Her wings were a horror of blood and brain matter from a half hour past when she’d turned into a spinning dervish to eliminate a nest of reborn. “You are one of the Cadre, sire. You don’t have to accept anything you do not want.”
He glared at her. “The Humming Bird,” he said, deliberately spacing out the two words that made up the name of the greatest living artist in angelkind. “Do you wish me to make enemies of our entire people?”
Everyone loved the Hummingbird. Even Titus loved her—in a distant kind of way. He didn’t know her as a person. He knew of her. That she was a gift to angelkind, that her kindness was legendary, that she had never had an enemy in her life. And of course, that she had given birth to Illium, a young angel Titus greatly liked.
Tanae, who had little relationship with her own son and was not a woman of large emotions, rolled eyes of a pale gray. “She isn’t a warrior and we’re in the midst of an infestation of reborn. No one will be surprised if you—respectfully—reject the offer.”
Titus had to turn and take care of another three rotting reborn before he could respond. “No one else will come,” he grumbled. “I scared all those who might’ve been free to join us, and now no warriors are left.”
“I told you not to yell at the last one,” Tanae said in a steady tone after chopping off a reborn head that featured a crushed eyeball hanging out of its socket. “He was competent.”
“He was lily-livered!” Titus roared. “What warrior runs from a good strong yell? You don’t run.”
“That’s because I’m deaf after all these years at your side.” Glancing around the field and seeing only dissolving bodies, she slid her sword into a thigh sheath.
The dissolving was a new thing that the reborn had begun to do after Lijuan’s death. The resulting gelatinous mess had so disgusting a stench that Titus’s second, Tzadiq, had rounded up a civilian crew whose sole job it was to dig deep holes using large earthmoving machines, then scrape all those dissolving bodies inside.
It was a luxury given all else that was going on, but it was a luxury for which his people thanked him, else their homes would be filled with the odor of decomposing flesh and no one could eat.
And food was a pleasure Titus treasured.
As for whether the gelatinous goo would poison the earth, Titus had plans to one by one cleanse the graves using archangelic power—but he couldn’t do that and fight the reborn at the same time. It’d have to be done at the end. In the interim, the holes were lined with a material created to keep contaminants from escaping into the soil, with his scientists monitoring the situation.
“You show me no respect,” he said to Tanae. “I should banish you.”
“I have a standing offer from three other courts.”
If he didn’t like her so much, he would banish her, he thought with an inward grumble. But if there was one thing Titus knew, it was that having bowing and scraping sycophants around an archangel did nothing but lead to rot. Look at Lijuan—all those fawning courtiers and a once competent leader had turned into a woman who thought death was life.
Tanae might have an edge to her tongue and no time for massaging anyone’s ego, but she was also loyal to the bone. Though he did sometimes wonder how her mate, Tzadiq, dealt with her. A man liked a little softness in his lover.
Not that Titus was getting any of that at present. While he well appreciated pleasures of the flesh, he had no time or inclination to soothe and gentle the pretty and fragile creatures with whom he usually kept company.
“I’ll have to clean up, entertain her.” It came out a groan unbecoming of an archangel but dear glory, the idea of it!
“Perhaps she’ll be more helpful than we believe,” Tanae said with her customary practicality. “She has, by all accounts, done a stellar job in her oversight of Lumia. You cannot argue that your household is in chaos and could do with a firm hand at the helm.”
“That’s because anyone who can lift a sword is out battling reborn, the others are digging holes to bury the resulting goo, and I’ve sent the vulnerable to safe havens.” Those safe havens were mostly islands off the coast of Africa. “She’ll have nothing to do but sit around and take insult at not being pampered like a lady.”
Titus had not expected this of Raphael—after his brutal and exhausting sojourn assisting in Africa, the pup knew very well what Titus needed. He categorically did not need a fragile artist renowned for her existence on a higher plane far from crawling reborn and war and blood.
There was no higher plane here. Just death and decay and devastation.
“Perhaps the others had no choice,” he admitted with a loud sigh. “We’ve lost too many good people.” Thousands of warriors had died in the battles, and though Titus now had control over what remained of Charisemnon’s forces, he couldn’t trust them.
Knowing a resentful fighter could do far more harm than good, he’d offered those troops the choice to leave for another territory if they so wished. Only a minuscule number had taken him up on it and departed Africa: all people who’d been high up in Charisemnon’s court.
Good riddance.
The rot in his enemy’s lands ran deep and it had come from the top.
Those who’d stayed had likely done so because they’d face the same lack of welcome outside Africa. Angelkind knew that fighters lower down in the pecking order had no control over the actions of their archangel, and so no one would outwardly shun those fighters, but the simple fact of the matter was that every angel had a choice.
These angels—and vampires—had made the choice to follow orders even when those orders were unforgiveable. That decision would stain them for centuries to come—how they responded to it, how they acted now, that would be their legacy. At present, however, Titus had command of too many sullen warriors he didn’t want anywhere near his people.
Some, he’d left in command of various northern cities—it was pointless to send his own people to do the task when Charisemnon’s commanders were already experienced in the job and had intimate knowledge of those cities.
It wasn’t as if even the most sullen and hostile would dare foment rebellion against an archangel. No one but the suicidal would listen to them. The worst they could do was deliberately fail in their duties as city commanders, and Titus’s spymaster had enough operatives scattered through the cities to ensure they’d soon hear of any such.
As for any overflow of warriors, he’d asked Tzadiq to situate them in the more isolated sections of the territory. They could be useful and clear up the reborn infection in that area, while keeping the poison of their hate safely away from his court.
“That’s good,” Tanae said in response to his acknowledgment of the Cadre’s lack of options. “You’re being positive. Is that not what your sisters suggested?”
Titus wanted to stop and bang his head against the nearest hard surface. It was not enough that he had to deal with the vicious seeds left by a bringer of disease. No, he also had to have four elder sisters, all of whom chose to be awake in the world, and all of whom considered it their business to give him advice. Really, a much younger brother had to grow a big voice to stand up for himself.
Was it any wonder his voice was now so big it scared and insulted others? That was another thing. “If I’m so terrifying, why is it my sisters show no fear?”
Tanae came as close to a smile as she ever did. “Titus, I know you’d chop off my head in battle should I come against you, but were I someone you thought of as a woman first and everything else second, you wouldn’t lift a finger to lay so much as a bruise on my skin. Every woman in the world knows this.”
Titus snarled at her, but he had no rebuttal. He didn’t believe in harming those who didn’t put themselves forward in battle. That applied, regardless of gender, but yes, he had a special soft spot for women. But the instant a woman picked up a sword, she went from woman to warrior. A warrior was fair game. A woman was to be protected.
Yet even though two of his sisters were warriors, he didn’t meet Zuri and Nala on that field. He met them as brother to sisters. Thus, much as they aggravated him, he wouldn’t ever do them harm. Even when they constantly sent him suggestions for battle strategy against the reborn. As if he wasn’t in his fourth millennium! As if he wasn’t an archangel who’d just defeated another archangel!
The last time around, he’d threatened to tell Alexander they were being lax in their duties if they continued to hound him. Surely, he’d written, you would not have so much time on your hands if you were actually doing your assigned tasks.
The twins had gone silent. That would last about five minutes.
His sisters didn’t know the meaning of defeat.
“Come,” he said to Tanae, “we must clear the next field so that the barriers can be put up.” That was how they were doing this—section by section, with teams of mortals and young vampires in charge of moving each barrier outward as more land was cleansed of the reborn infection.
It worked, but progress was slow. It would’ve been glacial if not for Raphael’s and Alexander’s assistance. The two had helped Titus completely clear the area directly around the thriving hub of commerce and trade that was the city of Narja. That it’d become his battle citadel was an accident of location—Charisemnon had been a friendly neighbor when Titus first took over as Archangel of Southern Africa, and Narja had been born naturally, a result of the trade between the two sides of Africa.
The battles had come long afterward, and by then, the people of Narja were of a mind to hunker down in support of the citadel that sat on a rise at the center of the city. It helped that the city wasn’t actually right on the border and thus protected from the worst of the fighting.
Nothing could’ve protected it from the plague of reborn, however. Charisemnon, that bastard son of a diseased ass, had—while acting the ally—quietly set his ground troops to shepherding the infectious creatures over the border. The reborn had rampaged through Titus’s people, a putrid wave of death and horrific resurrection.