by Nalini Singh
Page 3
Hanging up without further words, confident Sara would understand, Elena ran across a lawn scattered with bloodied birds, their eyes filmed over with the oblivion of death. However, the tiny corpses were far enough apart that it was clear both the house and the grounds were under the very edge of the affected zone. Fear a metallic taste on her tongue, she hoped the deaths had been caused by the impact, and not by the reason for the fall, because, unlike the birds, an angel could survive countless broken bones.
“I have him!” she called out to Raphael as he came in, an angel in his arms.
“He’s not breathing, his back is broken, and his heart has stopped. ” Putting the lithely muscled angel on the clifftop, Raphael swept off, but his mind remained connected to her own. Tell Montgomery to take medical measures—the male is too young to survive otherwise.
I will. Hauling one of the angel’s thankfully unbroken arms over her shoulders—ignoring the conventional teachings about broken backs because this wasn’t a mortal—she gritted her teeth and got to her feet. The victim’s shattered body was soaked from his fall, his wings dead weight. It was as well that as a born hunter, she’d always been stronger than most humans. Her growing immortality had only cemented that strength.
Still, she was glad to see Montgomery race out to take the angel’s weight on the other side, neither one of them flinching as two birds hit their backs hard enough to bruise. “Medical measures,” she managed to get out as they traversed the distance to the house as fast as possible; she hadn’t known until now that there were any medical measures—at least of the ordinary kind—that could be applied to angels.
More of the household staff, and a number of unaffected angels from other parts of the Enclave, ran or flew past them as they took the injured angel in through doors that led directly into the central core. The space that a couple of minutes earlier had been all shining wooden floors, an elegant statuette set against the wall, was now a temporary hospital.
A young vampire Montgomery had taken on as his apprentice was throwing down large futons that must’ve come out of storage, and a slender angel—Sivya—who was normally in charge of the kitchens, was snapping open a large black leather bag that looked like an old-fashioned medical kit.
As soon as they laid the angel on a futon, Sivya stabbed a large-bore needle directly into his heart and depressed the plunger. Elena had a thousand questions, but now wasn’t the time to ask them, Montgomery beside her as they raced back out. When she saw wings of silver-blue rising into the air after dropping off a victim, she felt an intense sense of relief . . . mingled with horror as she realized exactly how many winged bodies floated in the murky waters of the Hudson.
Another bird hit her as they ran, the beak carving a line down her face, but she shook it off and kept going. On their second trip inside, she heard a cough, saw the first angel they’d rescued retching on his side. His left wing and legs were mangled—but at least he was alive.
Leaving their current charge in Sivya’s hands, she ran back out with Montgomery at her side. It felt like an eternity, but she would later find out the actual hell of what came to be known as the Falling lasted five short minutes. Then the birds stopped dropping from the skies . . . and so did the angels.
• • •
Four hours later and they finally had some real numbers. Eight hundred and eighty-seven angels had gone down over the city in that horrific period no one would ever forget. Eight hundred and two of the fallen had been part of the two-thousand-strong defensive force stationed at the Tower, the remaining eighty-five composed of nonwarrior angels, visitors to the city, and two couriers who’d had the bad luck to come in just as things went horribly wrong.
“All of the injured,” Aodhan told Raphael, as the three of them stood on the railingless balcony outside Raphael’s Tower office, the sky above painted in the fiery palette of an agonizingly stunning sunset, “have been retrieved. ”
Raphael, his wings and clothes streaked with blood, glanced at the angel who was made of fractured pieces of light. Each strand of Aodhan’s hair appeared coated with crushed diamonds, his wings so brilliant as to hurt mortal eyes under sunlight, his irises shattered outward from the pupil in splinters of crystalline blue and green.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes. I’ve checked the fallen against the master list we keep of all angels stationed at the Tower or otherwise resident in the area. ” Aodhan resettled his wings, light sparking off the faceted filaments of his feathers. “Illium has accounted for all visitors—and we’ve had no reports from the Guild’s network of informants about unrecovered angels. ”
“How many did we lose?” Elena didn’t want to ask the question; her hands fisted in rejection. Angels might be immortal in the eyes of humans, but they could be killed . . . the younger they were, the easier they died. A destroyed heart, a broken spine paired with significant internal injuries, decapitation: none of that would kill Raphael, but inflict the same physical insult on a newly adult angel and the outcome would be lethal.
Raphael’s face was stripped of all emotion as he waited for Aodhan’s response.
“Five,” the angel answered. “It was the secondary trauma that caused the deaths, not the inciting incident. ”
“Tell me,” Raphael ordered.
Aodhan’s voice was quiet, his words violent. “An impalement on a spire where the heart and spine were both destroyed almost simultaneously—”
“Who?”
“Stavre. He was on his first placement. A bare hundred and fifty. ”
Jaw clenched against the injustice of it, Elena made herself listen as Aodhan completed the recitation, his tone without emotion, but she knew the words he spoke must cut like razors.
First, he named the fallen, then said, “Two died as a result of decapitation combined with major heart damage when they fell into traffic in front of vehicles that couldn’t stop in time; another was decapitated after she hit the sharp corner of a building, her body breaking into multiple pieces on impact with the street; and we lost the last when he fell into a rooftop exhaust system. ” A pause. “The humans did all they could, but the velocity of his fall into the blades meant there was no hope of survival. His body was sliced into shreds. ”
Five out of the nearly three thousand angels in and around the city at any one time. It didn’t sound so bad . . . until you realized that angels didn’t reproduce as humans did. Only a single, cherished child might be born in the space of a decade. A century might go by without any new births. The loss of five angels in the prime of their lives was an unspeakable tragedy.
“They must have an escort home. ” At that moment, Raphael was very much the Archangel of New York, a leader icily furious at the loss of his people. “Contact Nimra,” he said, naming an angel Elena knew to be a power within the territory. “She will understand what must be done. ”
And her presence, Elena realized, would be a sign of respect and honor from an archangel to his fallen soldiers.
“Sire. ” Aodhan inclined his head, the rain clouds that had begun to creep across the sunset doing nothing to dull the glittering shine of his hair.
“The injured?” Raphael asked.
“We’re moving them all to dedicated floors inside the Tower. The transfer will be complete by midnight. ”
Raphael, his wings glowing in a silent testament to his rage, continued to stare at a city that had gone eerily silent. No horns blew, no brakes screeched, no one fought, the events of this day so nightmarish as to erase the petty problems of life.
“Status?” he asked after several minutes.
“Three hundred and fourteen required emergency medical intervention as a result of life-threatening injuries,” Aodhan answered, “and will be down for months. The rest have broken bones, and most will need at least four weeks to recover. ”
Despite explanations, Elena didn’t quite understand the drug used today, except that
the closest human analog was epinephrine, though the two weren’t identical. According to Montgomery, the drug was a last-ditch option, because while it could kick-start the self-healing process in a badly injured angel—when that angel’s body might otherwise simply shut down—it had one very bad side effect: it extended the normal recovery time by months.
After seeing the stuff revive an angel who’d been all but decapitated, his head attached to his body by the gleaming wetness of his spinal column alone, and his lower body torn off to leave him a bloody stump, Elena didn’t have any argument with the drug.
“The Tower-based healers were able to speak to a number of the injured who regained consciousness,” Aodhan added, the world turning to twilight as the clouds succeeded in hiding the last rays of the sun. “They all report a sudden sense of dizziness, followed by unconsciousness before they could land. ”
Glancing at Aodhan when Raphael didn’t respond, Elena spoke with her eyes. Unlike with Illium, her relationship with this member of Raphael’s Seven was new yet, but he was one of the most empathic angels she’d ever met. Now, he gave a small nod and disappeared inside the Tower.
“Are you subverting another one of my men, Elena?” Raphael said into the quiet.
She came to stand beside him, their wings touching. An instant later, the rain clouds released their store of water in an unexpected deluge. It would, Elena thought, wash away the blood on the streets and the buildings, but the trauma of this day would never be erased. “I think nothing on this earth is capable of subverting your men. ” The Seven were as loyal to Raphael as hunters were to the Guild.
“But,” she said, blinking the rain from her eyes as Raphael’s wing rose over her in a protective curve, “I do have certain rights as your consort, including the right to stand with you against this thing, whatever it is. ”
His arm sliding around her waist, Raphael brought her against his body, the midnight strands of his hair even darker with the rain.
“I’m sorry, Raphael,” she whispered, spreading the fingers of one hand over his heart, needing to feel the life of him as a ward against the awfulness of what had taken place. “I know an archangel can’t be seen to grieve, but I know you grieve for the people you lost. ” Her own throat was thick, her eyes burning.