Archangel's War

27

Caliane was no longer the oldest Ancient awake in the world—the Cascade had been stirring up many things, including Sleepers who had lain dormant in secret places for eons upon eons—but she was unquestionably one of the two most powerful.

She wore a gown of cerulean blue with bejeweled clips on the shoulders and sleeves that flowed down into cuffs embroidered with delicate care. Her skirts floated to brush the earth, her midnight hair soft waves down her back.

Seeing her this way, regal and elegant, no one would believe that she was a warrior angel. Her voice was renowned in angelkind, but Caliane could make music with her blade, too. The wings of purest white that sloped gracefully down her back were capable of split-second turns and rapid acceleration in battle, and her fighting leathers were as well-worn as his. She had been his first teacher when it came to the sword.

His mother was a woman of many faces, the one she showed him today luminous with maternal warmth. “My son. My Raphael.”

He bent his head and she pressed her lips to his forehead, her hands on his biceps. “My heart sings to hold you thus, to see you standing strong and alive before me.” She turned without warning to take Elena’s face in her hands. His hunter’s hand clenched on his, her body stiff. Caliane had softened toward Raphael’s “most unusual consort,” but she didn’t treat Elena as a mother did her child.

Today, however, she pressed her lips to Elena’s forehead and said, “And you, my son’s heart, I feel joy to see you walk into my city as a warrior once again.” She reached for Elena’s hair, running the short strands through her fingers and examining the tiny feather at the end of one.

“There is nothing I despise more than those who seek to see a strong woman fall.” With that cutting denunciation, she broke contact. “Come, you must be hungry after the journey. We will break bread, and I will tell you what has been happening across the water in China.”

That sounds creepily ominous.

Even more so because my mother isn’t known for being melodramatic. Caliane did not speak in twisted truths and mysterious lies. We knew this wouldn’t be easy—Lijuan is no simple foe.

They followed Caliane deeper into Amanat.

His mother’s city had its own microclimate, warm and temperate no matter if snow fell outside. Flowers bloomed in window boxes and trailed down walls of aged stone. Lush grasses grew against foundations. Vibrant green vines crawled up the sides of the houses, some blooming with tiny flowers. The colors of Amanat scented its air.

Elena took a suspicious sniff. “I’m in danger of fainting from the fresh air. Where’re my exhaust fumes, my mishmash of cooking smells, that special eau-de-subway?”

“You will endure,” Raphael said solemnly.

“I dunno, it’s strong stuff.” She stepped off the path, her intent to examine a particular vine. Don’t worry. I’ve practiced—no more accidentally putting trees on steroids.

Caliane came to a halt, her expression indulgent when she turned to him. “You will build her a new greenhouse?”

“It was her favorite part of our home.” Even more than her weapons, Elena cherished her plants. Today, she shifted away from the vine to say something to a passing maiden . . . and the vine began to bloom. Not in huge bursts, but in small, secretive flickers.

Caliane went motionless, the utter stillness of a very old being. “More secrets, Raphael?” A chill in the air.

Raphael made a decision at that moment—whatever her flaws, Caliane would never betray him and, by extension, Elena. “We do not know all of who we are after our waking.”

“Such things for one so young . . .” Caliane’s voice was soft. “This isn’t good, son of mine. Power grows with age because age tempers us, makes us calmer, better able to weigh our decisions. Lijuan is a case in point—she gained too much power too quickly, lost herself inside it.”

Raphael wondered what his mother would say if he told her of the cold storm inside him, insidious and vicious and hungry.

An hour later, after he and Elena’d had a chance to “wash off the road dust,” they met Caliane in a leafy candlelit courtyard deep in Amanat. A table covered with a crisp white tablecloth and weighed down with food and drink sat in the center. Caliane’s people had whispered away to leave them in privacy under a velvet blue sky studded with stars.

“Do you remember your first taste of mead, my son?”

Raphael found himself laughing, the memory unexpectedly bright. “A friend and I made off with a jug long ago, when we were boys in short pants,” he told Elena. “We were curious about this drink we weren’t allowed to have.”

“Nadiel and I found the boys fast asleep in another angel’s garden.” His mother gave him a sternly affectionate look, and for an instant, it stabbed him in the heart, the family they’d once been. “Angel-mead is not meant for little ones.”

Elena grinned. “Do you still see him? Your friend.”

“We have a glass together every decade or so.”

“He remains a rapscallion,” Caliane said as she took a seat. “He has rejoined my court, but half the time when I send him out, I’m simply waiting to hear what calamity he’s walked into now.”

Raphael chuckled, but all their smiles faded soon afterward.

An angel of old, Caliane waited to speak until after Raphael poured them all a goblet and they broke bread. “I am sure your black-winged shadow will have already told you of the refugees who have landed on my shores.”

“Jason says they are well-behaved and go to great pains to keep their heads down.”

“It’s why I permitted them to stay when the exodus first began. That, and because none held high positions in Lijuan’s court.” Caliane took a drink. “Matters took an interesting turn a month ago, however. A high-ranking courtier moved in under cover of night and made a foolish attempt to blend in.”

“A courtier who wasn’t senior enough for Lijuan to take with her to wherever she’s gone—or so senior that they were left behind as a spy?”

“You speak my questions.” At that moment, Caliane was very much the Archangel of Amanat and not his mother. “I invited this vampire to my residence in a city an hour north of here.” Cold, dark and deep in her voice as she added, “Amanat will never again open its doors to any of Lijuan’s people.”

“What did you learn?”

Elena held her silence while Raphael and Caliane spoke—Raphael’s mother was old and not always predictable, and Raphael would get information from her the quickest. And it wasn’t exactly a hardship to sit back under a glorious night sky with her archangel beside her and their trip to Lijuan’s poisonous territory a future problem.

“I have seen terror in many faces over time,” Caliane said, “and I have seen the slavish devotion evidenced by Lijuan’s courtiers. I have never, however, seen such an entwined mix of worshipful devotion and bone-chilling terror.”

She opened out her wings, then pulled them back in, the sound of feathers brushing against one another a whispering rush. Elena had retracted her own wings soon after entering Amanat—no point wasting energy right when they had a dangerous journey coming up.

“The courtier is no weakling and had often been in the presence of an archangel,” Caliane continued, “but she shook when she spoke, sweat rolling off her, her eyes unable to meet mine.”

Raphael’s wing brushed the back of Elena’s chair. “Afraid enough to leave China, yet enthralled with her mistress?”

“I believe she worships her idea of Lijuan while being terrified of the truth of her.” Caliane finished off her mead. “The courtier’s estate was in a rural region. Most of the people around her were poor farmers. She did not much notice when they began to go missing—especially as the vast majority were mortals.”

No huge surprise there. Even Elena’s archangel didn’t always see the value of mortal lives. He’d come a long way from when they’d first met, but from an immortal perspective, mortals were fireflies—pretty things that blazed bright for a heartbeat before disappearing forever.

“Then,” Caliane said, “members of her own household began to go missing. At first, she believed they’d run away, but when one of her most trusted staff members didn’t return from a walk, she decided to investigate.”

An angel winged his way high above, keeping watch over Amanat’s borders.

“She found ghost villages, their people gone in the midst of living their lives. Pots left on stoves that had burned out, washing partially hung, gardens half harvested with the harvest left to rot in the open air. A baby’s bottle filled and left standing to curdle, a bag of foodstuffs gone putrid on a kitchen counter.”

The chilling recitation raised the tiny hairs on the back of Elena’s neck.

“I will say this to her credit—she didn’t turn tail and run at the first village. She went to five villages one after the other. She found not a man, woman, or child in nearly all of them.”

Elena sat up straight, exchanged glances with Raphael. “Nearly all?”

“In one village, she discovered living people so emaciated it was as if they were made of dust. When she attempted to speak to them, they gave her blank looks and continued to shuffle about their business. The tasks they were doing appeared to be repetitive—familiar movements that didn’t need input from their minds. She says they achieved nothing, but continued to repeat the motions.”

The candlelight caressed Caliane’s face. “You have spoken to me of how Lijuan fed on her people during the last battle, how you found one of her half-absorbed angels in the aftermath. It appears she is now doing this from beyond Sleep.”

“This confirms she is not in true Sleep.” Raphael’s voice was grim. “She must’ve gone deep enough that her power is no longer detectable by the rest of the Cadre, but not so deep that it will be a long waking.”

“She’s glutting herself,” Elena said. “Our worst-case scenario.” So many vanished people, all absorbed into her flesh. What would that make her when she rose?

“The unfinished ones may be from a day when she fed so much she could no longer finish them off,” Raphael said.

Elena’s fingers grew bone white around the stem of her goblet. “It could’ve been at the other end, Archangel. Early tests to work out how she could absorb and hoard power long-term.”

Two pairs of eyes as dazzling as crushed sapphires crashed into hers.

“If you are right, hbeebti, the war that is coming will be for far more than territory.”

“An archangel who can hoard lifeforce stolen from others . . .” Caliane’s jaw worked. “She will be an unstoppable, rapacious power that consumes the world.”

The dark echo of Cassandra’s voice in Elena’s head, ancient beyond compare.

Goddess of Nightmare.

Wraith without a shadow.

Rising into her Reign of Death.