He sent out two more arcs, one horizontal, one vertical. Lijuan moved just in time that the cross point of the arcs didn’t hit her face. Instead, she took the vertical line on one side of the body and the horizontal one on the heart. Raphael didn’t see what happened next because he was drowning in a rain of starlight obsidian.

He threw up a shield of wildfire. It began to buckle nearly at once.

His body, worn out from the constant fight against her proxies over the past two days, struggled to produce more wildfire and failed. Lijuan rammed herself toward him at the same instant, her hands spread out even as his wildfire crackled under her skin in an effort to take hold. If she touched him with those hands, she’d punch her poison into him at point-blank range.

Sweeping sharply to the left, he released the shield and that wildfire returned to him. Lijuan twisted to a halt, then turned to come after him again. Gathering the last of the wildfire in his hand, he held it up in a glowing ball. Come close by all means, he said. We will meet and see who survives.

A slight hesitation, her wings braking. Then she smiled and lifted her hands and he knew he’d soon be buried under a rain of death. He threw the wildfire, manipulating the energy so it would spread and encase her. It was the thinnest of barriers, but it blocked her energy for a moment or two.

He drew both his swords. There remained a limited amount of wildfire in his system, but he had to husband that on the off-chance he could get close enough to Lijuan to do what he’d done once before—send the energy directly into the bloodstream.

Tearing herself out of the thin skin of wildfire, she looked at him with irises so pale she appeared blind, her face hauntingly lovely and the ice white of her hair a silken fall. You will come to me, she said in that voice filled with ghosts. In the end, they all come to me.

Starlight obsidian rimmed her hands, her malevolent energy powerful beyond comprehension. Raphael’s left arm was already going numb, his body losing the battle with the poison she’d managed to get inside him. But he faced her with no fear—he would fight to the end to save his people. His Elena.

Archangel.

His consort in his peripheral vision, the stormfire of her hidden in the shadow of the nearest building. Then she flew forward and into the light.

Across from him, Lijuan smiled. How lovely of your consort to present herself. I will take care of her after you. A pity I will not be able to pin her up in my wing museum.

She was toying with him now. Taking her time before the kill. But she’d given something away—she didn’t realize Elena stored power for him. He and his consort had pulled off a similar action in the last battle, but Lijuan must’ve assumed all the power came from him.

To her, his consort was a former mortal and baby angel. No threat at all.

Wildfire licked across her eyeballs, danced in her hair. She shuddered and seemed to set her jaw. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. His power was having an impact, but not fast enough.

Already, she was lifting her hands, in readiness for a strike.

A sudden smile before she lowered her hands. You are no threat, she said in a laughing tone. I will absorb you in the way most pleasurable to me, then I will feed on your consort. She dove toward him, as if diving into a lover’s arms.

Archangel, here I come.

He thrust out his swords at the same instant that Lijuan stopped on the other end and laughed. What can sword wounds do to me now? Holding his gaze, her smile taunting in a face covered with moonlight skin, she pushed herself deliberately onto the blades, allowing them to sink into her flesh. I am a goddess. I will rise and rise and rise into my reign of death.

His consort touched her hand to his ankle. And the wildfire that had grown inside her over the past two days jolted into him in a direct line. It wanted to go toward the poison in his shoulder, but he shoved it all down the swords and into Lijuan.

His blades danced with white-gold and blue edged with an opalescence of midnight and dawn that shifted into an unexpected wild green, then back again.

Lijuan’s scream threatened to pierce his eardrums, a million deaths hidden within it. In her face, he saw the ghosts of the countless people she’d killed, her flesh morphing too fast to hold in the mind. Her facial bones turned skeletal right then, the flesh receding, before she was the lovely Archangel of China once more.

A woman he had once respected and looked to for advice.

But that wise archangel was gone, lost in the Cascade madness that had created this monster. One day, Raphael might mourn her, the Lijuan she had once been, but it would not be today. Today, he fought for the life of not just his and Elijah’s people, but for the survival of the world.

Lijuan’s hands turned into blood as she tried to wrench herself off the swords. He kept on pushing them into her even as she tried to pull away, until at last she shot a river of starlight obsidian down the swords, using them as a conduit as he had.

He broke contact with the hilts, and she wrenched.

He got out a warning to the angels directly in the path of the falling swords and the blades hit the street below without harming any of his people. In front of him, Lijuan was coming apart at the seams, the wildfire literally pulling her to pieces, the edge of defiant green causing searing burns along the ruptures. But even as he felt a flicker of hope, her obsidian starlight wrapped around her, as if sealing the cracks.

When Elena threw him another blade, he moved to cut Lijuan’s throat. The more they could hurt her, the more time they’d gain for the wildfire to regenerate. That deadly living green wasn’t his or Elena’s but formed of an amalgamation. If their combined wildfire could do so much damage now when he’d only had dregs to contribute to the strike, what might they be able to do if they combined their wildfire at full strength?

He sliced out . . . but Lijuan was no longer there. Once again, she’d gone noncorporeal to escape a killing blow, must’ve had a store of power in reserve for just such a possibility. Throwing back his head, Raphael roared out his rage.

She would be back.

And they had nothing left, no more aces up their sleeve.

63

Exhaustion hung over the Tower’s as well as Elijah’s forces. Elena could see both groups of troops as she walked through a snowy Central Park at Hannah’s side. Some members of their combined forces were sitting and resting with tired but open eyes, while others had their heads tilted back and their eyes closed. Another lull had fallen, except for brief skirmishes here and there.

The cause of the lull seemed to be a similar exhaustion on Lijuan’s side. Unexpected given their numbers, but Xi had sent all their forces into battle as one, instead of resting groups and sending them one after the other. Losing Lijuan this time had fizzled out the proxies, too. Even Xi was no longer shooting the obsidian bolts.

Elijah and Raphael had considered pushing forward, forcing Lijuan’s tired army to engage, but the numbers worked against them. Their forces were even more exhausted than Lijuan’s, and both Raphael and Elijah were on the edge of endurance.

Elijah had actually had to pull power from the city’s electrical grid, shorting out connections all over the city. It had been a desperate reach for power as he attempted to keep Lijuan’s most dangerous surviving generals at bay. Having barely recovered from his injury, he’d taken on at least ten of them while Raphael fought Lijuan.

As a result of Elijah’s stand, they still had at least five squadrons of fighters who would’ve otherwise fallen under the assault. But even if Raphael and Eli stripped the city’s entire grid, they didn’t have enough remaining power between them to demolish Lijuan’s forces. They’d do severe damage . . . but they’d flatline afterward.

Manhattan would then be helpless prey for a rejuvenated Lijuan.

Better for everyone to recover in readiness for her return—this time, they had a better idea of her vulnerabilities. Especially when it came to the bright new-leaf green that resulted from the amalgamation of Raphael and Elena’s wildfire. That stuff had hurt Lijuan.

Now, in this tenuous instant where they could catch a breath, Hannah was doing the rounds. Her people expected this from her, and their faces lit up when they saw her. They seemed to gain a fresh energy when she touched her hand to theirs or spoke to them for a moment or two.

Elena didn’t have the same relationship with her and Raphael’s people, but she had a relationship of her own, warrior to warrior. They told her about their injuries and asked her questions about the overall losses of the war. She didn’t lie to them—she and Raphael had agreed they’d tell their troops the truth.

Their courage deserved nothing less.

The only thing they wouldn’t share was Raphael’s depleted state. Angels, vampires, mortals, everyone needed to believe that their archangel was a power. Raphael had never before been so worn out. Even when he’d fallen with Elena in his arms that first time, he’d done so as a being of power who’d taken out a murderous enemy.

“We are holding up against impossible odds,” one of the senior soldiers said after her update. “No one could’ve expected Lijuan to bring her entire country into battle with her.”

It was about to get even worse, though they’d wait to share the news until after they were certain. Raphael’s forces had been able to neutralize the planes that had taken off from Charisemnon’s territory what felt like a lifetime ago, but their surveillance system had now picked up signs of ships heading toward New York. Those “trade” ships bore Charisemnon’s mark, and had been prowling in international waters prior to the war.

Lijuan was either about to get even more reinforcements, or the ships were filled with insects who’d become a plague. Raphael was currently holed up in the Tower with Dmitri and Galen, as well as Elijah and his top people, in an effort to come up with a way to take those ships out of the equation. Because if they landed . . .

Her phone buzzed. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said after a quick glance. “It’s my sister, Eve.”

A vampire so old that his face was ethereal in its beauty, said, “The little warrior? She is a brave one.”