After catching his breath, he said, “My relief was badly wounded soon after taking her position.”

So he’d effectively done a double shift. It put the continued speed and accuracy of his shooting in a whole different light. “Get some rest,” she said to him. “I can spot you for a while.”

“I’ll be back soon. I just need a blood boost.” Shifting into a low crouch, he headed out of the live fire area.

Elena had already begun to pick off enemy fighters with precision shots of the surface-to-air weapon that could fire both single shots and a burst. It wasn’t her favorite, but she’d trained on it because she knew it’d be used during battle. She’d made sure to update that training the instant she recovered enough after the chrysalis.

Given that she was a—limited—backup power source for Raphael, Dmitri had fought hard to have her stay safe in the Tower and out of the fighting. Elena had pushed back as hard. That was not who she was—and having the consort and “hunter angel” MIA from the field of battle would demoralize their people.

Raphael had agreed with her.

Her archangel understood what drove her, she thought as she targeted an enemy angel aiming his crossbow at the wings of their fighters. He’d already badly wounded one; the angel was only alive because Aodhan had managed another air rescue. Before today, she hadn’t known how fast Sparkle could fly—his speed tended to be eclipsed by Bluebell’s.

“Fuck you, you asshole.” She fired. Her shot hit the enemy angel in the eye, exactly as she’d planned. Screaming, he spun in the air as red bled down his face. She struck him twice more, shredding his own wings.

He fell.

Part of her would always mourn an angel’s fall, but she couldn’t be sorry. Not when he’d come to this city as part of an attacking force—and not when his eyes had been an ordinary blue instead of the ugly black that marked Lijuan’s puppets. It wasn’t like Raphael had gone to China and picked a fight. Lijuan had come here and all these clear-eyed fighters had followed out of choice.

A massive shattering sound, shards of concrete flying up into the air. Something struck Elena’s cheek hard enough that blood dripped down her skin. She glanced back to see a smoking hole in the center of the roof. “What the fuck was that?”

“Look out!

Her head jerked up at the warning . . . to see a bolt of shining copper power heading directly for her. She rolled up to her feet . . . and found herself on the Tower roof, her breath gasps and her heart thundering from the speed of her flight. Raphael was already above her previous position, his wings white fire.

I’m safe! she yelled to him mind-to-mind, as angry frustration gnawed at her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who abandoned her fellow soldiers and ran from danger. She stayed and she fought! Fuck this ability that wouldn’t let her choose!

Elena. A single word that held Raphael’s heart.

Philomena directed her blows toward Raphael, but Raphael was an archangel, Philomena a mere angel even if she was experienced and old. The piercing blue of his angelfire hit Lijuan’s general on one side of her body and that was it.

She disintegrated from the inside out.

Angelfire was designed to kill archangels; ordinary angels stood no chance.

Raphael then blasted angelfire across a heavy line of enemy squadrons coming at theirs and the sky glowed for a long moment before things quieted down. Lijuan’s forces didn’t withdraw but they became warier, more careful.

Come back, Archangel. You’re our only hope when Lijuan rises. You can’t afford to get injured. If the enemy managed to shoot off part of his wing while it was in its physical form, he’d be grounded until it grew back. It might grow back faster than before the Cascade filled him with power, but it wouldn’t be immediate.

There are so many of them, he replied. Our people are exhausted.

I know. But if you fall, we all fall.

A silver-green power cracked the sky at that moment, and Elena stiffened . . . until she realized it was coming from their side. I forgot about Elijah. Her grin was surely manic.

Raphael didn’t reply until he landed beside her on the Tower roof. “Eli is of the same opinion as you.” He folded back his wings, his skin glimmering with perspiration. “He will help our forces while I hoard my energy to take on Lijuan.”

He stared out at the battle zone. “He is a good man. Not many generals, far less archangels, would put themselves in the position of being the assistant.”

“Yeah, he is.” Leaning her head against his biceps, she let her wing overlap his, the energy that danced between them a familiar caress by now. “I have to be more careful where I put myself if they’ve begun to target me.”

It had happened in the last battle, too, but this time around Lijuan had appeared so obsessed with Raphael that the entire army had forgotten Elena. Too bad the memory lapse hadn’t lasted. “I don’t want to put our troops in danger. I could—”

A door banged behind them, Dmitri running out. “Titus is wounded,” he said, a phone held to his ear.

Elena’s entire body tensed.

“How bad?” Raphael asked at the same time.

A pause while Dmitri listened to the person on the other end of the line. “He’s not incapacitated but he’s down for at least a day.” Another pause. “Charisemnon is also down. Titus wounded him at the same time he was wounded.”

Exhaling on a shudder, Elena leaned forward with her hands on her knees.

“Good,” Dmitri said curtly, putting away the phone. “Tzadiq says Titus caused massive quakes through Charisemnon’s territory, including one that collapsed land under a significant percentage of Charisemnon’s ground troops. Injured as he is, Charisemnon won’t be able to make much headway while Titus is down.”

Tzadiq, Elena remembered as she rose back to her full height, was Titus’s second—and Galen’s father.

Dmitri’s T-shirt pulled against his pectorals as he put his hands on his hips. “I finally managed to get an update on Astaad and Aegaeon. Charisemnon got his insects into Astaad’s territory. He’s evacuating those who haven’t been bitten to clean islands, putting the infected on a single quarantine island, and burning the rest down to soil and rock. Aegaeon is assisting.”

Elena had seen pictures of Astaad’s lands, many of them lush and tropical. How it must hurt the archangel to deliberately destroy all that beauty, all that life. As it must’ve hurt Elijah to give the order to scorch his lands. “What about Australia?” It was the biggest swath of Astaad’s territory.

“Infected.” Dmitri’s jaw worked. “But it’s also where he bases a good percentage of his army—they’re burning out the areas closest to the ports and shepherding the uninfected inward. Infected are being quarantined in various small towns.”

“The enemy has poisoned our world to win this war,” Raphael said and in his voice was the cold of the Cascade. “If we do not stop them here and now, their plague of death will cover the planet.”

60

The smoke over the city finally began to dissipate after sunset—when Lijuan’s reborn stopped attempting to cross the border. A few of the macabre walking corpses apparently had a semblance of primitive brainpower, because they caught a clue and began to hunker down on the other side of the line of blackened remains that marked where their brethren had burned up.

Lijuan’s squadrons drew back at the same time.

Now, the moon a spotlight in the sky, Elena sat on the edge of the balcony with her legs hanging over the side, Illium beside her. Raphael was up in the sky with Elijah, giving the other archangel the lay of the land.

“Naasir’s behind enemy lines,” she told Illium. “No one saw him enter the city but Raphael’s spoken to him.”

“I figured as much when I saw Galen in the sky.”

“Did you know Galen brought in a freaking catapult in pieces? It’s being set up on a rooftop, ready to pelt Lijuan’s people.”

“Makes sense,” Illium said. “Lijuan’s got a ton of old vampires and angels in her forces. Catapults are intimidating and something they fear.” He took a drink from the bottle of vodka in his hand, then passed across the bottle. Elena took a hit, the warmth of it spreading like fire through her system. “We fought together in the last major battle of the day.”

“How long do you think this pause will last?”

“I’m more worried about why they’ve pulled back.” He took the bottle back from her but didn’t drink, the aged gold of his eyes focused on the distance, where Lijuan’s troops were doing something they couldn’t quite figure out.

The enemy had finally begun to stomp on Vivek’s bugs. Most of the drones were also down. Lijuan’s people hadn’t found the cameras hidden in the facades of buildings, atop roofs or on streetlights, but many of those buildings—and cameras—had been damaged during battles. As a result, there were blind spots.

“Elijah hurt them pretty bad,” she pointed out. “He was throwing angelfire around like it was candy.”

“It’s a question of resources,” Illium murmured. “Lijuan has an overwhelming number of fighters who will follow her commands without hesitation. She—or her generals—could’ve simply kept sending through wave after wave of people. And Philomena wasn’t her only naturally powerful fighter.

“Even Elijah and Raphael couldn’t hold off that entire mass of fighters, not if they swarmed. No one but Lijuan could kill either of them, but the army could do damage and take over the city, lay siege to the Tower.”

“Yeah, I see your point.” The moon’s silver light shimmered on the ocean in the distance. “Have we kept an eye on the other waterways around New York? She isn’t sending people into the water so they can sneak up on us?”

“We’ve got dive teams double-checking on the sensors. Nothing. They’re not in the water. And they’re not in the sky—not unless . . .”