Archangel's Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(69)

That was very bad of you, Elena, Raphael said once they were in the air. You know the coming sun shower will pass in but a moment.

I also know Tasha McHotpants is regretting she didn’t scoop you up when you were young and single. Altering her mental tone, she said, Oh, Raphael, what luck I caught you. And me dressed up like a warrior with a sword and everything. She snorted. Luck my ass.

McHotpants?

Shut up. I’m mad. Especially after that stunt you pulled this morning.

Then you know I’m more partial to knives than swords anyway.

Teasing me right now could be bad for your health.

To her surprise, he did go silent. It wasn’t until he pointed out the volcano some distance to their left that she understood why, her own blood heavy with turbulent emotion. Later that day, a young woman who’d done nothing but go for a walk in the woods would be laid to rest in the heart of that volcano.

As soon as the rites were completed, Amanat would once again become a closed city, according to what Raphael had told her as they showered. Caliane had agreed to stand sentinel against the darkness on this side of the world, while they fought it on the other. Much as Elena wanted all their preparation to be for nothing, she knew that was a wasted hope.

The drums of war pounded closer with every heartbeat.

? ? ?


Winging into Manhattan after the jet landed on a private airfield nearby, Elena breathed deep of the biting cold air of home. It had promised snow for a couple of weeks without delivering, but she felt sure that’d change very soon. “Anything from Aodhan?” she said, when Raphael came alongside.

“No, the city has been quiet since we—” He paused, his eyes locked on the Hudson.

“What is it?” It appeared as it always did to her, but she knew he had the piercing eyesight of a bird of prey.

“Watch.”

The water began to crash and froth even as he spoke. Managing to hover beside Raphael as he halted at the river’s edge, Elena glanced to the right . . . and that was when she saw it, the wave of red. Rich and dark, it rolled down the river in an eerie tide that made the hairs rise on the back of her neck, the scent of living iron pungent in the air. “Is that blood?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” He swept down to the water, hovering lower than she could manage with her current wing strength, until his fingertips skimmed the red stain.

Bringing his fingers to his nose, he shook off the wet and rose to her side. “Blood,” he confirmed. “But it’s weakening.”

As they watched, the water turned rose red, then pink, then blush, until it was the murky brown of a churned-up Hudson again, the unmistakable scent gone as if it had never existed. That was when the snow began to fall, airy flakes that whispered over her wings and face to settle on the city, a caress of whiteness to erase the blood.

“What we just saw”—she stared at the water—“should’ve been impossible.”

“Did Jessamy not say something about blood raining from the skies during the Cascade? This would seem to fall along the same continuum.”

“And the archangels were not who they should be, and bodies rotted in the streets and blood rained from the skies as empires burned.”

“Jesus, Raphael,” Elena said, as the historian’s words rang in her mind, “this is really happening.” And it wasn’t just going to be a war. “It’s going to be an event that changes the face of our world.” Her brain could barely comprehend the scale of what was coming.

Raphael’s eyes met hers, the snow continuing to drift from a crystalline sky. “In the hours I spent with Caliane, she told me more of the last Cascade.” Shadows of terrible darkness in the intense, impossible blue of his eyes.

“I almost don’t want to know,” she whispered, all the while aware this was a truth that couldn’t be avoided.

Her archangel angled his wings toward the Tower, and she did a wider sweep to follow. “You are consort to an archangel. You no longer have a choice.”





26





Aodhan was waiting for them on the Tower balcony outside Raphael’s office. “Sire, I’ve sent out people to keep watch for any signs of unrest caused by the event.”

The event.

Elena guessed there really was no other way to describe a river turning to blood.

“Panic has been stifled before it could take root.” Aodhan’s eyes reflected splinters of Manhattan as he looked toward the water. “However, members of the public no doubt captured live footage of the event and the Tower will need to issue an explanation.”

“No.” Raphael’s tone was autocratic, his face stripped of all traces of “humanity.” “There are to be no explanations. Say only that it is Cadre business and if anyone insists on further information, tell them to contact me directly.”

Anyone stupid enough to take him up on that offer, Elena thought, deserved what they got. Most mortals never came near an archangel for a reason—the power differential was so vast it created a gulf that couldn’t be crossed from either side except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. The longer she spent in the immortal world, the more she understood that that gulf was a safety net; anything else would lead only to death for countless humans.

Still—“People will be scared.” She had to speak for the humans and the ordinary vampires, because Raphael simply didn’t understand that kind of helplessness. He’d never been weak, not even as a child. “If we don’t do something to reduce their fear, the morale of the city could dip to dangerous levels, and it’s already shaky after the Falling.”