Archangel's War

53

As Dmitri fought to contact a trusted member of Titus’s court, Raphael turned his attention to the others of his Seven in the city. Indications of Lijuan since the previous sighting? They had to be on constant alert for the possibility that the Archangel of China would go noncorporeal again with part of her army.

His city would never see the ambush coming.

Aodhan and Venom, both positioned a good distance from the port, had caught no sign of her presence in their sectors, but Illium said, I think she’s in the center of her army, three deep behind Xi. Squadron Jason’s ID’d as her most elite is flying in a protective pattern around her.

Jason responded at the same instant to point out the elite squadron.

Raphael rose higher and saw it at once: the pattern being flown wasn’t just protective, it was that of an honor guard in old and traditional courts. It could be a double bluff, Xi more than smart enough to orchestrate that, but Raphael decided against it. Lijuan was too aware of her status to be so cunning in this particular way.

He headed toward the water.

Lijuan’s forces caught sight of him while he was still on this side of the fireline; arrows whistled toward him, along with lances of energy fired by the more powerful of Lijuan’s forces. He avoided the energy strikes, swatted away the arrows. He wasn’t about to reveal any more about his own power than necessary. His task was to engage Lijuan, gauge her power.

This was no battle. It was war and this was only the first skirmish.

Wings of brilliant stormfire below him as he passed the skyscraper on which Elena knelt with a bow in hand. He felt her mind touch his, her mental kiss vibrant with the life that ran so defiant and strong in her body.

He crossed the fireline.

A horde of Lijuan’s angels streamed at him with swords drawn, battle cries tearing through the air.

Will you hide behind your people? He transmitted the comment widely, so it would hit the mind of every angelic fighter, every individual in the submarines. Are you so weak?

I AM A GODDESS! A blast of crackling obsidian twined with pearlescent gray starlight blasted past his shoulder. He barely avoided the obsidian hail and that only by dropping precipitously. So, Xi had managed to get through to her about tactics after all—because that honor guard had been a feint.

Rapidly recalculating his options, Raphael nonetheless didn’t respond with his own strike despite the volleys coming at him from her fighters. Xi was at the forefront, blasting bolts at Raphael’s wings. No starlight shimmer to Xi’s blows, but the obsidian of it was a shadow of Lijuan’s—a visual confirmation that, unlike with the abilities possessed by Raphael’s Seven, Xi’s power came from his archangel.

Rather than turning his wings to white fire, Raphael made a point of avoiding the bolts; the less they knew, the better. As he did so, he tried to work out Lijuan’s position, but there was no sign of her. She’d faded in and out of her noncorporeal state during the last battle, but it appeared she could now maintain it without pause.

Why wasn’t she then right over New York?

Why wasn’t she blasting his archers into death?

The air in his lungs turned to ice. This time, she’d done the unpredictable. He broadcast a warning to his entire army. Mobilize all archers, all gunners, look skyward! Bloated with power, Lijuan had done exactly what he’d feared and kept part of her assault force hidden even while exposing the rest. The delay in an attack had to mean the broken-off section was getting into prime position—but they had to be deadly close to that by now.

He had to do something to even the odds.

Incinerating the fighters in front of him with a single blow, he drew on the wildfire inside him and released it not in a massive bolt but in a thick spreading blast with him as the center.

Static filled the air.

Lijuan may have gained enormous power, but as he’d seen with Antonicus, her brand of death wasn’t fully immune to the wildfire. Even if the effect was only temporary, it’d give his people enough knowledge that they could reposition their forces, defend their home.

The wildfire spread and spread . . . and crackled violent blue and white-gold as it hit the enemy force, stripping them of their noncorporeal cloak. The air filled with fire as all his fighters on nearby rooftops began to shoot up at enemy warriors already wounded by the gleaming scythe of wildfire. His power had been too spread out to kill, but it’d caused major damage.

A number went down screaming, their wings shredded by crossbow bolts or bullets, or in flames.

Fuck, Archangel. Elena’s voice, horror in every syllable.

He turned . . . and saw his city surrounded by an army of such magnitude that it had to be every living strong angel in Lijuan’s land. Thousands upon thousands of them. So many that his mind struggled to comprehend it.

A shift in viewpoint and he understood why the attack hadn’t come yet, why the squadrons had moved so slowly to ambush Manhattan. The majority of them were occupied with hauling huge metal carriers.

Those carriers had to hold Lijuan’s vampiric forces . . . and reborn.

Dmitri, call all our people home. This was a fight to the death; they needed everyone. Nimra, Nazarach, Augustus, all of them. It was a risk to pull in his people from around the territory, but unlike the last time, he didn’t think Lijuan was going to try to eat away at him in small bites. No, she intended to take New York, then crawl out across his land.

Tell Galen and Naasir to send our noncombatants in the Refuge to Eli’s Refuge stronghold. They will be protected by Eli’s people. It was a decision he and Elijah had made when Lijuan’s eventual rise became inevitable—had Lijuan chosen to attack South America instead, Galen and Naasir and their teams would’ve taken charge of Eli’s noncombatants, allowing his warriors to head home.

Today, it was Raphael’s warriors who would fly toward battle.

Even as Raphael sent out orders, he was fighting his way through the mass of winged fighters. His sword bled red, but his goal was the archangel with hair of white and wings of a delicate dove gray who soared high above the city, her fingers prickling with an eerily beautiful power that would devastate anything it touched.

He had to strike now, while he could see her. An enemy warrior sliced his sword downward at Raphael’s wing . . . and it turned into white fire without Raphael’s conscious volition. The sword went straight through without causing any damage—throwing the enemy warrior off-balance.

Slicing off the other angel’s head, a spray of warm blood hitting his face, Raphael scalded the remaining enemy fighters around him with archangelic power, then rose high, wildfire building into a lethal sphere in his hand. His initial blast intersected with Lijuan’s and the clash reverberated in a massive boom of sound that smashed over the entire city.

He saw some people drop, hands over their ears, but his archers held.

He threw the hidden sphere of wildfire in his other hand in the immediate aftermath, his aim her wing. She wasn’t expecting the rapid response and his blow found its mark. Screaming as the wildfire seared away part of her wing before she could go noncorporeal, she retaliated in a fury.

Her obsidian death hit the side of a building, shattering glass and destroying a corner. As if a giant had taken a bite out of the skyscraper. Taking advantage of her anger-fueled lack of strategy, he threw more wildfire in smaller but rapid-fire spheres, only then realizing the wildfire had gained a faint opalescence. Not as strong as he’d seen on the broken pieces of the chrysalis, but present.

A piece of Elena’s heart, embedded forever in his power.

The second sphere hit Lijuan’s leg. Wildfire burned over her, and in the background of its merciless glow, he saw the skeletal bones of her face fading in and out.

Why wasn’t she going noncorporeal? Was it possible the wildfire had evolved to stop her from switching form? Or had she used so much energy to hide her massive army that she’d burned out that particular ability?

Whatever the reason, it didn’t stop her from deluging him in a rain of starlight obsidian. But, wounded as she was, her aim was off. Her warriors closed ranks in front of her before he could target her again. Raphael scorched them out of existence, but there were always more ready to lay their lives and bodies on the line to protect their goddess, a flesh and blood wall of mindless fidelity.

The last was a squadron that flew with the precision of a seasoned team. The entire unit snapped around Lijuan in a single heartbeat, then they all dropped as one—right into the thick of the fighting.

Raphael could no longer target her without hitting his own people. She, however, had the same problem—she couldn’t attack him without killing a world-class team of her own.

Stalemate.

Utilizing the lull, he scanned the battle zone. The fireline was out and his archers had fallen back. It was no shock to see that Lijuan’s people had taken the port—with their numbers so gargantuan, he’d expected this first loss.

Wounded angels lay on rooftops all over the city, their wings crumpled and bodies bloodied. Healers and field medics attended to Raphael’s wounded, while hard-eyed warriors watched over Lijuan’s wounded to make certain they wouldn’t rejoin the attack.

He returned his attention to the enemy squadron that surrounded their goddess. I am willing to agree to a cease-fire for long enough for us both to collect our wounded. Some of his people had fallen in what was now enemy territory.

He’d deliberately sent his message so it would hit every mind in the vicinity. So her people would know the choice she made. If he could demoralize her army, he would. As he waited for a response, he told two of his warriors to drop from the air, clearing his line of sight . . . then blasted another one of her squadrons with angelfire. It incinerated them. The massive container they’d carried until their deaths crashed to the unforgiving street far below.

The distance didn’t fully muffle the loud shatter of its destruction. From the sky, it was a toybox spilling tiny broken dolls. Most lay unmoving, but the odd one crawled, pitiful and slow.

Ransom’s team has it, Dmitri told him, and he knew hundreds of meters below, a group of hunters was bearing down on the crawlers.

Raphael was already moving to destroy a second carrier, but Lijuan’s forces had seen what was happening, dropped precipitously to avoid his strike. Lijuan rose up out of the knot of her people at the same time to blast him once again. Her wing was badly damaged but she was no green angel in her first battle. She nearly got him.

He threw wildfire at her in a relentless volley until she dropped back into her protection. Sweat dripped down his back. It might appear as if he was winning, but he wasn’t. He’d used up so much wildfire that, Cascade power or not, his body was having trouble generating enough to keep up.

Much longer and he’d be forced to use ordinary angelfire—which didn’t have much of an impact on Lijuan. As he’d feared after his failure to heal Antonicus, even his wildfire wasn’t working as it had in the last battle.

Then, he’d truly hurt her.

Just now, when she’d risen, he’d seen signs that her body had already stopped the progression of the wildfire on her wing, the same for the damage to her leg. If Lijuan decided to wait him out, she’d win by default. He had, at least, given his people a little breathing room by crashing that carrier. Lijuan’s troops were being more cautious, and those with the carriers had dropped back behind the fighters and changed direction to head back to the port.

Aodhan, Illium, Jason, can you get to a carrier? They were the only three angels on his team with enough strength to take out the massive metal constructs.

The answer from all three was negative. Jason was fighting an advance on their left flank, Aodhan on their right, while Illium was at the frontline. Any withdrawal and Lijuan’s squadrons would fall on the archers and shooters in a bloody massacre.

Izzy is close to the one at your eleven o’clock. It was Elena in his head.

Raphael had included his consort in the communications as a matter of course.

He demolished a swathe of enemy warriors, something about two of them striking him as odd, but he didn’t have time to stop and think about it before he obliterated them from existence. I know he is your favorite, hbeebti, he said in the aftermath, but Izzy is a baby angel without the ability to light a candle with his power, much less that to throw bolts of energy.

That’s why he has a missile launcher, his hunter replied patiently. Ash taught him to shoot one last month and insisted he carry it into battle.