Archangel's War

36

Archangel! I have the best news!

Stepping out onto the balcony outside his office to meet his consort, Raphael went to ask the reason for her joy when a lightning strike speared out of the sky. Elena jerked out of the way just in time, and the bolt hit the balcony beside her.

The surface cracked, fine fault lines spreading across the entire space.

More bolts appeared out of the cloudless sky on the heels of the first, deadly arcs of energy that could fry an angel’s wings and crash him to the earth.

LAND! NOW! He sent the mental command to the edges of his ability, saw angels begin to arrow down to land wherever they could. A number of the Legion did the same, but one of them couldn’t avoid a strike.

His body disintegrated.

At least the Legion would rise again, unlike an angel who was hit. “Stay down, Elena. I must see if I can protect them.” The strikes were coming faster together now and many angels had been high, couldn’t drop fast enough.

Be careful! A mental shout as she got to the shelter of the doorway and he took off.

The lightning altered direction to angle toward him. He permitted a small bolt to hit him so he could gain further information, absorbing the impact with the strength that made him an archangel.

No strange Cascade energy. This was simply weather run amok.

But, for some unknown reason, he drew the violence like a lightning rod. Maybe because the energy that danced on his skin was akin to the lightning. Instinctively creating a shield around himself, similar to the one he used when he and Elena dived into the ocean together, he headed out toward the sea.

Guild Hunter, do not take to the air under any circumstances. You carry enough of my power to attract the lightning. It wasn’t chance that the first bolt had hit the balcony next to her. I’ll survive it. You won’t. Not at these levels.

Don’t you dare get hurt!

Wings floated in the ocean below him as he left the skyscrapers and high-rises of his city behind him; the squadron must’ve been flying home when he gave the landing order. All appeared uninjured, including an angel with wings of wild blue.

Sire? Illium’s voice. I can join you.

No, stay in the water until I give the all clear. The lightning continued to strike at his shield; he couldn’t guarantee the safety of anyone flying beside him.

He flew until he was far enough away from the downed squadron that the water wouldn’t conduct any energy release to them. Dropping low enough to the blue that he was just touching it, he pointed his feet and his hands downward . . . and dropped the shield.

The lightning hit him in a rapacious burst, jetting through his body and over his skin in arcs of fire that arrowed into the sea. The water boiled and surged, mist curling up into the air. Cold fire burned him from the inside out, but he knew it wouldn’t cause permanent harm.

Gritting his teeth he rode it out.

It was only after the sky went quiet at last that he realized the state of his clothes. Elena would not be happy. Have the skies cleared? he asked his consort.

Yes. Are you all right?

My clothing is a touch scorched, but I sustained no damage. I’m homeward bound. He told his angels it was safe to get in the air as he headed back.

Illium met him halfway.

It was no surprise the young angel had headed Raphael’s way; headstrong and loyal, Elena’s Bluebell was an angel Raphael was proud to have in his Seven. The icy Cascade power in his veins agreed; Bluebell was an asset. Not only because of his fidelity but because of the potential that burned in his body.

Raphael didn’t fight the cold calculation of that power head-on. He’d begun to understand that he had to stamp this power with his mark rather than attempting to leash it. So he stirred his memories, bringing the past to the fore. A past in which he’d given a toddler with nascent wings of blue a piggyback ride before taking the thrilled little boy on a flight through the Refuge gorge.

Rafa! I fly!

Illium would never be just a source of power to him.

“Well,” the angel said across the calm winds between them, “that was strange.”

Raphael felt his lips twitch. It was not chance that Illium and Elena were such good friends. They had a way of taking the most eerie, most deadly events and making them somehow human. “It appears the Cascade was merely taking a breath before it pummeled us once more.” The lightning strikes may have been nothing out of the ordinary as far as their composition, but their behavior had been distinctly abnormal.

“At least it seems to be maintaining a certain level and not increasing in power or virulence. I’ll worry when the sea turns blood red.”

“Should that happen, we will all have wine and watch the end of the world from a good vantage point.”

Grinning, Illium peeled off as they hit the edge of the city, and there was Elena, coming toward him on wings of stunning stormlight, several of the Legion in tow. The lightning in her wings seemed stronger, more violent.

“A touch scorched!” she yelled when they were close enough to exchange words. “You don’t have on a tunic anymore and your pants look like they were hacked up by a designer who charges five thousand dollars for his scissor skills.”

Her scowl deepened the closer she got. “And the soles of your boots are smoking!”

“I acted as a lightning rod. I’m surprised I still have boots in any form.” He’d half expected that they’d blow right off. “Whatever I did, I cannot explain the physics of it.”

“Let’s just call it Cascade weirdness and leave it at that.” His consort flew all around him, then back. No one but Elena had ever worried so much about him.

“Will I do?” he asked when she finally came to fly beside him once more, as inside him, the Cascade power morphed under the sheer force of her love, the ice infiltrated by a tendril of wildfire and steel that flat out refused to leave. And he knew. This change was permanent, anchored in the pieces of her heart in his bloodstream.

“I can’t see any burns, so I might forgive you for giving me a heart attack when you flew out with lightning chasing you.”

“Immortals don’t get heart attacks.”

“Look closely. This is my not-laughing face.”

Dismissing the Legion, Raphael wrapped himself in glamour while grabbing hold of his consort, so that she, too, was hidden from the world. Her wings danced stormlight over him, her lips meeting his as if they’d choreographed the contact.

It was a hard branding of a kiss and it held her heart.

He felt the thud of her pulse, tasted the bite of her fear. As she’d soothed him at times, he did the same to her now.

She broke the kiss at last with a suckling taste of his lower lip. “Okay, you’re okay,” she said, pure warrior strength and granite resolve. “Raphael.”

He understood. She’d convinced the small, irrational part of her that worried about an archangel’s hurt that he was all right. She could breathe again. Her heartbeat could turn normal again.

He flew her the rest of the way home. She didn’t protest, just wrapped one arm around the back of his neck and watched their city grow closer and closer until it was steel and glass and life beneath them. No one saw them, the glamour one of the greatest tools in his arsenal.

Sire. Dmitri’s voice. Jason’s just sent through a disturbing video captured by one of his people in China. I think you should see it as soon as possible.

“Dmitri has more weirdness for us, hbeebti,” he said aloud while mentally acknowledging Dmitri’s words. “This time from China.”

“Oh yay, my excitement knows no bounds.” A distinctly unenthusiastic tone. “I think immortals should make a rule—once you get to be a certain age, it’s time to go Sleep off the crazy. Not an option. Compulsory.”

“You should discuss your thoughts with my mother.”

“You are a horrible man sometimes.” She was yet scowling when he landed on the balcony outside Dmitri’s office, but the first thing she did was run her hands over his chest and arms, then go behind him and do the same with his wings and back.

“Uninjured.” Hands on her hips in front of him, she nodded. “You’re permitted to talk to Dmitri.”

“So much concern, Elena. I will worry you have no faith in me.”

A tightness to her jaw. “Don’t mess with me, Archangel. I am not in the mood.” Turning, she strode toward Dmitri’s door.

It was only when he saw himself reflected in the glass surface of the large window that was the back of Dmitri’s office that he understood her rattled response. His hair was singed at the edges and still smoking a little. His chest was covered with streaks of black smoke and his skin opened and closed in random spots with bursts of golden lightning.

Smoke curled out from the bottoms of his boots.

His eyes glowed. So hot it was as if he had a blue flame in his irises.

Elena walked through the door Dmitri had opened; Dmitri was momentarily silent when Raphael followed. Raphael picked off a shred of tunic that was somehow still stuck to his biceps, and dropped it in the wastebasket by Dmitri’s desk.

“I blame you,” his second said to Elena. “He didn’t think about frying himself in lightning bolts before you.”

Raphael waited for Elena to snap a quick comeback at Dmitri. He had the sneaking suspicion the two of them thrived on their animosity toward one another. He also knew that if push came to shove, they would fight as a battle-hardened unit. This was an amusement, nothing more.

Today, however, Elena pressed her lips together and looked down at the carpet. Frowning at the unexpected response, Dmitri went to the large screen on one wall of his office and played the recording he’d already cued up: waves of black smoke engulfed a village.

“A fire?” Raphael murmured, right as the recording panned out. The black fog was emerging from the ground about a quarter of a mile out. It wasn’t moving at dangerous speed, but the people in the recording did nothing to get away. As it brushed over them, they just waved at it as you might at an insect that was annoying you.

It was clear the villagers believed the fog would soon retreat or be blown away, but what happened was something else altogether. Once the strange fog had spread across the entire village, it hunkered down and turned opaque. The camera could no longer see through the thickness of it. No more faces. No more waving hands. Nothing but an endless night.

Expression grim, Dmitri brought up another file. “This was recorded the following day.” The fog had all but dissipated, but when the angel holding the camera flew down to take a closer look, he found only silence. Oranges rolled out of a bag abandoned on the small deck attached to a house. A barn door flapped open, no animals within. A bowl of food sat in front of a doghouse, but no puppy barked up at the angel.

No villagers. No bodies. An entire group taken without a trace.