Wait, hbeebti, he said when he felt Elena stiffen beside him. Andreja is not a cruel angel.

Today, she took in the dark pink scars that ridged the white of Laric’s face. They went from just below his hairline all the way through to his throat and farther. Of his face, only a single section around his left eye and cheekbone was smooth and unmarked. His shoulders had gone rigid at Andreja’s actions, his hands motionless on her flesh.

“Hvala, small one,” the female angel said with a slow smile that held not pity but something that had color crawling under Laric’s skin before he ducked his head and began to work on her leg again. “You have gentle hands.”

Ooooooh. With that, Elena tugged Raphael away and out of the infirmary. “Did she just hit on Laric?” she asked outside, a grin curving her features.

“He could do far worse.” Of an age that she saw below the skin, Andreja would have a care for the wounded angel’s body—and heart. “From what I have seen, she does not mind being the one who initiates a courtship, but she will not coerce or force if Laric indicates he doesn’t welcome her attentions.”

“I hope she gets a chance to find out.” Elena’s smile faded, the small moment of happiness dying under the weight of war. “What she said about the effect of the bite . . . Death’s not the aim, is it? If it happens, it’s as part of a process to a kind of reborn state.”

“I fear you are right.” He brushed the back of his hand over her cheek. “Elena, my wildfire isn’t regenerating fast enough to repel Lijuan should she strike again today.”

A tightening at the corners of her eyes.

He kissed her before she could speak. I have no regrets. Without his Elena by his side, he wouldn’t have wanted to fight for the world, wouldn’t have wanted to save it. I would rather fall as Raphael than win as a puppet of the Cascade.

Her lips trembled as they parted. “I would still rather die as Elena than live as a shadow.”

“So, we are agreed.” Pressing his forehead to hers, he wrapped her up in his wings.

An instant of love stolen from the crawling dark whispering at their door.

55

We have to rethink our plans,” he told his senior people only minutes later, all of them gathered around Dmitri’s strategy table in the war room. On that table was a full three-dimensional reconstruction of the battle zone.

Joining Aodhan, Illium, Dmitri, Venom, Jason, and Elena were Vivek Kapur, the members of Elena’s Guard, as well as Sara Haziz. While not a part of the Tower, Sara represented all the hunters on the ground and needed the knowledge to be discussed here.

Her husband, Deacon, was a brutally qualified hunter but he was an even better weapons-maker. He was working nonstop in a workshop lower down in the Tower, alongside a team he’d hand-selected. Their task was to repair broken weapons as they came in, discard what couldn’t be fixed, and make new ones.

The last person at the table was Suyin, here to offer any insight she could on her aunt.

“The size of her army changes everything,” Aodhan agreed, the glittering filaments of his wings streaked with rust red and his hair sweat damp. “I’ve never seen or heard of the like.”

“I missed it.” Jason rarely showed his emotions, but today, his shoulders were bunched, his spine rigid. “I can’t understand how. I personally confirmed the numbers I gave you. Those were the only fighters she had at her various strongholds.”

“I might have an answer,” Vivek Kapur said. “It’s weird as shit.” He lifted up the tablet he had on his lap. “I’ve been watching the battle from every angle I can, trying to feed the computers enough data that we can begin to predict their moves.”

Raphael had battle-honed generals for that—and he had Dmitri. His second’s brain was a steel trap when it came to battle strategy. But he wasn’t about to disparage a man this intelligent. “What did you discover?”

“A lot—and I mean, a lot—of the fighters don’t look like trained combatants,” he said. “Angels are pretty much all in shape, but these ones don’t have the look of honed warriors.” He brought up a set of images on his tablet.

“Put it up here,” Dmitri directed, touching something on the side of the table.

A large screen opened out from the ceiling, directly above the table.

“Give me one sec.” Vivek’s fingers moved over his tablet. “There.”

Raphael saw what the young vampire had meant the instant he set eyes on the images.

“I know him.” Jason pointed to an angel with his sword raised and teeth bared, the whites of his eyes showing. “Junior librarian in a minor court. No combat skills.” He pointed to another angel, went motionless. “She’s combat trained but belongs to Titus.”

All of them went silent for long moments.

“It appears we may find ourselves fighting friends,” Raphael said at last. “Warn your squadrons—and remember, it is unlikely they are acting of their free will.” Titus’s people were notoriously devoted to their archangel. “Do to them what we would expect them to do for us were our positions reversed and we were the ones being controlled.”

“I’m not sure they’re even actually alive,” Vivek ventured, his face pale under his brown skin. “I know they look it, but . . . Here.” He threw up another image.

It showed an angel with wings of speckled light brown sinking his teeth into Andreja’s arm—who was in the process of smashing the spiked ball of her morning star club into his head. A flail swung from her other hand, that spiked ball on its way to crushing the biter’s ribs.

“Talk about psycho eyes.” Arms folded across her chest and booted feet set apart, Elena stared at the biter’s visage. “There’s nothing there.”

She was right. The fighter looked dead, the lack of expression eerie.

“His eyes are black.” Illium came to stand beside Elena, their wings overlapping slightly—but no energy jumped from Elena’s wings to Bluebell’s. “Hardly anyone in the world, mortal or immortal, has eyes of pure black, but I came up against a number of other fighters with the same eyes. You can’t distinguish pupil from iris.”

Raphael recalled his own sense of unease about two of the enemy angels. It had been the eyes, he realized—too black, too flat.

Vivek threw up image after image of blank-eyed warriors, their gazes black. Jason identified half of them as belonging to archangels other than Lijuan. It was a small mercy they hadn’t yet come face-to-face with one of their own.

“Vivek,” Elena murmured, “can you find more images of the junior librarian Jason pointed out? I want to see him in battle.”

“Should be doable. This facial rec software is great, but it needs . . .” His words mumbled off as he worked.

Jason stirred again, his wings rustling as he stepped closer to the screen. “I don’t understand how she is even here.” He pointed to a female angel whose full breasts bulged from the sides of her improperly fitted armor. “She gave birth to a child two months early—and that was a mere week before China went dark. She was meant to rest and recover, then fly to the Refuge with the babe in the company of a healer.”

Sara Haziz spoke for the first time, her tone shards of flint. “Her breasts are engorged with milk.”

“A premature angelic infant needs near-constant contact with their mother to have any chance of survival.” Raphael had stood watch in the nursery as a youth, watched worried mothers cradle their early-born babes to their bare skin hour after hour.

“Got it.” Vivek replaced the photographs on the screen with a recording.

The librarian angel with no combat training sliced and cut through his opponents without pause. His movements were fluid, his reaction time that of a well-trained warrior. His expression, however, never changed. Whether he struck a blow or took one, the dead blankness of his eyes was a constant.

Raphael stared at the images, then he thought of the angels he’d seen in the infirmary and what his consort had said in the aftermath. “I think the reborn are already among us.”

“That’s impossible.” Illium shook his head. “She made reborn with mortals. These are angels.”

“Charisemnon was able to impact immortals,” Dmitri argued. “It’s possible.”

“Except for the meeting in India,” Jason murmured, “Charisemnon has stayed closeted in his palace for months. My spies glimpsed him now and then, but he never appeared outside, even within his own grounds.”

Raphael remembered that report, but as Michaela had so cleverly used to her advantage, immortals oftentimes decided to withdraw from the world. Charisemnon had been available to the Cadre and in being so, had fulfilled his obligations. His sociability or lack of it had been no concern of his fellow archangels.

“They did it together.” It was a certainty in Raphael’s blood. “Whatever created this abomination of death and life, it involves both Charisemnon and Lijuan.”

The Archangel of Disease and the Archangel of Death.

“His ‘gift’ turned on him last time,” Elena said. “You think he’d have risked it?”

“He recovered. If it happens again, he no doubt believes he’ll recover.”

“That might’ve been a miscalculation,” Ashwini said, a throwing star held absently in one hand. “Might be his ability kills him this time—not directly, but by weakening his body in ways that aren’t visible on the surface. If I were Cadre, I wouldn’t want to battle Titus at less than full strength.”

“That just your hope, cher,” Janvier drawled, “or will our dreams come true and Charisemnon will rot from within?”

Secreting away the throwing star, Ashwini made a face. “I can’t tell.”

Izak stood silent and awed next to them.

“Even if Charisemnon dies,” Raphael said, “the damage is done. He and Lijuan have created a plague upon immortals.”