Titus went to crouch down, then seemed to decide against it. Sharine wouldn’t want her wings dragging in all that death, either.

“That’s an angelic back,” he confirmed.

She forced herself closer. There was no avoiding the truth—under the skin, angelic bodies were built differently from mortals in ways both subtle and profound, because angels had wings and thus musculature not possessed by those who couldn’t fly. This was especially so when it came to the back and chest areas.

Even though this angel’s wings had been burned away, and no trace remained of any of the muscles or feathers that would’ve once overlaid the bones, that he was an angel was indisputable.

Her boots crunched on something.

Gut churning, she lifted her foot at once, and looked down. The bones on which she’d inadvertently stood were fine and long. Not mortal. “Wing bones.” She shifted back so Titus could see. “An angel died here.”

“No.” His hand fisted at his side, his voice harsh and deep. “An angelic reborn died here.”

26

Ice crackled its tendrils into Sharine’s gut. “That’s impossible. Angels aren’t susceptible to this infection.” Reborn could hurt them, but the creatures couldn’t turn them. “Lijuan created the reborn as a twisted promise of immortality, did she not? Angels are already immortal and thus immune.”

She wasn’t sure she was correctly recalling her conversation with Raphael; it’d taken place while her mind was yet a kaleidoscope. But she was certain when it came to angelic immunity. “Angels don’t get sick.” It was a fact of nature, as immutable as the wind and the sky.

“Do you know of the Falling?” Titus folded his arms, his biceps flexing. “In Raphael’s territory?”

Bile burned the back of her throat. “Yes. Charisemnon caused angels to fall from the sky.”

“He was able to create something that affected angels—we never discovered what, but as he was given the gift of disease by the Cascade . . .”

Her heart pulsed in her mouth, the horror of what he was suggesting turning her mute. Angelkind had no way to recover from a devastating disease; its birth rate was far too low. A single infection could annihilate their entire people.

The rays of the rising sun cracked the sky above their heads right then, bathing the entire site in a terrible golden glow.

* * *

* * *

Titus found no other signs of an angel, though he and Sharine searched the entire village twice, looking under every rock and in every cupboard and external building. It was possible his scientists would discover more when they sifted through the impromptu funeral pyre, for he hadn’t wished to trample through that and possibly destroy other fine wing bones, but for now he could confirm the presence of a single reborn angel.

“If the world is lucky,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be so simple, “this angel will prove to be the one who crawled away from the court of my nemesis to die having infected no others.”

The champagne hue of Sharine’s eyes were haunted when her gaze met his. “Have you heard anything to suggest that other angels have fallen to this infection?”

“No, but I don’t know this half of the territory as well as my own.” He’d barely had a chance to catch his breath, much less do an intensive tour of his new territorial region. “It’s possible the infected are hiding—we’ve seen that the new crop of reborn have a survival instinct. That instinct might be even stronger in reborn angels, if we assume the strength of our immune system means the infection doesn’t progress as fast as it does in mortals and vampires.”

Sucking in a breath, Sharine said, “An angel might know what he was becoming, know he shouldn’t exist.”

Horror churning in his gut, Titus rubbed his face. “For now, we’ll inform my people using your phone, then head back home. If this angel was moving when you landed, it was nothing but a lingering spasm—he is very dead, and I need to return to eradicating the threat in the south. Especially if there’s even a small chance we may have to deal with infected angels in the coming days or weeks.”

“I can ask part of Lumia’s guard complement to stand watch in the skies until your scientists land.”

Titus considered that; he didn’t wish to expose Lumia or its guard to risk, but he also couldn’t chance this body being disturbed by the reborn or by animals. “Tell them to stay in the skies,” he said to Sharine. “When they need to land to rest, they are to do so in open areas where reborn cannot sneak up on them. Lumia won’t come to harm by this secondment?”

“It’s not much farther than the sentries normally fly—even if anyone has covetous eyes on Lumia at this time of chaos, they’ll notice no difference in its routine.” After making the call to her second, she began to take pictures “just in case.”

Leaving her to it as he was certain no danger lurked here, he decided to take a final look through the village on the slim chance that he might discover something more about the infected angel. It was on his last look into the general store that he trampled on something that crackled. It turned out to be an envelope.

Picking it up, he saw that it was covered in dust except for one corner that bore the partial imprint of his boot. Written on the front were the words: For our lord Archangel Charisemnon.

Titus gritted his teeth. Rather than opening the envelope, he took it with him to where Sharine had just finished photographing the scene of death. “The villagers appear to have left behind a note.”

When she said, “Shall I read it out?” he held out the envelope. The missive within could contain no good news; all he could do to soften the blow was to listen to it in her rich tones complex with texture. “Is the language one you know?”

She checked. “Yes.”

“‘My lord Archangel,’” she began, after opening out the piece of white paper folded inside the envelope. “‘We don’t know if this missive will ever reach you, but we have hope. We are in a terrible state—we have lost so many of our young and strong and the monsters who roam the land destroyed our crops and killed our animals. We don’t have enough food, nor the manpower to grow more before we run out of supplies.

“‘After much thought and because we know not many angels fly this way, we’ve made the decision to trek to the next closest habitation in the hope we can find safe harbor. We carry with us information for you. However, we also leave it behind here, for there’s a strong chance we won’t make it. The tainted creatures with their craving for flesh appear more and more. We know that you, Archangel, are battling them and that takes priority.’”

Titus couldn’t hold back a snarl at the trust, innocent and pure, that these people had shown in the traitorous waste of archangelic space named Charisemnon. Rather his boot had ground the archangel’s face into dust than it had stepped on the envelope left behind in betrayed hope.

Sharine took a deep breath of her own before continuing. “‘We wish to tell you that, today, we had to fight an angel who was sick with the taint. At first, when we saw wings in the sky, we were so grateful we fell to the earth in joy. We thought to send a message asking for supplies enough to get us through the worst of it. But then the angel landed and we saw that he wasn’t right.

“‘We didn’t attack him. Please know that. We welcomed him as an honored guest, as we would do to any angel. Even though his teeth were sharpened at the edges, and his hands cold and wet, and a green rot was spreading under his skin. We believed that he was sick because of a wound taken in battle, that he would soon fight it off.’”

“For that knowledge alone,” Titus murmured, “Charisemnon would’ve executed them one and all.” No mortal could ever see angelkind as vulnerable. “Should the Cadre become aware of this, the only choice will be death, or the erasure of their memories.” The latter was a terrible thing, an intrusion and a violation, but Titus agreed with those who said it was better than wholesale slaughter.

Eyes shining with a wetness she didn’t permit to fall, Sharine carried on. “‘At first, the angel spoke to us and his voice was disturbing in its grating intensity. But that lasted only minutes. Then, snarling akin to a feral dog, he hauled one of the village women close and ripped off her head, bathing himself in her blood before tearing open her chest cavity to feed on the organs within.’”

Fingers trembling on the paper, Sharine lowered it for a moment. “I have heard of this type of behavior.”

“Vampires who’ve given in to bloodlust act so; hunters often find them with their faces coated with blood, their minds drunk and bodies slack from the indulgence.” He moved close enough so that his wing overlapped hers. She didn’t step away or rebuke him for the intimacy. “I can read the rest of the letter.”

“No. I’ll finish it.” Another long breath. “I do this for the scared, brave people who thought to leave this behind, to warn others.” Exhaling, she read on. “‘The angel acted drunk afterward, his actions uncoordinated, so we took the opportunity to defend ourselves.

“‘Many of our strong were already dead by then, so we couldn’t fight him with honor. We threw fuel on him and set him afire. We hope you will have mercy on us, my lord Archangel. We didn’t wish to cause him pain or kill him without mercy, but we didn’t have any other way to stop him.

“‘Once he fell to the ground, we used a kitchen cleaver to remove his skull from his spine; we believe that perhaps angels can recover from this, so we have left his head beside his body. That body, we placed with the others, both friend and foe, that lay decomposing around us. Then we lit a fire using what little fuel we had.’”

At least that explained why the fire hadn’t burned its way through the village; it hadn’t had enough fuel to begin with.

“‘Fire was the only way we could think of to purify the blood of the tainted ones and farewell our own,’” Sharine read. “‘We did a prayer for the lost, then began our preparations to leave.