Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,10

treated with respect, but there was no choice—their dead had to go into the cleansing cauldron of fire.

“Charisemnon and Lijuan must’ve had a plan to spread this new strain,” Tzadiq had said to him after they first became aware of the horror they faced, his second’s clean-shaven head gleaming in the reprieve of the dawn sun. “Why do you think that plan stalled in Africa?”

“We’ll never know for certain,” Titus had answered, his back drenched with sweat after yet another night fighting the reborn, “but if I had to lay bets, I’d say that whatever Charisemnon did to blend his disease with her death, it cost him.” Disease was a “gift” that cut both ways. “He likely couldn’t maintain the projected pace.”

But the archangel formed of pestilence and vanity had done plenty.

It was all more than enough to deal with—yet a nagging worry haunted Titus. When he’d entered Charisemnon’s inner border court after his return from New York, it was to find a number of badly decomposed bodies. No one had been inside the court buildings in the interim, both his and Charisemnon’s former forces caught in a desperate battle against the reborn.

The creatures had gone berserk upon the death of their master.

Only later, after questioning several senior members of the enemy court, had he learned that Charisemnon had shut off the inner court to everyone but a favored few. The other courtiers had worried they’d fallen in their archangel’s favor. Turned out, from what Titus had discovered, that the favored few had actually been the unlucky few.

For the vampires, Titus believed that their liege had either accidentally infected them with a disease or he’d used them as guinea pigs. It was possible the angels had been thrown to the vampires as sacrificial food, but it was equally possible the decomposition hid what might’ve been indications of disease. It was the latter prospect that haunted Titus—because angels weren’t supposed to be vulnerable to disease.

It was a law written into stone.

As immutable as the wind and the sky.

Or it had been before Charisemnon.

Then Tzadiq had discovered the worst thing: a slimy black-green trail along the hallway that led out of the room of the rotting dead . . . in a shape that couldn’t be of anything but an angel. No other being in the world could’ve made that particular pattern. Only an angel whose wings were dragging along the stone as they clawed and crawled their way down the hall.

Needless to say, Titus was handling serious and deadly problems.

The Hummingbird had exactly zero useful skills when it came to the grim tasks that lay ahead.

He wanted to groan all over again. Did he even have anyone left on his staff who could pretty up a room for her?

This was going to be an unmitigated disaster.

6

Sharine’s first action was to consider the well-being of Lumia and its connected township. To that end, she called together those of her current team who wore the mantle of leadership: Trace, Tanicia, and Farah.

The most senior of the three, Tanicia, her black hair delicately braided around the front but a halo at the back, said, “We won’t flinch at maintaining the rules you’ve set down, Lady Sharine.” Her voice was husky, her gaze resolute, and her wings a deep autumnal orange-red against skin of darkest brown. “We will allow no stain to fall on your honor.”

She should not have favorites, Sharine thought, but Tanicia was one of hers. A warrior through and through, but one with heart. Sharine had seen her slipping sweets into the hands of the younglings who ran after her in the streets, wanting to touch her wings but too well-taught by their parents to dare.

“I have every faith in you,” she reassured all three, lest they believe she was questioning their loyalty or commitment. “But we are short in number—and now you’ll lose me for a time. We must have contingencies in place should the vampires in the area begin to act out.” As Raphael had reminded her, bloodlust was always a threat, especially in the absence of archangelic oversight.

With Elijah, the Archangel of South America, as well as Caliane in the healing sleep of anshara, the Cadre was only seven right now, one of them Suyin, newly ascended and finding her feet. Add in the fact that Neha, the Archangel of India, had awakened from anshara a bare week ago, and the Cadre was stretched to the limit.

As a result, powerful angels who could maintain the leash of fear were