Before he went into Sleep, he reminded me that yours was a bond that remained unbroken across millennia. Now, I bow my head and ask if that friendship might extend to the mentoring of my son?
Xander is not yet at his majority, but he shows signs of becoming a warrior like his grandfather. It would be a great honor if you would consider taking him under your wing.
—Letter from Rohan, son of Archangel Alexander, to Archangel Titus
37
Rohan! I saw you running around naked while you were a babe, giggling manically all the while! I’ve broken bread with you. Why are you writing me such a formal letter?
Send your boy. I’ll care for Alexander’s grandchild as if he were my own flesh and blood.
—Letter from Archangel Titus to Rohan, son of Archangel Alexander
38
Titus wiped the sweat from his brow and looked down at the pile of beheaded bodies below. He and his people had followed a straggler who’d led them to a massive nest of reborn, but what worried him was that the nest had existed in the first place. “These reborn came from somewhere.” There was a settlement out there that no longer had any living citizens . . . children included.
It broke his heart to execute the smallest reborn, though he knew they weren’t alive in any true sense of the word. They were shambling abominations of life, without reason or thought. They’d never grow any older, would never understand speech or love or tenderness or anything but their voracious hunger for flesh.
To allow them to exist was equal to murdering the children who’d yet escaped the scourge. For even in the darkest hour, angels, vampires, and humans, they all hesitated when it came to harming a child, and in that hesitation could fall an entire town or city or territory.
“I’ve dispatched scouts.” His second’s voice was grim, the pale green of his eyes on the carnage. “Did you notice how fresh these ones were?” When Tzadiq, his shoulders broad and his body as big as Titus’s, landed beside the pile, Titus followed suit. “Look at their bodies, the lack of rot.”
Tzadiq was right; beneath the greenish tinge that began at the moment of transition, these reborn boasted pink and brown and black hues of flesh ordinary among living people. Some of their wounds bled as much red as green-black.
He and his squadrons could keep killing wave after wave of reborn but if the creatures were multiplying this rapidly, he’d lose half the people in his territory before they were done. Yet what other way was there?
“How are we on overall troop numbers?”
“We haven’t taken any losses today, but our people are exhausted.” Tzadiq’s tone was brutally honest. “We’re going to start making more and more mistakes in the coming days.”
Titus had known that, but it was still hard to hear it laid out so clearly. As he considered all possible options on how to rest his troops, his eye fell on the crossbow bolt embedded in the eye of a reborn creature, the reborn’s head long separated from its body. On the shaft of the bolt was a symbol—a small gold G in a circle.
“How bad is the Guild’s situation?” The African complement of the Hunters Guild, those mortals born—or trained—to hunt rogue vampires, had sided with Titus and fought with his army. As a result, they’d also taken heavy losses.
“Not as bad as we first expected.” Dirt streaked Tzadiq’s pale skin and clean-shaven head, but it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been—at least he’d mostly escaped being covered with reborn fluids. “They’re at seventy percent capacity, and of those, twenty percent are badly wounded and still recovering.”
That meant that—aside from a small number running things at the top—fifty percent of the Guild was currently fighting the reborn on the ground while Titus’s angels fought from the air. It struck him that the hunters, all of whom were trained in tracking techniques and used to working alone, were a resource he could use far more wisely.
“Clean up here,” he told his second, for the majority of reborn had scuttled into their holes under the bright light of day. “I need to speak to Njal.”
“He’s at Guild HQ today,” Tzadiq said.
“One day, you’ll have to tell me how you know everything that happens in Narja.”
“Tentacles, sire.” Dry words, his expression without apparent humor. “I have tentacles in every nook and cranny and blood den.”
Titus slapped his second on the shoulder—Tzadiq was one of the few people who