Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(92)

"It's as you thought," Jason said. "Lijuan wakes the dead."

Raphael felt the biting freshness of the water-tinged breeze coming off the river, and wondered if Lijuan would be as she was if she hadn't killed the human who'd threatened to make her a little bit mortal. "Are you certain?"

"I saw her raise them."

"Do they live?" He turned to face the other angel.

Deep revulsion whispered in the depths of Jason's eyes. "I wouldn't call it life, but there is some spark within, some glimmer of the person they once were."

This was worse than anything Raphael had thought. "Not puppets as we believed?"

"They are that, but they're also more. Abominations that walk, see, hear but never talk. Their silence is drowned out by the screams in their eyes. They know what they are."

Even an archangel's soul could feel the chill hand of horror. "How long can she maintain them?"

"Of the reborn I saw, the oldest was a year old. He was starting to become senile, that spark long gone." A pause, and then the usually temperate angel said, "It's a mercy when that part of their soul dies."

"And Lijuan has complete control over these reborn?"

"Yes. For now, she plays with them as one would with a new toy. But there may come a time when she turns them into an army."

That cold hand closed around his heart. For if the reborn marched on the living, civilization would fall as terror overtook the world. "Those she wakes-are they the newly dead?"

"No," was the disturbing answer. "Those are easier, but she's begun on the older dead-even those that have . . . rotted. She's somehow able to clothe them in flesh." Jason paused.

"What is it?"

"It's rumored their new flesh comes from consuming the bodies of the more recently dead, the ones Lijuan does not wish to reawaken, and I know they must then drink blood to survive." Jason's voice dropped even lower. "There are also whispers that she gains something from the rebirths, somehow absorbs power."

A bloodborn of another sort, Raphael thought, knowing that no hunter had been born-human, vampire, or angel-who could destroy Lijuan should that prove true. "Have your men maintain watch." Jason was the perfect spy, but as Elena had guessed, he was an even better spymaster. "We must know if she begins large-scale rebirths." The Cadre of Ten could do little while Lijuan played in her own lands. More, most of the members would choose to do little. They each had their own games, their own perversions. Raphael couldn't judge them-he'd countenance no interference in his domain, either.

Elena saw a fragment of humanity in him. But was he human enough to save himself from becoming another Lijuan? "Go. Rest. We'll talk more later."

Jason dropped off the balcony before rising in a steep climb, his wings visible until he rose up above the cloud layer. It was why the angel much preferred the night.

Dmitri.

Sire. The response was close. The vampire entered the balcony a few moments later, having just returned from their healers. "Venom reports that the cleanup at and around Jeffrey Deveraux's office, as well as at the museum, was completed earlier this afternoon. Geraldine is dead."

Raphael's first thought was of Elena-she'd be saddened at the death, though the woman had been all but a stranger. "What of the survivor we found at the warehouse?"

"I was able to trace her identity. Her name is Holly Chang, age twenty-three." Dmitri folded his hands behind his back. "She doesn't carry the mutant variant of the toxin, but she does carry something."

Raphael remembered his conversation with Elena. "Does she need to die?"

"Not at this stage. She's not contagious-and we need to discover the truth of whatever it is Uram did to her."

"Is she human still?"

Dmitri paused, frowned. "No one is certain what she is-she needs blood, but not as much as a vampire, and she does gain some energy from food. She may be the result of an aborted attempt at conversion."

"Without the proper procedure and with the mutant strain in Uram's blood, it should have been impossible."

"The healers and doctors think she may simply have been unlucky enough to be one of those who are easily Made-but now that she's been partially transformed, an attempt at full conversion may kill her." There was a long-buried edge in Dmitri's voice. Like Holly Chang, Dmitri had been Made against his will.

All because Isis had known Raphael's weakness-that he had a heart. More, she'd known that Dmitri was the descendant of a mortal Raphael had once called friend. So she'd stolen Dmitri's mortality . . . and made Raphael watch. That had been almost a thousand years ago. And Raphael had thought his heart dead for most of them.

Before Elena began to matter.

"Be easy, Dmitri," he said now. "We won't abuse her, but we must monitor her progress." If she carried the taint of the bloodborn, she had to die.

Dmitri nodded. "I've got her under twenty-four-hour watch." Another pause. "If I may, sire."

"Since when do you ask for permission?"

The vampire's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Elena makes you vulnerable. I don't know how, but she does." His eyes went to the injured wing. "You're healing at a slower rate."