She was right. The fighter looked dead, the lack of expression eerie.
“His eyes are black.” Illium came to stand beside Elena, their wings overlapping slightly—but no energy jumped from Elena’s wings to Bluebell’s. “Hardly anyone in the world, mortal or immortal, has eyes of pure black, but I came up against a number of other fighters with the same eyes. You can’t distinguish pupil from iris.”
Raphael recalled his own sense of unease about two of the enemy angels. It had been the eyes, he realized—too black, too flat.
Vivek threw up image after image of blank-eyed warriors, their gazes black. Jason identified half of them as belonging to archangels other than Lijuan. It was a small mercy they hadn’t yet come face-to-face with one of their own.
“Vivek,” Elena murmured, “can you find more images of the junior librarian Jason pointed out? I want to see him in battle.”
“Should be doable. This facial rec software is great, but it needs . . .” His words mumbled off as he worked.
Jason stirred again, his wings rustling as he stepped closer to the screen. “I don’t understand how she is even here.” He pointed to a female angel whose full breasts bulged from the sides of her improperly fitted armor. “She gave birth to a child two months early—and that was a mere week before China went dark. She was meant to rest and recover, then fly to the Refuge with the babe in the company of a healer.”
Sara Haziz spoke for the first time, her tone shards of flint. “Her breasts are engorged with milk.”
“A premature angelic infant needs near-constant contact with their mother to have any chance of survival.” Raphael had stood watch in the nursery as a youth, watched worried mothers cradle their early-born babes to their bare skin hour after hour.
“Got it.” Vivek replaced the photographs on the screen with a recording.
The librarian angel with no combat training sliced and cut through his opponents without pause. His movements were fluid, his reaction time that of a well-trained warrior. His expression, however, never changed. Whether he struck a blow or took one, the dead blankness of his eyes was a constant.
Raphael stared at the images, then he thought of the angels he’d seen in the infirmary and what his consort had said in the aftermath. “I think the reborn are already among us.”
“That’s impossible.” Illium shook his head. “She made reborn with mortals. These are angels.”
“Charisemnon was able to impact immortals,” Dmitri argued. “It’s possible.”
“Except for the meeting in India,” Jason murmured, “Charisemnon has stayed closeted in his palace for months. My spies glimpsed him now and then, but he never appeared outside, even within his own grounds.”
Raphael remembered that report, but as Michaela had so cleverly used to her advantage, immortals oftentimes decided to withdraw from the world. Charisemnon had been available to the Cadre and in being so, had fulfilled his obligations. His sociability or lack of it had been no concern of his fellow archangels.
“They did it together.” It was a certainty in Raphael’s blood. “Whatever created this abomination of death and life, it involves both Charisemnon and Lijuan.”
The Archangel of Disease and the Archangel of Death.
“His ‘gift’ turned on him last time,” Elena said. “You think he’d have risked it?”
“He recovered. If it happens again, he no doubt believes he’ll recover.”
“That might’ve been a miscalculation,” Ashwini said, a throwing star held absently in one hand. “Might be his ability kills him this time—not directly, but by weakening his body in ways that aren’t visible on the surface. If I were Cadre, I wouldn’t want to battle Titus at less than full strength.”
“That just your hope, cher,” Janvier drawled, “or will our dreams come true and Charisemnon will rot from within?”
Secreting away the throwing star, Ashwini made a face. “I can’t tell.”
Izak stood silent and awed next to them.
“Even if Charisemnon dies,” Raphael said, “the damage is done. He and Lijuan have created a plague upon immortals.”
Elena’s head snapped up and he knew she’d made the connection to the story the Legion told of the Cascade of Terror. An archangel had created a plague back then as well. As a result, a poisoned angelkind had chosen to Sleep in the hope they could wait out the poison—and woken to find a new people had been born in their absence. A people who held their salvation.
The toxin created back then still lived in the cells of each and every angel and archangel. Only by purging it into humankind at certain intervals could they stop from turning into bloodborn monsters. Vampires were the accidental byproduct of that purging.
“Sire.” Jason’s quiet but potent tone. “I’ve just watched a small part of the battle on Vivek’s device.” He passed the tablet back to the vampire. “It appears that each squadron of reborn fighters is led by a living fighter.”
“What happens if you kill that leader?” Illium muttered. “Are they connected to him somehow? Is he—or she—the source of their martial skills?”
“Possible.” As possible was the fact they might’ve all been imprinted from the same source—Xi was a skilled warrior and he’d have no compunction in opening himself up to his goddess. “Regardless, brief all squadrons to try and take out the leader.” If nothing else, it’d confuse the group. “Warn your people to avoid being bitten by the other side at all costs, on the ground or in the sky. If that means a broken leg or a gunshot wound, take it.”
Everyone nodded.
“I’ll warn the healers to use biohazard protocols on any bite victims.” Vivek slipped away to make the call.
“We’ve got ordinary reborn on the ground.” This from Dmitri, who’d stepped away for a moment, one finger pressed to his ear. “One of my reconnaissance team’s sighted them shuffling around a surviving container.”
“City firelines are ready,” Janvier said. “Ashwini and I took our teams out, checked them one last time before all hell broke loose. Give the word and the flames go up at the same time the ground opens up.”
To destroy his own city was a decision no archangel took lightly, but Raphael had authorized this destruction to save the rest of his territory. They’d lose two skyscrapers, badly damage part of the port area, but the destruction would make it near impossible for the reborn on the ground to get through to their side.
Lijuan’s troops would no doubt retaliate by flying the reborn across, but it’d be a far slower invasion than hordes of infected flowing into the streets of Manhattan. “If I’m in battle, Dmitri makes the call.”