Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,167

and tactics than Lijuan. Lost in her delusions of godhood, she could be pushed into unwise decisions. If she rose today, it wouldn’t be at full strength—he’d husband his and Elena’s combined wildfire, use it in a strike that turned Lijuan into a mindless creature of screaming pain.

Regardless of the threat posed by Lijuan, they couldn’t not launch the assault today—they had to find a way to cripple her army or his and Elijah’s troops wouldn’t have a fighting chance of survival. Another major battle and their people would be massacred, the streets awash with their blood.

A fireball punched the night sky as the windows of the first building blew out with a massive smash of sound. Many of Lijuan’s troops had bedded down in that building. They died in a hail of heat and crumbling foundations. Another building blew at the same moment, then a third.

Raphael scraped the sky with angelfire in the aftermath, cutting down the disoriented mass of fighters attempting to escape the shrapnel from the buildings.

More explosions lit up the night in enemy territory, these finely targeted. Naasir’s team was blowing up the remaining pipes that brought in clean water, and they were disrupting sewage lines so that the filth would flow into the enemy camp. A small demolition team had been tasked with destroying roads that led out of the port area.

Their aim was to trap Lijuan’s ground troops and annihilate her winged fighters.

Raphael’s archers slammed fiery death down on anyone who escaped the angelfire that burned in the sky. His troops began to move forward, squadrons landing on rooftops in a wave of silent death, while ground teams pushed their way through the rubble, eliminating the enemy on every side as they went.

Obsidian rain began to slam at them minutes later, but it was too late. They’d reclaimed much of what they’d lost. Raphael didn’t hold back his angelfire, his aim to wipe out as many of Lijuan’s generals as he could. But the senior leaders suddenly all dropped out of the way at precipitous speed.

KNEEL TO YOUR GODDESS!!

He saw her then, higher in the sky than him.

Her face was skeletal, and she appeared to be missing one side of her body. Her gown flapped against empty air where her thigh should’ve filled it out, and above, the fabric was being sucked in against her side—her rib cage was partially or fully missing. None of that stopped her from raining death down from the sky across a vast, vast area.

Lovely shimmering starlight obsidian shards of pain and horror.

He’d intended to save his wildfire until he could get it into her body, but hundreds of people would die if he didn’t stop her.

He spread out his wildfire in a shield across the sky. The deadly rain hit and dissipated. But Lijuan wasn’t done. She threw down another barrage. His shield held. Just. Wounded she might be, but her power was a terrible thing.

Whatever Lijuan had become, she was growing stronger with each passing day. Even at full power, he couldn’t hope to defeat her, not in a direct fight as this had become. Not when she could spread her attack across such a devastatingly large area.

He could carry on, infuriate her into a mistake so he could get close enough to inject her with wildfire, but the price of his choice would be grave upon grave upon grave.

He had no choice. Retreat! he ordered. Fall back!

Even as he gave that order, he shaped the last drops of wildfire in his body into small pellets, then shot them through his shield. He’d taken a precious extra second to time it just right, so the pellets—so small they were near invisible against her rain of starlight obsidian—would pass through in the gap between one blast of the rain and the next.

Lijuan hadn’t moved since this began; he hoped that held true for another second.

Two of the pellets were smashed out of existence by falling shards, but the other five punched into Lijuan’s heart.

Lightning lit her up from within. Blood trickled out of her mouth.

Raphael didn’t take that for an advantage of any kind. The only reason he’d achieved so much with so little was because she was already wounded. But wounded or not, she had plenty of firepower in her. She targeted him alone with the next volley.

His shield collapsed, the wildfire dissipating under the rain of black.

Raphael had nowhere to go that wouldn’t put his troops in the line of fire. An angelic squadron was retreating