The angel who’d been seated by the bed rose. “Sire. He hasn’t woken since you left him.”
“Thank you, Adaeze. You can return to your duties, now.”
She inclined her head before walking out the door, her wings held neatly to her back. Aodhan didn’t see what color they were; he was already climbing onto the bed to pat Illium’s shoulder so his friend would sleep without bad dreams. It took a few pats, but Illium stopped jerking and soon, his face wasn’t scrunched up anymore.
Raphael, who’d sat on the other side of the bed, reached out to brush Illium’s hair off his forehead. “I will leave you be,” he said. “Illium and I have spoken, and he knows I’m but a single call away. Now, I think he needs his closest friend.”
Aodhan nodded. “I can come get you if he wants.” He knew all he’d have to do was step into the hall and stop the first grown-up he saw; they’d find Raphael for him.
Raphael’s smile was of a kind that made Aodhan feel good inside. It was how Eh-ma looked at him when he finished a piece of art. “I’ll have Adaeze bring up a tray of food for you two. She has a little one of her own and tells me that everything is better with small sweets and savories.”
Aodhan wasn’t too sure about that, but when the angel with curly black hair and skin almost as brown as Naasir’s walked in with a tray of things that smelled nice, his stomach rumbled.
Adaeze smiled. “There you go, sweet little child.” She placed the tray on a table right beside the bed, so Aodhan could reach it from where he sat. “It’s usually no eating in bed for little angels under my care,” she murmured, her voice holding a rhythm that was like music, “but today’s a special case. Don’t you worry about crumbs now, and if you spill anything, you just let Adaeze know.”
Aodhan nodded. “Thank you.”
“You are most welcome.” Soft eyes on Illium. “Poor baby. But he is loved, so loved. I see that, I do.”
She left the door half-open when she went out, but Aodhan got out of bed after and quietly nudged it all the way shut. Illium wouldn’t want anyone to see him crying if he wanted to cry some more. Raphael was different. Raphael was part of their family. Then, his tired wings dragging on the floor, he walked across the carpet and climbed back onto the bed.
Illium stirred.
Seated beside him, Aodhan patted his shoulder so he’d know he wasn’t alone. Rubbing his eyes, Illium sat up. He had marks on one side of his face, and his hair was all mussed up and his eyes were big.
“Want a snack?” Aodhan picked a small pie thing he thought his friend would like.
Nodding, Illium took it, and they sat side by side, eating snacks from the tray until Illium spoke. “My papa went to Sleep.”
“You’re sad.”
Illium nodded. “How come he went to Sleep? Papas don’t go to Sleep.”
Aodhan remembered what Raphael had said and he didn’t say anything about Aegaeon being a bad papa. He just said, “I’m sorry. But Eh-ma is here, and Raphael is here. And I’m here.”
Illium put his head on Aodhan’s shoulder. “Do you think he didn’t like me? Was I bad?”
“No,” Aodhan said at once. “Even Brutus said he’d be proud to have you for his son, and he doesn’t like any kids.” Aodhan was careful to shape the words as the old warrior had said them, with a kind of half smile in his voice. “He yells at any other little angels who land in his garden, but he doesn’t yell at you.”
“My papa didn’t stay. He didn’t want me.”
Aodhan couldn’t stand that tone in his friend’s voice. Illium was always laughing, always playing jokes—never nasty ones, just funny ones. He wasn’t sad like this. “Your papa is old,” he said. “Maybe he was just so tired he couldn’t stay awake anymore.”
Illium chewed on a piece of dried fruit. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” Aodhan said, and it was a lie he didn’t mind telling—not when it made some of the sadness fade from Illium. “He played with you all the time when he came to the Refuge. My mama says that sometimes, angels just get old and tired. That’s what happened to my grandma. Remember? I told you.”
“My papa is old,” Illium murmured, but he was frowning. “Mama is old, too, and she’s not Sleeping.”
Aodhan shrugged. “Eh-ma is different. Special.”
No hesitation from Illium. “Yes, she’s special.” He sighed. “Do you think my papa will wake up soon and not be tired anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Aodhan replied. “But I know he’ll come to see you when he wakes up.”
The faintest hint of a smile on Illium’s face. “He will, won’t he? Because I’m his boy.”
19
Today
Illium. An archangel’s voice in his head. Vetra is here. She will meet you and Aodhan in the stronghold.
Yes, Archangel Suyin.
Switching direction, he landed on the cobblestones of the main courtyard, then made his way inside to the large gathering room with huge windows where they’d had dinner. Aodhan was already there, pouring Vetra a drink as she ate.
She was as he remembered from Titus’s court: a tall, leggy woman with a tumbled cap of mahogany-dark hair streaked with bronze, her skin the kind of white that tanned to a pale gold, and her wings as rich a brown as her eyes. She had the type of mobile face that seemed to mark spymasters—distinctive and vivid when she was with friends, she could turn it bland and forgettable while she was working.
It was a trick he’d seen Jason pull to great effect, and he had no idea how either did it. Jason had a tattoo that covered half his face and people still didn’t see or remember him when he didn’t want to be seen or remembered.
When Vetra lifted a hand in a silent apology aimed at Illium, he said, “Eat. You must be exhausted.” He grabbed a seat on the other side and took the tumbler of mead Aodhan passed across.
Their fingers brushed for a second.
He jerked back without meaning to, the mead sloshed—and Aodhan went motionless. Shit. It was just that he hadn’t expected it . . . and that Aodhan meant too much to him.
Vetra spoke before he could attempt to say something. What, he didn’t know.
“I didn’t find much else on my second glance,” she said. “Just the abandoned hamlet, everything neat, no rotting food in the fridges, no signs of people having packed up and left, no blood, no bodies.”
It was a haunting image she’d placed in their minds, of a place just waiting for its people to come home. “Fifty residents, right?” he said.
It was Aodhan who answered. “I checked with the scholar who did the headcount for our records—he puts the exact number at fifty-one. The woman you found? She told Rii her name is Fei. If she’s from the hamlet, that means we’re missing fifty. Thirty-nine mortals, eleven vampires.”
“High percentage of vamps. Unless they were getting blood shipped in before everything went to hell, each of the adult mortals would have to be a regular donor.”
“Yes.” Vetra took another bite, swallowed it down after a cursory chew. “I planned to look into that on my return but . . .”
She put down her sandwich, deep grooves in her forehead and lines flaring out from her eyes. “I looked for tracks, for burial places, didn’t find any. But there’s a lot of forest and I couldn’t do an in-depth search. If they’ve been dumped at the bottom of even a shallow ravine and covered with foliage, they’d be invisible from the air.”
She looked at the curved wall of windows at the front of the generous space in which they sat, beyond which lay the main courtyard. “Soon, the snow will come.”
Burying the dead in their forgotten grave.
A bleak and sad image that would haunt Illium until he found these lost people.
But though he and Aodhan spoke to Vetra for another quarter of an hour, she had precious little to add to what she’d already told them.
“It infuriates me that I’m so in the dark.” Her hand tightened on the tumbler. “I left the task unfinished, secrets hidden. More than that, I didn’t assign anyone to keep an eye on the place from the start, check regularly on the residents.”
“You have but a small team, Vetra,” Aodhan murmured, his deep voice soothing. “And the hamlet appeared well-established, its residents happy to stay outside the borders of the stronghold—you had no reason to expect a mass vanishing.”
“I should have,” Vetra muttered, her eyes like flint. “This is still Lijuan’s land.”
“No.” Aodhan’s tone was unbending. “She may have left behind some echoes, but it’s Suyin’s land now.”
A pink flush under the tanned gold of her skin, Vetra dropped her head. “You’re right. I’m just frustrated. How can fifty people vanish without a trace? Even when the black fog erupts out of the earth like pus ejected from a rank wound, it leaves behind shriveled bodies, bones.”
That was another horror of which Illium had become aware—that every so often, remnants of the black fog seeped out of the earth. As if it had been trapped in some pocket.
“None of it makes sense.” Vetra shoved both hands through her hair, then looked from Aodhan to Illium and back again. “I need you two to solve this. I must go with my archangel, but I won’t sleep easy until I know what could’ve possibly happened to so totally erase fifty living, breathing people.”
* * *
* * *
The vast majority of both immortals and mortals were in a deep sleep, and pack-up was complete but for odds and ends. It was one of the latter that currently held Aodhan’s interest: he was helping a human resident tie their belongings to the roof of their vehicle. The man had already done it, then woken up unable to sleep, decided it was badly arranged and restarted.
Aodhan understood needing to do something, anything to keep the nightmares at bay, so he’d said nothing about the unnecessary work, just stepped in to assist. He didn’t need to sleep tonight, and—with Illium—was part of the crew on night watch. He and the young mortal were almost done when Suyin’s voice entered his mind.
Aodhan, please find Illium, then meet me at the edge of the settlement—near the sleeping hazel tree.
I just saw him. We’ll be there soon.
The mortal’s belongings secured, he rose up into the sky in the direction he’d spotted Illium.
Illium turned at almost the same instant, as if he’d sensed Aodhan.
Their awareness of one another was part of what made them such great partners in battle. It was nothing mystical, rather the result of centuries of friendship and knowledge of each other.
Not mystical but . . . special.
Waving for the other man to wait, he headed over and told Illium of Suyin’s request.
Illium frowned even as they turned to fly toward the tree devoid of blooms or leaves, a bleak sight that would’ve blended in with the night sky if not for the portable “street light” that stood close to it. Those lights would usually be dotted heavily throughout the settlement, for Zhangjiajie was otherwise a cool darkness after nightfall.
Most, however, had already been packed in readiness for transport, only a final few left to act as beacons for anyone who woke before dawn. In a land known for a death fog that devoured in chilling silence, no one found comfort in the pitch dark of a moonless night.
“I wonder if it’s about Fei,” Illium said, the words traveling easily to Aodhan on the motionless air.
Aodhan didn’t have a chance to respond. They’d arrived at the meeting location. Rii, who’d been speaking to Suyin before they arrived, slipped away even as Aodhan and Illium folded back their wings. The mortal headman passed under the street light for a second, and Aodhan saw that his features were pinched, his lips pale.
Suyin allowed Rii to get out of hearing range before she said, “We have a problem.”
No warrior working at his archangel’s side ever wanted to hear such a statement. That went double-fold—triple-fold—in what had once been Lijuan’s land.
Illium groaned and slapped a hand over his face. “Go to China, they said. It’ll be a cakewalk, they said. Nothing much to do, they said.”
Suyin stared at Illium, while Aodhan shifted a minute fraction toward his friend, fighting the urge to wrap Illium protectively in his wings. Suyin didn’t know Illium’s humor, didn’t understand how he used it to try to lighten the dark, and despite her lack of “scariness,” she was an archangel, an archangel who was highly stressed . . . but then she burst into such laughter as Aodhan had never before heard from her.
It filled her eyes, broke the tension that locked her shoulders, lit her skin from within. At that instant, she was glorious, and he knew he’d paint her exactly so, with her body clad in warrior leathers, her wings held with strict control, her hands on her hips, and delight on her face.
“Would it not be splendid were it so?” she said to Illium, her lips curved and eyes dancing. “I dream of ruling a boring land in a boring time where the most exciting event will be the escape of someone’s prize bull, or perhaps a shocking fashion faux pas where two angels turn up to a court dinner in the same clothing. Would that not be a wonderful life?”
Illium’s grin was so real it stole Aodhan’s breath. “At least for a century or two.”
“Yes, but it appears we are not to have even a few days of peace.” Smile fading, she ran her hand through her hair. It rippled through her fingers like silken water. “The woman you found—Fei—no one in the entire settlement knows her or of her.
“General Arzaleya, who is in close contact with the scholars charged with keeping track of our population, confirmed the same just prior to your arrival. Fei did not exist before this night.”
“ ‘She’s here. She walks in death.’ ” Illium shifted to look over his shoulder on that eerie recitation, in the direction from which the stranger had come. “Guess there’s no question now. She must’ve come from Vetra’s troubling hamlet.”
“Just so,” Suyin said. “I would tell you to speak to her, but our senior healer, Fana, visited her earlier this day after Rii became concerned about her increasing lack of responsiveness. Fana was unable to get through to her. She has turned mute but not in the way of stubbornness, in the way of a being with a wounded mind.” Compassion in Suyin’s tone. “I’ll get word to you if she comes out of it once we are away from here.”
As an archangel, Suyin could’ve literally broken into the woman’s mind—but given Suyin’s own past, such an action was not one of which she was capable. It would damage her as badly as it would damage the mortal.
So it was that Aodhan made no effort to remind her of her ability. “It can’t be the reborn.” Their intelligence didn’t rise to the level where they could cover their tracks. “An infected angel as was discovered in Africa?” Only the very senior immortals knew of that abomination.
“Let us hope not.” Suyin rubbed at her eyes for a moment before she dropped her hand. “The one grace is that after tomorrow, there will be no prey here on which this threat—whatever form it now takes—can feed.
“Arzaleya has informed the staff who are to remain behind to stay inside unless you or Illium are nearby—the vast majority of their tasks lie within the stronghold so my order will not hamper them.” A faint glow against the darkness of the tree trunk, Suyin’s wings afire in a silent indication of her rage at all her aunt had done.
That it was viciously contained made it no less deadly. In truth, Aodhan worried at how Suyin stifled her anger. He knew it was hypocritical of him when he’d shut out the world for so long. But by that same token, he understood how much damage such a choice could do.
“Do you think you need more backup?” she asked Aodhan, none of that cold rage evident in her tone. “I may be able to spare you—”
Aodhan was already shaking his head. “No, Suyin, you can’t.
” They were working with razor-thin margins. “Illium and I can take care of ourselves. You need every warrior you have to make sure all the survivors make it to their new home.”
Illium gave a silent nod.
Not arguing, Suyin flared out her wings. But before she took off, her voice silvered into Aodhan’s mind. An angel who can bring laughter to the darkest time? Such a being is a gift, Aodhan. I see more and more why you have called him friend for these many centuries.
20
Yesterday
Sharine knew something was wrong with her. Her mind hadn’t been the same since . . . since . . . She let the memory float away, focused on trying to paste together the broken fragments of her thoughts.
“He doesn’t ask as much anymore,” she said, her eyes on the small blue-winged boy who was doing drills in the air with his class of fellow young angels. Learning to use their wings more precisely, learning to land with more control.
“His youth is a mercy,” said the archangel who stood by her side, his hair a familiar midnight hue and his eyes as blue as the heart of a sapphire she’d seen once.
Child of her closest friend in this entire world.
Her friend who had gone quite, quite mad.
A moment of clarity that whispered of her own madness, and then it was gone, slipping away like a wisp of mist from her grasp. “He learns new things, makes new friendships, doesn’t stand any longer at the edge of the Refuge waiting for . . .”
“That’s good.” Caliane’s son nodded at the children. “I see Aodhan beside him.”
“Always.” She smiled. “They are so different, but they are the best of friends.” Her smile faded as she experienced another moment of clarity. “My boy has always wanted to be a warrior. But I know nothing of this. Who will give him his first sword? Who will teach him those things that—”
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