“Should that happen, we will all have wine and watch the end of the world from a good vantage point.”
Grinning, Illium peeled off as they hit the edge of the city, and there was Elena, coming toward him on wings of stunning stormlight, several of the Legion in tow. The lightning in her wings seemed stronger, more violent.
“A touch scorched!” she yelled when they were close enough to exchange words. “You don’t have on a tunic anymore and your pants look like they were hacked up by a designer who charges five thousand dollars for his scissor skills.”
Her scowl deepened the closer she got. “And the soles of your boots are smoking!”
“I acted as a lightning rod. I’m surprised I still have boots in any form.” He’d half expected that they’d blow right off. “Whatever I did, I cannot explain the physics of it.”
“Let’s just call it Cascade weirdness and leave it at that.” His consort flew all around him, then back. No one but Elena had ever worried so much about him.
“Will I do?” he asked when she finally came to fly beside him once more, as inside him, the Cascade power morphed under the sheer force of her love, the ice infiltrated by a tendril of wildfire and steel that flat out refused to leave. And he knew. This change was permanent, anchored in the pieces of her heart in his bloodstream.
“I can’t see any burns, so I might forgive you for giving me a heart attack when you flew out with lightning chasing you.”
“Immortals don’t get heart attacks.”
“Look closely. This is my not-laughing face.”
Dismissing the Legion, Raphael wrapped himself in glamour while grabbing hold of his consort, so that she, too, was hidden from the world. Her wings danced stormlight over him, her lips meeting his as if they’d choreographed the contact.
It was a hard branding of a kiss and it held her heart.
He felt the thud of her pulse, tasted the bite of her fear. As she’d soothed him at times, he did the same to her now.
She broke the kiss at last with a suckling taste of his lower lip. “Okay, you’re okay,” she said, pure warrior strength and granite resolve. “Raphael.”
He understood. She’d convinced the small, irrational part of her that worried about an archangel’s hurt that he was all right. She could breathe again. Her heartbeat could turn normal again.
He flew her the rest of the way home. She didn’t protest, just wrapped one arm around the back of his neck and watched their city grow closer and closer until it was steel and glass and life beneath them. No one saw them, the glamour one of the greatest tools in his arsenal.
Sire. Dmitri’s voice. Jason’s just sent through a disturbing video captured by one of his people in China. I think you should see it as soon as possible.
“Dmitri has more weirdness for us, hbeebti,” he said aloud while mentally acknowledging Dmitri’s words. “This time from China.”
“Oh yay, my excitement knows no bounds.” A distinctly unenthusiastic tone. “I think immortals should make a rule—once you get to be a certain age, it’s time to go Sleep off the crazy. Not an option. Compulsory.”
“You should discuss your thoughts with my mother.”
“You are a horrible man sometimes.” She was yet scowling when he landed on the balcony outside Dmitri’s office, but the first thing she did was run her hands over his chest and arms, then go behind him and do the same with his wings and back.
“Uninjured.” Hands on her hips in front of him, she nodded. “You’re permitted to talk to Dmitri.”
“So much concern, Elena. I will worry you have no faith in me.”
A tightness to her jaw. “Don’t mess with me, Archangel. I am not in the mood.” Turning, she strode toward Dmitri’s door.
It was only when he saw himself reflected in the glass surface of the large window that was the back of Dmitri’s office that he understood her rattled response. His hair was singed at the edges and still smoking a little. His chest was covered with streaks of black smoke and his skin opened and closed in random spots with bursts of golden lightning.
Smoke curled out from the bottoms of his boots.
His eyes glowed. So hot it was as if he had a blue flame in his irises.
Elena walked through the door Dmitri had opened; Dmitri was momentarily silent when Raphael followed. Raphael picked off a shred of tunic that was somehow still stuck to his biceps, and dropped it in the wastebasket by Dmitri’s desk.
“I blame you,” his second said to Elena. “He didn’t think about frying himself in lightning bolts before you.”
Raphael waited for Elena to snap a quick comeback at Dmitri. He had the sneaking suspicion the two of them thrived on their animosity toward one another. He also knew that if push came to shove, they would fight as a battle-hardened unit. This was an amusement, nothing more.
Today, however, Elena pressed her lips together and looked down at the carpet. Frowning at the unexpected response, Dmitri went to the large screen on one wall of his office and played the recording he’d already cued up: waves of black smoke engulfed a village.
“A fire?” Raphael murmured, right as the recording panned out. The black fog was emerging from the ground about a quarter of a mile out. It wasn’t moving at dangerous speed, but the people in the recording did nothing to get away. As it brushed over them, they just waved at it as you might at an insect that was annoying you.
It was clear the villagers believed the fog would soon retreat or be blown away, but what happened was something else altogether. Once the strange fog had spread across the entire village, it hunkered down and turned opaque. The camera could no longer see through the thickness of it. No more faces. No more waving hands. Nothing but an endless night.
Expression grim, Dmitri brought up another file. “This was recorded the following day.” The fog had all but dissipated, but when the angel holding the camera flew down to take a closer look, he found only silence. Oranges rolled out of a bag abandoned on the small deck attached to a house. A barn door flapped open, no animals within. A bowl of food sat in front of a doghouse, but no puppy barked up at the angel.
No villagers. No bodies. An entire group taken without a trace.
37
Elena broke the chill silence. “At least now we know how she’s doing it.” A glance at Raphael. “Could be in conjunction with another volunteer acolyte . . . or maybe she’s gone beyond that.”
“I will send an alert to those in charge. The people of China must be warned to get out of the way should they see such a fog.” Doing nothing in these circumstances wasn’t an option. “Dmitri, send the recording to others of the Cadre, under my seal.”