“No,” she murmured, her hair flying backward in a gentle breeze. “I don’t think it’s me. It’s us.” Wing shifting under his in a soft susurration of sound, she said, “The white fire, Archangel. Ignite the white fire.”
He reached within him for that wild, near-uncontrollable flame, coaxing it onto his hand. Where it had once manifested a radiant white-gold with iridescent edges of midnight and dawn, today the white-gold bore swirls of violent blue, the flame just as volatile, as passionately alive. “Us,” he whispered and threw the wildfire up into the gray.
“Wildfire,” Elena whispered, as if he’d spoken aloud. “Yes, that describes it so much better.”
The wildfire arced out into the gray in every direction, eliminating the fog to leave them encased in sun-shot water of a pale, haunting green.
Elena ran her fingers through the water, the ripples disturbing the flawless serenity of the place, but there was no sense that the disturbance was unwelcome. “Oh, I like it here.” She danced her hand gracefully in the water, her delight without affectation.
It made his lips curve, his heart remember what it was to be a child. “We’re deep inside the ocean,” he said, understanding the sunlight wasn’t sunlight at all but the lingering burn of the wildfire.
“I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful.” Wonder in her eyes, their handclasp unbroken, Elena pointed out a tiny jellyfish-like creature that floated by, its body a translucent coral . . . but the wildfire, it was fading, the water caressed by gray, then enclosed by darkness.
“I understand,” he said, as his consort came into his arms, her hands on his shoulders and her kiss one that branded, drawing him out of the dream and into the warmth of their bed. She was strong and lithe underneath him, his warrior with her mortal heart, eyes of silver-gray open in the murky light that told him he hadn’t slept long.
“The risk,” he said, when their lips parted, “is being consumed by it.”
“The darkness?”
“Without you, I might one day have become another Lijuan.” Scowling, she would’ve shaken her head, but he stopped her with a grip on her jaw. “No, Elena. This truth I must confront—in me lives more power than any other angel my age has ever had. That much power changes a man, and it changed me.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point, but what’s also true is that you’re not the archangel I first met.” Elena’s expression stubborn, the hands she’d thrust into his hair fisting tight. “You’re still becoming—and, unlike Lijuan, you’re not afraid to take risks. She’s a coward who killed the mortal who made her feel; you claimed me as yours.” Tugging him down, she nipped hard at his lower lip in sensual rebuke. “Don’t ever think to compare yourself to her.”
“As my consort decrees,” he said, speaking with his lips on hers, his body cradled in the silken prison of her legs. “I know you’d never permit me to turn into a megalomaniacal tyrant with delusions of godhood.”
“Glad we got that straightened out.” Rubbing her nose against his in an open affection he knew he’d never tire of, should he live to be a hundred thousand years old, she said, “Where we were, it was a place of power, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” That power had saturated the water, the darkness, the living creatures that swam in those deep waters. “Not malevolent, and attuned to me, but out of my reach.” The final bitter seal on the revelation he’d had in the bloodstorm.
“That sucks.”
His lips kicked up at the succinct description of his own angry frustration. “It does.” Kissing her one more time, he rose to sit on the edge of the bed, his hand cupping the side of her face. “Sleep. It is early yet and you must rest—I will need my hunter more than ever in the days to come.”
Elena closed her fingers over his wrist to stop him from leaving. “How bad is it, Archangel?” It was the question of a consort, and the answer he gave her was one Elena knew he’d give no one else in the Tower, not even his Seven.
“My men and women are loyal and will fight to the bloody end,” he said, his broad shoulders holding the weight of a staggering number of lives, “but I’m afraid I am about to lead them into certain death.”
Getting up onto her knees, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, their faces side by side. “Not one of those men and women would ever want to serve Lijuan, you know that.” She pressed her lips to his marked temple, her understanding born of the hours she’d spent in the infirmary with the injured, and with the able-bodied soldiers who came to visit their fallen comrades. “Our people would rather go honorably in a fight against evil than cower under its hand.”
Raphael took a long, deep breath, his shoulders straightening and his head rising. “No one,” he vowed, “will ever subjugate those who are our own. Never will we surrender.”
40
Five hours into the new day, Raphael’s spymaster flew back to tell him Lijuan’s troops had crossed the early-warning border. A single command and Raphael’s offensive squadrons formed around him, the defensive perimeter tight and in place as he led the squadrons out across the city and over the water.
“Hold this position,” he told his commanders when they reached a location where his people could see the approaching army but remained within a hard, fast flight distance to their perimeter.
Leaving them hovering in precision formation, he flew out to meet Lijuan midway between the two armies. His move was a risk, given her increasing madness, but he believed part of her remained an archangel of old as yet, and seconds after he began his flight, his belief proved true. Cleaving to the rules of battle laid down at the dawn of angelkind, the Archangel of China flew alone to meet him in neutral space.
“Raphael.” Her pale, pale gaze turned to flint as she took in the mark on his temple. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”
“It appears we’ve all been doing that of late,” he said. “You must’ve worked long and quiet indeed to gain the trust of Uram’s scattered forces.” Until the ordinarily loyal men and women had abandoned their assigned posts and territories to swell her ranks.
“A goddess,” she said, her physical form fading to turn her skin translucent, “thinks not only for today, but for many tomorrows.” The eerie shift revealed the skeletal structure of her face, the sight merging with the crawling sense of screams beneath the surface of her voice, the trapped souls of those Lijuan had murdered.
“Your men wear only swords and crossbows.” Guns, at least, were a familiar weapon to most angelic fighters and wouldn’t have weighed down a winged fleet. “Do you foresee an easy victory?”
“I have been gathering my forces for ten thousand years, while you are a boy. We outnumber you until it will be no battle but an annihilation.”
Her arrogance, Raphael thought, might just be the Achilles’ heel that’d give his people victory in this unbalanced war. “Such is your belief, Lijuan. That doesn’t make it the truth.”
“It soon will be, but before the inevitable, I give you one more chance and invite you to surrender,” she said in that voice full of horror. “I cannot leave you or your consort alive, of course”—utmost civility as she spoke of his and Elena’s executions—“but I will treat your people as I would my own. Your Seven are extraordinary and will serve me well.”
His Seven, Raphael thought, would spend their existence attempting to erase Lijuan from the planet rather than lift a finger in her service. “There is a better way,” he said, extending the talk to give Naasir a final few minutes to put his plans in place. “You do not have to start a war.”
“I am not starting a war. I am stopping one before it begins.” She smiled at him, her eyes pale orbs with fetid shadows hidden within—as if to look too deep would be to fall into an inescapable hell. “You have never respected me as you should. I cannot allow that to continue. You understand.”
“Yes, I understand.” That Lijuan was a being of perfect madness, so mad she believed herself sane. Raphael recognized the signs; he’d seen them first in his father. But the powerful man who’d once played tag with him above the Refuge had never become the ugliness that was Lijuan. She was something new, a nightmare born of the rot at the core of her soul. “In turn,” he said, “you must understand that I cannot allow you to take my Tower and my city.”
“Then I’m afraid we are at an impasse.” Her smile never faltered, her teeth and jaw visible through skin turned to smoke. “We will be civilized about this. I will not attack you until you are with your troops, and you will not attempt the same.”
Accepting the stipulation, he said, “If you wish to cease hostilities at any stage, you need only remove your forces from my territory.”
“And should you wish to surrender, your fighters need only lay down their arms. Mine will not attack once your people are no longer a threat—unlike Charisemnon, I have no wish to degrade. My aim is only to conquer.” A pause. “It was not well done of him to so dishonorably use the reborn I gave him as a gift. I have told him I will not tolerate any further acts that bring disgrace upon my name.”
Raphael inclined his head. “I will see you in battle, Lijuan.”
“Good-bye, Raphael. You would’ve made a great Ancient one day, if only you had learned to respect your betters.”
Flying back to his troops at high speed, Raphael reached out to Elena. He needed her touch to erase the ugliness that permeated his bones, Lijuan’s presence a seeping wrongness in the fabric of the world. Elena, battle is imminent.
We’re ready. A kiss of untamed wildness that could be no one but his consort. I’m watching for you.
Ordering his troops to retreat inside the siege zone, Illium leading them in, he took the rear with Jason and Aodhan at his flanks. It was a wise move, Lijuan sending a blast in his direction the instant he hit the edge of Manhattan. Her power manifested as a hail of black daggers, gleaming and deadly.
