Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,89

members of the Cadre.” Their powers would be too close together, the energies too violent—and the old tended to be set in their ways, not ready for this new world. “It’ll make the Cascade look like a training run.”

Elena sucked in a breath. “That bad?”

“We survived with eleven before because Mother did not want territory and China is so huge that Favashi was far distant from her. We can rely neither on a lack of territorial desire nor geography with any new archangels or Ancients.” His mother was a unique case in not wishing to rule a vast area.

“You’ve seen how much violence two archangels can do in battle.” Raphael and Uram had nearly destroyed New York. “Now imagine that happening between more than two archangels, the battles taking place in multiple locations around the world at the same time.”

Elena’s gaze returned to the sea aurora. “You can be an Ancient and not be an archangel, right?”

“Yes. But any Ancient who awakens with natural phenomena such as this is an archangel.” The light continued to hang over the sea, seeming to ripple in the wind, a gentle music.

Dmitri’s phone rang. He glanced at it. “It’s Rhys.”

A senior general in Neha’s territory.

He stepped away to take the call, returned to say, “Delhi is glowing. Some kind of bioluminescence. Rhys is sending me images.”

“If this is all the same Ancient,” Elena said, “then I kinda like them already. I mean, pretty lights, cool bubbles in a lake, glowing cities, seems pretty mellow to me.”

Raphael stared out at the water, not certain it was all connected to one Ancient. “The bioluminescence strikes me as different from the two water-based phenomena.”

“Rhys has understatement down pat.” Dmitri flipped his phone in their direction.

“It looks like the aliens came and irradiated everything.” Elena whistled through her teeth.

When Dmitri’s phone rang just as he drew it back, Raphael said, “Which second is it now?”

“Not a second but might as well be—it’s that creep, Riker. I don’t know why Michaela keeps him around. He’s a vicious fucker.”

“He’s also viciously loyal to her,” Raphael said as Dmitri stepped away again.

His second just held out his phone when he returned: on it was the image of an old European city, possibly Prague, backed by a sky in which swirled a slow spiral of stars. A new galaxy being born.

It wasn’t the final portent.

By dawn, New York was in the grip of a huge storm that coated the city in ice, and the list had grown to include intricate crop circles in Titus’s land, a rainstorm in Japan that turned the country a bright magenta, large standing rocks erupting out of the earth in Alexander’s territory—some through the floors of buildings—and last but not least, an impossible blooming of wildflowers across frozen Siberia.

If each represented an Ancient—or even simply an archangel . . . Death. It was death.

38

The vortex of ice finally began to thaw seventy-two hours later, but Elena wasn’t breathing easy. Not only had the bitter cold caused a number of deaths, the volcano that shouldn’t fucking exist had blown with a vengeance. Andreas was in charge of disaster cleanup and his people were still counting the dead.

Raphael’s territory wasn’t the only casualty of the wave of catastrophic events.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, had been washed away in floods in India, while plagues of locusts had poisoned countless people in Titus’s and Charisemnon’s territories. A massive landslide in Alexander’s territory had buried a remote village, while a rampant fire had rioted through the ancient city of Xian, China.

Michaela’s territory was in the midst of a deadly heat wave in the depths of winter, while food crops designed to feed many of Elijah’s people through the winter months had begun to rot and degrade without reason.

With all that going on, Elena barely felt the chill of the drizzling rain as she paced along the cliff-edge of their Enclave land. “What did Astaad say?”

Raphael thrust his hand through the damp strands of his hair. “He just lost two more of his islands under the turbulent water. Low casualties because he’d already given the evacuation order, but a large ship capsized at the same time deep in the ocean. Over forty mortal lives taken by the sea.”

Numb from the constant wave of disasters, Elena went to ask about Japan when her body swayed on a rolling wave. Across the ice-encrusted waters of the Hudson, the Tower moved. “Archangel, the Tower.”

“It is designed according to modern ways of building. It will flex not fall