Archangel's War

by Nalini Singh

  Elena snorted out a laugh. “I like this guy.” She had to laugh or her heart might explode—she couldn’t believe Raphael had done that. Seeing the visuals and the size of the jet above his head, viewing the sheer power involved in the landing . . . Her pulse was thunder.

  “You would,” Dmitri muttered, but his words didn’t hold their usual mocking bite. He was too focused on the second recording that had begun to play—this one from the surveillance cameras at the airport. Vivek had stitched together the footage to provide a continuous narrative.

  The tornados had sprung up without warning, huge swirls of wind and dirt and flying debris that had become shrapnel. Raphael’s wounds had already healed, but Elena was going to be seeing his blood smeared on his skin for a while to come. Andreja at the air traffic control tower had narrowly avoided having her head sliced off when part of a broken-off wing smashed through the glass of her enclosure.

  Turned out that had occurred close to the start of things; she’d then continued to calmly communicate with Raphael.

  “Why is Andreja in that control room?” Elena said to Dmitri. “I’d figure a woman that unflappable would be in the Tower.”

  “You don’t know Andreja.” Dmitri folded his arms. “She’s seven thousand years old and has decided she’s on vacation this century. And she likes planes.”

  Elena thought it over and realized that when you’d lived so long, taking a century off to relax was no biggie. “Lucky for us she decided to vacation as an air traffic controller.”

  “Regardless, inform her that all vacation time is cancelled until the Cascade is past.” Raphael’s eyes were on the screen. “There is no sense to the twisters. It appears to be chance your plane was coming in to land when they appeared.”

  “Seems to line up with reports coming in from other territories,” Dmitri said. “Devastating weather events all over the place. Flash flooding in Chile. Major landslide in Turkey. Whirlpool in a lake in Switzerland—casualties are going to be significant there. Thing swallowed up multiple pleasure craft.”

  Elena rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “The pace of chaos, it’s speeding up.” Like a concerto rising to an inevitable crescendo: war.

  * * *

  • • •

  When she and Raphael made it up to their suite at last, it was to find the Primary waiting for them on the night-draped balcony. A patient gargoyle crouched on the very edge, his hair dripping. Sliding open the doorway and spilling light onto the balcony, Elena said, “You know you’re welcome to wait inside.”

  The Primary rose from his crouch.

  Elena went motionless when he stepped into the light. “Your second becoming,” she whispered, recalling words the Primary had spoken to her what felt like a lifetime ago.

  The Primary’s eyes remained that pale, pale color with a ring of vivid blue around the irises that echoed the color of Raphael’s eyes, but his skin had gained a hue that wasn’t gray or pale. It was very much alive. And his hair, it was a vivid black, the shade of midnight skies. The shade of Raphael’s hair.

  “It happened today.” The Primary lifted up his hand to stare at the back of it. “I have not been in full color for . . .” A tilt of his head. “For endless eons. Since the last aeclari.”

  “Are your brethren the same?” If her archangel was disturbed by the strange echo of his coloring, he didn’t show it.

  The Primary took time to answer. “They are themselves. Only the Primary is of the aeclari.” His dark pupils suddenly bled outward in waves of silver. Until the silver met the blue and the two merged, with the blue flowing into the silver at the edges. The pupils re-emerged from the silver-blue sea.

  Elena put her hands on her hips. Eerie but pretty.

  Look at his wings.

  Elena hadn’t paid much attention to the Primary’s bat-like wings—the wings of the Legion never seemed to change. Apparently, that rule was now over and done with, because the Primary’s formerly gray wings boasted a rim of white-gold that brushed inward into a vivid purple before fading into gray.

  “You have pieces of both of us,” Raphael said.

  “We glimpsed the mirror and the mirror changed us.” The Primary went down on one knee. “I come to offer the sire the power that is his. Today, you took only a percentage and returned the overflow to us.”

  “You told us once that if Raphael took the power, you’d have the choice to stay in the world as separate beings, or return to the deep,” Elena said. “Is that still true?”

  A small hesitation. “Things have altered. We feel the dark energies rising and rising. We wish to give you not just the power we hold for you, but the power that makes us.”

  Elena’s heart iced.

  Raphael’s wings brushed hers as he spread them out, her lightning dancing over his feathers before returning to her. “What will that mean for you?”

  “We do not know. We may die,” the Primary said with no indication of fear or anguish. “We may return to the deep to begin again.”

  The idea of a city without the Legion’s crouching presence, their green home abandoned and empty, was anathema to Elena. Her heart rebelled so hard against the idea of it that she couldn’t speak.

  “At this moment, I do not need any of the power,” Raphael said. “I would rather have my Legion present and at full strength. A battle is brewing and I will need as many experienced fighters as I can gather.”

  The Primary rose to his feet. “The last aeclari were not like you.” He seemed to be struggling to untangle memories so old they were beyond time. “You are . . . new. You . . . break patterns.”

  “Good. It’s probably why I’m not a chrysalis battery and Raphael hasn’t turned into a cold-hearted villain.” She was fucking proud of her archangel for making the choice he’d just made—especially when she felt the chill of the Cascade power continue to roil in his blood. He’d gained considerable control over it, but it took a fierce will not to listen to its sinister promises.

  Lijuan had listened. And now Lijuan was a monstrous power that might rule all the world. Being good, being honorable, didn’t seem to come with any prizes in this immortal fight to the death.

  Arms folded, Elena glared out at the sky. “I don’t know what the fuck the Cascade wants.”

  “To rebalance the world,” the Primary said, as if that was self-evident.

  When they both stared at him, he stared back for a long moment as whispered voices built in the back of Elena’s head. The Legion, talking among themselves.

  “We have remembered,” the Primary said. “We do not know from when. We do not know from who.”

  That was a reasonable enough statement given their age and how many memories they carried in their minds.

  “Tell us,” Raphael ordered.

  The Primary took his time to speak, a being so ancient that he had been present at the first end and the second beginning of angelkind. “Power grows. Archangels grow. A balancing is needed to keep the world from breaking.”

  Elena scowled. “Hold up. This whole power surge thing is part of the Cascade. I don’t know about you, but looks to me like it’s the Cascade doing the breaking.”

  Cassandra’s owls flew past the balcony on snowy wings, their silent beauty catching all their attention for a moment before they flew out of sight. “It is a paradox,” the Primary admitted, then seemed to struggle to find words. “Too many Sleepers. Too much stored power. The earth groans. It must be released.”

  A susurration of sound, Raphael settling his wings . . . a sound her own wings would never again make. The stab of sadness was unexpected and visceral. Swallowing hard against it, Elena reminded herself that she had fucking retractable wings like a comic book superhero. Not only that, her wings were afire with lightning.

  Her archangel spoke into the small silence. “The Cascade is triggered when the gathered power of the Sleepers in the wor
ld reaches a certain threshold?”

  Voices in the back of Elena’s head again, the Legion engaging in a furious discussion before the Primary nodded. “Wind, rain, tremors, ice, it is a release.”

  “Like a volcano letting off a bit of steam.” Elena tapped her boot on the ground. “Of course, then the top blows off and everyone dies.”

  “Yes,” the Primary said. “This time, the top will blow. Balance will be found again.”

  Elena and Raphael asked him more questions, but that was all he had to give them. “Unbelievably, that all made sense,” she said to Raphael as they got ready for bed. “I mean, in a race of immortals where some of you continue to grow in power, things are going to get out of control without an inbuilt safety switch.”

  “Especially when those of us with the most power are all but impossible to kill.” Bare chested and barefoot, Raphael walked to stand by the open balcony door, staring out at the night. “Leave us to continue on that trajectory unchecked and we will eventually become world-destroying powers who will annihilate each other.”

  Admiring him as she walked closer, Elena kissed his spine, right between where his wings grew out of his back. “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “But I think we must confront it. The only way for power to be released back into the system, and for things to come back in balance, is for some of us to die.” That was what Raphael hadn’t realized for so long—as Elena had said, a race of immortals couldn’t keep going forever without consequences. “And the only way for an archangel to die . . .”

  “. . . is at the hands of another archangel.” Elena shifted to face him, her back against the night. “Fucking Cascade’s setting up an immortal fight club?” Fury vibrated in her voice. “But what does it get if Lijuan wins and all the rest of you are dead?”

  “Think of how much power the deaths of the Cadre and the Ancients will release back into the system.” Wave after wave after shocking wave. “It explains why we do not have legends of more archangelic Sleepers. For a race of immortals, we appear to have lost countless prior Cadre without a trace.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Elena rubbed her forehead. “What happens to all the Cascade ‘gifts’ afterward? Your wildfire, Titus’s earthquakes, everything else. Your mother lived through a Cascade and she’s not mega-powerful.” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut for a second as she fought to get her thoughts in order. “Well, she is because she took an entire city with her into Sleep and now protects Amanat with a shield, but she doesn’t have a crazy-violent offensive power. Same with Alexander.”

  “Hers was a ‘normal’ Cascade.” He cupped the side of her neck, stroking his thumb over the delicate skin there. “Yet the question remains. Perhaps the Legion know.”

  But the Legion had no more answers for them. We Slept after the Cascade of Terror. Such a deep Sleep that when we woke, none of the old archangels walked the world.

  Elena ran her hands over his chest. “Guess we’ll find the answer after we kick Lijuan’s butt.” But in her eyes was the same dark knowledge that haunted him—that the wildfire hadn’t been enough to save Antonicus.

  Their only weapon against Lijuan’s poison had failed.

  47

  Raphael was called into a Cadre meeting only three hours later.

  Elena woke when he stirred, accompanied him down to the meeting space after pulling on some sweats. Raphael, in contrast, wore his warrior leathers—conversations with the Cadre were never simple things, especially now. The man who’d held her tucked against his bare chest, his wing her blanket, had to give way to an archangel ready for war.

  Neha was streaming live from the border with China. Bright sunlight glimmered off the roofs closest to the border . . . on Lijuan’s side.

  The fog was retreating.

  “It’s happening all around the territory,” Neha said, her voice clipped and precise. “Lady Caliane, Michaela, Alexander, and I have had our squadrons running patrols near the border regions and they all report the same thing. The fog has begun to withdraw toward the center.”

  The image on the screen changed as the feed switched to a drone flying directly over a section now clear of fog. It showed the edges of a small village.

  “A typical border village,” Neha told them. “Mostly the homes of off-duty soldiers. Lijuan and I never displayed enmity toward one another, but it’d be foolish of us not to have soldiers positioned along our borders.”

  Raphael, do you have soldiers along the border with Elijah?

  Yes. As he has his on the other side.

  Sometimes, she forgot how many layers there were to the relationships between archangels. Friendship, when it came, was a long and complicated process.

  “The homes are empty,” Neha continued as the drone scanned the eerily motionless area; not even a tumbleweed blew in the wind. “She must’ve recalled her soldiers to a central location. Unexpected since she knows I have a strong force of my own, but as I said, Lijuan and I have never gone to war.”

  Michaela broke in, her voice sharp. “Where are the wives, husbands, lovers, children, servants, pets? This was not a garrison. It was home.”

  Elena’s skin chilled. She stared again at the scene unfolding in front of them. Absolute and utter stillness. A village utterly abandoned. No sense of life at all.

  “It’s possible she called entire families back to a base command,” Titus said, his voice far more somber and quiet than was Titus’s normal.

  “Possible, but unlikely.” Charisemnon curled his lip. “She was my ally, but I do not wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to her. Lijuan wouldn’t care about pets and mortal servants. They should be present.”

  “We need more information.” Elijah sounded like the general he’d once been. “An abandoned border village can be explained as a strategic retreat. The animals could’ve run away disoriented during the fog.”

  “Eli is right.” Raphael’s tone was calm, measured . . . but wildfire arced across his fingers out of sight of the screen. “Is it possible to switch views?”

  “Yes,” Neha confirmed. “However, the border views all show the same thing. We will have to wait until the fog retreats farther inland.”

  No one spoke in the interim.

  The first person to appear in the footage did so on a square rooftop like the ones Elena had seen in India while on a hunt. She’d slept on a roof like that herself during the heat of summer and for a second, she thought they’d intruded on a poor schmuck who was trying to get some shut-eye under the weird fog night. Though it had to be freezing up there—roof sleeping wasn’t a winter activity and the fog must’ve caused temperatures to drop even further.

  Then the drone flew closer.

  Her stomach lurched.

  The man who lay under the thin sheet was a husk. His skin was dark brown parchment over wide cheekbones and hollow cheeks, his eye sockets sunken black shells, his hair strands of dried-out grass that would blow away in the next wind.

  The fog continued to retreat.

  The bodies came faster now. Fallen in the streets, more lying on rooftops, several just sitting under a tree. People who had no horror on their faces. People who’d simply been going about their lives when a dark goddess sucked that life out of them.

  Elena caught the edge of what looked to be a homemade children’s playground created from bamboo stakes and ropes and old tire swings. She wanted to look away, her gorge rising, but forced herself to stand in place. She would bear witness. She would remember.

  There were no bodies. None.

  A cold wind across her skin. Raphael, where are the children? They hadn’t seen a single living or dead child.

  I fear the answer, Guild Hunter.

  So did Elena, the claw of fear a vicious grip around her heart.

  The fog stopped retreating.

  They waited for ten minutes, but the barrier had settled at a
new point and there it remained. Neha’s drone pilots began to explore the exposed areas in more depth: mummified bodies inside the homes, both human and animal, everything desiccated. Plants, food, even a large spider that hung in the corner of one house.

  Neha directed one of the drone operators to use the drone to touch the shriveled corpse of what might’ve been a cat. It collapsed into dust at first contact.

  “Abandon that device in Lijuan’s territory once we’re done,” Neha commanded. “In fact, land all the devices on Lijuan’s side of the border. We will fly them again from that point. If their energy fails, we will send out new devices. I do not wish anything from that territory to come into mine.”

  Elena didn’t blame the Archangel of India. She had no idea how Neha had managed to stay so cool-eyed and rational. Having that nightmare at your border had to be fucking terrifying. At least Michaela was buffered by a massive expanse of relatively uninhabited territory in Mongolia—in the last balancing of territories, the country had been split between Lijuan and Michaela, and the residents had mostly moved either into China or into Russia.

  Alexander also shared a massive border with China, but his people, too, tended to live more inward from the border, for much the same reason. Better to be closer to your archangel and distant from a neighboring one seemed to be the thinking. Neha alone had a border with China that was inhabited—likely as a result of the long-term friendly relationship between the two archangels.

  The population there wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t miniscule, either.

  “She’s feeding again.” Raphael’s voice, cold and remote in a way that raised the tiny hairs on her nape . . . but the wildfire, it continued to dance over his fingers. “And, given the depth of land exposed by the retreating fog, she is already monstrous in her power.”

  Thousands of people, Elena realized, Lijuan had already fed from thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if some of the other border areas had been more heavily populated. Ports, she thought suddenly, China’s oceanic borders were home to thriving port cities . . . so much life, so much fuel for Lijuan.