“Mirrors and channels,” he said, picking up their conversation as if she hadn’t conked out in the middle of it. “Let us recap our thoughts, hbeebti: mirrors reflect objects and light, but a certain kind of mirror can make light stronger, too, focus it.”

Elena yawned, her brain fuzzy. “Gimme a minute to throw some water on my face.” It took more like five, but she was refreshed by the time she returned to the room. “What time is it?” It had been long enough for her own glow to disappear, though her veins did turn to liquid gold now and then without warning.

“Seven in the morning.”

She poked her head out the balcony doors. In the distance was a gray sky that might mean it was raining out there, but directly above . . . “Raphael, the bloodstorm sky is still swirling away above the Tower.” A slow-moving cyclone with a heart of red so dark it was black.

“I know.” Raphael’s voice was a little absent. “I decided to let the enemy wonder what exactly is happening to me.”

“Excellent evil plan.” Going back to the bed, she took a cross-legged position facing him. “How about an experiment? Throw a little power at me.”

When he did, the energy sank into her, only to release back into him the instant she made contact. “I guess that’s a mirroring effect in a way, but I don’t think that’s what the Legion meant.”

She pressed her fingers to her temples, squeezed her eyes shut. “I have fragmented images of massive explosions, of power narrowing to a single point . . . and a sense of things being made . . . bigger. Does that make sense?”

“The Legion want us to do something that magnifies power.” Raphael sat up, the sheet pooling at his waist and his bare chest a seduction.

But no matter how they approached it, they couldn’t find the truth hidden in the Legion’s enigmatic words—or in the memories the Primary had tried to pass on. The only thing that was indisputable was that even wildfire could only injure Lijuan now. If they did what they’d done before, they’d waste the Legion’s sacrifice for no final outcome. Yet doing nothing wasn’t an option.

When they rose not long afterward, Elena ate, then flew across to the front line to relieve a gunner who’d stayed up overnight. “I’ll take the day,” she told him. “Get some rest, and you need blood, too.” The male was too pale, his face thinner than was his normal.

When he protested that he was fine, she pointed out that he’d be useless as a gunner if he fainted mid-shot.

“I do not faint.” Arms folded, eyes narrowed, affront in every breath.

Jeez, four-hundred-year-old vamps could be so tetchy. “Then do it for me,” she said. “I need to feel useful.”

“Consort, no one could ask more from you.” Arms unfolding, his expression earnest. “You fight by our side every day.”

Despite his response, her words did convince him to take the break. That done, she turned her attention to another vampire. “You, too.” She pointed a finger. “Take the time while things are quiet. It’s all going to go to hell sooner rather than later.”

Setting down her weapon, the experienced vampire with whom Elena regularly played poker, sniffed at her. “Ellie, did you have a shower?” A gasp.

Elena waved her hand from her body toward the other woman. “Smell my lemony freshness. You, too, can have this scent if you leave before Her Evilness wakes.”

“I’m gone.”

Seeing that others who’d taken a rest break were arriving to relieve the remainder of the night watch, she settled in to her spot. It was raining on this side of the city, but the thin drizzle didn’t penetrate her jacket or pants. She’d walked up to this roof after landing lower down on a balcony invisible to Lijuan’s forces. At which point, she’d retracted her wings and covered her hair under a black knit cap.

The energy fissures didn’t often happen on her face, so if she kept the knit cap snugged down and her hands in her gloves, no one from Lijuan’s side should make her. Should that change, she’d return to the Tower.

She was here to help, not draw danger down on their troops.

Raphael, meanwhile, was in a meeting with Elijah and Michaela. The three archangels needed to make strategic plans about how best to utilize their energies in battle. For one, while it was clear Michaela could hurt Lijuan a little, her strikes would have more impact if she waited until Raphael had softened up the goddess of fricking zombies with wildfire.

They couldn’t afford to waste any advantage.

A strange calm hung over the city. A shooter would fire a potshot from Lijuan’s side every so often, and Raphael’s side would retaliate, but for the most part, things were eerie in their stillness.

Everyone was waiting for the last battle.

68

Raphael was standing on the Tower roof under the moonless night sky, watching his consort fly home after a long day spent as a gunner, when he received an unexpected message from Aodhan. Sire. Unless my eyes deceive me, Titus is heading your way.

Given Aodhan’s current position, that was the wrong direction for the Archangel of Southern Africa to have flown to New York, but then, he must have known or guessed that Lijuan controlled the other approach. Communications hadn’t become problematic until well after Lijuan’s initial assault.

Continue to watch, Raphael ordered. Report if anything appears untoward. He swept off the Tower roof, his wings slicing through the chill night air. Eli, it’s possible Titus may be closing in on the city. Will you stand sentry while I head that way?

Consider it done.

He angled his wings so his flight path would intersect with Elena’s. Come, hbeebti. We may be about to welcome an old friend.

Her face lit up when he shared the news.

The night air was cold over their bodies as they flew on, but only Elena’s wings glowed against the black. The energy fissures in her skin had stopped around midday, the same time that the glow began to fade from his body.

Their cells had absorbed the energies, made it their own. They would be the strongest they’d ever been when the war drums beat again.

A shadowy presence in the distance that resolved into large wings, an angel in flight.

“Well met, stripling!” boomed a familiar voice not long afterward.

“My old teacher, it is good to see you.” They clasped forearms in the way of warriors.

“Titus, you’re hurt.” Elena’s eyes were on the splint on Titus’s other arm, the bandage wrapped around it dusty from his travels. Raphael knew it must’ve been a very bad break for Titus to have allowed it to be splinted.

“That dog’s excrement of an archangel was rotting from the inside at the end—his breath was foul and putrid—but he got in a lucky blow,” Titus muttered—at Titus volume, which was a low boom. “He broke it to pebbles. It’s healing, but I will be one-armed for some days.”

That wasn’t the only damage. The usually smooth near-black of Titus’s skin was baby pink on one side of his face when he angled his head, though his eye had escaped injury. It will all heal, Raphael reassured his hunter, aware of her feelings for the archangel. His body has focused on the worst wound first. The facial damage is superficial.

It’s just hard to see Titus of all people hurt.

Yes.

“You fly strongly,” Raphael said aloud, conscious that was what would matter to this generous and honest archangel in whose army he’d once been a green recruit.

“I shoot well, too.” Titus’s smile was a slash of white in his face. “I saw a ship on my flight here. It was crawling with that infectious filth my once wise friend Lijuan calls the reborn. It is now at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Titus, I think I want to kiss you.”

Elena’s declaration had Titus throwing open his arms. Laughing, Raphael’s consort went into them and planted a kiss on the other archangel’s uninjured cheek. “Your wings . . .” Titus stared at the brilliant stormfire. “New things are not always good, but this I like.”

“Come on,” Elena said. “You need to rest, eat. You flew a long way.”

“I would’ve been here earlier, but I had to wipe that bearer of disease, that betrayer of honor, that putrid pustule, off the face of this earth.”

“Charisemnon is dead?” Raphael asked, for they couldn’t afford mistakes on this point. “There is no doubt?”

“Not a one, young pup. I eliminated his sorry being from existence with angelfire.” He settled in to fly beside Raphael. “I could not bring my army—they would have been too slow and it would have left my people with no assistance in fighting the reborn plague.”

“I would not expect it, Titus.” That the other archangel had come, injured and straight off the field of battle, it was more than enough.

“So, who else has made it?”

“Elijah and Michaela.”

“She’s a beautiful dagger, but she knows her duty. And Elijah has always been a good man. What excuse do the others offer?” He didn’t wait for an answer before booming, “If I am here, they should be here! I had to fight another archangel to do it!”

Sire, I may be hallucinating this time, Aodhan said, but Astaad just dropped out of the clouds. He has another angel with him—A jagged pause. It is Aegaeon.

Raphael stopped. “We may have more company.” He turned, watching the skies until he glimpsed the wings of the Archangel of the Pacific Isles. A deep black where they grew out of his back, Astaad’s wings faded in a gradient to pale gray at the tips—it made him very difficult to see against the night sky. Only the paleness of his skin gave him away.

The angel who flew beside him had far flashier coloring.

“Astaad! You took your time!” Titus called out when the two were close enough. “Did you bathe in dirt on your way here?”

Astaad, his goatee not as neat as usual and his tunic and pants a dark brown instead of his preferred white, smiled with the ease of a man long used to Titus’s ways and well able to hold his own. “I see Charisemnon got in a few licks.”