Archangel's War

by Nalini Singh

  “My apologies, Astaad,” Alexander said, the edge in his tone different this time. “Aegaeon went to Sleep roughly a century before I did. I had forgotten his penchant for drama.”

  Alexander’s not a fan.

  Neither was Raphael. If Aegaeon woke, it would destroy the lives of two people Raphael cherished.

  “He’s what, fifty thousand or so?” Charisemnon’s tone was offhand. “Not an Ancient in the same way as you or Lady Caliane then.”

  Caliane raised both eyebrows. “Is that what he spread around? He did always have a strange vanity about his age. The truth is, he was born when I was a youngling. He is of an age with Alex and me.”

  I did not know he claimed to be fifty thousand, Raphael said to Elena. Perhaps he never tried with me because I had one of his compatriots for a mother.

  “Aegaeon’s overall level of power in comparison to the current Cadre is impossible to calculate,” Alexander muttered.

  “He will be a power in age and experience alone,” Neha pointed out. “I remember him from his last waking—he did not enjoy that time, did not stay long—but he was an impressive being while he walked the Earth.”

  Meanwhile, Neha is a fan.

  Aegaeon had a way with women—though I would not call it charm. It had been too rough for that, too reckless.

  Raphael? Why are you so angry at him?

  I cannot speak of this, Elena. It is not a promise . . . but a trust I hold dear.

  Elena didn’t force the issue; she was a warrior, understood the import of such things.

  “The Cadre is missing a member.” Elijah, calm and thoughtful. “It may be that we are being brought back into balance.”

  “I will inform you of any further signs of waking,” Astaad said, white lines around his mouth.

  Astaad had reason for his tension. Should Aegaeon indeed rise, the Archangel of the Pacific Isles would have to share his territory, as Favashi had initially shared with Alexander. Astaad, however, was in a better position to hold on to the Pacific than Favashi had Persia—while Aegaeon had no doubt ruled that territory at some point during his long existence, the last time he’d woken, he’d held dominion over the lands Michaela now called her own.

  Not only that, but if he was as old as Caliane had said, then most of his people had to be dead or in a long Sleep of their own. Maybe that was why Aegaeon hadn’t stayed awake for an extended period the last time. Just long enough to irreparably break a precious gift to angelkind.

  “Since we are all here,” Neha said, her hands on her hips, “what is the situation in China? Lady Caliane, you have been there most recently.”

  More than one head turned toward Michaela; she ignored the pointed looks. Caliane, by contrast, was too well respected for anyone to ask why she’d stepped in.

  “No new infections among those who watch over the territory for the Cadre. The half-consumed discovered by Raphael are all dead—they would not feed, even when sustenance was placed into their hands.”

  “So nothing has really changed. Good.” Michaela logged off.

  “So nice to have the princess back in the fold.” Charisemnon’s tone was pure poison before his screen, too, went black.

  The others followed one by one.

  Elena’s face was forlorn when he turned to her. Crossing the carpet, he ran his fingers through her hair. “We did what we could to save the villagers. But they were doomed at Lijuan’s first touch.”

  Leaning her head against his thigh, his hand curved over her nape, she looked out at the soft rain that had begun to fall. Manhattan glittered beyond the veil. “You didn’t mention the snow owl.”

  “Let us allow Cassandra to Sleep in peace as long as she is able.” The two owls who dozed in one corner of the room, on a low perch that Dmitri had used long-rusty skills to make, rustled their wings as if in a dream. “One more Ancient, the Cadre can absorb, but two?” He shook his head. “It may tip the world into an archangelic war.”

  35

  His fears proved groundless.

  Three days after the meeting, Cassandra’s site was dead calm and Astaad reported the same of his territory. “It is as if Aegaeon had a nightmare and cried out in his Sleep, then laid his head back down.”

  Raphael took a silent breath at that. He’d been weighing up how to share the news of the Ancient’s possible awakening with the two people who’d be most affected by it, all the while aware that, by speaking, he would devastate both their lives at a critical time. He would hold his silence now, speak only when a waking was confirmed.

  The violent weather systems had also settled, including Alexander’s ice storms as well as the geothermal activity in Raphael’s territory.

  “It almost feels like the prelude to a tsunami,” Elena said one night as they stood atop the Legion building after Elena had spent the day getting her hands dirty. “How everything goes still and the water retreats and retreats from the shore . . . only for a huge wave to return and pummel everything to death.”

  “Your positive thoughts overwhelm me.” Raphael watched the purple-hued horizon as day fell into night, almost expecting to see the wave crashing.

  “That’s me, chipper as a spring bean.” Lightning dancing through her wings, she threw a blade at him without warning. “You gonna tell me what was in that package from Amanat?”

  Raphael lobbed back the blade through the frigid night air. “Another portrait of my father.” The words came out even, without emotion. “My mother wants me to have it.”

  Tilting her head to the side after slipping the blade back into its sheath, Elena crossed the space between them. “Hey.” A hand pressed to his heart. “Talk to me.”

  His pulse speeded up to beat in time with hers. She was now a full immortal, but she remained fragile in comparison to him. Breakable. Lijuan could end her with a single blow . . . yet his Elena would fly into battle at his side. Courage was writ on her soul. As defiant as the stormfire wings she’d clawed from the Cascade.

  “My mother remembers all the good about my father,” he said, his mind filling with thoughts of another pair of lovers. “I wonder if she has forgotten the rest, or if she chooses only to focus on the light.”

  Time rolled backward.

  “That he loved her is beyond question. He was a huge power and women gravitated toward him, but he never looked at anyone else. Even when they were apart for months at a time, he never fell to temptation, never even saw it—I witnessed that with my own eyes.” Raphael caught lightning from her wings. “In that, I am my father’s son. It will only ever be you for me.”

  Near-white strands of hair flirting against her neck, Elena reached up to brush her fingers over his cheek.

  “But he was also . . . irresponsible.” Laughing and bright-eyed and not as adult as he should be. “A strange thing to say of an archangel, but there was a boyishness to him that I can see clearly when I look back at my memories. He would take me on wild adventures and it was all wonderful—until I fell and broke a wing or a leg.

  “I loved the adventures, loved the danger. But it bothered my mother and yet, he wasn’t careful. He loved her desperately, but he wasn’t careful with her heart.” Raphael tried to find the words to explain. “He was always taking risks, always riding the edge. When the madness first licked at his mind, the healers told him to Sleep, that often, a long Sleep cured that which was broken.”

  Memories, hard and loud in his head. “I heard them arguing. I wasn’t a child any longer, and I understood. She begged him to Sleep, promised she’d be waiting when he woke. But my father refused to ‘give up on life.’” So stubborn and arrogant and believing he knew best.

  “In the end, he forced her to execute him.” It had broken Caliane in ways Raphael didn’t think would ever heal. “The woman you know, that’s not all of her. Parts are missing.” Would always be missing.

  “I saw it in the portr
aits.” Elena’s eyes were more gray than silver today, her mortal heart right out in the open. “She had a candle inside her that’s dimmer now, quieter.”

  “She was so old when they met. Old enough to be considering an endless Sleep. He brought her to life—that’s what she always told me.”

  Sliding her arms around him, Elena held him tight as the wind wove around them, bringing with it a chill that promised snow not too far in the distant future. “I wish I could’ve met them when they were together and happy. I wish you could’ve met Jeffrey and Marguerite when they were the same.”

  But the past was gone, leaving only broken shards at their feet. All they had were memories and a perilous future in which everything was shifting. Including the turbulent power inside Raphael that had become fused into his cells.

  * * *

  • • •

  HUNTER ANGEL RETURNS TRIUMPHANT!

  Elena glared at Demarco when he waved his tablet in front of her face a week later, that headline blaring across it. “Take that away or I’ll use it for target practice.”

  Her fellow hunters had freaked out at first sight of her stormfire wings, but by now it was old news. Alas, the same could not be said for the local papers and magazines. They were obsessed with her wings. A new article every damn day. It wasn’t a security threat since they mostly printed photos snapped by citizens along with gushing headlines like today’s, but she was starting to feel like New York’s prize poodle.

  Demarco, dressed in his now-faded Hunter Angel T-shirt and worn blue jeans—and smart-ass smile—began to read out the article while Elena, Ransom, Ashwini, Honor, Kenji, and Rose lounged around the table in the Guild HQ break room. “Elena Deveraux,” he intoned, “has returned from the dead not once but twice!”

  “I wasn’t dead either time,” Elena muttered. “I was just mostly dead.”

  Kenji snickered, and Demarco read on. “In this incarnation, she’s made the city proud with her retractable stormfire wings—”

  “Wait a minute!” Having been leaning back in her chair, Elena slammed it to the floor now. “Those are highly specific words.” Words she’d used to describe her wings. “Is there a mysterious anonymous source in this article?”

  Demarco blinked innocent eyes at her. “Do you want to hear the rest or not?”

  Balling up a paper napkin, she threw it at his tousled head of streaky blond hair, while the others cracked up.

  “Where was I before I was attacked?” He ostentatiously found his place again. “To those who doubted her, it’s a slap in the face. But to New Yorkers, it is confirmation of what we already knew: our hunter angel is unstoppable.”

  Elena groaned, her head in her hands. “End this torture. Please, I beg you.”

  But Demarco was relentless and her other friends egged him on. At least Ashwini threw her a chocolate bar as a consolation prize and she soothed herself with sugar and cocoa until the entire excruciating exercise was over—complete with the mysterious anonymous source who gave nothing away but added to the legend of the hunter angel.

  Her favorite quote was: “I’ve seen her wings zap people stone-dead.”

  “I guess I should thank you for that.” She threw another balled-up napkin at his head. “Hopefully it’ll stop the ones who can’t resist attempting a touch.” Unwanted touch had been uncomfortable on her old wings and it was the same now.

  “I have no idea why you’d thank me,” Demarco said piously. “Thank the anonymous source.”

  “Did I show you guys my new Hunter Angel T-shirt?” Kenji unzipped his jacket to reveal a cobalt-blue tee with Elena’s silhouette in black . . . with glitter for wings.

  “I got the pink one,” Ashwini said, her booted feet up on the table and big silver hoops dangling from her ears. “Bright pink with the Hunter Angel in gold and gold glitter for the wings.”

  “Honor and I went for yellow.” Rose bumped fists with Honor.

  “Mine’s black with white. Classic. No fucking glitter in sight.” Ransom’s phone beeped before Elena could threaten to murder the whole lot of them. Her hardass friend went sheet white under his coppery skin. “Now?” he blurted out. “I’m on my way.”

  He got up so abruptly that his chair clattered to the floor. “Where’s my helmet?” Manic expression, head swiveling this way and that.

  “Right behind you.” Elena frowned. “But I don’t think you should be driving in that state. What’s wrong?”

  Everyone but Ransom had gone quiet and watchful, a group of lethal hunters waiting to spring into action for a friend.

  Ransom stared at her before throwing out his hands as if it should be obvious. “Nyree’s having our baby!”

  A collective intake of breath, then they moved like a well-oiled machine. Demarco took charge of Ransom, shoving him into a Guild vehicle; Kenji and Rose piled in the back. Ashwini got on Ransom’s bike, Honor behind her, and they roared off in the wake of the vehicle, while Elena took to the air.

  Nyree was already in the maternity suite by the time they arrived at the hospital and they made sure they got Ransom to the right place. Elena had never seen him so shell-shocked—but his shoulders straightened as he went through the doors of the suite, his expression shimmering to pure calm.

  The rest of them waited like anxious parents themselves. Elena drew a bit of attention, but all the weapons bristling on their bodies kept the curious at bay. Or maybe it was the whole group that was drawing attention. Demarco was wearing a sword in a spine sheath, while Ashwini’s gun hung at her hip; she played throwing stars around her fingers—the light glinted off the viciously sharp edges.

  Kenji had taken a seat and begun to snap a garrote between his fisted hands, while Rose was practicing throwing a pretend knife. A passing doctor ducked as she sent one invisible missile flying. Honor, meanwhile, was “catching” Rose’s throws and sending them back.

  “Did he spill yet if it was a girl or a boy?” Demarco wrapped one arm around Elena’s waist, careful to keep his forearm away from her wings.

  Elena shook her head. “Said they don’t know. Wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “I’m going to kill all of you.” Sara rushed into the waiting room on black high heels, her outfit today a fitted dress in deep plum and her hair swinging glossily across her shoulders.

  “We know you’re magic, boss.” Demarco, with no regard for his life, sent Sara a quick salute. “Had zero doubts you’d make it here in time.”

  Sara glared at him. “Any news?”

  “No.” Honor brought up her legs to sit cross-legged on the hard plastic chair. “Doctor said since it’s Nyree’s first, it might take a while.”

  But it was only two hours later that Ransom walked out with a shit-eating grin on his face. “I’m a dad.”

  They swarmed him with hugs and congratulations and questions. After Sara corralled the lot of them into order, they snuck in to see mother and baby in groups of two or three. Nyree had already told Ransom it was all right.

  Elena entered with Demarco and Rose to find Ransom on the bed beside his wife, his arm around her back and his hand stroking the tiny head that lay nestled against Nyree’s skin. The new mother looked a little tired, her dusky skin paler than usual and her black curls wildly tumbled. Her smile, however, was radiant.

  “He’s so tiny.” Demarco’s tone was awed; he kept his hands scrupulously behind his back. “Jeez, Ransom, how’re you going to handle him without breaking him?” Not a smart-ass question, an honestly petrified one.

  Ransom ran the pad of his finger over his son’s head again. “You have no idea of my current level of fear.” His grin didn’t fade an inch. “But I can’t wait to do the dad thing.”

  “Nyree,” Elena whispered, “you grew a human.” With miniature fingernails and skin so new it was dewy.

  “I can’t believe it myself.” Ransom’s tough little wife pressed a kiss t
o the downy hair on top of the baby’s head. “You’ll all be babysitting so start studying up.”

  A collective spike of terror shared between her, Demarco, and Rose.

  Nyree’s laughter filled the room.

  At that instant, all was right with the world, Lijuan’s reign of death forgotten in the gift of this tiny new life. But things deadly and violent were stirring awake even as Elena dared touch a careful finger to the baby’s fragile hand.

  36

  Archangel! I have the best news!

  Stepping out onto the balcony outside his office to meet his consort, Raphael went to ask the reason for her joy when a lightning strike speared out of the sky. Elena jerked out of the way just in time, and the bolt hit the balcony beside her.

  The surface cracked, fine fault lines spreading across the entire space.

  More bolts appeared out of the cloudless sky on the heels of the first, deadly arcs of energy that could fry an angel’s wings and crash him to the earth.

  LAND! NOW! He sent the mental command to the edges of his ability, saw angels begin to arrow down to land wherever they could. A number of the Legion did the same, but one of them couldn’t avoid a strike.

  His body disintegrated.

  At least the Legion would rise again, unlike an angel who was hit. “Stay down, Elena. I must see if I can protect them.” The strikes were coming faster together now and many angels had been high, couldn’t drop fast enough.

  Be careful! A mental shout as she got to the shelter of the doorway and he took off.

  The lightning altered direction to angle toward him. He permitted a small bolt to hit him so he could gain further information, absorbing the impact with the strength that made him an archangel.

  No strange Cascade energy. This was simply weather run amok.

  But, for some unknown reason, he drew the violence like a lightning rod. Maybe because the energy that danced on his skin was akin to the lightning. Instinctively creating a shield around himself, similar to the one he used when he and Elena dived into the ocean together, he headed out toward the sea.