Siobhan was there for perhaps twenty minutes when she heard the sound of feathers slicing through the air, and she sat up on her elbows as Gabriel landed beside her. He folded his wings in tightly and sat down.
“Samael said you were looking for me,” he stated simply.
“Just wanted to check in,” she replied, shrugging lackadaisically. “You seemed a little out of it after the whole… thing with Remael. Were you close, before?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not particularly, no. As cold as it may seem, my thoughts were not actually occupied by Remael.”
Siobhan rolled onto her side to face him, propping herself up on one elbow. “What’s going on, then?”
“Only one of my siblings remains to be confronted,” he reminded her. “Raphael. I’m… uncertain how that confrontation will play out.”
“It doesn’t really seem like you to worry you won’t be able to kill him,” Siobhan mused quietly.
He shook his head again. “That is not what concerns me,” he stated, his voice low. “You know of the history between us. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to prevent myself from killing him before the time to do so arrives.” His wings rustled with discontent. “I would ask Anael or Samael to handle it in my place, but neither of them have any desire to partake in our… duties, and forcing it upon them because of my shortcomings doesn’t seem fair.”
Siobhan reached over with the hand she wasn’t leaning on to prod his knee. “I really doubt you’re just going to suddenly turn into some sort of murder goblin,” she informed him candidly. “Even when we were still kidnapping you, you’ve never given me any reason to doubt your self-control.” She offered him a small, cheeky smile. “Just make sure you’re well-fed before we leave, and it’ll all work out just fine.”
He breathed out a laugh. “You seem very sure of that.”
“That’s because I am sure of it,” she informed him primly, bringing one hand to her chest as she said. “I can feel it in my bones.”
His eyebrows rose, his expression turning slightly expectant. “Is that a promise?” He reached over with one hand, most of his fingers curled in towards his palm but his pinky finger extended. Grinning, Siobhan reached over and curled her pinky finger around his and squeezed.
“It’s a promise.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sun sank. The manor began to stir to full life, as there weren’t people napping in shifts anymore. And almost immediately, it seemed, Gabriel sought out Siobhan to inform her, “There’s another archangel that we need to deal with.”
“Raphael?” Siobhan guessed, pushing her chair away from the kitchen table and getting to her feet.
“He is the only one left,” Gabriel reasoned, “so I would imagine so.”
Siobhan groaned. There was no concern of Raphael winning—a vampiric archangel was basically unstoppable when pitted against anything other than a Vampire Lord or another vampiric archangel—but that didn’t mean Siobhan had to be happy to see him again. And she was not. Rather emphatically not, in fact. “I’ll go get Jack and Barton,” she grumbled, and she stomped from the room.
She was maybe being a little melodramatic. Perhaps. Just a little. Not that she was actually going to acknowledge it.
“Happening awfully quickly after the last time,” Jack acknowledged, once Siobhan found him and Barton in the bedroom.
“I guess the Metatron is getting impatient,” Siobhan sighed, folding her arms and leaning in the doorframe as she waited for Jack to pull his shoes on. “I mean, he’s kind of running out of toys. Maybe he’s just getting panicky.”
“I’m trying to picture a panicking angel,” Jack remarked after a moment of thought, and his expression screwed up slightly as he tried to imagine it, “and the image just isn’t coming to me.”
“Trust me, it happens,” Siobhan assured him. She smiled briefly, sly and impish, and she brought a finger to her lower lip, as if to try and look innocent. “I put a beetle in Gabriel’s hair once.”
She left Jack to ponder that thought as she turned and shoved herself away from the doorframe, back into the hallway. She could hear him laughing as she walked away.
*
The town was small. It seemed pretty insignificant, all things considered, at least compared to targets like Chambersburg or Belleview. It sort of gave Siobhan the impression that Raphael had simply been flung at the first populated target he spotted and told to break it. Like a kid kicking down sandcastles because they had been built too close to his own.
It wasn’t particularly scenic, and Siobhan hardly spared it a glance before she ushered Barton forward. He did his job as expected, burying his nose in Gabriel’s hands for a long moment before he set off at a trot and then broke into a run, leaving the others to follow along in his wake.
They came to a neat, quiet street lined in houses, some with cars in driveways and some with cars parked quietly along the edge of the sidewalk. It all looked very picturesque, in a slightly uncanny, suburban sort of way. Absolutely nothing about it stood out from a thousand other identical suburban towns.
But there was no time to wonder about whether or not the suburbs could actually assimilate people, as there was a rather ornery archangel hovering above them. Granted, in the limited number of times she had met Raphael, Siobhan couldn’t recall him being anything other than ornery. It seemed to be part and parcel of wanting to kill her and her friends.
If nothing else, it didn’t look as if he had been there for long. The damage to the street was still fairly minimal. Siobhan didn’t expect it to stay that way for long.
Meeting Raphael again was not what Siobhan would consider a good time. She had met him twice before, in a manner of speaking. The first time, he was helping Michael, and the two of them nearly killed Siobhan, Jack, and Gabriel. The second time, she mostly saw him in passing before he did his level best to try to kill Jack and a few of the other vampires from the manor while the Lords dealt with the seraphim. So seeing him again was not exactly what she wanted to do with her evening.
Like Gabriel, he was tall and fit. He had skin like bronze and hair that gleamed like copper, swept back against his head and the back of his neck. His four wings were a pale gold, as if they had been lightly coated in dust, and his eyes shone silver in the darkness.
Raphael was a follower. Siobhan knew that much. He only got involved initially because Michael convinced him, and when he showed up in Belleview, it seemed to be entirely because the seraphim told him to be there and he was just doing as he was told. Knowing that complicated matters, though.
He was a follower. So who was to say that he minded the signal? Though Siobhan supposed it wasn’t that important, there were only a few very limited ways the confrontation could go. Either he would become a vampire, or he would die. But still, Siobhan didn’t want him to have to die. She didn’t really want anyone to have to die. But she supposed she would see how it would all turn out soon enough. These fights never lasted long, after all.
She dove behind a nearby car. Not the best protection, but it was available and she wasn’t inclined to argue. She sat down, curled into a ball with her face buried against her knees, and squeezed her eyes shut. The signal rang between her ears, buzzing like a hornet nest, and she felt a bit like she was about to throw a baseball at it.
With her first attempt to suppress it, it leapt forward and doubled in intensity, and she hissed out a breath between her teeth.
Oh, this was not going to be fun.
Raphael hesitated for a moment before he spread his wings and lunged, angling for the car, only to veer away at the last instant as Jack tried to intercept him. Barton scrambled up onto the hood of the car and then onto the bonnet, and he launched himself off of it like a missile with his teeth bared.
Raphael and the mutt collided and crashed to the ground, scuffling and tumbling across the asphalt. The brakes of an approaching car squealed, and the driver instead (wisely) opted to abandon the vehicle and run, wailing, down the street. The comb
atants ignored him.
Raphael tossed Barton aside, only for Gabriel to catch the dog and toss him back. He latched onto Raphael’s arm, teeth sinking through skin and muscle. Raphael yelled, tugging at his arm, though it only made the situation worse just then, as Barton’s teeth bit deeper, like the teeth of a saw.
Calming slightly, Raphael fisted one hand in the scruff of the mutt’s neck and practically tore him free before tossing him aside. Barton tumbled with a yelp, but bounced back to his feet in an instant, already ready for another go. Blood streamed down Raphael’s arm, and Barton licked his teeth, though he whined in acquiescence when Jack snapped, “No eating!”
Barton stepped back a pace, and Jack surged forward, his shoulder slamming into Raphael’s chest. They tumbled backwards and landed on the road, where Raphael flipped their positions, pinning Jack to the asphalt. He joined both of his fists together like a club and raised them, though he never got a chance to strike, as Gabriel grabbed him by two of his wings and hauled him back and away, letting Jack scramble back to his feet as Raphael tried to squirm free.
Raphael took to the air for only a moment, knowing it was an ultimately pointless endeavor. Rather than trying to get distance, he instead swooped towards Jack. Jack began to backpedal, but he would never be faster than an archangel, and he knew that. He braced himself as a hand wrapped around his throat and wrenched him off of the ground.
Raphael scrutinized him for half a second before shaking him like a ragdoll and tossing him aside. Jack shouted in surprise as he very briefly soared through the air before he landed roughly once again.
Siobhan ignored it all to the best of her abilities. As it turned out, she was very good at tuning things out.
The signal was so loud, for once Siobhan wasn’t sure she would be able to beat it. The car behind her shifted as Jack slammed into it, and she cringed and redoubled her efforts. She couldn’t think like that. She had to win. She could wrangle the signal into silence no matter how much it felt like her skull was going to implode.
She couldn’t stop, though. She couldn’t just give up. She hadn’t before. She hadn’t made a habit of it in the past. She wasn’t going to start now.
(Admittedly, she wasn’t entirely sure if it was because she sincerely wanted to succeed or because, if this was the time she failed, it would look an awful lot like spite. Maybe it could be both.)
With a deep breath, she wrapped all of her focus around the signal, as if she was throwing a blanket over it. And then, throwing all of her mental weight against it, she did her best to smother it.
With a gasp, the signal fell silent, though it felt like it was buzzing beneath her skin. Siobhan opened her mouth to let the others know, but she didn’t get a chance before Raphael cried, “Wait!”
He held his hands up in a pacifying motion, backing away. Gabriel came to a halt, his wings partially spread but motionless, calm but ready to move. He took a deep breath and offered in a low voice, “If I turn you into a vampire, he won’t be able to control you.”
Raphael seemed conflicted at the offer, staring like a deer caught in a pair of headlights. He jerked back to himself as Gabriel added sharply, “But you must decide quickly.”
Raphael nodded, just a brief jerk of motion. “Alright,” he agreed, his voice quiet, and he stepped closer to Gabriel, though not without a certain amount of wariness.
Gabriel closed the last of the distance between them, placed a hand on Raphael’s chin to turn his head to the side, and bit into his shoulder. Raphael hissed and his wings twitched, though Gabriel paid him no mind, instead moving on to bite into his own wrist. He dripped his blood over the wound, and as soon as the first few drops landed, Gabriel released him and backed up several paces.
“Very shortly, you’re going to get very uncomfortable and pass out,” he explained to the confused look on Raphael’s face. “Before that happens, though, the signal is most likely going to come back, and you’ll start fighting like a feral weasel.”
As if on cue, Siobhan whined and the signal battered its way through her control and rattled back to full strength. Raphael stiffened, shook his head slightly, and then launched himself at Jack, who narrowly ducked out of the way before he could be slammed into the car again. Grabbing hold of one of Raphael’s wings as it passed, he twisted to the side and heaved with all of his weight, tossing Raphael aside. He tumbled over the road for a moment before he scrambled back to his feet, his wings flaring open behind him.
Barton bounded over, snapping at one wing, only for it to glide out of his mouth as his teeth closed on nothing but a pair of primary feathers. Unperturbed, he snapped at the back of one of Raphael’s legs, keeping him distracted until Jack tackled him to the ground again.
Jack pinned him to the asphalt, knees on Raphael’s elbows and hands forcing one pair of wings flat to the ground. Raphael struggled and thrashed with growing urgency until, abruptly, his eyes rolled back and he went limp.
Jack stayed right where he was for a moment, just to make sure the archangel wasn’t playing possum, before he rolled aside to instead sit on the asphalt. “We’ll go find somewhere to sit,” he offered as Gabriel picked Raphael up.
With a final nod, Gabriel vanished.
Jack reluctantly heaved himself back to his feet and made his way over to the car as Siobhan was poking her head out from behind it.
“That was the last of Gabriel’s siblings, right?” he wondered, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer. Double-checking never hurt anyone.
Siobhan nodded once. “That’s all of them,” she confirmed, folding her arms on the hood of the car and resting her chin on them as Jack hoisted himself up to sit on it.
“Think that means we’re almost done with all of this?” he asked, tipping his head to the side to look down at her.
“Hopefully,” she sighed. “Gabriel did say his family was the most combat capable. So the Metatron would be downgrading no matter what he decides to do next. But I’m pretty sure the Lords are almost finished with whatever they’ve been doing, so hopefully that means this will all be cleaned up soon.”
“Yeah, I’m getting a little tired of seeing my face on the news,” Jack added wryly.
“At least no one knows who we are,” Siobhan pointed out wryly. “And hey, what’s wrong with getting fifteen minutes of fame?”
“Because I have basically no good side when I’m taking a wing straight to the face.” There was a beat, and he added, “Granted, all of the conspiracy theories are pretty funny.”
Siobhan snorted. “I know, right? If I see one more person talk about how the Rapture is finally happening, I’m not going to be able to contain myself. My laughter will be loud and mean.”
Jack patted her shoulder sympathetically. “It’s okay, I’ll be right there with you.”
It was a silly joke, but the smile it brought to Siobhan’s face was probably unwontedly soft. She didn’t think Jack noticed, or if he did, he didn’t comment on it.
*
Though it might have surprised some of the others in the manor to know it, Allambee used to meditate quite a lot. It was a good way to refocus his thoughts on what needed to be done and to realize what unnecessary things he was focusing on too much, to the detriment of other things.
He wasn’t as fussy as most of the others. He didn’t need to be utterly at peace for it. Tune out the rest of the world long enough, and peace would come on its own. So he simply sat down on the bed in his suite on the charmingly dubbed Lords’ Floor. He stretched his arms over his head, picked up the dented shield from where it was propped up against the bedside table, and laid back on the mattress.
His eyes closed slowly, and he let his thoughts wander, letting them drift naturally as he felt the cool silver of the shield beneath his fingers. The Scale had been a valuable asset, and it had been as reliable as they came. And honestly, there was very little more satisfying that watching a seraph bounce off of it as if they were being launched out of a cannon.
He had be
en fond of it, for all that it had been his for only a very short time. Though he wondered if he could even consider it his, if he truly had so little control over it. But then, who did it belong to? Him? The trial keeper? The Metatron? He suspected the actual answer was somewhere in the middle.
He could feel firm, cool crystal beneath him, and if he concentrated, he could hear it ripple and crack as the massive serpent emerged from it. With a sound like stones rubbing together, it circled around him, armor-like scales dragging over the crystal until, at last, it came to a halt. A tongue brushed Allambee’s face, and he knew the snake had reared up to lean over him. A moment later, it shifted, resting its head against the Scale of Eden, as if it were a pillow. Its head was surprisingly heavy, considering Allambee’s strength even without the shield’s power.
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 45