“Very well,” she murmured, though there was nothing gentle in the softness. “Who is awake now?” she wondered, and there was something detached and clinical in her tone. “I will go there.”
“Regina,” he answered, his voice unsteady. “Do you need--”
She raised a hand sharply, and Jack closed his mouth so quickly that his teeth clicked. “I need nothing,” she informed him flatly. She smoothed her hands down her dress, gave first Jack and then Siobhan a searching look, and just like that, she was gone.
For a moment, nothing happened, and then Jack released an explosive sigh and slid down the wall until he was crouching on his heels. “I thought she was going to gut me.”
“Let’s…let’s just get going,” Siobhan suggested, pointing unsteadily back up the stairs with one finger, though her eyes remain locked on what remained of the bed. “Before anything else happens.” Like what? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to pretend nothing unusual could happen. A few days ago, she hadn’t even thought vampires were real.
They made it back outside and to the truck in record time. Siobhan only had to call Barton once before he came loping over, still cleaning his teeth from whatever he had decided to turn into his dinner.
They were back on the road in no time, eager to leave the ramshackle lake house and its leaking basement behind them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Siobhan had never been on a ship before. She had been on a few speedboats and canoes, and she had even been kayaking, but she had never been on anything large enough to have more than one deck. She had certainly never been on one the size of a cruise ship.
It was slower than flying, Jack had explained, but it was easier to avoid sunlight on a ship than in the air. They couldn’t exactly close every window on an airplane and expect that no one would open them again. They could, however, retreat to their cabin on the ship until sundown. After a few calls to Regina, she had even managed to get them forged papers listing Barton as Siobhan’s medical assistance dog so he could stay in their cabin with them.
At night, they roamed the deck while the majority of the passengers were asleep, and they watched the way the moon turned the waves silver.
When the ship pulled into port in Hokkaido, the sun was high in the sky, but it was a simple matter for them to grab their bags and make a dash indoors. The sheer amount of lines they had to stand in and papers they had to sift through was a bit baffling to Siobhan, but she had never left the States before. Jack seemed politely exasperated, but otherwise reasonably sure of where they were supposed to be going.
For Siobhan’s part, she was still hung up on the knowledge that everyone around them was speaking Japanese, and yet she could understand them.
They were at a hotel in time for lunch, if lunch was something they still needed to partake of. With the balmy weather, no one thought much of their reddened faces, and once they were in their hotel room, they drew the curtains shut and did what they could to keep themselves entertained.
*
“When was the first angel you ever saw?” Siobhan asked, sprawled on her back on the bed as Jack took up the couch, idly scrolling through his phone. She supposed it beat staring at the ceiling. For herself, she didn’t exactly have roaming data. She hadn’t expected it to be something she would need.
Jack glanced at her briefly over the edge of his phone before he looked back at his screen for a second, and then he lowered it and set it on his chest. He tucked his hands under his head with his fingers laced together and contemplated the ceiling for a moment.
“About three years ago,” he answered eventually. “Back before they really started doing anything. They took special interest in vampires—probably other nonhumans, too, but I don’t really know any to ask—since they probably figured we would give them more trouble than a run of the mill human would.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Siobhan drawled, and she let one hand fall over the edge of the bed to scratch Barton’s ears until he simply climbed up onto the mattress with her, curling up into a surprisingly small ball beside her hip. Her fingers carried on working the fur behind his ears.
Jack tipped his head toward her minutely in acknowledgment. “Yeah, they weren’t wrong. I don’t even know if humans have tried to attack them, since there would be no evidence. It would do…literally nothing. I mean, I imagine they have tried—humans are scrappy as a whole—but the fact that we can’t tell is…well, telling.”
“What was it like?” Siobhan asked after a few moments of quiet, save for Barton’s slow snoring. “Seeing an angel for the first time, I mean.”
“It was…exciting, at first,” he offered. “I didn’t know what it was. I figured it was just another nonhuman I hadn’t heard of yet. And then it flew off, and I started keeping my eyes open for more, since if they were another brand of nonhuman, I wanted to know more about them. Regina had never mentioned them, so it stood to reason that she didn’t know what they were, or if she did, then it wasn’t heard of for them to live in the area.”
“So, you really did just fall into the role of angel expert,” Siobhan mused thoughtfully.
Jack snorted. “Pretty much. It was a lucky break, I guess. If I’d known right out of the starting gate that they were dangerous, I probably would have avoided them at all cost rather than try to study them. It was months before I figured out that they were dangerous and that they didn’t mean well, and by then, it only made sense for that to become my primary duty; I already knew the most about their habits.”
“What other sorts of nonhumans are there?” Siobhan asked, propping herself up on one elbow so she could look at him.
He groaned and shook his head. “Please, no,” he sighed. “There are…so many. So. Many. If we run into any, then I’ll explain them on a case by case basis, but trying to explain them all right now would require a lot of information I don’t have and a lot of time that would basically be wasted.”
Siobhan sulked at him for a moment before she flopped back down on her back. Barton grumbled in his sleep and rested his muzzle on her stomach, his ears twitching over imagined sounds.
“How did you figure out that angels are dangerous, then?” she asked instead. “How do you even know any of the stuff about Heaven giving up on everyone?” She snorted out a laugh that was more like a scoff. “I mean, the angel I met wasn’t exactly a chatty fellow.”
“They underestimated us at first,” he answered simply, shrugging one shoulder as best he could from his position. “Me and two others got into a fight with one, and he humored our questions, figuring he would just rip us apart and it would be no big deal. And then we won, and we got to keep the information he had given us. They’ve learned to stop talking to us since then.”
Silence reigned for a moment as Siobhan mentally turned over a very select handful of his words. “What happens when an angel wins against a vampire?” she asked slowly. “You said ‘rip us apart.’ They don’t try what they do with humans? The whole…dropping us from five stories up thing?”
“No,” Jack answered, sounding mildly bemused. “Why would they? They know that won’t do anything against all but the squishiest of nonhumans. I said ‘rip us apart’ because that’s what I meant. Angels play for keeps. If they want to get rid of a nonhuman, then they are going to rip us to pieces, and then probably scatter the pieces just to be petty.”
Siobhan shuddered.
Jack’s voice was unexpectedly gentle as he said, “That’s why I didn’t want you along. You didn’t exactly sign up for this. Being given another chance at life shouldn’t come with a mandatory sentence of ‘might die tomorrow.’”
Slowly, Siobhan sat up so she could look at him properly, Barton’s muzzle sliding down to her lap as she did. She watched Jack quietly for a moment, until the silence was verging on uncomfortable. Finally, she broke it to admit, “I sort of wanted to come along.”
She shrugged one shoulder and toyed absentmindedly with one of Barton’s ears. “I was sort of looking forward to seeing some of t
he world. I kept telling myself I would eventually, but it always got pushed to the backburner.” She snorted. “So, this is less like I’m being forced, and more like some less than gentle encouragement.”
Jack didn’t seem convinced. “You could still die if we run into an angel. When we run into an angel, since I doubt our luck will hold out, especially if they realize what we’re up to.”
“I’ve already died,” Siobhan reminded him. “You keep telling me that. If I weren’t a vampire, I would be nothing; I would be dead. Why bother being cautious after that? I can survive more now than I ever could before, so being even more careful than I ever used to be doesn’t make any sense. Like buying a bicycle helmet only to decide I would rather walk everywhere instead.”
Jack’s head flopped onto the couch as he lifted his hands in a pacifying motion. “Alright, I get it,” he appeased her. “The situation still isn’t ideal, but as long as you’re alright with that, I guess there isn’t much for me to say.”
*
“If you’ve wanted to travel for a while, how come you haven’t?” Jack asked, filling the silence. It was, evidently, his turn to ask questions about things.
“Huh?” Siobhan looked up from the magazine she had grabbed from the front desk.
“Earlier,” Jack carried on, “you said you kept saying you would travel and it didn’t happen. How come?”
Slowly, she set the magazine down on her lap, rubbing the back of her head with one hand. “It’s a bit weird,” she informed him slowly.
Jack waved a careless hand toward the window, the curtains still drawn. “We’ve got time before we can go anywhere.” He picked up the toy Barton had left on his chest for the third time and rolled it across the floor for the mutt to chase. “So, what gives? Why the hermit lifestyle?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love my cabin. I love my woods and seeing the sky every night. But when I was younger…” She trailed off, searching for the right words. “Everything was sort of locked down when I was younger,” she decided on. “My sister was always sick. It was sort of expected we’d be ‘all hands-on deck’ all the time in case she needed anything.”
She wrinkled her nose. “If my brother or I wanted to do anything that wasn’t deemed necessary, I guess, we got the whole ‘oh, how could you be so selfish’ spiel and it just got louder and more guilt-inducing until we caved and agreed not to do it. My brother finally took off when he was seventeen, so then it was just me, getting all of the ‘you better be a good daughter, a good student, a good example, and a good unpaid caretaker’ attention.” She paused, glancing over at Jack again.
His eyebrows rose. “I’m pretty sure that’s abusive,” he pointed out, scratching the side of Barton’s muzzle like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. “You were a kid. You were supposed to be allowed to socialize.”
“Pffft,” she scoffed. “Please. I could barely hold on to a boyfriend for more than a couple of months. I was allowed to date, technically, but since I was never really allowed to do anything, it all had to be a secret, and they always got sick of it.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that I blame them. I split when I was eighteen.”
Jack made a sympathetic noise before he slowly admitted, “That…doesn’t really answer the question.”
“Huh—? Oh! Right.” She tapped the heel of one hand against her forehead, as if to silently say ‘duh.’ “Like I said, I split when I was eighteen—I talk to my brother sometimes, and even my sister now and then, since she never actually asked us to be her unwilling caretakers, but I haven’t talked to my folks in ages—but even so, every time I think about doing something…big, I hear those alarm bells in the back of my head, telling me that it’s unnecessary and that I’m being selfish, doing something like that just for myself. So it just…kept not happening.” She finished with a slightly lame shrug. “While this entire angel mess is…well, a mess, it’s also a decent chance for me to just get thrown into the deep end without my water wings, and I figure I’m allowed to appreciate that.”
She trailed off, her expression twisting in mild bemusement for a moment. “I don’t really talk about them that much,” she offered, her hands lifting in a shrug.
“You know,” Jack began cautiously, “most people aren’t going to do that. Aren’t going to treat you like that, I mean. You could, you know…actually meet people and not do the whole hermit routine.”
Siobhan’s nose scrunched up in quiet irritation, and her eyebrows furrowed together. “Hey.” She pointed one imperious finger at him. “I am here to kill angels and wake up old fuckers. I did not come along on this road trip for amateur psycho-analytics.”
Jack held the hand that wasn’t petting Barton up in surrender. “Acknowledged,” he offered dryly. They hardly even had a chance to lapse into silence before he instead asked, “Could you see the milky way from your cabin? I mean, I know it’s not visible in cities or even small towns, but I’ve heard you can see it if you’re far enough away from all the lights and everything like that.”
Siobhan’s expression brightened immediately. “Oh, yeah,” she confirmed, “and if I adjusted my telescope just right…”
Jack was content to let her ramble after that.
*
When at last, the sun sank below the sea, they took Barton for a walk before they left him in the hotel room. They went to the nearest store they could find to get some food for him, and then Siobhan found a café that was still open so she could get some coffee. Jack, unsurprisingly, was easily tempted into getting a drink of his own.
They wandered the streets idly for a while, the bag of dog food tossed easily over Siobhan’s shoulder, her coffee in her other hand. “Where do we go from here?” she asked eventually, pausing at a street corner. As she was about to step off, Jack yanked her back by her shoulder as a taxi careened past, and Siobhan’s fingers punched right through the dog food bag. She glared after the taxi and adjusted her hold on the bag before she could spill all of it.
Dryly, Jack began, “Well,” and he looked pointedly at the bag, “I think it’s a good time to take a night off and get you used to your strength before you use it accidentally when you really shouldn’t.” They carried on walking.
Siobhan pouted at him. “It’s rude to insult a lady’s self-control,” she crooned, turning her nose up. “So, what are you recommending?” she asked, shifting the bag on her shoulder.
“A sparring match,” he returned decisively. “You can get the hang of combat, since we’ll probably need to use it eventually, and you can learn how to control your strength without it making itself known at inopportune moments and without worrying about breaking your sparring partner.” At Siobhan’s slightly dubious look, he reminded her, “Vampires are very hard to break, remember?”
“Alright,” Siobhan agreed with a sigh. “A sparring match. Where, though? In the middle of the city doesn’t seem like the best idea, and trying it in the hotel is out.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Our actual destination isn’t far from here,” he replied as they approached the front door of the hotel. “We’ll start heading that way. There’s a decent amount of woods around, so we can stop around halfway for our death match.” Siobhan’s expression brightened, and Jack gave her a narrow-eyed look as he added, “You got way too excited at the concept of a death match. There will be no actual killing allowed.”
“I know,” she assured him, batting her eyelashes at him with as innocent of a smile as she could muster. “You’re very suspicious, did you know that?”
“You make it really easy,” he returned wryly, holding the front door open for her.
They made it back to their room in reasonably companionable silence, and Barton scarfed down his dinner quickly before he followed them right back outside. They set off at a jog that was faster than Siobhan had been able to sprint before, so Barton was galloping along beside them, his tongue lolling as they ran. Jack was ahead by just a few steps, staying in the lead so he could guide the way.
When they fin
ally came to a halt, they were surrounded by trees, and a stream babbled cheerfully nearby. It was almost relaxing, until Jack planted his hands on his hips, gave Siobhan a purposeful look, and demanded, “Show me your stance.”
Bemused, Siobhan raised her fists in front of herself. Jack sighed as he came over to correct her, his fingers closing around her hands to resituate them. “Keep your thumbs outside your fingers or you might break them. And keep your wrists straight. Hitting something with your wrists at an angle could lead to broken bones. They’d heal, yeah, but they could still take you out of a fight, and they could be a death sentence if we run into any angelic opposition.”
Siobhan nodded distractedly, making a mental note of his instructions. Self-defense classes had never been too far up on her to-do list. It had never seemed particularly imperative while living in the middle of the woods.
“Got it?” Jack asked, backing up a few paces and adopting his own, less clumsy fighting stance. He waited for a nod before saying, “Good. Now come at me.”
The Vampire's Bond: A Vampire Romance For Adults (The Bonded Series Book 1) Page 6
