by Nalini Singh
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.
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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.
37
Elena broke the chill silence. “At least now we know how she’s doing it.” A glance at Raphael. “Could be in conjunction with another volunteer acolyte . . . or maybe she’s gone beyond that.”
“I will send an alert to those in charge. The people of China must be warned to get out of the way should they see such a fog.” Doing nothing in these circumstances wasn’t an option. “Dmitri, send the recording to others of the Cadre, under my seal.”
His second nodded and turned his attention to the task.
Raphael, meanwhile, asked Elena to walk outside with him.
Only once they were out on the edge of the railingless balcony, their city spread out below them like a toy creation, did he say, “Why did you allow Dmitri’s jibe to get to you?” It had disconcerted his second, too. Dmitri only acted the way he did with Elena because she gave as good as he dished out.
“It just struck me.” She stared out at the steel and glass and vibrancy of their city. “This craziness began with me—with a mortal turned angel. What if I was the catalyst for the Cascade? All this death and darkness and horror, it’d be on me.”
“It could as easily be said that Uram was the catalyst.” Raphael felt sorrow for the archangel he’d had to execute, an archangel who’d once been his friend, but he also knew that it’d had to be done. Uram had become a monster, one who gorged on death and whose murderous appetite would never be satisfied. “It’s what brought you into my life.”
Elena played a throwing knife through her fingers, the fading winter light glancing off the shining surfaces. “I try to tell myself that, but . . . I’m the wild card element in all of this. Archangels, angels, mortals, vampires, that was the world before me. Now we have an angel-Made.”
“Naasir would be most annoyed at you for forgetting him.”
But Elena’s gaze remained solemn. “Naasir and I should begin a club for all the ones who don’t quite fit on the taxonomic tree.”
“You were just the first whisper of the Cascade, Elena-mine. Not the catalyst, for no one can control such powers as are currently smashing the world, but the first sign that the Cascade had begun.”
Allowing him to haul her close, Elena stroked his skin . . . and jumped. “You’re a little electrified, lover,” she informed him, while continuing with her caresses. “I don’t know if I like being the first sign of impending doom any better.” A scowl. “Still, it beats being the cause.”
“What arrogance you have, Guild Hunter, to think you are the reason behind a tumult of power such as the world has never seen.”
“Jeez, you’re right.” She bumped her forehead against his chest. “I must sound so full of myself.”
He went to reassure her that he’d meant nothing of what he’d said, then paused. His words had worked. Not in the way he’d wanted, but they’d broken through the shadowy miasma that had threatened to encompass Elena. So he curved his hand around the side of her neck and said, “It is the curse of immortality. You must watch against further development.”
She tilted back her head. “Fiend.” She “punched” him in the side, the touch featherlight. “Also, Dmitri’s now one point up on me. Ugh.”
“You’ve forgotten the kiss.”
Her eyes brightened at the reminder of Dmitri’s utter horror. Satisfaction curling her lips, she pressed a kiss to his chest, shivered. “Yep, still electrified.”
“And filthy. Come.” He rose up into the air as night licked the horizon. “You can wash my back.”
* * *
• • •
Elena put on soft gray pajama pants after a delicious bath with Raphael, topping them with an equally soft tank in a darker gray and a deep blue hoodie—both designed with wing slits. The hoodie boasted a sparkly silver unicorn on the left breast, while on the back were printed the words: Wait, I have to park my unicorn.
“I miss the time when unicorns roamed the earth.”
“Very funny, Archangel.” She knew that glint in his eye by now. “Beth got this for me after Maggie picked it out.”
“Talking of gifts.” Wearing only a pair of faded sweatpants that hung precariously on his hips, Raphael plucked out a small box from inside their private weapons locker.
Elena’s breath caught. Slipping a hand under her pillow, she withdrew her own small box. “I was going to spring it on you in bed.”
Raphael’s wings began to glow.
Opening his box, he held it out. The last time, it had been small amber hoops appropriate for a working hunter. This time, it was studs: one an amber crossbow bolt with a heart of white fire, the other a tiny crossbow that must’ve taken an artisan days to craft. She held her breath as he inserted first one, then the other through ears she’d had pierced a couple of weeks ago.
Neither of them spoke as she opened her own box. A ring because Raphael wasn’t much for other forms of jewelry. A heavy titanium band scored with a pattern that echoed the gunshot scar on his wing, a roughly square chunk of amber in the center. An explosion of white fire had been caught in the amber, the edges pale gold.
The one thing that wasn’t new was the word inscribed on the inside: Knhebek.
Raphael held out his hand and she slipped it on.
A sigh whispered out of her. She hadn’t known how much she missed this small sign of their entanglement until now. “I saved the rest of the amber.”
“For the next time we blow up ours?”
“The rate we’re going . . .” That was when she caught a glow on the horizon out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t look now but I think something’s happening.”
Of course, they both headed outside. Elena hugged her arms around herself as they stepped out into the cold. Her hoodie wasn’t meant for outdoor temperatures. Raphael, bare chested, tugged her against that chest and the two of them stood in the winter cold night while an eerie light came to life over the water, the colors of it blood red.
“Illium told me that at least the sea wasn’t turning blood red.”
“Now he’s jinxed us.” She watched transfixed as the light came closer and closer. “Shall we—”
“No, your Bluebell has already taken a squadron out for the initial reconnaissance.”
Raphael kept thinking he should know about this light, a faint whisper of memory at the back of his mind.
Sire, Illium said. The water around the light is clear and I just saw a bird fly into it and return with no apparent ill effects. The light isn’t coming from the sky but rising from the ocean.
Con
tinue to watch. Raphael trusted nothing about the Cascade. Do not enter it.
Elena’s owls are dancing around in the colors of it.
“Guild Hunter, you will have to unpark your unicorn. It appears this is for you.” He told her of the owls.
“Cassandra?” A quiet tension in her voice. “Let’s go find out.”
It took them only a short time to get into gear more suitable for a night flight and head out. Elena took only minimal weapons—which for her meant her crossbow, the bolts, and enough throwing blades to set up a knife shop.
When Raphael saw how many other curious angels were heading toward the luminescence, he ordered everyone but the squadron to fall back.
Obedience was immediate.
Wow.
Raphael had to agree with Elena’s awed whisper. He’d been alive an eon longer than her and he’d never seen such a sight. What had seemed blood red from the Tower proved to be a complex blend of colors, true red only at the very top edge. Even there, it wasn’t blood red but a deep pink red.
That shade faded into a softer pink; the colors that rippled below it were blues and greens and golds and so many other hues that he didn’t have names for all of them. It is like an aurora on the ocean. A lovely vision thrown up from the depths.
How high does it go?
Raphael flew up, and up. As high as the Tower. Arrowing back down to hover beside Elena, he watched the owls dance over and through the light and, despite his suspicions of the Cascade, could find nothing threatening in the sight. It was an artwork given life, a song painted in color and light.
Raphael. I have Jessamy on the line. Dmitri’s confident dark-edged voice. I’ve asked her if she’s heard of this phenomenon.
Tell her that it appears peaceful at first glance. The owls are certainly happy with it. It may be linked to Cassandra.
