“And even weirder, the ones not squirming and slapping off bees are grinning like lunatics because they’re coated in butterflies. I’ve never seen so many in one place. I didn’t even know butterflies flew around at night.”
Grinning, Elena pressed the reply button on the comm device. “Naasir apparently has some tricks up his sleeve.” Hell, if he kept this up, she might have to risk being eaten and kiss him on that gorgeous and freaky mouth the next time she saw him.
“I’ll say.” Sara logged off.
Two minutes later, Elena got a confirmation that Raphael had destroyed the planes. “On alert,” came the order in her earpiece seven minutes after that, the ongoing distractions having apparently bought them that much time. “Enemy forces preparing to launch major offensive.”
Breathing calm and heart rate steady, Elena kept her eyes on the night sky . . . so she saw the flares that lit it up, dazzling the senses. An enraged scream sounded from Lijuan’s side of the line with the second flare, bolts of archangelic power going completely wide of the Tower by several blocks. Glass smashed, bricks fell, but the Tower remained unscathed.
Was the crazy old bitch sensitive to light?
It made sense, given the paleness of her eyes. But since she appeared fine in daylight, it wasn’t a debilitating weakness, simply one that could be aggravated by the right conditions. Elena decided she really would have to kiss Naasir for figuring that out with his sly tiger-creature brain.
Flares continued to light up the sky over the next few minutes, exacerbating Lijuan’s screams of fury and keeping her own forces down because her bolts were going so awry, she could as easily hit them. Then the fireworks started.
Elena couldn’t help it; she began to giggle. They were fighting a battle for their lives and it was going to be fireworks that saved them?
Giggles passing when a glance at her watch showed Raphael would only be halfway home at this point, she kept her eyes on the brilliant display—and suddenly became aware of midnight blades slicing through the storm of color to hit the Tower and surrounding buildings. “Shit. Lijuan’s figured out a way to adapt to the light.” Trying to spot Lijuan’s people among their own as wings filled the air, she found herself blinded by the fireworks. “Dmitri! Get Naasir to shut it off!”
“Three seconds.”
The last firework went out as Lijuan’s second blow hit the Tower, leaving a significant dent and destroying an entire row of windows. Scanning the sky, she spotted the Archangel of China’s distinctive white hair above the sea of wings. There was no way to hit her that far up. “Fuck.”
Teeth gritted, she started aiming at the enemy angels as they swarmed, their objective clearly to land on the buildings that housed the aerial defense systems and the shooting teams. Precision aim was near impossible with the lack of light and the enemy’s sheer numbers, so she switched approach to go for the wings.
All they had to do was hold on until Raphael’s return.
Angel after angel went down with torn and badly damaged wings, but there was a constant wave of reinforcements, giving the wounded angels time to heal and arise anew. Meanwhile, Elena knew their own forces were being worn down by the constant barrage, above and below, the vampires on the ground no doubt locked in violent combat against vampires and wounded angels both.
Black lightning splintered the sky the next instant, taking down a number of Lijuan’s people. The lightning didn’t stop Lijuan, but it irritated her enough that she tried to aim for the source, only to find her way blocked by a rain of glittering stone so sharp it threatened to shred her wings. On its heels came a pulse of golden power that smacked into the enemy fighters and Lijuan both, cutting the ordinary angels down like bowling pins and making Lijuan fight to hold her position in the sky.
Stabilizing, the Archangel of China raised her arm to unleash her power, and the black lightning struck a second time.
Jason, Illium, and Aodhan, Elena realized, were working together to keep Lijuan annoyed and distracted. It worked, at least for a while. Then Lijuan decided to leave them to her generals, while she flew above the fighting, her focus on the Tower. Her first blast blew out another row of windows to shower the streets in glass; a second one to the same spot would do serious structural damage.
“Archangel,” Elena whispered, taking aim at one of the enemy generals, “if you’re planning to do something, now would be the time.”
Her bolt ripped through the red-winged angel’s right wing, just as another hunter hit his left . . . and a spear of incandescent blue kissed with wildfire slammed straight into Lijuan—or it would have, if one of her troops hadn’t angled across her in a suicide intercept.