Taking off in pensive quiet, their boot prints immortalized in the dust until the next wind, they turned to the right. Their flight path would take them over new territory before they met up with the jet. Below them passed more green fields and rural villages. The light was fading but hadn’t yet affected visibility. Which was why unusual motion below caught Elena’s eye.
There’s something odd about those villagers. She couldn’t quite make out the details from their current altitude, so she dropped lower. They’re all moving like old people. No village this big was occupied only by the elderly.
She descended farther . . . and horror curdled her stomach. Shrunken and emaciated faces. Bodies of bone in a skin bag. Shuffling movements, limbs being dragged.
We land. Raphael went down first, Elena right after him.
The shuffling villagers didn’t react at all.
Everyone who wasn’t an archangel reacted to Raphael.
Elena caught the gaze of a nearby woman. Her eyeballs gleamed wet in a hollow bone frame. Pity and a need to render aid overwhelmed the cold bite of fear. “We’re here to help.”
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.”