Ashra walked out of the bedroom, her diaphanous gown pearlescent white. Her silver hair tumbled in lush waves down her back. If not for her large black wings, she might have looked like an angel. “Why did the city turn around?”
She would have known, of course. Ashra, for all that she favored frocks over armor, was shrewd and attentive. She was also, when the mood suited her, a vicious and capable warrior.
“Siri went to visit Rafael. She hasn’t returned, but there are twenty-five daevas pursuing us. Jaden’s routing the city back to Rafael’s caverns in case Siri needs us there. The fight’s inevitable.”
Ashra nodded. “Fine.”
“Will you be wearing something more…suitable?”
Ashra arched an eyebrow. “Do I need to?” Her wings flared to their full ten-foot span. The gold-gilded horns at each juncture of her wing bones glittered beneath the lights. With a slow slither, her talons extended.
Tera shrugged a shoulder. “It’d be a shame to get your dress dirty.”
“The least of my problems,” Ashra said. She straightened as if from a subtle sigh. “Jaden and I will keep the daevas occupied. I want you to find Siri and bring her home safely.”
From Ashra, that simple order was tantamount to a panic attack. Who knew that Ashra, the aloof queen of the icrathari, was capable of such feeling for anyone other than Rohkeus, and now Jaden?
Tera nodded. A ghost of a smile flicked over her face. It appeared that even the icrathari were capable of change. “I’ll find Siri.” And pity any fool who got in her way.
With her fangs, Siri tore a gash in her wrist. Her blood spilled out. She pressed her bleeding wrist to Rafael’s lips. “Here, drink.”
His breath was like the barely perceptible flutter of butterfly wings against her skin. The suction was weak, scarcely more than the lapping of his tongue against the endless flow of her blood.
She stared at the vicious wounds through his shoulders. Heal. Please, heal.
For a moment, nothing happened, and then golden blood—her blood—oozed unprocessed and unabsorbed through his open wounds. He was not healing; he could not heal.
And her blood, still tainted with aconite, could not heal him.
The air moved around her, as if ushered by thousands of wings. Siri’s head snapped up. Even Rafael, although scarcely alive, stirred. His eyes, unnaturally large in his gaunt, sunken face, opened. She pressed a finger to his lips, lowered him to the ground, and inched forward to peer out from behind the rock.
A dark storm cloud swept in from the mountains in the north.
Siri’s eyes narrowed. No, it couldn’t possibly be—
As it approached, the cloud shredded into tatters of black bat wings as hundreds of daevas landed in front of the immortali Erich Dale, who stood on the cliffs outside the caverns. The flutter of a thousand wings rumbled like thunder.
Siri’s breath caught. The icrathari would not be able to hold Aeternae Noctis against so many daevas.
Erich spoke in the guttural tones of the daevas. Siri strained to separate the sounds into words as she searched her memory for the human language that had been its source. Hints of Russian. Glimmers of German. As Erich spoke, she pieced together the words she recognized. “Domed city…approaches. Kill the queen… and her consort. Leave the warrior to me.”
The warrior. Tera.
Siri snorted under her breath. She will tear you apart.
The icrathari were, nevertheless, outnumbered. Ashra, Tera, and Jaden’s only chance at survival was to stay in the city, and they would only do that if they understood the enormity of the unwinnable battle ahead of them.
Siri had to draw the daevas out, make their massive numbers visible in a fly-by the city where the sensors would pick up on their presence.
And she still had no idea how to get Rafael back into the safety of the city.
She could not fly with him; his bulk, if not his weight, would slow her down.
“Go,” he whispered, the sound barely audible.
The breath she drew in shuddered through her body. She turned to face him. He was a wizened husk, little more than a skeleton, but those eyes, those beautiful hazel eyes, were still his own—wise beyond his years.
“I will always come back to you,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I know.” The corners of his mouth tugged, baring teeth in a ghastly smile. “Go.”
She turned and crawled behind the jagged line of rocks until she was several hundred feet away from Rafael, and then leapt up and soared into the sky.
Erich screamed a command. Hundreds of daevas took flight.
Her lead was small, but escape wasn’t part of her plan. She raced toward Aeternae Noctis. Please be watching, Tera. Jaden. Somebody.
They could not possibly have missed the shadow sweeping over the city as the horde of daevas streamed over the dome, blotting out the light of the moon. They could not possibly have missed the screams as the daevas skimming beneath Aeternae Noctis were scalded by gusts of superheated air gushing from the engines that kept the city aloft.
As the end of Aeternae Noctis came in sight, Siri twisted in mid-flight. Her wings slammed down, driving her vertically up. Beneath her, some daevas overshot the city before they turned to follow her. Siri raced back to Rafael and a fool’s chance of saving them both. She had left him once before; she would not do so again.
Rafael’s hands, little more than bones, made grasping the narrow test tube particularly difficult, but he managed to extract the vial of Megun’s blood from his pants pocket where it had lain through his months and years of torment.
Lucas’s words rang through his mind. The stronger the blood, the faster the healing.
Rafael maneuvered the stopper off the top of the vial and then tipped the narrow tube to his lips. Megun’s blood, as golden as Siri’s, spilled past his lips. Like nectar, it coated his throat and poured into his body. Done. The consequences, whatever they were, were his choice to bear. For Siri.
Rafael closed his eyes, and his hand fell limply to his side. The empty vial rolled from his hand and came to a stop with a faint tinkle of glass against rock.
Something from within wrenched at him with such force that his body convulsed. Blackness, pierced with psychedelic hues, rose up to consume him; madness assaulted his consciousness. God, no… It was happening again. He was transforming for the second time, and this time, Siri was not around to anchor him to sanity.
A scream ripped through the night, the cry of a wounded animal, an animal driven insane by pain. The sound rose high into the air. Somewhere, in that maddened cry, Siri recognized his voice.
“Rafael!” Siri dove toward Rafael’s hiding place, but Erich and a large daeva leapt out to block her path.
Erich shook his head. A sardonic smirk danced across his face. “You came back for him. This is the third time you’ve done so.”
She glared at him. “And I will keep coming back, again and again.”
The daeva growled a word that almost sounded like her name.
Siri stared at it. Something almost familiar in his face beckoned a memory. “Elken?”
It inclined its head. Like Megun, Elken—Elkser’s brother—had chosen not to follow Rohkeus into Aeternae Noctis. It was a decision Siri was certain the four icrathari-turned-daevas had come to regret.
Erich glanced past Siri as the daevas who had pursued her around Aeternae Noctis caught up with her. They hovered in the air, rendering escape impossible. “How loudly will you scream? How painfully would you have to die before Tera comes for you?”
Siri’s eyes narrowed. She would not have time to scream, not if she was too busy killing him.
Her hands tensed into talons, she leapt for Erich’s throat. With a casual, contemptuous blow, he slapped her attack aside and sent her tumbling to the ground. She shook her head sharply to bring her wavering world back into focus.
With a smirk on his face, Erich wrapped his hand around her throat and effortlessly lifted her off the ground. Her
toes kicked at the air as she tried to find purchase for her feet. She needed her balance, needed leverage, to fight him off.
Somewhere behind Erich, Rafael’s screams had subsided into moans, its mindless, repetitive timbre both haunting and frightening.
“Rafael…” She forced the words out past the suffocating grip locked around her throat. “I’m here…”
Elken moved to stand beside Erich. Out of the corner of her eye, Siri saw two radiant figures streak out of Aeternae Noctis. Ashra. Tera. They had come for her. She had failed—
A blur of motion leapt up from behind the rocks and latched on to Elken. A clawed fist punched through Elken’s stomach. His eyes wide, the daeva stared down at the hand emerging through his midsection. His eyes glazed, and he dropped to his knees. The skeletal creature that had attacked Elken yanked his head to the side, exposing his throat. Incisors gleamed white in the moonlight before they sank into Elken’s neck and ripped through skin and flesh.
Golden blood spurted.
The creature lapped up the blood, drinking with the desperate need of an animal driven to the brink of death by thirst.
Before Siri’s disbelieving eyes, Rafael’s body filled out, flesh and muscle rebuilding with unnatural haste. When Rafael raised his head, he was once again as he had been, physically restored to his perfected immortal state, except that his eyes were completely insane.
A cry of dismay rose among the ranks of the daevas. “Immortali!”
Rafael launched himself at the daevas, a whirlwind of death amid a chaotic flurry of black wings. For several moments, all Siri could see was a dark curtain as hundreds of daevas took to the sky. The torrent of wind created by the driving beat of massive wings churned the air into a tornado. By the time the flurry of panicked daevas cleared and the wind spluttered out, Rafael stood alone, unscathed, over a mound he built with the corpses of daevas.
His upper lip drew back, exposing incisors dripping with golden blood. His eyes filled with hate, he leapt through the air toward Siri and Erich. Erich dropped Siri and pushed her behind him as he turned to meet Rafael’s attack, but Rafael swiped him aside with seemingly no effort at all, and hurled him into a rock.
Before Siri could push to her feet, Rafael was on her. Talons and fangs tore into her, ripping through skin, slicing across tender veins and pulsing arteries.
Blood poured out of her as she reached for him. She touched his cheek, the movement slow and difficult as if her limbs were refusing her commands. “Rafael—” She stared into his eyes, distantly aware that the expression in them was changing, but too weak to ask, let alone, understand why.
Darkness flittered across her vision. Her heart stuttered as it struggled to pump blood that no longer flowed through her. Dying. I’m dying.
Chapter 18
Rafael’s vision was a haze of gold and black—light and darkness blending in a twisted circle of eternal damnation. The scent of blood, fragrant and intoxicating like jasmine flowers, filled his nostrils and infused his body.
More. He needed more.
He needed something, anything, to silence the shrill cry ricocheting in endless echoes through his mind. His panicked, anguished scream—his descent into madness—kept him there, the horror looping upon itself.
Must run. Must escape. Tear through anything. Destroy everything.
Must touch. Must feel. Break bones. Shred flesh.
Life flutters like a broken-winged sparrow.
Crush it. Crush it.
Rafael, a soft voice whispered through the cacophony of his insanity. It flittered on the edge of memory.
Crush it.
The rush of wings heralded a shout. “Rafael!” A voice, not the quiet and compelling one, rang through his head like the clang of gongs.
Stop it. Stop it. Silence it.
He dropped the broken body in his arms and spun around. Two silver-haired winged-creatures landed several feet away from him. A dark-haired man—no, not a man—an immortal predator, an elder vampire, stood beside them.
The immortali Rafael had flung aside pushed into a battle crouch. With a low hiss of pain and rage, Erich leapt at the winged creature who wore her hair in a braid. The twisting tangle of limbs from their battle kicked up a dust cloud. The commotion set up a howling echo in his skull, but it could not silence his own screams.
Shut up. Shut up.
Rafael lunged at the other winged creature, but the elder vampire intercepted his attack. Fangs bared, claws extended, they traded blow for blow. Rafael tore through flesh; blood the color of a sunset spilled onto the thirsty ground.
“Rafael, stop,” the elder vampire pleaded as he parried Rafael’s attack. “We’re friends! You know who we are. Stop.”
Friends?
Don’t know. Can’t think through the screams. Silence it.
Make it stop. Make it go away.
Kill it. Crush it.
Rafael caught the elder vampire’s head between his hands. His grip tightened, his claws digging into the vampire’s flesh. His muscles tensed in anticipation of the kill.
The rhythmic beat of large wings fanned a breeze across Siri’s face. Someone gathered her up. Ashra’s voice seemed to float across a vast space to her. “I’m taking you back to the city. Lucas will save you.”
Siri mustered the strength to shake her head. It was too late for her. Lucas could not save a body that could not heal, and Rafael had injured her too grievously. She could not live, but Rafael did not have to die. She forced the words out, the sound rasping through a torn throat. “Back. To Rafael.”
“No, I’ve got to—”
“Rafael. Go back for him.” I promised I would always come back to him.
The wind shifted as Ashra changed direction. Siri forced her eyes open. In the distance, Tera fought Erich, but Siri’s attention was drawn to the battle between Jaden and Rafael. Muscles straining, they trampled over blood-soaked ground. Rafael’s injuries healed twice as fast as Jaden’s, and insanity provided Rafael with an edge that even Jaden’s training as a warrior could not overcome.
Rafael seized Jaden’s head between his hands. A sharp twist would snap Jaden’s neck.
Tera lunged away from Erich and raced toward Rafael and Jaden.
With a single glance, Siri gauged the distance. Tera could not reach Rafael in time to stop him from murdering Jaden.
Only she could stop him. Siri reached out a trembling hand and choked out his name. “Rafael.”
Rafael. Her voice resonated with a quiet certainty, a sureness that braced him against his mental storms. Rafael.
His lips moved, shaping a silent word. “Siri.”
Fragments of a lovely face appeared on shards of broken glass. The shattered visage stared at him. Beautiful. Irreparable.
His hands jerked apart. Something dropped to the ground with a thud, but he hardly heard the sound. He collapsed to his knees and coiled over the ache that burned through him. The howl of anguish that rose up within him rang with her loss. Love. He had loved her. He had killed her.
Rafael, her voice called to him.
Not lost. Not dead. Not yet.
Focus.
In his mind, the shards of broken glass moved. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—an eye here, the mouth there—he reshaped the fragments. With each piece that moved into place, the flurry of his mental storm subsided, as if a wall were going up in his mind, keeping the madness at bay.
The final piece rotated and shifted into place. The face stared at him through shards of perfectly placed glass fragments. Her face. Her violet eyes. Her half-smile. The solemn expression that he now knew was love.
“Siri,” he whispered.
The image shimmered. When the light cleared, the cracks had vanished. The image fused into a single flawless whole.
Rafael’s eyes opened, and he looked out upon the world, his vision no longer obscured by a haze of madness.
Ashra stood before him, her black wings partly unfurled. Beside her, Jaden crouched on one knee, breathin
g heavily as his injuries healed, but Ashra paid her lover no attention. The icrathari queen wore a stricken expression. The body she held so tenderly was limp and broken.
“Siri. No…” Rafael dragged himself to his feet and rushed forward. He reached out to touch Siri’s face, but stopped himself. He sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. His hands were stained with her blood.
“Take her,” Ashra said.
Rafael’s lips shaped an objection, but he instinctively moved to obey. He stared at Siri’s unmoving body in his arms. The gashes he had ripped in an immortal body unable to heal had bled her dry. No, oh, God, no. “Siri?” The plea tore out of him. He dropped to his knees and bowed over her body. He pressed his cheek to hers, and his shoulders shook so hard he almost missed the weak pulse that fluttered in her throat.
Almost…
The pain had passed, leaving her in languorous solitude. Sensations and sounds seemed far away. She closed her eyes, content to rest. Life, like silken threads, slipped through her fingers, but she lacked the strength to grasp on to them.
“Siri?” Rafael’s voice reached her from a great distance away.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Her world moved around her as he lifted her up and pressed her against him. Her lips rested in the hollow of his neck. From deep within his chest, his voice—the timbre rich with power—whispered, “Drink, my love. Drink and live.”
He drew a sharp fingernail across his jugular. Blood spilled from his body into her mouth. Instinct demanded that she drink. His heady taste of his blood spun her senses into confusion, but she knew enough to whimper from need and desperation when the wound in his throat closed. Again and again, he sliced into his neck, keeping the wound open for her as he traded his blood for hers.
Sensation returned gradually like dawn creeping across the night sky, and with it an awareness that she was no longer bleeding. She stared up at Rafael. His hazel eyes locked on her face, their gaze holding steady. A half-smile tugged across his face as his lips moved, shaping her name.
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