No forklifts or other vehicles moved in the container area, industrious ants going about their business. Day or night, no major port was ever this quiet. Someone was always coming in or shipping out.
The drone pilot flew deeper into the city.
The only sounds picked up by the drone’s systems were the lap of the waves and a dull banging that sounded as if a loose piece of wood was whacking up against the metal side of a ship.
The drone zeroed in on a large warehouse emblazoned with Chinese characters. It had huge openings on either side where roller doors had been pulled up.
It is the fish market such as on our own port, Raphael translated silently for her.
The noisy, busy place where restauranteurs and shopkeepers came early in the day to bid on fish auctions and haggle over the freshest catch. Of course, a few other locals always wandered in, too—you could often get the “leftovers” for trade prices.
The drone flew inside the market.
Bodies lay everywhere. Behind the large display counters full of a mix of rotting and desiccated fish, in the wide aisles, near pallets stacked with boxes ready for the refrigerated trucks that had to be waiting out back, under a massive central scale the market must’ve used for its showier auctions.
Unlike in the villages, these people had been afraid when they died.
Their corpses lay huddled against walls or curled up in balls on the floor, arms around one another and faces contorted.
Elena didn’t realize she was crying until the wet streaked her cheeks. She let the tears fall—some things were beyond politics or games of power. The desiccated body of a small dog lay cradled in the lap of a woman hunched protectively over her pet. A woman’s mouth was open in a scream as she reached out a hand in a futile cry for help.
Elena dashed away her tears. “Go back there.”
Caliane didn’t hesitate to give the drone operator the order despite the abrupt way Elena had made her demand. “What do you see with your hunter’s eyes, Consort?”
“That woman”—Elena’s face burned hot, then cold—“she’s wearing a baby carrier. The ones mortals and young vampires wear in the front so the baby can be up against their heart.”
The drone operator zoomed in on Caliane’s orders, but there was no dead child in the carrier. The woman’s outstretched hand took on a terrible new meaning.
“They stole her child.” Michaela’s voice, tight with rage.
The drone flew out of the market. Its mechanical eye soon discovered haunting evidence of more lost children: abandoned marbles outside a shop, a rattle lying on the street, balls sitting in gutters, a small and sparkly shoe drowning in a puddle, a schoolbag dropped on the ground.
Then the drones hit what should’ve been a heavily populated port city.
Silence.
Corpses.
A reign of death.
48
Elena felt as if she’d aged five hundred years by the time Neha and Caliane told the drone operators to stand down.
“We can do nothing at this instant,” Caliane said at last, lines of sorrow carved into her features. “Lijuan remains within her borders and we have no way to penetrate the fog.”
“We wait,” was the consensus.
Elena managed to keep her silence until the Cadre was gone from the room. “How can you all still say she has a right to her territory! Look at what she’s done!” Her voice shook, her muscles bunched.
“These are our laws, Elena.” Raphael’s jaw as hard as stone, his eyes metallic in their remoteness. “Else war would be a constant and the world awash in blood.”
Giving a scream, Elena turned and kicked a wall. “Titus and Charisemnon have been fighting forever! And we hunted Uram!”
“A conflict between two archangels is a far different thing from the Cadre interceding in another territory.” Lightning cracked his skin, but his eyes were frost. “Uram broke a far more fundamental law prior to the hunt order being decided, you know this. That law stands above all others but it does not apply here. Lijuan’s madness is not the kind for which it was written.”
She knew he was right. That just made it worse. No matter how ugly and awful an atrocity Lijuan had committed, if the rest of the Cadre breached her borders in a martial strike, they permanently destabilized the world’s power structure. Once an archangel was assigned a territory, it was theirs to rule as they saw fit.
No exceptions but for the one that had tripped up Uram.
As long as Lijuan kept her evil confined to her territory, the Cadre couldn’t touch her without throwing open a door that could never again be closed. Because what had been done once, even if done under exigent circumstances, could be done again and again—no archangel could ever again be sure of their status so all would make war to hold on to their right to rule.
“You know mortals are the losers when archangels battle.” Steel edged Raphael’s voice. “It would be their annihilation.”
She stalked back to him. “Do you think I’m mad at you? Argh!” Gripping his hair in her fists, she rose up to kiss him hard and deep before stalking back to kick the wall again. “I’m mad at Lijuan. If she’d been content with the biggest fucking territory in the world, we wouldn’t be looking at mummified bodies and hunting for lost babies.”
“I would argue that, if the Primary is correct about the trigger for the Cascade, it may have all ended up this way regardless.” Raphael’s hair mussed from her fingers, his lips wet from her kiss. “It could’ve been Uram had he managed to keep his blood treachery hidden.”
Elena thought of the naked, violated bodies the dead archangel had discarded like trash, the amputated limbs inserted into the wrong places, the glistening eyeballs held in cupped hands, and shoved a fisted hand against her gut. “Or Charisemnon.”
“Disease run rampant.” Raphael nodded. “Yes, the Cascade would’ve found a receptive mind one way or another.” Eyes of Prussian blue, violent in their purity, locked with her own. “Before you, it could have been me.”
She thought of the cold archangel who’d made her close her hand over a blade, watched her blood drip to the floor, an archangel who’d seen mortals as nothing but pawns to be used and forgotten, and swallowed hard.
“It is a terrifying thing to consider, is it not? We all have a monster inside us Elena, each and every archangel in the world. It is the flip side to such blinding power.” He backed her up against the wall, his hands braced on either side of her head. He was big, had always been big, but it was only at times like this that she really became aware of it—became aware that he was deadly strong, far stronger than her.