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 ki
tchen. I thought to save time, I’d inform you in his stead.”
Siobhan heaved yet another sigh, her shoulders rising and falling with it, so great was its melodrama. “Alright,” she huffed. “We’ll head over there and get going.”
So much for watching that comet. And Siobhan had been so looking forward to it. She could’ve named it something silly and convinced the Vampire Lords that was its actual name, because watching them adapt to the way the world worked was one of the few things about them that was consistently entertaining.
But oh well. Duty was calling.
*
For once, they were in a city. It was enormous, skyscrapers clawing at the clouds and enough light pollution that the late night clouds looked orange, and Siobhan doubted she would have been able to see a single star even if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. She could hear sirens in several directions, because in a city of that size, there were always going to be emergencies that needed to be tended to. They offered no insight on where they actually needed to be going.
Barton was already snuffling at Gabriel, muzzle buried amongst the feathers of one of his wings for a few moments, until he decided that was enough and he wheeled about and took off along the sidewalk with the other three in hot pursuit.
They wound up on a residential street, carefully tended to with apartment complexes that reached towards the clouds in every direction. There was smoke billowing out of two of them, and people were screaming. As they watched, two people were flung through a hole in one of the buildings on nearly the top floor. Without even hesitating, Gabriel shot into the air to catch them both and return to the ground with them.
They babbled incoherently, terror and gratitude and awe mixing in equal measures, until the man simply passed out and the woman was left a sobbing mess. Gabriel deposited them behind the corner of the building, tucked into an alley and out of the line of sight and, hopefully, out of the path of destruction.
When there was no satisfying crunch of bodies meeting the pavement below, the angel emerged from the building, hovering high above them but gradually lowering towards them, wings carrying him downwards in a manner that should have been graceful, but mostly managed to look faintly mechanical for its puppet-like movements. It was like watching a beautifully-made marionette being used by a puppeteer who had no experience.
When they found Remael, Siobhan was almost used to the way he so closely resembled Gabriel. Having both Anael and Samael wandering the manor and looking so very similar to each other had softened the unnerving edges of the… family resemblance, as it was.
As ever, though, the resemblance was not exact. Remael was paler than Gabriel by a considerable margin, though still lightly tan. His eyes glowed such a bright shade of green they were almost neon. His hair was black and pulled back into a short tail, and it was such a dark shade that it almost seemed blue in the moonlight. His wings were a pale color caught somewhere between red, gold, and brown, and they gleamed faintly as they flapped.
When he landed, his wings snapped out behind him with a melodramatic flair that had been absent in the others, and Siobhan wondered if the Metatron’s control only managed to strip them of most of their personality, rather than all of it in its entirety.
She didn’t wonder on that long, though. They had a job to do, Siobhan most especially. She shuffled backwards a few steps until she came to the nearest front stoop, and she circled around it to drop to a crouch and sit down against its other side, hidden from view as much as she could be and well away from the hapless civilians Gabriel had snagged out of the air. She didn’t need them getting caught up in anything when Remael inevitably made a grab for her.
As it turned out, though, it wasn’t an enormous concern. Remael lunged straight for Siobhan, but it was an obvious, telegraphed movement, and he was slammed down to the ground when Gabriel clothes-lined him across the chest with one forearm as easily as he might pick up Barton.
Before Remael had a chance to get up, Barton was on him, teeth sinking into the joint of one wing and beginning to drag him backwards. Remael thrashed and squirmed and kicked, making loud, outraged noises at the utter indignity of it all, and his wings beat fitfully before he finally managed to wrench himself free, scattering feathers. Barton sneezed and spit out the mouthful of down he was left with.
Again Remael tried to make a move for Siobhan, but that time, Jack intercepted, catching the archangel’s arm and vaulting him up and over his shoulder to hit the ground with a reverberating thud that made Siobhan’s shoulders ache in sympathy. Granted, he sort of had it coming to him at that point.
Remael scrabbled away, out of Jack’s reach, and slowly got to his feet once again. He looked around to watch as he was closed in upon before he evidently decided that it was not something he wanted to deal with.
When Remael took to the air, it was a fairly obvious attempt at fleeing. Gabriel followed him without effort. He turned in a circle, swatting Remael with one wing and causing him to abruptly drop through the air for a few yards before he caught himself and tried to change directions. There was no way for him to outpace Gabriel, though. Soon enough, there was a hand hooked loosely around his throat, and another holding onto one of his wings. Save for some agitated squirming, Remael fell still in Gabriel’s hold.
When the signal died down, it was like a needle scratching over a record. It was there one moment and gone the next, and Siobhan couldn’t help but to think that the Metatron was getting frazzled with their continued efforts and their continued successes. But she could ponder over that later.
“Gabriel!” Siobhan barked, her fingers tightening in her hair. “Get to it!”
Gabriel hurled Remael downwards so he hit the ground, and when Gabriel landed, he was standing over his brother, wings spread and braced forward to block off escape routes.
“We can get rid of the Metatron’s control over you,” he stated bluntly, “but you must become a vampire to do so.”
“You’ll not banish me from my own home,” Remael snarled in return, sitting up as much as he could. “Just because you decided never to return doesn’t mean the rest of us want to make that decision.”
“You won’t get to return either way,” Gabriel pointed out, and Remael’s eyes widened as, just then, it finally dawned on him that they intended to kill him if he didn’t fall in line.
As quickly as his surprise manifested, it vanished, his eyes narrowing sharply. He spread his wings as much as he was able. “Be a traitor, then,” he snarled. “You’re already off to a good start.”
Gabriel reached forward, quick as lightning, and snapped Remael’s neck as if it took no effort at all. It probably didn’t. He let go, and Remael’s body toppled backwards.
Slowly, Siobhan poked her head up over the edge of the stoop in time to watch Gabriel pick the body up and vanish without any preamble. She supposed she understood. Regardless of the baggage and the history, she wouldn’t like it if she had to kill any members of her family, either.
She could check on him later, back at the manor. After he came back to pick the rest of them up, and after she had some time to nurse her headache.
*
Meditation was not something Harendra had ever put much stock in, in the past. If he needed to reflect on something or calm himself down, he had other ways of doing so, and his own methods were generally not quite so mind-numbingly dull.
Needs must when a devil takes the wheel, he supposed, though the phrase seemed a touch backwards, given the nature of their enemies lately.
When it came time for it, he left the manor entirely. He had the ability to be anywhere he wanted to be as quickly as he pleased. Considering that, why would he stay at a manor that he held no attachment to? There was no one room over any other that inspired calm in him. The manor didn’t inspire much of anything in him. It was Regina’s home, not his.
So that was where he went. He went home. Back to India. Back to the plantation he had hibernated beneath for centuries.
It was much the s
ame as it was when he’d last seen it, after Siobhan and Jack woke him from his slumber. He made his way leisurely through the maze that the pepper plants had been turned into, deftly avoiding the traps scattered throughout it as he did. His thoughts wandered as he walked, only occasionally returning to the shepherd’s crook he held loosely in one hand.
Useless. It would splinter if he simply tightened his grip, and its power was long gone. But it had served its purpose well while it had still functioned. He had saved people with it. Not many, but enough to make a difference. Just saving one person would have made a difference, he supposed, but the Serpent had helped to defeat the seraphim, stealing from them the single moment where they might have been able to turn the tide. They never stood a chance, courtesy of the Serpent.
It was a pity to see it reduced to little more than an attractive chunk of wood. But he didn’t want to focus on that too much. He had a purpose for being there, and as he made it to the center of the maze, he dragged his thoughts towards that purpose.
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