Archangel's War

19

Nodding, Jason took a sip of his drink. “For the most part, they act as is normal, expected, but every so often, their bodies jerk—as if being pulled by invisible strings.”

“Told you—better, more improved zombies,” Elena muttered, her head bent over the puzzle box.

“An apt description,” Jason said. “These are not the dead turned reborn, but their eyes are not . . . what they should be. The irises appeared an intense black to me rather than even a very dark shade of brown. It is not a natural mortal hue.”

“Are they a threat?”

“At present, they appear to be going about their ordinary lives—farming for the most part. There is a chance it’s the same infection that took Favashi, but that it impacts mortals in a different way.” Jason’s wings rustled as he flared them out before folding them back in. “It could also be connected more immediately to Lijuan.”

Raphael sipped at his cognac as he considered Jason’s words. “If so, she has not gone into Sleep,” he said at last. “A Sleeping archangel cannot impact the world around her.”

“I have sent operatives to all of her strongholds. There is no sign of her or her most trusted people.”

“China is a vast land.”

“Yes, and she has held it for millennia—it’s possible she built a hiding place long before we were born. To be used only once, so it could never be known.”

“Ah-ha!” Elena’s triumphant cry caught both their attention.

Part of the puzzle box had come away from the center. As they watched, she pushed two specific spots using the edges of her nails and multiple other pieces snapped out from the box to reveal a set of tiny metal darts. The box itself had turned into a blower from which the darts could be shot.

Elena’s face was a study in wonder. “This is amazing, Jason! Raphael, check it out.”

Raphael examined the object with interest. “A great artisan put months of work into this.” It was a piece of art as well as a weapon.

Accepting it back, Elena picked up a dart using two fingernails. “I wonder if it still works. Can you throw me a disinfectant wipe from the stuff Nisia left behind?”

After Raphael did so, she sanitized the blower, then very delicately inserted a dart into the device.

Aiming it at the opposing wall, she blew.

The dart flew straight and true to come to a sudden stop in the wall. Small as it was, it was barely visible. Jason retrieved it. “I believe you need to poison the tips for full effectiveness as a weapon,” he said upon presenting it back to Elena.

“I’m totally going to do that. Never know when a secret poison dart might come in handy.” A brilliant smile. “Thank you, Jason. Though . . . it is a little terrifying that you picked up exactly the thing I would’ve coveted had I seen it.”

“I’m a spymaster,” Jason said. “It is my calling to notice such things.”

“Venom’s poison is potent.”

“Hah!” Elena laughed at Raphael’s suggestion. “I’m going to ask him.” Tipping out the darts onto a side table with extreme care, she began to clean and oil the moving parts of the device.

Jason, meanwhile, turned to give Raphael the rest of his report. His people had discovered more ghost villages devoid of life. “We haven’t yet found any bodies.” The spymaster also confirmed that the vampires were getting restless. “The smart ones have started to notice that the archangels never land in China—it’s made them bold.”

Jason’s words bathed Elijah’s earlier concern in a new light. Blood would flow like water should the massive number of the Made in China realize its soil was poisonous to the Cadre. “We have kept you long enough, Jason.” His spymaster’s task was to unearth the problems; Raphael and the Cadre were charged with discovering the answers. “It is time you turned your wings homeward to your princess.”

Inclining his head at Raphael, then Elena, Jason left as silently as he’d arrived. It wasn’t until after he was gone that Elena put down the puzzle box and said, “I didn’t know Jason liked me that much.”

“He is a hard angel to read, even for me, and I have known him nearly all his life.” All but the formative first years that had woven aloneness into Jason’s bones. “But never take Jason’s quietness for disinterest, Guild Hunter.” He ran his hand through the silk of her hair, the tiny feathers at the ends delicate yet strong.

Leaning her head against his thigh, she said, “You’ll have to do a rotation in China, won’t you?”

“Yes.” His gaze might’ve been on the glitter and lights of Manhattan, but it was a land of death and vanishings that he saw in his mind. “Mother stepped in during my absence and will continue to cover for me for the time being, but it cannot be for too long, or it will raise questions about my ability to do all that is required of an archangel.” Once that happened, war was inevitable.

Ice wove through his veins, the cold Cascade power eager for violence.

The next day, Elena learned that, despite her lack of wings, her DNA was “mostly” angelic, though that was only an interim result; her DNA was fluctuating and transforming from hour to hour.

“Frankly, Elena, you’re weird.” Lucius, calm and gentle, threw up his hands.

She laughed; it was either laugh or cry and she’d cried all the tears she was going to—now it was time to kick the future’s ass. “Is that your official diagnosis?”

“My official diagnosis is that you’re definitely immortal. The rest is subject to change.” The soft yellow of his wings rippled in unfamiliar agitation. “Also, you have strange glowing cells inside you. Come look through the microscope.”

Striding over to the device, she put her eye to the viewer. A happily glowing cell floated by, followed by one that looked normal to her non-scientist eyes. Drawing back, she checked the skin of her hands. “I’m not glowing. I stopped sometime last night.”

“If that changes, come straight here so I can take a sample. I need to see if your cells morph when you glow.”

“Uh-huh.” Elena couldn’t help thinking how she’d gone glow-in-the-dark in Raphael’s arms. “Give me a syringe.”

Lucius sighed, his handsome face set in lines that shouted, “Grant me patience.” “Do you know how to use one to draw blood?”

“Well . . . no.”

“Just prick yourself and put a couple of drops in here, then close the stopper.” He passed over a small glass vial, then added two more. “Get me samples from the archangel, too. He’s also got glowing cells.”

“What we did, it changed both of us.” His heart in her chest. Her heart in fragments in his system. Their minds locked together in the dream.

Leaving the infirmary, the vials tucked safely into a zippered pocket of the hip-length black leather jacket that Beth had sent over, she found herself drawn to the balcony at the end of the hall. Phantom wings tugged suddenly at her back, a maddening muscle echo her body couldn’t forget.

Gritting her teeth, she continued on. The balcony had no railing—and Elena not only didn’t have wings, her bone structure wasn’t strong enough to withstand any kind of a real impact, far less one from so high. She’d splatter herself into pieces.

Regardless, she stepped into the doorway . . . and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you summon me?”

“You were speaking of blood.” Under the haze of a misty rain, the Primary was a crouched gargoyle, gray and motionless but for his mouth.

Oddly, Elena wasn’t disturbed by his knowledge. The Legion were a hum at the back of her mind now, there without intruding. “You listened in?”

“No. We just feel it.”

That made no sense but this was the Legion. Making sense wasn’t their strong suit. “So, any input on the glowing cells situation?”

“The sire’s blood traveled across the bed and was absorbed by the chrysalis. We watched it. We did not interfere.”

And that was after the damn insane archangel had given her a piece of his heart. All that archangelic blood inside her when Raphael released violent energy meant for an archangel. Powered by his blood, her body had obviously stolen some . . . but what was it doing with it? “Anything else happen while we were napping?”

“Right before you woke, the filaments that formed the chrysalis grew and grew, spreading like spidersilk across Raphael and the room.” His bat-like wings stayed motionless even as the wind riffled his hair. “Before then, a long time before, we had a thought that the earth would help you, so we brought the soil from your garden and it was dark and rich, and we placed it over the chrysalis and the sire’s sleeping body.”

Elena thought back—they’d woken on such dark soil. A remnant of the Legion’s offering? “I remember bringing that soil into my greenhouse.” She smiled at the memory of Illium’s complaints about how hauling bags of soil was beneath his dignity—but he’d done it anyway, on the condition she plant some bluebells in the soil.

Her hands itched. “How is your garden? Can I come play?”

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Elena. Come. Come. We wait.

So much excitement that her head hurt but she didn’t censure them. They’d missed her, these strange beings unlike any others in the world. She’d missed them, too. “Give me a few minutes.”

The journey to the ground floor was the easy part—all she had to do was get in the elevator. Even crossing the grass to the Legion building didn’t take much out of her—she was definitely stronger after the psychedelic sex mojo with Raphael. Fine droplets of water beaded on her jacket, clung to her lashes, the cool, damp day beautiful to her. Then she reached the bottom of the wall of vines that led up to the entrance to the Legion’s home . . . and reality hit with a backhanded slap.

Visit’ll have to wait. Things ached inside her, the need for the earth curling her fingers into her palms. I’ll fall and break my butt right now.

Elena. Elena. Elena. One of the Legion landed beside her. Come.

She went to repeat that she couldn’t when she realized he was waving for her to move to the right of the climbing wall. Keeping her questions to herself, she followed him around the corner and, after he lifted it up, under a heavy weight of vines. There, hidden behind those thick ropes was a door that had been opened from the inside.

“Hot damn.” Soul flowering at the humid warmth that whispered outward from the doorway, she slipped in. The Legion fighter came after her. As she watched, he locked the door securely behind him—it involved two iron bars and a third crossbar.

The first thing she did was take off her boots and socks and curl her toes into the grass underfoot. The second was to shrug off her jacket. Fall was locked out, summer in full bloom within. She stood in a grove of orange trees plump with unseasonal fruit. Plucking a ripe one, she used one of her knives to cut it into pieces and held out a slice to the Legion fighter.

The Legion didn’t need to eat, but anytime she gave them food, they accepted.

The fighter took the slice, looked at it with intense interest, then ate it. Peel and all.

Grinning, she disposed of her own peels at the foot of a tree, where it would become part of the earth once again, then just walked around, breathing in the smell of the earth, and of green growing things.

Elena. Come.

Heading toward the two members of the Legion who’d spoken to her, she saw an empty garden lush with dark soil. A row of potted seedlings sat beside it. “Is that for me?”

For you. We make. For you.

Her throat closed up. “Thank you.” Going down to her knees, she sank her fingers into the soil and sighed. “I needed this so much.”

Humming quietly under her breath, she began to plant. She was aware of the Legion around her, above her. One was a helpful presence that passed her the potted seedlings, while another flew down with a tray on which sat a large bottle of Nisia’s new concoction, meant to complement the IV calories. Elena drank it without complaint.

Once she’d planted her small garden to her satisfaction, she helped weed the other gardens on this floor, and checked the orange trees for any indication of damaging insect activity. The Legion brought her berries to eat, flowers to look at, acting like small children excited to show her their favorite things. This was the paradox of the Legion—they were infinite in age, yet at times, innocent as children.

Deeply content and less tired than she’d expected by the time she finished gardening, she said good-bye to the Legion before exiting via the secret entrance to return to the Tower. Suhani, the receptionist, had been away from her desk when Elena left the Tower, but now beamed and waved at her, so Elena walked over.

The vampire’s smile deepened, but there was sadness in the brown of her gaze. Suhani had seen Elena come through these doors the very first time, when the Archangel of New York had summoned Guild Hunter Elena Deveraux to his tower. Later, she’d seen Elena reappear with wings, and now the wings were gone.

Yeah, it was going to be an adjustment for all of them.

About to say hello, Elena got distracted by the utterly lovely bonsai on the polished black marble counter behind which Suhani held sway. “This is glorious work.” The Japanese red maple had been painstakingly shaped into its miniature form with intricate delicacy, the color of the leaves an astonishing and flawless scarlet.

“Oh, thank you.” Suhani blushed under the burnished brown of her skin, her hair a deep brown-black that she always wore in a sleek knot. “I used to do it a hundred years ago, then fell out of practice, but I have a few that have survived my benign neglect.”

Elena had never asked Suhani’s exact age, but felt the cool and deadly weight of that age in her bones. Suhani might work reception, but she was no less than lethal. She was also a dedicated member of the “Bring back Hunter’s Prey” lobby, and had a scrapbook about the show that she’d pull out at any opportunity.

“You have a true talent. Can I . . . ?” Elena lifted a hand.

“Of course!” Bright, happy eyes. “If you really like it, I would be honored to gift you one from my collection. I have a sakura that—” Her smile faded as the maple shot up two inches. Right under Elena’s hand.

Elena jerked back. But the maple, it grew . . . and grew.