Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,52

was truth. At least thirty of the reborn scrabbled under the late-afternoon light. The rotting beings were gathered around the long-limbed carcass of a giraffe they appeared to have brought down. I’ll remain aloft and out of reach.

The reborn must’ve been desperate to resort to feeding on an animal. From the way they moved, however, while the animal flesh was keeping them functional, it wasn’t truly revitalizing them—they didn’t have the smooth motion of those who fed from humans. Wanting to help in a way that didn’t make her a fatal distraction, she flew to where she could see the entire battle; this way, she could warn Titus if a creature was about to come at his back.

Power wreathed her hand, as if summoned by her fear for him—yes, he was an archangel, but there were a lot of reborn and they could do massive damage to his body, including tearing off his wings.

Curling her fingers, she held the power back with significant effort. She’d intervene only if it appeared that Titus needed the assistance . . . because while she had all this rich, old power, she had little experience with her aim. She couldn’t afford to get it wrong with Titus down there, his big body surrounded by monsters.

* * *

* * *

Titus took out the first ring of reborn even as he landed in the remains of the carcass of the animal they’d brought down. It was as well that his boots were solid, came up to his calf, and were impenetrable to the blood and viscera in which he stood as he swept out his swords in a rapid-fire motion that cut off reborn heads so quickly that one hadn’t yet fallen to the ground when another joined it.

His wings were his biggest vulnerability—this iteration of the rotting, voracious creatures had developed razor-sharp hooked claws. As a result, he had to keep lifting off when they got too close, then coming down again to lop off their heads.

Previously, reborn this hungry would’ve just kept coming, stupid machines driven by the urge to feed. The newer strains seemed to have gained a semblance of self-protective instinct—but from the emaciated state of their bodies, this nest was starving and thus too desperate to give up the fight, run.

Snarling, hissing, spitting putrid fluid, they kept on coming.

Behind you!

He twisted to eliminate the one about to go for his wing . . . and saw the creature was already falling, a blade in his eye. Grinning, he ripped out the blade and spun it back to Sharine, while stomping his boot over the reborn’s chest. He preferred a clean beheading, but he had three others coming at him and crushing the heart to pulp stopped them in their tracks.

When he lifted off the next time, he took stock of remaining numbers. The creatures screeched and clawed up at him, their faces twisted into a caricature of life. Adrian, the very first reborn Lijuan had displayed to the rest of the Cadre, had been a man of glossy dark skin and rich brown eyes, and he’d possessed a mind. Mind enough to understand that his goddess had turned him into an abomination.

Titus could still remember how blood, scarlet and wet, had dripped down Lijuan’s white skin after Adrian sank his fangs into her neck in a futile effort to end the nightmare, end his goddess. The reborn male’s eyes had held infinite sorrow—and so deep a pain that it had scraped across Titus’s bones.

Adrian had been the final truly intelligent reborn Titus had ever seen.

Unwilling to risk another defection, Lijuan had turned her reborn into stupid, mindless machines that wanted only to feed. It didn’t matter if a person had been a scholar or a warrior before being infected, the infection that brought them back from the dead also erased all evidence of who they’d been in life.

For all Titus knew, some of these people had once been in his court. He’d lost many good people in the battle against Charisemnon and in the battles against the reborn that had followed. It was equally possible that they were so emaciated because they’d been buried a short time earlier; long enough for their flesh to begin to decompose, but “fresh” enough for the reborn to pass on their contagion.

The latter might explain the dirty, blood-dotted suit being sported by one of the reborn.

Whatever their story, Titus could have no mercy on them—and he knew none of his people would want to exist