“I can’t see any burns, so I might forgive you for giving me a heart attack when you flew out with lightning chasing you.”
“Immortals don’t get heart attacks.”
“Look closely. This is my not-laughing face.”
Dismissing the Legion, Raphael wrapped himself in glamour while grabbing hold of his consort, so that she, too, was hidden from the world. Her wings danced stormlight over him, her lips meeting his as if they’d choreographed the contact.
It was a hard branding of a kiss and it held her heart.
He felt the thud of her pulse, tasted the bite of her fear. As she’d soothed him at times, he did the same to her now.
She broke the kiss at last with a suckling taste of his lower lip. “Okay, you’re okay,” she said, pure warrior strength and granite resolve. “Raphael.”
He understood. She’d convinced the small, irrational part of her that worried about an archangel’s hurt that he was all right. She could breathe again. Her heartbeat could turn normal again.
He flew her the rest of the way home. She didn’t protest, just wrapped one arm around the back of his neck and watched their city grow closer and closer until it was steel and glass and life beneath them. No one saw them, the glamour one of the greatest tools in his arsenal.
Sire. Dmitri’s voice. Jason’s just sent through a disturbing video captured by one of his people in China. I think you should see it as soon as possible.
“Dmitri has more weirdness for us, hbeebti,” he said aloud while mentally acknowledging Dmitri’s words. “This time from China.”
“Oh yay, my excitement knows no bounds.” A distinctly unenthusiastic tone. “I think immortals should make a rule—once you get to be a certain age, it’s time to go Sleep off the crazy. Not an option. Compulsory.”
“You should discuss your thoughts with my mother.”
“You are a horrible man sometimes.” She was yet scowling when he landed on the balcony outside Dmitri’s office, but the first thing she did was run her hands over his chest and arms, then go behind him and do the same with his wings and back.
“Uninjured.” Hands on her hips in front of him, she nodded. “You’re permitted to talk to Dmitri.”
“So much concern, Elena. I will worry you have no faith in me.”
A tightness to her jaw. “Don’t mess with me, Archangel. I am not in the mood.” Turning, she strode toward Dmitri’s door.
It was only when he saw himself reflected in the glass surface of the large window that was the back of Dmitri’s office that he understood her rattled response. His hair was singed at the edges and still smoking a little. His chest was covered with streaks of black smoke and his skin opened and closed in random spots with bursts of golden lightning.
Smoke curled out from the bottoms of his boots.
His eyes glowed. So hot it was as if he had a blue flame in his irises.
Elena walked through the door Dmitri had opened; Dmitri was momentarily silent when Raphael followed. Raphael picked off a shred of tunic that was somehow still stuck to his biceps, and dropped it in the wastebasket by Dmitri’s desk.
“I blame you,” his second said to Elena. “He didn’t think about frying himself in lightning bolts before you.”
Raphael waited for Elena to snap a quick comeback at Dmitri. He had the sneaking suspicion the two of them thrived on their animosity toward one another. He also knew that if push came to shove, they would fight as a battle-hardened unit. This was an amusement, nothing more.
Today, however, Elena pressed her lips together and looked down at the carpet. Frowning at the unexpected response, Dmitri went to the large screen on one wall of his office and played the recording he’d already cued up: waves of black smoke engulfed a village.
“A fire?” Raphael murmured, right as the recording panned out. The black fog was emerging from the ground about a quarter of a mile out. It wasn’t moving at dangerous speed, but the people in the recording did nothing to get away. As it brushed over them, they just waved at it as you might at an insect that was annoying you.
It was clear the villagers believed the fog would soon retreat or be blown away, but what happened was something else altogether. Once the strange fog had spread across the entire village, it hunkered down and turned opaque. The camera could no longer see through the thickness of it. No more faces. No more waving hands. Nothing but an endless night.
Expression grim, Dmitri brought up another file. “This was recorded the following day.” The fog had all but dissipated, but when the angel holding the camera flew down to take a closer look, he found only silence. Oranges rolled out of a bag abandoned on the small deck attached to a house. A barn door flapped open, no animals within. A bowl of food sat in front of a doghouse, but no puppy barked up at the angel.
No villagers. No bodies. An entire group taken without a trace.
37
Elena broke the chill silence. “At least now we know how she’s doing it.” A glance at Raphael. “Could be in conjunction with another volunteer acolyte . . . or maybe she’s gone beyond that.”
“I will send an alert to those in charge. The people of China must be warned to get out of the way should they see such a fog.” Doing nothing in these circumstances wasn’t an option. “Dmitri, send the recording to others of the Cadre, under my seal.”
His second nodded and turned his attention to the task.
Raphael, meanwhile, asked Elena to walk outside with him.
Only once they were out on the edge of the railingless balcony, their city spread out below them like a toy creation, did he say, “Why did you allow Dmitri’s jibe to get to you?” It had disconcerted his second, too. Dmitri only acted the way he did with Elena because she gave as good as he dished out.
“It just struck me.” She stared out at the steel and glass and vibrancy of their city. “This craziness began with me—with a mortal turned angel. What if I was the catalyst for the Cascade? All this death and darkness and horror, it’d be on me.”
“It could as easily be said that Uram was the catalyst.” Raphael felt sorrow for the archangel he’d had to execute, an archangel who’d once been his friend, but he also knew that it’d had to be done. Uram had become a monster, one who gorged on death and whose murderous appetite would never be satisfied. “It’s what brought you into my life.”
Elena played a throwing knife through her fingers, the fading winter light glancing off the shining surfaces. “I try to tell myself that, but . . . I’m the wild card element in all of this. Archangels, angels, mortals, vampires, that was the world before me. Now we have an angel-Made.”
“Naasir would be most annoyed at you for forgetting him.”
But Elena’s gaze remained solemn. “Naasir and I should begin a club for all the ones who don’t quite fit on the taxonomic tree.”
“You were just the first whisper of the Cascade, Elena-mine. Not the catalyst, for no one can control such powers as are currently smashing the world, but the first sign that the Cascade had begun.”
Allowing him to haul her close, Elena stroked his skin . . . and jumped. “You’re a little electrified, lover,” she informed him, while continuing with her caresses. “I don’t know if I like being the first sign of impending doom any better.” A scowl. “Still, it beats being the cause.”
“What arrogance you have, Guild Hunter, to think you are the reason behind a tumult of power such as the world has never seen.”
“Jeez, you’re right.” She bumped her forehead against his chest. “I must sound so full of myself.”
He went to reassure her that he’d meant nothing of what he’d said, then paused. His words had worked. Not in the way he’d wanted, but they’d broken through the shadowy miasma that had threatened to encompass Elena. So he curved his hand around the side of her neck and said, “It is the curse of immortality. You must watch against further development.”
She tilted back her head. “Fiend.” She “punched” him in the side, the touch featherlight. “Also, Dmitri’s now one point up on me. Ugh.”
“You’ve forgotten the kiss.”
Her eyes brightened at the reminder of Dmitri’s utter horror. Satisfaction curling her lips, she pressed a kiss to his chest, shivered. “Yep, still electrified.”
“And filthy. Come.” He rose up into the air as night licked the horizon. “You can wash my back.”
* * *
• • •
Elena put on soft gray pajama pants after a delicious bath with Raphael, topping them with an equally soft tank in a darker gray and a deep blue hoodie—both designed with wing slits. The hoodie boasted a sparkly silver unicorn on the left breast, while on the back were printed the words: Wait, I have to park my unicorn.
“I miss the time when unicorns roamed the earth.”
“Very funny, Archangel.” She knew that glint in his eye by now. “Beth got this for me after Maggie picked it out.”
“Talking of gifts.” Wearing only a pair of faded sweatpants that hung precariously on his hips, Raphael plucked out a small box from inside their private weapons locker.
Elena’s breath caught. Slipping a hand under her pillow, she withdrew her own small box. “I was going to spring it on you in bed.”
Raphael’s wings began to glow.
Opening his box, he held it out. The last time, it had been small amber hoops appropriate for a working hunter. This time, it was studs: one an amber crossbow bolt with a heart of white fire, the other a tiny crossbow that must’ve taken an artisan days to craft. She held her breath as he inserted first one, then the other through ears she’d had pierced a couple of weeks ago.
Neither of them spoke as she opened her own box. A ring because Raphael wasn’t much for other forms of jewelry. A heavy titanium band scored with a pattern that echoed the gunshot scar on his wing, a roughly square chunk of amber in the center. An explosion of white fire had been caught in the amber, the edges pale gold.