Elena’s head snapped up and he knew she’d made the connection to the story the Legion told of the Cascade of Terror. An archangel had created a plague back then as well. As a result, a poisoned angelkind had chosen to Sleep in the hope they could wait out the poison—and woken to find a new people had been born in their absence. A people who held their salvation.

The toxin created back then still lived in the cells of each and every angel and archangel. Only by purging it into humankind at certain intervals could they stop from turning into bloodborn monsters. Vampires were the accidental byproduct of that purging.

“Sire.” Jason’s quiet but potent tone. “I’ve just watched a small part of the battle on Vivek’s device.” He passed the tablet back to the vampire. “It appears that each squadron of reborn fighters is led by a living fighter.”

“What happens if you kill that leader?” Illium muttered. “Are they connected to him somehow? Is he—or she—the source of their martial skills?”

“Possible.” As possible was the fact they might’ve all been imprinted from the same source—Xi was a skilled warrior and he’d have no compunction in opening himself up to his goddess. “Regardless, brief all squadrons to try and take out the leader.” If nothing else, it’d confuse the group. “Warn your people to avoid being bitten by the other side at all costs, on the ground or in the sky. If that means a broken leg or a gunshot wound, take it.”

Everyone nodded.

“I’ll warn the healers to use biohazard protocols on any bite victims.” Vivek slipped away to make the call.

“We’ve got ordinary reborn on the ground.” This from Dmitri, who’d stepped away for a moment, one finger pressed to his ear. “One of my reconnaissance team’s sighted them shuffling around a surviving container.”

“City firelines are ready,” Janvier said. “Ashwini and I took our teams out, checked them one last time before all hell broke loose. Give the word and the flames go up at the same time the ground opens up.”

To destroy his own city was a decision no archangel took lightly, but Raphael had authorized this destruction to save the rest of his territory. They’d lose two skyscrapers, badly damage part of the port area, but the destruction would make it near impossible for the reborn on the ground to get through to their side.

Lijuan’s troops would no doubt retaliate by flying the reborn across, but it’d be a far slower invasion than hordes of infected flowing into the streets of Manhattan. “If I’m in battle, Dmitri makes the call.”

Dmitri gave a curt nod, but he still had a finger to his ear, his concentration intense. “Lijuan’s troops are dumping their wounded in a big pile,” he said before breaking off.

Three seconds later: “V, pull up the feeds from quadrant eight.”

Having completed his call to the healers, Vivek reacted at once.

Sixteen different live cameras filled the screen. “Full screen on camera seven.” Dmitri pointed to the feed on the far left.

Piles of squirming and screaming bodies, one on top of the other.

Angels with their wings half burned, or hacked off.

The broken but live bodies of ground fighters who’d survived the container Izak had sent plummeting to the ground.

The mass of burned and healthy flesh, the squirming, the destroyed wings, it made a dark, angry heat crawl over Raphael’s skin. He’d seen many terrible things in battle, but never this kind of callousness from a leader toward their own troops.

“All of them are damaged.” Aodhan’s quiet voice held nothing but calm, but Illium shifted to stand with his wing brushing the other angel’s. “There is no one whole on that pile. No one who will heal quickly.”

Dmitri asked a question into the mike on his lapel, received an answer. “Aodhan’s right—they’re taking the wounded with functional wings and limbs to another area.”

Another angel was dropped onto the pile from above, his bloody body sliding down the flesh pile to end at the bottom with his remaining wing smeared dark red . . . and black. Some of those in the pile weren’t alive, not as everyone but Lijuan understood life. They were reborn.

A choked-off sound drew his attention to Suyin, so silent till this instant that he’d nearly forgotten her though she stood beside Elena. Her hands clutched the edge of the table, the ice white of her hair a liquid waterfall as she leaned forward.

“Our family line was one of honor.” Her voice shook. “Warriors and scholars and an archangel who was the cause of much pride. We are not this. She is not us.” Agony contorted her features. “My memories of the moments after I woke this time are blurred, but I have a vague recollection of a conversation between Xi and my aunt while they stood over me.”

A furrow between her eyebrows, those brows black in contrast to the white of her hair. “She said words that made no sense to me: ‘Your troops will not die, Xi. Be content, for they will become of me, their goddess.’”

Oh, fuck, Archangel.

Come stand with me, Elena. His rage was a cauldron in his gut, cold and deadly. I need to remember why I cannot simply fly out right now and attempt to stop this atrocity.

His hunter slipped to him, coming to stand so that part of her back brushed his chest, wings of stormfire defiant with life against him. We’ll get her. Steel and wildfire in his mind. She doesn’t get to do this and win.

A stirring on one side of the camera feed before Lijuan flowed into view, as graceful and regal as ever.

“Her wing’s dragging.” Suyin’s voice steadied, a grim joy in it. “You hurt her.”

“Not enough if she’s able to walk.” He’d expended far more wildfire than he had in the last battle, but done far less damage.

Dressed in a gown of fog gray that darkened to black at the edges and followed the shape of her body until it flared out in waves from the waist, she was an empress in her bearing and in the elegance of her features. No skeletal mask showed through her pearlescent skin, no nightmares danced in her haunting pale eyes. Even her wings, dove gray and soft, were so lovely that the damage to the left one appeared an abomination.

A hush fell on the world.

56

Halting in front of the mountain of wounded, Lijuan smiled with a kind gentleness that Raphael remembered from long ago, when he’d been a boy holding on to his father’s hand while they visited Lijuan’s court.

She gave me a plate of sweets once, he found himself sharing with Elena. Then she told me I was free to run around in her maze garden while she and my father spoke—and that I wasn’t to cheat by flying to look down at the maze from above.

Elena shook her head. What happened to her?

Greed and ambition. Lijuan had always chafed at not being the oldest and strongest in the Cadre. I remember my father laughing and telling her not to wish for age; that he knew far too many mad old ones. The irony of Nadiel’s declaration echoed through time.

Onscreen, Lijuan knelt beside the broken body of the last angel to have been dropped into the pile; as they watched, she brushed back his hair with utmost gentleness. The camera had enough definition that when Vivek zoomed in, they saw awe and wonder and joy on the face of the fallen angel. His lips shaped the words, My Lady.

Lijuan murmured something that made him attempt to bow his head even as blood dribbled from a corner of his mouth. Lijuan touched his hair again before rising. Hands dropping to her sides, she threw back her head and—

Darkness.

“Shit.” Vivek wheeled to a computer, began to work it with frantic hands. “I don’t get it. The cameras say they’re transmitting, all functions optimal.”

“It’s the fog.” Jason, his gaze unblinking as he stared at the darkness. “She’s created a mini-fog.”

“Rouse one of the miniature drones we have in the area,” Dmitri ordered. “Get an aerial view.”

“I’ll pilot,” Illium volunteered, and Vivek passed across the controller, but Ashwini said, “Wait,” before they could activate the drone. “Fog’s fading at the edges.”

“I don’t see it,” Suyin murmured, but that was to be expected. She hadn’t experienced Ashwini’s third eye.

Five seconds later and shapes began to appear in the blackness, silhouettes that made little sense but for Lijuan’s form—she was in the same position she’d held when the darkness first descended. The flesh mountain, however, had become smaller, seemed to keep shrinking as they watched.

The last of the fog whispered out of existence.

In place of a mountain of wounded fighters lay a mound of bodies devoid of any indication of life. Their flesh was akin to paper, their faces twisted into a rictus of gasping mouths and wide eyes. Only . . . there were no eyes. Just hollow sockets that begged for redemption.

The corpses’ fingers, stiff and dry, were frozen in curled-up twists, though a few reached out toward Lijuan as if to beg for mercy . . . or to ask for the benediction of their goddess. Feathers divested of color floated in the air, lost from the bodies of angels who’d been stripped of life, of flesh.

An eerie silence hung over the entire scene.

Lijuan lowered her arms and seemed to sigh. Her wings glowed, her face exquisite in profile when she turned to the side. At that moment, she was the loveliest Elena had ever seen her. Her hair was a sheet of glittering ice, silken and healthy. It blew back in a gentle breeze to reveal the flawless lines of her face.

The same breeze also lifted more feathers into the air. They surrounded Lijuan in a soft halo that glowed with the power reflected off her wings.

Lijuan looked up at the feathers. Smiled.

Hers is not a power I can match, Guild Hunter.

To hear Raphael say that so bluntly, it made the rock on her heart crushingly heavier. That’s because you don’t feed on the life of others. She locked her hand with his, this lethal archangel who would never do to his own what Lijuan had just done. We’ll fight her with honor and with our people by our side, not shriveled into husks.