Archangel's Sun

16

She actually rolled her eyes at him. Rolled her eyes at the Archangel of Africa. “No,” she said. “I’d simply like to make sure we have all the details, so we can see if there’s something to be learned from it.”

Titus went to grumble back a response, when a herd of buffalo below caught his eye. The large and aggressive creatures with dark coats were moving in erratic ways, slamming their heads against each other and pawing at the earth. More than one set of wickedly thick horns glinted red with blood.

He flew lower. “Don’t get close enough for them to make contact!” he yelled back to the Hummingbird; he didn’t believe the creatures were in any way sentient, but there was a feral energy to them.

Hovering a few feet above, out of reach of their lunges, he found himself looking down into reddened eyes and slavering mouths. That was when he saw torn-out throats, disemboweled stomachs, and missing limbs that caused some of the animals to drag themselves into the fight.

Cold infiltrated his bones. “They’re reborn,” he said to Sharine when she came to hover next to him.

Nothing and no one but the reborn had that particular vicious look in the eye—a kind of rapacious voraciousness that nothing could assuage. A hunger that was endless and even worse than the bloodlust that had taken hold in vampires across many territories. Titus’s theory on why Africa had been spared that scourge was that even the vampires were terrified of the reborn.

That, and any vampire who got out of fucking line was soon terminated by his fellows. No one sane wanted to foster or create a distraction from the battle taking place on the continent.

Sharine sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know it could be transmitted to animals.”

“Neither did I,” he said, his power alive in his hand. “No one else has reported anything of the like.” He had no proof as yet, but he knew this was Charisemnon’s doing; whatever poison he’d created, however he’d hybridized the reborn with his disease, it meant the horror could now jump between species.

“Sweet mercy.” Sharine’s lovely voice was as cold as his blood. “Lijuan and Charisemnon would’ve turned our entire world into a mockery of life.”

“I must end these buffalo, but I’ll need to take a sample back for my scholars and scientists.” He frowned. “I don’t have anything in which to preserve and carry a sample.”

“Create a hole in the earth,” Sharine suggested. “Dump some feed within. As long as the hole isn’t shallow, the creature won’t be able to clamber out.”

It was a smart idea. There was just one problem. “They’re no longer grazing on grass.” He pointed out the hunks of flesh that one buffalo had ripped out from the flank of another.

“Such horrors.” Sharine’s expression was open, her renowned kindness and heart at the forefront—yet there remained nothing fragile about her. “You’ll have to leave a dead animal in there with the reborn one, for your scientists need a live sample to study—if the infection melts the flesh of the reborn, you may otherwise end up with no sample at all.”

The reborn tended to be drawn to living flesh, but Titus wasn’t going to trap two maddened creatures together so one could eat the other. There were some lines he wouldn’t cross. “A living creature should survive if I create the hole under shade. I’ll send word back to my people as soon as I see a scout.”

Titus could speak mind-to-mind with his senior people from some distance away, but they’d flown beyond his maximum range. Mental speech had never been one of his stronger skills regardless, and was perhaps a reason he’d retained so much of his Cascade-born abilities. To even out the spread of power in the Cadre.

“Wait.” Sharine’s voice was breathy . . . flustered? “I’m foolish. We can use the phone—I have a number within it that connects to your court.”

“I don’t deal with such.” Titus examined the creatures below to see which he could most easily cut from the herd and corral.

“Careful, Titus,” she said, “lest you morph into a monument of yourself—one stuck in stone and in the past.”

As he watched her touch her fingers to the screen of the device, he chewed over her words, heat in his blood. He was who he was and he had no argument with himself.

Tito! Stop being so stubborn.

His eldest sister’s voice, an echo from childhood—or possibly from last year. Phenie still scolded him from time to time. She also went to great lengths to bring him his favorite fruit from the Refuge, and, when he’d been a child, had never begrudged the fledgling who tottered after her, eager to poke his nose into her business.

Come, Tito, we’ll go visit Master Carvari. It’s possible you have untapped musical abilities.

To Phenie’s great horror, Titus’s only interest in instruments was how to use them as weapons should he need to. Yet she’d never stopped him from being underfoot, not even when he spent an entire year with her while their mother led Alexander’s troops in battle.

Titus had long forgotten what that battle might’ve been or against whom, but he remembered sitting on the stone wall outside Phenie’s house, listening to her play the harp—and waiting in happy anticipation for when she’d inevitably call his name.

It’s time for a snack, Tito! Hurry home or I shall eat it all!

The memory made his lips curve. Perhaps, in Phenie’s honor, he’d concede that Sharine was right in her reproof. The device in her hand would ensure his scientists could get under way at speed.

Not that he’d tell Sharine he agreed with her—she struck him as the kind of woman who’d say “I told you so” and he’d heard quite enough of that in his childhood, thank you very much.

Especially from Charo. The youngest of his sisters was an inveterate gloater.

“Here.” Sharine handed over the device that felt flimsy and breakable in his hand. “I’ve touched the button that should connect you to your court.”

It was his steward who answered the call. “Yash,” Titus boomed. “I need you to fetch either Tzadiq, Tanae, Orios, or Ozias.” Yash was brilliant at running the household, but it’d be better to give this particular information to someone who’d ensure the scholars and scientists didn’t get themselves eaten by a deranged buffalo.

“Sire.” A stunned response, but the man recovered fast. “I’ll fetch Orios at once; I saw the weapons-master just now.”

Glancing down, Titus saw that three of the creatures had managed to take down a fourth, were now feasting on his yet-pink flesh. That meant the infection was recent. Unable to stand by and watch any being writhe in agony, Titus sent down a bolt of power that erased all four from existence. The rest of the herd screamed in a way that was eerily unnatural—buffalo didn’t make that sound—but they didn’t scatter.

Rather, they turned and looked up at him, trying to jump in a way that was impossible for their ungainly bodies.

Orios came on the line. “Sire, when Yash told me it was you on the line, I thought for certain he’d taken a blow to the head!” The weapons-master’s voice was as deep and resonant as Titus’s. “What calamity has befallen us now?”

Of all the people in his court, Orios was the one with whom Titus was the closest. Perhaps because Orios had been with him from the very beginning; the only reason he wasn’t Titus’s second was because he preferred the duties of a weapons-master.

I have no patience for the politics that come with being second, he’d said when Titus brought up the question soon after his ascension. You need a second with a bit more cunning and charm to him, one who’ll soften your blunt edges when it comes to dealing with the seconds of others in the Cadre. You should promote Tzadiq—he’s an excellent general, but he will be a brilliant second.

Orios had been right in his advice, and now Titus had an intelligent and urbane second he trusted to uphold Titus’s honor—while not insulting everyone in the vicinity. “It has reached the animals, my friend,” he told Orios, then laid out the details.

“I’ll send out a science team with an escort,” Orios told him, his tone grim. “The scholars have become more practical since the war, but I don’t trust them outside without protection.”

Neither did Titus; immortal scholars could sometimes live on their own planet. “I leave it in your capable hands.” After ending the conversation, he passed the phone back to Sharine, then went about creating the earthen prison for the chosen buffalo.

That done, he erased the rest of the infected animals from existence, his power leaving another scar in the landscape of his territory. It bruised his heart to see that, but it had to be done.

They saw no other unnatural creatures in the hours that passed, but while the cities appeared well enough—if quiet and on edge—the damage to the passing villages and farms was becoming increasingly worse. “Lumia?”

Though he hadn’t spoken for the past two hours, Sharine understood what he was asking. “We were safe—the reborn never reached that far.” She indicated below. “From what I saw on my previous journey, this is the worst-hit section on this side of the border.”

Titus took in the damage. “Charisemnon was playing with fire thinking he could control the reborn.” Only Lijuan’d had that ability.

“He also left his people helpless against them,” Sharine said, her tone full of cut glass, bright and bloody. “I was informed that he drafted not only angels and vampires, but strong mortals into his troops—including people from farmsteads and villages.”

“My spymaster has confirmed this.” Titus still had difficulty understanding the why of it. “Farmers and field workers?” None would’ve stood a chance in a battle between immortals. It wasn’t the same as when Guild Hunters or mercenaries joined in—they were highly trained and made the decision of their own free will.

The African Guild had all defected to Titus’s side as soon as Charisemnon’s perfidy and evil became clear, and they’d fought with courage and heart and skill. The Guild had taken losses, but at about the same percentage as the rest of Titus’s forces. No one would ever consider a hunter easy prey.

Quite unlike the poor scared mortals called up by Charisemnon.

“I understand now why so many villagers burned their homes to the ground—they would’ve had no chance one-on-one. It was a smart choice to lead or drive the monsters inside a house, then turn it into a funeral pyre.”

“The only choice, I think.” Sharine’s eyes were soft with sadness. “Even if it left them without a home.”

“These people showed more courage than the hind end of an ass who called himself their archangel.”

It was at the next battered but still living village, flaming torches marking out its boundaries, that he made a decision. “I will land. These people need to understand that I am now their liege and I will send help.” Such had always been in his plans—but he hadn’t realized the sheer depth of the devastation in this area.

Titus had been a fool; he’d believed that his enemy would’ve protected his own people, not crippled them. With so much available prey, a few reborn would’ve quickly turned into many. “I assumed that leaking bag of pus would’ve at least placed a rear guard whose task it was to eliminate any reborn who scuttled north.”

“Assumptions are the enemy of coherence,” Sharine said.

In other words, You’re an idiot.

“I would’ve never attacked my own people!” It came out thunder in the air that caused startled villagers to jerk their heads upward.

Sharine looked at him for long moments before inclining her head. “I accept that. Your honor made you expect too much from someone who had no honor. Remember that, Titus.” A fierce intensity to her. “Remember that there are those in this world who will cross every line and feel no guilt in doing so.”

He’d witnessed that ugliness with Lijuan. The Archangel of Death had used children to her own ends. Such was not to be borne. And yet, he’d made this mistake, left the north too long untended. Yes, Sharine was right to castigate him. He’d been foolish and these people had paid for it.

Landing in the center of the village, dust swirling around him as he folded back his wings, he waited until she was down, too, before he took in the villagers. He would not have anyone say that he hadn’t watched over the Hummingbird while she was in his care—not that she seemed to want or even need his concern.

No one had warned him she was so contrary.

Had all of angelkind lied to him for an eon? Surely that was impossible.

“Well,” she murmured, for in the time since their landing, every single raggedly dressed villager within sight had gone down flat to the earth, their faces pressed to the dirt and their hands palm-to-palm in front in a pose of supplication that disturbed him on the deepest level.

He ruled with a firm hand, but he’d never sought to unman or humiliate anyone, for these people were mothers and fathers, elders and healers with their own pride and honor. But the people in front of him weren’t like his own . . . though they belonged to him now.

Charisemnon, he reminded himself, had somehow convinced his populace that for him to take their young daughters to his bed was an honor and not a perversion. The memory caused a crawling sensation across his skin and his voice was harsh when he said, “Rise! I wish to talk to your faces, not your asses!”

Whimpers whispered into the air, but several trembling citizens got to their feet. At least a few of them had some backbone. Beside him, Sharine might as well have been formed of iron, so stiff was she. No doubt she’d have sharp words for him when they were alone, but this was beyond ridiculous. “Why do you have so many burned buildings in your village?” he asked, wanting to confirm his theory.

It was a man old and shriveled, his beard unexpectedly lush, who answered, his hand shaky on his cane and his bones all but clattering. Yet he spoke, and for that, Titus looked at him with respect. “The rotting ones came,” the old man said in his whispery voice. “They took some of our own and we knew that none could be saved.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “The last one to be mauled, he saw what had happened to his neighbors and friends, and before his mind was gone, he used himself as bait to lead them into one of the houses.” Water spilled from his eyes. “We were able to lock the door and burn down the house, saving the untainted. And so we learned how to kill the rotting ones.”

Titus thought he’d seen and heard of every horror, but this . . . “Did one of your people always act as a lure from then on?”

The speaker’s jerky nod was followed by a muffled sob from the crowd, one quickly quieted. A being brokenhearted at the loss of a loved one.

“The old do it,” the speaker rasped. “I am next.”

Yet he stood here, spine bowed but courage undaunted. Indeed, he was a man to respect, as were all those who’d gone before him. “How many people did you lose?” he asked, already calculating how he could redeploy troops to assist on this side of the former border. “Both to the rotting ones and in the war draft.”

The answer shook him; if he was right in his calculations, the village had lost at least half its people. The survivors had a glazed kind of resignation on their faces, their bodies brittle and emaciated.

And . . . he saw no children.

That was an impossibility. In every village in which he had ever before landed, he’d seen the curious face of a child or two peeking at him from behind a door, or from on top of the stoop. They were inevitably inquisitive, smiles carving their faces and energy bouncing through their bodies. A bold heart would approach him once in a while and then Titus would tell the child to come join his stronghold when they were grown.

No small hearts beat in his vicinity today, the lack of their high voices and bright eyes a sharp pain. “Did the reborn take your children?”

From the fear that carved the old man’s face, he suddenly realized this was something else altogether. And he wondered what else his enemy had taken from his own people. Had he demanded their young? For what purpose?

His stomach churned. Was it possible Charisemnon had somehow been able to do what Lijuan had and turned the most vulnerable members of their society into a horrific melding of vampire and reborn? If so, where were they?