Archangel's Sun

41

Punching out his hand with warrior precision, he wrapped his fingers around the throat of what he expected was a reborn. Nails clawed at him as Sharine wreathed her hand with her power. Dim light suffused the room . . . to reveal a reborn such as he’d never seen. Her wings had been clipped so she couldn’t fly, her eyes were reddened, her flesh holding a greenish tinge.

Yet she wasn’t rotting, was alive in some bizarre sense.

His anger at Charisemnon’s malevolent actions a storm, he went to tear off her head out of instinct when Sharine put a hand on his forearm. “No, Titus, don’t!”

He stopped mid-motion, even as the reborn scrambled weakly at his arm, its strength fading at rapid speed. “The creature is a danger, and it’s also cruel to allow it to exist in such a state.” No angel would ever choose this life.

“Look.” That single word was full of horror, her gaze not on the reborn’s face, but lower.

To the creature’s swelling belly.

His stomach revolted so badly that he almost threw up, as might a young soldier faced with the viscera of battle for the first time. “I’ll do it quickly,” he promised Sharine. “I won’t extend its torture.” Such a thing as this was beyond evil. “Women who are with child when attacked don’t survive and rise as reborn—I’ve never seen such.”

But she put her hand in his and squeezed. “Don’t you understand, Titus?” Her body trembled. “I think she’s carrying the cure.”

He stared at her, then at the weak creature in his grasp. There was little flesh on its body—not a surprise if it had been trapped in this room since Charisemnon’s death; it would’ve had only the food the other archangel had left behind for it. That food was apt to be flesh . . . and while the reborn had become smarter, they were nowhere close to smart enough to know to hoard food against a shortage. Their instinct was to gorge.

“Find another light source,” he said to Sharine; he focused on the practical action because the horror would otherwise overwhelm him. “There must be something brighter here if this was Charisemnon’s workspace.”

It didn’t take her long, the room soon drenched in a clinically white light. The space that stretched out in front of them was massive, but it was also open enough that he could see at a glance that it contained no other reborn.

A filthy mattress and a pile of blankets lay in one corner, along with iron restraints that had come off the slightly cracked wall. He looked down, saw the chains dragging from the creature’s ankles. Though it turned his stomach, he carried the now unmoving reborn to that bed—even the chains didn’t add much to her weight.

She’d fouled part of the mattress, but he found a comparatively clean patch on which to place her.

“This must’ve held food.” Sharine pointed to several now broken containers near the mattress. “Oh, sweet mercy.”

Following her gaze, he saw a mound of small bones. Muscles bunching, he looked again at the starving reborn. “When I moved the earth, it must’ve cracked the joints enough for rats to get in.”

“She did what she had to do to survive,” Sharine said, her face taut with sorrow.

“It’s not a she, Sharine. She died when Charisemnon and Lijuan did this to her.” Sharine had to understand that, or she’d hesitate against a reborn at the wrong time, and end up torn apart. “This is a creature created by a monstrous evil.”

A shuddering breath, but Sharine nodded.

Sire, the cracks in the earth are moving and heading your way.

Titus felt the first whisper of a rumble under his feet even as Ozias’s warning hit his mind. That this structure was still standing told him it was solid and built to be resilient, but they couldn’t rely on that—not after all the damage caused by earlier quakes. “Gather any documents you see,” he told Sharine. “I’ll do the same—this creature’s body is limp. We don’t have to fear an attack.”

It was Titus who found the still functional cold storage room. Rows upon rows of bodies lined the walls, all of them angelic females. Clipped wings were standard . . . and someone had slit open the stomachs of several. Small twisted forms with no faces and with skin a rotting green were stacked in another corner.

He shut the door when he heard Sharine coming closer. “You don’t wish to see what lies within,” he said, holding tight to the door handle to stop her from even attempting to open it. “Trust me on this. As a mother, you don’t want to see that.”

She looked at him for a long moment before inclining her head. “I trust your judgment.” In her hands were several thick notebooks. “Can you get a box from the external room?”

He made her come with him, not wanting the building to come down on top of her while he was away. After returning with the box, they quickly filled it with all of Charisemnon’s notes that they could find, then Sharine hefted it up in arms that trembled, but held. He, in turn, wrapped the reborn angel in multiple blankets so that no one would know it was an angel he held, then followed Sharine out of the bunker.

He’d send an excavation team here once the shakes had stopped and it was safe, but for now, this would have to be enough.

Ozias took the box from Sharine the instant they stepped out, her eyes narrowed as she observed Titus’s burden. But she didn’t ask any questions, her faith in Titus overwhelming her shock. “Back to Charisemnon’s border court?”

Titus nodded. He wasn’t about to carry this infection into his own court.

“Wait,” Sharine said. “May I have that?” She was pointing at the water flask his spymaster had strapped to one side of her thigh.

When Ozias, her hands full of the box, nodded, Sharine reached for it. Opening the flask . . . she began to pour the cool, clear water over Titus’s wounds. He could tell the scratches were already healing, and he felt no sense of sickness, but he let her do what she needed—with the blood washed away, she’d be able to see the healing edges for herself.

“It’s itching,” he murmured, his gaze on her downbent head, and his heart . . . soft. “You know what that means.”

A sharp, tight nod. “Good.” Closing the lid on the empty flask, she held on to it as the three of them took off.

She flew right next to him while Ozias went a little ahead, and they spoke as they flew. “She looks to be either at term or very near it.”

“You must advise me on this. Do we need a midwife?” He couldn’t believe he was asking such a thing, not when what was growing inside this dead creature brought to shambling life was apt to be a thing of horror. “Or can I open her womb after ending her life, and retrieve whatever germinates within?”

Sharine’s face went white, her bones sharp against her skin as she looked at the reborn angel in his arms.

“Think of your people,” he said gently. “Would any one of them wish to be in this state? Would they want for you to prolong their torture?” That was when he felt a movement against his chest, where the reborn angel’s stomach was pressed.

A rippling spasm.

He’d never been in such close contact with a woman about to have a child, and the ripple felt too big and strong, but he was old enough to know what was happening. “The decision’s been made—she’s having contractions.”

“I can act as midwife.” It wouldn’t be the first time Sharine had delivered a child; with age came many experiences, and she remembered acting as an emergency midwife to another angel well enough to do this. “It’s probably for the best if we don’t bring anyone else into it. We don’t know what either mother or . . . child, if it is a child, carry in their blood and other bodily fluids.”

For better or worse, Sharine and Titus had both already been exposed. Ozias hadn’t come in actual contact with the victim, nor had she spent time in an enclosed space with her. Sharine, in contrast, had scratched her hand while inside that room. Nothing but a minor scrape that was already all but healed, but still, a significant exposure.

She went to say something to Titus on that point, but went silent when her gaze fell on him. He was staring at the reborn angel in his arms, a twisted pain in his features.

“I recognize her from my last visit to the Refuge,” he said roughly. “Two hundred years old at the most. Barely out of training.”

So young. Sharine’s heart broke. A child this young shouldn’t be with child herself; it was beyond rare for such a young angel to fall pregnant. She’d also most likely have parents who were yet awake. Their world would shatter at this terrible loss.

She and Titus exchanged no further words the rest of the journey to Charisemnon’s stronghold. After landing directly in the inner courtyard, Titus ordered Ozias to stand guard, then carried the reborn to the closest bed. It happened to be a feminine room, dressed with soft fabrics and delicate embellishments.

Sharine was glad of the softness of the coverlet on which Titus placed the dying woman. No doubt they could revive her with a meal of flesh, but such an act would dishonor not only who this woman had once been, but the concept of life itself. Titus was right to say no angel would choose this existence.

Sharine tugged the blankets free, so the reborn was no longer bound up in them.

When Titus tore strips from one of those blankets, she wanted to protest that the reborn no longer needed to be tied up, that the creature was too weak—but she knew that was her heart speaking. Whoever this being had once been, that being was gone. Charisemnon had stolen a dignified death from her, turning her into this abomination of life, and now she couldn’t be trusted.

But she stepped in when Titus would’ve tied her ankles to the bed. “I’m in no danger from her feet. And it’s better if she has control of her lower body.”

Titus nodded. “I’ll be here should she somehow break her bonds.”

The reborn woman screamed then, a thin shriek of sound that raised every hair on Sharine’s body, it was so inhuman. Still, careful to keep her hand away from the woman’s snapping teeth, she stroked her hand over her hair. This child was dead, its torment close to over, but at this instant it was a creature caught in a trap it could never escape; Sharine would do it what kindness she could.

Oddly the stroking seemed to calm her, and when Sharine said, “Push!” she screamed but obeyed. The few shreds of clothing that still clung to her frame were no impediment to the birth. So Sharine kept giving the order—the contractions were coming one on top of the other now, in a rhythm that wasn’t that of a healthy angel.

No angel’s stomach had ever bulged and rolled this way. No angel’s body had gushed a greenish black fluid. And no angel’s eyes had been devoid of white, the sclera a sea of crimson.

Another scream, the reborn angel’s eyes locked with Sharine’s. For a moment, Sharine saw sanity within those eyes, saw a knowledge of horror, and she heard the whispered words, “Give me mercy. Please.” Then the woman snapped her teeth before screaming again and bearing down as she thrashed in her bonds.

Shifting lower down the bed, Sharine pushed up her sleeves and got ready to grab whatever it was that was about to come out, but Titus nudged her gently aside. “You don’t know if what’ll emerge will do so biting and clawing.”

She shuddered, her imagination conjuring up a nightmare. “Did you hear her?” Grief thickened her voice. “She asked for mercy.” Sharine couldn’t imagine the pain of this woman—to know that she was a diseased and dying creature, but being unable to do anything to stop it.

A curt nod. “She shouldn’t be conscious in any way. Once they rise, the reborn of this iteration—even the most cunning—have no sense of reason and no language. It confirms what we were told about the first angelic reborn.”

Grabbing a throw from the settee by the windows, she passed it to Titus. “So you can protect your arms at least a little.” After he took it, she went back to the head of the bed. Though the reborn woman’s eyes were now crazed red with no sign of sentience, her mouth bared as she sought to bite, Sharine stroked her hair and murmured gentle words that she hoped would make this a little easier.

The screaming suddenly reached a pitch that was pain in the ears, glass shattering. The reborn angel’s body erupted in a gush of dark, dark green-black fluid as she gave birth to whatever it was that Charisemnon had planted in her. Sharine only glanced over long enough to see that Titus was safe. Her attention was on the woman, whose breathing had altered dramatically, her chest rattling.

And though she knew there was a chance of being clawed, Sharine slid one hand into the reborn angel’s. A weak grip around her own, her eyes holding Sharine’s for a profound moment of purest peace . . . then she gave one last breath and went still in a way only of the dead. The reborn did not pass in this way, but this woman had never been an ordinary reborn.

A single droplet of green-black rolled from her eye and down her cheek.

Tears burning her throat, Sharine gently closed the woman’s eyelids. By some mercy, they stayed that way. When she turned to Titus, it was to see him staring down at what he held cradled in the throw in his arms.

“Titus?” Breath lodged in her throat, she stepped over.

Her stomach churned—all she could see at first was putrid black-green. But then she saw the waving fisted hands with perfect tiny fingers, the mouth that was gasping for air in a face that Titus must’ve wiped clean, and felt an even colder horror run through her blood. Her words came out a whisper. “It’s a baby.”

“Check her fingers.” Titus’s voice was crushed stone. “See if she has claws.”

Gently wiping one fist clean using an edge of the throw, she unfurled those delicate baby fingers with care. Then she examined the babe’s feet. “Nothing. She has the same soft nails as any other infant.”

Shifting on her feet, she walked quickly into the suite’s bathing chamber and found what appeared to be an unused towel set hanging on a railing. Dampening the soft hand towel with warm water, she went back into the room and began to gently wipe down the child.

But it wasn’t enough; the slime was everywhere and it stuck. “Bring her into the bathing room.” Going ahead, she found a pitcher sitting to the side of the bathtub. It must’ve been for bathers to pour water over themselves—or perhaps for a body servant to do so.

She filled the pitcher with warm water, then made Titus get rid of the soiled throw and hold the child in the sink while she poured the water over the strangely quiet infant’s skin, washing it until it was clean all over its front. Unlike most babies this young, its eyes appeared to be able to focus and the baby watched her with eyes of a strangely familiar hue.

Deep gold with slivers of brown.

The last time she’d seen such eyes, they’d been set into a strikingly handsome male face, his lips lush and his hair a silken mahogany.

The face of an archangel.