Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,140

blackness, silhouettes that made little sense but for Lijuan’s form—she was in the same position she’d held when the darkness first descended. The flesh mountain, however, had become smaller, seemed to keep shrinking as they watched.

The last of the fog whispered out of existence.

In place of a mountain of wounded fighters lay a mound of bodies devoid of any indication of life. Their flesh was akin to paper, their faces twisted into a rictus of gasping mouths and wide eyes. Only . . . there were no eyes. Just hollow sockets that begged for redemption.

The corpses’ fingers, stiff and dry, were frozen in curled-up twists, though a few reached out toward Lijuan as if to beg for mercy . . . or to ask for the benediction of their goddess. Feathers divested of color floated in the air, lost from the bodies of angels who’d been stripped of life, of flesh.

An eerie silence hung over the entire scene.

Lijuan lowered her arms and seemed to sigh. Her wings glowed, her face exquisite in profile when she turned to the side. At that moment, she was the loveliest Elena had ever seen her. Her hair was a sheet of glittering ice, silken and healthy. It blew back in a gentle breeze to reveal the flawless lines of her face.

The same breeze also lifted more feathers into the air. They surrounded Lijuan in a soft halo that glowed with the power reflected off her wings.

Lijuan looked up at the feathers. Smiled.

Hers is not a power I can match, Guild Hunter.

To hear Raphael say that so bluntly, it made the rock on her heart crushingly heavier. That’s because you don’t feed on the life of others. She locked her hand with his, this lethal archangel who would never do to his own what Lijuan had just done. We’ll fight her with honor and with our people by our side, not shriveled into husks.

“Oh, fuck.” Vivek’s bitten-out words wrenched her attention back to the screen.

The mummies were crumbling into dust under the glow of the dark orange evening sunlight. All except for a layer of bodies on the bottom edges . . . who were attempting to crawl out and away from the mound.

Elena’s brain couldn’t make sense of it. No one who looked like that should be able to move. The crawlers’ wings were featherless lumps of flesh that curled inward, their bones looking broken or partially disintegrated. As she fought not to bring up her last meal, the fingers of one snapped under him as he attempted to drag the remains of his body forward. His face was all but gone, caved in, his eyes missing.

Striding across the screen, Xi began to behead the “survivors” one by one, with clinical efficiency. It was an act of mercy by a commander, except that you couldn’t call it that, not when Xi had stood by Lijuan in all of this. It didn’t take him long to behead all the crawlers and step back to his position beside his goddess.

Lijuan sent out power in a languid wave, disintegrating the remains into dust.

That dust rose into the air.

Vivek’s fingers went rigid on the wheels of his chair. “We’re all going to be breathing that in.”

Elena lifted a hand to her mouth and ran from the room.

No one said a word when she returned after emptying her stomach. Raphael put his arm around her while Sara passed her a bottle of water. As she drank, she saw that she wasn’t the only one with a white face. Further, Izak and Suyin were also missing.

Both returned to be handed their own bottles of water.

Elena reached out a free hand to take Izzy’s. He let her, cuddling in surreptitiously on one side of her. She loved her archangel all the more that he let the young angel be, though Izzy’s wings had to be dangerously close to touching his own.

“What did I miss?” It came out husky, her throat raw.

“That commander bowing down on one knee to Lijuan,” her best friend told her, while Illium said something to Suyin that made the tight pain of her expression soften. Trust Bluebell to get through to a woman so wounded she had no faith in anyone.

“The two left together,” Ashwini added. “The queen and her knight.”

“That’s exactly how Xi sees himself,” Dmitri said, his cheekbones sharp against his bronzed skin. “Any luck getting us another visual on them, V?”

“Not yet.” Vivek had his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed bloodlessly tight as he