Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(49)

“The enemy remained forever a head, sitting there oozing on the bloody stump of his neck, screaming into the void. It’s said that he is there still. Insane beyond all understanding, a thing no longer sentient.”

He lunged his head toward Sharine.

She screamed.

Titus burst out laughing, shaking so much with mirth that he was barely aware of her hand slapping his shoulder while she called him “a fiend.” “I thought you were narrating a true story! Who came up with that hideous tale?”

“One of my sisters.” Still chuckling, he found his gaze dropping to the sweet plumpness of her lips, had to consciously force it away before he gave in to temptation and broke about a thousand unwritten laws of angelkind. “I was perhaps five decades old.” The midpoint between child and adult. “I spent the next five years searching every gorge I could find for the decapitated head of the insane archangel.”

“Did you never wonder about the identity of the other one? The one torturing his nemesis for eternity?”

“I was fifty.” A boy ready for mystery and adventure. “And it’s a very good story. Charo has always had a great talent.”

Sharine sat up in his arms, her inhale sharp. “Your sister is Charo of the Tales?” Her mouth fell open at his nod. “How did you spring from the same stock that produced such a glorious wordsmith?”

“I’m a gift,” he shot back.

She parted her lips to reply, when her attention was caught by something else. Pointing down, she said, “Do you see that?”

“Yes.” Another group of reborn, these ones moving in a crablike crawl, their heads hanging forward and their bodies hunched. “This area is uninhabited for many miles in all directions, and these reborn appear heavily lethargic from lack of food. I predict we’ll find them in much the same place on our return.”

“Yes,” Sharine said, “you’re right—it’s more important that we unearth the strangeness I saw in that village.” No amusement or bite in her voice now, simply a deep vein of sadness. “Why do we do this? Destroy that which we love?”

The golden filaments in her feathers glinted in the starlight. “Charisemnon loved this landscape as much as you do—he visited Lumia twice during my time there, and we watched the sunset together. We spoke of the animals and the sky and the colors of this land, and I would’ve staked my life on the fact that he was honest in his love.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Titus’s sorrow was more complicated, bled through with hate and disgust. “I, too, once sat beside him—it was long ago, soon after I became an archangel. We shared a tankard of ale, and we spoke of how lucky we were to have this land as our territory.”

Then, Charisemnon had been content with his half of Africa, had welcomed Titus as his neighbor. “There are differences as you fly from the north to the south, but in the end, there’s a feeling to this continent that you can’t find in any other. It sings to my soul and it sang to his.”

Titus could barely remember that Charisemnon. “But the thing is, he grew to love power more—or perhaps that hunger always existed in him. He chose power and vanity over his love for this land and for his people. In pursuit of that power, he poisoned our land of life and wonder, and he turned our people into prey. For that, I will never forgive him. Had he a grave, I would spit on it.”





25


Sharine didn’t disagree with Titus’s judgment, harsh though it was.

The Archangel of Northern Africa that she’d gotten to know had been jaded and dissolute in a way that was difficult to explain. It was oft said that power corrupted, and archangels were the most powerful beings in the world—but archangels also had to deal with myriad problems to maintain a healthy territory, from keeping a firm hand on vampires, to—at the basest level—ensuring the population had work and didn’t starve. That didn’t even take lethal territorial politics into account.

An archangel couldn’t simply sit pretty and “exist.”

It was unlikely that Titus thought of himself as a crouching threat over the other members of the Cadre, but he was, as were they in turn. Power such as that of an archangel didn’t sleep. It watched and so by default, the members of the Cadre watched each other. Friendships, love, logic might stop them from making constant war, but the threat of it loomed always.

Ennui shouldn’t have ever been a realistic possibility for Charisemnon.

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked. “I had little to do with him prior to my stint at Lumia.”

“From what I’ve heard of his youth, he was always possessed of arrogance and the belief that he was better than others. However, many a young man believes so.”

About to make a quip about Titus’s own brash confidence, Sharine found herself remembering how he’d sat with the headman in the village, how he’d spoken to the elderly mortal with patience for his wisdom. Titus might believe strongly in himself but he didn’t look down on others. It was a critical difference between the two archangels.

She had to stop trying to put him in the same box as Aegaeon or Charisemnon or their ilk just because she was discomforted by the fact he aroused urges in her she’d believed long dead and buried. Against her, his skin was like silk, his heat a delicious burn, and the vibration of his chest when he spoke an increasingly familiar pleasure.