Archangel's War

9

Err, Archangel? That doesn’t look like blue sky anymore.” She hoped it wasn’t sky at all—because a world with a sky molten and deadly wasn’t a world in any kind of good shape.

Raphael’s response was unexpected. “Cassandra may still be falling into Sleep.” Gold lightning lived in his eyes, eerie and unfamiliar. “I lost her right at the end, before I earthed the power, but the descent into Sleep is a long process. If some vestige of her remains awake, she could be protecting us.”

Elena stared up at the dot far above, saw in it echoes of the sinkhole that had begun all this. “As long as she isn’t whispering creepy prophecies in my head, I have no problem with Cassandra.” The Ancient was just a messenger.

She sat up on a wave of effort. And belatedly realized a pertinent fact. “I’m buck naked.” All glowing skin, electrified hair, and breathless lungs. “Assuming that is Cassandra and she’ll allow us through, can you use your glamour, hide us?” She had no wish to flash New York with her bony ass.

“Glamour is child’s play with the amount of power currently in my system.” Hair yet afire at the ends and lightning cracking his skin, Raphael sat up beside her, looked up. He was beautiful beyond compare. He was also dangerous and deadly and a power.

His jaw muscles tightened. “Part of me does not wish to surface.”

Chest constricting to the edge of pain, she followed his gaze. “We have to have hope.” She was speaking as much to herself as to her archangel. “Without hope, the Cascade wins.”

“Hope.” Raphael brushed his wing over her back and the tattoo whispered sensation through her—as if she had feathers, too, over a wing understructure of bone and tendon and muscle and nerves.

Her ghost wings were torturous in many ways, but this? Elena gloried in it.

They rose to their feet together . . . and that was where she hit the first snag. Her spindly toothpick legs couldn’t support her body. She would’ve crumpled if Raphael hadn’t caught her, held her close. “Hope,” she said again when cold fury seared his features.

“Hope,” he gritted out, and it wasn’t the most heartfelt pledge—yeah, her archangel was pissed—but she’d take it given the circumstances . . . and try not to let her own anger take root. Elena P. Deveraux, Guild Hunter and consort to an archangel, was not about to let the Cascade twist her personality to bitterness and despair. She was going to fucking own this new chance at life.

Raphael spread his wings.

“Wait!” Elena nodded to the area behind the glory of his wings. “The amber and the statuette.”

Raphael lowered himself on one knee, his arm locked tight around her hips to stop her from falling. He used his free hand to grab the precious items and pass them up to her. Clutching them to her naked chest, she said, “Let’s do this.”

A last glance from eyes that were the wrong color and alive with deadly power before Raphael scooped her up in his arms. Elena pressed a kiss to his left pectoral muscle and hoped.

Flaring out his wings, he rose in an effortless vertical takeoff.

Elena whooped at the sensation—flight was beautiful and she’d never be jaded about it. And this, it might be their final moment of happiness if what lay beyond was a devastated wasteland.

Dipping his head, Raphael kissed her and she tasted power, love, Raphael, before they broke apart and turned their faces upward. “Together,” she said, her voice firm.

His response was immediate and absolute. “Always.”

The red-orange “sky” began to disappear as they got closer to the top, falling away on either side like molten doors sinking back into the earth. The two of them shot up and out. The temperature was just on the edge of cold, the sun bright.

Gold met silver . . . and they turned as one to look down.

Their home was gone. So was the greenhouse. Blast damage was evidenced by broken trees and what looked like a car flung upside down in a tangle of shattered wood, but their nearest neighbor was some distance away and that house appeared undamaged except for shards of glass that glinted in the grass around it. Its windows had blown out.

Nothing moved in that direction. No birds, no people, no cars.

The skies were empty.

“We must look toward the Tower.”

Elena clenched her abdominal muscles. “Do it.”

All the air rushed out of her a heartbeat later. Directly in their line of sight and not ten meters away hovered two familiar faces. “Bluebell.” A whisper. “And the Primary.” Both looked a touch worse for wear, but otherwise fine. At that instant, they appeared to be arguing—as much as the Primary argued with anyone.

Beyond them hovered countless more wings of Legion-gray . . . silhouetted against the skyscrapers of Manhattan. “Can you ask about Montgomery and Sivya?” Their butler and cook were the most likely to have been in the house when it exploded.

Raphael spoke mentally to Elena’s Bluebell on the heels of Elena’s request. Illium. He, too, needed to know this answer.

The blue-winged angel’s head swung toward them. His eyes scanned the skies in a futile search—Raphael and Elena were invisible inside the glamour.

Sire?

Raphael saw the angel swallow hard even from this distance, his body held with a rigid stiffness.

Elena and I have returned, Raphael said, for he would not draw out his people’s pain. Montgomery and Sivya?

Safe. Illium shuddered, every muscle in his body seeming to unlock. We cleared everyone within a large radius and your home was already a no-fly zone with heavily patrolled borders. There should be no casualties.

Raphael passed on Illium’s words to Elena. A shimmer of wet on her irises. Squeezing her eyes shut, she spoke in a voice thick with unspoken emotion. “I’ll take that as a win.”

“As will I.” They had not risen on the cold bodies of others, had not stolen life by sending others into the abyss.

Sire, what should I do now?

Raphael had never heard Illium sound so uncertain, so shaken. Watch over this chasm until I can return to refill it. The sides looked to have been forcefully compacted by his power. The hole should fill if he could collapse those walls.

Jason is in the city. Illium’s eyes still searched for them, though he was well aware of Raphael’s ability to create glamour. Together, we can take care of it.

“Your Bluebell needs to see us,” Raphael murmured to Elena. “I will ask him to come to the Tower.”

“I’d need to see us, too, if we got eaten by a chrysalis then exploded our house.” The strands of her hair waved around her face in the gentle but crisp wind, the tiny feathers glittering a touch in the sunlight.

Illium’s face was stark with need when Raphael spoke the invitation, but he was one of Raphael’s Seven for a reason. Squaring his shoulders, he said, I will wait for Jason and collapse the hole first. Should I do a run inside to retrieve anything salvageable?

This was why the blue-winged angel was one of Raphael’s most trusted people. He had courage and intelligence both. No, Illium, on second thought, you and Jason should stay away from the chasm. I do not know if any remnants of Cascade-born power linger within and how those remnants will react to anyone but Elena and me.

Raphael could survive even if buried under tons of rock and dirt infused with wild Cascade energies, but Illium was too young. Keep watch until I return. Then we will go to the Tower together.

Sire. Ellie . . .

She is the Ellie you know. Her physical state would matter as little to Illium as it did to Raphael.

Raphael spoke next to the Primary. He had no need to announce his and Elena’s return—it had taken about thirty seconds after they’d exited the hole, but the Legion were once again a murmur at the back of his mind. He knew his consort heard them, too, for they were as much hers as his.

Raphael. Aeclari. Elena. Aeclari. We waited! You have come!

“Whoa.” Elena winced. “I think they’re trying to whisper, but seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven whispers pack a punch.” But despite the barrage of noise, her lips curved. “It’s good to be home.”

Elena. Aeclari. Raphael. Aeclari.

What do you need?

We are your Legion.

Help Illium maintain a watch over the chasm, Raphael ordered.

He directed his next words to the Primary and Illium both. Contact me at once should the chasm change in any way. Do not go any closer than you are now.

Sire. Two minds, two very distinct mental voices, the rest of the Legion fading away to a background murmur.

Raphael flew toward Manhattan, angling his flight so that the wind of his passage blew Illium’s hair off his face. The angel’s startled laughter held a sharp edge. The kind of edge that came from relief so visceral it was painful.

Cupping his hands to his mouth a second later, the blue-winged angel yelled out, “Ellie, I saved your crossbow!”

In Raphael’s arms, Elena’s face cracked into a grin so broad that it lit up the cold places inside him. As long as she existed, he would always be a little bit mortal, but he would have to be careful with this Cascade-born power. It continued to fight to manipulate him, continued to attempt to push him into a coldness that would make the most cruel, heartless decisions seem tenable.

“That is true love if ever I heard it,” he said to his delighted consort.

“I’m going to kiss him when I see him next,” she vowed.

“I suppose as he is so loyal I shall resist the urge to smite him.”

Elena’s laughter wrapped around him as the two of them flew across the choppy waters of the Hudson. As they did so, he spoke to the others of his Seven who were within his mental reach: Dmitri, Jason, Venom.

A dark-haired form appeared on a high Tower balcony moments later. Though he was but a pinprick from this distance, Raphael had no doubt at all that it was the vampire who had walked by his side for a millennium: Dmitri. His friend and his blade.

Your suite is ready. Dmitri’s voice was as hard as stone. Keir is in the city, as is Nisia.

Send both to meet us. He understood the hardness in his second—Raphael had been the same when he’d found Dmitri again after his friend had been abducted and tortured and broken in a way that had forever changed him. Some emotions were too big to show. They had to be contained in a tight fist lest they crush you.

Raphael—how bad is it?

When Raphael repeated Dmitri’s question to Elena, she snorted. “Tell the Dark Overlord that we’re breathing but also glowing. And if he tries any scent games, I’ll sharpen my toothpick arms and stab him with them.”

Lips curving, Raphael passed on the message.

I see the white-haired bad influence is still with you. Despite the cutting words, Dmitri’s tone had begun to unbend, as he permitted himself to believe in their return.

Jason’s voice was the next in Raphael’s head. Sire. Do you wish a report?

And that was Jason, loyal to the bone but unable to speak of emotions to anyone but the woman he loved. Soon. For now, handle the borders. I’m guessing the explosion was spectacular. It may attract attention.

The explosion lit up the sky across the entire city, Jason confirmed. Lady Caliane sent her best squadron to New York to help protect our borders. I will join them with a Tower squadron.

Venom’s voice slipped into his mind in a sinuous flow. Sire. It has been too long a wait.

The vampire with the eyes of a viper was often considered sophisticated and urbane—but Venom’s voice held no sophistication then, was open in a way Raphael knew the vampire was to only a rare few. He responded without words, with the kind of mental contact only an archangel could make.

Even as he did so, huge winged birds took off from the roof of a skyscraper below them.

“Raphael, are those condors?” Arching her head over to the side, Elena blinked. “I swear I just saw a jaguar sunning himself on a roof.” She rubbed at her eyes.

Raphael had caught the same fleeting impression of a pelt of spotted black and gold; halting in the air, he turned to check.

He and Elena stared at the splendid beast together. As if sensing them, it raised its head and yawned, exposing a set of gleaming canines.

“This land will soon be far too cold for such creatures,” Raphael murmured.

“No, see—someone’s set up heat lamps for it to sit under.” As the beast lazily shifted its tail back and forth, Elena whispered, “Don’t look now but there are a bunch of pumas over on that other roof.”

“Elijah.” An archangel who had once been a general in Caliane’s army, and who could call birds of prey as well as large cats.

“He must’ve sent them to help protect your territory while we were lost in weird-ville.”

“Not the first thought that would come to the mind of another archangel,” Raphael murmured. “Yet I find I agree with you.” Perhaps it was the droplet of humanity in him, or maybe it was the relationship he had built with the Archangel of South America, but he didn’t believe Eli would attempt to annex his territory.

He resumed his journey to the Tower.