The kitten stood three feet away, staring at him out of bright blue eyes. He raised his eyebrows. “Meow?”
She skittered back.
Great, now even tiny helpless creatures were pulling away from him. Scowling and feeling sorry for himself, he folded his arms and turned to the right. Washing hung lank and brown on the line of the house next door. He frowned, took a step toward it. There was something . . .
“Aodhan, I’m just moving a few feet away to look next door.”
“I’m done here anyway,” Aodhan said, exiting the house. “What did you see?”
“I’m not sure . . .” Walking over, with Aodhan by his side, and the kitten padding along a little farther back, he saw that the piece of washing was stiff and marked by bird droppings. “Oh, it’s leather,” he said. “That explains—Fuck!”
28
Illium wrenched back his hand before his fingers could brush over the skin.
Because that’s what it was. And not an animal skin.
Not an angel, either, because there were no marks or holes where wings grew out of an angel’s back. Mortal or vampire, then. A fly buzzed over to sit on the skin. That there were no other insects on or around it told him the skin had been hanging there long enough to dry out, lose its smell. Would that happen naturally? Or had someone prepared it?
He swallowed repeatedly.
“Now we know.” Aodhan’s voice, his tone even but his face expressionless. “Something bad did happen to this settlement, and to its people.”
Having managed to get his nausea under control, Illium moved around the line to look at it from the other side. It was no less horrific from that side. “I can see why Vetra didn’t notice.” From above, she’d have seen what he originally had—an old brown shirt on the line.
Aodhan, who’d stepped toward the house, said, “There’s more here.” He shook his head when Illium went to join him. “No, Blue, you don’t want to see this.”
Blue.
A nickname so old that only Aodhan used it, and that rarely. Almost everyone else used Bluebell, a moniker he’d picked up later in life.
Illium froze, caught by the solemnity of his friend’s voice. “What is it?”
“Stacks of skins,” Aodhan told him. “Cured and neatly folded up into piles.”
Illium had seen horror, survived it. But today, his gorge rose for a second time. Swiveling away from the doorway, he breathed deeply to try to keep it contained. When Aodhan walked over to put his hand on Illium’s shoulder, he didn’t shrug it away.
“How?” he said at last. “How could someone capable of that be so calm and controlled that they left behind no chaos?”
It made no sense to him.
“How, too, did the murderer manage to do this to so many people without causing them to flee?” Aodhan said. “Why is Fei the only survivor?” Aodhan ran his hand down Illium’s spine, his fingers brushing the inner curve of his wings.
It was an intimate touch, but again, Illium didn’t shrug him away. He needed his friend at this moment, needed the connection. “We have to tell Suyin.” Illium might be jealous of Suyin, but she was the archangel of this territory, needed to know its horrors and dangers. “She has to know to keep an eye on Fei—I think the girl’s mute out of terror, but we can’t discount the possibility that she might’ve been involved.”
Aodhan pulled out a phone. “I’ll call the general—she kept up with technology while Caliane Slept, seeing it as part of her duty to be ready for the day her archangel returned to the world.”
“What about Suyin?”
“She’s working on it, but current technology is difficult for her.”
“You should push her,” Illium muttered. “If Titus can learn, so can she.”
“She’s far older than Titus, Illium.”
“She’s not older than my mother.” Illium knew he was being obdurate, but he also knew he was right. “Staying stuck in the past won’t exactly help her.”
Aodhan stilled. Yes, Illium could be militant about technology, but the particular words he’d just spoken held far more meaning than was apparent on the surface. Because Illium was the child of the Hummingbird, whose mind had been stuck in a whirlpool of the past for most of Illium’s life. He’d never blamed his mother for her fractured mind and he probably wasn’t even conscious of why, his obsession with Kaia aside, he refused to cling to the past—but Aodhan had always seen it, known it.
Reaching out, he brushed the back of his fingers over Illium’s cheek. He didn’t take it badly when Illium flinched. There were scars in both of them that hurt, and this was one of Illium’s. Which was why he didn’t put it into words, either. Illium didn’t need the connection made apparent, didn’t need the torment of history to color his present.
As he placed the call, Illium walked away to examine the closest edge of the forest, his wings spread as if to block Aodhan from following. Illium was the one who’d first taught him to use this device and the ones that came before it. No matter the origins of his fascination, Illium had always been far more in tune with the technology of any given era than Aodhan, whether it was a teletype machine, steam engines, or computers.
Once, during Aodhan’s dark years, Illium had brought him a mechanical paint-mixing apparatus. It hadn’t been anywhere near as technologically advanced as what existed in the current time, but it had been a thing strange and fascinating, and it had pulled Aodhan a little further into the light.
“Aodhan?” Arzaleya’s voice held an echo that said she was in the air.
“Hello, Arza,” he said, for though the general could be formal with juniors, she was no stickler when it came to interactions with senior staff; she also had a dry sense of humor that amused him—and that he thought would be the perfect foil for Suyin’s quiet sorrow. “I need to talk to Suyin.”
“She’s flown down to talk to the mortals and vampires. Is it urgent?”
“No, it can wait a few minutes. But call me back the instant she’s free.”
“No, wait, she’s flying up now.” A short pause.
“Aodhan, you’ve found something.” Suyin’s voice was alert, ready for another nightmare.
Aodhan told her what they’d discovered. “Right now, we have no answer for any of it.”
“I think we all knew something was coming.” There was nothing of defeat in her tone. It held only the bite of a simmering anger.
That anger had been a part of Suyin since before her ascension. According to Naasir and Andromeda, both of whom had stayed in contact with Suyin since the day they helped her escape Lijuan, her anger had woken as her body knitted itself back together.
“At first, she was a wounded bird,” Naasir had said. “Stuck on the earth, unable to fly.” His silver eyes had been bright. “But strong, not willing to bow down to pain.” A glance at the angel he loved with all his wild heart. “Wasn’t she, Andi?”
Andromeda had nodded, her thick hair a beautiful chaos of golden-brown curls, aglow in the evening sunlight. “There was always grit to her. It just took her a while to find her way back to herself.
“But I don’t think she came back the same Suyin she was when Lijuan put her into captivity.” Thoughtful words from the woman who was Jessamy’s right hand. “Before then, all the records talk of her as a great architect, a woman of grace and art. No mention of the rage that lives in her today.”
Aodhan hadn’t needed Andromeda to spell out the latter; he knew better than most that some moments altered you forever. Suyin’s anger was now an indelible part of her, as his shadows were a part of Aodhan. She’d asked him once, if he thought her rage made her weak.
“As long as you don’t let it control you,” Aodhan had answered. “I allowed evil to steal away a part of my life that I will never get back, and I regret that.”
Suyin had returned the unadorned honesty of his words with her own
raw truth. “I won’t allow my aunt to be a malignant ghost riding my shoulder, I promise you this, Aodhan. My anger . . . it fuels me.”
“Then use it.”
Today, she said, “Do you need more people? I can—”
“No. We can handle the situation.” Suyin’s circle of trust was incredibly tight. Aodhan wouldn’t deplete it without desperate need.
Her next question had nothing to do with their horrific find. It seemed, in fact, to come out of left field. “How is Illium? Have his power levels stopped fluctuating so dangerously?”
Aodhan went motionless.
Correctly interpreting his silence, Suyin said, “Vetra is a good spymaster.”
His hand clenched on the phone at the realization that Suyin was spying on Raphael, even though he knew his response to be irrational. Raphael was also spying on Suyin. It was a game with the Cadre, though right now, it was also about unearthing any threats that might emerge in the post-war period.
He went to ask what any of that had to do with Illium—because he would never betray his closest friend, not even for his archangel—when he got the import of her question. “If you’re worried I don’t have stable backup, don’t. To save my life, Illium would get in the way of an archangel’s strike.”
Suyin’s response held a tone he couldn’t identify. “I ask only as a friend. He saved my life, too, in battle, though he likely has no memory of it, we were in such fierce combat at the time. He warded off a blow from a morning star aimed at my face—the spikes would’ve surely shattered my skull into a hundred pieces.”
“It’s who he is,” Aodhan said, his gaze going to the wings of defiant blue on the edge of the forest. “I’ll let you know the instant we learn any kind of an answer.”
“Stay safe, Aodhan.”
“And you, Suyin.”
They hung up on that sentiment, Aodhan happy to have gotten through it without having to chase after Illium. His best friend could be impulsive when angry or emotional. Aodhan had been half prepared for him to stride off into the trees.
As Aodhan slid away his phone, Illium crouched down, stayed that way for several seconds. When he rose again, turned, a tiny, furry face looked out at Aodhan from Illium’s muscled embrace.
Of course he’d charmed the wary kitten.
Aodhan couldn’t help his lips from curving. “Another conquest.”
Scratching the top of the kitten’s head, Illium looked around. “Aside from the odd fly and a couple of birds, she’s the only sign of life in this place.” No longer was there anger in his body or in his voice, his attention on the eerie quiet of their surroundings.
That was the thing with Illium—he was rare to anger and quick to forgive. Aodhan was far more likely to hold on to a grudge. “Let’s finish the search. Once we know all there is to know, we can make a plan for our next step.” He nodded at the kitten. “We’ll take her back to the stronghold with us.”
“Yes.” Illium scratched the kitten again, this time under the chin.
She purred, her eyes closing. “That’s my girl,” Illium said, his tone warm with affection. “I think I’ll call you Smoke, for this pretty fur.”
Smile deepening, Aodhan shifted to face the house again. And no longer wanted to smile. His skin chilled.
“Aodhan.”
“We have to look inside, find the extent of . . . whatever this is.”
“Here, you hold Smoke and I’ll—”
Aodhan rounded on his friend. “Stop it.” It came out far harsher than he’d intended, and he was sorry for it at once when Illium’s beautifully mobile face went blank. “Fuck.” He wasn’t one to use profanities, but it was the only word that seemed appropriate.
Shoving a hand through his hair, he said, “I’m not incapable. I’ve been surviving this territory for a year. You don’t need to babysit me.”
Illium’s eyes glowed gold. “Why are you so fucking stuck on that?” It came out hard as stone. “We’ve always had each other’s backs.”
“No, Illium. You’ve been watching my back for over two hundred years, and I’m over it.” Aodhan’s skin burned now, his muscles tense wires. “I’m not a child, and I’m not—”
“Don’t you say it,” Illium gritted out. “Don’t you fucking say it.”
Hand fisting at his side, Aodhan said, “I’m going to check the house. Keep watch outside.”
Illium stepped closer instead of backing away, the heat of his body buffeting Aodhan and his power a storm in the air. “No.” An unbending response. “That house is going to smell like a fucking coffin and you don’t need that.”
Aodhan’s stomach twisted on itself, his throat threatening to choke up. “It’s time,” he said, his voice rough. “I decided not to hide anymore when I first came to New York. I won’t go back on my promise to myself. I won’t, Blue.”
Illium’s gaze turned stark, all anger melting away. “Aodhan.” It was a plea.
“No. Stay here.”
Illium’s jaw worked. “I should knock you out, you stubborn asshole.”
“Try it and see who comes out the winner.” Illium might be the better trained, but Aodhan was a fraction taller and had a little more heft to him. Enough to balance them out in a hand-to-hand combat situation. Because the two of them were never going to fight with angelic powers—it would always be hard and dirty, a thing of muscle and skin and bone.
“Don’t,” Illium said, the single word a request that stood on foundations laid centuries ago. “Don’t do this to yourself. Or to me.”
Aodhan gripped the side of Illium’s neck, pressed his forehead to Illium’s for a single potent second. “If I keep on hiding,” he whispered in a rough rasp, “I might as well still be in that box, Blue.”
Illium’s wings glowed, streaks of red on his cheekbones, but he didn’t try to get in Aodhan’s way this time.
Holding the warmth of Illium’s skin in the fingers he’d curled into his palm, Aodhan stepped into the center of the horror.
I am a goddess. I will rise and rise and rise into my reign of death.
—Archangel Lijuan
29
Death had a smell pungent and old and putrid.
The skins might’ve been cured enough not to rot, but not enough to eradicate the smell associated with dead things. Or live things that had partially rotted.
Aodhan’s stomach wanted to eject all the food he’d eaten that day, eject itself, but he held his breath and forced himself to go on. An angel his age could survive a long time without breathing, though it was uncomfortable. Far better that, however, than to have the fetid scent in his nostrils.
Memories threatened to rise, threatened to hijack his thoughts.
I’m going to tell Mother you did this.
He clung to Illium’s voice, that thread of wild blue normality. I’ll tell Eh-ma you’ve been snapping at me since you arrived in China.
I have not.
It was a silly, juvenile conversation, and it was exactly what Aodhan needed to find his feet. Which Illium would well know.
Sometimes, of late, Aodhan wanted to strangle his best friend—but then Illium would do something like this, and all Aodhan wanted was to hold him close and fix what had broken between them.
Even as they continued their ridiculous back and forth that fixed nothing, and yet bolstered Aodhan’s ability to do this, Aodhan made himself count the skins. Only ten.
Even though he hadn’t specified to what the number referred, Illium said, Add in the one on the line and it’s still nowhere enough to account for the people who lived in this village.
No, Aodhan agreed. I’ll keep looking. His fingers feeling soiled from having had to touch the skins to count them, Aodhan kept them by his sides, not wanting them to come into contact with any other part of his body.
The room just beyond the back entryway was a kitchen th
at appeared to have been in use in the recent past. An onion sat badly chopped on a wooden board, tomatoes that looked foraged from the garden outside sat beside it, and there was a large pot on the unlit stove. Green mold furred the vegetables.
Aodhan didn’t want to look in the pot, but he knew he had to do this, had to finish it.
Blue? Talk to me about something, anything.
Demarco and his girlfriend held a party at their new place, and I went. Drunk guild hunters have nothing on drunk tattoo artists. I almost ended up with a rose tattoo on my butt.
Aodhan clung to the steady rhythm of his friend’s voice as he forced himself to approach the large pot. There’s a pot, he told Illium when he reached it. The state of the onions and tomatoes on the board says someone was here a number of days past. It could be nothing, just an abandoned meal. Except it was the first such scene they’d discovered. The rest of the village was almost pathologically neat and tidy.
Illium said, Venom swapped out Dmitri’s Ferrari for an old Mini as a joke.
Aodhan’s hand trembled as he lifted the lid off the pot. Dmitri called me after. He was pissed.
But laughing, too, right?
Yes. He had plans for Venom’s Bugatti. The word pink came up a lot.
Illium’s laughter in his mind, the strain in it unhidden—but it was enough to hold Aodhan steady as he looked in the pot.
Slamming the lid shut, he stumbled away from the stove.
“Aodhan!”
“Stay outside!” Aodhan yelled. “I’m fine!” I was just startled, he added, because he knew Illium, understood that for him to remain outside would push him to the edge of endurance.
“I hate this!” Illium’s voice was taut. “Hurry up and get the fuck out of there!”
His protectiveness raised Aodhan’s hackles, made him want to snap back—and the surge of frustration was exactly what he needed to deal with the ugliness of what he’d found. There are rotten human remains in the pot. He didn’t enumerate on what he’d seen—the hand floating in a watery soup, the chunks of meat that had probably come from a fleshier part of the body.
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