by Nalini Singh
Eve inhaled on the other end of the line, the sound a touch shaky. “A friend of mine has a broken arm, another’s got bruises, but nothing worse than that. Sorry I missed your call—it got crazy in here after the reborn swarmed again. I have a bunch of messages from you and Amy, and Mom and Father.”
Father. Jeffrey had never been Daddy to Eve. Not as he’d once been to four little girls who’d laughed in delight as he pushed them on a swing.
Higher, Daddy! Higher!
Echoes of yesterday, poignant and beautiful.
That same man had danced one of his daughters across the living room floor, while another daughter took photographs with her beloved camera, and the baby of their family played in the corner.
Marguerite had often sat in a sunny spot in the living room, making this or that on the sewing machine Jeffrey would push out of her small sewing room and into the sunshine. Elena’s favorite spot had been on the bench of the sewing machine. Her mother had teased her that one day, she’d get too big to sit there and they’d have to reinforce it, but Marguerite had been long gone by the time Elena reached that size.
Today, her daddy was Eve’s father, and she didn’t think he’d ever laughed with his two youngest girls. Elena’s half sisters had grown up with a very different man than the one who’d loved Elena, Beth, Ari, and Belle. “How are they?”
“Good. Amy and Mom are volunteering in a warehouse that’s packing supplies for us, and Father’s involved with transporting them into Manhattan.”
Elena hadn’t known that, but it made sense. Jeffrey Deveraux had tentacles in every area of business in the city. If anyone knew supply logistics, it was Elena’s father. “But he’s outside Manhattan?” Their father was a brilliant businessman, hard as nails in the boardroom, but his kind of battle didn’t involve blades and guns and flamethrowers.
“Yes, he’s with Mom and Amy in New Jersey.” Eve exhaled slowly. “I said they should go farther away. Things are bad here.”
“I know. But the thing is, Eve, if we fall, it doesn’t matter how far they go.” Lijuan would spread like a virus across the land. “I think they’ll probably feel better if they stay and help in the fight how they can.”
She almost heard Eve swallow. “Yeah, that’s what Amy said. She said she might be crap at holding a sword and would probably vomit if she had to chop off a vampire’s head, but she’s really good at making sure supplies are packed exactly as they need to be packed so that all the space is used up. They put her in charge of one whole area of supplies.”
“Your sister is tough in her own way.” Had become so after realizing that Jeffrey would never love her own mother as much as he’d loved Marguerite. It had grown a hard angry core inside Amy that Elena wasn’t sure would ever melt—but that clarity of vision came from a tough, pragmatic nature.
“Amy always protected me when we were little. She never backs down from bullies and she says Lijuan is just a very powerful bully.”
“Your sister’s right.” Not for the first time, Elena wished she had a relationship with Amy, but she wasn’t about to push where she wasn’t wanted.
A noise in the background before Eve said, “I better go. There’re so many wounded—the healers and doctors need all of us who can run and grab necessary stuff and do errands, so they can focus on their work.” A pause. “Ellie, don’t get hurt okay?” The tremor was back. “I can’t lose my biggest big sister.”
Elena pressed her palm to her abdomen, blinked away the heat in her eyes. “I have plans to kick Lijuan’s butt,” she said . . . but she made no promises that she’d end this alive. She couldn’t.
After Eve hung up, she took a couple of seconds to find her feet again, then called Beth. It turned out that she was with Gwendolyn and Amy at the supply warehouse. Also with them was Majda.
Elena knew Beth’s husband Harrison was acting as a gofer in the Tower. That was harder than it sounded. He’d been running nonstop for days and, to his credit, hadn’t complained once. As for Jean-Baptiste, she’d spoken to him only a couple of hours earlier.
“Grandfather’s fine,” she told her grandmother when Majda came on the line. “Just tired.” As a highly experienced vampire, he was in charge of one of the ground teams under Venom’s overall command.
“And you, heart of my heart?” Soft words, infinite care. “How are you?”
“I currently have on new boots because some asshole angel stabbed a hole through my favorite ones and I’m annoyed.” It was such a petty thing to be irritated over that she clung to it. She needed petty right now, needed something that felt normal and not a matter of life or death. “I’ll probably get a blister.”
Majda’s tone held a smile when she replied. “May that be your biggest worry today, azeeztee.”
Elena clenched her stomach against the slamming wave of memory. Soft hands on her face. A laughing woman in the sunlight. The scent of gardenias. Lips pressed to her brow. “Maggie?” she managed to get out.
Last Elena had heard, Beth had decided to keep her daughter with her rather than send her away deeper into the territory. “You know Sara’s parents are still happy to take her until this is over.” They already had charge of Zoe; with both Sara and Deacon in combat and little Zoe familiar with her flighty, kooky, but loving grandparents, it had been the best choice.
“Our little Maggie is with us,” Majda confirmed. “I think for us, for Beth, it’s the right choice. Whatever happens, this child will always know what it is to be loved by her mother.” In her voice lived a thickness of memory, cherished pieces of the little girl she’d left behind in order to keep her safe.
“Maman lived a joyous life for many years,” Elena reminded her grandmother. “And she remembered you with love all her life.” Never once had Marguerite said anything negative about the mother who’d left her to wake alone in an old Parisian church. “I think she always knew you would’ve come back if you could have.”
“Take care of yourself, Elena,” Majda whispered. “I could not bear it if I were to survive you as I have survived my daughter and two granddaughters.”
Elena hung up the conversation with a heavy lump in her chest that she had to quickly breathe past when she saw a young warrior heading toward her. The female angel had a bandaged-up arm, which meant she’d sustained a fairly significant injury. Young by Tower standards, she was still two hundred and fifty years old.
“Deep sword wound?” Elena nodded at the injury.
“No, Consort. Even worse. One of the dead-eyes got me with a knife.” A flare of her nostrils, her lips pressed flat. “I can’t believe I allowed him to get that close. But I did manage to slice off a piece of his wing, so I salvaged my honor that much at least.”
“We take the ones we can get, Ahayl. Personally, I’m most proud of taking out an eye with a grenade launcher.” She’d actually taken out the entire side of an angel’s face, but the fucker had been so strong he’d survived it and flown off toward Lijuan’s territory.
Not that it would do him much good—Lijuan seemed to have only one solution for her injured: she ate them. Then again, that particular angel had been old and experienced. Could be Lijuan would shove him full of power to accelerate his healing. She was certainly doing something to keep her generals in the game even after they took grievous injuries, and they’d all seen that she could share power.
Elena wondered that the generals weren’t sickened by knowing the source of that power. Did the dead scream in their heads as they screamed in Lijuan’s voice?
Ahayl nodded. “That is a good win.” Then she was gone, their conversation having fulfilled its purpose—contact with the consort. The troops knew Raphael couldn’t be on the ground much, but that was all right because Elena was his heart and she was with them.
Pushing aside the pain of the past, Elena carried on. She fixed a vampire’s scabbard so it’d hang properly on his back. She helped sharpen the
knives of an older angel who didn’t speak much. And she told warrior after warrior that they were doing well, that their archangel was proud of their spirit and courage.
Andreas was also in the park, dirtier and more rough-edged than she’d ever seen him. Twin swords curved like scythes crisscrossed his back under the amber gray of his wings—she could just see the hilts over his shoulders, but she’d seen him working those gleaming blades in battle.
As she’d seen him use the hunting knives he wore in thigh sheaths. As with most of the angels in the park, his leather tunic was sleeveless regardless of the snow and cold. “We will battle to the death for Raphael,” he said to her when their paths crossed, the pale greenish hazel of his eyes unflinching. “Better to die with honor in his service than be a slave in Lijuan’s.”
It was a feeling she heard articulated a hundred different ways that day. The same song sang in her soul. She would die in freedom beside her archangel a thousand times over than trade it for even an extra day on Lijuan’s leash.
If death is our destiny, Archangel, she thought, then I’ll see you on the other side.
64
Raphael managed to bring all of his Seven into the discussion after Elijah and his people left to go prepare for their part in what was to come. Only Galen and Dmitri stood with him in the war room, the others all voices on the speakers.
“I did not want you all back in the city in such a way,” he said to them after they’d talked through tactics and strategy, conscious that it wasn’t only his Seven in the line of fire but their women. Holly—liquid fast and with significant training under her belt—was behind enemy lines, while Honor—a honed hunter under her preference for scholarly pursuits—fought beside Venom.
Naasir’s Andromeda had stayed in the Refuge with Galen’s Jessamy. Both women would die before allowing harm to come to their charges—the precious children of all the warriors who’d flown to fight in the various battles going on around the world. Should the enemy turn their eyes toward the Refuge, Naasir and Galen would be far from the women they so fiercely loved.
As for Jason, his princess was tougher than she looked. Mahiya was working in the infirmary. It turned out that she’d quietly studied with Tower healers in the years since it became clear Lijuan would rise again, was skilled enough now that she could take care of minor injuries, leaving the healers free to concentrate on the more critical ones.
Then there was his consort.
He’d last seen her with a streak of dried blood on her face and a tear in the reinforced leather of her jacket where a sword had come dangerously close to her neck. He knew she was in Central Park right now, among the troops. He wondered if she’d realized how very regal she was in her own way—not in the distant mode of an empress, but in the calm, capable way of a warrior queen.
She would ride with him into battle until the end.
Archangel. As if he’d conjured her up by thinking of her, the warm steel of Elena’s voice filled his mind and all at once, the power in his veins felt a touch less cold, a little more human. Do you have some time? I think it’d do our troops good to see you.
I will be there soon.
He returned his attention to his Seven. “You have your tasks. Rest if you’re able, put in place that which you can, and ready your fighters for what is to come.” It would be the most terrible battle of them all, of that he was certain.
Vivek had managed to sneak more of his bugs into Lijuan’s area, and the images that had come back to them—scattershot though they’d been—showed a flesh mound of impossible size. Many of the angels and vampires on it were barely injured, and yet sat in place, ready to be consumed by their goddess. Not all had the dead eyes that spoke of a lack of freedom.
“I can’t understand why they follow her even after they’ve seen what she’s become.” Aodhan’s quiet voice, the angel calling in from a sentry position near the port. “It is no longer a question of loyalty. It is a question of honor.”
The most beautiful of the Seven, his skin a thing of light, his hair strands of shattered diamonds, said, “Sire, had you become as she is now, I would not have stayed loyal. I would’ve understood that the archangel I loved, the archangel to whom I had sworn fealty, was gone. I would’ve mourned your passing, and then I would’ve battled to end the horror that you had become.”
“It’s why you are in my Seven.” His men were not automatons, did not follow him without thinking. “Lijuan has never liked too much strength around her.” There was one exception to that rule—Xi.
Xi’s ability to think for himself as well as his previous track record in looking after his troops was why the general’s current slavish devotion surprised Raphael. He didn’t know if Lijuan had done something to Xi that led him to follow her even when she fed on fighters he’d promised to lead with integrity and care, or if he’d always had that weakness inside him, but the question was moot in any case.
They were facing an army that had swallowed the poison pill and passionately believed that Raphael and the rest of the Cadre were a threat to Lijuan because they did not accept her as their goddess. And, after all that they’d already done, they had no choice but to follow Lijuan to the end.
For it was the victors who would write history.
“I’m going to meet Elena in Central Park,” he said. “Dmitri, take a break.” His second had either been in battle or in the war room nonstop. “Trace can cover for you while you rest.” The vampire had been in India when hostilities began. Flights had been grounded in the aftermath of what was happening in Neha’s land, sea crossings a slow and treacherous risk. Yet Trace had made it home in time to join the previous battle.
“He’s one of the few men I’d trust in the position.” Dmitri pinched up the shoulder of his T-shirt, lowered his head to sniff at it. “I need a shower at least. Those dead eyes release putrid decaying blood when decapitated.”
“I’ll hold the watch here until Trace arrives,” Galen offered, his red hair a shaggy mess around his head and streaks of soot on his arms. “Go bathe. You stink.”
“You’re not exactly a fragrant rose yourself, Barbarian,” Dmitri muttered.
A snort from the speakers. “Don’t speak to me about bad smells until you’ve been covered with half-fried reborn flesh.” Venom’s languid voice. “Your wife threw a grenade into a knot of them that scuttled toward us like crabs even while on fire.”
Dmitri grinned in a way that would’ve shocked those who had never seen the man under the deadly thousand-year-old vampire. “That’s my Honor.”
As his Seven began to speak among themselves, taking a minute or two to feed their souls, Raphael walked to the balcony and took in his abused city. Smoke snaked into the sky from areas where groups of reborn had been spotted and eliminated. To the left was a huge scar in the landscape, barren and black.
It was a small mercy that the insect incident hadn’t been repeated.
In all likelihood, Charisemnon could only make so many at a time before his ability flatlined. As far as Raphael was aware, the only one of them whose Cascade power was limitless was Lijuan—and that because she fed off others. Raphael’s healing and Charisemnon’s disease creation both had a limit.
Not that any of them were taking the latter fact for granted. A group of wounded soldiers did nothing all day but zoom in on any suspected enemy movement in the streets no matter how small. They’d discovered multiple reborn and three vampiric stealth operatives, but no insects.
Spreading his wings, he took off into the dusty, smoky sky.
It took him time to reach his destination. His troops were scattered all over the city; whenever he saw a group on a rooftop, or gathered in the street, he landed and spoke to them. He couldn’t speak to each and every member of his army, but he knew word would travel through the ranks. It would matter that he cared enough to check in with junior vampire soldiers and senior squadron leaders both.
He saw movement on several rooftops, noticed a number of gunners lay down their weapons and begin to stretch out their shoulders. The Tower had already sent out the same instruction, but it was different coming from their archangel. He knew the watch would remain constant, that no one would fall into a deep rest, but any break was a good thing.
He made it to Central Park five minutes later.
The ensuing conversations were much the same as those he’d had on the journey here. All knew that their status was dire, but again, there was no talk of defeat. They spoke only of skirmishes won, or ideas they had for future operations.
He listened to all of them.
He found young Izak seated on the snowy ground with a number of his squadron. The angel was fast asleep with his head against a tree, his wings folded around his body like a blanket. A tumble of yellow curls fell across his forehead, making him look like a lost child, but Izak was not a boy. Not any longer.
Even in his rest, he had his sword by his side. Blood, dried an iron red, coated the soles of his boots and was sprayed across his feathers. Those feathers were a rich cream for the most part, except for the lower third of each wing—there, his coloring was cream speckled with dark blue, akin to the egg of some small bird.
Today, flecks of rust red joined the blue and cream.
“I want to find a blanket and snuggle it over him.” Elena’s whisper was followed by the brush of her wing against his, her stormfire arcing through his own feathers in an electric caress. “I know I need to treat him as a warrior, but he’ll always be Izzy to me.”
