Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(42)

Dead as soon as they attempted to enter that oily miasma.

“Enough.” Antonicus exercising his voice again. “It is time I do what must be done—I am not a child to be scared by ghost stories.” His voice dripped with contempt for what he clearly saw as their cowardice.

Fool. A good general reviewed all information before making a decision. They didn’t send people blundering off into the unknown. But if Antonicus wished to volunteer to blunder, then Zanaya would use the resulting knowledge. And as she’d said to Alexander, she still wished him well.

Antonicus continued on. “I will see you all after I return from speaking to this Lijuan who believes herself a goddess even over immortals.”

Zanaya was aware of Alexander coming to stand beside her as all the archangels lined up on the edge of the roof to watch Antonicus’s progress over the sea of black. He’d agreed to drop down into the fog at a point that would be visible to them, before rising to head on deeper, toward Lijuan’s main stronghold.

She held her breath as he reached the first point. He turned to indicate that he was about to dive by raising his arm . . . then dived into the black that wasn’t black. Her chest tightened as the moments passed and he didn’t emerge. She truly hadn’t expected the death fog to affect an archangel—and an Ancient at that.

No, there he was!

A sudden burst of hope . . . shattered when it became clear that Antonicus was injured.

It was Caliane’s son, Raphael—the only archangel who, she’d learned, had a proven immunity to at least some of Lijuan’s powers—that flew out to assist Antonicus. And it was Raphael who carried back an archangel wasted and hollow, Antonicus’s eyes sheened by oily blackness.

Laying him down on a mat on the roof, Raphael was able to use his power to chase the black from Antonicus’s eyes, but it was a temporary reprieve.

Zanaya had seen archangels die, but never in such a way. Always in battle, always in a blaze. This . . . Her gut clenched. She crouched beside the body alongside the rest of the Cadre, an honor guard of archangels as Antonicus’s wings began to curl and go black, as his skin became a rotted green, and as his chest sank inward, as if his body was turning into viscous soup.

Until . . . it all stopped.

Antonicus lay frozen in a moment of decay and death. Perhaps because archangels could come back from many things.

Which was why Zanaya didn’t argue when it was mooted that they shouldn’t destroy his body but bury it in a distant place of ice and frost where he couldn’t spread the infection that riddled his frame—and where he could lie in peace for eons as his body fought to repair itself.

“I don’t know if I want to hope that he’s alive or not,” she said to Alexander as they flew ahead of the group some hours later, having already taken a turn carrying the sling that held the body. “The horrors in his eyes, on his face before he was no longer present . . . imagine being trapped in that moment for all eternity.” For there was a chance that Antonicus wouldn’t die—but wouldn’t wake either.

He’d remain forever a partially rotted corpse.

“He had no mind at the end,” Alexander said. “I’m certain of that. If he Sleeps, it’ll be a Sleep devoid of all knowledge. Which may be what keeps him sane should he be alive.”

Zanaya hoped Alexander was right when it came time to hold the burial. She and Archangel Elijah formed the hole where Antonicus’s body would lie cradled in impermeable stone. Then they all joined together to lower Antonicus into the hole.

“To Antonicus!”

Zanaya’s eyes met Alexander’s as they said the name of the gravely injured archangel, and she could read his thoughts in his eyes: the general was afraid that they’d made a mistake, that they’d just buried a problem rather than dealing with it. Antonicus was infected with a darkness beyond anything either of them had ever before seen.

If he returned . . .

We must give him a chance, she said to Alexander, mind-to-mind. It’s the only honorable choice.

Yes, he agreed at once. But we will watch. We will be ready.





22


Afterward, their mood somber, the Cadre split in various directions to return home, all of them knowing this was but the first strike.

“How has she become so?” Zanaya asked Alexander when they finally landed on the balcony of his main fort. “Zhou Lijuan? Was she always a great power?”

“I knew her as a young woman,” Alexander said. “She was powerful but no more so than you or I. Had she not given in to this madness, I could’ve seen her becoming a strong Ancient.” He thrust a hand through his hair as he led her inside and down a corridor carved out of the local red stone, paintings etched into the stone itself.

“I’d blame it on the Cascade,” he said, “but Titus informs me that there were more subtle signs of change in her before this evil.” He began to tell her of those signs; he’d always been generous when it came to information that was Cadre business.

Halting in front of a set of heavy golden doors, he held her gaze. “These are my rooms, Zani. Will you come with me this dark day?”

Perhaps she might’ve refused at another time, still bruised from their earlier altercation. But after witnessing what had taken place with Antonicus, she said, “Yes. But you, my general, will provide for me a bath first and foremost.” She would not lie with him rife with the stink of death.