“What if she’s figured out a way to make her entire army noncorporeal?” Elena’s mouth dried up. “All those dead, all that power she’s sucked up . . . What if it’s about hiding her assault force?”

“If she can do that, then she has won the war before it begins.”

* * *

• • •

The next day dawned with no sign of a threat on the horizon, but Raphael took Cassandra’s warning seriously: he ordered extra watches in the east, on water and in the sky. He’d just finished reviewing their overall border strategy with Dmitri when Neha called another meeting of the Cadre.

Things had changed in China.

“We have begun to see live people beneath the retreating fog,” reported the Archangel of India before she switched to the feed from a drone.

Thin people with shocked faces stumbled around the mummified remains that littered the streets. Horror scarred the expressions of many, while others were blank-eyed and lost.

It was Elijah who pointed out that all the survivors were young and—aside from their low weights—healthy. “The women are of childbearing age, the men young enough to help raise those children.”

“She has left enough survivors to repopulate her country,” Caliane murmured. “If this is madness, it is a cunning one.”

And still, they didn’t know what had happened to the children.

The fog over China disappeared the next day. Gone without a trace in a matter of seconds. Drone flights over the core of the country discovered several still-living cities . . . but with much smaller populations.

There was just one problem—the warriors, the fighters, were dangerously limited in number. Nothing with which an archangel could hope to defend her territory.

“She knows no one will dare enter,” Alexander bit out. “Not with the death she left on the borders and what happened to Favashi and Antonicus—the threat of a contagion is too great.”

“Your borders?” Astaad asked the impacted archangels. “Your people are safe?”

Neha was the one who replied. “Yes. If it was airborne, it was confined inside the fog.” Her jaw worked. “I have been unable to contact any of mine who were helping to caretake the country.”

“I have also lost people.” Raphael’s anger was a cold, hard thing. “Have any of you managed to initiate communication with your own inside Lijuan’s territory?”

Silence.

So many strong angels gone. It was a catastrophic loss if you considered the angelic birth rate and how many of those warriors had been highly experienced.

“She has begun the war then.” Alexander, his voice razored. “To kill so many of our own when they were placed in China by the Cadre and would’ve stepped down at her return, it is a declaration of war.”

Raphael’s hand fisted as he thought of Gadriel. The angel had taught four-hundred-year-old Raphael how to use a battle axe, his calm, unflappable patience undaunted in the face of the anger Raphael carried within. All that maturity, all that life just gone, destroyed so totally that his parents wouldn’t even have a body to bury. “I am in agreement with Alexander. This is war.”

No one in angelkind would argue against the Cadre’s decision—the terrible loss of mortal and vampiric lives had already begun to make an impact. Immortals weren’t without soul, couldn’t just shrug off mortal deaths on such a scale. But the angelic lives lost? It would hammer home the final terrible blow.

“We will not get to pick the field of battle.” Caliane, her eyes blue fire. “She has poisoned her land to ensure we cannot invade it. Her next act will be to choose where she makes her stand. Prepare for war.”

50

Guild Hunter, Raphael said early afternoon the next day, the bite of winter welcome on his bare arms; he’d chosen to pair a sleeveless white tunic with the deep brown of his tough but battle-scarred pants and equally marked black boots. I am flying out to the lava. Venom’s reported unusual movement.

Wait for me. I just got back from a hand-to-hand combat session with Eve.

Already on the Tower roof, Raphael waited until he saw wings of stormfire take off from one of the balconies before he swept out into the sky. And though he’d said nothing to alert her of his presence, she looked up.

“How is your sister?” he asked once they were at the same altitude.

“Still a little mad at me, but we’ll be good I think.” Solemn eyes searched his face. “Jason have any luck?”

“No.” His spymaster had refused to believe all their people—all Jason’s people—had been murdered so callously. “Not a word, not even from a minor spy in the kitchens.” A vampire so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it would’ve cost Lijuan nothing to allow him to live.

“Damn her.”

Raphael was silent, his anger a black wave.

They flew on until the lava glowed orange in a sea of white.

Venom watched them land with his gaze shielded against the bright snow-reflected light. Slitted like a viper’s and of the same vivid green shade, the vampire’s eyes had been known to inspire fear and fascination both—often in the same individual.

“Sire, Elena.” He motioned his head toward the lava sinkhole, the fine wool of his olive green sweater hugging his shoulders and his legs clad in black cargo pants, his boots scuffed. “It’s begun to bubble. The odd one at first, steady increase over the past hour.”

Though he and Elena had seen the bubbles from above, his consort pressed her face to one of the windows in the fence. “I can’t hear her but she has to be close to—”

A rush of voices inside Raphael’s head. Elena winced at the same time.

Aeclari. We relay for the Blade. He says these words: Inexplicable oceanic disturbance an hour out from Manhattan to the east.

Raphael felt no surprise, only a cold determination. “Head to the city,” he ordered Venom. “The enemy may be at our doorstep.”

Elena rose into the air with him as Venom ran to his Bugatti—parked in the snow like a crouching tiger.

Go! Elena said. Do the white fire thing. I’ll follow.

Lijuan may have already managed to steal into our city in her noncorporeal state. Leaving Elena alone under those circumstances was not a thing he would ever countenance. I will fly us both. Sweeping below her, he held out his arms.

She retracted her wings and dropped.

He caught her, thought of white fire, and suddenly, his wings were nothing physical, the world a blur. As he flew, he contacted Dmitri and got the exact direction from his second. He and Elena were soon over the water; he slowed as they neared the suspect location.

“There!” His hunter pointed down.

The water surged and flowed in a way that spoke of a large body beneath.

Releasing Elena from his arms with a mental warning, her wings erupting out of her back to hold her to a hover, Raphael narrowed his eyes and shot a bolt of power in the center of the suspicious area.

The bolt hit something before it reached the water. The resulting explosion sent large pieces of metal flying in every direction.

“That was a submarine!” Elena, crossbow out, pointed at a distinctive floating piece. “When did she get a fucking submarine?”

“I would assume she’s been gathering weapons and tools since the last battle.”

No bodies floated up from below. Raphael hadn’t held back with that blow; the bodies were apt to have disintegrated into tiny pieces. Neither did he hold back with the balls of wildfire he sent into the sky—one east, one west, one south, one north. Each detonated to cover a massive area.

Screams breached the air before the sky rippled . . . to reveal a winged army. It was shaped into a vee, with the thin point manned by Xi, Lijuan’s most trusted general, and the wide end so far distant that Raphael couldn’t see the end of it.

That’s not an army, it’s a fucking continent. Elena’s shocked voice, her crossbow cocked and ready.

She does not intend to lose this time. Lijuan had brought a force unseen in angelic history, a force so huge that Raphael couldn’t comprehend how it had been built without anyone’s knowledge.

We have to retreat. Choppy strands of Elena’s hair whipped around her face. She holds all the advantages here.

Agreed. Raphael was no longer a boy, to be goaded into fighting without strategy or thought. Come.

Elena flew into his arms.

A massive mind smashed into Raphael’s as he and Elena left the area on wings of white fire.

BOW DOWN! I AM DEATH. I AM YOUR QUEEN.

Shoving Lijuan out with the coldly vicious Cascade power that knew nothing of mercy, Raphael flew on. Dmitri, the army should now be visible to the eyes in the sky. He didn’t think Lijuan would waste power keeping them hidden now that they’d been discovered—there was no reason for her to do so, not with so many squadrons at her disposal.

We have it. A pregnant pause. Fucking hell, Raphael. Where did she get that many combatants?

I have no answers. What he did know was that Manhattan had less than an hour to ready itself to face an enemy so vast no single archangel could’ve prepared for it. Raphael’s entire army, an army spread across the territory, was less than one-tenth of that force.

Launch the battle plans, he ordered his second, for Raphael and his Seven hadn’t sat on their laurels since Lijuan’s first assault. Initiate the first line of defense.

Those defenses were not long-range missiles or bombs. To count, archangel to archangel battles had to be undertaken without large-scale weapons, including any that acquired their targets from afar. It was to protect the world from annihilation—because archangels could survive such violent weapons. It was everyone else who would die.

“At least Lijuan appears to be holding to the rules of war,” Raphael said as they hit the edge of the city. “I saw no signs of advanced technology other than the submerged ships.” As they’d been used for transport rather than as weapons, the subs were acceptable.

“Too bad,” Elena muttered. “I wanted to use a long-range surface-to-air missile and blast off her face.” She glanced up. “There they go.”