“If she does, the Cadre is agreed that all will come here to help defend the city.” He looked up at the moonless sky. “They know that if I fall, so do they and Lijuan’s dark night will spread across the entire world.”
Elena crouched down to stare at the lava moving languorously below. “Same deal if she targets another territory?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter who she attacks, she is a threat to us all.”
A golden-eyed owl swept over the lava . . . and in Elena’s mind stirred an old presence heavy and tired. Child of mortals, Cassandra murmured. Watch the Sea of Atlas. Death comes.
Cassandra?
But the Ancient was gone.
A stone on her chest, she rose to her feet and told Raphael what the Ancient had said. “I don’t know what Sea of Atlas means.”
His already grim expression grew lethal. “It is an old name for the Atlantic. I have squadrons patrolling that and every other border and we now have eyes in the sky.”
“What if she’s figured out a way to make her entire army noncorporeal?” Elena’s mouth dried up. “All those dead, all that power she’s sucked up . . . What if it’s about hiding her assault force?”
“If she can do that, then she has won the war before it begins.”
* * *
• • •
The next day dawned with no sign of a threat on the horizon, but Raphael took Cassandra’s warning seriously: he ordered extra watches in the east, on water and in the sky. He’d just finished reviewing their overall border strategy with Dmitri when Neha called another meeting of the Cadre.
Things had changed in China.
“We have begun to see live people beneath the retreating fog,” reported the Archangel of India before she switched to the feed from a drone.
Thin people with shocked faces stumbled around the mummified remains that littered the streets. Horror scarred the expressions of many, while others were blank-eyed and lost.
It was Elijah who pointed out that all the survivors were young and—aside from their low weights—healthy. “The women are of childbearing age, the men young enough to help raise those children.”
“She has left enough survivors to repopulate her country,” Caliane murmured. “If this is madness, it is a cunning one.”
And still, they didn’t know what had happened to the children.
The fog over China disappeared the next day. Gone without a trace in a matter of seconds. Drone flights over the core of the country discovered several still-living cities . . . but with much smaller populations.
There was just one problem—the warriors, the fighters, were dangerously limited in number. Nothing with which an archangel could hope to defend her territory.
“She knows no one will dare enter,” Alexander bit out. “Not with the death she left on the borders and what happened to Favashi and Antonicus—the threat of a contagion is too great.”
“Your borders?” Astaad asked the impacted archangels. “Your people are safe?”
Neha was the one who replied. “Yes. If it was airborne, it was confined inside the fog.” Her jaw worked. “I have been unable to contact any of mine who were helping to caretake the country.”
“I have also lost people.” Raphael’s anger was a cold, hard thing. “Have any of you managed to initiate communication with your own inside Lijuan’s territory?”
Silence.
So many strong angels gone. It was a catastrophic loss if you considered the angelic birth rate and how many of those warriors had been highly experienced.
“She has begun the war then.” Alexander, his voice razored. “To kill so many of our own when they were placed in China by the Cadre and would’ve stepped down at her return, it is a declaration of war.”
Raphael’s hand fisted as he thought of Gadriel. The angel had taught four-hundred-year-old Raphael how to use a battle axe, his calm, unflappable patience undaunted in the face of the anger Raphael carried within. All that maturity, all that life just gone, destroyed so totally that his parents wouldn’t even have a body to bury. “I am in agreement with Alexander. This is war.”
No one in angelkind would argue against the Cadre’s decision—the terrible loss of mortal and vampiric lives had already begun to make an impact. Immortals weren’t without soul, couldn’t just shrug off mortal deaths on such a scale. But the angelic lives lost? It would hammer home the final terrible blow.
“We will not get to pick the field of battle.” Caliane, her eyes blue fire. “She has poisoned her land to ensure we cannot invade it. Her next act will be to choose where she makes her stand. Prepare for war.”
50
Guild Hunter, Raphael said early afternoon the next day, the bite of winter welcome on his bare arms; he’d chosen to pair a sleeveless white tunic with the deep brown of his tough but battle-scarred pants and equally marked black boots. I am flying out to the lava. Venom’s reported unusual movement.
Wait for me. I just got back from a hand-to-hand combat session with Eve.
Already on the Tower roof, Raphael waited until he saw wings of stormfire take off from one of the balconies before he swept out into the sky. And though he’d said nothing to alert her of his presence, she looked up.
“How is your sister?” he asked once they were at the same altitude.
“Still a little mad at me, but we’ll be good I think.” Solemn eyes searched his face. “Jason have any luck?”
“No.” His spymaster had refused to believe all their people—all Jason’s people—had been murdered so callously. “Not a word, not even from a minor spy in the kitchens.” A vampire so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it would’ve cost Lijuan nothing to allow him to live.
“Damn her.”
Raphael was silent, his anger a black wave.
They flew on until the lava glowed orange in a sea of white.
Venom watched them land with his gaze shielded against the bright snow-reflected light. Slitted like a viper’s and of the same vivid green shade, the vampire’s eyes had been known to inspire fear and fascination both—often in the same individual.
“Sire, Elena.” He motioned his head toward the lava sinkhole, the fine wool of his olive green sweater hugging his shoulders and his legs clad in black cargo pants, his boots scuffed. “It’s begun to bubble. The odd one at first, steady increase over the past hour.”
Though he and Elena had seen the bubbles from above, his consort pressed her face to one of the windows in the fence. “I can’t hear her but she has to be close to—”