Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(42)

When he lifted off the next time, he took stock of remaining numbers. The creatures screeched and clawed up at him, their faces twisted into a caricature of life. Adrian, the very first reborn Lijuan had displayed to the rest of the Cadre, had been a man of glossy dark skin and rich brown eyes, and he’d possessed a mind. Mind enough to understand that his goddess had turned him into an abomination.

Titus could still remember how blood, scarlet and wet, had dripped down Lijuan’s white skin after Adrian sank his fangs into her neck in a futile effort to end the nightmare, end his goddess. The reborn male’s eyes had held infinite sorrow—and so deep a pain that it had scraped across Titus’s bones.

Adrian had been the final truly intelligent reborn Titus had ever seen.

Unwilling to risk another defection, Lijuan had turned her reborn into stupid, mindless machines that wanted only to feed. It didn’t matter if a person had been a scholar or a warrior before being infected, the infection that brought them back from the dead also erased all evidence of who they’d been in life.

For all Titus knew, some of these people had once been in his court. He’d lost many good people in the battle against Charisemnon and in the battles against the reborn that had followed. It was equally possible that they were so emaciated because they’d been buried a short time earlier; long enough for their flesh to begin to decompose, but “fresh” enough for the reborn to pass on their contagion.

The latter might explain the dirty, blood-dotted suit being sported by one of the reborn.

Whatever their story, Titus could have no mercy on them—and he knew none of his people would want to exist in such a form. Roaring, his dual swords a blur, he dropped. When he came up for air this time, sweat gleaming on his skin, it was to devastation. Decapitated bodies. Reborn cut in half. Some with all their limbs chopped off. His swords had become razors that sliced and ended.

To the right.

The reborn Sharine had pinpointed was using its chin to try and drag itself away. Two steps to close the distance between them, then Titus brought down a blade on the creature’s neck. He took no satisfaction from the act; this hadn’t been an honorable battle. These people hadn’t had a choice. To him, this was simple mercy. Do you see any others not yet properly decapitated?

Sharine flew over the entire scene and hovered over several bodies before saying, “No.” Landing not far from him, she held her wings scrupulously off the blood and gore seeping into the ground. “We’ll have to burn the bodies.”

Nodding, he wiped his swords on a clean patch of grass, then slid them home. “I’ll take care of it.” A single pyre would do far less damage to the soil than if he’d used his power to scour the entire area.

“It’ll go faster if we both help.” She picked up a severed arm. “Where do you want to build the bonfire? I’m assuming somewhere close to the main mass of bodies.”

Titus blinked, but no, she was still standing there, radiant and ethereal . . . and with a rotting severed arm held by the wrist, while she bent to pick up a decapitated head. “Yes, atop the animal carcass,” he said, his instincts taking over; the longer they lingered, the higher the risk of attracting another nest, and the longer his people would have to fight the worst area of infestation without their archangel.

Sharine didn’t complain even as her hands became slippery with putrid green-black reborn blood, her body flecked with more of the same. The two of them would stink of decaying flesh for the rest of the journey, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Such cruelty,” she murmured at one point, her eyes bruised.

Glancing over, he saw her picking up what appeared to be a small carving. And he understood. In those who’d come from the far north, such carvings were sometimes tucked into the pockets of the clothing worn by the dead, to act as guardians on the journey beyond death that mortals believed awaited.

Now those carefully and lovingly buried dead were being desecrated.

Jaw set, Titus carried on, even as he saw Sharine add the carving to the pile of bodies. It didn’t take long to complete their task, the giraffe carcass at the bottom. After they’d gathered up some dry branches and leaves to act as kindling, he used a tiny fragment of his energy to start a flame. Then they watched, because he wouldn’t leave this fire to burn and spread across the land.

The heat blasted their faces, sparks jumping out, but they stood firm with their slimy blackened hands and stinking clothes. That was when he noticed light coming from Sharine’s palms. “I also wish I could blast them all into oblivion, but we must care for this land or it’ll become a desert.”

“What?” Following his gaze, Sharine stared down at one hand. Then, as he watched, the blood on her skin began to crystallize into dust and fall away.

Titus watched in fascination as she repeated the process with her other hand. “Useful.” It wasn’t a skill for which he’d give up his own abilities, but it would be a prized one in battle—something as simple as filth could demoralize an army.

Still staring at her own hands, as if she didn’t understand what she had done, she said, “Why don’t I know myself?” A vibration of anger.

“Do you want to see if you can repeat the process on someone else?” He thrust a hand in her direction—he was no stranger to the smells and liquids of battle but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.