Archangel's War

56

Halting in front of the mountain of wounded, Lijuan smiled with a kind gentleness that Raphael remembered from long ago, when he’d been a boy holding on to his father’s hand while they visited Lijuan’s court.

She gave me a plate of sweets once, he found himself sharing with Elena. Then she told me I was free to run around in her maze garden while she and my father spoke—and that I wasn’t to cheat by flying to look down at the maze from above.

Elena shook her head. What happened to her?

Greed and ambition. Lijuan had always chafed at not being the oldest and strongest in the Cadre. I remember my father laughing and telling her not to wish for age; that he knew far too many mad old ones. The irony of Nadiel’s declaration echoed through time.

Onscreen, Lijuan knelt beside the broken body of the last angel to have been dropped into the pile; as they watched, she brushed back his hair with utmost gentleness. The camera had enough definition that when Vivek zoomed in, they saw awe and wonder and joy on the face of the fallen angel. His lips shaped the words, My Lady.

Lijuan murmured something that made him attempt to bow his head even as blood dribbled from a corner of his mouth. Lijuan touched his hair again before rising. Hands dropping to her sides, she threw back her head and—

Darkness.

“Shit.” Vivek wheeled to a computer, began to work it with frantic hands. “I don’t get it. The cameras say they’re transmitting, all functions optimal.”

“It’s the fog.” Jason, his gaze unblinking as he stared at the darkness. “She’s created a mini-fog.”

“Rouse one of the miniature drones we have in the area,” Dmitri ordered. “Get an aerial view.”

“I’ll pilot,” Illium volunteered, and Vivek passed across the controller, but Ashwini said, “Wait,” before they could activate the drone. “Fog’s fading at the edges.”

“I don’t see it,” Suyin murmured, but that was to be expected. She hadn’t experienced Ashwini’s third eye.

Five seconds later and shapes began to appear in the blackness, silhouettes that made little sense but for Lijuan’s form—she was in the same position she’d held when the darkness first descended. The flesh mountain, however, had become smaller, seemed to keep shrinking as they watched.

The last of the fog whispered out of existence.

In place of a mountain of wounded fighters lay a mound of bodies devoid of any indication of life. Their flesh was akin to paper, their faces twisted into a rictus of gasping mouths and wide eyes. Only . . . there were no eyes. Just hollow sockets that begged for redemption.

The corpses’ fingers, stiff and dry, were frozen in curled-up twists, though a few reached out toward Lijuan as if to beg for mercy . . . or to ask for the benediction of their goddess. Feathers divested of color floated in the air, lost from the bodies of angels who’d been stripped of life, of flesh.

An eerie silence hung over the entire scene.

Lijuan lowered her arms and seemed to sigh. Her wings glowed, her face exquisite in profile when she turned to the side. At that moment, she was the loveliest Elena had ever seen her. Her hair was a sheet of glittering ice, silken and healthy. It blew back in a gentle breeze to reveal the flawless lines of her face.

The same breeze also lifted more feathers into the air. They surrounded Lijuan in a soft halo that glowed with the power reflected off her wings.

Lijuan looked up at the feathers. Smiled.

Hers is not a power I can match, Guild Hunter.

To hear Raphael say that so bluntly, it made the rock on her heart crushingly heavier. That’s because you don’t feed on the life of others. She locked her hand with his, this lethal archangel who would never do to his own what Lijuan had just done. We’ll fight her with honor and with our people by our side, not shriveled into husks.

“Oh, fuck.” Vivek’s bitten-out words wrenched her attention back to the screen.

The mummies were crumbling into dust under the glow of the dark orange evening sunlight. All except for a layer of bodies on the bottom edges . . . who were attempting to crawl out and away from the mound.

Elena’s brain couldn’t make sense of it. No one who looked like that should be able to move. The crawlers’ wings were featherless lumps of flesh that curled inward, their bones looking broken or partially disintegrated. As she fought not to bring up her last meal, the fingers of one snapped under him as he attempted to drag the remains of his body forward. His face was all but gone, caved in, his eyes missing.

Striding across the screen, Xi began to behead the “survivors” one by one, with clinical efficiency. It was an act of mercy by a commander, except that you couldn’t call it that, not when Xi had stood by Lijuan in all of this. It didn’t take him long to behead all the crawlers and step back to his position beside his goddess.

Lijuan sent out power in a languid wave, disintegrating the remains into dust.

That dust rose into the air.

Vivek’s fingers went rigid on the wheels of his chair. “We’re all going to be breathing that in.”

Elena lifted a hand to her mouth and ran from the room.

No one said a word when she returned after emptying her stomach. Raphael put his arm around her while Sara passed her a bottle of water. As she drank, she saw that she wasn’t the only one with a white face. Further, Izak and Suyin were also missing.

Both returned to be handed their own bottles of water.

Elena reached out a free hand to take Izzy’s. He let her, cuddling in surreptitiously on one side of her. She loved her archangel all the more that he let the young angel be, though Izzy’s wings had to be dangerously close to touching his own.

“What did I miss?” It came out husky, her throat raw.

“That commander bowing down on one knee to Lijuan,” her best friend told her, while Illium said something to Suyin that made the tight pain of her expression soften. Trust Bluebell to get through to a woman so wounded she had no faith in anyone.

“The two left together,” Ashwini added. “The queen and her knight.”

“That’s exactly how Xi sees himself,” Dmitri said, his cheekbones sharp against his bronzed skin. “Any luck getting us another visual on them, V?”

“Not yet.” Vivek had his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed bloodlessly tight as he worked. “Might be time to activate a crawler.” A sudden stiffness. “Things look like bugs and are super stealthy, but have a much narrower field of view.”

“I suggest a new name,” Aodhan murmured. “Bugs.”

“Yeah, bugs it is.” Vivek took another two seconds. “Bug’s on the move.”

At first, all they saw from the bug’s low position were the windows of the buildings opposite and the odd angel flying low. “Her army isn’t all in uniform this time around,” Elena said, that fact only now registering.

Raphael stirred. “Are all our people marked?”

“Yes,” Dmitri confirmed. “If they aren’t in uniform, they’re wearing armbands signifying their allegiance.” He glanced at Illium. “Bluebell, get your squadron leaders to fly out with extras while we’re in the cease-fire. I don’t want the bands accessible to Lijuan’s troops.”

It was only as Illium headed out that she saw he’d had his hand curled over Aodhan’s brutally fisted one. What nightmares did Sparkle remember, she thought. What ugliness had this stirred up?

His departure left Aodhan and Suyin side by side, and the picture they made was startling: Aodhan’s glittering beauty against the ice white of her skin and hair. A symphony of cold starlight and the heart of the sun.

“No time to make uniforms for such a grand army?” Janvier’s molasses of a voice, slow and easy, but the bayou green of his eyes was as hard as jade.

Ashwini ran a hand down his back. All of them attempting to comfort one another.

“Lack of markings could be on purpose, a way to cause confusion in battle,” Dmitri pointed out.

Jason opened out his wings, settled them back in. “We could turn that around, use her lack of uniforms against her.”

Nodding agreement, Raphael said, “Brief Naasir on the situation so he can utilize it as soon as he arrives. He’s going to be heading into enemy territory.”

“I heard from him just before the cease-fire,” Dmitri said. “He and Galen should be here by morning. They helped Elijah’s people move the vulnerable in the Refuge into the most central stronghold. Jessamy and all the babies and kids are in there, along with the majority of the Medica team. Keir’s missing, said to be in Michaela’s territory.”

Elena thought back, realized the most central Refuge stronghold was Favashi’s. Her people certainly had no loyalty to Lijuan or Charisemnon. Keir must be with Michaela’s child.

If I know him, he’s already left with the babe, Raphael replied. He’ll be making his way to the Refuge along isolated routes. Michaela would not want her child in her territory when Lijuan’s infected present the threat of a plague.

Will he be safe? He was crossing a massive distance in the midst of a war.

My guess is that he’s traveling alone with the child, Raphael said. He should attract no attention, especially as other noncombatants will be fleeing to the Refuge for safety. And Keir is tougher than he looks—this is not the first child he has carried to safe harbor.

On the screen, Vivek’s bug finally caught sight of Lijuan and Xi. The two stood in a large garden-like square that Elena recognized from her flights over the city. It was a semi-private park created for business workers, a bright green haven in the summer months and a pretty place to catch some fresh air in winter.

Yet today, despite the rich hues painted on the snow by the setting sun, the park was a place of shadows. In the center bustled multiple vampires; they were constructing something out of materials they must’ve brought with them in one of the submarines. “What is that?” She leaned in closer to the screen.

“I recognize it,” Raphael said. “It’s the jade throne from a mountain stronghold Lijuan often used as a retreat. I saw it on a visit with my father.”

“It went missing hundreds of years ago, is considered a lost relic,” Jason murmured.

“Lijuan must’ve put it in storage.” Dmitri scanned the scene in front of them. “It looks like she’s busy for the time being. I’m going to set some things in play. Janvier, Ash.”

The two slipped away with Dmitri. Together with Naasir, the three led the “sneak attack” section of Raphael’s forces. They’d trained multiple small teams in the time since the last battle, and were the reason the city was so well booby-trapped. Venom’s Holly was part of their group.

“I can watch the feeds,” Vivek said. “I’ll send out an alert if I see anything that indicates preparation for an attack.”

“You have more of those bugs?” Illium, having returned from the balcony, came to stand next to Vivek’s wheelchair.

The hunter-born male nodded. “I seeded them everywhere I could. Bugs are pretty dumb in the brain department and have a tendency to fall off buildings and get squashed, but no one much notices them. Where do you need eyes?”

“I want to get a real count of her forces.”

Sara and Venom walked over to join them. “It’d be good if we could separate out ground and air support numbers,” Sara said, to Venom’s nod.

While the four of them worked on that, Suyin and Aodhan decided to rejoin their squadrons. Both those squadrons were in the air, maintaining the watch. Raphael stayed in the war room to speak to Suyin while she put on her battle armor, while Elena walked out onto the balcony with Aodhan.

With the twin swords that he wore in a dual sheath down the center of his spine, his well-worn leathers, and muscular build, he was a battle-honed warrior whose beauty was brilliant in the last of the sun’s light. But beyond all that, he was her friend. So she held out her hand.

He closed his own over it without hesitation, his palm warm. “Illium’s not as stable as he appears. His father’s waking threw him badly.”

No surprise that Sparkle was more concerned about Bluebell than himself. “He talking to you about it?”

A clenched jaw, Aodhan’s bare biceps bunching. “He’s the most stubborn person I know.” Releasing her hand, he prepared to take off. “But as the Hummingbird pointed out, I am no pushover.”

His takeoff was flawless, the glittering filaments in his wings ablaze. Suyin took off with a quieter whisper not long afterward. In this light, the dull silver of her armor appeared nearly the same bronze as the primaries that edged the snow-white of her wings.

Not all angels wore armor, but it was a smart move for Suyin, given her level of training. Designed for the angel, it featured a breastplate that fit exactly right, a neck guard, thigh guards, leg guards integrated into her boots, and forearm guards.

Elena’s own “armor” was integrated into her leathers, everything triple reinforced. She liked the freedom of movement it offered. “Suyin doing okay?” she asked Raphael as he came to stand behind her.

“She is haunted by the knowledge that she is of a bloodline with Lijuan. What hidden capacity for evil, she asks, does she carry within?”

Retracting her wings, Elena leaned back against his chest and drew in the masculine heat of his scent. “That they share nearly the same face must make it even worse.” It’d be like watching a horror version of yourself.

“I have told her it comes down to choices. Such as the one Lijuan made to murder the mortal who awoke in her what you do in me.” Arms already around her, he kissed her temple.

In front of them, their city was eerily calm. Sentries stood on rooftops around the entire perimeter, with archers and shooters on standby. Elena spotted a medic lift off from one rooftop, head to another. Bandaging wounds that didn’t necessitate a trip to the infirmary. “Do you know how many we lost?” It was a hard question to ask; the one question she couldn’t ask was if someone she knew was already gone.

“Six percent of our overall force.” Raphael’s wings became limned with a deadly glow. “It does not seem a large number against such a massive enemy, but for our first battle we projected a one percent loss as the maximum.” Though he was talking in cold percentages, his hand fisted against her abdomen.

These weren’t just numbers to Raphael.

Throat thick and eyes hot, Elena slid her hand over his fisted one and held on. They stood in silence as night fell on the first day of a war that had just begun.