47

The rising wind ripped at Raphael’s hair as, ahead of them, a huge army took shape. But holding to archangelic expectation and the “rules” of war, Favashi broke off to fly directly toward him. Two others came with her, an echo of Illium and Jason.

The rest of her forces were too slow to keep up with Favashi and her seconds, and so when they met, it was as an even grouping.

“Favashi.”

“Raphael.”

His blood iced. Because that wasn’t Favashi’s voice. It held death and whispers and screams. It was the voice of an archangel who was meant to be lost in Sleep, far from the living world.

As for the rest of her . . . Those weren’t Favashi’s eyes either.

The former Archangel of Persia and current Archangel of China didn’t have black eyes. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown.

“You are changed,” he said to her.

“I am more.” Favashi’s voice was awash with screaming whispers, and when she raised her hand, it crackled out of existence. Not as smooth a shift as with Lijuan, but Favashi shouldn’t have had such a power at all. The ability to go non-corporeal was not hers.

Favashi was rumored to have gained power over the winds during the Cascade—which might explain the howling gale that now surrounded them, but the rest . . . that belonged to the former Archangel of China.

Unless . . . “Did you gain this power in the last Cascade surge?”

Black lightning crackled from Favashi’s fingertips in answer, the bolts screaming over Raphael’s shoulder and past Jason, who’d dropped to avoid the strike. “A demonstration only,” she said in the aftermath, as the black energy that “smelled” of Lijuan smashed into the ocean and disappeared. “I am a power now, and you will bow down before me.”

Raphael missed Elena with a ferocious need at that instant. She would’ve said something about “Her Creepiness” coming back from the dead, and inside, he would’ve found amusement even during the prelude to war.

Sire, can archangels be possessed? Illium’s voice, so different from Elena’s, and yet the question was one Elena might well have asked—there was a reason the two had become such friends.

Raphael thought of how he’d battled to hold Elena’s memories, her essence, inside himself only to fail. And he thought of Holly Chang, who’d been haunted by an energy that should’ve ended with Uram. Lijuan was no ordinary archangel—and we do not know how the Cascade twists the rules of life and death and Sleep.

Ignoring the pain in his chest, his heart with its mortal core straining to support his archangelic body, he coaxed a ball of wildfire to his hand, the colors swirling brilliant white-gold with deep edges of midnight and dawn. His Elena, inside him. “We have had this battle before,” he said softly. “You lost.”

The words should’ve made no sense to Favashi, who had never faced Raphael in battle, but she screeched and unleashed another bolt at him. This time it was aimed directly at his heart—and it seemed to him that Favashi flinched . . . just before he intercepted it with wildfire and it dissipated into nothing.

He had more wildfire inside him, all that had been generated before he tore out his heart, but he was too drained to rule it to his will. If he drew much more, he risked it going wild—his half-regenerated heart with its mortal core couldn’t take the strain of access and control.

To win this battle, he would need to fight with cutting intelligence.

Suddenly Favashi was throwing the black lightning from every fingertip, her assault so vicious that her own guard fell back, unable to break through the hail of black to safely get to Jason or Illium.

Both members of his Seven dropped to a much lower altitude. Raphael meanwhile was avoiding the strikes but not attempting to neutralize all of them. He caught only the ones at risk of hitting his body or his wings. And still, he was nearly at his limit, his heart about to fail.

Sire, the squadrons near, Illium informed him. But Favashi’s army will arrive first.

Raphael avoided another bolt—and realized Favashi was wavering, her targets off. As well, because his heart was beginning to miss beats. He avoided Favashi’s last bolts before they fizzled out to nothing.

Across from him, the Archangel of China swayed in the air and her eyes cleared for a second to reveal the deep brown with which he was familiar. “Raphael.” It came out a whisper. “You must not let her take me.”

Streaks of black snaked up her eyes again.

Raphael surged forward. Favashi’s attendants tried to stop him, but Jason and Illium had already intercepted the two. The strike of sword against sword rang out across the air as the four fighters clashed.

“Give the order,” Raphael said to Favashi when they were only a hairsbreadth apart. “Quickly, while you can.”

Favashi curled her fingers into her palms, squeezed her eyes shut, and said nothing. But the two angels who’d been fighting with Illium and Jason fell back. One said, “My lady?”

Whatever message Favashi gave them, they flew off toward the rest of her army . . . Which began to turn as one.

“I am not a mortal to be taken,” Favashi gritted out. “I am not a beast to be broken.” Each word was red with power and anger and rage. “I am an archangel.”

The black crackled over her irises again. As it had once attempted to blind Raphael. “Is it a part of Lijuan?” Uram had left behind an echo of energy, but his victim, Holly, had been young and a multitude of times weaker than Favashi.

“It feels like an infection. A virulent one designed to crawl into archangelic bones.” She shivered hard, streaks of black racing through the aged ivory of her wings before they began to retract, as if she was fighting a battle within.

“I do not think it can take you, Raphael. You beat her. That’s why, when it pushed me to battle madness, I fought to take the battle to you.” Her eyes landed on the wildfire that danced on Raphael’s fingertips. “This death is buried in China. Send no one there. Not one of us. It is made for us.” Her back arched, a scream pouring out of her mouth and it was a scream of violence, of madness.

Raphael placed his hand directly on Favashi’s heart, his palm burning with the last whispers of wildfire he could coax to do his will. Instead of fighting what might be a killing blow, Favashi gripped his wrist, holding him to her.

And the wildfire punched into her.

The black disappeared from her wings under a searing edge of wildfire, the screaming madness stopped, and when she looked at him again, her eyes were that familiar rich brown. “I cannot know if it has been destroyed. I was too long in that place.”

What had Lijuan become that she’d been able to leave behind a virus that attacked an archangel? Even Charisemnon’s disease-causing abilities didn’t dare reach for the Cadre.

“I can’t keep pushing wildfire into you,” he told Favashi. “If you are infected with a death born of Lijuan, the wildfire will eventually kill you.”

Favashi’s head jerked, a sudden faraway look on her face. “There is another kind of fire in your territory. It calls to me.”

In front of Raphael, her face began to lose its softness, until her bones shoved out against her skin, her collarbones appearing as suddenly, her arms no longer smooth but jagged with bones. She was being consumed as Elena had been consumed.

“It has taken all my energy to fight this,” she rasped, no fat on her bones now, her skin holding together bones and muscle and tendon alone. “I feel your wildfire eating away at it, but I must . . .” She crumpled.

Raphael caught her skeletal form and, after confirming her army was fading into the distance, flew directly toward the only fire in his land that could’ve spoken to Favashi. Illium fell in with him, while Jason broke off to take control of the squadrons that had responded to Illium’s command.

As per the plan Raphael had put in place for just such a contingency, New York’s forces would now spread outward, a constant watch on all their borders until Jason’s spies reported that Favashi’s army had landed in China.

The journey to the sinkhole at the foot of the Catskills was again a hard one for Illium. Despite his exhaustion and faltering heart, Raphael gave no quarter, needed to be back with Elena. The blue-winged angel was dripping with sweat by the time they arrived.

Ah, you have come.

“To the edge, Bluebell—this is a matter between an archangel and an Ancient among Ancients.”

Illium’s expression held rebellion, but he gave a curt nod and went to hover at the very edge of the sinkhole.

The lava began to bubble and spread in a pattern that formed a whirlpool at its very center. Elena would’ve found it astonishing, he thought. She’d also have wondered what kind of insanity they’d be facing now.

Zombies, Archangel. Fire-breathing ones.

Yes, she’d have muttered that while staying courageously by his side.

But it wasn’t a zombie that emerged out of the flames. It was a woman formed of fire. When the glowing magma dropped away to rejoin the swirl that was the sinkhole, he saw an angel clad in a long gown of palest green that was like air given form; it both clung and fell away from the lush curves of her body. Her hair was a tumble of lilac and her eyes empty, bleeding orbs. Dark red tears ran down her cheeks, her skin a pitiless white canvas for the brutality of it. Her wings, in contrast, were a violet so deep it was blue.

Reaching Raphael with soft beats of her wings, she looked at him with those sightless eyes. “You have half a heart.” A pause, a frown. “And you have two hearts. Yet you are not whole.”

“I won’t be whole until my Elena wakes.” An absolute truth. “What do you see?”

“The future has warped.” A bloody tear dropping to stain her gown. “I see . . . nothing. I see a million possibilities. I see chaos and horror. I see hope and life. I see everything that could be.”

We battled destiny and changed time, Elena-mine. The future was now theirs to shape.

Cassandra touched his face with fingers that bore nails encrusted with blood. “Ambrosia will flow and a mortal will be made an angel when an archangel loves true.” She spoke the words in a singsong voice. “That is what I saw and that is what I wrote and that was a future born.”

“Elena is the first angel-Made.” That was the answer to why there were no records, no road map to follow; the legend of ambrosia had been born of a prophecy spoken by an angel so old she was legend.

Cassandra held out her arms. “This child of kin bloodline is mine. In this moment, and in this time, she is mine.”

Raphael gave her Favashi because there was no other choice and because Favashi had spoken of this place. “When will she return?”

“Madness is coming. Life is coming. Wonder is coming. Death is coming. The future warps again and again.” Tiredness, such aching tiredness. “I try so hard to Sleep, but even in my Sleep, I dream. I see.” A pause. “I helped your love, this prophecy-of-mine, alter time. A new dawn not yet seen, not yet known.”

She hugged Favashi’s frail body close. “Fire cleanses. I knew fire would be needed. On this day and in this time, fire would be needed. For you alone cannot fight what she has become. The Cadre alone cannot fight the evil that Sleeps.”

Cassandra pressed a kiss to Favashi’s brow. “Archangel of Death. Goddess of Nightmare. Wraith without a shadow. Rise, rise, rise into your Reign of Death. For your end will come. Your end will come. At the hands of the new and of the old. An Archangel kissed by mortality. A silver-winged Sleeper who wakes before his Sleep is done. The broken dream with eyes of fire. Shatter. Shatter. Shatter.”

More bloody tears. “This was to be. Death, endless death, followed by victory. But you and the fragile, courageous prophecy-of-mine have rewritten destiny, erased the future to be. Time warps and changes. Only one constant remains. The Sleeper, the Wraith, the Goddess. She will rise and she will be monstrous.”

Cassandra began to lower herself into the lava. She was a being of liquid fire again before she reached the molten core, Favashi invisible against her.

The sinkhole began to close over in front of their eyes.

Two minutes after the encounter with an Ancient out of angelic myth, there was nothing there, no sign a sinkhole had ever existed. The earth was not bare. Grass grew, pebbles rolled around on it, and the wind swirled snow against the barrier of the fence.

Elena would not be pleased to have missed such a sight.

Inside his chest, his heart gave a sluggish beat. Come, Illium. You must watch for my fall today.

The blue-winged angel flew below him all the way home.

But even safely landed, Raphael could not yet rest. First, he must warn the Cadre about China. He called an urgent meeting using a signal that was never to be ignored. Their faces appeared one after the other on the screen in his study, cold and immortal and altered with Cascade-born power.

Only Michaela, strikingly beautiful and deeply manipulative, was different. She appeared . . . faded, tired.

Raphael described only what had happened to Favashi, shared only what Cassandra had said about Lijuan being a monstrous world-destroying force when she next woke. Too big for even the Cadre.

It was Caliane who broke the silence that had fallen after his short, curt report. “I would ask if you dreamed this, my son, but I know you are too practical and pragmatic a warrior to create fantasies—and I saw Favashi’s strangeness firsthand a month earlier, when I flew to offer her counsel.”

Neha was the next to speak. “So did I,” said the Archangel of India, her saree a yellow that made her skin shimmer with light. “I wanted to brush it off as arrogance, but there was a falseness to her presence, as if a shadow lay atop it.”

Raphael conserved his energy and let the ensuing discussion flow at its own pace until Titus said, “China is not safe.”

All the Cadre nodded as one.

Even Charisemnon’s expression was black. Archangels, after all, were not supposed to be prey. Such a line had never before been crossed in their histories.

“It cannot be left unguarded.” Alexander’s silver eyes were a painful echo of the ring of silver around Elena’s irises. “We saw what happened in the short period that Lijuan was missing. We cannot know how long Favashi will be gone.”

“She was adamant that whatever it is that Lijuan left behind in her territory, it affects only archangels,” Raphael pointed out. “Favashi has a number of strong men and women loyal to her who can run things in the interim. There are also enough of us that we can rotate through China to ensure no one in her territory forgets the Cadre exists even if they do not have a resident archangel.”

A cycle of flights was swiftly worked out. None of them would land in China, but an archangel didn’t need to land to make his or her power felt. Raphael, Astaad—Archangel of the Pacific Isles, and a number of others would stay in Japan when it came time for their turn at policing Favashi’s territory in her absence.

Caliane was considered neutral ground. She wasn’t neutral, of course, would always fight in Raphael’s corner. But she also wouldn’t take it amiss if an archangel guested in her territory—perhaps it was because of her love for Nadiel, but Raphael’s mother could tolerate the presence of another archangel close by for relatively long periods.

It was also agreed that none of them would use an archangel’s absence from his or her own territory to attempt to gain a foothold in that territory. The rest of the Cadre would unite against any such attempt, no matter friendships or alliances. This was a thing about controlling vampires; the Cadre would not let the world drown in bloodlust regardless of their other enmities.

Neha volunteered to take extra shifts. “It will be less of a distance for me, and seeing me will remind them that an archangel resides within easy reach.”

Caliane also volunteered to do extra shifts. “Five years,” his mother said afterward. “If Favashi yet Sleeps, then we must make a long-term plan.”

“It is settled,” said the Cadre, and the meeting was over.

His wound bleeding under his leathers, Raphael staggered up the steps. Such a wound needed the deep recovery of anshara, not a battle against another archangel.

Sire. Sire. Sire. The Legion’s voices filled his head as he entered the room. The chrysalis is too small. Dismay in every word. Where will her wings grow?

Hand pressed to his heart, Raphael crashed onto the bed and onto the silken filaments that flowed from the chrysalis that was too small to hold his hunter’s tall body and extraordinary wings. His own wing fell across the chrysalis and his heart, it stopped.