the
Metatron will likely rely on us until he can’t any longer.”
“Hopefully, this mess will be over and done with by the time that might be a concern,” Siobhan sighed, before she shook her head and dragged her attention back to the actual question at hand. “But, uh—no. You don’t have to. We can handle them just fine.” She shrugged. “Honestly, with Gabriel’s strength boost, not hurting anyone too badly is more of a concern than anything else. Mostly, your job is just… not being controlled.”
“I can still hear it,” Anael pointed out, her tone mostly even, though slightly morose.
“It’s an annoyance now, and nothing more,” Gabriel assured her. “I can hear it, but it is harmless. Eventually, you will learn to ignore it.”
“And it will go away once the Metatron’s handled,” Siobhan supplied helpfully. “But, uh…” She trailed off and cleared her throat. “You need anything? Or just want anything? I know everything’s really weird right now.”
Slowly, Anael shook her head. “No,” she answered after a moment. It took her a few seconds to elaborate. “I will be fine, I think. I just need to… adjust, I suppose.” She sighed, her wings drooping slightly and her chin dipping towards her chest. “Gabriel?” She glanced up at him from the corner of one eye. “How strange was it for you?”
“Not as much as I expected it to be,” he answered candidly. “I had already spent significant time here, though, so that may have had something to do with it.” Not the most comforting answer, perhaps, but he wasn’t going to begin lying to her now. It would help no one, and it would quickly lose any of its comfort if she had a harder time adjusting than Gabriel did.
“Once this is done with, we can stop adopting angels under weird circumstances,” Jack sighed wistfully.
“You kidnapped me,” Gabriel reminded him without missing a beat.
“It was only sort of kidnapping. You decided you liked us,” Siobhan argued in return.
Despite herself, Anael laughed quietly behind one hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
With two archangels living in the manor, everyone else seemed slightly on edge. Well, everyone else save for the Vampire Lords, who had nothing to be concerned about, and Siobhan and Jack, who were both on reasonably good terms with both archangels.
Everyone else, though, remained slightly convinced that the archangels were going to try to kill them all at any moment. Siobhan supposed it wasn’t an entirely baseless concern, though it grated on her nerves a bit, if only because she was pretty sure she could cut the tension with a rusty butter knife.
She took to essentially using Gabriel as a jungle gym as often as she could get away with. If he wasn’t killing her, despite her insistence on draping herself over him, sitting on him, pestering him incessantly, using him like furniture, and climbing him if the opportunity presented itself, then she figured eventually everyone else would get the point that he wasn’t harboring any murderous intent.
Despite that, Jack felt the need to inform her, “One of these days, he’s going to punt you across the yard, and everyone is going to laugh.”
She pouted at him, her eyes large as she batted her eyelashes. “You’d come scrape me out of my crater afterwards, though, wouldn’t you?”
Jack heaved a melodramatic sigh. As if he was making a solemn vow, he placed a hand on his chest. “I promise, I’ll come scrape you out of your well-deserved crater after you torment him into throwing you like a fastball.”
Siobhan pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “My knight in shining armor,” she sighed, pitching her voice to something high-pitched and breathy.
“Are you both done?” Alistair demanded. “You are grossing me out.”
*
It was a day like most others, if Siobhan ignored the way her head pounded (and she had gotten rather good at that, all things considered). Casually, she was sitting on one of Gabriel’s shoulders because she knew he wasn’t going to throw her off. She was reading, though mostly she was skimming through the words halfheartedly, most of her attention focused on keeping the signal quiet for as long as she could manage.
It would be different in an actual combat situation. She knew that. It would be louder then, and so much stronger, and it would be capable of fighting back. But that wasn’t an excuse not to practice.
“That can’t be comfortable,” Gabriel remarked eventually, leaning on the balcony’s railing. He didn’t clarify whether he meant her choice in seat or her choice to tamp down the signal as long as she could just to see if she could do it.
She shrugged distractedly and flipped the page of her book. “I need to practice,” she reasoned.
“Not to your own detriment,” he argued, stretching two wings out from the shoulder she was sitting on. “You don’t need to hurt yourself.”
“Meh.” Carelessly, she waved it off.
Eyes narrowing slightly, Gabriel turned his head to scowl at her. She pretended not to notice for a moment, before she slowly looked at him. She tried very hard to look innocent, and she failed spectacularly. Even so, she still tried to sound innocent as she asked, “What’s that look for?”
“You’re not an expendable party,” he stated flatly. “Stop acting as if you are.”
Siobhan rolled her eyes, but dutifully, her efforts to silence the signal stopped. “There, happy?” she sighed, letting it buzz once again. Given how quiet it tended to be, it wasn’t a particularly noticeable difference. “You are such a mother hen.”
Gabriel scoffed and rolled his shoulders, and Siobhan fumbled her book and then clutched at one of his wings before she tumbled off of her perch.
“Why is everyone so worried about me trying to get better at this?” she groused, resituating herself but not yet bothering to hop down from her seat, despite her seat gradually deciding to be uncooperative. “Why is everyone making it into such a big deal?”
“Shock and amazement, we care about you,” Gabriel deadpanned in returned, jerking one wing in to swat her with the joint of it. “My apologies if this distresses you.”
She swatted the side of his head. “Don’t be a dick,” she scolded mildly.
“Don’t be a stubborn martyr,” he returned in much the same tone. “The effort is appreciated and acknowledged, but if we find you passed out in a heap because of it, we’re all going to be rather irate.”
Siobhan closed her book and brought it to her chest, as if in apology. “Oh, yeah. I would hate to make anyone irate.”
Gabriel rolled his shoulders again, and with a yelp, Siobhan flailed and tumbled down onto the balcony.
Alright, so her assessment that he wouldn’t toss her off had maybe been a little misjudged.
*
The view from the roof really was incredible. If not for the series of increasingly odd looks they got getting up there, Siobhan would consider making it her regular relaxation spot. As it was, though, most everyone else in the manor had looked at her and Jack as if they were singing show tunes in the kitchen as they made their way up. Ah, well. For the moment, at least, she was content to enjoy the view of the midnight sky and not let anything else bother her, splayed out on her back with her fingers twined with Jack’s.
There was the sound of feathers in the air, and Gabriel landed delicately at the edge of the roof. Siobhan and Jack both began to sit up to look at him.
“While I hate to disturb your peace—”
“Let me guess,” Siobhan sighed, cutting him off. “There’s another remote-controlled angel wreaking havoc.”
Gabriel nodded once. “Got it in one,” he confirmed. “Do you need anything other than the dog, or shall we simply get going?”
“Just the dog,” Jack replied, getting to his feet. He offered a hand down and hauled Siobhan upright.
“I’ll go get him,” she groused, brushing her clothing off briefly before she bolted off to fetch him from the kitchen.
*
Siobhan would never get used to the sight of rubble in a residential area. She had barely been able to deal with it in C
hambersburg. It hadn’t sat well with her in the town they fought Anael in. And it wasn’t sitting well with her there in… whatever city it was. She could see skyscrapers in the distance, and there were houses in both directions on either side of the road.
It was a quaint little street, honestly. The porches were little more than stoops, and the yards were tiny, but the lawns surrounding the neat little houses and tidy little duplexes were green and well-tended, and the gardens were simple but cared for. There was no egregious maintenance being done on anything, and Siobhan could imagine in her mind’s eye a school bus dropping a herd of children off in the middle of the afternoon on the street corner at the stop sign.
The street was quiet, and it didn’t deserve what was going on. For a moment, Siobhan wished it was much earlier in the day, so she could at least comfort herself with the knowledge that most of the occupants were likely at work or school. Just past midnight, though? She knew those odds were slim.
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 38