by Nalini Singh
No response.
“Raphael, do you speak the dialect in this region?”
Yes. I lived in China for two decades long ago. But the woman just stared blankly at him before shambling past. She was pushing a small cart, the type of thing on which you might carry vegetables or other goods you were taking to market.
Not far from them, a man banged a hammer up and down on a piece of wood, as if building something. Except he’d been banging at the same piece of wood since they’d landed. It was splintering, the nail long since embedded.
“It is as the courtier reported to my mother—they are going through motions so well learned that they are instinct.” An arctic gaze, the blue a cold chrome. “Nothing but the most primordial part of their minds remain.”
Elena struggled with the ethics of what she was about to say, finally made the choice. “Check, make sure.” She’d asked him to never again invade a mortal mind, but what if these people were trapped and screaming within? The only person who might be able to hear them was an archangel.
“There is nothing there,” Raphael said in a matter of seconds, his expression flat. “Broken sparks of memories that are already fading. No sense of personhood. No awareness of the outside world or of others as living creatures. Even a badly damaged mortal mind has a sense of personality; here, there is only a blank slate. I will see if any others are different.”
They weren’t. Vampire or human, all were empty.
Nausea twisted Elena’s intestines. “If the Cascade had won, I’d be like this, an empty shell with no soul.”
“Such an abomination would’ve never walked the world. I would’ve kept my promise.”
Yes, he would have. Even though it would’ve destroyed him. Elena went to brush her hand over his wing in a silent apology when it struck her. “Archangel.” Cold sweat along her spine, her leg muscles suddenly rigid. “Where are the children?”
Every single one of the shambling skeletons around them was an adult.
29
The young would’ve been too weak to survive such a catastrophic drain on their bodies,” Raphael said with chilling pragmatism. “A small mercy that they died before being turned into mindless shells who would have starved to death.”
Elena had dropped a knife into her palm soon after landing, now clenched her fingers around it. “She has to die, Raphael.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t care how we do it. If we have to cheat, lie, break every rule in the book, the fucking monster has to die.”
“Yes. Today, we must gather as much information as possible.”
Fading light or not, they checked the entire village.
Nothing but more shambling mummies, a number already on the verge of starvation. Crouching beside one particular male who sat propped up in a corner, his head tilted to the side, Elena used the flashlight on her phone to light him up. And stared. “He’s wearing the battle uniform of Lijuan’s army.” Gray with a single red stripe down the left side. “Did he come home to visit at the wrong time, get caught up in a feeding?”
Raphael hunkered down beside her, his wings brushing the dust and dirt on the floor. “Not just a soldier. A captain.” He pointed out the red dots on the collar that she’d missed because of how the uniform fabric had wrinkled over the male’s emaciated body.
“Her captains all disappeared with her.” No one higher-ranking than a lieutenant had been left behind.
Raphael stared at the dead man. “One mystery in all of this is how she’s able to feed across such a wide range. The ghost villages are dotted throughout China.”
A creeping chill on the back of Elena’s neck. “You think he’s a vector?” She held on to her knife like a security blanket, even knowing this threat was beyond knives, swords, guns.
“A willing sacrifice sent to anchor her link to this place. There is no precedent for such, but there is also no precedent for a consort who can store power for her archangel. The rules are changing.”
Neither of them spoke again until they were in the air, the empty husks of people who’d once had dreams, hopes, fears, disappearing into the dark of dusk turned to night. But they didn’t fly on, hovering close enough to each other to speak. A decision had to be made.
Raphael, however, didn’t immediately bring up the fate of the people below. He said, “Do you recall the thick coating of dust in the previous village? The one with no signs of life.”
“Hard to forget it.” It had been ash under their feet, their boot prints clear and deep from the air. “Why?”
“I do not think those villagers disappeared. I think they’re still there.”
Elena pushed a fisted hand against her stomach. “Oh hell.” Bile was a nasty taste in her throat. “We walked through people’s remains?”
Raphael’s voice stayed cold, but his tone gentled. “In New York, we witnessed how the husks collapsed into dust after Lijuan was done with them.”
A million burrowing insects under her skin, her entire body revolting against the malice of such erasure. “I hope you’re wrong. I hope all those people turn up even if it’s as reborn.” It’d be better than knowing that so many people had been consumed so totally that all that remained was dust. No bones, no headstones, no memorials.
“I would put the husks below out of their misery.” Lightning broke in Raphael’s eyes, his wings glowing with lethal intent. “Else, they will starve to death. It will be a protracted passing for all but especially for the vampires. Starvation takes much longer to kill one of the Made.”
Elena’s hand clenched again, her mind flashing to the bloody footprints she’d seen earlier in the night. They’d been left by a villager who’d shredded his feet at some point and now walked on bone. “Is there any chance they can be helped?”
“No, the spark that is life is gone from their shells. I know of no one who can bring it back.” He ran his hand over her hair. “I’ll tell one of the squadrons to keep watch, drop down food and blood.”
Elena struggled against the only two choices. Raphael had chosen life for her, but again she remembered the bloody footprints. “Do they feel pain? Will they feed even if offered food?”
“I do not know the answer to the second question, but I sensed no awareness of pain—it is why they repeat tasks even when those tasks cause blisters to form or bones to break.” A hand cupping her cheek, the pad of his thumb brushing over her cheekbone. “I will not fill your mind with the silent screams of the dead. We will give them a chance.”
Sobs broke through her.
She didn’t fight them. Someone had to cry for the lost.
Raphael wrapped her up in his arms, his heart beating in time with hers.
* * *
• • •
It wasn’t until they were in the jet that they noticed the dot of black on the back of Elena’s hand. Raphael immediately hauled his consort into the private room in the back so she could strip to the skin. She didn’t protest his resulting examination.
“Just that one,” he confirmed. “I’ll take care of it with a whisper of wildfire.”
“No, wait. It’s tiny yet. Give it until we get to Japan—I want to know if I have any immunity.” Elena pressed her unmarked hand over his heart, holding him back. “I have tendrils of wildfire inside me, too. If I get hit in battle, I have to know my tolerances.”
Raphael ground his teeth because she was right. “Only until the jet lands.”
“Agreed. Now get naked.” A hard swallow. “I need to be sure, too.”
It was his turn to cooperate.
“Not a single blemish.” A kiss pressed to his spine, her naked body flush against his as she held on with desperate strength.
He picked up her marked hand. “The dot is nearly too faint to see.” A “pop” of wildfire from beneath Elena’s skin even as he fought the urge to eliminate the threat. “It’s gone.”
Turning, he ki
ssed her until neither one of them had any breath left.
30
Their first flight the next day was over a large city. Things appear as they should.
I’m not getting any vibes, Elena said from where she flew to his left.
Lijuan, however, wasn’t the only threat. When he spotted a huddle of vampires in a small cobblestoned courtyard, their eyes glinting red and their fangs flashing as their bodies shivered, he knew he had only one option.
Because that shivering, it wasn’t cold.
It was a primitive and overpowering lust for blood.
The kiss began to disperse the instant they felt the shadow of his wings, running and crouching and scrambling in a way that confirmed their degeneration from thinking beings into creatures driven only by an insatiable need to feed. No finesse, no care. Jugulars torn out and bodies disemboweled.
He began to pick them off with surgical precision.
His consort took down three with her crossbow.
Her eyes were determined when they met his in the aftermath. “They were too far gone to help.” She nodded down at the skinny vampire she’d pinned to a wall with a crossbow bolt through his heart. “Even though he knew you were hunting, he couldn’t resist temptation. He was about an inch away from ripping out a passing girl’s stomach and burying his face in the cavity.”
She reloaded her crossbow with grim efficiency, her eyes hunter-focused. “I don’t know why they do that. So many of them go for the stomach.”
Raphael finished off the vampires she’d hit; a single touch of his power and their bodies burned in a flash that left only scorch marks on the wall and in the street. A silent warning to those who would follow the same violent path. “Yet you feel sadness at ending them.” He’d caught the regret beneath the focus. “What am I to do with you, hbeebti?”
“Too late to back off now, Archangel. You’re in this for eternity.” She strapped her crossbow back on. “I don’t actually feel sorry for them. Vampirism is a choice and it comes with consequences. It’s the entire messed-up situation. It’s getting to me.”
“At least our sojourn here is temporary.”
“Thank the fuck.”
They located three more nests of bloodlust-ridden vamps in short order, cleaned them out as quickly. “It’s like you can sense them,” Elena said after the final execution.
“My instincts tend to take me in the correct direction—it is a gift that comes with ascension.” He didn’t often have cause to use that ability—such vampires fell under Dmitri’s purview and he was efficient at organizing their capture and execution.
Their next stop was the city citadel. I expect no problems here. The city is under the stewardship of one of Favashi’s senior courtiers.
Actual working courtier, not a pretty ornament?
Exactly so.
The citadel lay behind a wall and was a palace of lush adornment and bronze-streaked fawn marble; Favashi had converted the structure into a barracks for her soldiers and the Cadre used it for their combined forces.
Every single vampire, angel, and mortal in the vicinity appeared to gasp when Raphael landed in the citadel courtyard, but he felt no concern. He and Elena had run a test at dawn to confirm his immunity to the poison that had taken Favashi; they’d landed in a ghost village and Raphael had deliberately cut himself so the ash could get in.
Wildfire had erupted at once around the wound. His body would not allow the infection to get in, and if Elena didn’t have enough wildfire to fight anything that managed to cling to her, he could give her what she needed.
Striding through the courtyard with his hunter by his side, he was met halfway by one of his own people, a senior angel Dmitri had seconded to China as part of Raphael’s contribution to the Cadre’s combined forces. “Sire.” Gadriel went down on one knee in front of Raphael, his head bowed. The sword on his back had a weathered and old hilt, but Raphael had no doubts the blade was razor-sharp.
“Gadriel,” he said. “Tell me what is happening here.”
The angel rose to his feet, and inclined his head at Elena before he spoke. His eyes were a haunting gray mixed with green, his height an inch below Elena’s, his skin pale with an edge of pink, and his body tautly muscled. “Riva has become erratic over the past week. He was doing an excellent job of managing the city before then.”
“You’ve sent through a report to Jason?”
Lines flared out from the corners of the angel’s eyes. “No, sire. I thought to give Riva a little leeway—he mourns Favashi’s disappearance yet. He was not simply a courtier but one of her closest lieutenants.”
“I would’ve made the same choice.” Raphael clasped Gadriel on the shoulder. “He is nine thousand years old and not apt to fall down in his duties. Still, these are strange times. Tell me of his actions just prior to the alteration in his behavior.”
“He rode out on his motorcycle to do a routine sweep of the city, but came back hours later than he’d indicated.” Gadriel’s wings were a deep brown with hints of bronze woven into the filaments and they glimmered under the late afternoon sunlight. “At the time, I thought nothing of it. All of us need time alone to shrug off the cobwebs. Especially here, with the constant screaming tension under the surface.”
The steel and wildfire of Elena in his mind. You think something got to him?
The dead captain in the ghost village preys upon me. We do not know how many operatives Lijuan has in the world and what she can do with them.
Aloud, he instructed Gadriel to lead them to Riva.
“Sire.”
Elena had met Gadriel once before—in the Refuge. Though he was named after a legendary angelic painter renowned for the sumptuous sensuality of his works, the gray-eyed angel with chestnut hair was a bit stuffy and set in his ways. More importantly, however, he was deeply loyal to Raphael. Now, she took in everything around them as he walked on ahead, his comment about the “constant screaming tension” resonating.
Lijuan might be gone, but the echo of her presence lingered in the air. It was stares on the back of Elena’s neck from people in the courtyard, dust in the air that tasted of distant death, electric sensations beneath her boots—as if tiny insects were attempting to penetrate the soles and enter her bloodstream.
Favashi, she thought, had come into a tough situation even before the infection.
Shadows passed overhead right before they left the courtyard and entered the citadel, a wing of angels coming in to land. It was cool and dark inside, the stone walls smoothed by time. Elena felt the age of the building in her bones and when she put her hand against the wall, history itself spoke to her.
Nothing in New York was this old, this woven in time.
Gadriel led them to stone stairs far narrower than in modern angelic buildings, but still with enough span to accommodate wings. All the spaces in the citadel, she came to see, were built for angels. But it wasn’t an angel who sat in the center of the large chamber into which Gadriel showed them.
The vampire, his scent cardamom crushed with ice and rippled with a thick treacly sweetness, sat with his head in his hands. His skin was ebony, his hair kinky curls darker than his skin. He wore battered leather pants, along with a black jacket and tee of faded brown, and when he lifted his head, his red-rimmed eyes proved to have irises of a stunning indigo.
Elena barely stopped herself from going for the long blade worn against her spine. Old, this one was old. Nine thousand years, Raphael had said, but this wasn’t just age. This was the kind of power Dmitri would hold in another millennia or two. As for those eyes, she’d bet her new set of throwing knives that they hadn’t begun that way. It was vampirism that had taken what might’ve been more ordinary blue or gray eyes and altered them to this startling and unearthly hue.
Why wasn’t he Favashi’s second?
Power alone does not a second make, but I think he was her
third.
“Archangel.” Riva rose to his feet in a clatter of limbs. His chair toppled behind him onto the thick Turkish rug.
Flushing, he bent to pick it up.
Gadriel whispered away at the same time.
“It has been an age, Riva.” Raphael held out his arm. “I think two hundred years at least.”
The vampire clasped his forearm, but the two didn’t embrace as Raphael would’ve done with Dmitri. “Not so very long when one has lived nine thousand years.” Riva’s voice was melodious and deep, but his fingers trembled before he broke contact.
“Tell me what has happened.” Cold and dark with power, Raphael’s words weren’t a request. “There is no use in lying. I can see it.”
Shuddering, the vampire seemed to pull himself together with a conscious effort of will. He wasn’t fully successful—his face quivered before he clenched his jaw, and though Elena couldn’t see his hands because he’d put his arms behind his back, she could tell from the strain in his muscles that he was gripping the wrist of one with vicious force.
“I lost time.” The column of his throat moved. “At least five hours. I have no memory of where I was or what I did during that time, but when I woke . . .” His voice broke.
“At this time,” Raphael said, “I am your liege. Speak.”
His entire body trembling, Riva began to shrug off his jacket.
Raphael, Elena murmured mind-to-mind. Should I step out? This wasn’t about humiliating the guy after all; no one this powerful would want to be seen as weak, much less by the consort to an archangel.
Raphael spoke directly to Riva. “My consort asks if you would prefer that she step out.”
The vampire’s eyes flared before he inclined his head in a deep bow. “No,” he said. “I thank you for your consideration, Consort, but I am too old to be shy in such matters.” Words spoken with a courtly grace and innate confidence that showed her a glimpse of who he was when not under such strain.