Archangel's War

13

A kiss of heat inside him, a pulse of defiant life. A piece of Elena’s heart, refusing to surrender him to the immortal cold.

Raphael fisted his hand. “I’m going to fly down and ensure there are no hidden dangers.” As he would not become a mindless tool for the Cascade, he would not build his and Elena’s home on poisoned soil.

Illium stirred. “Sire, you just emerged. I’d rather you didn’t disappear back into the black hole.”

The angel with eyes of aged gold and a face of pure beauty—gaunt now in a way angels rarely became—was too young to give Raphael orders. Their relationship was far different from the one Raphael had with Dmitri. Raphael had held Illium as a newborn, known him as an unwieldy child angel with wings he could barely control.

He’d watched the youth Illium had become fall so madly in love that his heart had broken forever with the loss of his mortal lover. And he had known Illium as a young warrior who mourned the loss of a friend who had been trapped inside his own torment for two hundred years.

All these things and more made up the ties between Raphael and Illium. “I have nothing to fear down there,” he said, for the greatest risk was in his blood, in the power that sought constantly to shape him into a weapon of chaos.

Lijuan believed herself a goddess, so he must be a god.

The Cascade was nothing if not a blunt hammer.

“If I cannot contact you”—Illium set his jaw—“I’ll fly in to search for you.”

“Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.” Raphael stepped into the chasm, his wings spread to control his descent.

His primaries didn’t come close to touching the edges.

In places, the walls around him were glassy. Either the energy he’d released had solidified natural minerals into a glassy surface, or pieces of their home had become bonded to the earth. Here and there, he saw the odd item he recognized—a spoon, part of a stair railing—but the majority had been pulverized.

Sorrow sang an unexpected song in his heart. The Enclave home was where he’d first made love to Elena. It was a place all of his Seven had called home many times over their lifetimes. It was where he’d begun a friendship with Elijah. And it was the house in which his mother had come to stay after waking from madness.

But . . . he’d built this home as a lone archangel. He would rebuild it as one half of an unbreakable pair.

Most of the earth is simply compacted, he told Illium. I should be able to churn up the dirt so that the walls collapse inward, eliminating most of the hole. What space remains, we will fill using soil excavated from other areas.

That new skyscraper being built in Soho, Illium said. Tons of earth just sitting around. I’ll put a squadron on standby to bring across as much as we need.

Raphael continued his descent. There were no scorch marks, nothing that indicated a raging fire. Just crushed and broken things that spoke to the violence of the power inside him. Halfway down, he halted and placed his hand against the soil, felt a faint warmth—it was an echo, an imprint left behind by the energy that crawled across his wings and lived in his bloodstream.

He kept on dropping.

A glint caught his eye. After tracing his way back to the spot, he laughed at what he saw. Carefully digging out the leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine, he dusted it off and put it in a side pocket of his pants. Elena would be aghast that of all their books, it was Imani’s tome on angelic etiquette that had survived unscathed.

He picked up nothing else on the way down and was soon standing with his feet on the earth where he had awoken with Elena. Pieces of the chrysalis lay broken around the imprint of his consort’s body. Crouching down, he reached out to touch one.

It crumbled into dust so fine it was mist in the air.

Nothing but a discarded shell. Devoid of Elena’s energy, it could not exist. He took a sample of the dust for the scientists in any case, stored it away with Imani’s worthy tome.

As he rose back to his feet, he found himself searching for a mind so old it made his bones ache. Cassandra?

Silence. Not even the distant murmur of a presence. Yet he had no doubts the lava shield had been hers. Perhaps she hadn’t even been aware of it, the act done by the last vestiges of her conscious mind. He would have to speak to Elena, confirm whether she sensed any remnants of the Ancient’s consciousness. The archangel with the terrible gift of foresight had always spoken to his hunter the most.

For Elena was Cassandra’s prophecy.

After taking another look around to ensure he’d missed nothing, Raphael spread out his wings and began the flight upward. He scanned the walls as he flew, but the only other thing he recovered was a spoon that had been bent and twisted into such a strange and complicated shape that he thought Elena would find it intriguing.

As he slipped it into a pocket, he considered whether she would want to decorate their new home herself . . . and laughed at the sudden impression of utter horrified negation that came through loud and clear. Guild Hunter? He hadn’t realized he’d reached for her until her response.

Go away. Am sleeping. A grumble of words. Woke up at nightmare image of having to choose paint colors and carpets for formal dining and living areas. I can make a nest of our suite, but then you’re on your own. Her mind was already fading as she spoke the last words, her body too exhausted to do anything but rest.

But she’d left him with a smile on his face. The two of them would put their stamp on the house in ways that mattered, with items that held meaning to them, but otherwise, they would rely on Montgomery. As Raphael had done once before. A relatively new archangel at the time, he’d been content to live in the first iteration of his Tower—his household staff had consisted only of his cook, Sivya, and her assistant. It was Neha on whose advice he’d built the Enclave home.

“This land is young as you are young,” she’d said on her visit. “It suits you—but your Tower is a rough construct. Some in the Cadre will look down their nose at your lack of a formal court and consider you weaker because of it. You must build a residence fit for an archangel.”

During the build—to which Raphael had lent his strength—he’d begun to notice that nothing was ever out of place at certain times of day. Tools were clean and sharpened; water, mead, food, and blood supplies provided like clockwork; broken items replaced and the detritus taken away.

When he’d asked Dmitri who was responsible, he’d been introduced to a dark-haired vampire who met his eyes only in flashes, the physical scars of his human life as a low servant yet apparent on his face and upper body. But even then, Montgomery had not flinched at being in the presence of an archangel.

By the end of the build, Raphael had such faith in the quiet and hardworking vampire that he’d put Montgomery in charge of furnishing the entire house. That was when Montgomery had flinched. “But, sire, I am only a servant!”

“You are a man who notices the smallest detail. I have faith in your ability to create a home suitable for an archangel.”

It had taken Montgomery a year. He’d asked if he could go to Neha’s court, to Titus’s, to Uram’s, to Lijuan’s, so he could see examples of an archangelic home, and Raphael had sent him off with suave and sophisticated Trace as a guide.

Montgomery had come back with painstakingly knotted silk carpets from India, wall hangings from Africa, a hand-carved settee from the hinterland of Uram’s territory, artisan-painted screens from China.

He’d also returned with a statuette he’d found “abandoned” in Neha’s court.

It had taken Raphael two decades to realize that Montgomery had “rescued” the item because it wasn’t being appreciated. By then, the vampire was running his home with elegant efficiency and his tendency to rescue items now and then was a small peccadillo. Raphael quietly returned what needed to be returned, and Montgomery continued to ensure his house was a stunning showpiece in the formal areas—and a welcoming haven elsewise.

Emerging into the sunshine on that thought, he told both Illium and the Primary to clear the skies and to ensure no one had returned to nearby homes since their earlier evacuation. “I do not foresee a second explosion but let us not take any chances.”

Only once the two confirmed the area remained devoid of unauthorized life did Raphael drop back down into the chasm. Halting a quarter of the way up from the bottom, he began to surgically target the walls with his power. What emerged from his hands was a melding of vivid blue and lightning-shot gold.

The archangel he had been and the archangel he was becoming.

He had to recalculate after the first hit did more damage than good; his power was violently strong, more so than prior to the chrysalis. It took him three strikes to gain an accurate gauge of what was needed. The chasm began to crumple inward with slow grace below him as he flew up, continuing to weaken the walls as he went.

This time when he shot out into the fall sunshine, it was to turn and see the scar in the earth collapsing behind him. The rumble of sound was huge and dull, and it seemed that the soil moved in slow motion. But dust soon puffed into the air, the rumble ceasing as the earth settled. Loosened by his strikes, much of the compacted soil had released itself back into the chasm, but a significant dent remained.

Wings of blue edged in silver in his peripheral vision. I will take care of it, sire.

Raphael nodded. With Elena resting, her Bluebell would miss nothing while he completed this task. Raphael, meanwhile, needed to fly over his territory, take stock of what had happened in his absence—and remind the world that the Archangel of New York was back. Complete with wings of white fire and a cold power that had torn a hole in the fabric of the earth.

Elena opened her eyes in a familiar kitchen, the warm smell of baking in the air. Smiling, she ran her fingers along the counter and called out her sisters’ names as she walked toward the back door. The grass outside shimmered emerald under a soft sun, Marguerite’s flowers bobbing prettily in the garden she’d planted a month earlier.

Elena had helped. She’d dug her hands into the soil and carefully placed each small seedling. “Will they flower soon, Maman?” she’d asked.

“Yes, these ones will.” Marguerite’s fine-boned face was shaded by the large white hat she always wore in the garden, but Elena had heard her smile. “They are pretty things that grow quickly and only last one season, but ah, such joy they give us for that season, non?”

Elena, her own hat on, snug and dirty “gardening” sneakers on her feet, had nodded. “Yes, this garden is pretty.”

“A fleeting, bright beauty.”

Beyond the garden, at the back of the yard, Elena saw a woman sitting in the swing Elena’s papa had created using a plank strung with ropes to the branches of a big tree. The woman’s legs were long, the dress that covered her body a gown of frothing pale green that licked around her ankles.

Elena had never seen such hair: waves of purest lilac that fell down her back like water, arresting against the woman’s pearl white skin. Her wings were lovely arcs of violet so deep it was blue, and her eyes . . .

“Why can I see your eyes?” Elena crossed the grass to sit on the swing that had appeared beside Cassandra. Though they had met only in thought, she had no doubts that this was the Ancient cursed with the gift of foresight. And she felt no surprise that Cassandra was here, in this place that was Elena’s pocket of memory.

Those eyes of an extraordinary and unexpected seafoam green that bled into indigo with edges of clear-sky blue turned incandescent with the light of Cassandra’s smile. Twin auroras of breathtaking beauty.

“This is your dream, child, and it appears you do not wish to see blood.” A deepening of Cassandra’s smile. “I have not seen the serene and the peaceful through my eyes for an eternity. I had forgotten such hues existed.”

Elena kicked off the ground to swing gently beside Cassandra. The skirts of the Ancient’s dress rippled in the wind as they swung. Her own legs, Elena saw, were clad in black hunting boots and black pants. “I thought you went to Sleep?”

“I did, but still I dream.” A sigh. “I wish I did not, but the dreams are so vivid they disturb my rest.”

“Your voice is different.” Young, without the weight of incredible age.

“This is a young place.” Hands clasped around the ropes of the swing and bare feet held off the ground, Cassandra looked around. “Happiness lives here.”

“Yes.” Elena nudged aside the nagging feeling that the happiness wouldn’t last, that the sunshine would soon be clouded. “Did you just come to visit?”

Cassandra stopped swinging and gave her a strange, thoughtful look with those eyes so lovely and haunting, strands of her hair flirting with her cheek. “I have not just visited anyone for . . .” Her hands tightened on the ropes.

“You don’t have to remember,” Elena reassured her. “Sometimes, I don’t like to remember.” Shadows danced in the kitchen windows, and Elena told herself that was her maman, moving about as she made Elena’s favorite cookies. Or maybe it was Belle grabbing a soda after her dance lesson. It might even be Ari, come to find a snack. That was all. Nothing else. Nothing dark.

“It has never been the remembering that is the problem. It is the seeing.” Despite the lonely darkness of her words, Cassandra began to swing again. “I came to give you a gift, prophecy of mine, but I find it difficult to form the thought. Most of me is Sleeping.”

“I’m resting, too,” Elena shared, suddenly certain of that. “My wings are nothing but color and hope.” Her back felt empty, a needed weight missing. “Do you think I’ll fly again?” In the dreamscape, the potent emotion of the question was a distant cloud on the horizon.

Lilac hair streamed behind Cassandra as she pushed herself higher and higher on the swing. She didn’t answer for a long time, but that was all right, because Elena was swinging, too. It was on a whoosh back that she heard Cassandra call out, “We are flying now!”

Elena laughed and kicked her feet even harder.

And she forgot that Cassandra was in her dream for a reason.