And Elena was still too far away to help.
Think Elena! Why had it worked with Aodhan but not Raphael?
Because he is an archangel, child. The voice was old and tired and heavy with Sleep. You cannot interfere in the wars of archangels.
That’s bullshit, Elena said, not having the time or the inclination to be startled by Cassandra’s reappearance. If I’d been a fucking battery, I’d have interfered wouldn’t I? But thanks for the tip.
Willing to believe that the Cascade could be so arbitrary, she focused on Illium instead. Fast as he was, he’d outpaced his squadron and was about to fly directly into the line of fire, had nearly a hundred percent chance of being badly wounded before the rest of the warriors caught up with him.
Not my Bluebell, she thought, letting all her fear and anger coalesce into a hard knot in her gut.
Her breath came in pants when she appeared beside him.
“Ellie!”
“Cover me!” She dove in front of him while he shattered the sky around her with his power, driving off would-be assailants. It wasn’t as good as if she’d come out next to Raphael, but it was good enough.
Ignoring the death bolts the fucking Queen of the Dead was throwing her way, she fired the grenade launcher. Lijuan ignored it. Of course she did. She didn’t pay attention to mortal things. Or a baby angel.
Elena dropped at the same moment, screaming at Bluebell to do the same.
Lijuan’s poisonous spray flew over them to smash into the buildings at their backs. And the grenade went straight into Lijuan’s chest . . . or it would have if she hadn’t smashed her hand across it at the last moment. But all was not lost. Because the thing blew up as her hand connected with it. It took her hand and a section of her ribs with it, while peeling back part of her face to reveal the skeletal understructure.
Elena fired again while the bitch was distracted, and this time, she aimed for the lower half of Lijuan’s body. The grenade punched out the side of her hip and amputated her thigh. Raphael slammed Lijuan with wildfire at the same time, aiming for an open wound.
The Archangel of China went noncorporeal.
Elena had a moment of hope, thinking she’d turned tail and run. But the sky erupted with shards of starlight obsidian a moment later . . . right on top of the incoming squadrons. Angel after angel went down, even as Raphael and Elijah attacked a rematerialized Lijuan. She was bleeding and listing badly to one side, and her face was straight out of a horror film, but she had enough power to make a return volley before she flew toward her troops.
Half wrapped protectively around her as an escort, while the other half continued to fight. But with Illium, Andreas, Nimra, and Nazarach all here with their highly trained squadrons, along with two archangels, the advantage was now on their side.
Archangel, Galen and Aodhan need backup!
Eli is going to them. I need to clear up the mess on the ground. Venom’s ground teams are already overwhelmed on the port side and Jason is taking care of a skirmish to the west.
That was when Elena saw the scuttling movements below. Landing on the nearest roof, she flipped open weapons lockers until she found a flamethrower. Raphael beat her down and used his power to burn the things up before they could scramble any deeper into Manhattan, but there were a fucking lot of them.
While he took care of larger groups as battle raged overhead in a clash of swords, she flew in and out through gaps and alleys, burning up the loners sneaking through. She saw fallen angels as she flew, sent their coordinates to Dmitri to organize rescue—while she crisped the reborn trying to get to those angels.
“Hurry!” she yelled into the mike on her collar. “There’re too many wounded angels. The reborn are heading straight for them!” To Elena it seemed they were acting with resolve and planning.
They’re being guided. Raphael’s voice in her mind. Look for a vampire at the head of each group.
Elena switched focus. There. She flew right over the bastard and turned him to flame. She took no pleasure in his scream, but he had to die. As he did, she saw things crawling out of him and scuttling quickly away. Her blood ran cold. Raphael, they’re bringing in the insects!
A breath of cold in her mind she could almost feel. This part of the city is now infected. A moment while I take care of the aerial assault—there is no point in accumulating power to fight Lijuan if she takes the city by stealth.
Elena had to turn away from the furious blaze of his power as he raked angelfire across Lijuan’s troops. Ash fell like rain from the sky. She tried not to think about what she was breathing in—but Raphael’s deadly assault achieved its intended outcome. Lijuan’s people retreated en masse.
Elijah had achieved the same outcome by the port.
Raphael’s next order to the ground and aerial troops was to evacuate their wounded and create a fireline that would encompass a large chunk of the city. As soon as that was done, the area clear of their people, Raphael began to rain down hell on the infected area. Standing watch on top of a skyscraper just behind the blaze of the fireline, Elena watched and felt tears burn her throat, her eyes.
New York was going up in flame and that bitch Lijuan was responsible. Her and her disease-ridden friend. The only mercy was that the entire city had been evacuated of noncombatants. “We’ll rise again,” she promised herself and all their people.
Another woman stood not far from her, her moonlight hair dancing in the hot winds and her armor glowing in the firelight. “It is a horrible truth to accept that the person I most hate in this world, the person who is my worst nightmare, is so far beyond me in power that I can never do her harm.”
“But you’ll try anyway, won’t you?” Sometimes, you had to fight the monsters even if you knew you’d fail—as a frightened and traumatized ten-year-old Elena had fought Slater Patalis while Ari and Belle’s blood was an iron-rich scent that clogged her throat.
“Yes.” Suyin’s murmur was a soft vow, the weight of her presence a portentous heaviness. “To the death.”
It took pathetically little time to erase so much of Elena’s beloved city. The angelfire not only razed buildings, leaving a smoking red ruin of earth, it ate up the reborn and any insects they’d brought with them. Do we have to worry about the side Venom’s ground team is handling? she asked her archangel as she swallowed her tears for her city.
No. He landed next to her, his wings aglow and his eyes chips of Antarctic glaciers. There have been no reports of insects there—I don’t think they can be controlled. Even Lijuan wouldn’t risk releasing them so close to her own people.
Below them, the lost part of their city smoldered.
61
Once the casualties from the engagement were tallied up, Raphael discovered that, together, he and Elijah had lost an entire squadron of strong, powerful warriors. Rage burned in him, but it was a cold hard thing. He couldn’t afford to be hot, to give in to the sorrow that bit at his throat. To lose warriors in battle was a thing that could not be fought. But he had never lost so many so rapidly.