Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)

Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)

Nalini Singh




Immortality is a gift incandescent.

    Immortality is a curse obscene.

    —Unknown scholar





The First Ending





1


Lijuan, Archangel of Death and Goddess Over All, gloried in the howl of her power as battle raged around her, Raphael’s once-glittering city now broken and scorched. Impudent child. He should’ve listened to Lijuan, listened to his goddess! She’d told him what to do, had attempted to guide him. But no, he would make the wrong choice. He would choose to tie himself forever to a mewling mortal.

It mattered naught that his consort now bore wings and other trappings of immortality. She was nothing, a worm to be crushed under the boot, as Lijuan had once crushed her own worm. Because worms dug inside you, creating runnels and holes. Weaknesses. Fractures. Vulnerabilities.

Raphael had all of those. And today he would pay the price. They would all pay.

She laughed at the temerity of the archangels who’d gathered into an alliance against her. Together, they thought they could defeat her. When all they’d done was made things easier for her by congregating in one place. They might’ve been the apex predators on the planet once, but Lijuan alone held that throne now.

They were nothing but her servants.

Ignoring the chaos all around her, she scanned the area until she pinpointed the archangel she most wanted to remove from the equation. There she was. Small in stature, with skin “like the night, eyes that held the stars, and hair of violet moonlight”—or so she’d been described by the idiotic poet who’d written a scroll devoted to Zanaya, Queen of the Nile.

Lijuan had researched Zanaya as part of her investigation into all possible Sleepers who might prove a problem in the future . . . but she’d paid a little extra attention to the so-called Queen of the Nile. Not because she was more of a power than the others, but because Zanaya had managed to obtain the one thing that Lijuan had never been able to capture: the love of Alexander, Archangel of Persia.

Oh, he’d been kind to Lijuan, had told her that she was too young and that perhaps after another seven thousand years, they could come together. Only later had she realized that he’d simply been letting her down with kindness—by then, she’d seen true passion in a man’s eyes, had understood with bitter clarity that what she’d seen in Alexander’s had been . . . gentle, yes. Twined even with affection. But passion? No. Not even the merest inkling.

Why her and not me?

A gnawing question inside her ever since she’d learned of Zanaya and Alexander’s history. Because that’s how most ancient scrolls were written—with their two names linked. As if they were so much a unit that it was understood that should Zanaya walk the earth, Alexander would belong to her and no one else.

Rage burned through Lijuan.

How dare he choose this mere archangel in place of Lijuan, who was a goddess? How dare he still look at Zanaya in a way he’d never once looked at her! She shouldn’t have noticed how their glances met, shouldn’t have noticed anything beyond what was necessary to win this war, but she had—and the reminder of her pathetic past self enraged her.

Fueled by the lifeforce of those who’d sacrificed themselves to their goddess, she turned noncorporeal . . . and then she flew straight to the archangel who mocked Lijuan with her very existence. Lijuan had no weaknesses. After she killed Zanaya, she’d take care of Alexander. She’d consume them both, and once they were inside her, she would control them.

Zanaya never stood a chance.

Appearing behind her, Lijuan sank her fangs into the archangel’s neck, and drank of her life. Those fangs usually only emerged in angels during the Making of a vampire, but Lijuan could call them up at will. Yet another sign of her difference from these creatures who sought to humble her.

Sudden savage winds whipped at Lijuan’s hair as Zanaya called up her power, the archangel’s body twisting to respond to the attack, but it was a futile effort. Lijuan had swallowed up too much of the potent power that made up a member of the Cadre, and Zanaya was fading, fading.

Lijuan’s rage, however, oh, it continued to scald.

Because it did, she made a critical error. She eased her iron control on the vicious power which made her a goddess—and created a leak. A whisper of her own power flowed into Zanaya, a gift of which she was utterly unworthy. But no matter. Zanaya was dead anyway. At least now, Lijuan knew not to get so entranced by the refueling process that she lost her grip on the screaming endlessness that was her glory.

Sated for the moment, she dropped Zanaya’s shriveled corpse and turned noncorporeal once more. There would never again be a scroll written that paired Zanaya with Alexander.

What a terrible shame that their love story had come to such an inglorious end.

Her lip curled when she saw golden-haired and silver-winged Alexander race to catch his lover’s desiccated body before it could shatter against the earth. What a fool he was; so unworthy of the goddess she’d become. How odd that she’d once wanted him. Now, all she wanted was his death. His end. Nothing could exist in this world that reminded her of personal failure.

She was a goddess. She. Did. Not. Fail.





2


Alexander saw Lijuan attack Zanaya.