by Nalini Singh
Galen caught Elijah as he fell, lowered him to a rooftop. A flash far below caught Raphael’s eye, Venom’s face outlined in heat as he blasted a flamethrower at a horde of reborn right on top of him.
Raphael had no time to check on Eli or help Venom—Lijuan hadn’t gone noncorporeal after wounding Elijah, and he blasted bolt after bolt at her. Her entire body burned the white-gold and blue of wildfire kissed with green, but she didn’t break apart. Instead, she ran from Raphael and directly toward Neha. The Archangel of India avoided her bolts, but her avoidance strategy put her under a massive hail of obsidian rain shot by Xi and another general.
Neha went down.
Aegaeon attempted to cut Lijuan with his sea-green scythe, but it only seemed to irritate her. He did manage to avoid being hit, which meant Raphael still had three other friendly archangels in the sky with him. Then a mind with a weight as heavy as Caliane’s touched his.
I am running out of power. Alexander, his words spoken in the instant between one attack and the next. I have never in all my existence come this close to the edge. Aegaeon will not admit it, but he must be the same.
Raphael got Lijuan once again, just as she readied herself to hit Alexander. Spinning around, she sent her power at Raphael instead. “You cannot kill me!” she roared as wildfire arced through her veins . . . and didn’t end her.
The hail of starlight obsidian she sent at him was a wall.
He threw up a wildfire shield but it threatened to buckle under the pressure almost immediately.
Archangel. Elena’s hand on his calf, the wildfire from her body entering his.
Using some of that power to dissipate Lijuan’s as Elena broke away to take position by his side, he saw the reason why he wasn’t under a secondary attack. A burst of violet energy had broken the sky to slam into Lijuan. A woman with hair of lilac, her gown pale green and her eyes impossible to see from here, was pounding Lijuan with blow after blow.
Another thinner figure joined her, and her eyes were visible to Raphael. What had once been brown was now liquid fire. As if the flame that had cleansed Favashi of infection had become part of her. Her Cascade-born power was rumored to be control over the winds, but it was liquid fire that she wrapped around Lijuan, trying to burn her down to the bone.
From the other side of the battlefield came another massive bolt of energy, this one holding the poignant beauty of the sea aurora.
Alexander fired at Lijuan at the same time, the silver of his wings brilliant in the blasts of energy lighting up the sky.
Raphael shot more wildfire at Lijuan, even as beside him, Elena used her crossbow to take down a flyer who’d come at them. He wanted to tell her to go back to a rooftop where it was safer, but no place was safe in war. And if this was the end, then they’d go into it side by side.
Then Lijuan managed the impossible and broke away from the combined attack.
Alexander fired after her.
Lijuan made an unpredictable move to the left.
Elena moved at the same instant to shoot out the wings of one of Lijuan’s generals who was raising his hand to fire at them.
The bolt of Alexander’s silver energy came straight at Elena.
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Elena!” Raphael smashed into her, and the bolt hit him while the two of them were connected . . . but there was no pain. It bounced off him and as it did so, it changed form to become wildfire. White-gold and blue. Midnight and dawn.
Lijuan avoided that blow to rain down her own violence at him.
Even as he blocked it, Raphael’s mind was racing. But it was his consort who yelled, “A mirror that’s a channel! Tell everyone to throw their power at us!”
Raphael reached for his consort’s hand. “Hover,” he told her, knowing it would make them targets. But he also knew their people would protect them to the end. “Ready?”
“Always,” she said, as if they weren’t about to put their lives on the line.
Fire at me, Raphael told the surviving archangels. Do not hesitate! Fire at me!
It was Alexander who obeyed first, the metallic brightness of his wings flashing in the distance as he fired directly at Raphael. Then came Favashi, Titus, and Aegaeon. Cassandra and the sea aurora angel fired at the same time. Their combined power was a huge and old thing, and it stunned with its force. But Raphael and Elena stood firm under the barrage, and the mirror they became together bounced all the energy toward Lijuan.
It became wildfire that engulfed her. So much wildfire that it filled her mouth, lit her eyes, became her skin, burned in her hair. But still she didn’t die. They hit her with more and more, as around them, her troops slammed obsidian rain at the archangels to try to take them down, and Raphael’s people fought back with blood and fury.
He saw Jason eliminate a proxy, Aodhan another, Galen a third before he took a sword blow to the chest that made him stagger and fall. Jason came to his aid and a bloody Andreas took up Galen’s fight.
Battle raged.
In the center of the vortex of power, Lijuan was an eerie mass of wildfire. Throwing back her head, she screamed, and wildfire erupted from her mouth to scar the sky. That was when two of Lijuan’s troops managed to slam into Aegaeon. Illium’s father had been in the process of firing more energy at Raphael. It went wide.
The vicious power of an Ancient punched into Elena before Raphael could shove her out of the way.
ELENA!
He would never have a clear memory of the moments that followed. There was too much power in the air, too much fear in his heart. He just felt energy flow violently into his body from hers. He threw the power at Lijuan almost instinctively, though his eyes were searching for Elena through the blaze of light around her.
I’m right here, Archangel. A little breathless but that was definitely his hunter’s voice. Her fingers tightened on his.
Heart thundering as the other archangels stopped firing, the sudden change in pressure causing his ears to pop, he turned to see the new ball of wildfire he’d thrown crash over Lijuan. It spread over her as with the others . . . but this wildfire was different. It had a verdant green heart so brilliant it was the kiss of spring, the lush grass under your feet, the rustle of a tree in full bloom.
That green speared into Lijuan’s mouth, her eyes, leached through to her cells. Leaves erupted over her skin, only to curl up and die. Her hair turned into vines that blackened and fell away. More leaves erupted on her face before being destroyed.
But underneath it all, her skin was steadily going green.
“Um, Archangel. Remember when I grew that tree in the lobby?”
He looked for his consort again . . . and saw her. The blaze of energy had faded to reveal an Elena whose clothing was scorched—badly. The black leather had gone a strange greenish silver at the solar plexus, where she’d taken Aegaeon’s rogue blow.
It spread out from that point in lighter shades all the way to scorched brown edges at her shoulders and her thighs, curled around her waist. But no skin showed through and what he could see of her body was undamaged.
Her eyes were locked on Lijuan.
He followed her gaze.
Lijuan was screaming soundlessly as leaves poured out of her mouth.
“Life,” Raphael murmured. “Despite all the efforts of the Cascade, all the efforts of immortality, you are raw, defiant life, hbeebti. And she is death.” The two could not exist together in the same being.
Roots erupted out from Lijuan’s body and though they shriveled away, they left holes in her. The wildfire infiltrated even more of her until Lijuan was a being of pure wildfire become an explosion of searing white light.
Raphael’s arm flew up to shield his eyes, even as he pulled Elena close.
The wildfire explosion seemed to go on forever, and when it ended, he could only see white spots in front of his eyes. But he could feel Elena in his arms, her
hair soft against him and her hold strong.
“Can you see?” Her voice, dulled and distant, as if his ears had taken a pounding.
“Barely.” A minute later, the spots began to clear at last.
There was no Lijuan in the air.
Thousands of bright green leaves fell to earth in a gentle rain.
“Jeez, don’t tell me I turned her into leaves and she’s going to get together and become a zombie tree.”
Unfamiliar laughter in their minds, an old voice saying, Child, she is dead. There is no future line for her. It ends here.
You’re certain? he asked Cassandra.
Her line in time has been permanently severed. She stops forever.
“It’s over.” Elena exhaled on a shudder. “It’s really over.”
Before he could answer, he saw golden fire arc up from a rooftop to hit Xi. Lijuan’s most trusted general had been a bare meter away from Elena, his sword raised and his eyes red with battle lust, but he died there, in a single blow from Illium.
No longer able to create the obsidian fire, more and more of Lijuan’s generals fell to Raphael’s people and to the other archangels. Their dead-eyed brethren literally fell, crashing to the earth or onto rooftops without control.
Hundreds, thousands, of broken dolls over his city.
He and Elena flew toward the closest fallen fighter in silence.
The putrid smell was a noxious wave in the air before they landed. Body already partially decayed, the fallen angel’s arm rotted off in front of them.
Elena pulled out her crossbow. “Incoming.”
Raphael rose into the sky to help finish off those who continued to fight. It didn’t take long. Without their archangel, even thousands of warriors couldn’t beat seven archangels, the majority of whom were Ancients. Those who tried, died. Those who laid down their arms and showed no signs of infection were given safe passage out of New York. In the wars of archangels, the victor always showed mercy.
“They’re foot soldiers,” he said to Elena a day later as they watched the last of the troops depart—it had taken this long because each was checked for infection. But all those with the black poison in them were dead—and a cause of the ugly smell that hung over the city. He and the other archangels had worked overtime to incinerate the bodies, but the smell would take time to dissipate, even with the sea winds Aegaeon had stirred.
“Whether those foot soldiers followed Lijuan out of fear or out of loyalty, they must live with their choice through eternity—it will not be forgotten. Wherever they tread, they will be known as those who chose to swear fealty to the Archangel of Death.”
“Where will they go?”
“With Lijuan dead and as evidenced by the way the black-eyed ones fell, China is most probably no longer infected with the darkness that impacts immortals and near-immortals—but even if it is, these people have no other safe harbor. They will go there. And they will wait for their new archangel. What that archangel does with them is that archangel’s choice.”
The two of them didn’t move until the last fighter was nothing but a far-off blur. Multiple squadrons were following those troops out, and those squadrons would stay on alert until they received word that the remnants of the defeated army had landed in China.
Their next task was to go to a special private area of the infirmary with the rest of the Cadre, and consider the catastrophic damage to so many archangels.
Zanaya appeared dead, her body mummified and her eyes shriveled in their sockets. Astaad was in a better condition, with more flesh on his bones, but still unresponsive.
Caliane was down but would recover, as would Neha.
Elijah was worse off. Though Raphael’s wildfire had stopped the spread of the infection on the battlefield, it hadn’t dispelled it. So Eli had made much the same choice as Michaela, though in his case, he’d amputated an arm and shoulder, as well as part of his heart.
He was in anshara, the deep healing sleep where his body could make repairs. So was Caliane. Anshara couldn’t always be held back. Michaela, too, was in a state conducive to healing, but in her case, it was deeper than anshara; she appeared as the dead, but her body didn’t decay.
Raphael had his mother moved to a Tower suite where she’d be protected as she healed. Hannah asked to take Elijah back with her.
“We have a safe place for such times,” she said, her face stark with worry and tight with determination at the same time. “And I think no archangel will be making war anytime soon.”
No, they were all too battered, their lands in chaos. Lijuan’s dead-eyed angels might’ve fallen from the sky, but her reborn seemed to have become a permanent species on the planet. It would take a coordinated effort to wipe them out—and to eradicate the disease-bearing insects Charisemnon had created. The two ships full of reborn still in the ocean were an easier matter—Raphael would eliminate them after this meeting ended.
Eli’s troops left with his wounded body two hours after Lijuan’s army departed the city.
“It comes down to us,” Raphael said to Titus, Alexander, Favashi, Aegaeon, Cassandra, and Qin.
His consort had called Qin the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, and Raphael had to agree with the assessment. The Ancient was tall and slender, with silky black hair that ran to his shoulders in an onyx rain, his sharply slanted eyes the same shade but striated with a hue that echoed his sea aurora.
His wings were white where they grew out of his back but by the time his feathers reached his primaries, they were a delicate deep pink. Before that came myriad watercolor shades, Qin’s wings a “soft focus photograph” according to Elena. By contrast, his cheekbones were razors, creating hollows in his cheeks, but he was not a hard archangel. His face held a sorrowful softness, especially the eyes that were always on Cassandra.
“Eli will recover, as will Caliane and Neha,” Raphael said. “If you will stay, Lady Cassandra, we will have a full Cadre of Ten until we know whether Astaad or Michaela will survive and rise again.” Michaela should’ve been facing the same recovery time as Elijah, but whether it was because she’d given birth so recently or because of where Lijuan had injured her, she’d shown no signs of even minor healing as yet, while Elijah’s body had begun to knit itself back together.
As for Astaad and Zanaya, no one had any idea of the recovery process—or if recovery was even possible—for those archangels from whom Lijuan had fed; that no ordinary angel had survived was a bad sign, but archangels were archangels because they had magnitudes more power. The worst possibility was that Astaad and Zanaya’s power meant they wouldn’t die . . . but wouldn’t wake either, caught forever in a horrific limbo.
By that same token, was it possible Antonicus wasn’t dead and would lie in his half-decayed state for eternity?
Shaking off that ugly prospect because it did no good to dance in the unknown, he caught Cassandra’s gaze. “Will you stay?”
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Cassandra, whose eyes were a haunting seafoam green melded with indigo and blue when she wasn’t clawing them out, smiled sadly at him. “The knot of chaos has untangled. I see clear paths again.” A tear rolled down her face. “I will be a mad archangel should I stay.”
Moving forward, she touched her hands to Elena’s cheeks. “Such glory you are, prophecy of mine. I will wake again when you next change the world.”
A kiss pressed to Elena’s cheek before Cassandra came to Raphael. “Child of flames, how strong you have become. And yet . . .” She pressed a hand to his heart. “Your heart is a little mortal.” She smiled, as if that pleased her, but the smile held a terrible sadness. “It is time for me to Sleep. Do not disturb me, children, for at least a thousand years. Perhaps then, I will be ready.”
She turned to walk to Qin, wiped the tears that ran down his cheeks. “My Qin.”
Raphael and the others all looked away as she laid her head down on th
e silent archangel’s chest and he put his arms around her. Beside Raphael, his hunter’s eyes shone wet.
Cassandra’s skirts stirred the air and when they looked up, she was no longer in Qin’s arms. “I will take with me the broken ones,” she said. “They cannot find a safe place to Sleep. I will find it for them.”
“Will they wake?” Alexander asked, grooves marking the sides of his mouth. “Zanaya, Michaela, and Astaad?”
Cassandra’s lilac hair blew back in the breeze coming through the balcony doors. “This, I do not know,” she said. “Some futures are not yet written.”
Raphael met her haunted eyes, wondered if they would be bloody holes when he next saw her. “I will ask my people to prepare to escort Michaela, Zanaya, and Astaad.” He sent the instruction even as he spoke.
Not long afterward, they watched Cassandra walk to the edge of the balcony. Her white owls took off in a symphony of silence. A single look back, the brush of an old, old mind, then Cassandra followed. Behind her came Jason, with Astaad in his arms, Aodhan, with Michaela, and Andreas, with Zanaya. An honor guard flew behind them.
Alexander ran to the balcony edge without warning, wings of silver spread for flight. He took Zanaya from Andreas before they’d reached the city limits. The squadron commander dropped out to return to his other duties.
I need to take her to her resting place, Alexander said to Raphael, but do not consider me gone from the table.
I will ensure your voice is heard.
“Nine then,” Raphael said afterward. “Three of whom are incapacitated.” With Eli, it might be for months, while Caliane would rise again within days or weeks, depending on how much damage she’d taken. Neha would be up even sooner.
“I do not know who I am.” Favashi held up her hands and on her skin played the slow, sinuous glow of lava. “I do not know what I have become.”
