“Six percent of our overall force.” Raphael’s wings became limned with a deadly glow. “It does not seem a large number against such a massive enemy, but for our first battle we projected a one percent loss as the maximum.” Though he was talking in cold percentages, his hand fisted against her abdomen.

These weren’t just numbers to Raphael.

Throat thick and eyes hot, Elena slid her hand over his fisted one and held on. They stood in silence as night fell on the first day of a war that had just begun.

57

Lijuan launched her next assault under cover of night.

Thanks to its watchers, living and electronic, Manhattan was ready.

Squads of black-clad angels had taken to the skies in absolute silence only ten minutes after Vivek’s bugs picked up the first signs of preparation in her camp. All the flyers for this op had been chosen because their wings were naturally dark. Each angel took off on their own, as if heading home to the Tower . . . but used the moonless night to disappear into the clouds.

Jason led the team.

Once in the sky, the squadrons did silent sweeps in a holding pattern above Dmitri’s predicted attack zone. When an angel needed a break, he flew back a short distance and dropped down on a rooftop.

No one from Lijuan’s side seemed to notice—lone angels all over the city, enemy and friendly, were dropping down or taking off. Aside from those taking a break, Jason’s team stayed high.

Now, Jason! Raphael sent the command as Lijuan’s forces rose en masse from their base by the water; he’d waited until they were high enough that no soft landing was possible.

The nets were fine and black and invisible in the darkness as they fell from the sky. He knew the instant they made contact with Lijuan’s winged fighters because the fighting formations collapsed into chaos, angels tumbling uncontrolled from the sky as their wings became tangled in nets that cut and made them bleed.

Their nets successfully deployed, Jason’s team emerged from the skies behind enemy lines, and the sky crackled with black lightning. Jason’s power was enormous in comparison to most angels’ and he sent his energy directly into the heart of Lijuan’s disoriented forces, while other angels in his team used line-of-sight grenade launchers to blow up enemy supplies and ground teams.

Aodhan supplied violent backup from this side.

Raphael, meanwhile, was facing off against Lijuan. Jason’s team had made no effort to tangle her in nets—given her power, it’d have been a waste. She was his to neutralize. But while his wildfire had regenerated to a certain point, he had nowhere near enough to take on an archangel who’d so recently fed on the lifeforce of at least a hundred people.

Turning his wings to white fire, he moved so quickly in and out of position that her shots went wild, smashing into buildings devoid of residents or workers. Step by step he managed to draw her past her collapsing night assault force and out over water. Now past enemy lines, he took her high, where none of her angels could interfere.

Her next attempt at hitting him smashed into the water. It caused that water to foam and spout, but the ocean was vast enough to absorb the energy without damage. Her fury at his avoidance of her strikes made her face turn skeletal for a haunting instant . . . before she turned without warning and headed straight to Manhattan.

Raphael fired, aiming at her wings.

She went noncorporeal right before the wildfire reached her. Raphael swore under his breath . . . except it appeared Lijuan hadn’t shifted location when she went noncorporeal. Wildfire fractured inside the hauntingly translucent form of an archangel, her mouth falling open in screaming pain.

Her body reappeared.

Rage a cold mask on her features, she shifted position to rain her own power at him in a wide spread he couldn’t fully evade. One bolt hit him hard on the shoulder, spinning him around. But he’d already thrown the ball of wildfire in his hand and it smashed into the tip of her right wing.

He had only droplets left inside him—and Lijuan was healing in front of his eyes.

He flew straight at her, sliding out his swords as he did so. When she responded with a barrage of poisonous blows, he made no attempt to dodge them. He was already hit. He’d deal with the damage in the aftermath.

He had to stop her before she took his city.

Blades of starlight obsidian slammed into him with brutalizing force, the poison spreading below his skin in an oily slide. Lijuan laughed at the sight of his swords, the two of them close enough now that she spoke aloud. “You should’ve killed her when I told you.” In her voice whispered thousands of ghosts, their pleas piteous in the maw of their terrible goddess. “Now you are a little bit mortal and weak with—”

Raphael sliced one razor-sharp blade across her neck, the other across her thighs. Blood splurted and her hands flew up to hold her head to her neck.

One leg fell into the ocean, while the other hung half severed.

Managing to get his hand on her stump, he sent the last of his wildfire directly into her bloodstream.

She shrieked in true pain, the sound agony along his nerve endings.

Eyes red and blood overrunning the hand she had around her throat, she sent out a blast that caught him at point-blank range. His vision wavered, but he saw her turn and fly toward her base of operations. Already, her fighters were coming toward Raphael, ready to intercept him.

His wings grew heavy with the blackness spreading over them. He couldn’t make them turn into white fire. Even his ability to create angelfire had flatlined. The ocean awaited below—if he fell, it was over. Lijuan’s forces would take him. And she would feed on an archangel.

Sire. Jason dropped out of the sky, Jurgen with him. Falling on either side of Raphael, the two dark-winged angels literally dragged him into the air, while Andreja covered their retreat with a machine gun.

Run, Raphael commanded her and she followed them up, firing at the enemy the entire way.

The rest of Jason’s stealth squad appeared around them.

All of them made it to safety, with the majority of the squad splitting off to return to the front line. Leave me on the roof of the Legion building and go, Raphael ordered, even as blackness began to creep across his vision. This is when Xi will launch a secondary attack, while he believes we are at our weakest.

Sire, Jason argued, why the Legion building and not the infirmary?

Because Elena is waiting for me there. Alongside their Legion. Go.

Jason and Jurgen eased him to the rooftop, then took off. That they weren’t happy about it was obvious even through his increasingly narrow field of vision.

Eyes of liquid silver above him, the near-white of Elena’s hair windswept around her head—and her expression ferociously set. “Shit, Archangel, you look like crap.” Cutting away his leathers to expose his chest, she pressed both hands to his skin. “If this doesn’t work, I’m going to kill you.”

Nothing happened. The world hung in balance.

“Black stuff’s trying to crawl onto my skin.”

“Break contact.” He lifted his hand, caught her wrist.

“No, wait.” She dug her nails into his skin when he would’ve moved her. “Hah! Stupid stuff can’t get a grip.”

Before he could ask what she meant, the opalescent wildfire contained in Elena’s body jolted into his in a savage blast that had his back arching as he clenched his jaw and attempted not to scream. The wildfire was unrelenting torture through his veins, along his wings, on his eyes as it ate away at Lijuan’s poison.

Elena never broke contact with his skin. He could hear her voice in his head and though he couldn’t divine the words through the howl of the battle taking place in his body, it was a reminder that he was not just the Archangel of New York.

He was Elena’s lover . . . and her beloved.

It was only when his body slammed back down onto the hard surface of the roof that he realized he’d lifted partially off. Breath heaving as wildfire continued to shoot through his veins in sharp stabs, he opened his eyes. “How does it look?” His senses remained dazed from the dual punch he’d taken—first from Lijuan, then from Elena.

Such a vicious punch for so small an amount.

Yet Lijuan had survived blow after blow after blow with little effect.

“Eyes clear.” Breaking contact, she watched with intense care as he got to his feet.

Upright, he flexed his hands and saw that his veins were wildfire, a glowing network of midnight and dawn that flowed to living green. Shifting to go behind him, Elena ran her hands over his wings.

“Clean,” she pronounced, just as the lovely, strange wildfire under his skin faded and settled. “No sign of the poison.” Exhaling on a shudder, she pressed her head to his back. “Fuck. I can’t believe that worked. Not after what you told me about Antonicus.”

“Neither can I.” It had been a desperate gamble put in play when it became clear Lijuan was planning to strike.

“Could be you have a level of immunity because of the dregs of wildfire always inside your cells.”

“Perhaps.” He looked out at where battle had broken out once more, the dazzling light of Aodhan’s power coming up against the obsidian of one of Lijuan’s generals. “I’ve bought us a little time before Lijuan rises again. It may be enough for my wildfire to fully regenerate.”

Dmitri, report.

Lijuan’s soldiers are building another mound of bodies for her to feed from, but other than that they look to be hunkering down in a defensive formation. Aodhan and Jason are dealing with a small air attack, and Venom’s cleaning up one on the ground. No loss of territory.

The Legion, who had stood watch around the rooftop during the transfer, began to whisper in his mind. Raphael. Aeclari. We give.

Raphael found the Primary, shook his head. “Not yet. I can recover without it this time.” He didn’t know if his body had developed enough to hold both the Cascade power and the Legion energies. “Give me the power only when there is no other choice, when I am dry of power, and we are on the verge of losing the war.”

We understand. A rain of whispers. We hold. We wait.