He dreamed again of that forgotten field, and of a woman’s bare feet as light as air on the ruby-flecked grass, his mother walking away from him after he fell to the earth, his body bloodied and bones broken.
Except . . .
He stood able-bodied on that field—and it was the same field, on the same day. He’d never forget the breathtaking clarity of the sky; the way the dew sparkled as if a careless hand had spilled a thousand translucent gemstones on the lush green blades; the distinctive patterns of light and shadow formed by the blossoming tree to the right; the tiny insect that crawled painstakingly across the grass, food held in its pincers.
He’d watched that insect for what felt like hours as it made its way across the field. When the food slipped out of its pincers, it would stop, pick it up again, and restart its journey. Lying broken on the grass Raphael had thought of himself as an insect, too, an insignificant, discarded piece of angelic flotsam beneath an endless sky.
Today, he could step on that insect without thought, ending its existence and struggle, but he took care to walk around it, the clear morning sunlight a cool brightness on his face, the slight wind adding to the sense that dawn had just broken. Tilting back his head, he saw nothing in the sheet of blue above . . . no, there was his mother. Though he stood in the wrong place, his view was the same as on that fateful day—when he’d watched her from a hidden vantage point, needing to see her free and beautiful just once more before he sought to bring her down, end her life.
She’d caused the death of every adult in two thriving cities, creating a silence painful and eternal. The survivors had all been children, little ones so bruised in the heart that they’d curled up and died of terrible sorrow, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny lives snuffed out without ever being given the chance to truly burn.
He’d known all that, understood she needed to be stopped, but she’d still been the mother who’d once sung him such lullabies that the Refuge stood silent to hear her. So he’d taken that single moment to watch her, to remember who she’d been before the madness sucked her under.
Graceful and strong, her wings backlit by the sun, she flew above him . . . but now there was a cloud across the sun. That wasn’t right. There had been no clouds that day, the sun a burning orb that baked his spilled blood to crystalline hardness and threatened to boil him alive from the inside out.
The clouds grew darker and darker, until they blotted out the sun. And his mother, she was gone. All he could see was a thick blanket of featureless gray. Beneath his feet, the verdant grass had turned brown, the insect a carcass. And the wind, it blew cool across his face, but it wasn’t fresh.
It tasted old.
There was no scent of putrefaction or of death, simply a sense of unfathomable age, of dark, hidden places full of secrets and whispers. Breathing it in, he continued to walk across the field, for someone was waiting for him. He was halfway across the dried-up landscape—so old, this place—when he saw that dawn had come . . . no, that was Elena’s wing arcing over him as she folded it away to reveal the skylight above their bed, the world outside the hazy formless gray of the time just before true daybreak.
The rim of silver around her irises glowed in the muted darkness as she leaned closer. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It was time.” He knew he’d never have reached the end of that field without . . . something, something he was meant to have in order to complete the journey. “Why do you watch me in such a way?”
“Occasionally I wake,” she whispered, as if it were a secret, “and I have this instant where I don’t believe the happiness inside me, can’t imagine you could ever belong to me, but you do.” A smile that pierced the lingering grayness. “You’re mine.”
“I had another dream,” he told his hunter, for she belonged to him as much as he belonged to her.
Elena cocked her head, listening as he described the forgotten field and the weight of age, the scent of old, old things. “There was no sense of threat,” he said, “but I felt I’d lose something indefinable if I did not do an act of which I had no knowledge.”
A thoughtful silence. “It might simply be your subconscious’s way of working out everything that’s been going on, but after that shared dream, I have my doubts.”
As did he. “And you, Elena,” he said, deciding to let matters lie for now, for the intrigues of the dream world had to take second place to the harshness of reality, “what did you dream?”
“Not a damn thing.” Her beaming relief segued into concern all too soon. “Did Jason send through another report last night?”
“The reborn component of Lijuan’s gathering forces appears to be suspiciously small, especially given how many villagers have disappeared from the areas closest to her stronghold.”
Elena sucked in a breath. “You think they might already be on the way?”
“Or have arrived, been stashed away until needed.” It wasn’t impossible that they could’ve been smuggled in on shipping containers. A container would provide a perfect cage, and, once released, the starving and infectious creatures would decimate the population. “Jason also has information that Lijuan has ‘improved’ on her design so these reborn are not sentient in any way, simply creatures designed to kill and feed.”
“Infectious, mobile weapons.”
He nodded, agreeing with her assessment. “Charisemnon’s forces are also strong, but Titus has stepped up the aggression on their border to ensure Charisemnon cannot risk seconding any squadrons to Lijuan.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Elena said. “I know Lijuan has more fighters, but she can’t move all her forces against us or she risks leaving her territory vulnerable.”
“She has also been an archangel for millennia, and as such, has many, many more older angels and vampires at her command.” Harder to kill or disable, the senior fighters could endure far longer than younger ones.
“Hell, I didn’t even think about that.” Elena spread her hand over his heart, the look in her eyes telling him she was calculating every angle. “Home field advantage remains our best weapon.”
“Yes, and we must utilize it in every way possible.”
When they flew into the city a half hour later, it was to see its rooftops bristling with weaponry inimical to winged fighters.
“Even the old angels,” Elena said, satisfaction in her tone, “will take time to heal if we blow the bastards to smithereens.”
So bloodthirsty, hbeebti.
A grin. “You know you love me that way.”
“Which is why I wish you to join the squadron practicing with crossbows in the air.” He knew his consort would never sit in safety while her city burned, so he’d make certain she was prepared.
“Good. I’m not fast in flight, but I’m a crack shot.” A tender kiss, a fleeting memory of the short, passionate minutes they’d taken for themselves earlier in the morning. “You’re meeting with Dmitri?”
“Yes.”
That discussion took over two hours. Leaving the other man to organize an extended sentry line, Raphael was about to take off from the Tower to meet Nazarach—the senior angel having relocated to the city overnight—when he felt the wind turn violent, whipping his hair off his face. Along with its fury came a scent of age and old, old things. Buried things.