Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,123
wings of stormfire take off from one of the balconies before he swept out into the sky. And though he’d said nothing to alert her of his presence, she looked up.
“How is your sister?” he asked once they were at the same altitude.
“Still a little mad at me, but we’ll be good I think.” Solemn eyes searched his face. “Jason have any luck?”
“No.” His spymaster had refused to believe all their people—all Jason’s people—had been murdered so callously. “Not a word, not even from a minor spy in the kitchens.” A vampire so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it would’ve cost Lijuan nothing to allow him to live.
“Damn her.”
Raphael was silent, his anger a black wave.
They flew on until the lava glowed orange in a sea of white.
Venom watched them land with his gaze shielded against the bright snow-reflected light. Slitted like a viper’s and of the same vivid green shade, the vampire’s eyes had been known to inspire fear and fascination both—often in the same individual.
“Sire, Elena.” He motioned his head toward the lava sinkhole, the fine wool of his olive green sweater hugging his shoulders and his legs clad in black cargo pants, his boots scuffed. “It’s begun to bubble. The odd one at first, steady increase over the past hour.”
Though he and Elena had seen the bubbles from above, his consort pressed her face to one of the windows in the fence. “I can’t hear her but she has to be close to—”
A rush of voices inside Raphael’s head. Elena winced at the same time.
Aeclari. We relay for the Blade. He says these words: Inexplicable oceanic disturbance an hour out from Manhattan to the east.
Raphael felt no surprise, only a cold determination. “Head to the city,” he ordered Venom. “The enemy may be at our doorstep.”
Elena rose into the air with him as Venom ran to his Bugatti—parked in the snow like a crouching tiger.
Go! Elena said. Do the white fire thing. I’ll follow.
Lijuan may have already managed to steal into our city in her noncorporeal state. Leaving Elena alone under those circumstances was not a thing he would ever countenance. I will fly us both. Sweeping below her, he held out his arms.
She retracted her wings and dropped.
He caught her, thought of white fire, and suddenly, his wings were nothing physical, the world a blur. As he flew, he contacted Dmitri and got the exact direction from his second. He and Elena were soon over the water; he slowed as they neared the suspect location.
“There!” His hunter pointed down.
The water surged and flowed in a way that spoke of a large body beneath.
Releasing Elena from his arms with a mental warning, her wings erupting out of her back to hold her to a hover, Raphael narrowed his eyes and shot a bolt of power in the center of the suspicious area.
The bolt hit something before it reached the water. The resulting explosion sent large pieces of metal flying in every direction.
“That was a submarine!” Elena, crossbow out, pointed at a distinctive floating piece. “When did she get a fucking submarine?”
“I would assume she’s been gathering weapons and tools since the last battle.”
No bodies floated up from below. Raphael hadn’t held back with that blow; the bodies were apt to have disintegrated into tiny pieces. Neither did he hold back with the balls of wildfire he sent into the sky—one east, one west, one south, one north. Each detonated to cover a massive area.
Screams breached the air before the sky rippled . . . to reveal a winged army. It was shaped into a vee, with the thin point manned by Xi, Lijuan’s most trusted general, and the wide end so far distant that Raphael couldn’t see the end of it.
That’s not an army, it’s a fucking continent. Elena’s shocked voice, her crossbow cocked and ready.
She does not intend to lose this time. Lijuan had brought a force unseen in angelic history, a force so huge that Raphael couldn’t comprehend how it had been built without anyone’s knowledge.
We have to retreat. Choppy strands of Elena’s hair whipped around her face. She holds all the advantages here.
Agreed. Raphael was no longer a boy, to be goaded into fighting without strategy or thought. Come.
Elena flew into his arms.
A massive mind smashed into Raphael’s as he and Elena left the area on wings of white fire.
BOW DOWN! I AM DEATH. I AM YOUR QUEEN.
Shoving Lijuan out with the coldly vicious Cascade power that knew nothing of mercy,