Archangel's Storm

33

Two and a half hours after discovering the mutilated bodies of Neha’s pets, Jason called Raphael from a mountaintop touched with the dawn. “One of my people just sent through a report that indicates the possibility of Lijuan making the reborn again is now in the near-certain range.”

Jason’s man was situated not in Lijuan’s home fortress, but at another of the archangel’s strongholds. The distance from the origin made every piece of information suspect, but this particular rumor had been gaining momentum for weeks, until the highly intelligent vampire was sure it had been born in truth. The most recent whispers had been dangerously explicit in their detail.

“I cannot believe her a fool.” Ice in Raphael’s voice. “It was one of her reborn who first attacked her in Beijing.”

“It’s being whispered that she’s no longer choosing candidates from within her court, but from the peasants, those who look upon her as a demigoddess.” Lijuan was a good empress in many ways—her people always had enough to eat, and she meted out justice with a fair hand. However, she preferred to keep the majority of her people in a cultural and technological state that had remained unchanged for centuries.

“Why should I create discontent by permitting them to know of things beyond their reach? It is not as if they live long enough for it to matter.”

Words she’d spoken to Raphael four hundred years ago while Jason had been in the room, her decision that of an archangel who’d been alive millennia and who considered mortals little more than a disposable workforce. Yet age alone couldn’t account for her choice. Caliane was far, far older, and from all the reports Jason had had from Naasir, her people were well-learned and within her city lay a sprawling library open to all.

No, the desire Lijuan had to keep so many of her people in ignorance came from within her, as did her power to reanimate the dead to shambling, horrifying life. And it was this archangel who might well be teaching Neha how to handle her destructive new abilities. Jason had to find out the content of those lessons.

If Lijuan had groomed herself an ally to assist her in her malignant games, the earth might yet become a place of endless horror. A place where fire fell from the sky and the dead hunted the living for flesh, warm and blood drenched.

Mahiya was sitting on a bench in the pavilion in the courtyard in front of her palace, her magnificent wings spread on the marble behind her when he returned from speaking to Raphael. She said nothing until he came to stand beside her. “I keep thinking of her.”

Jason didn’t need her to tell him who she meant. “It’s a natural thing. Nivriti was your mother.”

Her head lifted, a slight hesitation to her as she said. “Your mother, Aurelani, is she alive?”

“No.”

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

Hidden from prying eyes by the spread of her wing and the columns of the pavilion, she reached a hand up to close it around his. “I’m sorry. I’ve made you sad.”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t. It happened an eon ago.” His emotions had aged, taken on a hue he couldn’t describe.

“Will you tell me about her?” Tawny eyes looked up at him, her lashes casting lacey shadows on her cheeks.

Until Mahiya, he hadn’t ever spoken of his mother to anyone, and even then, it had been in the guise of a romantic tale. He didn’t know if he could speak of her, of the mother the famed Aurelani had been to him, the scar tissue inside him a jagged barrier. “Ask me again another day.”

“All right.” With that gentle agreement, Mahiya leaned her head against his side. “I asked Vanhi to tell me stories about my mother this morning.” Her fingers squeezed his. “She told me many things, including about the lake palace that was her favorite place in all of this land. It’s not so very far from here. An hour’s flight.”

Jason looked down at the black silk of her hair, his mind filling with images of a desolate building covered with moss, its windows and doorways gaping maws. “Abandoned.”

“Yes. When my mother was supposedly executed.” A quiet exhale. “It was made to last, the palace. Built of marble within the crater of a mountain, the ‘lake’ is filled by the monsoon rains. I don’t know if it still stands—”

“It does.” He told her of his previous flight to this territory. “I came in as the sun was setting, and something caught the light. When I turned and circled, I saw only the shimmer of water—it took me a minute to find the building half hidden within the lake.” Covered by moss as it was, the water palace merged into the deep dark green of the lake, its camouflage perfect.

“We have the whole day,” Mahiya said, her body warm against his own. “Neha is in seclusion—I do not know for whom she mourns, if it is for the people lost or her pets, but I’ve seen her like this before. She won’t reemerge before dark, will not think to ask where we have been.”

“Come,” he said. “It may take me a few passes to locate the palace.”

Mahiya stared down at the building that had become a chameleon over the centuries, hiding in plain sight. Covered not only by a dark green moss that echoed the color of the water, but by fine vines of the same shade, it appeared nothing so much as a floating clump of greenery. Desolate as this place was, few angels would pass over it, and those that did wouldn’t be tempted to linger. It was a testament to Jason’s curiosity that he’d discovered it.

“I didn’t have time to land then,” he said, hovering beside her with an ease she envied. “We can’t count on its stability.”

“It’ll hold,” she told him. “It was built to withstand water, to endure through centuries.” Diving without waiting for him, she headed toward what she guessed had once been a large balcony or courtyard that hung out over the water. A dark blur passed her a second later, and Jason had landed, his wings folded back, before she touched down.

A storm swirled in irises gone a turbulent black. “That wasn’t smart, Mahiya.”

Fascinated, she stared. Never had she seen him angry, and the leash he kept on his anger even now made her wonder at the depth of his control. “I knew you were faster,” she said. “And that you would’ve stopped me had you glimpsed anything that indicated danger.”

The storm crashed, dark and violent. “You shouldn’t have such faith in an enemy spymaster.”

“I don’t. I have it in you.” Reaching out to touch his wing, she smiled at this man who was an enigma she would never get the chance to solve and yet who grew deeper into her heart with each breath. “Let’s explore.”

Jason should’ve held his ground, forced Mahiya to acknowledge that she’d acted with rash impatience, but he had the thought that unleashing his anger on her at this instant would be akin to smashing the most fragile glass. He saw the confusion behind the eagerness, saw that she didn’t know if she wanted her mother alive or not, for if Nivriti lived, she had a sadistic streak of violence.

“Stay close.” Reaching back, he drew his sword from its sheath.

Mahiya raised a hand as if she’d touch the obsidian blade that seemed to roil with black flame, before dropping the blade and falling in step beside him. Deciding against using the vine-shrouded door in front of them, he walked with quiet steps around the side of the palace. They had to be careful of their footing, the moss slippery.

The palace had been designed to sit above the water level, but it was clear the monsoon rains had been strong enough to overwhelm it in years past. The marks of those deluges were waves of brown on the discolored marble of the building. It was probable the lake had some mechanism by which the waters could be bled off to other waterways—he’d seen such in other parts of Neha’s land. But this palace and its surrounds had lain fallow for over three hundred years, any blockage in the system untended.

A doorway allowed sunlight to spill into the room beyond.

“Wait.” He entered with care, taking in every desolate corner before nodding at Mahiya to enter.

“There’s nothing here.” Disappointment turned her voice leaden as she took in the debris and moss and the dried remnants of sludge that had come in when the waters rose. While the air wasn’t damp, the sunshine probing deep, the layers of dirt created a musty, earthy scent that made it clear this room had seen no other living presence for centuries. “The furniture must’ve been made of wood, rotted.”

“Yes.” He stepped to a shadowy doorway leading inward. “If I were hiding within, I would choose the core.” Where light would be least likely to escape come night.

Mahiya’s wing brushed his as she took her place beside him once more.

The rooms that followed were as bleak as the first. Stripped of furniture, carpet, and paintings, they were hollows broken and echoing, though Mahiya was able to guess at the functions of some from the placement of windows devoid of glass and doors long destroyed.

“It must’ve been magnificent when alive,” she whispered. “Like a jewel on the water at night, the lights reflected in the lak—”

Warned by her sudden silence, he followed her gaze and saw color. Crimson. Shiny and sleek, a ribbon that might have come from a woman’s dress.

“Lovers,” Mahiya murmured, picking up the decadent hue that did not belong in this lonely palace devoid of laughter, “may be using this as a pace for discreet assignations.” It was patent she fought hope.

“Perhaps.” It was too old and without comfort to tempt most, but he’d known young angels to do startling things.

“It’s soft.” She rubbed her fingers along the ribbon. “It can’t have been here long or the damp would’ve seeped in, turned the satin rough when it dried.” Her voice was near soundless, her wings held tight to her back to give Jason as much room as possible as they moved through the palace.

Two rooms later, he held up a fisted hand.

Mahiya halted.

Not moving a muscle, Jason listened. But the wind, it didn’t whisper the name of Mahiya’s mother, nor did it warn of danger. Still, he’d sensed something, and a second later, he knew what it was.

Sensuality, luxuriant and potent, and a perfume a woman might wear.

The cause of the silent warning identified, he dropped his hand but put his finger to his lips. Nodding, Mahiya held her silence as he reached out to part a doorway of vines . . . to reveal a room as disparate from the others as a ruby was from a hunk of rock. Here, the marble had been cleaned with scrupulous care, until in spite of the permanent staining, the walls gleamed.

Light came in through a skylight devoid of glass and half covered by vines. Rain would easily penetrate the green barrier, but there was little threat of it this time of year. Certainly, whoever had set up this room was unworried about potential water damage to the rich indigo carpet that lined the floor or the cushions of gold-shot silk scattered over the bed in the center.

A small vanity stood against another wall, hairpins and jewels scattered across the surface. In front of it was a stool on which a woman might sit as she readied herself. “No vampire could’ve brought this in.” Not with the single road up the mountain buried under a landslide old enough to have scraggly trees hugging its jagged slope.

“Jason.”

Turning at the shaken whisper, he saw Mahiya’s reflection in the mirror above the vanity, her fingers clutching at something.

An envelope.

Written on it was a single word: Daughter

Mahiya knew Jason had been right to insist they fly to a safer location before she opened the letter, but by the time they landed in a remote field dotted with a scarcity of trees and surrounded by nothing but balls of dusty foliage rolling across the endless vista, she felt as if her skin would split.

Then they were there and it was time. Back against a spindly tree that nonetheless provided shimmering gray shade, she stared at the red seal of the letter, while the black-winged angel who was no longer her enemy stood a dark sentinel. He said nothing, giving her the time to find her courage, break the seal.

My dearest Mahiya Geet,

I had faith you would find this. You and your dangerous black shadow. I thought to kill him for you at first—

Mahiya swallowed a cry, thrusting her knuckles against her mouth.

—but I realized upon further reflection that he is the only thing standing between you and Neha. And it is deliberate. So, then I must tell you I approve. You have made a better choice than I.

Her heart clenched at the pain inherent in that simple confession.

I am sorry I cannot be here to greet you, my beloved child. But this part is done. It was a test of my strength and skill. A warning, too, but we both know Neha is far too arrogant to listen, to understand.

This place is for you—stay here, be safe. Your spymaster will protect you. If he needs must return to Neha, be assured I will make certain he comes back to you unharmed after the real game is played and won. You cannot be in the court at that time. Neha will slit your throat and rip your beating heart from your chest, if only to wound me.

Your residence in this place will not be for long. Soon I will hold you as a mother should hold her child, while Neha bleeds heart’s blood and her people scrabble in panic and terror. I have had three hundred years to plan my vengeance.

Nivriti