then, it’d take him hours. Raphael’s city was going to be dead by then. He had to find a way to delay Lijuan, stop this full-frontal assault. He and his people needed time to reassess their plans. Not even in their worst-case scenario simulations had they imagined an army of this magnitude.
There was no point hoarding power when New York was on the brink of a catastrophic defeat.
Decision made, he ordered all his fighters nearby to collapse their wings and drop. Not all of them could get disentangled fast enough, but enough did that he had an opening. Exhaling, he released all the wildfire in his body and shaped it like a spear, then threw it with tactical calculation at the squadron locked around Lijuan.
The husk of a once-living angel dropped from the core at that very instant . . . right as the wildfire cut through the protective guard like butter.
It punched to the center. And found its target.
Lijuan’s scream was a serrated saw in his head. Gritting his teeth as she reappeared at last, burning in wildfire, he lifted his hands as if to throw more at her. She ran, heading to the port area while her fighters collected around her in suicidal loyalty. He followed, smashing them down with archangelic fury, but had to turn back when a large enemy squadron broke through the front line to close in on a rooftop full of archers.
He blew the squadron out of the sky, but Lijuan was out of reach by then, her fighters falling on his people in chaotic hordes to keep him from following her.
I will accept your offer of a cease-fire to gather our wounded. Lijuan’s nightmare of a voice, awash with the thready screams and begging cries of the dead.
Both sides will retreat, Raphael replied. One squadron from each side comes forward to collect the bodies. His people were lying broken all over the city, too. And he was out of wildfire. Nothing else could really touch Lijuan.
It is agreed. Rage in every word, but he’d done enough damage to her that she was slinking off to lick her wounds.
He waited for her to order her troops to retreat before he gave his own the same order. As expected, Lijuan’s army retreated to the neighborhood by the port area. Raphael’s people had booby-trapped entire neighborhoods long before and would set off those traps once Lijuan’s ground troops began to crawl forward—because his forces hadn’t managed to destroy all the carriers.
At least five had landed.
He could hope that the reborn had been in the ones he and Izak had destroyed, knew they wouldn’t be that lucky. The Cascade wanted destruction and destruction it would get. But Lijuan wouldn’t find any safe harbor in his city. For her, all of New York had teeth.
His archers and shooters stayed in position as the rest of his people withdrew.
Raphael, too, waited until Lijuan’s army was far enough away that they couldn’t mount a stealth attack while his back was turned. When Elena flew up to join him on his return flight to the Tower, he saw a splash of sticky red on her side. Not her blood. Someone else’s.
Enemy angel, she said, having caught sight of his glance. Someone cut off his head in the sky and he bled all over me as he fell. Her voice was grim as she continued. We lost two archers on the roof I was on. Two more are badly wounded.
Four. It wasn’t a huge number . . . unless you considered how long this war would likely rage, and how few people his side had in comparison to Lijuan’s. With that in mind, he shifted the oncoming strategy meeting to the infirmary. He might be able to heal enough warriors that his forces could hold the line until Elijah’s army arrived.
Ahead of them, the Primary landed on the Legion building. Raphael had seen the gray-winged fighters in the thick of battle. If one fell, another rose in his place. They were Raphael’s greatest advantage. Seven hundred and seventy-seven warriors who couldn’t be killed. Except . . .
“Something is wrong, Guild Hunter.” He dropped into a rapid descent.
The Primary was crouched over one of his people who lay on his back on the ground, one hand clutching at his chest as he coughed black liquid out of his mouth.
“What is this?” As far as Raphael knew, the Legion were invulnerable to disease.
“Death,” the Primary said in a voice that held a chorus of