by Nalini Singh
46
Sire. You must wake.
The voice nudged at his consciousness again and again until Raphael stirred. Jason? Scents of old blood and absence in his breath, his chest a heavy ache.
Yes, it’s Jason. You must wake.
Jason was not an angel to say such things without reason.
Shrugging off the heaviness of sleep, Raphael opened his eyes. His wing no longer lay over Elena’s body. Where she’d been was an oval chrysalis. White filaments flowed out from the chrysalis like water, falling over the bed and spreading across the carpet.
When he rose, he had to tear himself from the strands that had flowed over him in his sleep. “Fight, hunter-mine,” he said, not knowing if she could hear him . . . if she’d ever hear him again. “You have always written your own history. Now write ours.”
Sire.
The sharp concern in Jason’s voice got through this time. Reaching out his infinitely more powerful mind to catch the spymaster’s faint whisper, Raphael said, How far away are you? Jason had to be incredibly distant for his voice to be so weak in Raphael’s mind.
I am over the ocean. Perhaps two hours on the wing from Manhattan, his spymaster told him. I took too long to leave—I could not go while there was no news of you or Elena. I intended to fly into Titus’s territory first, pick up any news from there, then fly on to China. Augmented by Raphael’s archangelic strength, his voice came through strong and clear. I have just seen what appears to be an army headed toward New York.
Raphael looked down at his chest. The hole remained, though it was webbed over with wildfire. He hadn’t finished healing, had only half a heart. It seemed appropriate that he would go into battle with only half a heart when he had no Elena by his side.
“I will keep the predators from the door,” he promised her. “Just come back to me.”
Leaving the bed, he washed off any dried blood then dressed in leathers of old and weathered bronze paired with worn-in boots. It wouldn’t do to advertise that he was wounded. That done, he gripped two heavy swords and slid them into crisscrossed sheaths on his back. Archangels rarely fought sword-to-sword when it came to it, but Raphael wanted to be ready for anything.
How long did I sleep? he asked the Primary, for a number of the Legion sat on the balcony, watching through the glass doors.
Four days. We did not allow anyone to interrupt.
Raphael nodded. Protect her. She is your only priority.
He hauled open the doors.
Illium stood on the far edge, swords at the ready and his expression wearing death. When he saw Raphael, he shuddered, his eyes closing for a heartbeat before he raised his lashes again. “Ellie?”
“She fights,” was all he said, and saw Illium’s heart break in front of him. “Come. Jason says an army is heading toward the city.” Chest aching, he lifted up into the air.
Do you believe Lijuan has woken? Raphael asked his spymaster as he and Illium flew seaward.
I cannot see her, but she could be hidden in the mass of the flyers.
I am coming out to you, Jason.
“Sire,” Illium said across the icy winter air between them. “I have alerted the squadrons to join us.”
“Stay with me. Tell the others to follow.”
Illium was one of the fastest angels in the world, could keep pace with Raphael. He didn’t have the endurance of an archangel, but he wouldn’t need it for the distance in question. It still took him effort to stay with Raphael, was one of the few times Raphael had seen the blue-winged angel breathing heavily in flight, beads of sweat rolling down his temples.
They hit the water, New York disappearing rapidly behind them until it wasn’t even a smudge on the horizon, but there was no sign of Jason or of the army he’d warned against.
Jason, where are you?
Heading in your direction. I flew back to see if I could discern anything further.
A risky move, but if anyone could do it, it was Jason. Did you see Lijuan?
No. Favashi is the archangel flying in the center.
Fly toward me as fast as you can, Jason. This is a battle of archangels.
Sire.
His chest straining from the force of the flight, Raphael told Illium what Jason had shared. The blue-winged angel swung down on an air current, riding it to conserve his energy, then swept back up. His wings glittered in the sunlight. The sluggish cloud cover had finally moved, and though the sea would be a chilling embrace for a fallen angel, no snow fell from the sky.
“Sire,” Illium said aloud, the two of them close enough now that they could exchange words again. “What possible reason could Favashi have for mounting an assault against New York? You’ve always had a good relationship with her.”
“She has no rational reason to come at me—and if her spymaster is even half as good as Jason, he must know that my territory is heavily guarded.” Raphael didn’t sit on his laurels; he’d learned from the last battle and fixed the holes in his defenses.
He’d also taken on more warriors. Many of them had been independents to whom he’d had Galen make a personal offer. He’d expected perhaps a quarter to respond—sometimes ennui got to even the best of men, and they felt no impetus to interact with the world. Most eventually slid into Sleep.
The response rate had been seventy-five percent.
It turned out that doing scandalous things like falling in love with a mortal then turning her into an angel, followed by defeating Lijuan in battle, had made New York something of a “fascinating hotspot” to immortals.
Elena’s words.
That their city also had pretzel bars, coffee stations, even burger carts on rooftops—fly-throughs, as some clever human had nicknamed them—was seen as exotic and outlandish and worthy of a visit.
But if the old vampires and angels had originally come to satisfy their curiosity about Raphael’s territory, they stayed because New York had seduced them. More, Elena had seduced them. She didn’t even know she was doing it, but he’d seen the way the old ones watched her—as if she was a new and prized treasure, surprising and unexpected.
Three weeks before it all began to go wrong, he’d seen her offer to take a five-thousand-year-old female warrior to a dance club on a rooftop after the angel mused about not having danced for centuries. The warrior had returned luminous with a renewed sense of excitement about the world, her gaze holding a whisper of the youth she’d once been.
Elena woke people up with her raw zest for life, reminding them what it was to be alive. And now his hunter battled a foe that sought to erase her . . . and Raphael went into battle with her heart cradled inside his, the fragile light of mortality somehow not extinguished by the violent forces in his body.
I see Illium’s wings.
Raphael spotted Jason at the same time that his spymaster’s voice filled his mind. Jason’s black wings were stark against the winter blue sky, his black clothing the same. How far behind you are they? An army could never move as fast as a strong lone warrior.
At least twenty minutes, Jason told him.
The three of them met above the ocean, nothing beneath them but waves that had begun to crash in a pattern that did not reflect the weather. First, he got numbers from Jason about the size of the army; then he asked if Favashi had brought her senior people. A single skilled and powerful fighter could do the same damage as a hundred unskilled warriors.
“That’s the strange thing,” Jason said. “From what I could see, all of those at the leading edge of the formation are Lijuan’s people who stayed behind and joined Favashi’s court.”
“Impossible.” Illium shook his head, the blue-tipped black strands of his hair whipping wildly in the wind that had begun to rise. “Favashi may have accepted those people into her court, but she wouldn’t trust them, not enough for anything like this.”
“I agree,” Jason said
, his power a quiet but potent darkness. “But that’s what I saw.”
None of this made any kind of sense.
“I’ll go ahead,” Raphael said to Jason and Illium. “Flank me, but stay back far enough that she can’t eliminate you both with a single strike.”
The two angels nodded.
And Raphael flew toward the approaching army as his grievously wounded heart struggled to beat.
The Legion
In the bedroom in the Enclave, the chrysalis lay unmoving. It was too small, the Legion thought, their bodies crouched all over the room. A chrysalis that size could not hold Elena.
There was no room for her wings. Her height.
Will she be born as a child? one part of their mind asked.
Conversation abounded in silence.
We do not know, was the consensus. But the chrysalis is too small.
47
The rising wind ripped at Raphael’s hair as, ahead of them, a huge army took shape. But holding to archangelic expectation and the “rules” of war, Favashi broke off to fly directly toward him. Two others came with her, an echo of Illium and Jason.
The rest of her forces were too slow to keep up with Favashi and her seconds, and so when they met, it was as an even grouping.
“Favashi.”
“Raphael.”
His blood iced. Because that wasn’t Favashi’s voice. It held death and whispers and screams. It was the voice of an archangel who was meant to be lost in Sleep, far from the living world.
As for the rest of her . . . Those weren’t Favashi’s eyes either.
The former Archangel of Persia and current Archangel of China didn’t have black eyes. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown.
“You are changed,” he said to her.
“I am more.” Favashi’s voice was awash with screaming whispers, and when she raised her hand, it crackled out of existence. Not as smooth a shift as with Lijuan, but Favashi shouldn’t have had such a power at all. The ability to go noncorporeal was not hers.
Favashi was rumored to have gained power over the winds during the Cascade—which might explain the howling gale that now surrounded them, but the rest . . . that belonged to the former Archangel of China.
Unless . . . “Did you gain this power in the last Cascade surge?”
Black lightning crackled from Favashi’s fingertips in answer, the bolts screaming over Raphael’s shoulder and past Jason, who’d dropped to avoid the strike. “A demonstration only,” she said in the aftermath, as the black energy that “smelled” of Lijuan smashed into the ocean and disappeared. “I am a power now, and you will bow down before me.”
Raphael missed Elena with a ferocious need at that instant. She would’ve said something about “Her Creepiness” coming back from the dead, and inside, he would’ve found amusement even during the prelude to war.
Sire, can archangels be possessed? Illium’s voice, so different from Elena’s, and yet the question was one Elena might well have asked—there was a reason the two had become such friends.
Raphael thought of how he’d battled to hold Elena’s memories, her essence, inside himself only to fail. And he thought of Holly Chang, who’d been haunted by an energy that should’ve ended with Uram. Lijuan was no ordinary archangel—and we do not know how the Cascade twists the rules of life and death and Sleep.
Ignoring the pain in his chest, his heart with its mortal core straining to support his archangelic body, he coaxed a ball of wildfire to his hand, the colors swirling brilliant white-gold with deep edges of midnight and dawn. His Elena, inside him. “We have had this battle before,” he said softly. “You lost.”
The words should’ve made no sense to Favashi, who had never faced Raphael in battle, but she screeched and unleashed another bolt at him. This time it was aimed directly at his heart—and it seemed to him that Favashi flinched . . . just before he intercepted it with wildfire and it dissipated into nothing.
He had more wildfire inside him, all that had been generated before he tore out his heart, but he was too drained to rule it to his will. If he drew much more, he risked it going wild—his half-regenerated heart with its mortal core couldn’t take the strain of access and control.
To win this battle, he would need to fight with cutting intelligence.
Suddenly Favashi was throwing the black lightning from every fingertip, her assault so vicious that her own guard fell back, unable to break through the hail of black to safely get to Jason or Illium.
Both members of his Seven dropped to a much lower altitude. Raphael meanwhile was avoiding the strikes but not attempting to neutralize all of them. He caught only the ones at risk of hitting his body or his wings. And still, he was nearly at his limit, his heart about to fail.
Sire, the squadrons near, Illium informed him. But Favashi’s army will arrive first.
Raphael avoided another bolt—and realized Favashi was wavering, her targets off. It was just as well, because his heart was beginning to miss beats. He avoided Favashi’s last bolts before they fizzled out to nothing.
Across from him, the Archangel of China swayed in the air and her eyes cleared for a second to reveal the deep brown with which he was familiar. “Raphael.” It came out a whisper. “You must not let her take me.”
Streaks of black snaked up her eyes again.
Raphael surged forward. Favashi’s attendants tried to stop him, but Jason and Illium had already intercepted the two. The strike of sword against sword rang out across the air as the four fighters clashed.
“Give the order,” Raphael said to Favashi when they were only a hairsbreadth apart. “Quickly, while you can.”
Favashi curled her fingers into her palms, squeezed her eyes shut, and said nothing. But the two angels who’d been fighting with Illium and Jason fell back. One said, “My lady?”
Whatever message Favashi gave them, they flew off toward the rest of her army . . . Which began to turn as one.
“I am not a mortal to be taken,” Favashi gritted out. “I am not a beast to be broken.” Each word was red with power and anger and rage. “I am an archangel.”
The black crackled over her irises again. As it had once attempted to blind Raphael. “Is it a part of Lijuan?” Uram had left behind an echo of energy, but his victim, Holly, had been young and a multitude of times weaker than Favashi.
“It feels like an infection. A virulent one designed to crawl into archangelic bones.” She shivered hard, streaks of black racing through the aged ivory of her wings before they began to retract, as if she was fighting a battle within.
“I do not think it can take you, Raphael. You beat her. That’s why, when it pushed me to battle madness, I fought to take the battle to you.” Her eyes landed on the wildfire that danced on Raphael’s fingertips. “This death is buried in China. Send no one there. Not one of us. It is made for us.” Her back arched, a scream pouring out of her mouth and it was a scream of violence, of madness.
Raphael placed his hand directly on Favashi’s heart, his palm burning with the last whispers of wildfire he could coax to do his will. Instead of fighting what might be a killing blow, Favashi gripped his wrist, holding him to her.
And the wildfire punched into her.
The black disappeared from her wings under a searing edge of wildfire, the screaming madness stopped, and when she looked at him again, her eyes were that familiar rich brown. “I cannot know if it has been destroyed. I was too long in that place.”
What had Lijuan become that she’d been able to leave behind a virus that attacked an archangel? Even Charisemnon’s disease-causing abilities didn’t dare reach for the Cadre.
“I can’t keep pushing wildfire into you,” he told Favashi. “If you are infected with a death born of Lijuan, the wildfire will eventually kill you.”
Favashi’s head jerked, a sudden faraway look on her face. “There is a
nother kind of fire in your territory. It calls to me.”
In front of Raphael, her face began to lose its softness, until her bones shoved out against her skin, her collarbones appearing as suddenly, her arms no longer smooth but jagged with bones. She was being consumed as Elena had been consumed.
“It has taken all my energy to fight this,” she rasped, no fat on her bones now, her skin holding together bones and muscle and tendon alone. “I feel your wildfire eating away at it, but I must . . .” She crumpled.
Raphael caught her skeletal form and, after confirming her army was fading into the distance, flew directly toward the only fire in his land that could’ve spoken to Favashi. Illium fell in with him, while Jason broke off to take control of the squadrons that had responded to Illium’s command.
As per the plan Raphael had put in place for just such a contingency, New York’s forces would now spread outward, a constant watch on all their borders until Jason’s spies reported that Favashi’s army had landed in China.
The journey to the sinkhole at the foot of the Catskills was again a hard one for Illium. Despite his exhaustion and faltering heart, Raphael gave no quarter, needed to be back with Elena. The blue-winged angel was dripping with sweat by the time they arrived.
Ah, you have come.
“To the edge, Bluebell—this is a matter between an archangel and an Ancient among Ancients.”
Illium’s expression held rebellion, but he gave a curt nod and went to hover at the very edge of the sinkhole.
The lava began to bubble and spread in a pattern that formed a whirlpool at its very center. Elena would’ve found it astonishing, he thought. She’d also have wondered what kind of insanity they’d be facing now.
Zombies, Archangel. Fire-breathing ones.
Yes, she’d have muttered that while staying courageously by his side.
But it wasn’t a zombie that emerged out of the flames. It was a woman formed of fire. When the glowing magma dropped away to rejoin the swirl that was the sinkhole, he saw an angel clad in a long gown of palest green that was like air given form; it both clung and fell away from the lush curves of her body. Her hair was a tumble of lilac and her eyes empty, bleeding orbs. Dark red tears ran down her cheeks, her skin a pitiless white canvas for the brutality of it. Her wings, in contrast, were a violet so deep it was blue.
