Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,117

was when it struck her: Is the Hummingbird Aegaeon’s consort?

No. Raphael’s grip grew stronger, his voice a whip. The arrogant fool never understood the treasure he’d been offered.

“Lady Caliane?”

Caliane nodded at Neha’s query. “Tasha’s squadron is on the deck of a ship I ordered moved near a port border and their drone machines are about to reach land. Ah, to be young and to quickly comprehend a new world.” A turn of her head. “Avi, we wish to see through the eyes of the machines.”

The feed cut into static before it switched to an oceanside view. Water lapping against a shore, ships raised up on blocks in a nearby yard, in the process of repair. Nets crumpled on the sand. Baskets piled up on a dock where a small-time fisherman might pick them up to throw back onto a boat.

A view shift to a different drone. Elena clenched her gut. What they’d just seen had been nothing but the tiniest edge of a huge port. Hundreds of containers sat ready to be loaded onto massive ships that sat waiting in the deep water against which the port had been constructed. Large fishing trawlers sat alongside the container ships. Cranes arched overhead, all of them motionless and silent in the sunlight.

No forklifts or other vehicles moved in the container area, industrious ants going about their business. Day or night, no major port was ever this quiet. Someone was always coming in or shipping out.

The drone pilot flew deeper into the city.

The only sounds picked up by the drone’s systems were the lap of the waves and a dull banging that sounded as if a loose piece of wood was whacking up against the metal side of a ship.

The drone zeroed in on a large warehouse emblazoned with Chinese characters. It had huge openings on either side where roller doors had been pulled up.

It is the fish market such as on our own port, Raphael translated silently for her.

The noisy, busy place where restauranteurs and shopkeepers came early in the day to bid on fish auctions and haggle over the freshest catch. Of course, a few other locals always wandered in, too—you could often get the “leftovers” for trade prices.

The drone flew inside the market.

Bodies lay everywhere. Behind the large display counters full of a mix of rotting and desiccated fish, in the wide aisles, near pallets stacked with boxes ready for the refrigerated trucks that had to be waiting out back, under a massive central scale the market must’ve used for its showier auctions.

Unlike in the villages, these people had been afraid when they died.

Their corpses lay huddled against walls or curled up in balls on the floor, arms around one another and faces contorted.

Elena didn’t realize she was crying until the wet streaked her cheeks. She let the tears fall—some things were beyond politics or games of power. The desiccated body of a small dog lay cradled in the lap of a woman hunched protectively over her pet. A woman’s mouth was open in a scream as she reached out a hand in a futile cry for help.

Elena dashed away her tears. “Go back there.”

Caliane didn’t hesitate to give the drone operator the order despite the abrupt way Elena had made her demand. “What do you see with your hunter’s eyes, Consort?”

“That woman”—Elena’s face burned hot, then cold—“she’s wearing a baby carrier. The ones mortals and young vampires wear in the front so the baby can be up against their heart.”

The drone operator zoomed in on Caliane’s orders, but there was no dead child in the carrier. The woman’s outstretched hand took on a terrible new meaning.

“They stole her child.” Michaela’s voice, tight with rage.

The drone flew out of the market. Its mechanical eye soon discovered haunting evidence of more lost children: abandoned marbles outside a shop, a rattle lying on the street, balls sitting in gutters, a small and sparkly shoe drowning in a puddle, a schoolbag dropped on the ground.

Then the drones hit what should’ve been a heavily populated port city.

Silence.

Corpses.

A reign of death.

48

Elena felt as if she’d aged five hundred years by the time Neha and Caliane told the drone operators to stand down.

“We can do nothing at this instant,” Caliane said at last, lines of sorrow carved into her features. “Lijuan remains within her borders and we have no way to penetrate the fog.”

“We wait,” was the consensus.

Elena managed to keep her silence until the Cadre was gone from the room. “How can you all