by Nalini Singh
“Of course I have,” he grumbled, but allowed her to put more food on his plate. “I’m an archangel.”
Sharine’s plate was more than full enough, but since Titus was over twice her size and was expending enormous amounts of energy on a daily basis, she dished him out more before taking her seat. They began to eat in silence, though she was aware of Titus sending her wary looks.
It pleased her.
No one was ever wary of the Hummingbird. She was meant to be lightness and gentleness and kindness and no threat at all. All that was part of her nature, it was true. But Sharine was part of the Hummingbird, too, and a long time ago, Sharine had been far more than an artist with her head in the clouds.
It had been so very long ago, eons before Titus had existed even as a mote in the universe, but the memories had begun to awaken with her return to the real world. She remembered things others had long forgotten or never known . . . except for Caliane.
“Do you remember Akhia-Solay?” Caliane had asked her in one of their final conversations before her friend left to fight Lijuan. “I wonder if he’ll wake this Cascade.”
Sharine hadn’t had any personal memories of the Sleeping Ancient then, the veil yet fading, but it had come to her as she flew across the African landscape, the long flight nudging loose memories of other such flights.
Once, after Raan and long, long before Aegaeon—so long that Akhia-Solay was a myth to even most angels—Sharine had flown with a general as his army’s battle historian, the artist who made frantic sketches to add to angelkind’s histories. She’d also—she glanced down at her hand, caught in the fragments of memory. At some point, she’d faced an enemy combatant . . . and she’d . . .
“You’re displeased with the meal?” Titus’s big voice snapped her back to the present, the past fading back where it belonged but for the echoes of knowledge it left behind.
“What?” Looking down at her plate, she saw that she’d stopped eating. “No, not at all. It’s all delicious. I must compliment your chef.”
“Cook,” Titus corrected. “He is adamant that he will quit on the spot if anyone dares call him a chef.”
“I’ll take care not to anger him.” She paid attention to what she was eating, savoring the tastes and textures and scents. Food was another thing she’d allowed to fade from her life in her time in the fog. She’d eaten, but had tasted none of it, her mind distanced.
Only after she’d cleared her plate did she look at Titus again. He was smiling at her. That smile was . . . devastating. No wonder many of her warriors sighed when talking about him. Though he seemed to take only women as lovers, that didn’t stop all and sundry from pining after him. Truly, the adulation went some way toward explaining his high opinion of himself.
“Here.” He held out a dish she’d particularly enjoyed.
She hadn’t realized he’d been paying close attention. “Thank you,” she said, a touch of heat under her skin. “I’m full for now.”
Putting down the dish, Titus leaned back in his chair and ran both hands over his head. He seemed about to say something, when a warrior with dust-covered wings that might’ve been white when clean dropped down outside the doors and yelled, “Sire! Massive reborn nest sighted just beyond the new barriers! They’re awake and climbing!”
Titus moved so fast she’d have thought it impossible for such a big man if she hadn’t seen it happen. He was outside and taking off before she’d even gotten out of her chair. Heart thunder, she raced after him to see multiple squadrons take to the sky, all of them arrowing southward. Heavy-duty vehicles painted in camouflage colors screeched out of the courtyard at the same time.
When a young and slender warrior dropped next to her, his skin ebony, his eyes a pale brown, his hair twined into falling locs decorated with wooden beads, and his wings a spread of black dusted with green, she said, “You’re not with the squadrons?”
“I’m to be your guide here, my Lady Hummingbird,” he said with a deep bow, and though he attempted to hide his misery, he was too young—barely beyond a hundred if she was any judge—to succeed. “I am Obren, the newest member of the sire’s forces.”
And so he’d been given the unenviable task of babysitting Sharine. “Call me Lady Sharine,” she said first of all; she’d prefer Sharine alone, but knew the child would expire on the spot should she suggest it.
He already appeared a touch green around the gills at having to say her actual name. “Lady Sharine,” he croaked out at last.
“Is there any danger in my flying behind the squadrons?” She had no wish to be a distraction, but while she was tired, she wasn’t so tired that she couldn’t spend some time in the air getting a firsthand look at what was occurring. She hadn’t flown all this way to sit back and do nothing, and the first thing she needed was information.
Only then could she know what she might do to assist.
The boy’s head jerked up, his mouth falling open before he snapped it shut. “My lady, the sire was very firm in his order that you’re to remain within the bounds of the citadel.”
Deciding she truly would kick Titus at the first opportunity, Sharine smiled . . . and was rather delighted to see Obren blink. It appeared the steel growing inside her had shown on her face. “Titus is not my sire,” she pointed out with conscious gentleness, for it wasn’t this youngling’s fault that his archangel was a numbskull. “You can come with me or I’m happy to go alone.” They both knew he’d never attempt to physically detain her.
Gulping, he shifted on his feet. “If—if you stay in the air at a height beyond the reach of the reborn, then I can’t see the risk.” Another swallow. “The creatures have torn angels apart when those angels have been wounded and landed into a nest. The new variant work in packs and swarm so fast that if an angel is alone when they fall . . .”
Sharine touched the boy’s shoulder, overcome by maternal affection. “I’ll be careful. I have no desire to either distract the fighters or suffer such torture at reborn hands.”
Face pinched, but clearly knowing he had no choice, the boy said, “I will lead you to the right location.”
“I’ll tell Titus this was my decision,” Sharine assured him.
A glum look. “Oh, the archangel won’t blame me. He thinks I’m an infant yet, still wobbly on my legs.”
Hiding her smile, she said, “Let us fly.”
They took off together, and Sharine saw at once that she didn’t need a guide. Dust flew up into the air some distance beyond the city limits as Titus’s forces engaged with the reborn. As she flew closer, she also understood why there was so much dust—large swaths of grasses, trees, and other plants had been destroyed by angelic fire.
Today, the winged fighters were mostly staying above, firing down at the reborn using inborn angelic power—or weapons that spouted fire. Ah, those were the very weapons she’d seen in the cities on her way here. The vampiric fighters hadn’t yet reached the site, but she glimpsed several pairs of angelic wings on the ground.
Including Titus’s honey-gold and cream.
Heart thundering, she didn’t understand why he’d land into danger until she saw him throw a bolt of energy into a hole in a small hillside—a bare bump in the landscape. The power exploded the hillside, throwing out stomach-churning pieces of reborn flesh along the way. That was when she realized the use of the word nest was deliberate and specific. These creatures were clumping together under the earth.
“Tunnels!” Obren shouted, pointing down at a ripple of power traveling back along the way Sharine had flown. As if through a burrow.
Roaring, Titus lifted fisted hands.
The ground bucked, then cracked, exposing a long hollow stuffed with reborn. Some were dead, but too many were yet alive, their eyes red and their claws ripping into each other as they scrambled to escape.
Blood cold, Sharine turned to Obren. “How far do these tunnels
go?”
Her young guide’s voice was shaky as he said, “This, we haven’t seen before, Lady Sharine. They make nests but they have never before created burrows. These could go underneath the barriers we’ve built to protect the cleared zones, all the way back into the city.”
Understanding his terror, Sharine thought quickly. “Titus and the squadrons are busy dealing with the reborn here.” This nest appeared to be massive. “Let us fly back toward the city and see if we can spot possible danger. We can also alert the vampiric teams as well as the guards left at the barriers.”
Obren fell in with her, a young soldier used to orders from a senior.
Sharine was no scout, but she had an artist’s eye and that eye caught on the slightly misaligned barrier to the northeast. Flying there on heavy wings, she met a nonplussed angelic warrior in the sky. “My lady,” the other woman began, “is there anything I—”
“The reborn are burrowing under the earth.” Sharine pointed down. “And this barrier is no longer flush to the ground.”
The warrior, to her credit, went on immediate alert. “I’ll have to request assistance and move the guard line back until it arrives.” Lines flaring out from her eyes, her lips pressed tight. “We have no one at the border who can bore into the earth with their power and I don’t think the weapons at hand will do so.”
Do you remember Akhia-Solay?
Memory whispered, Sharine’s fingers curling inward. Power, grown old and potent and stiff from disuse, heated in her veins. Her palm glowed champagne-pale.
“Tell your ground troops to move away from the barrier.”
Mouth falling open, the warrior angel stared at Sharine’s hand—then quickly snapped into action, yelling at her people to evacuate the danger zone. Sharine waited until they were just far enough, then released the power.
The resulting hole was only a fraction of the size of Titus’s but it was enough to reveal the tunnel beneath. The border guard and her people arrowed back at the reborn within, all of them shooting the weapons that spouted flame.
Sharine, meanwhile, stared at her hand.
Obren was doing the same. “I didn’t know you could do that.” It came out a whisper. “I was told the Hummingbird was an artist.”
“I’d forgotten,” she murmured, her mind using the unraveling skeins of memory to travel right back to the genesis of Sharine.
12
Eons Past
Papa! Papa! Look what I can do.” Light shot from Sharine’s small fingers to crack one of the stones that littered the wildflower-strewn mountainside. “See!”
Black eyebrows drawing together over his eyes, her father crouched down to touch the rock. He drew back his finger with a hiss, the pad of it red. Face falling, Sharine pressed her lips gently to it. “I kiss it better,” she said, having learned that from the mother of her friend who lived the next mountain over.
Her father didn’t smile, just took her hands in his and stared at her palms. But there was nothing there now, no hint of the pretty fire. “It’s inside me,” she told him, bouncing on her feet. “All fizzy and hot.”
Her father wasn’t like her friend’s father, who laughed and took her for rides on his back. Sharine’s father was old in a way that made her bones ache. She was too young to know how to put that into words, but she felt the weight of his age like a looming black cloud on the horizon. She knew he loved her—she felt that, too—but it wasn’t the same as how other fathers loved their children.
“We need to fly home to your mother,” he said in his deep voice, his eyes the same sunlight shade as her own but with streaks of brown.
Sharine wanted to play longer on this mountainside, with the sun shining so bright that the wildflowers appeared to glow, but she knew there was no point in arguing or dragging her feet. The last time she’d tried, her father had left her alone until she “came to her senses” and flew home. It might be fun to play alone here, but then she’d miss him and mama and go home and they’d be disappointed with her behavior.
Sighing, she flew up. She couldn’t fly as smooth or as straight as her papa, but she could stay in the air the whole way home now. Before, she’d used to fall, or have to rest. But her wings had become stronger over the past year, though she was still puffed, with her heart going boom-boom, when she landed in the stone courtyard of their home.
“Mama!” she cried as she ran inside, excited to share her new trick.
“Sharine, sweetheart, how often have I told you not to run?” Mama’s words were mild, the smile she sent Sharine’s way kind . . . and tired. Sharine’s mother was always tired. It was just the way she was—Sharine had no memory of a time when her mother wasn’t on the edge of exhaustion.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile and slowed down. “I showed Papa my fire. Can I have some food?”
Her mother’s sky-blue gaze went to her father, her golden hair rippling and the light purple of her wings restless, but they didn’t speak until after Sharine’d had her snack and was outside. But she was bad and she tiptoed back to near the window so she could listen. She knew she shouldn’t, that it was bad to listen in on other people, but no one ever had interesting conversations around her and she wasn’t a baby anymore.
“Her fire?” Mama murmured in her husky-soft voice.
“Yes.” Papa’s deeper tones. “She’s showing signs of an offensive ability. It may be that our daughter is destined to be a warrior.”
“I can’t believe it, not with how she loses herself in her art.” Sharine’s mother sounded as if she was smiling, and that was nice. “It’s apt to be a remnant from my mother. She served Qin until she decided to Sleep.”
“But so young?” Papa murmured, the sound of his wings moving as he opened and closed them familiar and comforting. “Offensive abilities don’t appear in children for a reason. She could hurt a friend or playmate without intent.”
A pause before her mother said, “Yes, you’re right in that. We shall have to teach her to never use her abilities. At least until she’s older.” Endless tiredness in every word. “I don’t know if I’ll make it, my love. I ached for a child when I was young and full of life, only for fate to bless me when I see nothing of interest in the world any longer but for you and our daughter.”
Sharine deliberately stepped away from the window, and walked over to her mother’s flower garden to begin pulling weeds. “They shouldn’t talk that way.” Eyes wet and hot, she ripped out a weed. “I hate it. I do.”
She was old enough to understand they were talking about Sleep. Not normal sleep. Sleep that went on for ages and ages and ages. It scared her. Angels weren’t like the mortal children she’d been told about but had never met—angels took a long time to grow up. What if Mama and Papa left her while she was still only half a grown-up? What would she do then? She’d be all alone.
Maybe if she listened and minded better, they’d stay longer.
“I won’t use the fire,” she promised the flowers in a wet, quavering whisper. “I’ll be good. I’ll be the best little girl.”
13
Titus was worried enough about where the burrows might lead that he left his weapons-master Orios in charge of the main section of the nest and flew back to expose other hidden routes. The first suspicious area, however, proved to have already been unearthed.
Fire boiled inside the tunnels, the reborn surely incinerated.
“Who did this?” he asked on a stab of joy, wondering if one of his older angels had come into a new power.
Sweat streaking her face from the heat of the flamethrower, Marifa turned to him and said, “The Hummingbird.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long second before the other angel said, “On my honor, sire. It was her. She looked as surprised as I felt, but she blew open the hole for us.”
Deciding that particular mystery could wait, Titus left the squadron captain to i
t and went in the opposite direction to where he could see wings of indigo light. It appeared the Cadre had sent him far more help than he’d believed. That, or a doppelganger had taken over the Hummingbird’s body.
It took hours for them to clear out the entire interconnected burrow, but the work wasn’t yet done. He and his people—and the powerful imposter with drooping wings who looked like the Hummingbird—had to go backward through every other cleared section to ensure they hadn’t missed a burrow that might spout reborn in a nightmare eruption.
It wasn’t as if he could simply crack open the earth—an entire city sat on that earth.
“We will have to be vigilant,” he said to his people as they gathered on the ramparts of the citadel, sweaty and dirty and with more than one streak of putrid reborn flesh or blood on their clothing and bodies.
He’d been lucky today, hadn’t lost any of them, mortal, vampire, or angel, to the vicious creatures. “Alert the populace to the danger and tell them to hail a warrior should they hear anything beneath their homes—reassure them we won’t be angry at false alarms, no matter how many.”
“We could position ground-sensors around the citadel and the city,” said a two-hundred-year old vampire who had an intense interest in the technologies of this time.
“Go, speak to Tzadiq, get it under way.”
The Hummingbird had returned to the citadel with them, but she stayed on the edge of the group and remained silent until it had disbanded. Only then did she approach Titus, her wings having dropped until the tips dragged on the ground.
“I haven’t yet spoken to you of all I saw on my journey.” No tiredness in her voice, but he saw it in those wings and in the strain on her face. “Who should I consult regarding the settlements that desperately need assistance?”
“Tzadiq will take care of it,” Titus said, not happy to know so many people were suffering. “But right now, I wish to talk about your power.”