Even with Titus, Raphael, and Alexander all in play, they’d had to fight with brutal intensity to erase the threat from Narja. Whatever Charisemnon and/or his megalomaniacal partner had done to the reborn, the strain in Africa was even more vicious and virulent than in the rest of the world.
These new reborn hunted in packs, and seemed to have a rudimentary intelligence that harked back to the very first reborn Lijuan had created; many of the creatures had learned to dig dens in which to hide during the bright hours of daylight, crawling out only at dusk to begin their attacks.
And unlike the transmission rate in other parts of the world, here, as long as the victim’s head hadn’t been ripped off, it appeared to be one hundred percent. To die by reborn hands was to return reborn. That was nowhere near the worst of it—for a vampire or a mortal to be scratched or bitten by a reborn led to an ugly infection that had a fifty percent fatality rate.
The Archangel of Death and the Archangel of Disease had created a horrific hybrid. But the ugliest “improvement” was why all of the dead in Titus’s territory were now being cremated—these reborn had the ability to pass on the infection to the dead who yet had a shred of flesh on their bones. The creatures dug up graves, hauled out corpses, fed on them, but if any flesh remained afterward, the dead would be reborn.
An entire village had been butchered by their just-buried war dead in the hours after Titus left the continent to fight Lijuan. Now, people across this land spent daylight hours digging up their dead as tears streaked their faces and their hearts broke; each body was treated with respect, but there was no choice—their dead had to go into the cleansing cauldron of fire.
“Charisemnon and Lijuan must’ve had a plan to spread this new strain,” Tzadiq had said to him after they first became aware of the horror they faced, his second’s clean-shaven head gleaming in the reprieve of the dawn sun. “Why do you think that plan stalled in Africa?”
“We’ll never know for certain,” Titus had answered, his back drenched with sweat after yet another night fighting the reborn, “but if I had to lay bets, I’d say that whatever Charisemnon did to blend his disease with her death, it cost him.” Disease was a “gift” that cut both ways. “He likely couldn’t maintain the projected pace.”
But the archangel formed of pestilence and vanity had done plenty.
It was all more than enough to deal with—yet a nagging worry haunted Titus. When he’d entered Charisemnon’s inner border court after his return from New York, it was to find a number of badly decomposed bodies. No one had been inside the court buildings in the interim, both his and Charisemnon’s former forces caught in a desperate battle against the reborn.
The creatures had gone berserk upon the death of their master.
Only later, after questioning several senior members of the enemy court, had he learned that Charisemnon had shut off the inner court to everyone but a favored few. The other courtiers had worried they’d fallen in their archangel’s favor. Turned out, from what Titus had discovered, that the favored few had actually been the unlucky few.
For the vampires, Titus believed that their liege had either accidentally infected them with a disease or he’d used them as guinea pigs. It was possible the angels had been thrown to the vampires as sacrificial food, but it was equally possible the decomposition hid what might’ve been indications of disease. It was the latter prospect that haunted Titus—because angels weren’t supposed to be vulnerable to disease.
It was a law written into stone.
As immutable as the wind and the sky.
Or it had been before Charisemnon.
Then Tzadiq had discovered the worst thing: a slimy black-green trail along the hallway that led out of the room of the rotting dead . . . in a shape that couldn’t be of anything but an angel. No other being in the world could’ve made that particular pattern. Only an angel whose wings were dragging along the stone as they clawed and crawled their way down the hall.
Needless to say, Titus was handling serious and deadly problems.
The Hummingbird had exactly zero useful skills when it came to the grim tasks that lay ahead.
He wanted to groan all over again. Did he even have anyone left on his staff who could pretty up a room for her?
This was going to be an unmitigated disaster.
6
Sharine’s first action was to consider the well-being of Lumia and its connected township. To that end, she called together those of her current team who wore the mantle of leadership: Trace, Tanicia, and Farah.
The most senior of the three, Tanicia, her black hair delicately braided around the front but a halo at the back, said, “We won’t flinch at maintaining the rules you’ve set down, Lady Sharine.” Her voice was husky, her gaze resolute, and her wings a deep autumnal orange-red against skin of darkest brown. “We will allow no stain to fall on your honor.”
She should not have favorites, Sharine thought, but Tanicia was one of hers. A warrior through and through, but one with heart. Sharine had seen her slipping sweets into the hands of the younglings who ran after her in the streets, wanting to touch her wings but too well-taught by their parents to dare.
“I have every faith in you,” she reassured all three, lest they believe she was questioning their loyalty or commitment. “But we are short in number—and now you’ll lose me for a time. We must have contingencies in place should the vampires in the area begin to act out.” As Raphael had reminded her, bloodlust was always a threat, especially in the absence of archangelic oversight.
With Elijah, the Archangel of South America, as well as Caliane in the healing sleep of anshara, the Cadre was only seven right now, one of them Suyin, newly ascended and finding her feet. Add in the fact that Neha, the Archangel of India, had awakened from anshara a bare week ago, and the Cadre was stretched to the limit.
As a result, powerful angels who could maintain the leash of fear were needed far more so than in the normal order of things. Sharine wasn’t deadly or an enforcer. But in the time since taking up her position here, she’d learned that she had the ability to bring out the best in others, including warrior squadrons.
Those squadrons held the leash for her.
“We’ve spoken of that,” Tanicia said, her glance taking in Trace and Farah. “A number of vampires from this region were called to fight in Archangel Charisemnon’s army.”
“Yes.” Sorrow wove through her blood for all the people, vampiric and angelic and mortal, who would never again return, their bodies obliterated in war. Those assigned to Lumia at the time had come to her before their departure, making sure she knew she was about to lose them from Lumia’s complement and why.
Sharine had begrudged none of them. The war hadn’t reached this isolated area—Charisemnon had aimed himself at the southern half of the continent, with the fighting mostly taking place at the north/south border.
“The archangel didn’t only recall his soldiers, he drafted in civilians who were technically his people, though they lived inside our borders,” Tanicia reminded Sharine. “Sad as it is to say, that means we currently have a very small population of civilian vampires. We should be able to maintain the peace for weeks or longer—you’ve built a solid foundation on which we can stand.”
“The idiots know to behave,” Trace drawled. “Everyone else will otherwise haul them into line—and not be gentle about it. No one, mortal or immortal wishes to lose you as Guardian, and to that end, they will ensure the Cadre has no reason to question your leadership.”
Oh, she did like him. She liked all of her people. Farah, so quiet and sage in her advice. Trace, erudite and silkily dangerous. Battle-worn Tanicia, who’d been at Sharine’s side from the start, when Sharine wasn’t sure what she was doing here. The only reason she’d even accepted the position was because Illium had taken her hands and said, “These people are hurt, Mother. You understand pain, and you understand how to be kind. That’s what they need.”
He could be so wise sometimes, her blue-winged boy who was becoming more powerful each time she turned around. Yet she would always remember him as the ungainly babe who’d wobbled the first time he took off from their kitchen doorway, straight down into the breathtakingly steep drop-off outside.
She’d had her heart in her throat every painful second, but she hadn’t gone after him. His father had been watching from below . . . and well, Aegaeon had still been a good father then, even if he’d already lost interest in her as a woman. He’d have caught their small and delighted boy if he’d tangled his wings and fallen.
But he hadn’t. Their baby had flown.
And he’d given Sharine wings when she was at her most broken, bringing her to this place where she was considered someone to come to, a person to trust. “I have confidence in your ability to handle anything that arises in my absence,” she told her three senior people, and saw their spines lengthen, their faces gain light from within.
“I will prepare tonight and fly on the wing to Titus’s court come morning.” She held up a hand when Tanicia’s eyes flared, her lips parting. “Raphael offered to arrange a ride in one of those flying metal contraptions, but I’m not that modern.” The idea of being trapped inside a tube of metal was not her idea of flight. “I also wish to make a survey of the landscape.”
Tanicia frowned, and Farah stepped from foot to foot. Surprisingly, it was Trace who inclined his head in defeat. “I wish you good journey, Lady Sharine.”
* * *
* * *
Dawn came on a caress of pink and light yellow across twilight gray skies.
Sharine’s maidens had argued for sending her things overland, but Sharine had no intention of risking her people for vanity. She’d borne their distraught silence as she made it clear she’d carry what she needed in a small pack that fit neatly between her wings. “No one is to send anything else after me.”
Such long faces they’d had, such bowed shoulders, but they had accepted her word. Now, she double-checked the pack she’d filled the previous night. She’d had such a pack as a young woman, but this one had been a gift from Aodhan. And Aodhan being Aodhan, while the pack was a golden brown suitable for the heat of Morocco, when examined more closely, it proved to be patterned with a design in the same color. Even in the simplest of things, her protégé couldn’t stop making art.