Archangel's Legion: A Guild Hunter Novel

by Nalini Singh

  It was a slow, tender dance, their bodies rocking together as they kissed and touched and murmured to one another in the dark. “Knhebek, Archangel,” she said at the end, pleasure a languorous ripple in her blood and her lover’s skin rough heat over her own.

  “Elena.” The masculine groan made her clench around his cock, the hot pulse of his seed marking her in a primal claim.

  Wanting to watch his pleasure, she lifted her lashes . . . and felt her breath leave her lungs in a rush, Raphael’s wings edged by an intensely beautiful flicker of haunting white fire.

  38

  The next day, after a three-hour warning to permit people to gather what they needed, angels hovered over every major route out of Manhattan as an army of cops made sure residents left in an orderly fashion. Normally, the Tower didn’t mess with the civilian force made up of mortals and vampires, but, as with everything else in this territory, the organization fell ultimately under Raphael’s authority, and he’d exercised his power.

  Not that the police officers were averse to what they were being asked to do. One of Elena’s cop friends had put it best: “After our briefing this morning about the hurt Lijuan’s planning to bring down on the Tower, and seeing those fucking nasty reborn things scuttling on the pier, I wouldn’t want my family in Manhattan.”

  The cops’ next task would be to maintain order in the surrounding boroughs and make certain no one crossed back into Manhattan.

  Fear lingered an acrid taint in the air during the evacuation, but the sight of grim-faced angels overhead and equally lethal vampires on watch in the evacuated parts of the city meant no one stepped out of line—especially after Illium picked up a pair who had thought to burglarize an empty building and dumped them into the freezing waters of the Hudson. He left them there for the maximum survivable time, their eyes panicked and lips blue.

  “Next time,” the message went out, “we will not retrieve those consigned to the water.”

  There were no further incidents.

  Jeffrey, Elena was glad to see, moved his family—including Beth—out by helicopter the first day. Beth, by contrast, was hysterical when she called Elena that afternoon. “What if Harrison dies?” her sister sobbed.

  Elena didn’t lie; she didn’t say any one of them would make it out of this alive. Instead, she reassured Beth that the city’s defenses were strong, the evacuation a precaution. After hanging up, her sister marginally calmer, she returned to the young angelic squadron to which she’d been attached, their task to assist in the evacuation of the city’s most vulnerable.

  Not strong enough to carry sick adults or older children across to hospitals outside Manhattan, she carried bundled-up babies and toddlers. The latter, despite their illnesses, grinned throughout each flight, not a lick of fear in their expressions. “Can we do that again?” a four-year-old asked when they landed, his cheeks bright red because he’d wanted to face the wind the entire time, despite her attempts to shelter him.

  Bending down to hug his thin body, the IV port on his left hand appearing far too harsh for his delicate skin, she said, “Yes,” and hoped it was a promise she’d be alive to keep. “After we fight the bad people, I’ll come back and see you again.”

  Then she passed him to the care of the nurse who waited, and she returned to carry across another child, the ambulances—road and air—reserved for those who needed the support of medical machinery. Tower, Guild, police, and corporate choppers were all pooled into the effort, while hunters drove the elderly, and those others who required special assistance, from point to point.

  Most evacuees had friends and family with whom they could stay, and still others were invited in by kind neighbors in surrounding areas. However, for those who found themselves homeless, emergency services—acting in concert with the Tower—had set up temporary but snug housing facilities on Tower-owned land in nearby areas. The latter had been done well before the evacuation was announced, which spoke to the precision planning behind the entire operation.

  Elena had never seen any evacuation proceed with such speed and lack of trouble—but then again, this was the evacuation of a healthy city into equally healthy areas. No natural disaster had blocked supply lines, damaged roads, or hit the workforce.

  Forty-eight hours after it began, Manhattan was a ghost city.

  Flying above the empty streets, the odd bit of paper fluttering on the pavement and a lone dog looking up at her, Elena felt a shiver crawl down her spine. The heart of her city was meant to be loud and noisy and full of people. Not that she believed they’d evacuated every single mortal—it was a sure bet some enterprising souls had managed to avoid the mass departure, but they were hidden ghosts, the landscape desolate.

  Unable to bear passing over the deserted silence of Times Square, she angled to land at one of the air defense stations, the anti-wing guns primed and ready. Not far from her stood Dmitri, his attention on whatever was being said by a pair of vampires who were experts in using the weapon.

  Raphael’s second looked no different from before he’d left the city, his presence darkly sexual with an undertone of deadly violence. But he’d come back with a hunter wife now at work as part of the combined Guild-Tower operations team—Honor wasn’t yet at full strength, but neither was she an ordinary new-Made vampire, her skin brushed with a shimmer of gold, her eyes a luminous jewel green, her mortal beauty honed as sharp as a blade.

  The other hunter had laughed at Elena’s flabbergasted expression when they first came face-to-face. “I know, I know. It was a bit of a shock to me, too.” A deep smile, Honor still Honor. “But hey, I was Made by an archangel and feed solely from a dangerously sexy thousand-year-old vampire.”

  “Is it weird?” The question was one Elena had only felt comfortable asking because Honor was a friend. “The blood drinking?”

  Honor’s honey gold skin had turned a fascinating shade of pink. “Oh, um, no.”

  “Oh, um, no?” Elena had teased, delighted to see Honor so happy after the horror the other woman had survived. “Dmitri clearly gives good . . . blood.”

  “My husband,” a still pink but laughing Honor had said, her words holding an adorable possessiveness, “gives phenomenal . . . blood.”

  Now, the husband in question finished his conversation with the two gunners and strode over. Even dressed in scuffed black boots, jeans of the same black, and a black T-shirt, his attention totally focused on the city’s defenses, no time for the insidious scent games he usually liked to play, there was something about Dmitri that whispered of sex—the bloody, painful kind.

  “Are you free?”

  She nodded at the curt question, having just finished her duties with the team assigned to make absolutely sure all the hospitals had been evacuated. “You have a job for me?” Dmitri would never be her friend, and she’d never see in him whatever it was that Honor saw, but when it came to protecting their city, they had no arguments.

  “The Guild teams need a winged consult.” He pointed out another high-rise. “The two team leaders are up there.”

  Demarco and Ransom looked up at the wash of wind generated by her wings. “I hear you guys asked for a consult,” she said, meeting Demarco’s light brown eyes first, because she didn’t want to see the coolness in Ransom’s.

  “Ellie.” The rangy hunter grinned, streaky blond hair ruffled by the wind and long legs folded in a crouch in front of what appeared to be a chalk outline of the defensive perimeter. “Our own personal hunter angel.” Shifting, he showed her the front of his oatmeal-colored T-shirt. “Didjya know they’re selling these in Times Square?”

  Groaning at the solid black silhouette of a gun and crossbow-toting female with wings, the name Elena emblazoned above the figure, and the words Hunter Angel below, she rubbed at her eyes. “God damn it, get rid of that monstrosity before I go blind.”

  Demarco just grinned as she dropped her hands from her face to walk over and crouch between the two men. Then, when she couldn’t avoid it any longer, she dared
look up at Ransom.

  His expression as tentative as she felt, he gave her a lopsided smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said, painfully relieved he wasn’t holding a grudge.

  “Why are you two acting like moobs on a first date?” Demarco asked in open confusion. “Did you dump the librarian and the archangel and rub your naughty bits together? Man, it must’ve really sucked eggs if you’re avoiding eye contact.”

  “Demarco,” Elena and Ransom growled together.

  “And awkward moment over.” Demarco winked, his usual laid-back grin on his face. “Let’s talk angels, crossbows, and bullets.”

  They spent the next ten minutes in a discussion of optimal positioning, after which the focus shifted on how the shooters—crossbow wielders and those with specialized anti-angel guns—could do the most damage with the least effort.

  Elena’s advice was simple. “Aim for the wings.” It was highly unlikely either weapon could kill immortals of the age and strength as those in Lijuan’s army, but if the Guild team could keep wounding the enemy fighters long enough, the immortals on their side might be able to finish the task.

  “We have crossbow users like you who have precision aim,” Demarco countered, his careless charm discarded to reveal hard-eyed intensity. “You can get bolts through the neck. It’ll disable the enemy fighters for longer.”

  “It’ll take longer to get off a shot.” Elena thought of the intricate timing that’d be required and shook her head. “We can take out more with the wing hits.”

  “Yeah, but the ones with injured wings will rise faster, too.”

  They both looked to Ransom. Frowning, the other hunter said, “We have approximately twenty-five precision bowmen. We can embed them with the ones aiming for the wings, so the enemy doesn’t know who to take out and the shooters have time to aim under the cover provided by the others.”

  “Works for me.” Demarco glanced at Elena, and when she nodded in agreement, said, “Okay, positions.”

  They spent the next few hours making sure all the shooters knew where they were supposed to be once the shit hit the fan. When Ransom and Demarco were satisfied with that aspect of things, Elena rounded up a crew of junior angels and did flyovers so the hunters could practice aiming at a moving, winged target. The gunmen used blanks, the crossbow users blunted bolts.

  When they called the exercise to a halt, Elena spent a quarter of an hour discussing possible refinements with Demarco and Ransom, before taking off again, her intent to head to Raphael. He was at a higher elevation, working out something with Illium and Jason that periodically cracked black lightning across the sky.

  She’d just swept around to begin the climb when it happened.

  The Hudson altered color in a rolling wave. This time it wasn’t the shade of blood, but a deep, vibrant blue electric with a luminous white fire. Angels who’d been nearby hovered above the water, but Elena saw the gulls dive in and out with no ill effects, the shimmering blue glittering on their feathers until it drained off.

  “An interesting development,” Raphael said, having dropped down to hover beside her. “Astaad is rumored to have a certain control over the sea—but it may well extend to domination over water in general.”

  “Maybe, but those are your colors.” That heartbreaking blue, more pure than any gemstone on this earth, existed only in the eyes of her archangel and the woman who’d given birth to him; never had she seen it in any other circumstance. Until now.

  “The day I ascended to the Cadre,” Raphael murmured, “the skies rained such a hue and the waters of the world became my eyes. I did not have you in my heart then; there was no dawnlight.”

  Elena glanced at the purity of his profile, the deep red mark on his temple hidden behind glamour. “Could it be a sign? Of further evolution?” She couldn’t help but remember the astonishing beauty of the white fire on his wings that he’d said must’ve been an illusion created by a pulse of power that ignited a glow.

  It sounded right . . . except her gut insisted that what she’d seen had been real, that if she’d reached up and touched his primaries at that instant, she’d have caught a flame on her fingertip.

  “If this is a sign of evolution,” Raphael said, “it’s not one I can sense, as I sensed my ascension from angel to archangel.” Angling his wings, he swept down to the water.

  Elena followed as close as she could get, close enough to see him run his fingers through it. The water, he said, tastes of the same power that attempted to push its way into me.

  Get away from it, she ordered, her heart stuttering at the sensory memory of the terrible cold that had come with the bloody rain.

  There is no chill beyond that of a winter river today, he said, but flicked off the water and rose to her side.

  The color began to retreat at almost the same instant.

  “Regardless of what this portends,” he said, expression brutally pragmatic, “we can’t permit it to distract us, not when Lijuan’s winged fleet has been spotted less than two days’ flight from making landfall.” His hand closed over hers. “Omens and signs are worthless when we’re about to go into battle against a flesh-and-blood army.”

  Some mysteries, Elena thought, as the masculine heat of him reassured her the water had had no ill effects, would have to remain unsolved. The lives of millions were at stake. Because if Lijuan defeated Raphael in battle, it’d mean the death of the only being in the world with a proven ability to cause the Archangel of China any significant harm. Left unchecked, Elena had no doubt Lijuan would soon turn the planet into a festering graveyard peopled by her reborn.

  A court of rotting corpses to worship at the feet of the Goddess of Death.

  39

  The Tower’s satellites got clear eyes on Lijuan’s forces the next day, the heavy clouds that had been blocking their view dissipating under piercing sunlight.

  “Impossible,” Jason said at the sight of the incredible mass. “That army is at least three times the size of the one that left her region. Even if she brought all her winged fighters, leaving only her vampire troops to defend her territory, she has too many squadrons.”

  Raphael had always known they were going into this war at a disadvantage, but if all those men and women were experienced fighters, the scales had tipped so severely in Lijuan’s favor that every one of their plans would have to be reevaluated. “We need to know exactly what we face.” He turned to the fastest flyer in his squadrons, some said the fastest flyer in all of angelkind. “Go.”

  Illium left at once, taking a small recording device with him.

  It was a bare hour after that that their battle plans suffered another blow.

  “We are overrun with reborn,” Elijah told him, his cheekbones cutting sharply against his skin. “I don’t know how Lijuan got them in, or even if she did it with more than a single creature—we both know it would’ve taken only one to start the process.” An indictment of the creatures’ sheer infectiousness. “It appears to have been a plan put in place over months, the infected seeded throughout my territory and kept chained up behind locked gates. Evidently, she predicted we’d ally and stand against her, for those gates have now been opened.”

  The Archangel of South America shoved a hand through the gold of his hair, his eyes backlit by a furious amber glow. “I’m shamed to break my promise of aid,” he said, the words clearly hard for him to shape, “but I need to use every weapon at my command to hit hard and fast before the reborn riddle every part of my territory. Already, they’ve killed or infected thousands, savaging entire villages and townships.”

  “The risk is ours,” Raphael said, reminding Elijah they shared a land border. “No shame comes of your decision. Should you contain them, you more than uphold your part of our pact.” He considered who he had near that border, if they could provide any assistance.

  “My strongest people are here, others on watch in areas where we had small reborn infestations of our own, but I’ll order every able individual near the border, m
ortal and immortal, to mobilize with flamethrowers and fuel to set up fire lines. They can at least clean up any reborn that attempt to escape your forces.” The reborn couldn’t survive fire as they couldn’t survive beheadings. “I wish you luck, Eli.”

  “And I, you, Raphael.”

  When Illium returned in the twilight hours beyond midnight, Lijuan’s forces still at least twelve hours away, for they had to move at the speed of their slowest member, he brought worse news than anyone could’ve imagined.

  “Your people didn’t fail,” Raphael said to a quietly infuriated Jason, pointing out a commander to Lijuan’s left. “She was part of Uram’s troops.”

  Dmitri pinpointed three more of the dead archangel’s people, all commander level, just in the first row. “Uram’s territory was parceled out after his execution,” the vampire said, “his troops divided. If all the extra fighters prove to be Uram’s, she has over half his squadrons. She shouldn’t.”

  Aodhan was the one who answered, voice quiet but words potent. “If Raphael were to perish, the Seven divided, would we not come together should we have a chance to avenge his death?”

  “I didn’t think the guy inspired that kind of loyalty,” Elena said, staring at the photographs of the massive force that would soon hit Manhattan. “I mean, he murdered hundreds of his own people.”

  “He was a good archangel once.” An archangel Raphael had called friend an eon past. “That is who his loyal soldiers remember, who they seek to avenge.”

  “Sire,” Galen said from the screen on the wall, where he and Venom had joined in the discussion, “the enemy outnumbers us five to one. We need to pull our forces inward and compel the enemy to mount a siege. So long as the Tower does not fall, Lijuan doesn’t win.”

  Raphael knew what it must’ve cost his weapons-master to make that recommendation, for Galen was a warrior who lived by the blade. And though he knew the other man’s counsel was sound, the idea of abandoning any part of his city made his blood rage.