The same breeze also lifted more feathers into the air. They surrounded Lijuan in a soft halo that glowed with the power reflected off her wings.
Lijuan looked up at the feathers. Smiled.
Hers is not a power I can match, Guild Hunter.
To hear Raphael say that so bluntly, it made the rock on her heart crushingly heavier. That’s because you don’t feed on the life of others. She locked her hand with his, this lethal archangel who would never do to his own what Lijuan had just done. We’ll fight her with honor and with our people by our side, not shriveled into husks.
“Oh, fuck.” Vivek’s bitten-out words wrenched her attention back to the screen.
The mummies were crumbling into dust under the glow of the dark orange evening sunlight. All except for a layer of bodies on the bottom edges . . . who were attempting to crawl out and away from the mound.
Elena’s brain couldn’t make sense of it. No one who looked like that should be able to move. The crawlers’ wings were featherless lumps of flesh that curled inward, their bones looking broken or partially disintegrated. As she fought not to bring up her last meal, the fingers of one snapped under him as he attempted to drag the remains of his body forward. His face was all but gone, caved in, his eyes missing.
Striding across the screen, Xi began to behead the “survivors” one by one, with clinical efficiency. It was an act of mercy by a commander, except that you couldn’t call it that, not when Xi had stood by Lijuan in all of this. It didn’t take him long to behead all the crawlers and step back to his position beside his goddess.
Lijuan sent out power in a languid wave, disintegrating the remains into dust.
That dust rose into the air.
Vivek’s fingers went rigid on the wheels of his chair. “We’re all going to be breathing that in.”
Elena lifted a hand to her mouth and ran from the room.
No one said a word when she returned after emptying her stomach. Raphael put his arm around her while Sara passed her a bottle of water. As she drank, she saw that she wasn’t the only one with a white face. Further, Izak and Suyin were also missing.
Both returned to be handed their own bottles of water.
Elena reached out a free hand to take Izzy’s. He let her, cuddling in surreptitiously on one side of her. She loved her archangel all the more that he let the young angel be, though Izzy’s wings had to be dangerously close to touching his own.
“What did I miss?” It came out husky, her throat raw.
“That commander bowing down on one knee to Lijuan,” her best friend told her, while Illium said something to Suyin that made the tight pain of her expression soften. Trust Bluebell to get through to a woman so wounded she had no faith in anyone.
“The two left together,” Ashwini added. “The queen and her knight.”
“That’s exactly how Xi sees himself,” Dmitri said, his cheekbones sharp against his bronzed skin. “Any luck getting us another visual on them, V?”
“Not yet.” Vivek had his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed bloodlessly tight as he worked. “Might be time to activate a crawler.” A sudden stiffness. “Things look like bugs and are super stealthy, but have a much narrower field of view.”
“I suggest a new name,” Aodhan murmured. “Bugs.”
“Yeah, bugs it is.” Vivek took another two seconds. “Bug’s on the move.”
At first, all they saw from the bug’s low position were the windows of the buildings opposite and the odd angel flying low. “Her army isn’t all in uniform this time around,” Elena said, that fact only now registering.
Raphael stirred. “Are all our people marked?”
“Yes,” Dmitri confirmed. “If they aren’t in uniform, they’re wearing armbands signifying their allegiance.” He glanced at Illium. “Bluebell, get your squadron leaders to fly out with extras while we’re in the cease-fire. I don’t want the bands accessible to Lijuan’s troops.”
It was only as Illium headed out that she saw he’d had his hand curled over Aodhan’s brutally fisted one. What nightmares did Sparkle remember, she thought. What ugliness had this stirred up?
His departure left Aodhan and Suyin side by side, and the picture they made was startling: Aodhan’s glittering beauty against the ice white of her skin and hair. A symphony of cold starlight and the heart of the sun.
“No time to make uniforms for such a grand army?” Janvier’s molasses of a voice, slow and easy, but the bayou green of his eyes was as hard as jade.
Ashwini ran a hand down his back. All of them attempting to comfort one another.
“Lack of markings could be on purpose, a way to cause confusion in battle,” Dmitri pointed out.
Jason opened out his wings, settled them back in. “We could turn that around, use her lack of uniforms against her.”
Nodding agreement, Raphael said, “Brief Naasir on the situation so he can utilize it as soon as he arrives. He’s going to be heading into enemy territory.”
“I heard from him just before the cease-fire,” Dmitri said. “He and Galen should be here by morning. They helped Elijah’s people move the vulnerable in the Refuge into the most central stronghold. Jessamy and all the babies and kids are in there, along with the majority of the Medica team. Keir’s missing, said to be in Michaela’s territory.”
Elena thought back, realized the most central Refuge stronghold was Favashi’s. Her people certainly had no loyalty to Lijuan or Charisemnon. Keir must be with Michaela’s child.
If I know him, he’s already left with the babe, Raphael replied. He’ll be making his way to the Refuge along isolated routes. Michaela would not want her child in her territory when Lijuan’s infected present the threat of a plague.
Will he be safe? He was crossing a massive distance in the midst of a war.
My guess is that he’s traveling alone with the child, Raphael said. He should attract no attention, especially as other noncombatants will be fleeing to the Refuge for safety. And Keir is tougher than he looks—this is not the first child he has carried to safe harbor.
On the screen, Vivek’s bug finally caught sight of Lijuan and Xi. The two stood in a large garden-like square that Elena recognized from her flights over the city. It was a semi-private park created for business workers, a bright green haven in the summer months and a pretty place to catch some fresh air in winter.
Yet today, despite the rich hues painted on the snow by the setting sun, the park was a place of shadows. In the center bustled multiple vampires; they were constructing something out of materials they must’ve brought with them in one of the submarines. “What is that?” She leaned in closer to the screen.