Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,116

who’d attacked their settlement: His skin was like a bruise almost all over and it was peeling away in places, shriveled in others. His fingers were hooked, his nails like claws, and it seemed as if his tongue was rotting green, his lips too plump and red.

The angel on the cot looked relatively healthy in comparison, if the word could be used in this context—as if the infection hadn’t advanced as deep. Despite that, he showed no awareness of their presence, one of his arms hanging limply over this side of the cot. One wing was the same, the other crushed under his back.

When Sharine looked around the cabin, she spotted something that had her last meal threatening to rise from her stomach. “Unless I’m very wrong, that was his food source.”

Ozias crouched by the pile of bones and used her sword to nudge out the skull. “Mortal.” A pause, a closer look at the teeth. “No, vampire.” Voice cold, she said, “From the state of the bones, they’ve been here a number of days.” She got to her feet. “There’s no flesh or marrow.”

“A lack of food might explain his current state.” No normal reborn would appear as healthy after being deprived of food for days, but that was the thing that had become clear since their first discovery—infected angels might not be reborn at all. “Charisemnon’s journal states that his goal was to create an infection that didn’t need death as a starting point.”

Sharine had read the relevant journals over and over in an effort to discover the tiniest bit of data, and it had struck her that for an antidote or cure to work, the individual had to be alive in the first place—Lijuan had been the strongest of them all and even she hadn’t been able to bring the dead back to true life.

Add to that the information that Charisemnon’s “gift” had been disease, and it became even more probable that he hadn’t been capable of creating reborn on his own. All the initial stock of reborn had been birthed by Lijuan. “Our only indication that he might’ve succeeded is the pregnant angel.”

Titus’s medics, healers, and scientists were united on that one point: life, actual life, couldn’t come from one of the dead. Disregarding all philosophical discussion on the point, the internal organs of the reborn started to undergo a metamorphosis at the very moment of “resurrection”—a number of the more intrepid healers, including Sira, the leader of the entire team, had flown with the fighting squadrons and had studied enough “fresh” reborn to be sure of their conclusion.

The metamorphosis included the total desiccation of certain internal organs—including the womb. No reborn who’d existed longer than twenty-four hours could carry a child. Neither could a reborn sire one, as those organs also desiccated into nothing. The latter discovery had apparently caused a shudder to run through the ranks of all those who possessed said organs.

“You think he might be alive?” Ozias, Sharine had learned, was as adept as any spymaster in concealing her emotions—but now she compressed her lips and swallowed. “I’ll check his blood. Did Sira’s healers not theorize it might remain red until the infection took a strong hold?”

“Yes.” Sharine shifted to take position near the angel’s head. “Should he rise in an attack, I’ll bring him down with my power.” Sharine had an artist’s soul, violence not in her usual lexicon, but she’d come to accept that violence was the only answer in the current situation—the reborn would never listen to reason, never agree to live in peace side by side.

And whatever the connection between Lijuan’s reborn and Charisemnon’s disease, the victims of both shared a single overriding desire: to feed on living flesh. Sira’s team was of the opinion that Charisemnon had used the blood of the reborn as a base to synthesize or “birth” his disease. Sharine was apt to agree with them.

“Ready, my lady?”

At Sharine’s nod, Ozias slid away her sword and took out a knife. Using the razored edge, she made a tiny cut at the tip of one of the angel’s fingers. The angel didn’t recoil, though his chest continued to rise and fall, his eyes to blink. What emerged from the miniscule cut was a fluid of viscous green streaked with black.

The smell was putrid and overpowering.

The spymaster staggered back. “I’ve smelled that stench before,” Ozias choked out. “It’s of a body decaying in the grave.”

Sharine thought back to the infant’s mother; had she had such an