Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,157

Slicing off the heads of the two angels he’d been fighting, then finishing off the one she’d taken on, he followed her gaze to where the new squadrons were heading their way.

Opening his mouth, he issued a command in a voice that carried across the entire rooftop—she’d known he could do that, had heard him do the same in the Refuge. Then, he’d been yelling at a group of recalcitrant children to fall in line. Though the kids had obeyed at once, they hadn’t looked the least scared; most had been grinning while trying hard to maintain correct wing posture.

The sight had gone a long way toward making Elena understand how kind, soft-hearted Jessamy could’ve fallen in love with this barbarian angel.

“Fall back!” he ordered. “Begin defensive maneuver alpha!”

Elena continued to fight beside Galen as the rest of their people fell back behind them; she swapped out her knife blades for a long blade another retreating fighter slapped into her hand. Her own had been lost in another skirmish earlier that day.

Everyone had their assigned tasks in this maneuver and hers was to hold the line and buy their people time. The vampires and two other guild hunters on the roof would be flown to the next nearest safe position by the angels who were strong enough, but before the guild hunters went, they’d lay a little trap for Lijuan’s troops.

Gadriel, wing damaged and stomach bleeding, was suddenly in front of her again. Her eyes burned as she swung the deadly sharp blade of her weapon across his neck, separating head from body. Gadriel had died in China. This was nothing but Lijuan abusing an honorable warrior’s corpse. She would remember him as he’d once been, not as this monstrosity.

“Run! You will all run in the end!” yelled one of Lijuan’s squadron leaders as he landed on the roof, his face bloody and his eyes hot with battle fury—he had normal hazel eyes, which meant he’d chosen this, chosen to walk with Lijuan. “We will own you!”

Elena lodged a knife in the back of his throat the next time he opened his big mouth. She and Galen were falling off the edge of the roof even as he gurgled and struggled to remove the weapon. The two of them made a hasty retreat, following the rest of their people. A number of Lijuan’s warriors flew after them, but Jason dropped out of the sky to score black lightning across the space, cutting them in half and driving back others who would’ve followed.

As with all of Raphael’s Seven, he was tired and worn, but he would fight to the very end.

The boom came seconds later, the explosives planted on the roof by Rose, one of the Guild’s demolition experts, going off with such violence that the resulting collapse sucked in a number of angels who’d been attempting to fly off. Dust and stone flew into the air, tiny pieces of shrapnel hitting the back of Elena’s neck and getting caught in the energy of her wings before being spit out.

She made a hard landing, the vibration going through her entire body. The first thing she did was look around to see if Hiraz had made it out from inside the building. There. The vampire sat slumped against a wall, his eyes on the collapsing building across from them. His expression was bleak, the look shared by many of the others around him.

Elena understood why. They were losing.

This wasn’t the first of their buildings that had fallen to Lijuan’s people. Elijah was wounded. Raphael was exhausted. The Seven were reaching the edge of their endurance. Dmitri had taken to the battlefield with his sword a deadly menace in an effort to give the others a break, but the enemy was just too big in number.

And Lijuan was yet to rise again.

Another enemy squadron rose into the air behind the dust of the collapse, heading right for them, and the battle was on again.

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Raphael felt the explosive force ripple through the air, and knew his people had detonated another building. They weren’t destroying every building as they retreated. Some had been left whole but stuffed with explosives—in the hope that Lijuan’s people would settle in and the delayed detonation would take out hundreds of them at once.

But with every boom of sound, every call to retreat, Lijuan’s grip around the city tightened. All his people were fighting to their limit—he could ask nothing more from them. Elijah’s predatory cats were stalking the