by Nalini Singh
“Do you remember your first taste of mead, my son?”
Raphael found himself laughing, the memory unexpectedly bright. “A friend and I made off with a jug long ago, when we were boys in short pants,” he told Elena. “We were curious about this drink we weren’t allowed to have.”
“Nadiel and I found the boys fast asleep in another angel’s garden.” His mother gave him a sternly affectionate look, and for an instant, it stabbed him in the heart, the family they’d once been. “Angel-mead is not meant for little ones.”
Elena grinned. “Do you still see him? Your friend.”
“We have a glass together every decade or so.”
“He remains a rapscallion,” Caliane said as she took a seat. “He has rejoined my court, but half the time when I send him out, I’m simply waiting to hear what calamity he’s walked into now.”
Raphael chuckled, but all their smiles faded soon afterward.
An angel of old, Caliane waited to speak until after Raphael poured them all a goblet and they broke bread. “I am sure your black-winged shadow will have already told you of the refugees who have landed on my shores.”
“Jason says they are well-behaved and go to great pains to keep their heads down.”
“It’s why I permitted them to stay when the exodus first began. That, and because none held high positions in Lijuan’s court.” Caliane took a drink. “Matters took an interesting turn a month ago, however. A high-ranking courtier moved in under cover of night and made a foolish attempt to blend in.”
“A courtier who wasn’t senior enough for Lijuan to take with her to wherever she’s gone—or so senior that they were left behind as a spy?”
“You speak my questions.” At that moment, Caliane was very much the Archangel of Amanat and not his mother. “I invited this vampire to my residence in a city an hour north of here.” Cold, dark and deep in her voice as she added, “Amanat will never again open its doors to any of Lijuan’s people.”
“What did you learn?”
Elena held her silence while Raphael and Caliane spoke—Raphael’s mother was old and not always predictable, and Raphael would get information from her the quickest. And it wasn’t exactly a hardship to sit back under a glorious night sky with her archangel beside her and their trip to Lijuan’s poisonous territory a future problem.
“I have seen terror in many faces over time,” Caliane said, “and I have seen the slavish devotion evidenced by Lijuan’s courtiers. I have never, however, seen such an entwined mix of worshipful devotion and bone-chilling terror.”
She opened out her wings, then pulled them back in, the sound of feathers brushing against one another a whispering rush. Elena had retracted her own wings soon after entering Amanat—no point wasting energy right when they had a dangerous journey coming up.
“The courtier is no weakling and had often been in the presence of an archangel,” Caliane continued, “but she shook when she spoke, sweat rolling off her, her eyes unable to meet mine.”
Raphael’s wing brushed the back of Elena’s chair. “Afraid enough to leave China, yet enthralled with her mistress?”
“I believe she worships her idea of Lijuan while being terrified of the truth of her.” Caliane finished off her mead. “The courtier’s estate was in a rural region. Most of the people around her were poor farmers. She did not much notice when they began to go missing—especially as the vast majority were mortals.”
No huge surprise there. Even Elena’s archangel didn’t always see the value of mortal lives. He’d come a long way from when they’d first met, but from an immortal perspective, mortals were fireflies—pretty things that blazed bright for a heartbeat before disappearing forever.
“Then,” Caliane said, “members of her own household began to go missing. At first, she believed they’d run away, but when one of her most trusted staff members didn’t return from a walk, she decided to investigate.”
An angel winged his way high above, keeping watch over Amanat’s borders.
“She found ghost villages, their people gone in the midst of living their lives. Pots left on stoves that had burned out, washing partially hung, gardens half harvested with the harvest left to rot in the open air. A baby’s bottle filled and left standing to curdle, a bag of foodstuffs gone putrid on a kitchen counter.”
The chilling recitation raised the tiny hairs on the back of Elena’s neck.
“I will say this to her credit—she didn’t turn tail and run at the first village. She went to five villages one after the other. She found not a man, woman, or child in nearly all of them.”
Elena sat up straight, exchanged glances with Raphael. “Nearly all?”
“In one village, she discovered living people so emaciated it was as if they were made of dust. When she attempted to speak to them, they gave her blank looks and continued to shuffle about their business. The tasks they were doing appeared to be repetitive—familiar movements that didn’t need input from their minds. She says they achieved nothing, but continued to repeat the motions.”
The candlelight caressed Caliane’s face. “You have spoken to me of how Lijuan fed on her people during the last battle, how you found one of her half-absorbed angels in the aftermath. It appears she is now doing this from beyond Sleep.”
“This confirms she is not in true Sleep.” Raphael’s voice was grim. “She must’ve gone deep enough that her power is no longer detectable by the rest of the Cadre, but not so deep that it will be a long waking.”
“She’s glutting herself,” Elena said. “Our worst-case scenario.” So many vanished people, all absorbed into her flesh. What would that make her when she rose?
“The unfinished ones may be from a day when she fed so much she could no longer finish them off,” Raphael said.
Elena’s fingers grew bone white around the stem of her goblet. “It could’ve been at the other end, Archangel. Early tests to work out how she could absorb and hoard power long-term.”
Two pairs of eyes as dazzling as crushed sapphires crashed into hers.
“If you are right, hbeebti, the war that is coming will be for far more than territory.”
“An archangel who can hoard lifeforce stolen from others . . .” Caliane’s jaw worked. “She will be an unstoppable, rapacious power that consumes the world.”
The dark echo of Cassandra’s voice in Elena’s head, ancient beyond compare.
Goddess of Nightmare.
Wraith without a shadow.
Rising into her Reign of Death.
28
Elena and Raphael left for China in the pitch-dark hours before daybreak.
The two of them caught the jet to the border of Lijuan’s territory, then dropped out of the specially designed hatch. Raphael went first, so he could catch her if her wings didn’t emerge, the glittering white-gold of his feathers brilliant in the dawn sunlight. The fire had begun to calm down, his wings mostly solid until he wanted them to be otherwise.
The frigid air rushed past her face as she dropped, the sensation of freefall exhilarating until she was brought up short by the lightning storm of her wings. Folding them back, she dropped even farther, Raphael by her side.
Dougal needed to maneuver the jet for his return flight to Japan without worrying about catching them in his drag, and they had to be able to see the details in the landscape.
At first glance, all appeared as it should be: lush green fields, small homes with smoke puffing out the chimneys, angels in the sky. Every single one of those angels acknowledged Raphael when they spotted him. The squadrons that currently patrolled China had been created out of soldiers taken from the armies of all of the Cadre. Including from the two previous Archangels of China.
The vast majority of Favashi’s people had chosen to stay when given the option to stay or go. They were determined to husband the territory for their liege. Lijuan’s people
had joined the squadrons for much the same reason. Had to be some tension there, but this was as much their home as it was for Favashi’s people. It helped that they were all ordinary angels. Lijuan had taken her deadly generals and commanders with her.
Population density increased the farther they flew inward. Small villages turned into towns turned into cities. Raphael, I think I should land. Her body was starting to protest the long stretch in the air without a break, but one thing had become clear today: her endurance had increased from pre-chrysalis levels, as had her speed.
On the hill in the distance. It is far from any of the houses. Remember—any sign of illness, and you rise.
Elena made the landing without problem, then refueled with energy drinks and snacks she carried in the pack strapped to her back. It was designed to fit like a normal angel’s pack, flush against her spine. Otherwise her wings would’ve burned right through it, destroying her supplies in the process.
Raphael stayed close by, circling the town at the foot of the hill; Elena could see people scurrying about like ants. That type of scuttling fear? It came from the knowledge an archangel had his eyes on them—which was the whole point of the archangelic patrols: to remind mortals and vampires that the Cadre of Ten had the country in its sights.
The sky crackled with golden lightning that had all movement in the village coming to a quivering standstill.
Putting her hands on her hips, she looked up. Showing off?
A single demonstration can forestall catastrophic bloodshed.
Rested, she pulled her backpack on, then took off with startling ease. As if the more she used these wings, the stronger they got. Weird when there were no muscles involved, but she wasn’t about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.
I have a theory about the Cascade, she said an hour later, as they crossed a largely uninhabited expanse of rock and shale that was eerily beautiful in its starkness.
I am listening.
Sometimes, you sound so much like an archangel. She had to force the lightness, because just then he hadn’t been playing. The cold and remote edge had been real, his new power pushing constantly to erase the humanity inside him.
It may surprise you to learn that I am, in fact, an archangel.
Elena’s laugh held as much relief as amusement, because that had been her archangel.
At times, he said before she could respond, I feel the cells of your heart inside me. Small pieces of mortality that are so weak, so vulnerable, that they should be eaten up by my immortal blood and yet they endure.
I feel you in me, too. Energy shattered her skin less and less now, but it was there in the background, a constant hum of power. That power tasted of Raphael and it had the Cascade cold to it, but though she could access enough of it to heal, fly, it couldn’t seem to find a clawhold in her, designed as it was for the body of an archangel.
She rode an air current over a field left fallow for the season, the moonscape of rocks now behind them. Raphael swept down beside her and they skimmed the rooftops of a small hamlet where nothing moved. I’m getting creeped out, Archangel.
They are all out in the fields. Look.
A line of hats, bodies bent industriously over a low-height crop. The wind carried across faint sounds of laughter and conversation. Phew.
Tell me your theory of the Cascade.
We decided it isn’t sentient and I haven’t changed my mind on that, but what if it’s driven by the thoughts of sentient beings?
Raphael angled to catch a draft, creating a slipstream for her to ride. She did so until it whispered out, then rejoined him at his side. Who could have such powerful thoughts?
I know it’s an angelic ghost story, but what about those Ancestors said to Sleep below the Refuge? Immortals so old they were beyond time, immortals who had slept through the rise and fall of civilizations, through the birth of mortals and the creation of vampires. Elena had even heard it whispered that they were a different subspecies, an earlier iteration of angelkind. It could be a reset of sorts.
If so, they do it in Sleep so deep they are invisible to our senses. The sun glittered off Raphael’s wings as he swept right. The idea of a reset . . . We are currently in a time of great turbulence. Already, we’re down to only nine in the Cadre. If it is a reset, to what purpose?
I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Elena dug into her jacket pocket for a couple of plain brown hair clips; her damn short hair kept getting into her eyes. She should’ve listened to Ransom and worn a headband but ugh, they made her think of the torture of junior high.
The sea washed into her mind again as she clipped back the worst offenders. There is another option.
Gee, you’re not sounding scary at all right now.
What if the Ancestors are real and this Cascade is so violent because they are waking?
Elena’s throat dried up. That wouldn’t be good would it?
They are said to be so powerful they built our world. They could as easily destroy it.
Nice cheery ghost story. Thanks Mr. Guild Hunter.
Raphael laughed and they flew on, taking in everything around them and resting when Elena needed it. This was only the first of multiple flights they’d be doing across the country. At no point, however, would they be staying in China. The jet would drop them off at different points through the country. It would then return to pick them up in the air.
If necessary, the two of them would stay nights in the territories that bordered China, those archangels having agreed to the arrangement, but actually being resident in China, even with wildfire rampant in Raphael, was a risk too far.
It was as they were reaching the far point of the day’s quadrant that they overflew a village of silence and stillness. No people in the fields. No dogs excitedly playing with children in the streets. No smoke rising from hearths even though with the sun setting in a blaze of soft reds and lush pinks, the world had become noticeably colder.
Jason marked this ghost village in his reconnaissance map. It was one of the first he discovered. Raphael’s voice was the sea on a bitingly cold day, shards of ice forming on the surface.
She embraced the sensation, accepting who he was and who he was becoming. I want to land, look around. When his expression turned to granite, she said, I’ve already done it multiple times with no ill-effects.
None of those times were in a village devoid of life. Lijuan’s poison may be soaked into every inch of dirt, every square meter of every home. Raphael continued to circle the eerily silent village after making that point.
But Elena wasn’t done. I think there are things going on below that one of us needs to see. Jason’s last surveillance flight over this area was probably a while ago. The spymaster had spies all across China, but they couldn’t see everything.
If we land, we do it together.
Elena’s abdomen clenched. The poison is aimed at archangels, she reminded him, desperate to keep him off the land that had infected one archangel already; Raphael had given her all the dreadful details of how the contagion had turned Favashi into an adjunct of Lijuan. I have strange DNA that—
No, Elena. No give in his tone. We cannot allow Lijuan to dictate to us from beyond Sleep. And if I am vulnerable to her, I must discover it now, before she rises in battle.
Shit. She couldn’t exactly argue with that—because if Lijuan had become immune to wildfire, the entire world was fucking screwed. Let’s do it.
Their boots hit the earth moments later. Dust swirled up around them as Raphael folded back his wings. Elena retracted hers, and the two of them began to walk through the village accompanied by the sound of nothing. No life. Not even a squawking chicken or irritated cricket.
Spotting an open door, Elena knocked. “Hello? I don’t mean you any harm,” she called out in the very basic Mandarin Chinese she’d learned in the weeks before their departure. Mostly greetin
gs and phrases like this one that she’d thought might be needed.
But her nose told her that attempting communication was a vain effort: abandonment had a dull, musty odor it was impossible to mistake. The taste of it coated the back of her throat as thickly as the dust that caked everything in sight.
She walked all the way inside.
Charred pot on the stove. Looks like it was left on until the element burned out.
The table is set in this home, Raphael replied from another part of the street. The food on the plates has petrified under mold.
The two of them checked multiple buildings, even a barn, and a garage where a car sat up on blocks with its bonnet raised, but aside from the unnerving lack of people and animals, there was nothing unusual to see. No mummified bodies, no indications of burials. It was as if the entire village had simply vanished in a single heartbeat.
Taking off in pensive quiet, their boot prints immortalized in the dust until the next wind, they turned to the right. Their flight path would take them over new territory before they met up with the jet. Below them passed more green fields and rural villages. The light was fading but hadn’t yet affected visibility. Which was why unusual motion below caught Elena’s eye.
There’s something odd about those villagers. She couldn’t quite make out the details from their current altitude, so she dropped lower. They’re all moving like old people. No village this big was occupied only by the elderly.
She descended farther . . . and horror curdled her stomach. Shrunken and emaciated faces. Bodies of bone in a skin bag. Shuffling movements, limbs being dragged.
We land. Raphael went down first, Elena right after him.
The shuffling villagers didn’t react at all.
Everyone who wasn’t an archangel reacted to Raphael.