Archangel's Legion(112)

She’d caused the death of every adult in two thriving cities, creating a silence painful and eternal. The survivors had all been children, little ones so bruised in the heart that they’d curled up and died of terrible sorrow, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny lives snuffed out without ever being given the chance to truly burn.

He’d known all that, understood she needed to be stopped, but she’d still been the mother who’d once sung him such lullabies that the Refuge stood silent to hear her. So he’d taken that single moment to watch her, to remember who she’d been before the madness sucked her under.

Graceful and strong, her wings backlit by the sun, she flew above him . . . but now there was a cloud across the sun. That wasn’t right. There had been no clouds that day, the sun a burning orb that baked his spilled blood to crystalline hardness and threatened to boil him alive from the inside out.

The clouds grew darker and darker, until they blotted out the sun. And his mother, she was gone. All he could see was a thick blanket of featureless gray. Beneath his feet, the verdant grass had turned brown, the insect a carcass. And the wind, it blew cool across his face, but it wasn’t fresh.

It tasted old.

There was no scent of putrefaction or of death, simply a sense of unfathomable age, of dark, hidden places full of secrets and whispers. Breathing it in, he continued to walk across the field, for someone was waiting for him. He was halfway across the dried-up landscape—so old, this place—when he saw that dawn had come . . . no, that was Elena’s wing arcing over him as she folded it away to reveal the skylight above their bed, the world outside the hazy formless gray of the time just before true daybreak.

The rim of silver around her irises glowed in the muted darkness as she leaned closer. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It was time.” He knew he’d never have reached the end of that field without . . . something, something he was meant to have in order to complete the journey. “Why do you watch me in such a way?”

“Occasionally I wake,” she whispered, as if it were a secret, “and I have this instant where I don’t believe the happiness inside me, can’t imagine you could ever belong to me, but you do.” A smile that pierced the lingering grayness. “You’re mine.”

“I had another dream,” he told his hunter, for she belonged to him as much as he belonged to her.

Elena cocked her head, listening as he described the forgotten field and the weight of age, the scent of old, old things. “There was no sense of threat,” he said, “but I felt I’d lose something indefinable if I did not do an act of which I had no knowledge.”

A thoughtful silence. “It might simply be your subconscious’s way of working out everything that’s been going on, but after that shared dream, I have my doubts.”

As did he. “And you, Elena,” he said, deciding to let matters lie for now, for the intrigues of the dream world had to take second place to the harshness of reality, “what did you dream?”

“Not a damn thing.” Her beaming relief segued into concern all too soon. “Did Jason send through another report last night?”

“The reborn component of Lijuan’s gathering forces appears to be suspiciously small, especially given how many villagers have disappeared from the areas closest to her stronghold.”

Elena sucked in a breath. “You think they might already be on the way?”

“Or have arrived, been stashed away until needed.” It wasn’t impossible that they could’ve been smuggled in on shipping containers. A container would provide a perfect cage, and, once released, the starving and infectious creatures would decimate the population. “Jason also has information that Lijuan has ‘improved’ on her design so these reborn are not sentient in any way, simply creatures designed to kill and feed.”

“Infectious, mobile weapons.”

He nodded, agreeing with her assessment. “Charisemnon’s forces are also strong, but Titus has stepped up the aggression on their border to ensure Charisemnon cannot risk seconding any squadrons to Lijuan.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Elena said. “I know Lijuan has more fighters, but she can’t move all her forces against us or she risks leaving her territory vulnerable.”

“She has also been an archangel for millennia, and as such, has many, many more older angels and vampires at her command.” Harder to kill or disable, the senior fighters could endure far longer than younger ones.

“Hell, I didn’t even think about that.” Elena spread her hand over his heart, the look in her eyes telling him she was calculating every angle. “Home field advantage remains our best weapon.”