The resulting hole was only a fraction of the size of Titus’s but it was enough to reveal the tunnel beneath. The border guard and her people arrowed back at the reborn within, all of them shooting the weapons that spouted flame.
Sharine, meanwhile, stared at her hand.
Obren was doing the same. “I didn’t know you could do that.” It came out a whisper. “I was told the Hummingbird was an artist.”
“I’d forgotten,” she murmured, her mind using the unraveling skeins of memory to travel right back to the genesis of Sharine.
12
Eons Past
“Papa! Papa! Look what I can do.” Light shot from Sharine’s small fingers to crack one of the stones that littered the wildflower-strewn mountainside. “See!”
Black eyebrows drawing together over his eyes, her father crouched down to touch the rock. He drew back his finger with a hiss, the pad of it red. Face falling, Sharine pressed her lips gently to it. “I kiss it better,” she said, having learned that from the mother of her friend who lived the next mountain over.
Her father didn’t smile, just took her hands in his and stared at her palms. But there was nothing there now, no hint of the pretty fire. “It’s inside me,” she told him, bouncing on her feet. “All fizzy and hot.”
Her father wasn’t like her friend’s father, who laughed and took her for rides on his back. Sharine’s father was old in a way that made her bones ache. She was too young to know how to put that into words, but she felt the weight of his age like a looming black cloud on the horizon. She knew he loved her—she felt that, too—but it wasn’t the same as how other fathers loved their children.
“We need to fly home to your mother,” he said in his deep voice, his eyes the same sunlight shade as her own but with streaks of brown.
Sharine wanted to play longer on this mountainside, with the sun shining so bright that the wildflowers appeared to glow, but she knew there was no point in arguing or dragging her feet. The last time she’d tried, her father had left her alone until she “came to her senses” and flew home. It might be fun to play alone here, but then she’d miss him and mama and go home and they’d be disappointed with her behavior.
Sighing, she flew up. She couldn’t fly as smooth or as straight as her papa, but she could stay in the air the whole way home now. Before, she’d used to fall, or have to rest. But her wings had become stronger over the past year, though she was still puffed, with her heart going boom-boom, when she landed in the stone courtyard of their home.
“Mama!” she cried as she ran inside, excited to share her new trick.
“Sharine, sweetheart, how often have I told you not to run?” Mama’s words were mild, the smile she sent Sharine’s way kind . . . and tired. Sharine’s mother was always tired. It was just the way she was—Sharine had no memory of a time when her mother wasn’t on the edge of exhaustion.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile and slowed down. “I showed Papa my fire. Can I have some food?”
Her mother’s sky-blue gaze went to her father, her golden hair rippling and the light purple of her wings restless, but they didn’t speak until after Sharine’d had her snack and was outside. But she was bad and she tiptoed back to near the window so she could listen. She knew she shouldn’t, that it was bad to listen in on other people, but no one ever had interesting conversations around her and she wasn’t a baby anymore.
“Her fire?” Mama murmured in her husky-soft voice.
“Yes.” Papa’s deeper tones. “She’s showing signs of an offensive ability. It may be that our daughter is destined to be a warrior.”
“I can’t believe it, not with how she loses herself in her art.” Sharine’s mother sounded as if she was smiling, and that was nice. “It’s apt to be a remnant from my mother. She served Qin until she decided to Sleep.”
“But so young?” Papa murmured, the sound of his wings moving as he opened and closed them familiar and comforting. “Offensive abilities don’t appear in children for a reason. She could hurt a friend or playmate without intent.”
A pause before her mother said, “Yes, you’re right in that. We shall have to teach her to never use her abilities. At least until she’s older.” Endless tiredness in every word. “I don’t know if I’ll make it, my love. I ached for a child when I was young and full of life, only for fate to bless me when I see nothing of interest in the world any longer but for you and our daughter.”
Sharine deliberately stepped away from the window, and walked over to her mother’s flower garden to begin pulling weeds. “They shouldn’t talk that way.” Eyes wet and hot, she ripped out a weed. “I hate it. I do.”
She was old enough to understand they were talking about Sleep. Not normal sleep. Sleep that went on for ages and ages and ages. It scared her. Angels weren’t like the mortal children she’d been told about but had never met—angels took a long time to grow up. What if Mama and Papa left her while she was still only half a grown-up? What would she do then? She’d be all alone.
Maybe if she listened and minded better, they’d stay longer.
“I won’t use the fire,” she promised the flowers in a wet, quavering whisper. “I’ll be good. I’ll be the best little girl.”
13
Titus was worried enough about where the burrows might lead that he left his weapons-master Orios in charge of the main section of the nest and flew back to expose other hidden routes. The first suspicious area, however, proved to have already been unearthed.
Fire boiled inside the tunnels, the reborn surely incinerated.
“Who did this?” he asked on a stab of joy, wondering if one of his older angels had come into a new power.
Sweat streaking her face from the heat of the flamethrower, Marifa turned to him and said, “The Hummingbird.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long second before the other angel said, “On my honor, sire. It was her. She looked as surprised as I felt, but she blew open the hole for us.”
Deciding that particular mystery could wait, Titus left the squadron captain to it and went in the opposite direction to where he could see wings of indigo light. It appeared the Cadre had sent him far more help than he’d believed. That, or a doppelganger had taken over the Hummingbird’s body.
It took hours for them to clear out the entire interconnected burrow, but the work wasn’t yet done. He and his people—and the powerful imposter with drooping wings who looked like the Hummingbird—had to go backward through every other cleared section to ensure they hadn’t missed a burrow that might spout reborn in a nightmare eruption.
It wasn’t as if he could simply crack open the earth—an entire city sat on that earth.
“We will have to be vigilant,” he said to his people as they gathered on the ramparts of the citadel, sweaty and dirty and with more than one streak of putrid reborn flesh or blood on their clothing and bodies.
He’d been lucky today, hadn’t lost any of them, mortal, vampire, or angel, to the vicious creatures. “Alert the populace to the danger and tell them to hail a warrior should they hear anything beneath their homes—reassure them we won’t be angry at false alarms, no matter how many.”
“We could position ground-sensors around the citadel and the city,” said a two-hundred-year old vampire who had an intense interest in the technologies of this time.
“Go, speak to Tzadiq, get it under way.”
The Hummingbird had returned to the citadel with them, but she stayed on the edge of the group and remained silent until it had disbanded. Only then did she approach Titus, her wings having dropped until the tips dragged on the ground.