She punched his shoulder.
It was decent entertainment after that, listening to Sinead spout questions at the angels. A lot of them were conversations that Siobhan and Jack had already had with them, and that seemed to help, giving them a known angle to answer from.
The topics ranged all over the place, from what they thought of humans to what they thought of human entertainment to what angels did in their downtime to how many angels there were and why a handful of them were living in a vampire house.
…They carefully avoided that last topic. It seemed like it would be a bit much, maybe, to expect Sinead and Sean to perfectly accept the idea of angels being at war with the mortal world and being turned into vampires being the only way to get out of it.
Samael opened up quickly enough, though she seemed far keener on Sinead than on Sean. Siobhan could understand. Sinead’s boundless enthusiasm for basically anything she set her mind to was sort of infectious, and it had always been fairly compelling. It was basically the first thing Siobhan thought about whenever she thought of her sister: enthusiasm as bright as the sun. Sean’s own taciturn nature had to seem almost cold in comparison.
By the time the conversation was wrapping up, even Raphael had offered his own two cents a few times. Siobhan supposed it was probably good for him to simply talk to a few average, non-vampiric people and know that they existed. He had to get used to them, after all. He was going to be around for a very long time.
(Even if Siobhan wasn’t thrilled at the idea of her siblings being the guinea pigs used to acclimate him to humanity. She supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers.)
The archangels departed, eventually, bidding Jack, Siobhan, and her siblings farewell. Curiosity had drawn them out of the manor, rather than any sort of pressing need, so there was no need to linger. Besides, Siobhan was pretty sure they were getting uncomfortable; they weren’t particularly well-adjusted when it came to talking to more than two people at a time.
The rest of them lingered at the pond for a while longer, if only because Sinead was determined that she had to try to catch a frog. She denied all of Siobhan’s offers to help, since enhanced speed apparently counted as cheating.
Not that she actually did anything with the frog once she did catch it. She cooed over it for a moment because of how adorable it was (according to her, at least; Siobhan had always preferred fuzzier animals) before she let it go once more while Sean applauded the acquisition in the background.
Siobhan really had missed them. Assuming she survived everything with the Metatron, she really did need to make an effort to see them more often.
*
Returning to the manor—or at least the manor’s driveway—was a quiet affair. It was a comfortable sort of silence, though, even if Sinead and Sean still seemed (understandably, admittedly) rather unnerved by the entire matter of ‘inhuman creatures actually exist, some of them look almost perfectly human, and your sister is one of them.’ They would adjust, though. Siobhan had faith in that. And she was glad to have seen them, regardless of how it went. Soon would come the confrontation with the Metatron. She would be no help there, and she had no idea how it was going to go. She didn’t want to leave any loose ends, should the worst happen.
Not that she thought it was going to. She just wanted to be prepared.
Sinead threw her arms around Siobhan’s neck once again, seeming to enjoy the novelty of being able to just dangle there as if she weighed nothing. More restrained, Sean slung an arm around Siobhan’s shoulders and gave her a noogie. As she scowled and tried to fix her hair to no avail, both of her siblings shook Jack’s hand.
There was a moment where the four of them simply stood there, observing each other in silence. It was a brief moment, though, and it ended without commentary as Sean turned away to head back to the car and Sinead followed closely on his heels.
Jack headed back inside, leaving Siobhan to watch as Sean’s car began to drive back along the driveway.
She waved after the car until it disappeared over the nearest hill before she turned away at last, heading towards the manor once again. Her head pounded dully as she headed back inside.
*
Siobhan’s head hurt. That was nothing new by that point, but it was growing to new, creative levels. Her skull throbbed as if it was trying to crack into pieces in time with her pulse. Her ears rang, and even with the curtains drawn and the lights off, everything still seemed just on the edge of too bright. She squeezed her eyes shut and refused to open them even when she heard the door opening. She didn’t hear the click of claws on the floor and the door was opening too purposefully to be the dog nudging it open, so she knew it wasn’t Barton, which meant someone had gone looking for her.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She didn’t want company. Company made noise and expected her to talk, and just then, she wasn’t really up to pretending she was okay. More importantly, it was rather apparent that she was not okay, which sort of voided all of her past efforts to prove the opposite.
She was curled up in the middle of the bed when Jack found her. She heard him start to ask a question, though he fell quiet with a click of teeth as he looked at her, before she got a chance to figure out what the question was going to be.
Slowly and quietly, he crawled onto the bed and pressed up behind her. He tucked his face against the back of her neck and began to stroke a hand through her hair, the motion steady and soothing. It would have been calming had she been in a position to be anything other than calm.
He didn’t ask her what was wrong, which was a relief. She supposed he didn’t need to. It was pretty apparent that she was in pain, and there had really only been one culprit with regards to her pain recently.
Mostly, she was just glad that he wasn’t trying to talk. Everything was too loud, and she felt like she was going to burst out of her head like a firework. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to handle talking just then.
For a few moments, not much else happened, though Siobhan’s thoughts continued to churn sluggishly.
Jack’s hand running through her hair felt nice, but it wasn’t quite enough of a distraction. Siobhan wanted to feel better. Failing that, she wanted to at least not notice how shitty she felt. With that thought in mind, she disentangled herself from Jack and pushed him back on the bed. Leaning close to him, so that their noses brushed and there was hardly any space between their lips, she said, “Make me feel good, Jack.”
He paused for a moment, though he nodded slowly. He gave her a thoughtful look, and then shifted backwards, away from her, until he could swing his legs over the side of the bed and stand up. It was not particularly surprising to see him begin to strip his clothes off, and it wasn’t particularly surprising when he motioned at her expectantly and said, “Come on, clothes off. All of it.”
Siobhan sat up on her knees on the bed and began to strip, tossing first her shirt and then her bra over the edge of the bed. Her shorts and her panties followed. Completely bare, she sat cross-legged on the bed, looking at him expectantly.
Jack motioned for her to lie down, and then for her to roll over.
There were a rather limited number of things she was expecting to happen once they were both naked. Being told to lie down on her belly wasn’t quite one of them, but it could pretty easily factor into them. Jack straddling the backs of her thighs didn’t factor into them quite as well. And then his hands were kneading her shoulders, and it began to make more sense, and then he pressed his thumbs into a knot between her shoulders, and with a quiet moan, she decided she was done thinking about how any of it fit together, so long as he kept doing what he was doing.
His hands moved steadily down her back, working outward from her spine and then inward once again. At first, she praised him every so often, but by the time he made it down to her tailbone and began working his hands back up towards her shoulders once again, she was beyond words, reduced to just the occasional moan.
She had a new, very intense appre
ciation for Jack’s hands.
When his hands made it back to her shoulders, they trailed up the sides of her neck and stroked through her hair, massaging her scalp for a moment before they began to work their way down once again. By the time his fingers were once again kneading at the dip of her back just before her ass, she was limp and loose-limbed, and she was pretty sure she was going to fall asleep. She hardly even noticed when he shifted so he was kneeling beside her, rather than astride her.
With one hand, he coaxed her thighs to spread slightly, and she sighed out a quiet gasp as he pressed two fingers to the lips of her sex. He stroked the outer folds slowly for a drawn-out moment, until her hips were shifting lackadaisically against the bedspread, before he finally let his fingers dip between the folds to begin stroking her clit. Gently, at first, almost as if he was simply trying to tickle her, and then firmer, fingers pressing against it as he rubbed them in circles.
He waited until she was moaning steadily before he pressed his thumb to her entrance and found it dripping. With three fingers still rubbing her clit, he pushed his thumb inside, letting it shift to and fro within her heat with each motion of his hand, until with a low, breathy cry, she came, fluid flooding over his fingers. He kept stroking, working her through her orgasm until she was whining quietly.
Pulling his hand away, he scrubbed it off on the blanket. With a hand on her hip, he urged her, “Roll over.” She complied easily, rolling onto her back, hands splayed gracelessly at her sides. She lifted her head reluctantly as Jack got up, the mattress shifting. He curled his hands around her hips and gave her a tug, until her hips were hanging off of the end of the bed. She looked confused at first, until he placed his hands on her knees to push them apart and then knelt on the floor between them.
He cupped his hands behind her knees and urged her to hitch them over his shoulders, and he waited until she did so before he shuffled forward on his knees, close enough that he could duck his head down, between her legs. His hands drifted downwards, so his fingers could curl against her thighs.
The first lap of his tongue, only against the outer folds of her sex, was slow, but it still hit her like a shock. She had never had anyone do this before, and just the anticipation alone had her hands fisting in the blanket beneath her.
He lapped at her gently, his tongue dragging only over the outer lips of her sex at first, until she was squirming impatiently against the bed. Finally, he tightened his hold on her thighs and dipped his head forward, his tongue parting her labia. It dipped past her entrance briefly, before dragging upwards, to lap at her clit. He closed his lips around the nub and sucked, and nearly instantly, there were two hands clenched in his hair. He let her push him more firmly against her.
Her fingers tightened in his hair, and her legs tensed against his shoulders as he worked her with his lips and tongue, until he had to push her hips down to the bed to keep her from grinding against his face. She gasped and moaned, and she writhed under his hands. He redoubled his efforts until, finally, her back arched away from the bed like a bow and her fingers tightened to the point that it was nearly painful, before her grip relaxed all at once as she came.
Jack leaned back and to the side, letting go of Siobhan’s hips and using the blanket to wipe the lower half of his face dry. Siobhan went limp on the bed, every muscle going lax, so her legs fell down from his shoulders. She panted slowly, drawing air into her lungs in long, heaving gulps.
Slowly, Jack stood up and crawled back onto the bed. Carefully, he began rearranging Siobhan, pulling her the rest of the way back onto the bed, until he could kneel between her legs. He hitched her legs up towards her chest, nearly bending her in half. He gave her a questioning look, and she managed a clumsy, glazed-eyed nod for him to go ahead. He lined his cock up with her entrance and pushed forward, gliding in easily. He groaned, low and drawn-out, and Siobhan sighed out a quiet moan.
His first thrust was slow, and then Siobhan breathed out a quiet, “Go on,” and after that, there was no holding back. Each thrust was fast and harsh, scooting Siobhan steadily along the bed. It didn’t take long before her hips were rolling to meet each thrust as heat began to build in her abdomen for a third time.
Siobhan, running low on anything resembling stamina at that point, came first. Jack kept thrusting through her orgasm as her muscles tensed, and he kept thrusting afterwards as she went limp, her eyes half-lidded. When, at last, he came, it was with a final handful of stuttering, uneven thrusts, before he leaned over her to catch his breath. He let go of her legs, letting them fall back to the bed on either side of him. Slowly, once he caught his breath, he withdrew.
Gracelessly, Jack toppled to the side, tumbling down onto the mattress beside her. Siobhan rolled sluggishly onto her side and burrowed closer to him, slinging an arm across his chest as she did.
Both of them were a mess, coated in a sheen of sweat. Jack’s hair was in absolute disarray from Siobhan’s hands, and her curls were in every direction, some of them stuck to her forehead, cheeks, and neck.
For a very long moment, no one said anything. And then, Jack turned his head to look at her. She was definitely more relaxed than she had been when he’d walked into the room.
“Verdict?” he asked wryly, pushing her hair back from her face.
Siobhan breathed out a tired laugh. “Definitely made me feel good,” she replied, tucking herself more firmly against his side. She ducked her head against his shoulder, muffling her voice slightly as she added, “I think I’m just going to sleep for the next three days.”
“Probably more like three hours,” Jack corrected blandly, idly carding his fingers through her hair. She grunted at him incoherently, which he took to mean that the time for conversation had ended, at least for the time being. Obligingly, he fell silent.
Siobhan was out for the count in what seemed to be an instant, and she hardly even twitched the entire time she slept.
She dreamed of a phoenix falling through the air as it crumbled to ash and struggled to pull itself back together, until it finally managed to turn into a fresh, unburned chick. It wobbled along, growing steadily, until it took off once again, a bright and beautiful and burning bird, lighting its way across the sky.
Maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn’t. She wasn’t particularly inclined to think too hard on it—stressing about what her sleeping imagination was trying to tell her had never been particularly high on her to-do list—and, soon enough, the images faded, and the rest of her sleep was dreamless.
CHAPTER TEN
To all appearances, it was an average night. It was mildly cloudy, but the weather was calm. The manor was quiet, and nothing particularly adventurous was going on within the walls. There was no rain. There was hardly even a breeze. It was simply a night like any other, with no details to pick out that made it stand out from any others. But it felt like something was going to happen that night. There was a thrum in the air, as if the entire world had taken a breath and was holding it while they waited to see what happened.
The Vampire Lords were deliberating, locked away in Regina’s chambers. With all of the trial keepers contacted and in agreement, all that was left to do was to decide when they were going to deal with the Metatron. Everyone was reasonably certain that the answer was going to be ‘tonight.’ Time was an important factor, after all, and there was nothing else standing in their way.
No one could say they were surprised when the Vampire Lords gathered everyone together on the manor’s ground floor and Regina explained, “Tonight, we’re putting an end to this, one way or another. We’re going to confront the Metatron, and whatever happens, that will be the end of things.”
“What do you want us to do?” Jack asked, always the first to volunteer for anything Regina needed done.
Regina shook her head. “Nothing,” she answered simply. “This will take the efforts of five Vampire Lords. There is nothing you can do. All of you are to stay clear of whatever conflict erupts. Leave, if you wish. Because whatever is g
oing to happen will kill you if you get caught in the middle of it.” She gave Jack, Siobhan, and Gabriel a very meaningful look. “Do I make myself clear?”
There was some indistinct mumbling in reply until Regina’s eyes sharpened, and Jack, Siobhan, and Gabriel answered, almost as one, “Understood.”
“Good.” Regina nodded once, satisfied. From there, all five Vampire Lords filed out of the manor into the yard. They clustered together, standing in a circle, close enough that they could reach out and grab the shoulders of the Lords to either side of them. They were all being watched from the windows and doors, and they knew, but to be fair, none of them had actually expected the ‘it might be a good idea to leave’ suggestion to be followed.
All five of the Lords let their eyes close, and they reached for that feeling that holding the Pieces of Eden had once invoked, focusing on that space in the backs of their minds where they knew the trial keepers were waiting to be called upon.
Regina felt roots brushing her legs and the shade of leaves over her shoulders. Harendra felt scaly coils around his arm, shifting and tightening slightly. Dask’iya heard the rattling of a serpent’s tail. Allambee felt a forked tongue against the back of his neck before a wedge-shaped head nudged his shoulder. Osamu heard a bell-like laugh, and a hand curled around one of his shoulders almost companionably.
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