“It is,” Dask’iya agreed easily. “I was rather fond of it. It was a noble weapon.”
The snake hissed out a sigh, and its tail rattled in agitation. “All the time I dedicated to keeping it safe, and this is what it gets,” it scoffed. “You know, I was made for this blade.”
“I imagine its loss is a bit of a slap in the face,” Dask’iya acknowledged, and there was honest sympathy in her voice.
The snake paused for a moment. “Something like that,” it agreed quietly, and it gave the sword a final prod with its nose. “Yes, that’s an apt description.” It sounded thoughtful, and soon, its voice was coming from in front of her face. On a whim, Dask’iya reached up to press a hand to its nose, her fingers splaying over it.
They were silent for a moment, and then the snake leaned forward, pressing its head more firmly against her hand. “I can help you,” it volunteered, it’s voice low and secretive but playful at the same time. “That’s why you’re here, is it not? You need my help—all of our help—to be rid of the Metatron.”
Dask’iya nodded once, just a quiet dip of her chin towards her chest.
“I can help you,” it repeated, sounding more thoughtful that time. “Others of us have already agreed to.”
“Will you?” Dask’iya asked, her voice level. Curious, but mild. “It’s a grievous insult to be made irrelevant. If you help, then it is you who shall make him irrelevant instead.”
There was a quiet hiss and a gentle, slow rattle. “Yes,” it agreed slowly. “Yes, I think I shall. But,” and it pressed its head more firmly against her fingers, “the question is, what is it, specifically, you are asking for my help with? I can get you into Heaven, true enough, but is that all?”
“Not quite,” Dask’iya conceded easily. “We’ve been informed that all of you in concert can get us and him out of Heaven. To make it safer for us.”
“We can,” the snake confirmed easily. “And I suppose I shall,” it sighed, its words escaping as more of a quiet hiss. “I would be done with him, if it’s possible. I think we’re all getting rather tired of the mayhem he’s brought. To add insult to injury is the final straw.”
“Thank you.” Dask’iya pressed her hand against its nose more firmly, and it pushed back, only to withdraw a moment later.
Its voice hissed against her ear, “I believe that’s all you came here for.”
Dask’iya opened her eyes, and she found herself looking over the manor’s grounds. She looked down, and she was still seated on the balcony’s railing. With a quiet sigh, she lifted the Fang of Eden once again, watching the way the light played over it.
It would have been fitting, she thought, if the Metatron could be bested with his own weapons. But it wasn’t to be, she supposed. No matter. With or without irony, they would do away with him, and they would be done with his chaos. Their world would be safe, and they could all be done with the angels pouring out of the woodwork.
Of course, that wasn’t to say other problems wouldn’t arise later. The world was never so organized. Never so neat. It hadn’t been during her reign. She doubted it would be at any point in the future. But she supposed she had no complaints about that. It made the world… charming. She imagined she would get bored if everything was always exactly as it should be. And truly, ‘bored’ was not something anyone ever wanted the Vampire Lords to be.
Let them keep wondering. Let the world never run out of things to show them or ways to surprise them. Let the world forever hold their attention. She was not naïve enough or optimistic enough to think that they could get by on good will alone.
*
“We haven’t run into Raphael yet,” Siobhan mused, voice partially muffled as she dug through the fridge for something involving the appropriate amount of sugar. (Who knew? Turning into a vampire didn’t break an addiction to processed sugar. Siobhan couldn’t even be disappointed, because really, why would she complain that she still craved cookies and frosting periodically?) As she emerged from the fridge with a brownie, she wondered, “Who’s left, other than him?”
“Just Remael,” Gabriel replied, eying the confection dubiously. Siobhan thought about offering him a bite, but he always remained adamant in his denial. (“Having never eaten actual food before, I’m not sure what I would get out of it now,” had been his exact words the first time Siobhan tried to insist.) So she paid no mind to the whim and, instead, took a bite that nearly filled her mouth.
“Have I met him yet?” she asked, her voice muffled once again, that time by the sheer amount of food in her mouth.
Finally, Jack chimed in, “Barbarian,” before he turned his attention back to his phone. Siobhan cheerfully flipped him off with the hand that wasn’t holding the brownie.
“No, you haven’t,” Gabriel sighed, leaning back slightly, as if she was going to spray crumbs all over him. “He tended to avoid leaving Heaven unless he was strictly ordered to.”
Slowly, Jack peered up from his phone. “He doesn’t sound like the type who will agree to being turned, since he would never be allowed back,” he pointed out.
“He probably won’t,” Gabriel agreed, his voice low. His wings flexed slightly behind him, feathers rustling, before he pulled them in tight to his back again.
Siobhan swallowed, set her snack down on the counter, and gave Gabriel’s shoulder a delicate punch. “We’re doing the best we can, Gabe,” she reminded him, bonking her shoulder into his.
“True enough,” he agreed, followed by, “You’re getting crumbs on me.”
That was the end of that conversation, evidently. Siobhan pulled a wide-eyed, apologetic face and all but swooned away from him, one forearm across her forehead as she did. “How ever shall I apologize?” she cried, as she instead wilted over Jack’s shoulder.
“With your mouth and your words, probably,” he suggested wryly, before he added, “Or, more likely, not at all.”
Siobhan punched his shoulder considerably less delicately, and sulked when he gave a couple of her curls a tug.
“I don’t even know why I spend time with you two,” Gabriel deadpanned, shaking his head.
Siobhan grinned at him beatifically. “We’re adorable. Like puppies.”
*
When Samael awoke once again, it was without fanfare. Siobhan, Jack, Gabriel, and Anael didn’t even realize she was awake until Alistair ushered her nervously onto the balcony and informed them, “I found her wandering around in the hallway, so I brought her to you.” With that said, he turned on his heel and scampered away. While Siobhan was still very fond of him, she did sometimes wish he’d been granted the opportunity to grow a bit beyond his teenage flightiness. Ah, well. It wasn’t as if he was causing any problems, and she was sure he had more than a few things he could have complained about in regards to her.
For a few moments, Samael stood in silence, observing them. The air was tense, but not as tense as it could have been. While it was true enough that they had only Samael’s word that she intended to behave and leave well enough alone, and that word was not exactly a binding contract, it was also true that, if she tried anything, Gabriel and Anael could deal with the problem without any trouble. Regardless of whether or not Samael truly wanted to behave, it was in her best interest to do so, lest she find her life expectancy abruptly shortened.
Eventually, she opened her mouth to speak, before Anael cut her off. “You can still hear it.”
“We know,” Gabriel added. “It’s fine.”
Samael closed her mouth and nodded slowly. “Will it go away?” she wondered quietly after a moment of thought.
“Presumably once the Metatron is dead,” Gabriel answered simply.
Samael didn’t look entirely comfortable with the idea, but Siobhan supposed she could give her a pass. When one was millennia old, adjusting to an entirely new way of living couldn’t be an easy thing. If she was anything like her brother and her sister, then she would be fine.
“You’re alright?” Gabriel wondered after a moment, his he
ad cocked to one side as he watched her expectantly.
Samael jerked slightly, startled, as if her thoughts had been in another universe entirely. She nodded once, quickly. “More or less,” she replied, linking her hands together in front of herself and folding her wings tightly to her back. “I will… adjust, I suppose,” she added, though she sounded faintly unsure.
“I can help,” Anael assured her. “I leave the heavy lifting to Gabriel, so if you need me, I’m never far off.”
Hesitantly, Samael smiled.
Things would be okay, probably. That was what Siobhan liked to believe, at any rate. It made life easier. It gave her something to look forward to. Maybe some people thought it was more realistic to expect the worst in everything, but she couldn’t imagine they were particularly happy with their lots in life if they were never actually taking the time to appreciate any of it.
No, thanks but no thanks. She would keep her quiet optimism.
Contently, she deposited herself on Jack’s lap and got comfortable. Her headache wasn’t even too bad just then.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Do angels have hobbies when they aren’t waging war?” Jack’s question came entirely out of left field, and Gabriel, Anael, and Samael turned to stare at him almost as one. “That was creepy,” he tacked on pleasantly. “So, did you? Or did you all just bask in your perfectness up in Heaven?” He cocked his head to one side thoughtfully. “Is Heaven even ‘up,’ or what? How would you get to it?”
“It’s not a place above the clouds,” Samael sighed. “It’s an alternate plane. So it’s not quite ‘up.’ Explaining it beyond that is difficult.”
“And some of us did mostly sit and ponder our perfection,” Gabriel added.
“We found them rather boring,” Anael interjected dryly. Slightly more seriously, she added, “The seraphim never did much, but we hardly saw them if they weren’t needed. We were never even sure if they were awake the rest of the time.”
“Other than that, we kept ourselves busy,” Gabriel explained. “Anael and I were explorers, though we weren’t the only ones. We had games, and we had duties we were supposed to tend to.”
“For some of us, there was art,” Samael offered, “but it was… a very niche thing. Many of us didn’t want to feel like we were copying the humans. We felt it would’ve been… beneath us.”
With some amusement, Anael added, “Even those of us who partook liked to say it was because we were improving upon it.”
“Were you?” Siobhan wondered, draping over Barton like some sort of cape. He slept as if she wasn’t there.
“Not especially,” Gabriel answered blandly. “We’re not particularly imaginative. Creativity wasn’t deemed necessary when our molds were made.”
“A pity,” Anael supposed. “It seems like it would be fun, coming up with something entirely new.”
“You know, you can learn creativity,” Siobhan pointed out. “You can sort of… pick it up from the world around you or the things you do with your time.”
Nodding his head, Jack added, “People do all the time. It’s not like we pop out of the womb with all of these crazy ideas already in our heads.”
At that, the trio of archangels looked thoughtful. And it was nice, Siobhan decided, to give them things to look forward to. They hadn’t asked to be part of this world, but there was no reason they couldn’t enjoy being part of it.
*
“How’s your head?”
It had become a daily question. Multiple times a day, actually. Siobhan was getting sort of sick of it. Not because she thought Jack was getting annoying—he never pushed, he never badgered her about it, he just asked the question—but because she was running out of ways to avoid the question. She couldn’t just tell him ‘fine.’ He would know that was a lie, and she didn’t want to start lying to him. Not if she didn’t have to, and this didn’t qualify as a ‘have to’ sort of situation as far as she was concerned.
“It’s been better,” she replied, shrugging one shoulder. It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t a real answer, and Jack’s eyes narrowed slightly. He let the matter drop, though.
“How’s Barton behaving?” he asked instead, looking down at his notebook.
With a grin, Siobhan launched into a detailed explanation of how well he was behaving, how she hardly had to scold him at all anymore, how he barely needed to be told when he couldn’t eat anymore, and how he was such a clever boy for picking all of it up as quickly as he had and without any serious incidents. Jack nodded along as she rambled, and on the two occasions where she challenged whether or not he was actually listening anymore, he repeated back to her exactly what she had just said.
She guessed the matter of her headaches had dropped for the time being, which was good, really, because her head was killing her. It felt like she had a brass band parading through her brain, putting on one hell of a halftime show. She didn’t want to have to think about it anymore than she already did, if she could help it.
*
It was time, Siobhan thought, for Jack to be the center of attention. The center of scrutiny. Or at least, the center of her scrutiny.
“So, what’s it like for you, having an angel in your head?” she wondered, stealing the seat beside him in the kitchen. “Is it super weird?”
He blinked at her, plastic bag raised halfway to his mouth. He lowered it, his forearms leaning against the table. “Not super weird,” he replied. “Only a little weird. I figure the bond might be sort of weak, since she got my blood but I didn’t bite her.”
“Plus angels are just really good at tuning that sort of thing out, apparently,” Siobhan informed him. “Here I needed a whole crash course in ‘how to ignore your vampire sire,’ and Gabe, Annie, and Sam can just… do so. Like it’s nothing.”
“We’re a different species,” Jack reminded her, lifting the bag again. He bit through it and took a few gulps from it before he pulled it away from his face to add, “Less similarities might just make it easier to ignore, since it’d be… more like gibberish.”
“I guess,” Siobhan conceded with a huff. “Still, it’d be nice if they didn’t make me feel slightly inadequate.” There was no heat behind her words, though, and they were said largely in good fun. Jack patted her shoulder sympathetically and resumed drinking his dinner.
They lapsed into content silence for a time as Jack finished his dinner and Siobhan let her thoughts wander. And then, she tapped at her mental bond with Jack. They kept it fairly quiet most of the time, not wanting to look unprofessional around so many Vampire Lords. Considering that, Jack seemed to nearly have a heart attack at the curious tap, and Siobhan couldn’t hold back a grin at his surprise.
She felt a brief, small surge of indignation in response to her amusement, which only encouraged her to open the bond wider. She liked being connected to Jack. Their bond wasn’t unique amongst vampires—it was a standard part of the package—but even so, she liked to feel like she had something special and hidden with him.
Her fondness was echoed by his own, and as he set the empty bag down on the table, Siobhan leaned towards him in anticipation. He turned his head, and she was close enough already to simply seal her lips over his as he turned.
There was a curious edge to his end of the bond. Wondering at the surge of affection, probably. But Siobhan had no explanation beyond a simple ‘I felt like it,’ and at the blasé response, Jack let the matter drop, and instead simply enjoyed the kiss, letting the fingers of one hand thread through her hair.
“Really guys?” Alistair demanded from the doorway, and Siobhan and Jack both split apart to look at him. His face was scrunched up in a scowl, and his hands were on his hips. “You’re both still gross,” he informed them plainly, as if it was simply a fact he was reporting.
“I acknowledge this, and I’m okay with it,” Siobhan returned pleasantly, grinning when Alistair threw his hands up in defeat and retreated once again.
*
Jack and Siobhan were sitting on the
roof, waiting for a comet. It was only going to be small, and it was pretty insignificant—insignificant enough that its name was still just a string of numbers and letters to identify it by—and it probably wouldn’t be particularly bright, but Siobhan wanted to see it anyway, and Jack was content to keep her company.
At least until Anael landed a few feet away from them, her hands folded together in front of herself and her expression politely neutral, as if she was waiting for a chance to speak. Which meant she actually had something to say. They had a guess as to what that something was.
“There’s another angel?” Siobhan sighed, already getting to her feet, slightly awkwardly as she hadn’t bothered to disentangle her fingers from Jack’s. Using her hold on his hand, she pulled him up to his feet.
“Correct,” Anael confirmed, sounding slightly amused by their resignation. “Gabriel is feeding Barton in the kitchen. I thought to save time, I’d inform you in his stead.”
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 43