by Nalini Singh
“My guess is that they knew no one would be coming and, as you said, starving to death was a real possibility.” Titus looked up. “From the charts we found in Charisemnon’s court, this settlement isn’t on any normal angelic flight path. No one would’ve seen a sign asking for help.”
She touched the phone in her pocket. “Why did they not use modern devices?”
“We brought down the network across the entire continent during the battle.” Titus’s expression twisted. “It would’ve left them with no means of communication with the outside world. And so I was partially responsible for whatever happened here.”
Sharine found herself touching her hand to his forearm, the warmth of him soaking into her skin. “This is the way of the world,” she said simply. “When immortals fight, it’s the weaker beings who pay the price. Yet you had to fight. Had you not, chances are these people would’ve been just as dead, and the death wave would’ve continued unabated—you know your nemesis wouldn’t have stopped.”
Titus, his muscles rigid, didn’t say anything. Dropping her hand, she carried on at his side . . . but his open distress at the deaths here caused a crack in the walls she’d put up around her innermost self. This man, this archangel, he kept surprising her with the depth of his heart.
“We’re here.” In front of the damaged wall through which she’d seen the bones.
Titus strode up to it. “Wait.”
As she watched, he tore apart the wall with care not to damage the remains on the other side. Parts of the wall, almost burned through, crumbled into dust at his feet. She wondered why the flames hadn’t engulfed the entire village. Perhaps it was that the bodies hadn’t burned hot enough or the fire had somehow starved.
Enlarging the space with methodical concentration, Titus worked until he’d eliminated most of the wall and they were looking on at a makeshift crematorium. Piles of ash played witness to the intent of the fire. But the flames hadn’t been hot enough and skulls rolled around on the floor, while long thighbones as well as smaller finger bones lay in the light falling through the new opening.
She pointed out what had brought them here, the elongated hand . . . which she now saw was attached to a body. No wonder she hadn’t been able to see it during her first visit; the body was at the bottom of many others. Titus silently moved the other remains aside—with care, but at speed, to reveal the body at the bottom.
It hadn’t burned up in the fire, simply been scorched in a way that meant it had mummified in the interim.
It had no head.
Her eyes widened but her horror had nothing to do with the decapitation. She’d just understood the import of the body’s spinal structure. “Titus.”
Titus went to crouch down, then seemed to decide against it. Sharine wouldn’t want her wings dragging in all that death, either.
“That’s an angelic back,” he confirmed.
She forced herself closer. There was no avoiding the truth—under the skin, angelic bodies were built differently from mortals in ways both subtle and profound, because angels had wings and thus musculature not possessed by those who couldn’t fly. This was especially so when it came to the back and chest areas.
Even though this angel’s wings had been burned away, and no trace remained of any of the muscles or feathers that would’ve once overlaid the bones, that he was an angel was indisputable.
Her boots crunched on something.
Gut churning, she lifted her foot at once, and looked down. The bones on which she’d inadvertently stood were fine and long. Not mortal. “Wing bones.” She shifted back so Titus could see. “An angel died here.”
“No.” His hand fisted at his side, his voice harsh and deep. “An angelic reborn died here.”
26
Ice crackled its tendrils into Sharine’s gut. “That’s impossible. Angels aren’t susceptible to this infection.” Reborn could hurt them, but the creatures couldn’t turn them. “Lijuan created the reborn as a twisted promise of immortality, did she not? Angels are already immortal and thus immune.”
She wasn’t sure she was correctly recalling her conversation with Raphael; it’d taken place while her mind was yet a kaleidoscope. But she was certain when it came to angelic immunity. “Angels don’t get sick.” It was a fact of nature, as immutable as the wind and the sky.
“Do you know of the Falling?” Titus folded his arms, his biceps flexing. “In Raphael’s territory?”
Bile burned the back of her throat. “Yes. Charisemnon caused angels to fall from the sky.”
“He was able to create something that affected angels—we never discovered what, but as he was given the gift of disease by the Cascade . . .”
Her heart pulsed in her mouth, the horror of what he was suggesting turning her mute. Angelkind had no way to recover from a devastating disease; its birth rate was far too low. A single infection could annihilate their entire people.
The rays of the rising sun cracked the sky above their heads right then, bathing the entire site in a terrible golden glow.
* * *
* * *
Titus found no other signs of an angel, though he and Sharine searched the entire village twice, looking under every rock and in every cupboard and external building. It was possible his scientists would discover more when they sifted through the impromptu funeral pyre, for he hadn’t wished to trample through that and possibly destroy other fine wing bones, but for now he could confirm the presence of a single reborn angel.
“If the world is lucky,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be so simple, “this angel will prove to be the one who crawled away from the court of my nemesis to die having infected no others.”
The champagne hue of Sharine’s eyes were haunted when her gaze met his. “Have you heard anything to suggest that other angels have fallen to this infection?”
“No, but I don’t know this half of the territory as well as my own.” He’d barely had a chance to catch his breath, much less do an intensive tour of his new territorial region. “It’s possible the infected are hiding—we’ve seen that the new crop of reborn have a survival instinct. That instinct might be even stronger in reborn angels, if we assume the strength of our immune system means the infection doesn’t progress as fast as it does in mortals and vampires.”
Sucking in a breath, Sharine said, “An angel might know what he was becoming, know he shouldn’t exist.”
Horror churning in his gut, Titus rubbed his face. “For now, we’ll inform my people using your phone, then head back home. If this angel was moving when you landed, it was nothing but a lingering spasm—he is very dead, and I need to return to eradicating the threat in the south. Especially if there’s even a small chance we may have to deal with infected angels in the coming days or weeks.”
“I can ask part of Lumia’s guard complement to stand watch in the skies until your scientists land.”
Titus considered that; he didn’t wish to expose Lumia or its guard to risk, but he also couldn’t chance this body being disturbed by the reborn or by animals. “Tell them to stay in the skies,” he said to Sharine. “When they need to land to rest, they are to do so in open areas where reborn cannot sneak up on them. Lumia won’t come to harm by this secondment?”
“It’s not much farther than the sentries normally fly—even if anyone has covetous eyes on Lumia at this time of chaos, they’ll notice no difference in its routine.” After making the call to her second, she began to take pictures “just in case.”
Leaving her to it as he was certain no danger lurked here, he decided to take a final look through the village on the slim chance that he might discover something more about the infected angel. It was on his last look into the general store that he trampled on something that crackled. It turned out to be an envelope.
Picking it up, he saw that it was covered in dust except for one corner that bore the partial imprint of his b
oot. Written on the front were the words: For our lord Archangel Charisemnon.
Titus gritted his teeth. Rather than opening the envelope, he took it with him to where Sharine had just finished photographing the scene of death. “The villagers appear to have left behind a note.”
When she said, “Shall I read it out?” he held out the envelope. The missive within could contain no good news; all he could do to soften the blow was to listen to it in her rich tones complex with texture. “Is the language one you know?”
She checked. “Yes.”
“‘My lord Archangel,’” she began, after opening out the piece of white paper folded inside the envelope. “‘We don’t know if this missive will ever reach you, but we have hope. We are in a terrible state—we have lost so many of our young and strong and the monsters who roam the land destroyed our crops and killed our animals. We don’t have enough food, nor the manpower to grow more before we run out of supplies.
“‘After much thought and because we know not many angels fly this way, we’ve made the decision to trek to the next closest habitation in the hope we can find safe harbor. We carry with us information for you. However, we also leave it behind here, for there’s a strong chance we won’t make it. The tainted creatures with their craving for flesh appear more and more. We know that you, Archangel, are battling them and that takes priority.’”
Titus couldn’t hold back a snarl at the trust, innocent and pure, that these people had shown in the traitorous waste of archangelic space named Charisemnon. Rather his boot had ground the archangel’s face into dust than it had stepped on the envelope left behind in betrayed hope.
Sharine took a deep breath of her own before continuing. “‘We wish to tell you that, today, we had to fight an angel who was sick with the taint. At first, when we saw wings in the sky, we were so grateful we fell to the earth in joy. We thought to send a message asking for supplies enough to get us through the worst of it. But then the angel landed and we saw that he wasn’t right.
“‘We didn’t attack him. Please know that. We welcomed him as an honored guest, as we would do to any angel. Even though his teeth were sharpened at the edges, and his hands cold and wet, and a green rot was spreading under his skin. We believed that he was sick because of a wound taken in battle, that he would soon fight it off.’”
“For that knowledge alone,” Titus murmured, “Charisemnon would’ve executed them one and all.” No mortal could ever see angelkind as vulnerable. “Should the Cadre become aware of this, the only choice will be death, or the erasure of their memories.” The latter was a terrible thing, an intrusion and a violation, but Titus agreed with those who said it was better than wholesale slaughter.
Eyes shining with a wetness she didn’t permit to fall, Sharine carried on. “‘At first, the angel spoke to us and his voice was disturbing in its grating intensity. But that lasted only minutes. Then, snarling akin to a feral dog, he hauled one of the village women close and ripped off her head, bathing himself in her blood before tearing open her chest cavity to feed on the organs within.’”
Fingers trembling on the paper, Sharine lowered it for a moment. “I have heard of this type of behavior.”
“Vampires who’ve given in to bloodlust act so; hunters often find them with their faces coated with blood, their minds drunk and bodies slack from the indulgence.” He moved close enough so that his wing overlapped hers. She didn’t step away or rebuke him for the intimacy. “I can read the rest of the letter.”
“No. I’ll finish it.” Another long breath. “I do this for the scared, brave people who thought to leave this behind, to warn others.” Exhaling, she read on. “‘The angel acted drunk afterward, his actions uncoordinated, so we took the opportunity to defend ourselves.
“‘Many of our strong were already dead by then, so we couldn’t fight him with honor. We threw fuel on him and set him afire. We hope you will have mercy on us, my lord Archangel. We didn’t wish to cause him pain or kill him without mercy, but we didn’t have any other way to stop him.
“‘Once he fell to the ground, we used a kitchen cleaver to remove his skull from his spine; we believe that perhaps angels can recover from this, so we have left his head beside his body. That body, we placed with the others, both friend and foe, that lay decomposing around us. Then we lit a fire using what little fuel we had.’”
At least that explained why the fire hadn’t burned its way through the village; it hadn’t had enough fuel to begin with.
“‘Fire was the only way we could think of to purify the blood of the tainted ones and farewell our own,’” Sharine read. “‘We did a prayer for the lost, then began our preparations to leave.
“‘We hope that you’ll find us in the next village. It lies north-northwest in a straight line, a half day’s hike for a young man or woman. For us, it’ll take a day or more. We no longer have any working vehicles, and we have many wounded, children, and elderly. We thank you for fighting for us, and hope our letter helps you to save others from this horror. And if we don’t make it, please send word of our passing to the two towns below, where many of us have family and friends who’ll tell others that we are gone.’”
Sharine was crying now, her tears quiet and heartbreaking. “It’s signed with what I assume is the name of this settlement. Below that is a description of the angel: tall, with white skin in the few areas where it wasn’t green-black, black curls, and a marking on the left cheek that looked like a lightning bolt.”
Titus hissed out a breath. “Skarde, a courtier of Charisemnon’s—and a man rumored to be one of his best intelligence agents.” The scar hadn’t healed after a decade because it had originally been made by Charisemnon in a temper—the barest graze of archangelic fire.
Carefully folding the letter, Sharine placed it back in the envelope.
They stood in a moment of silence for the dead and the lost. When she looked up at him and said, “We’ll go north-northwest?” he didn’t tell her that there was no hope. He nodded; it was beyond him to abandon people who’d thought of others in their most dire moment.
First, however, they made a second call to his scientists and scholars, giving them this further information. One of the scientists asked Titus to take a sample of any flesh they could find, as well as some bone as a contingency against a disaster that might make the body inaccessible.
He was still speaking on the phone when Sharine moved to fulfill the request. Taking off her backpack, she took out the packet in which she’d kept the energy bars she’d given the children; she used it to scoop up a small wing bone, then set her jaw and used her throwing blade to cut off a piece of mummified skin.
Dropping it into the packet with the bone, she sealed it before thrusting it to the bottom of her backpack, then pulled the backpack on. When she looked around for something with which to clean her blade, he took it from her and wiped it on his pants. One more stain made no difference.
Accepting the blade back as he finished talking to his people, she slid it away into its thigh sheath. Two minutes later, they took flight in grim silence, their eyes searching the land for bones.
A half day’s walk wasn’t so far by the wing even at low speed and the sun was not yet high in the sky when they reached a village that appeared alive, smoke coming from the chimneys and movement in the streets. Bones aplenty they’d seen on their journey here, but none had been human.
Their landing caused fear, chill and black, to ripple through the village, the people going down with their faces pressed to the earth, but Titus was ready for it this time. “Rise!” he ordered, and once they’d done so, he held up the letter. “I come from the village of Dojah. Did any of the survivors make it here?”
A thin girl with a worn face, her skin a light brown and her hair in braids against her skull, stepped forward. “My lord Archangel.” Her voice shook. “Ten of us made it. Two died later, their injuries terrible. Of the remnan
ts, there is one older than me but he battles a fever after our trek here, and isn’t lucid. The others are all children, saved by the courageous actions of others, but wounded in their hearts.”
“Do you know what’s written in this letter?” he asked, striving to keep his voice gentle and knowing he’d failed when she flinched.
“N-no.” A whispery response. “My grandmother is the one who wrote it, b-but she is now gone.” Tears washed her cheeks.
Sharine moved to put her hand on the young woman’s, murmuring to her until awe replaced the terror in her expression and she found her voice again. “I will tell you all that I know, Archangel Titus.” That she addressed him as he preferred told him that Sharine had said something on the point.
I thank you, Sharine. He found it infuriating to deal with these people’s blind terror even knowing it had nothing to do with him.
Sharine’s lovely eyes met his. One day, they will know you. Until then, you must be strong enough to bear their fear. I know you have the shoulders to carry this weight.
It should’ve shaken him, how much her faith in him meant to him, but it settled on his bones as if it had always existed. “Come,” he said to the young woman, “we three will speak under the tree in the distance.”
Once there, separated from the others in the village by a stretch of trampled grassland, he asked her to tell him all she knew. Everything she said dovetailed with the letter. Including that, regardless of the “harsh grate” of his voice, the angel had spoken words intelligible and rational when he first landed.
“But his skin was like a bruise almost all over,” she added, “and it was peeling away in places, shriveled in others. His fingers were hooked, his nails like claws, and it seemed as if his tongue was rotting green, his lips too plump and red.”
When Titus asked who she’d told of the angel, her eyes got very big. “Our hosts,” she whispered. “We didn’t want them surprised if it happened here.”
