“So, what, you just regularly expect me to start spouting out inanities?” Siobhan wondered wryly, eyebrows rising.
“Most of the time, yeah,” he replied candidly, and he quickly picked up the notebook to use as a shield as she tried to swat at his nose.
Feigning a sulk, he whined, “You’re always so violent. You’re going to give me the wrong idea one of these days.”
“Will not,” she returned primly, folding her arms over her chest and squirming her shoulders as she adjusted her position. “I’m adorable. Not even just to you, but objectively speaking.”
Jack snorted behind the edge of the notebook to hide a laugh. “Your modesty has always been one of your best features,” he drawled wryly.
Siobhan sat up slowly and swung a leg over his lap so she could straddle his legs. Leaning close, she placed a swift kiss on the end of his nose, one cheek, the other, the end of his chin, and finally on his lips. When she drew back again, she batted her eyelashes and wondered, “You mean, you don’t think I’m adorable?”
Jack stayed steadfast for about half a second before he slumped slightly, bumping his forehead against hers. “Precious,” he agreed. “And you’ve got me wrapped around your finger.”
Beaming brightly, she assured him, “I know,” as she tucked her head under his chin, pulled her arms in close to their chests, and got comfortable. “I’m going to take a nap now,” she informed him cheerfully just before she closed her eyes.
Jack blinked at her, silently noting that her current position made it rather hard to write in a notebook. With a long, slow sigh, he set the notebook and his pen aside. “I guess I am, too.”
He curled his arms around her and let his eyes drift closed.
*
“How’s your head?”
They were barely awake when Jack asked. Neither of them had even bothered to open their eyes yet.
Siobhan made an incoherent noise and pawed at his face before finally cracking an eye open. “You are such a worrywart,” she sighed fondly, and he opened one eye to look down at her. “You need a new hobby,” she informed him wryly. “One of these days, worrying about me is going to get old.”
With a yawn, she levered herself up and away from him. She stretched her arms over her head and climbed off of the bed, offering a cheerful, “Well, come on, we’ve got a day to fill before we can actually go outside and do anything,” over her shoulder. She motioned for him to follow her.
With that said, she turned and swanned her way out of the room.
She didn’t actually answer his question, and that in and of itself was pretty telling.
With a sigh, Jack swung his legs over the side of the bed and followed her out of the room.
*
It was the middle of the afternoon when Gabriel found Jack and Siobhan feeding Barton in the kitchen and informed them, “There is another archangel attack. The signal is getting louder again.”
For anything else, the timing might have been inconvenient, but as it was, the fights to (ideally) convert or (if necessary) kill the archangels had to happen so quickly that the daylight wasn’t an especially pressing concern. Vampiric archangels seemed less affected by sunlight on the whole, and Siobhan and Jack could put up with an extreme sunburn for a few hours.
(Well, mostly Jack. Siobhan intended on sitting herself down somewhere shady, wherever they were headed.)
Siobhan scuffed the toe of one of her boots against the floor before she nudged Barton’s bowl. As expected, he rapidly finished off its contents before anyone might try to take the bowl away from him.
“Alright, let’s go,” Siobhan sighed, ignoring the bowl as she tapped her thigh for Barton to follow her. Alistair would make a fussy, disgusted noise and pick it up later.
*
Wherever they were seemed small by the standards of a city, and yet still too large to be called a town. It was a very in-between sort of place. Not filthy, but not pristine. Not beautiful, but not entirely unfortunate. Not chaotic, but not calm.
Jack and Siobhan clustered in the shadows of a shop when they arrived. It was calm still, though a police car and an ambulance tore past after a few seconds, and they had a good idea of what had summoned them. Without wasting time, Gabriel dropped to his knees to let Barton snuffle at his arms and hands. Freshly fed, Siobhan didn’t even have to scold him for letting his attention wander as he stayed on task.
After a few moments of vigorous smelling, Barton burst into a sprint.
Though he paused every so often to scratch at the unfamiliar feeling of a sunburn setting in, the mutt did his duty all the same. Barton led them down a busy main street, through an alley that seemed bizarrely clean, and along several side streets, until finally they came to a street lined in cookie cutter townhouses. Each one was two stories, longer from front to back than from side to side, and pressed up against their neighbors like cattle at an auction. Cars lined the street on both sides, and empty spaces had been claimed with deck chairs and anything else large enough that people would be reluctant to simply run it over.
Their most recent angelic problem was easy to spot.
“Which one is this?” Jack wondered, shading his eyes as he looked up at her.
“Samael,” Gabriel answered. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his wings, readying himself for whatever was about to happen.
Samael, like Oriphael before her, looked eerily identical to Anael when it came to her body type and the shape of her face. But as pale as Anael was, that was how dark Samael was, with skin the color of black coffee. Her hair was such a pale shade of blonde it was nearly white, and it was coiled around her head in two obscenely long braids. Her wings were white but faintly iridescent, gleaming pink and purple and blue and green and gold as the light shifted across the feathers, and her eyes glowed a strange, vibrant shade of pink that Siobhan had not yet encountered anywhere else at that point in time, save for possibly in photos of a few exotic flowers.
She was hovering over the street when they arrived, her expression impassive and her eyes hollow. Loud and clear, Siobhan could hear the signal buzzing, rattling, like it was trying to shake Samael’s skull apart and bring everyone else down with her.
She was calmer than Oriphael had been. Certainly, she was still trying to destroy the street, but the damage was localized still, and she didn’t start shrieking like a harpy as soon as she laid eyes on them. She was hardly even moving as she observed them, save for the slow, occasional flapping of her wings to keep her aloft.
Siobhan didn’t take long to appreciate the difference between them, though, instead dropping down to a crouch on the sidewalk before she sat back on her heels and then sat down entirely in the shade of the nearest building. Barton stationed himself in front of her, his head low and his teeth bared, like some sort of sentry or a gargoyle. He was only partially shaded by the building, but evidently defending Siobhan trumped any urge he might have had to get out of the sun.
Jack patted the mutt on the head and took up a defensive stance beside him.
Unlike others before her, Samael wasted no time. She lunged at Siobhan without preamble, hands outstretched and grasping. Jack and Barton pounced in tandem, and the three of them hit the ground in a tangle of scuffling wings and limbs. There was a pained, outraged shout as Barton closed his teeth around the base of one of her wings and shook his head like a hungry shark, ripping feathers loose and scattering droplets of shimmering blood across the ground.
Samael’s head impacted the ground a moment later as Jack slammed a hand against her head with enough force to knock her backwards.
Her wings flared open, ripping free of Barton’s hold and forcing her up and away from the ground quickly enough that Jack stumbled backwards to avoid being head-butted. Barton skittered several steps back, dancing backwards the length of her wingspan before she could smack him with one of them and send him reeling.
Gabriel hung back, staying at the fringe of the confrontation until his interference was necessary. The od
ds of her being able to seriously hurt Jack and Barton when they worked in tandem were slim. The odds of Gabriel accidentally hurting her more than he intended were much higher.
Jack retreated for only a moment before he threw himself at her again, his hands slamming into her shoulders and forcing her down to the ground. His knees landed on her abdomen and, with a gasp, all of the air was forcibly ejected from her lungs. She thrashed weakly for a moment until she managed to take a full breath again—or, at least, as full of a breath as she could with Jack still kneeling on her chest.
As she began to move to throw him off, Barton leaned over her, snapping his jaws at her nose, forcing her to recoil towards the ground again. Notably, he didn’t appear to have any intent to actually bite her. Or at least, not her face.
It was only a short-term distraction, though. Samael gathered her bearings once again, and Barton yelped and scampered backwards, shaking his head quickly after she punched him square in the snout. Jack lunged for her arm, but as his weight shifted, she snapped her wings open, tossing him off of her and propelling herself back to her feet.
For a moment, there was a standoff as Samael and Jack stared each other down and Barton paced around them, his growl rumbling like a freight train. And then, Samael snapped all four wings out to their full length and launched herself upwards.
When she took to the air, it seemed less like a combat tactic and more like she was getting some breathing space. Not that it did her much good. Gabriel followed her upwards and grabbed her before she even realized she had been followed, wrapping his arms around her like a living straightjacket. Her legs kicked, and she clawed at his arms with her fingers, but he didn’t relinquish his hold on her.
Slowly, Gabriel began to land, the efforts largely smooth save for a few stutters when Samael struggled particularly hard, like a kitten trying to get out of someone’s grasp.
Siobhan didn’t shout in excitement when the signal finally fell silent, struggling feebly under the blanket of her willpower. Instead, all she shouted was, “Start talking, Gabe!” She huddled into a ball, drawing her knees up to her chest and ducking her forehead against them. She curled her arms over her head, blocking out as much of the rest of the world as she could.
Gabriel landed, his arms still wrapped around Samael tightly enough to keep her from squirming free but not enough to hurt her. She wasn’t making any efforts to fight, though, and instead, the placid expression on her face had morphed into quiet confusion.
“Gabriel,” she stated, her voice low and almost devoid of inflection, though not quite. “What is going on?”
Not one for mincing words when there wasn’t a clear idea of how long they had until the signal became stronger than Siobhan’s ability to suppress it, Gabriel simply stated, “There is a way to get rid of the Metatron’s ability to control you, but it involves becoming a vampire.”
“My actions would be my own again?” she asked simply, though there was a certain wariness to the words. Understandable, considering everything else that was going on. Siobhan was fairly sure she would distrust the sky itself if she were an angel.
(Siobhan wondered, for a moment, what the principalities were doing. If the Metatron had a purpose for them, or if they had been abandoned because they weren’t strong enough. She supposed there was no way for them to win; either they would be utterly outmatched, or they would be abandoned. She sort of felt bad for them when she looked at things from that perspective. Privately, she hoped they were abandoned; it seemed the less fatal and more peaceful of the two options.)
“So long as you don’t continue your violence, then yes,” Gabriel answered easily. “But you don’t have long to think about it, so I would decide quickly, were I you.”
Samael nodded once. “Very well,” she decided. “Go ahead.”
She inhaled sharply when Gabriel bit her, squirming for only a second before she fell still once again.
“Hurry up!” Siobhan snapped, her voice strained. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she was digging her knuckles into her temples. Barton whined and nosed at her cheek, his claws clicking against the cement as he shuffled back and forth.
There was no point in shouting the warning, though. With an internal shriek of noise, the signal battered through her control and reared back to the forefront, loud and badgering and angry.
Samael went rigid in Gabriel’s hold before she began to thrash, her wings trying to stretch open to break his grip, though the effort was fruitless. He tightened his hold on her slightly, and she growled as he compressed her wings to her back.
Jack bit into his wrist and shoved his arm between the archangel’s, dripping blood over Samael’s bite wound, so Gabriel wouldn’t need to free up a hand and lose his hold on her.
With that accomplished, Gabriel released her, and she practically exploded away from him, spiraling higher into the air. Gabriel rose after her, knowing there was only so long before the change began.
Samael fought it off admirably, compared to others before her. For nearly five minutes, Gabriel herded her through the sky as she clawed at where her neck and shoulder joined, though the wound was already beginning to heal closed.
But finally, it was just a bit too much, and with a gasp, Samael’s eyes rolled back into her head and she wilted. She dropped through the air like a stone until Gabriel caught her a moment later. He looked down to where Jack and Siobhan were watching him, nodded once to acknowledge them, and vanished with Samael.
It was still slightly irritating, needing to wait for Gabriel to bring them all back in shifts. Siobhan got to her feet, and she, Jack, and Barton backed into an alley to avoid the worst of the sunlight and to wait for him to return. Absentmindedly, Siobhan pressed her fingers to her temples in a futile attempt to ease the ever-present headache.
*
As Dask’iya stepped out onto the balcony, she paused only to make sure it was not occupied, as it so often was of late. But it was empty for the moment, and Dask’iya hoisted herself up to sit on the balustrade. She crossed her ankles in a manner that seemed deceptively delicate, and she laid the Fang of Eden across her lap.
Unlike the broken Bough and the dented Scale, the Fang remained whole and undamaged, a gleaming short sword that any warrior would have been glad to wield. That was all it was, though. The power it had once granted to her was gone, and she knew it would shatter if she used even a fraction of her strength. It was pretty, and though its edge was still sharp, it was useless to her.
She trailed her fingers along the edge of the blade and lifted it over her head to watch the way the moonlight gleamed off of the silver of the blade.
It had been a good tool for the short amount of time she had wielded it. She supposed she would hold onto it. She didn’t know if it could be restored, but perhaps, one day, she would find someone who needed a simple blade. At that, at least, she knew it would still excel.
She lowered the blade to her lap once more and closed her eyes.
Meditation was not something she engaged in frequently. It always seemed to her that there were better ways for her to spend her time, better ways to calm herself, better ways to center herself. But she supposed not all problems could simply be burned through, even if most of them could be.
It took a few moments for her to get into it. Her thoughts kept drifting to other matters, as if the act of simply closing her eyes and deciding she needed to focus had robbed her of the ability to do so. Finally, she curled her fingers around the Fang’s hilt, letting its weight in her hand, minimal though it felt, keep her grounded.
She let her thoughts shift focus from the Fang itself to the trial keeper she got it from, and the frosted, frozen tundra where they’d last spoken. It was not the place she would have ever expected to find a snake (least of all one of truly prehistoric proportions), but she supposed that had all been part of the game.
And what a strange game to play. Playing word games and puzzles with a serpent, to see if it might deign to help her save the world. She couldn’
t say it had been an especially enjoyable game. But she would play it as many times as she needed to in order to keep winning.
That was the important part, wasn’t it?
She felt cold, as if the balustrade beneath her had turned to ice. Though she kept her eyes closed and could see nothing, she heard the sound of a snake’s rattling tail slowly getting closer. Soon enough, she heard a familiar, sibilant voice hissing in her ear, “Hello there.” A forked tongue brushed her cheek before the serpent withdrew slightly. “I didn’t expect to see you again. And you didn’t even cheat this time.”
“I maintain that using fire was not cheating,” she returned. “You needed to be warmed up. I had the means to do so expediently. Using my own abilities is not cheating.”
“Fair enough,” the snake conceded with some amusement.
The blade shifted on her lap, as if it was being prodded, and when the serpent next spoke, the genderless voice was coming from the vicinity of Dask’iya’s knees. “A pity, isn’t it?”
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 42