by Nalini Singh
He landed on the deserted Tower roof. Raphael’s people would only retreat inward when there was no hope of holding the line—but, regardless, multiple steel boxes sat near the edges of the roof. Each was filled with short-range missiles, bows and arrows, crossbows and such other weapons as could be used with line-of-sight targeting.
The two of them made their way to the redesigned war room from where Dmitri ran battle operations. Where before the war room had been separate from the aerie, the two were now integrated. The entire floor was a single space with toughened mirrored glass on all sides, giving his second a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city.
To ensure Dmitri didn’t need to walk around the floor to get that view, in the center of the space hovered a screen that curved fully around in a single piece. Dmitri could step below the screen, pull it down so it was at his eyeline, and see everything in a single rotation, zooming in and out as necessary.
Small apertures built into the glass walls could be opened at will to fire weapons directly from the war room. The space also boasted a large flat table to the left, on which Dmitri could run battle tactics as he preferred, as well as a full electronic hub to the right that would switch automatically to generators should the Tower’s main power supply be cut.
“I called Lady Caliane,” Dmitri said as they entered.
“Good.” His mother would’ve already alerted the rest of the Cadre to head to New York.
But Dmitri shook his head, his expression as black as the tailored shirt he wore with the sleeves folded back. “There’s a major problem in India.” Walking them to the electronic hub, he pointed to a screen streaming images that had Raphael frowning, for what he saw wasn’t a problem but a gift.
“The children.” Hope lilted through Elena’s voice. “Are they running across the bor—” Her voice broke off with a jagged edge at the same instant Raphael realized the sickening truth.
“Raphael, those children have fangs.” Rigid spine, a white face.
51
Raphael knew his hunter could handle her rage. Today, he needed to look after someone else first. Dmitri, you do not need to watch this.
I’m dealing with it. A steady voice, though his second’s expression was stone. My Misha is safe from this hell and I like to think he got a second chance at life—as I did. But I would appreciate it if you kill the bitch stone-dead so she doesn’t do this to any other child ever again.
It is a promise, my friend. Raphael squeezed Dmitri’s shoulder before looking back at the ugliness on the screen. “These children aren’t simply vampires—they’ve been changed in a way akin to the reborn.” Eyes reddened and flesh holding a greenish tinge that spoke of putrefaction, their locomotion a rapid crablike skitter, these innocents were already dead, reanimated only by Lijuan’s power.
Elena’s hand clenched around a knife blade. “Are they infectious?”
“Looks like it.” Dmitri’s voice held pure calm; Raphael’s second had shut away his violent anger so he could function.
Raphael reached for Honor’s mind. I apologize for the intrusion. He was not in the habit of making such contact with the wife of his closest friend. Dmitri needs you. Come to the war room.
Honor didn’t have the ability to respond to him, but Raphael knew she would soon be here. Honor loved Dmitri as intensely as Ingrede once had. Ingrede had known a content mortal husband and father. Honor knew a deadly vampire with scars on his soul. Dmitri loved them both and always would.
“An entire group got through in the first wave,” Dmitri was saying to Elena. “The fighters on duty froze.”
“Like I did the last time, with the cruise ship passenger.” Elena’s voice was rough, her neck held stiffly. “Lijuan counted on people’s abhorrence of harming children.”
Closing his hand over her nape, Raphael massaged it gently. “How bad is it?” Children were never to be turned into vampires, much less such abominations as Lijuan had created. Each and every angel in the world would consider it their personal shame that such an atrocity had been committed.
“There are thousands of them—Lijuan must’ve had them lying silent and unmoving in the forests near the border, or in the basements of houses.” Dmitri brought up another set of moving images that showed the children attacking vampiric ground troops and spitting up at angelic fighters who came too close.
None of the adults were doing anything but defending themselves.
“You are right—they spread disease.” The spitting, the way the children attempted to claw anyone nearby, it was designed not to kill but to infect.
“That’s from the initial invasion.” Dmitri’s attention shifted to over Raphael’s shoulder, the ice of his calm cracking with a flex of his hand.
Not asking any questions, Honor went straight to her husband and wrapped her arms around him with ferocious tightness. Dmitri held her back as hard, his head bent so his cheek pressed to hers for a long, taut second.
Elena glanced up at Raphael, a painful comprehension in her eyes. Dmitri intimated once that he’d been a father.
He was beloved by his children. Little Misha had pelted down the pathway anytime he caught sight of his papa.
Swallowing hard, Elena said nothing further, honoring Raphael’s loyalty to his friend.
In front of them, Dmitri and Honor separated—but Dmitri kept Honor’s hand in his as he brought up another set of images. “This is the current feed.”
Yellow and orange licked across the screen.
Neha’s angelic squadrons were setting the border aflame. Several of the toughened warriors were crying. To execute a child even when that child had been made monstrous was no easy thing. Neha, too, was in the thick of battle, her face smudged with streaks of soot and sweat plastering her hair to her temples as she used her Cascade-born ability to create fire to speed up their efforts.
No tear tracks marked her face, but the Archangel of India was attempting to drive the children back into Lijuan’s territory rather than ending their existence. Even the knowledge that those tiny bodies were rotting flesh held together by infection wasn’t enough to stifle the primal rejection of killing a child.
A buzz, Dmitri glancing at his phone. “Rhys just confirmed Lady Caliane is assisting Neha.”
Raphael’s gut clenched. My mother’s revulsion against harming a child ever again is so strong she’ll let them eat her alive before raising a hand to help herself.
She understands the stakes. Elena shifted so that the side of her body brushed his. We have to trust her not to surrender to her nightmares.
Not certain his mother’s mental state was strong enough, Raphael said, “Lijuan’s eliminated both Neha and my mother from the fight.” Neither could leave India lest it be overrun by the infected. Lijuan surely had more reborn hiding close by. The stronger adults would be the second wave, after the children traumatized and weakened the border guard.
“She’s taken out Alexander and Michaela, too,” said another familiar voice.
Raphael glanced over to the sharp-featured man with a muscular upper body who’d come up beside Dmitri in a manual wheelchair. Vivek Kapur passed across a sheet of paper, the dark brown of his skin shining with health. “Dispatch from the border with Persia. Reborn children pouring out there, too. Lijuan doesn’t seem to have targeted the border with Michaela, but she’s gone to assist Alexander.”
“With their territories connected by land, she has no other choice.” Should they fail to stop the scourge in Alexander’s land, the infected would crawl unchecked across a vast geographic area. “Elijah?”
“No adverse reports at this point,” Dmitri said. “No reports at all from the rest of the Cadre, but it hasn’t been long since I fired off my message.”
A whisper of black on the edge of Raphael’s vision. “Jason,” he said. “What have you heard?”
Breath a little jagged—highly unusual fo
r Jason—his spymaster said, “I’ve just received a report from one of my people in Charisemnon’s territory. Nests of reborn are breaking out all over his lands, killing and infecting and rampaging.”
Honor spoke for the first time, her forehead wrinkled. “I thought the entire Cadre took precautions?”
“Lijuan’s a smart operator.” Dmitri stared unseeing at a blank screen. “I bet those reborn were smuggled in during her “Sleep” and someone’s been feeding the fuckers in the interim.”
“Those things feed on blood and living flesh.” Elena’s hand was bone white on the handle of her blade, her thigh pressed up against his and the stormfire of her wing tangled with his feathers. “And they can’t make other reborn from nothing.”
Raphael considered her point. “The keeper or keepers must’ve hunted locals with stealth over a long period, so the disappearances wouldn’t be noticed.”
Vivek Kapur had been bent over a tablet in his lap, now shook his head. “Article in not one but three different local papers report a rash of disappearances in their areas in the past month.”
His fingers flew across the screen with nimble speed. “Looks like each set of disappearances was blamed on a different thing—a bloodlust-ridden vampire, a flash flood, a man-eating pride of lions. Can’t find any articles that cross-link the three incidents.”
A muscle ticked in Dmitri’s jaw. “Someone hasn’t been doing their job.”
Because Dmitri would’ve noticed those disappearances and Raphael would’ve been informed of them. “So Charisemnon is out.” The archangel would have to contain the reborn threat to the African continent before he could render any assistance. “And so is Titus.” The two archangels were in no way allies, but this wasn’t about their differences. It was about a world that would end them all.
Vampires couldn’t feed on reborn. They needed mortals.
And the greatest secret of angelkind was that they needed mortals, too.
“She knows the danger, knows the reborn are a plague that could spread across the entire world,” Elena said, blades in both her hands now, as if she would stab Lijuan in the heart right then and there. “What use is it being goddess of a dying world?”
“She’ll have created a protected zone inside her territory,” Raphael said, Lijuan’s entire genocidal plan suddenly icily clear in his mind. “She intends to win the war, then kill the reborn, and repopulate the world with those loyal to her. It is tempting to call her mad, but she is not mad. She is drunk on her own power.”
“The first wave of the enemy are nearly at the fireline.” Dmitri zoomed in on the image displayed on another screen. It was being transmitted from a device mounted discreetly on a portside skyscraper. That device was one of a multitude. Devoid of the veil provided by their archangel’s powers, Lijuan’s people could not move unseen in his city.
Raphael caught a hint of silver blue at the corner of the screen before it disappeared and knew Illium was out there with his squadron, making the call on when the archers would fire again. Neither Dmitri nor Raphael would interfere. Illium was an experienced squadron commander, the decision one that had to be made in the field of battle.
The arrows fired all at once half a minute later. A cascade of fire arced down into the mass of enemy combatants heading for the city, but a single precision set were aimed at the floating buoys of fuel. The impact would contaminate the water, but that couldn’t be helped—if Lijuan took New York, millions would die.
If he won, his people would clean the water.
The arrows flew silently to their destinations. The buoy archers had been chosen because they could shoot with near-impossible accuracy. Three of the team were guild hunters, one a mortal who competed in archery as a sport, the rest a mix of angels and vampires. Since no one could predict if all the archers would be in the city at any one time, the shooting team could be put together from double the necessary number.
The arrow points slammed into the buoys while the enemy was focused on the fiery threat from above, the buoy skins designed to puncture under such an impact. Flames shot up with explosive force . . . and angels fell screaming from the skies, their wings destroyed.
Every muscle in Raphael’s body clenched.
He had witnessed the Falling, seen the broken bodies and torn wings of their wounded and dead. To see any angel plummet from the sky was a repellant sight, but these winged warriors had come to murder his people.
A strong, slightly callused hand sliding into his. He curled his fingers over hers as she curled hers over his, and together, they watched Lijuan’s army come to a halt beyond the flaming wall of fire—an impressive sight, but not enough to be a deterrent once you could see it.
Coming over that wall however, was an endless hail of burning arrows.
Illium had taken charge of arrow production and created a stockpile so massive that his archers could keep going for days, with one set resting while the others fired. Those men and women were tough to the bone, would shoot until their hands bled and then they’d wrap them up and shoot again.
Lijuan’s fighters hesitated just out of reach of the arrows. Several warriors dropped to the water, going to the rescue of the burned angels. Angels couldn’t easily be killed by fire, not unless they were burned down to the bone. Then, without warning, the entire army reversed course to the sky, a massive vee of power and violence.
52
Cowards are abandoning their wounded.” Dmitri spat out the words. “It’ll tank morale among her troops.”
“No,” Raphael murmured, “they’re too devoted to her. She is their goddess and the burned ones will consider it their sacrifice to sink down to the ocean floor until they can be retrieved. The ones with enough wing surface left to float may survive. Most will die.”
Elena sucked in a breath. “I thought angels couldn’t drown?”
“That badly wounded? It’s possible. Especially if their lungs are scorched and they are young.”
The idea of burned and bleeding angels sinking helplessly into the ocean while they drowned over a matter of hours or days made Elena’s stomach threaten to revolt. “Can we help them?” She had to ask the question, couldn’t abandon her humanity.
The Raphael who looked at her was the deadly archangel with power running cold and hard through his veins. But the Raphael who answered her was the man who loved her. “If we can do so safely, we will float out rafts onto which they can climb.”
Shokran, Archangel.
You keep me human, Elena. You stop me from becoming Lijuan. Never stop making such requests. Out loud, he said, “We must prepare for the next wave.”
Dmitri pressed a finger to his ear. “Ashwini’s got her team in position. Short-range rocket launchers ready.”
“Any signs of similar weapons among Lijuan’s troops?” Elena asked.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Dmitri zoomed in on a particular group of fighters. Rocket launchers on angelic backs, assault guns strapped to the front, that was just the start.
“Satellite’s also picking up a ton of movement beneath the water,” Vivek added. “She’s got more submarines, and I bet you they’re overflowing with supplies and people and weapons.”
“Her Evilness learned from the last battle.”
“No, it would have been Xi,” Raphael murmured. “He has always been the most intelligent man in her arsenal—though he is only dangerously powerful when she is nearby.”
Elena had nearly forgotten that Lijuan could share power with her troops. “That explains how she pulled off the noncorporeal tactic—she must’ve temporarily shared that power across her entire army.” No one had to tell her it was seriously bad news that Lijuan was now strong enough to spread herself that thin.
“Divers are in position,” Dmitri said.
Raphael resettled his wings. “Can they see the underwater craft?”
Dmitri spoke into a button mi
ke pinned to his shirt collar, dark head bent, listened to the reply. “Negative. The water is murky.”
“I can use satellites to—” Vivek began.
Raphael swiped out a hand. “No. We stick to the rules of war. I will not violate them and step on the road to becoming Lijuan. If the subs attack, they become fair game at any distance. Prior to that, the divers must be able to see them. Line of sight, that is the law.”
Pride had Elena lifting their clasped hands to her mouth for a kiss.
In the distance, the hail of arrows continued. “I need to go relieve an archer.” That was her assigned task during the initial assault phase; she wasn’t expert-level, but she was good enough to take over for short periods so they could rest.
Eyes as blue as a pristine mountain lake slammed into hers, lightning alive in their depths and in the Legion mark at his temple. Stay safe, hbeebti.
That goes double for you, Archangel. He was going to be doing something incredibly dangerous very soon.
She made it to her position with two minutes to spare and picked up the shooting where the archer had left off. Her preference was the crossbow, but she’d honed her archery skills after the last battle because at this distance and with the added fire element, the specially designed arrows functioned better at the task.
Heat smoldered against her in every direction, eliminating the chill of winter. In front of each archer was a small flaming pot in which they lit their arrows. Sweat trickled down Elena’s face; she was glad she’d taken the time to find a hairtie and pull her hair back into a short tail.
She missed the ease of braiding her hair to keep it out of the way, and was already growing out the strands. Mostly though . . . she couldn’t keep seeing Belle in the mirror. Each time she turned and glimpsed the shorter strands without warning, she remembered Belle’s delight the day she’d had her own hair trimmed to that length. It hurt too fucking much to have a constant reminder of her dancing, wild, often impatient but always loving big sister.
