by Nalini Singh
The Archangel of the Pacific Isles was fighting, but she had her face buried in his neck and already, Astaad looked emaciated, his wings limp. You are all NOTHING but fodder for a goddess. Watch me feed. Know me as your superior!
Raphael released a ball of wildfire. My apologies, my friend, he said to Astaad, who was in the direct line of fire.
The other archangel’s face eased, as if in gratitude.
The wildfire hit them both. Screaming, Lijuan released Astaad. She went noncorporeal again as Astaad’s body fell, riven with wildfire. No one was close enough to catch him. The Archangel of the Pacific Isles crashed to lie broken on a rooftop. Jason landed beside him a second later. He’s alive, Raphael’s spymaster reported. His body has lost nearly all its flesh, but his eyes are lucid.
Rather than killing him, the wildfire appeared to have ameliorated a little of the damage Lijuan had done. Get him to safety. As helpless as Astaad was now, Lijuan might come back to finish him off. Eli, protect Astaad and Jason.
The Archangel of South America took up an escort position—and the former general did something clever. He began to fire his power erratically around them, where it would either hit enemy troops or go into clear air. It made it nearly impossible for Lijuan to appear nearby—she’d have to risk being hit by one of Elijah’s bolts. It wouldn’t badly hurt her, not the way she was now, but the delay while she dealt with the shock would give Raphael time to drown her in wildfire.
Shooters and soldiers armed with flamethrowers had already begun laying down fire around the Tower. Again, Lijuan could survive that, but it might leave her vulnerable for a moment. The Tower guard paused only long enough for Jason to get through with Astaad, and Elijah to clear the area, before starting up again. Elijah continued to fire around him as he returned to battle, but no archangel could keep that up nonstop, especially when fighting against Lijuan’s army.
Obsidian fire was now erupting not only from the hands of the generals, but others. Lijuan had to be bloated indeed to be fueling so many subordinates.
Titus was Lijuan’s next target—but he reacted with warrior speed to smash his splinted arm into her face. Blood splurted and she was gone. Only to suddenly be behind Aegaeon. Raphael shouted out a warning. Illium’s father ignored the obsidian rain coming at him from her forces and sliced both blades backward into her stomach, wrenching up.
Lijuan turned noncorporeal as her gown became drenched in red, even as Aegaeon took a massive number of blows from the generals. He began to fall, his wings shredded. Aodhan slammed into him, slowing his descent enough to bring him to a softer landing on a rooftop. It had been a risk on Aodhan’s part that he’d become infected but it looked like the subordinates’ fire wasn’t infectious. Only Lijuan’s.
He left Aegaeon on the rooftop, where the Ancient managed to get himself to a position near the archers. Though the generals had done significant damage, he continued to fight, while his body dealt with the obsidian. Courage had never been Aegaeon’s problem. Not far in the distance, Neha destroyed three of Lijuan’s generals in a single precision strike with the vivid green of her poison whip.
Raphael! Look out!
He blocked the shards of starlight obsidian dropping at him from the sky, only for Lijuan to repeat the attack again and again. He couldn’t allow even one of the shards to burrow into him, not now she’d fed on two archangels, had to waste precious power maintaining the shield.
She was trying to wear him out. And hugely bloated with power, she was going to succeed. Then Michaela shifted position without warning—and ended up face-to-face with Lijuan. The Archangel of China had obviously meant to appear behind Michaela. No hesitation, no thought, Michaela blasted Lijuan with her power point-blank.
Raphael targeted the Archangel of China with a massive jolt of wildfire at the same time.
It punched through her entire system, turning her skin into a pattern of broken light but she was nowhere near down. She directed a hail of starlight obsidian shards directly at Michaela before going noncorporeal again. Michaela dropped and Lijuan’s poison smashed into a skyscraper that was already half destroyed.
“Why won’t the fucking bitch die?” Michaela’s scream of frustration rent the air.
But they had no time for discussion, for frustration, because Lijuan had reappeared behind Alexander. She had her mouth on his neck before anyone could react, but she’d made a miscalculation. Illium was right beside Alexander and sliced off one of Lijuan’s arms before she had any warning of what was to come.
As the severed limb fell to the ground, she disengaged from Alexander with a sound that was ten thousand screams in their minds. And went noncorporeal again.
Alexander?
I’m a little weaker, but she didn’t get much, barely a sip.
Sweaty and bloody, they fought on. Raphael wasn’t the least surprised when Lijuan reappeared with a whole arm only five minutes later. This time, she didn’t attempt to feed—she aimed a bolt directly at Illium, her face wreathed in malevolence.
Illium twisted with speed, but even Bluebell’s agility wasn’t enough to fully avoid the blow. It went through the tip of one wing and began to spread blackness over his wing in a rapid surge. Illium wasn’t an archangel. His body had no defenses. Raphael was too far from him and Lijuan was now raining her power down at his troops in a merciless hail that would murder and destroy if he didn’t stop her.
He put up a wildfire shield.
Despite taking a catastrophic hit, Illium did the impossible. He went straight at Lijuan and slammed his favorite sword, Lightning, through her heart. She and the sword disappeared even as his wing blackened—but there was a flicker in her disappearance this time. He’d got the heart itself, damage bad enough that most archangels would’ve gone into anshara while it healed.
Go to Elena! Raphael told the angel, aware he couldn’t lower his shield and go to Illium when Lijuan was apt to return at any moment. He didn’t know if Elena could release wildfire on her own into anyone but Raphael, but it was Illium’s only chance. Elena, Illium’s been hit.
Lijuan returned in a viciousness of starlight obsidian.
71
Pulse in her mouth, Elena was ready for Illium.
Bloody from the spray when he’d cut off Lijuan’s arm, his blue-tipped black hair matted with sweat, he came down hard. One of his wings was almost fully black at this point, the infection gaining ground with every second that passed. Elena touched her hand to it even before he’d caught his balance. Wildfire sparked over her skin in a protective glove but none passed from her to him.
“Cut it off.” Illium handed her his other sword, the edge a deadly gleam. “Stop the spread. Now Ellie.”
Elena set her jaw and took the blade. There was no point in arguing. His wing would grow back. He wouldn’t survive if the poison reached his bloodstream. Using one wildfire-gloved hand to hold the blackened wing away from his back, she sliced. The blade was razor-sharp, went through the feathers and bone and tendon like they were butter.
Illium’s spine went rigid, but he didn’t cry out. Elena didn’t cry, either, even as she excised off half of one of the most beautiful pair of wings in the world. She made sure to cut as close to the inner edge as possible, removing a clear two inches of healthy wing to ensure none of the poison would get into his bloodstream.
The blackened and dead wing fell to the rooftop.
He incinerated it with his power.
“You’re bleeding,” Elena said as she returned his sword.
“It’ll stop soon.” His face was pale but marked by lines of determination. “Slice off the healthy wing. I can’t fight with it pulling me off-center.”
It was harder this time, because there was nothing wrong with that wing, his feathers a vivid blue edged with filaments of silver, but she knew why he was making the choice. Illium was lethal with a sword in the air or on the ground but a messed
-up center of gravity would make him clumsy, easier to kill.
“Done.” Her voice came out a rasp.
Shifting to face her, his eyes dilated but his resolve unshaken, he touched his fingers to her cheek. “Wing loss is a foreseeable battle injury, Ellie. They’ll grow back. I’ll just have fluffy duck feathers and be grounded for a while—I’m very strong. It won’t take long.”
He incinerated his remaining wing, as if able to tell how much it hurt her to see it lying there, severed from his body. “Not sure if this’ll make you feel better, but the first time this happened, my feathers grew back even prettier.” A wicked grin.
“No.” She poked him in the chest. “That does not make me feel better.” But weirdly, it did. He’d been so much younger then, and he’d come through fine.
His back was a mask of blood when she checked again, but the first wound had already stopped bleeding and there was no sign of any further infection. For a second, she thought she saw a faint glow, similar to what happened with Raphael’s wings when he was feeling lethal—or when he was overflowing with power.
Then an entire squadron of Lijuan’s fighters landed on the rooftop and they had no more time. Elena brought up her crossbow, Illium sliced out with his sword, and they exchanged grins before diving into battle.
Elena was on the edge of the building, having just brought down an enemy angel when she saw one of Lijuan’s poisonous bolts drop down directly at Galen, who was in the air on the far side of her roof. She was beside him before she realized it, shoving him out of the way. The bolt hit her instead, punching all the air out of her lungs.
Her entire body erupted with wildfire, encasing her in light.
Lijuan’s bolt dissipated.
Handy, but it used power. She flew back to her rooftop just as Illium finished off the last assailant. Grabbing a crossbow from a fallen enemy fighter, he took up a shooting stance beside her, and they aimed up. Not far from them, she saw Michaela deliberately put her body in the path of a bolt that would’ve otherwise hit and disabled Jason.
The Archangel of Budapest shrugged it off and kept going, flying to take on a general who’d pinned down a squadron. Turned out some people’s true colors were hella surprising. She’d never again look at Michaela the same way.
Elena saw Raphael hit Lijuan in the fucking center of the chest, the wildfire turning her veins electric, but not only had the damn immortal monster healed devastatingly fast from Illium’s heart blow, she remained able to turn noncorporeal. When she appeared by Michaela this time, neither the archangel nor anyone around her was able to interfere before Lijuan disappeared—taking Michaela with her.
She reappeared less than a second later only a meter from the edge of Elena’s rooftop, hovering over clear air with Michaela in her grip.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Illium yelled and all the shooters unleashed their arrows or bolts or guns at the Archangel of China.
Several hit Michaela, but Elena knew an archangel could survive those. If they didn’t disengage Lijuan from her neck however, she’d be dead or close to it very soon. Not that Michaela was taking this lying down—she’d created a collar of bronze energy around her neck that appeared to be repelling Lijuan’s attempts, and she was trying to swamp Lijuan in her bronze fire.
Face icy in fury, Lijuan went to put her hand directly over Michaela’s heart.
Taking a breath, Elena paused for a split second, exhaled . . . and shot. Her bolt went through Lijuan’s eye, causing her to rear back, both her hands flying up to her face.
Raphael hit the injured eye with wildfire at the same time, getting it directly into Lijuan’s blood. Lijuan shimmered then reappeared and Elena thought they’d got her. But she disappeared fully the next second . . . even as Michaela fell, fell, fell. There was no one in her path who could catch her, nothing to stop her catastrophic impact with the city street far below.
Trusting Illium and the others to hold off enemy troops, Elena retracted her wings and jumped off the rooftop, only reengaging her wings when she was nearly at the ground. She was beside the fallen archangel mere seconds after the impact. Michaela looked stunningly beautiful even now, with her legs broken under her, bones piercing her bodysuit to gleam wetly in the light, and her neck at a sickening angle, her arms like matchsticks someone had snapped into tiny pieces.
Blood spread from beneath the fan of her hair, a scarlet carpet on the asphalt.
But even worse was the creep of black that was a growing sun around her heart. “Lijuan got her poison into you.” At point-blank range.
Cat green eyes held Elena’s. Flickers of fire lit the archangel’s irises.
Elena looked up.
The sky was aflame above them, as Neha unleashed the flip side of her ability to create ice. Even from so far, it felt as if the heat kissed Elena’s skin through her clothes.
“My son,” Michaela whispered and it was barely comprehensible. “The healer . . . he will be kind.”
“Keir? You want Keir to be the foster dad?”
“Yes.” Rattling sounds in her throat. “Tell him . . . tell him . . . I did not mean . . . to leave him. My . . . son. Protect . . .”
“We will.” Elena wanted to close her hand over Michaela’s, but the archangel’s bones were shattered. When she looked up again, to see if Raphael could help, she found him in a pitched battle against Lijuan.
Fires continued to burn in Michaela’s eyes when Elena turned back to the archangel. A sudden fierceness lit them. Her voice came into Elena’s mind now, the feel of her a sensual perfume. But the words she spoke were hard with resolve—though her voice, it was faded there, too.
I need you to lift my hand and bring it to my chest, above the infection. A cough that bubbled blood. Once I do what needs to be done, take me to a safe place.
Elena had no idea what the hell Michaela was talking about, but she lifted one shattered hand, not flinching when the bones rattled, and placed it in the correct spot. “You’re about two inches from the top of the infection.”
Bronze fire erupted from Michaela’s fingers.
Elena closed her eyes reflexively against the sudden brightness. When she opened them again, Michaela’s eyes were closed, her body limp . . . and most of her chest gone, cut out by her own power. Elena could see the gleam of bone, the spongy texture of one lung.
And blood, so much blood.
Stomach roiling, Elena nonetheless looked carefully at the massive open wound. No sign of infection, all the black cut away. Along with most of Michaela’s ribs and internal organs, part of one hip, a section of pelvis.
“Ellie.” Dusty black boots slamming down beside her, Jason’s wings in her vision. “I’ll carry her to the infirmary.”
Elena nodded jerkily. “I think her neck’s broken.”
“No,” Jason said after crouching down to examine Michaela more closely. “It’s not broken. It’s almost severed from her body.”
Swallowing hard, Elena said, “She was talking.”
“She is an archangel.” He gathered Michaela into his arms.
Elena didn’t ask him if Michaela would survive; as long as none of Lijuan’s infection remained, the Archangel of Budapest would come back. Given her massive injuries, however—injuries that had come on top of having given birth not long ago—it might take a long time.
She flew escort for Jason until they were in friendly territory, then he went onward and she flew back to the battle zone. The sky remained full of fire. Neha was attempting to burn Lijuan’s troops out of the sky.
She thought suddenly of Laric, scarred by his time caught in a fire sky. She hoped he was deep in the infirmary far from any windows. And she hoped the flames didn’t bring nightmares to Caliane and Raphael.
As she got closer, she saw Aegaeon was right next to Neha, appeared to be protecting her so she could focus on her fire. In the orange-red glow, his wings appe
ared as pure blue as Illium’s. As she watched, he razed an entire squadron with a scythe of sea green power.
“At least the bastard is useful,” she muttered before firing a crossbow bolt through the wing of an angelic fighter who was about to thrust his sword into Andreas’s gut.
The squadron leader raised a hand in thanks before slicing out with his blades to remove the head of another winged fighter. Surrounded by battle, she couldn’t take even a second to search for Raphael in the sky, but she could feel him high above, exchanging blow after blow with Lijuan.
Lijuan, who could heal from any injury.
Fear tried to clamp its claws around her heart.
Gritting her teeth, she shoved it off, and fought on.
* * *
• • •
Sweat dripped down Raphael’s back, and dampened his hair. His wildfire was being rapidly depleted. He was going to need to draw from Elena again soon, but the second he did that, they were in the endgame. There was no more power after that and Lijuan appeared unstoppable.
He’d deliberately drawn from Elena before battle began—not the totality of what she held, but enough so their energies would combine to create the green-tinged wildfire. However, since feeding from two archangels, Lijuan seemed all but impervious to even that.
Not far in front of him, Caliane took a massive wave of poisonous strikes from Lijuan’s troops. His mother fell to a rooftop held by Raphael’s people, her wings badly mangled and her bones shattered.
Mother?
I will survive this, my son. But I am out of the battle. Her mind cut off on the heels of that statement.
Just as Lijuan went noncorporeal again. He’d done enough damage that she couldn’t seem to hold it for long, but even a second was too long. This time, she appeared close enough to Elijah to target him with her starlight obsidian.
The Archangel of South America couldn’t avoid it, but Raphael was close enough to slam wildfire into both him and Lijuan. Eli’s body jerked as the wildfire punched through to the poison in his system and began to fight it, while Lijuan’s eyes lit up with wildfire before she screamed and fired back at Raphael.