by Nalini Singh
It was Elena who gave him perspective. “With the entire area evacuated,” she said, “we’d only be protecting buildings anyway. Buildings can be rebuilt.” Bleak acceptance in the silver-gray, his hunter who loved every tiny pocket and corner of her city.
“Go,” he said to Dmitri. “Do what needs to be done, commandeer the people you need.” All the anti-wing guns would have to be moved, for a start. “I’ll rework the troop placements.”
Dmitri left with a curt nod, taking Jason with him and ordering Illium to rest after his long flight. Aodhan went in a separate direction, having assumed the task of ensuring there’d be enough food stock inside the Tower for the hunters and the wounded, should the siege continue beyond a few days. Water, at least, was no problem, the Tower having a secret independent line that had been put in place at the time of its construction.
Raphael turned to the last member of his Seven who remained, Galen and Venom having signed off to return to their task of holding the Refuge stronghold secure. “How many more do you need in your team?” he asked Naasir. The vampire had arrived forty-eight hours before, fed well, and was at full strength.
“The team is complete,” was the response, Naasir’s silver eyes intelligent as only a predator’s could be. “Janvier and his hunter.”
“I wouldn’t call Ash that to her face,” Elena pointed out, wondering what it was Naasir planned to do. If she had to guess, given the team members and their abilities, she’d say it was about causing sabotage and disorder among the enemy camp.
A feral grin that said Naasir still found her interesting, and then he was gone.
Alone with Raphael for the first time in hours, Elena touched her fingers to his face and he lifted the glamour to expose the mark on his temple. It had grown at an accelerated rate since the river altered color . . . to the point where it was now clear it had nothing to do with disease—no, it was a symbol both savage and dangerously elegant. Created of complex but jagged lines, it curved down his temple to the top of his cheekbone on one end, the other end curling in on itself.
“Raphael, it’s not red anymore,” she whispered, astonished at the primal beauty of a finished design that reminded her of a stylized dragon. “It’s the color of us.” An incredible violent blue lit with searing white fire, so drenched with light and color that it appeared alive.
Reinitiating the glamour until they were in the bathroom of their suite, Raphael dropped it to examine the mark in the mirror. “I’ve seen this design before,” he said, to her surprise. “In old places in the Refuge, from times so long gone, no one has any memory of when the carvings were created.”
She hitched herself up on the counter so she could continue looking at the mark that no longer terrified, but compelled. “Any hint as to its meaning?”
“No. I asked Jessamy once, and she said she’d looked in the texts herself and found no mention of them. ‘Perhaps they are an enigma left behind by our ancestors to inspire us to search for knowledge,’ was what she said to me.” Shifting into the space between Elena’s legs, he was patient as she traced the vibrant, living mark with her fingertips.
“It’s truly beautiful.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Many would say it’s savage.”
“Savage can be beautiful.” It suited him, her archangel whom she’d seen fight the reborn with raw ferocity, his twin blades moving so fast, she’d wanted only to watch him. “I don’t think there’s any longer any question that you’re evolving.”
That hard, pragmatic look back on his face. “Not fast enough. The mark may be complete, but in power, I’m no different than I was yesterday. We must focus on the factors we can control.” He stepped back, the glamour going up. “I need to reconfigure squadron placements. You should wake the leaders of the Guild and vampire shooting teams and do the same.”
Elena nodded. “One thing, Archangel.” She drew him to a stop with a touch on his wing. “I don’t think you should hide the mark come morning.”
“Fool the enemy into believing I’ve gained more power than is true?”
“And give our own forces heart,” Elena said, pushed by the same instinct that told her his wings were changing in more ways than in surface appearance. “There’s nothing to lose.”
• • •
Hours later, with the sky shifting from darkness to gray, Raphael left Aodhan on watch and walked up to the suite, having sensed a disturbance in Elena’s sleep patterns. He’d kept an eye on her since she’d finally gone to bed two hours past, knowing her tiredness and the tension-filled day made for optimal conditions when it came to the horrors that stalked her dreams.
When he reached the bedroom, he found her restless but not yet in distress. Lying down beside her, he spread his wing over her body in a protective wave and murmured words of love from an archangel to his consort until she sighed and sank into a deep, peaceful sleep. “Sleep well, hbeebti,” he said softly, brushing a kiss to her temple.
Not needing to rest, he had every intention of leaving the bed in the next few moments . . . but then he was dreaming, with no awareness of having closed his eyes. This time, he wasn’t on that lonely, forgotten field, but in a place so dark, it was beyond the rich black of night. He could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, the blackness pressing down until it felt as if it would suffocate the life out of him.
More games.
His anger ignited, his wings glowing to fill the dark with light. The blackness swallowed the glow, pushing down harder on his body. Furious, he struck out with his power, and it parted the black, only to reveal more blackness, a world of nothingness. About to strike again, he thought suddenly that he needed Elena, needed the passionate life of her, born of the brilliant firefly existence that was a mortal’s.
“Raphael.” A touch, fingers rough from weapons-work sliding into his to curl around his hand.
“How did you find me?”
The rim of silver around her irises luminous in the blackness, she said, “I heard you call my name.” Screwing up her nose, she glanced around. “I’m not sure I like this new dreaming habit of yours.”
Sliding his wing over hers, he said, “I have to agree with you,” as around them, what had been impenetrable black became a soft gray. “Your heart drives away the dark.” She’d seen terrible things, been bathed in blood, yet in her lived an innocence of soul of which she seemed unaware.
“No,” she murmured, her hair flying backward in a gentle breeze. “I don’t think it’s me. It’s us.” Wing shifting under his in a soft susurration of sound, she said, “The white fire, Archangel. Ignite the white fire.”
He reached within him for that wild, near-uncontrollable flame, coaxing it onto his hand. Where it had once manifested a radiant white-gold with iridescent edges of midnight and dawn, today the white-gold bore swirls of violent blue, the flame just as volatile, as passionately alive. “Us,” he whispered and threw the wildfire up into the gray.
“Wildfire,” Elena whispered, as if he’d spoken aloud. “Yes, that describes it so much better.”
The wildfire arced out into the gray in every direction, eliminating the fog to leave them encased in sun-shot water of a pale, haunting green.
Elena ran her fingers through the water, the ripples disturbing the flawless serenity of the place, but there was no sense that the disturbance was unwelcome. “Oh, I like it here.” She danced her hand gracefully in the water, her delight without affectation.
It made his lips curve, his heart remember what it was to be a child. “We’re deep inside the ocean,” he said, understanding the sunlight wasn’t sunlight at all but the lingering burn of the wildfire.
“I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful.” Wonder in her eyes, their handclasp unbroken, Elena pointed out a tiny jellyfish-like creature that floated by, its body a translucent coral . . . but the wildfire, it was fading, the water caressed by gray, then enclosed by darkness.
“I understand,” he said, as his consort came into his arms, her hands on his shoul
ders and her kiss one that branded, drawing him out of the dream and into the warmth of their bed. She was strong and lithe underneath him, his warrior with her mortal heart, eyes of silver-gray open in the murky light that told him he hadn’t slept long.
“The risk,” he said, when their lips parted, “is being consumed by it.”
“The darkness?”
“Without you, I might one day have become another Lijuan.” Scowling, she would’ve shaken her head, but he stopped her with a grip on her jaw. “No, Elena. This truth I must confront—in me lives more power than any other angel my age has ever had. That much power changes a man, and it changed me.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point, but what’s also true is that you’re not the archangel I first met.” Elena’s expression stubborn, the hands she’d thrust into his hair fisting tight. “You’re still becoming—and, unlike Lijuan, you’re not afraid to take risks. She’s a coward who killed the mortal who made her feel; you claimed me as yours.” Tugging him down, she nipped hard at his lower lip in sensual rebuke. “Don’t ever think to compare yourself to her.”
“As my consort decrees,” he said, speaking with his lips on hers, his body cradled in the silken prison of her legs. “I know you’d never permit me to turn into a megalomaniacal tyrant with delusions of godhood.”
“Glad we got that straightened out.” Rubbing her nose against his in an open affection he knew he’d never tire of, should he live to be a hundred thousand years old, she said, “Where we were, it was a place of power, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” That power had saturated the water, the darkness, the living creatures that swam in those deep waters. “Not malevolent, and attuned to me, but out of my reach.” The final bitter seal on the revelation he’d had in the bloodstorm.
“That sucks.”
His lips kicked up at the succinct description of his own angry frustration. “It does.” Kissing her one more time, he rose to sit on the edge of the bed, his hand cupping the side of her face. “Sleep. It is early yet and you must rest—I will need my hunter more than ever in the days to come.”
Elena closed her fingers over his wrist to stop him from leaving. “How bad is it, Archangel?” It was the question of a consort, and the answer he gave her was one Elena knew he’d give no one else in the Tower, not even his Seven.
“My men and women are loyal and will fight to the bloody end,” he said, his broad shoulders holding the weight of a staggering number of lives, “but I’m afraid I am about to lead them into certain death.”
Getting up onto her knees, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, their faces side by side. “Not one of those men and women would ever want to serve Lijuan, you know that.” She pressed her lips to his marked temple, her understanding born of the hours she’d spent in the infirmary with the injured, and with the able-bodied soldiers who came to visit their fallen comrades. “Our people would rather go honorably in a fight against evil than cower under its hand.”
Raphael took a long, deep breath, his shoulders straightening and his head rising. “No one,” he vowed, “will ever subjugate those who are our own. Never will we surrender.”
40
Five hours into the new day, Raphael’s spymaster flew back to tell him Lijuan’s troops had crossed the early-warning border. A single command and Raphael’s offensive squadrons formed around him, the defensive perimeter tight and in place as he led the squadrons out across the city and over the water.
“Hold this position,” he told his commanders when they reached a location where his people could see the approaching army but remained within a hard, fast flight distance to their perimeter.
Leaving them hovering in precision formation, he flew out to meet Lijuan midway between the two armies. His move was a risk, given her increasing madness, but he believed part of her remained an archangel of old as yet, and seconds after he began his flight, his belief proved true. Cleaving to the rules of battle laid down at the dawn of angelkind, the Archangel of China flew alone to meet him in neutral space.
“Raphael.” Her pale, pale gaze turned to flint as she took in the mark on his temple. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”
“It appears we’ve all been doing that of late,” he said. “You must’ve worked long and quiet indeed to gain the trust of Uram’s scattered forces.” Until the ordinarily loyal men and women had abandoned their assigned posts and territories to swell her ranks.
“A goddess,” she said, her physical form fading to turn her skin translucent, “thinks not only for today, but for many tomorrows.” The eerie shift revealed the skeletal structure of her face, the sight merging with the crawling sense of screams beneath the surface of her voice, the trapped souls of those Lijuan had murdered.
“Your men wear only swords and crossbows.” Guns, at least, were a familiar weapon to most angelic fighters and wouldn’t have weighed down a winged fleet. “Do you foresee an easy victory?”
“I have been gathering my forces for ten thousand years, while you are a boy. We outnumber you until it will be no battle but an annihilation.”
Her arrogance, Raphael thought, might just be the Achilles’ heel that’d give his people victory in this unbalanced war. “Such is your belief, Lijuan. That doesn’t make it the truth.”
“It soon will be, but before the inevitable, I give you one more chance and invite you to surrender,” she said in that voice full of horror. “I cannot leave you or your consort alive, of course”—utmost civility as she spoke of his and Elena’s executions—“but I will treat your people as I would my own. Your Seven are extraordinary and will serve me well.”
His Seven, Raphael thought, would spend their existence attempting to erase Lijuan from the planet rather than lift a finger in her service. “There is a better way,” he said, extending the talk to give Naasir a final few minutes to put his plans in place. “You do not have to start a war.”
“I am not starting a war. I am stopping one before it begins.” She smiled at him, her eyes pale orbs with fetid shadows hidden within—as if to look too deep would be to fall into an inescapable hell. “You have never respected me as you should. I cannot allow that to continue. You understand.”
“Yes, I understand.” That Lijuan was a being of perfect madness, so mad she believed herself sane. Raphael recognized the signs; he’d seen them first in his father. But the powerful man who’d once played tag with him above the Refuge had never become the ugliness that was Lijuan. She was something new, a nightmare born of the rot at the core of her soul. “In turn,” he said, “you must understand that I cannot allow you to take my Tower and my city.”
“Then I’m afraid we are at an impasse.” Her smile never faltered, her teeth and jaw visible through skin turned to smoke. “We will be civilized about this. I will not attack you until you are with your troops, and you will not attempt the same.”
Accepting the stipulation, he said, “If you wish to cease hostilities at any stage, you need only remove your forces from my territory.”
“And should you wish to surrender, your fighters need only lay down their arms. Mine will not attack once your people are no longer a threat—unlike Charisemnon, I have no wish to degrade. My aim is only to conquer.” A pause. “It was not well done of him to so dishonorably use the reborn I gave him as a gift. I have told him I will not tolerate any further acts that bring disgrace upon my name.”
Raphael inclined his head. “I will see you in battle, Lijuan.”
“Good-bye, Raphael. You would’ve made a great Ancient one day, if only you had learned to respect your betters.”
Flying back to his troops at high speed, Raphael reached out to Elena. He needed her touch to erase the ugliness that permeated his bones, Lijuan’s presence a seeping wrongness in the fabric of the world. Elena, battle is imminent.
We’re ready. A kiss of untamed wildness that could be no one but his consort. I’m watching for you.
Ordering his troops to retreat inside the siege zone, Illium leading them
in, he took the rear with Jason and Aodhan at his flanks. It was a wise move, Lijuan sending a blast in his direction the instant he hit the edge of Manhattan. Her power manifested as a hail of black daggers, gleaming and deadly.
The other archangel, however, was too far away to do much damage, her aim no doubt to send his troops into disarray. Brushing the daggers aside with a minimal use of power, he turned to see that none of his people had dropped even an inch out of formation. There was no second attempt, Lijuan obviously realizing she couldn’t do any real harm from that distance, and a few minutes later, his squadrons crossed the line of their defensive perimeter.
Wings filled the sky in every direction, each and every fighter dressed in a distinctive black uniform to distinguish them from the dark gray and red of Lijuan’s forces. To further avoid confusion, every single pair of wings—including Raphael’s—was marked above and below with streaks of a shimmering blue paint developed exactly for this purpose. Designed not to clog or otherwise harm their feathers, it meant the shooters could see if an angel was friend or foe at a glance.
Those shooters lay concealed in protective hides on the rooftops and in the now windowless top floors of several high-rises, as well as on the perimeter line alongside vampires expert in anti-wing weaponry, the guns pointed skyward. More vampires stood on the ground armed with flamethrowers and swords, their task to attempt to eliminate or so disable downed enemy fighters that they couldn’t heal and rise again. A third group of vampires prowled the city, on alert for any reborn threat.
Rising above the squadrons, so he was visible to all, he raised his arm and his sword. “This is our land,” he said, augmenting his voice so it’d reach every man and woman, mortal and immortal, who’d fight this day. “We will not be intimidated, and we will not surrender. We did not begin this war, but we will end it!”
A roar shook the world, arms and voices raised in solidarity.
