“She’s taken out Alexander and Michaela, too,” said another familiar voice.
Raphael glanced over to the sharp-featured man with a muscular upper body who’d come up beside Dmitri in a manual wheelchair. Vivek Kapur passed across a sheet of paper, the dark brown of his skin shining with health. “Dispatch from the border with Persia. Reborn children pouring out there, too. Lijuan doesn’t seem to have targeted the border with Michaela, but she’s gone to assist Alexander.”
“With their territories connected by land, she has no other choice.” Should they fail to stop the scourge in Alexander’s land, the infected would crawl unchecked across a vast geographic area. “Elijah?”
“No adverse reports at this point,” Dmitri said. “No reports at all from the rest of the Cadre, but it hasn’t been long since I fired off my message.”
A whisper of black on the edge of Raphael’s vision. “Jason,” he said. “What have you heard?”
Breath a little jagged—highly unusual for Jason—his spymaster said, “I’ve just received a report from one of my people in Charisemnon’s territory. Nests of reborn are breaking out all over his lands, killing and infecting and rampaging.”
Honor spoke for the first time, her forehead wrinkled. “I thought the entire Cadre took precautions?”
“Lijuan’s a smart operator.” Dmitri stared unseeing at a blank screen. “I bet those reborn were smuggled in during her “Sleep” and someone’s been feeding the fuckers in the interim.”
“Those things feed on blood and living flesh.” Elena’s hand was bone white on the handle of her blade, her thigh pressed up against his and the stormfire of her wing tangled with his feathers. “And they can’t make other reborn from nothing.”
Raphael considered her point. “The keeper or keepers must’ve hunted locals with stealth over a long period, so the disappearances wouldn’t be noticed.”
Vivek Kapur had been bent over a tablet in his lap, now shook his head. “Article in not one but three different local papers report a rash of disappearances in their areas in the past month.”
His fingers flew across the screen with nimble speed. “Looks like each set of disappearances was blamed on a different thing—a bloodlust-ridden vampire, a flash flood, a man-eating pride of lions. Can’t find any articles that cross-link the three incidents.”
A muscle ticked in Dmitri’s jaw. “Someone hasn’t been doing their job.”
Because Dmitri would’ve noticed those disappearances and Raphael would’ve been informed of them. “So Charisemnon is out.” The archangel would have to contain the reborn threat to the African continent before he could render any assistance. “And so is Titus.” The two archangels were in no way allies, but this wasn’t about their differences. It was about a world that would end them all.
Vampires couldn’t feed on reborn. They needed mortals.
And the greatest secret of angelkind was that they needed mortals, too.
“She knows the danger, knows the reborn are a plague that could spread across the entire world,” Elena said, blades in both her hands now, as if she would stab Lijuan in the heart right then and there. “What use is it being goddess of a dying world?”
“She’ll have created a protected zone inside her territory,” Raphael said, Lijuan’s entire genocidal plan suddenly icily clear in his mind. “She intends to win the war, then kill the reborn, and repopulate the world with those loyal to her. It is tempting to call her mad, but she is not mad. She is drunk on her own power.”
“The first wave of the enemy are nearly at the fireline.” Dmitri zoomed in on the image displayed on another screen. It was being transmitted from a device mounted discreetly on a portside skyscraper. That device was one of a multitude. Devoid of the veil provided by their archangel’s powers, Lijuan’s people could not move unseen in his city.
Raphael caught a hint of silver blue at the corner of the screen before it disappeared and knew Illium was out there with his squadron, making the call on when the archers would fire again. Neither Dmitri nor Raphael would interfere. Illium was an experienced squadron commander, the decision one that had to be made in the field of battle.
The arrows fired all at once half a minute later. A cascade of fire arced down into the mass of enemy combatants heading for the city, but a single precision set were aimed at the floating buoys of fuel. The impact would contaminate the water, but that couldn’t be helped—if Lijuan took New York, millions would die.
If he won, his people would clean the water.
The arrows flew silently to their destinations. The buoy archers had been chosen because they could shoot with near-impossible accuracy. Three of the team were guild hunters, one a mortal who competed in archery as a sport, the rest a mix of angels and vampires. Since no one could predict if all the archers would be in the city at any one time, the shooting team could be put together from double the necessary number.
The arrow points slammed into the buoys while the enemy was focused on the fiery threat from above, the buoy skins designed to puncture under such an impact. Flames shot up with explosive force . . . and angels fell screaming from the skies, their wings destroyed.
Every muscle in Raphael’s body clenched.
He had witnessed the Falling, seen the broken bodies and torn wings of their wounded and dead. To see any angel plummet from the sky was a repellant sight, but these winged warriors had come to murder his people.
A strong, slightly callused hand sliding into his. He curled his fingers over hers as she curled hers over his, and together, they watched Lijuan’s army come to a halt beyond the flaming wall of fire—an impressive sight, but not enough to be a deterrent once you could see it.
Coming over that wall however, was an endless hail of burning arrows.
Illium had taken charge of arrow production and created a stockpile so massive that his archers could keep going for days, with one set resting while the others fired. Those men and women were tough to the bone, would shoot until their hands bled and then they’d wrap them up and shoot again.
Lijuan’s fighters hesitated just out of reach of the arrows. Several warriors dropped to the water, going to the rescue of the burned angels. Angels couldn’t easily be killed by fire, not unless they were burned down to the bone. Then, without warning, the entire army reversed course to the sky, a massive vee of power and violence.
52
Cowards are abandoning their wounded.” Dmitri spat out the words. “It’ll tank morale among her troops.”
“No,” Raphael murmured, “they’re too devoted to her. She is their goddess and the burned ones will consider it their sacrifice to sink down to the ocean floor until they can be retrieved. The ones with enough wing surface left to float may survive. Most will die.”