Archangel's War

50

Guild Hunter, Raphael said early afternoon the next day, the bite of winter welcome on his bare arms; he’d chosen to pair a sleeveless white tunic with the deep brown of his tough but battle-scarred pants and equally marked black boots. I am flying out to the lava. Venom’s reported unusual movement.

Wait for me. I just got back from a hand-to-hand combat session with Eve.

Already on the Tower roof, Raphael waited until he saw wings of stormfire take off from one of the balconies before he swept out into the sky. And though he’d said nothing to alert her of his presence, she looked up.

“How is your sister?” he asked once they were at the same altitude.

“Still a little mad at me, but we’ll be good I think.” Solemn eyes searched his face. “Jason have any luck?”

“No.” His spymaster had refused to believe all their people—all Jason’s people—had been murdered so callously. “Not a word, not even from a minor spy in the kitchens.” A vampire so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it would’ve cost Lijuan nothing to allow him to live.

“Damn her.”

Raphael was silent, his anger a black wave.

They flew on until the lava glowed orange in a sea of white.

Venom watched them land with his gaze shielded against the bright snow-reflected light. Slitted like a viper’s and of the same vivid green shade, the vampire’s eyes had been known to inspire fear and fascination both—often in the same individual.

“Sire, Elena.” He motioned his head toward the lava sinkhole, the fine wool of his olive green sweater hugging his shoulders and his legs clad in black cargo pants, his boots scuffed. “It’s begun to bubble. The odd one at first, steady increase over the past hour.”

Though he and Elena had seen the bubbles from above, his consort pressed her face to one of the windows in the fence. “I can’t hear her but she has to be close to—”

A rush of voices inside Raphael’s head. Elena winced at the same time.

Aeclari. We relay for the Blade. He says these words: Inexplicable oceanic disturbance an hour out from Manhattan to the east.

Raphael felt no surprise, only a cold determination. “Head to the city,” he ordered Venom. “The enemy may be at our doorstep.”

Elena rose into the air with him as Venom ran to his Bugatti—parked in the snow like a crouching tiger.

Go! Elena said. Do the white fire thing. I’ll follow.

Lijuan may have already managed to steal into our city in her noncorporeal state. Leaving Elena alone under those circumstances was not a thing he would ever countenance. I will fly us both. Sweeping below her, he held out his arms.

She retracted her wings and dropped.

He caught her, thought of white fire, and suddenly, his wings were nothing physical, the world a blur. As he flew, he contacted Dmitri and got the exact direction from his second. He and Elena were soon over the water; he slowed as they neared the suspect location.

“There!” His hunter pointed down.

The water surged and flowed in a way that spoke of a large body beneath.

Releasing Elena from his arms with a mental warning, her wings erupting out of her back to hold her to a hover, Raphael narrowed his eyes and shot a bolt of power in the center of the suspicious area.

The bolt hit something before it reached the water. The resulting explosion sent large pieces of metal flying in every direction.

“That was a submarine!” Elena, crossbow out, pointed at a distinctive floating piece. “When did she get a fucking submarine?”

“I would assume she’s been gathering weapons and tools since the last battle.”

No bodies floated up from below. Raphael hadn’t held back with that blow; the bodies were apt to have disintegrated into tiny pieces. Neither did he hold back with the balls of wildfire he sent into the sky—one east, one west, one south, one north. Each detonated to cover a massive area.

Screams breached the air before the sky rippled . . . to reveal a winged army. It was shaped into a vee, with the thin point manned by Xi, Lijuan’s most trusted general, and the wide end so far distant that Raphael couldn’t see the end of it.

That’s not an army, it’s a fucking continent. Elena’s shocked voice, her crossbow cocked and ready.

She does not intend to lose this time. Lijuan had brought a force unseen in angelic history, a force so huge that Raphael couldn’t comprehend how it had been built without anyone’s knowledge.

We have to retreat. Choppy strands of Elena’s hair whipped around her face. She holds all the advantages here.

Agreed. Raphael was no longer a boy, to be goaded into fighting without strategy or thought. Come.

Elena flew into his arms.

A massive mind smashed into Raphael’s as he and Elena left the area on wings of white fire.

BOW DOWN! I AM DEATH. I AM YOUR QUEEN.

Shoving Lijuan out with the coldly vicious Cascade power that knew nothing of mercy, Raphael flew on. Dmitri, the army should now be visible to the eyes in the sky. He didn’t think Lijuan would waste power keeping them hidden now that they’d been discovered—there was no reason for her to do so, not with so many squadrons at her disposal.

We have it. A pregnant pause. Fucking hell, Raphael. Where did she get that many combatants?

I have no answers. What he did know was that Manhattan had less than an hour to ready itself to face an enemy so vast no single archangel could’ve prepared for it. Raphael’s entire army, an army spread across the territory, was less than one-tenth of that force.

Launch the battle plans, he ordered his second, for Raphael and his Seven hadn’t sat on their laurels since Lijuan’s first assault. Initiate the first line of defense.

Those defenses were not long-range missiles or bombs. To count, archangel to archangel battles had to be undertaken without large-scale weapons, including any that acquired their targets from afar. It was to protect the world from annihilation—because archangels could survive such violent weapons. It was everyone else who would die.

“At least Lijuan appears to be holding to the rules of war,” Raphael said as they hit the edge of the city. “I saw no signs of advanced technology other than the submerged ships.” As they’d been used for transport rather than as weapons, the subs were acceptable.

“Too bad,” Elena muttered. “I wanted to use a long-range surface-to-air missile and blast off her face.” She glanced up. “There they go.”

Fire arced over their heads as they flew into the city, the archers who’d taken up position on the rooftops having found the weapons ready and waiting for them in Tower-branded steel boxes that had been positioned at key points throughout the city. The first wave of flaming arrows had no hope of reaching Lijuan’s army.

The arrows were a warning . . . and a distraction.

Elena looked over his shoulder. “It’s coming up,” she murmured. “None of our vessels caught out as far as I can see. Dmitri must’ve hit the alert as soon as he spotted the disruption.”

“Good.” He did not want his own people trapped outside with the enemy when the fuel line they’d lain in the ocean went up in flame. That fuel line curved around all the oceanic routes to Manhattan—because it was always to Manhattan that Lijuan would return should she decide to declare war against Raphael.

Manhattan held his Tower. The symbol of his rule.

Destroy it and she struck a savage blow to his people’s hearts.

At present, the fuel line was nothing but innocuous buoys of faded blue bobbing on the water. The entire line had been held firmly anchored to the ocean and river floors until Dmitri hit the switches to release them. It was the Legion who’d laid the line—it turned out that creatures who Slept in the deep for thousands of years didn’t actually need to breathe.

Strands of Elena’s hair kissed the side of his face. “How long do we wait?”

“Until her army is right over the fuel line.” Because some of the enemy angels would be flying low—and the fireline was set to ignite in furious vertical blasts. An old technique from wars fought before Raphael was born.

“I hate the idea of crisping angels, but I know these ones want to kill and enslave us.” Elena’s eyes were resolute when they met his, silver bleeding into gray. “No mercy. Anyone with her has seen her true face, seen her murder and consume thousands, and still they choose to follow her.”

“Should you falter, hbeebti, remember the lost children.”

Cheekbones sharp against her skin, she said, “Let’s kick her psychopathic ass.”

He landed on the deserted Tower roof. Raphael’s people would only retreat inward when there was no hope of holding the line—but, regardless, multiple steel boxes sat near the edges of the roof. Each was filled with short-range missiles, bows and arrows, crossbows and such other weapons as could be used with line-of-sight targeting.

The two of them made their way to the redesigned war room from where Dmitri ran battle operations. Where before the war room had been separate from the aerie, the two were now integrated. The entire floor was a single space with toughened mirrored glass on all sides, giving his second a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city.

To ensure Dmitri didn’t need to walk around the floor to get that view, in the center of the space hovered a screen that curved fully around in a single piece. Dmitri could step below the screen, pull it down so it was at his eyeline, and see everything in a single rotation, zooming in and out as necessary.

Small apertures built into the glass walls could be opened at will to fire weapons directly from the war room. The space also boasted a large flat table to the left, on which Dmitri could run battle tactics as he preferred, as well as a full electronic hub to the right that would switch automatically to generators should the Tower’s main power supply be cut.

“I called Lady Caliane,” Dmitri said as they entered.

“Good.” His mother would’ve already alerted the rest of the Cadre to head to New York.

But Dmitri shook his head, his expression as black as the tailored shirt he wore with the sleeves folded back. “There’s a major problem in India.” Walking them to the electronic hub, he pointed to a screen streaming images that had Raphael frowning, for what he saw wasn’t a problem but a gift.

“The children.” Hope lilted through Elena’s voice. “Are they running across the bor—” Her voice broke off with a jagged edge at the same instant Raphael realized the sickening truth.

“Raphael, those children have fangs.” Rigid spine, a white face.