Archangel's Enigma

35

Hauling her back before her foot could land, Naasir pinned her to his chest, her scraped and cut wings between them. “There’s something beneath.”

Fine white lines bracketed her mouth, but she just nodded. “I won’t move.”

Releasing her after making sure she had her balance, he crouched down and went to brush away the sand when he realized his fingers might create too much pressure.

“Here.” Andromeda held out one of her feathers, this one a pale brown that turned dark at the tip. “It was about to fall off anyway.”

He gently stroked her calf, knowing her wings had to be hurting. Being immortal didn’t mean suffering no pain.

When he leaned forward, one hand still on her, and brushed away the sand, he found what he’d expected. “It’s a pressure switch.”

Andromeda’s calf muscle tensed. “I don’t think the ceiling cracks are accidental,” she said slowly. “This cave is rigged to collapse.”

“Burying all intruders with it.” Naasir rose to his feet. “We can’t risk crossing it—no way to know how many switches lie under the sand.”

Making it safely back out into the tunnel by retracing their steps, it took them another thirty minutes to find a downward sloping tunnel again. It also brought them far too close to the entrance to the caves. So close that at one point, Naasir heard two wing brothers talking—a male and a female.

He immediately pressed a finger to Andromeda’s lips so she’d know to be silent.

“. . . in the caves.”

“No sign so far, but if they are, they can’t get past us.” A gritty voice, holding a weight that spoke of experience. “All possible entry points to the chamber are tightly guarded.”

“That explorer got in,” said the first speaker, her youth apparent.

“Shavi was a new wing brother at the time. Green as grass. He fell for a distraction. Just as well the explorer went insane or we would’ve been knee deep in the curious and the dangerous.”

A long pause. Naasir was about to move on when the younger wing brother said, “I always wondered about that.” Her voice was diffident. “The others have told me he went inside sane and cocky, came out screaming having clawed out his eyes. That that’s why we didn’t kill him—because it would’ve been dishonorable to kill a madman.”

A chuckle. “They’ve been playing with you, girl. The part about why he was permitted to live is true, but the explorer didn’t scream or claw out his eyes.”

“Oh.”

“He made it to the nearest city, thanks to the luck fate offers the mad and the stupid, but ended up catatonic in a hospital ward soon afterward. When he woke a year later, he had gaping holes in his memories and so rarely made sense that no one paid his ramblings any attention.”

“The sire scrambled him?” An awed whisper.

“Simply because he Sleeps, it does not mean he isn’t aware of the world around him.” A thick clink that could’ve indicated a crossbow bolt being put back with others. “Remember, it is said Caliane rose before her time because she heard Lijuan plotting to kill her son.”

That wasn’t quite the truth, but the point was well made.

Naasir listened further but the two wing brothers moved on to talking about a man the female one wanted to approach. Silently wishing the hopeful wing brother good luck in her courtship, Naasir led Andromeda away from the entrance and to a space that felt safe, free of fresh scents and formed in a way that meant sound wouldn’t carry.

Then, putting his lips to her ear, he told her what he’d heard. Having her so close, her warmth soft and female, it made him want to stop being civilized and sensible. He just wanted to take, to give in to the primal core of him that didn’t understand why he should wait.

When she tugged him down so she could reply, he put his hand on an undamaged part of her wing in an effort to ease his need. Stupid Grimoire book, he thought, and again caught a flicker of memory—of a small red book with a drawing in gold on the cover.

His mind kept telling him he’d seen it. But where?

“It’s true,” Andromeda said, her lips brushing his ear and shocking jolts of pleasure over his skin. “The record from that explorer was disjointed and jerky. Almost like a delusion. The single reason I took it seriously was because I knew that as a very young angel, Alexander lived in the oasis.”

That truth had become lost in time, buried by Alexander’s ascension and eventual control of this entire territory. Andromeda had the knowledge because, a hundred years earlier, she’d tracked down Ancients still in the world and listened to them. Unlike Caliane and Alexander, these Ancients weren’t powerful, but they were often wise.

The ones she’d spoken to were all once more Sleeping, having awakened together for half a century to “taste” the new world. Having decided against living in it, the three had told her they’d see her in another thousand years. “Save your other questions for then, child. It is quite lovely having young ears eager to listen to our tales.”

One of the tales they’d told her had been of going to a newly adult Alexander’s oasis home for a “warrior party” where mead was drink and the dancing was wild.

“He never forgot us,” one of the Ancients had said. “Even when he became a powerful general, then an archangel, we still had an open welcome to his home—whether it be an archangelic palace or a hunting cabin—and he’d sit with us and drink a glass or five and laugh over old stories.”

The others had nodded, their smiles holding a deep and true affection for an archangel who to them was a friend they’d grown up alongside. “I hope one day when we wake, he, too, is awake. I should like to share a drink with him and see what he makes of this world where metal machines fly in the air and an archangel keeps no court.”

Thinking of all her conversations with the Ancients, she braced herself with a hand on Naasir’s chest and said, “If Alexander is in some sense aware of people in this cave system, then we may be safe. He wasn’t capricious or heedlessly cruel.”

“But if it’s an autonomous defense as with the locusts, then we could end up catatonic,” Naasir completed in the low, slightly growly tone that she loved.

“Should we leave and attempt to get far enough away that the phone works?”

“I missed the check-in call—Raphael is already on his way.” Naasir closed one warm, rough-skinned hand over the one she had on his chest. “But it’ll take Alexander time to rise, and Lijuan has a shorter distance to travel than Raphael. We need to try to start the process so Alexander isn’t helpless if Lijuan realizes this is his location and arrives first.”

Andromeda thought of how Lijuan’s physical form had faded in and out, of her thin face and missing limbs. The Archangel of China was clearly weak, but according to the news Andromeda had received from Jessamy while in Amanat, there was a chance Lijuan had killed Jariel—an angel rumored to have been strong enough that he might one day soon have become an archangel.

And Alexander was currently helpless should she strike.

“What are we waiting for?” she said to Naasir, her blood hot. “We have to go annoy an Ancient and hope he doesn’t turn us into gibbering idiots.”

Naasir’s chuckle was soft, the teeth that grazed the tip of her ear sharp. “I knew you were my mate.”