by Nalini Singh
“I’ll make sure you have one of mine,” she said to Kiama. “I ask for payment in the form of you sitting for me.”
“My lady—” A sucked-in breath. “I didn’t mean to—”
Sharine squeezed her forearm. “Hush, child. Not only do you have a face and a presence that make me itch to sketch you, I like you and I give my art to those I like.” She’d gifted Raphael a piece on his ascension to the Cadre, and as for Illium and Aodhan, she’d done countless studies of them throughout their childhood, several of which they’d “stolen” with her laughing permission.
She was wealthy, she supposed. Money had never really been the reason she created, but, thanks to Raan, she had a powerful financial support structure that meant she’d never have to seek a patron. That support structure took the form of two old angels who’d withdrawn from life except for what they did for her—not only did they husband her finances with fierce protectiveness, they acted as the conduit through which others might acquire her work.
Sharine had come to realize that they’d stayed awake so very long because she was broken and they were too loyal to Raan to abandon her. She’d decided to go to them as soon as she could, thank them with all her heart, and tell them they could lay down to rest without worry. She was no longer lost; they had more than honored their friend’s memory.
Sharine knew herself well enough to accept that she’d never be the right person to manage her finances or the sale of her art, but she knew how to get good people. All she’d have to do was mention it to Raphael and he’d send five scrupulous and talented candidates to her door.
Kiama yet had a stunned look on her face as they continued on, but she pointed out the spots where they’d found the bodies, her stance always that of a warrior on alert. “The dead included mortals, vampires, and angels,” she said first of all. “From the smell and the extent of the decomposition, they’d been dead for some days before we found them. But the decomposition was . . .”
The other woman frowned, lines carved into her forehead. “There is a way that flesh rots,” she said at last. “The flies come to lay their eggs, then the maggots are born. There is a progression.” She looked around the room again, her eyes intense. “Here, things were just . . . wrong. When touched, it felt as if the flesh had liquefied from within, the decomposition going from the inside out.”
A hard swallow. “I made the mistake of prodding one of the bodies with my sword—I wasn’t doing it to be cruel, but because I thought I saw movement and wanted to ensure I wasn’t setting myself up to be attacked by a reborn.
“I was careful not to push hard but the skin erupted as if it was so taut all it needed was the barest nudge, and liquid flowed out of the body. A greenish slime that got on my boots and caused such a pungent odor that we had to evacuate the room for an hour.”
The soldier’s breathing had turned unsteady. “Before we evacuated, I and the warrior-scholar standing next to me both saw insects swimming in the slime. That was the movement that had caught my eye—a massive nest of insects within the body.” Hand on her stomach, she shuddered.
Sharine couldn’t blame her. Her own skin was crawling.
“We were lucky that the sire was with us. He used his angelfire to cremate the body and reduce the insects to dust.” She indicated one of the scorch marks Sharine had noticed. “I don’t want to know what those insects would’ve done had they been able to burrow into the body of one of our own.”
“Did anyone take samples for further study?”
A hard shake of the head. “It all happened too quickly. We were terrified of the possibility of the insects getting out. We already have a plague of reborn, don’t need anything more. And the insects were moving.”
Sharine couldn’t imagine the horror, knew she’d have made the same call. “Was he the only one so infested?”
“We didn’t attempt to find out. Given the risk of containment failure, the sire made the decision to incinerate all the bodies in situ—he did the same with all the furniture.”
That explained the large burned patches on the floor.
“It was the safest possible option. If the contagion had been contained in this room, we didn’t wish to let it out.” A sad look at the painting. “The sire couldn’t bring himself to destroy it, but I don’t think it’ll ever be permitted out of this place.”
“All things come to an end, child.” And she’d been given an unexpected chance to say good-bye. Poignant sadness entwined with a sense of thankfulness as she turned away to glance up at the walls again; Kiama’s words had triggered another awareness in her mind. “There are seals around the boarded-up windows.”
35
You see it.” The warrior’s voice was grim. “A vampire member of the entry team—Sarouk is his name—took images of this entire place on a phone. Our scientists looked at the images. They say the window boards are constructed in such a way as to create an airtight seal.”
Around them, the air pulsed with hidden knowledge.
“The door is the same,” Kiama said. “Our entry team did some damage to it as we had to force it open, but that’s now been repaired.”
Ah, there was the answer to the pop of sound she’d heard on their entry. “Was this the room where Charisemnon did his experiments?”
Kiama shook her head. “We believe it was more of a holding chamber, a gallery where he could watch the progress of the disease.” She pointed to several dark circles in the walls and ceiling. “Cameras. He might’ve preferred to live like the kings of old, but Archangel Charisemnon knew the value of technology.”
This, Sharine wouldn’t have expected. The Charisemnon she’d met had been scathing about the modern world and its conveniences. Just another example of his hypocrisy and lies.
“We worried about Sarouk and our other vampire warriors,” Kiama said. “It was possible there might’ve been something in the air that could’ve infected them, but nobody has shown any effects. We had no reason to worry about angelic infection then.” A glance at Sharine. “Are airborne contagions a viable risk?”
“Given that Charisemnon chose to use insects to carry disease, and experimented with making the reborn even more virulent,” Sharine said, “I don’t believe he possessed the ability to launch an airborne attack. At least not a fatal one.”
She hadn’t forgotten the Falling—but there, the deaths had resulted from angels falling into the streets in the path of traffic, and other such accidents. Whatever Charisemnon had done had only pushed them into unconsciousness, not death—and she’d heard Illium say that Charisemnon had suffered terrible consequences as a result.
From what she knew of Charisemnon and what she’d learned of late, she didn’t believe he would’ve taken the risk of becoming so debilitated a second time around. Especially since his goal had been to kill Titus—for only an archangel could kill another archangel. Hence the insects, and his use of Lijuan’s reborn as a poisonous base on which to build.
“Was Charisemnon showing signs of disease when he fought Titus?” she asked, to be certain.
Kiama’s face was a picture of disgust. “I was never close to him, but the sire has said his breath smelled of decay, as if he was rotting from within.”
“But he was able to fight?”
“Yes.” Kiama’s jaw worked as she lifted a finger to her cheek. “He managed to harm the sire, shatter his arm, damage part of his face.”
A burn inside Sharine’s blood at the thought of Titus being injured by someone so unworthy. “Then I don’t believe he’d been working on an airborne disease—I’m told he was bedridden and covered with sores after the Falling. And that was to create mere moments of unconsciousness; an airborne disease might well have ended him.”
Kiama’s expression altered to watchful scrutiny. “You have better sources than many spymasters I think.”
What she had was an archangel who treated her with
the same respect he gave his mother, and a son, as well as a protégé who knew their liege begrudged her no information. She also had Caliane. Her friend, too, told Sharine anything she wished to know, for Sharine had held faith with Caliane longer than these young ones could imagine. “I’m old, child, and I value my loves and friendships.”
Perhaps one day, this young and angry warrior, too, would call Sharine friend, but for now, the divide of years stood between them. How very strange when Kiama was likely not that much younger than Titus. There was no distance with Titus, no sense of a chasm formed by age.
Now, Kiama gave a slow nod. “I hope you are right in your supposition of Archangel Charisemnon’s capabilities, Lady Sharine. Else we are all doomed.” She stepped to an area to the left. “The dead vampire here, he looked as if he’d been attacking himself. Biting at his own arms, chunks of flesh missing.”
Shifting on her heel, she pointed in another direction. “Another one was completely naked and had rolled herself up into a ball under the table. It was as if each was part of a different experiment, but why then they’d be thrown in here together, we can’t answer except that perhaps Archangel Charisemnon was forced to rush at the end.”
“What of evidence that an angel might’ve been infected?” she asked, remembering what Titus had told the Cadre.
“If you’ll follow me.” Kiama showed her to a door on the other side, made sure it shut behind them, then led her down the wide hallway to the left.
Stopping at the first door, she opened it to reveal a large empty room. “The furniture within had been badly damaged and the lock was warped. It was as if someone or something had broken out. The sire found a trail of . . . I’m not sure how to describe it.”
After a long moment’s thought, she said, “It wasn’t blood, but there was blood mixed in with what appeared to be liquefied decomposing flesh. It had a greenish edge, and we thought the streaks on the stone of this hallway could’ve been from wings dragging on the ground, especially after we found a feather petrified in the substance. And these”—pointing at gouges in the floor—“appear to be claw marks.”
She then indicated a spot on the wall only a few inches from the ground. “We also discovered smeared handprints at this level made in the same liquid, as if the individual was dragging themselves along the ground. Later we found multiple bodies beyond the walls of the stronghold, including several dead angels, so we hoped that whoever or whatever had escaped was dead.”
A single angel, Sharine thought, could’ve easily slipped out in the time between Charisemnon’s departure with the majority of his forces, and the arrival of Titus’s. Especially if that angel was heading outward, past the cities, to more rural areas. Even more so if that angel had experience with remaining unseen.
The latter wasn’t always a skill possessed by courtiers, who were all about flash and show. But given Kiama’s story about her parents, Charisemnon’s court hadn’t been filled only with the useless. Titus had also identified the reborn angel as Skarde, a man rumored to be a skilled intelligence agent.
Skarde had been betrayed by his hunger for flesh, but if the angel who’d escaped this room had been someone other than Skarde, but of the same ilk . . . Well, a spy with a functioning mind could hide for a long time in the expansive landscape of Africa.
Shoving that fear aside, she said, “Did you find anything that looks like a laboratory?” She wasn’t truly expecting such a place—whatever it was that Charisemnon had done, it’d come from him, from the same thing that made him an archangel.
He’d birthed poisons in his blood.
“No,” Kiama confirmed. “But I can show you to his personal quarters.”
Those quarters proved opulent and overtly sensual to an extent far beyond her personal tastes, with too much red and gold, too much texture, just generally too much, but that didn’t stop the rooms from being surprisingly beautiful. But no . . . it wasn’t a surprise.
Sharine frowned, paging back through the book of memory. Michaela had long been called the muse of artists, but Charisemnon had been known for being a patron of the arts. “Once, long, long ago,” she murmured almost to herself, “Charisemnon offered me a palace in his lands where I could live and work. No strings except that he wished to be known as having the Hummingbird as a guest in his lands.”
She’d forgotten that until this very instant when she stood on a thick velvety rug of black with a design picked out in ruby red. “I hadn’t been to this land for far too long, so came to see if I wished to accept the offer and we met for a private dinner. He was a different man then.” The person he’d been before he decided to join Lijuan on a path to death and pain and murder.
“I can’t imagine you sitting across from him,” Kiama said, her voice taut with a thrumming anger. “My mind simply refuses.”
Sharine hoped this warrior would one day find peace, but it wouldn’t be today, in the space of her enemy. “Did you and the rest of Titus’s people do an intensive search of this part of the stronghold?”
Shaking her head, Kiama said, “We didn’t think it necessary. We were looking only for living creatures—of any size—rather than documents or notes.”
The pages of her memory book continued to flip. Charisemnon had sent her a letter with his invitation. “You have a beautiful hand,” she’d said to him when they met.
He’d smiled at her, a handsome man with silken hair the shade of mahogany and skin of dark gold, his lips lush and perfect in their shape. “Words and ink, they hold our history even as we grow old and the memories become lost in the tangles of our mind.”
Such a man would keep records.
With that in mind, she left Kiama to keep watch, then began to methodically search each and every place where an archangel sure of his privacy would hoard important documents. She didn’t think he’d have thought to hide them—first of all, he’d been confident in his power, and secondly, he’d had no reason to hide anything from the people in his court.
They’d seen what he could do and had chosen to stay with him.
Books lined the walls of the large study beyond the bedroom and living areas. A lot of knowledge; you’d have thought some of it would’ve given him pause as he began his association with Lijuan and with death, but, in the end, people chose their identity, and Charisemnon had chosen a life of darkness.
A metal ladder was built into the frame of the bookshelves on both the left and the right of the room. They proved to move smoothly along the rails when she tested them.
She’d check each and every one of the books on the shelves if necessary, but first, she went to Charisemnon’s desk. In the top drawer was a leather-bound notebook. Something about it struck her as familiar and she looked over to the shelves—to realize that this room held the history of Charisemnon, the memory journals he’d kept year after year, decade after decade, century after century.
She was holding the most recent one.
Aware that she was standing in a treasure trove—angelic historians would clamor to be allowed access to this room—she took care with the journal as she sat down in Charisemnon’s ornate chair. Placing the book in front of her, she opened it.
The words made no sense.
She tried again, working her way through all the languages she knew. She was about to give up and ask Kiama if Titus had a linguist on staff, when Raan’s voice whispered into her mind.
My little bird, your talent for art strips mine. I can’t wait to see you fly.
Raan’s favored language had been so lyrical, so lovely, born on the banks of the Nile among an enclave of angels who’d made it their home for centuries. His friend in this land had spoken the same tongue. Charisemnon hadn’t been of an age to have lived in the enclave, but perhaps he’d learned it from a parent or grandparent.
Sharine knew nothing about his parentage, and she didn’t care at this instant.
Raan’s en
clave had faded from existence long ago, the language rarely spoken, but Sharine had learned it from her lover and it remained inside her. That it took her a while to turn those rusty gears was inevitable.
Yes, little bird. You have the skill and the heart for this.
He’d been such a good man, her Raan, one who’d always been gentle and kind with her.
Yes—and paternal.
She winced at the unsheathed words from another part of her psyche. But it was true; their relationship had hardly been one of equals. But it had been a relationship that made her happy in that time and place, and it deserved to be honored for that. Raan deserved to be honored for that.
Consciously shaking away the errant thoughts to focus on the here and now, she looked down at the journal. She’d opened it to a point some months before the beginning of hostilities.
They think I’m a fool, that I will tie my loyalty to the weak rather than ally with the strongest one of us all.
I’m not the fool here.
Lijuan will emerge the victor in the war to come. There’s no question on that point—she has evolved far beyond the rest of the Cadre, and she is right when she says we are immortals and capable of far more than is permitted by the current power structure.
Why should there be a Cadre of Ten? Why can there not be a Cadre of Two if those two archangels are the most powerful in the world? There’s no point in sharing power with the more feeble among us. The others, the ones who survive the war, will serve the Cadre of Two. That is as it always should’ve been.
The last line was underlined twice, a blunt insight into Charisemnon’s mind. It did confuse her a touch because she’d believed that he wasn’t an archangel much driven to stir himself. He enjoyed a life of ease and comfort, and yet now he spoke of absolute dominion.
What had changed?
Settling in, she went back to the beginning of the journal and began to read, for in the genesis of Charisemnon’s change of heart might be the information she needed about a disease that could end angels forever.
