Archangel's War

by Nalini Singh

  “You are kind.” Suyin’s age pressed against Elena’s skin with a power that was uncommon; it always made Elena wonder if Lijuan had tortured and imprisoned her niece not only because Suyin knew the secrets of Lijuan’s stronghold, but because she’d seen Suyin as a possible rival.

  “I know I have a long way to go.” Suyin’s voice was a haunting melody, her accent that of an old being speaking a new tongue. “As part of that, I must now do flight drills with Jurgen’s squadron.”

  “She’s learned to fight and she’s good at it,” Honor murmured as she followed Elena down the hallway after Suyin had left. “But she’ll never be a warrior. It’s not in her nature.”

  Elena thought of Astaad. The Archangel of the Pacific Isles preferred literature over swords, would rather debate a point than start a war, but pushed to the wall, he’d push back as hard.

  “For Suyin,” Honor continued, “it’s about never being helpless again when evil rises.”

  Then they were at the large training ring, and everyone was soon watching the footage. No one spoke at the first viewing. Illium slowed down the playback for the second viewing and one thing became clear. “You’re not disappearing and reappearing, Ellie. Your wings are morphing to white fire and you’re moving at a speed invisible to the naked eye.”

  Thanks for the chunk of your heart, Archangel.

  You are most welcome, hbeebti.

  “I know you flew at impossible speed once.” Dmitri, arms folded, looked to Raphael. “That day Elena collapsed. That wasn’t just the white fire wings. It was more.”

  “I did it another time—again, when Elena was at risk.” Raphael frowned, as lightning cracked his arms. “That level of speed, it appears, is also triggered unconsciously.”

  “So Elena’s not doing anything new,” Dmitri pointed out. “She’s doing exactly what you do, but in microbursts. Seven microbursts to be precise.”

  Elena didn’t like where this was going. “I seem to have stolen a little of your Cascade-given abilities.” And he’d need everything he had when Lijuan picked a fight. Because the Queen of the Dead would, of that Elena had zero doubts.

  “I am yours, Guild Hunter.” No hesitation, nothing but a sense of love so deep it was her bedrock. “I would give you every drop of blood in my body did you have a need.”

  “It’s all right,” Ashwini said breezily while looking down at her phone, her hair up in a long ponytail and her lipstick a dark fuchsia “You’re mirrors anyway.”

  Everyone stared at her, but she was involved in tapping out a message.

  An amused Janvier gently flicked one of her dangling earrings. “Cher.”

  “Hmm?” She slid away her phone and seemed to notice all the eyes on her for the first time. “Sorry, that was Sara about a hunt. She wanted to know if I could take it—I said I could, since we’re pretty much done here?”

  “Ash,” Elena said very deliberately, “what do you mean about mirrors?”

  “Huh?” The other hunter frowned. “Oh, that.” A shrug. “No idea. Sometimes words just fall out of my mouth.”

  Elena knew there was no point pushing her. The last time words had fallen out of Ashwini’s mouth, they’d had a geothermal event in upstate New York. “Can you keep your senses trained for any other hints on the whole mirror thing?”

  Ashwini nodded, but Elena knew that there would be no quick answers. And they needed those quick answers—because the situation in China was getting worse. That night, they received a dispatch from Neha that said the fog had drawn farther back to reveal even more death—and more signs of missing children.

  After that, the report that Cassandra’s lava sinkhole had opened up again was almost good news. There’d been no earthquake, no bird murmurations. A passing squadron had stumbled upon the glowing hole in the snow on their way home, the orange-red of the lava a jewel in a bed of white.

  “There will be a war,” Raphael said to her as they stood inside the fence, beside the heat of the sinkhole, while the snow drifted down in delicate flakes. “This cannot end any other way—Lijuan is not gorging herself for pleasure. Even if we disregard her, there are too many archangels awake and now Cassandra stirs.”

  His eyes glowed with the reflected heat of the lava. “Our energies will begin to collide. It is a law of nature, cannot be stopped.”

  “Do you think Lijuan will come here?” The Archangel of China was obsessed with eliminating Raphael. He was the only one who’d ever hurt her, and appeared to remain the only one who had a weapon even slightly effective against her.

  “If she does, the Cadre is agreed that all will come here to help defend the city.” He looked up at the moonless sky. “They know that if I fall, so do they and Lijuan’s dark night will spread across the entire world.”

  Elena crouched down to stare at the lava moving languorously below. “Same deal if she targets another territory?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t matter who she attacks, she is a threat to us all.”

  A golden-eyed owl swept over the lava . . . and in Elena’s mind stirred an old presence heavy and tired. Child of mortals, Cassandra murmured. Watch the Sea of Atlas. Death comes.

  Cassandra?

  But the Ancient was gone.

  A stone on her chest, she rose to her feet and told Raphael what the Ancient had said. “I don’t know what Sea of Atlas means.”

  His already grim expression grew lethal. “It is an old name for the Atlantic. I have squadrons patrolling that and every other border and we now have eyes in the sky.”

  “What if she’s figured out a way to make her entire army noncorporeal?” Elena’s mouth dried up. “All those dead, all that power she’s sucked up . . . What if it’s about hiding her assault force?”

  “If she can do that, then she has won the war before it begins.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day dawned with no sign of a threat on the horizon, but Raphael took Cassandra’s warning seriously: he ordered extra watches in the east, on water and in the sky. He’d just finished reviewing their overall border strategy with Dmitri when Neha called another meeting of the Cadre.

  Things had changed in China.

  “We have begun to see live people beneath the retreating fog,” reported the Archangel of India before she switched to the feed from a drone.

  Thin people with shocked faces stumbled around the mummified remains that littered the streets. Horror scarred the expressions of many, while others were blank-eyed and lost.

  It was Elijah who pointed out that all the survivors were young and—aside from their low weights—healthy. “The women are of childbearing age, the men young enough to help raise those children.”

  “She has left enough survivors to repopulate her country,” Caliane murmured. “If this is madness, it is a cunning one.”

  And still, they didn’t know what had happened to the children.

  The fog over China disappeared the next day. Gone without a trace in a matter of seconds. Drone flights over the core of the country discovered several still-living cities . . . but with much smaller populations.

  There was just one problem—the warriors, the fighters, were dangerously limited in number. Nothing with which an archangel could hope to defend her territory.

  “She knows no one will dare enter,” Alexander bit out. “Not with the death she left on the borders and what happened to Favashi and Antonicus—the threat of a contagion is too great.”

  “Your borders?” Astaad asked the impacted archangels. “Your people are safe?”

  Neha was the one who replied. “Yes. If it was airborne, it was confined inside the fog.” Her jaw worked. “I have been unable to contact any of mine who were helping to caretake the country.”

  “I have also lost people.” Raphael’s anger was a cold, hard thing. “Have any of you managed to initiate communication wit
h your own inside Lijuan’s territory?”

  Silence.

  So many strong angels gone. It was a catastrophic loss if you considered the angelic birth rate and how many of those warriors had been highly experienced.

  “She has begun the war then.” Alexander, his voice razored. “To kill so many of our own when they were placed in China by the Cadre and would’ve stepped down at her return, it is a declaration of war.”

  Raphael’s hand fisted as he thought of Gadriel. The angel had taught four-hundred-year-old Raphael how to use a battle axe, his calm, unflappable patience undaunted in the face of the anger Raphael carried within. All that maturity, all that life just gone, destroyed so totally that his parents wouldn’t even have a body to bury. “I am in agreement with Alexander. This is war.”

  No one in angelkind would argue against the Cadre’s decision—the terrible loss of mortal and vampiric lives had already begun to make an impact. Immortals weren’t without soul, couldn’t just shrug off mortal deaths on such a scale. But the angelic lives lost? It would hammer home the final terrible blow.

  “We will not get to pick the field of battle.” Caliane, her eyes blue fire. “She has poisoned her land to ensure we cannot invade it. Her next act will be to choose where she makes her stand. Prepare for war.”

  50

  Guild Hunter, Raphael said early afternoon the next day, the bite of winter welcome on his bare arms; he’d chosen to pair a sleeveless white tunic with the deep brown of his tough but battle-scarred pants and equally marked black boots. I am flying out to the lava. Venom’s reported unusual movement.

  Wait for me. I just got back from a hand-to-hand combat session with Eve.

  Already on the Tower roof, Raphael waited until he saw wings of stormfire take off from one of the balconies before he swept out into the sky. And though he’d said nothing to alert her of his presence, she looked up.

  “How is your sister?” he asked once they were at the same altitude.

  “Still a little mad at me, but we’ll be good I think.” Solemn eyes searched his face. “Jason have any luck?”

  “No.” His spymaster had refused to believe all their people—all Jason’s people—had been murdered so callously. “Not a word, not even from a minor spy in the kitchens.” A vampire so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it would’ve cost Lijuan nothing to allow him to live.

  “Damn her.”

  Raphael was silent, his anger a black wave.

  They flew on until the lava glowed orange in a sea of white.

  Venom watched them land with his gaze shielded against the bright snow-reflected light. Slitted like a viper’s and of the same vivid green shade, the vampire’s eyes had been known to inspire fear and fascination both—often in the same individual.

  “Sire, Elena.” He motioned his head toward the lava sinkhole, the fine wool of his olive green sweater hugging his shoulders and his legs clad in black cargo pants, his boots scuffed. “It’s begun to bubble. The odd one at first, steady increase over the past hour.”

  Though he and Elena had seen the bubbles from above, his consort pressed her face to one of the windows in the fence. “I can’t hear her but she has to be close to—”

  A rush of voices inside Raphael’s head. Elena winced at the same time.

  Aeclari. We relay for the Blade. He says these words: Inexplicable oceanic disturbance an hour out from Manhattan to the east.

  Raphael felt no surprise, only a cold determination. “Head to the city,” he ordered Venom. “The enemy may be at our doorstep.”

  Elena rose into the air with him as Venom ran to his Bugatti—parked in the snow like a crouching tiger.

  Go! Elena said. Do the white fire thing. I’ll follow.

  Lijuan may have already managed to steal into our city in her noncorporeal state. Leaving Elena alone under those circumstances was not a thing he would ever countenance. I will fly us both. Sweeping below her, he held out his arms.

  She retracted her wings and dropped.

  He caught her, thought of white fire, and suddenly, his wings were nothing physical, the world a blur. As he flew, he contacted Dmitri and got the exact direction from his second. He and Elena were soon over the water; he slowed as they neared the suspect location.

  “There!” His hunter pointed down.

  The water surged and flowed in a way that spoke of a large body beneath.

  Releasing Elena from his arms with a mental warning, her wings erupting out of her back to hold her to a hover, Raphael narrowed his eyes and shot a bolt of power in the center of the suspicious area.

  The bolt hit something before it reached the water. The resulting explosion sent large pieces of metal flying in every direction.

  “That was a submarine!” Elena, crossbow out, pointed at a distinctive floating piece. “When did she get a fucking submarine?”

  “I would assume she’s been gathering weapons and tools since the last battle.”

  No bodies floated up from below. Raphael hadn’t held back with that blow; the bodies were apt to have disintegrated into tiny pieces. Neither did he hold back with the balls of wildfire he sent into the sky—one east, one west, one south, one north. Each detonated to cover a massive area.

  Screams breached the air before the sky rippled . . . to reveal a winged army. It was shaped into a vee, with the thin point manned by Xi, Lijuan’s most trusted general, and the wide end so far distant that Raphael couldn’t see the end of it.

  That’s not an army, it’s a fucking continent. Elena’s shocked voice, her crossbow cocked and ready.

  She does not intend to lose this time. Lijuan had brought a force unseen in angelic history, a force so huge that Raphael couldn’t comprehend how it had been built without anyone’s knowledge.

  We have to retreat. Choppy strands of Elena’s hair whipped around her face. She holds all the advantages here.

  Agreed. Raphael was no longer a boy, to be goaded into fighting without strategy or thought. Come.

  Elena flew into his arms.

  A massive mind smashed into Raphael’s as he and Elena left the area on wings of white fire.

  BOW DOWN! I AM DEATH. I AM YOUR QUEEN.

  Shoving Lijuan out with the coldly vicious Cascade power that knew nothing of mercy, Raphael flew on. Dmitri, the army should now be visible to the eyes in the sky. He didn’t think Lijuan would waste power keeping them hidden now that they’d been discovered—there was no reason for her to do so, not with so many squadrons at her disposal.

  We have it. A pregnant pause. Fucking hell, Raphael. Where did she get that many combatants?

  I have no answers. What he did know was that Manhattan had less than an hour to ready itself to face an enemy so vast no single archangel could’ve prepared for it. Raphael’s entire army, an army spread across the territory, was less than one-tenth of that force.

  Launch the battle plans, he ordered his second, for Raphael and his Seven hadn’t sat on their laurels since Lijuan’s first assault. Initiate the first line of defense.

  Those defenses were not long-range missiles or bombs. To count, archangel to archangel battles had to be undertaken without large-scale weapons, including any that acquired their targets from afar. It was to protect the world from annihilation—because archangels could survive such violent weapons. It was everyone else who would die.

  “At least Lijuan appears to be holding to the rules of war,” Raphael said as they hit the edge of the city. “I saw no signs of advanced technology other than the submerged ships.” As they’d been used for transport rather than as weapons, the subs were acceptable.

  “Too bad,” Elena muttered. “I wanted to use a long-range surface-to-air missile and blast off her face.” She glanced up. “There they go.”

  Fire arced over their heads as they flew into the city, the archers who’d taken up position on the roof
tops having found the weapons ready and waiting for them in Tower-branded steel boxes that had been positioned at key points throughout the city. The first wave of flaming arrows had no hope of reaching Lijuan’s army.

  The arrows were a warning . . . and a distraction.

  Elena looked over his shoulder. “It’s coming up,” she murmured. “None of our vessels caught out as far as I can see. Dmitri must’ve hit the alert as soon as he spotted the disruption.”

  “Good.” He did not want his own people trapped outside with the enemy when the fuel line they’d lain in the ocean went up in flame. That fuel line curved around all the oceanic routes to Manhattan—because it was always to Manhattan that Lijuan would return should she decide to declare war against Raphael.

  Manhattan held his Tower. The symbol of his rule.

  Destroy it and she struck a savage blow to his people’s hearts.

  At present, the fuel line was nothing but innocuous buoys of faded blue bobbing on the water. The entire line had been held firmly anchored to the ocean and river floors until Dmitri hit the switches to release them. It was the Legion who’d laid the line—it turned out that creatures who Slept in the deep for thousands of years didn’t actually need to breathe.

  Strands of Elena’s hair kissed the side of his face. “How long do we wait?”

  “Until her army is right over the fuel line.” Because some of the enemy angels would be flying low—and the fireline was set to ignite in furious vertical blasts. An old technique from wars fought before Raphael was born.

  “I hate the idea of crisping angels, but I know these ones want to kill and enslave us.” Elena’s eyes were resolute when they met his, silver bleeding into gray. “No mercy. Anyone with her has seen her true face, seen her murder and consume thousands, and still they choose to follow her.”

  “Should you falter, hbeebti, remember the lost children.”

  Cheekbones sharp against her skin, she said, “Let’s kick her psychopathic ass.”