“Then, one day, a bird picked it up but lost it mid-journey, dropping the piece of brain matter into a massive gorge. There it lay in the dark shadows for hundreds of years as the archangel slowly rebuilt his body cell by cell, the action one of instinct, of the natural order. For all you need for an archangel to come back to life is a fragment of a healthy cell.” That was also why he was sure that Lijuan would never return—nothing of her had remained.
“A most gruesome story.” Sharine pressed her free hand to his chest. “Tell me the rest.”
He grinned, delighted with the unpredictable woman in his arms. “Well, the archangel stayed silent even after his head grew, for his torso wasn’t yet complete. He knew he remained vulnerable. So he lay there in silence for tens of years more—I’m told that once the brain and the head have regenerated, the rest of the body doesn’t take as long.
“Still, because he had no sustenance except for the insects that flew into his mouth and the rainwater that fell on him, he regenerated far slower than is possible with more fuel to power the growth. Once he had arms, he dragged himself to a spot in the gorge that had a small stream, and in that stream lived such creatures as small frogs that he could catch and eat.
“He also ate the wildflowers on the stream’s edge, and the moss that grew on the shadowed rocks that were his home. Even once he had his whole body, he remained weak, so he waited crouched in the dark crevices of the gorge and hunted any animal that came close. It’s said that it took him another ten years to regain his strength to the point that he could fly out of the gorge. Once out, he hunted for bigger creatures until he was brimming with power.”
He paused.
The Hummingbird slapped him lightly on the shoulder, a butterfly’s sting. “Stop dragging this out, tell me the rest!”
He chuckled. “So, Sharine likes a good story.”
“What Sharine likes is flaying infuriating men alive.”
Grinning, he carried on. “Once he was full of power, the archangel didn’t attempt to pull together his court. He knew who was loyal and who wasn’t, and he knew they’d come to him. First, however, he had a task to complete. He stalked his enemy, and then, when the enemy was alone, he incapacitated him by chopping off his head.”
“That seems a bit anticlimactic.”
“Do you always interrupt your storytellers?” he asked, though he’d made a similar judgment as a child.
“Carry on, my lord storyteller. Please do carry on.”
Despite her poor demeanor, he could feel the tension in her body and knew she was hanging on the edge, waiting for the next part of the story. “After chopping off his head, the archangel incinerated his enemy’s body. Then, before he flew the head back to the same gorge where he’d lived all that time, he destroyed the mouth and jaw of his enemy.
“He hid the silent head deep in a shadowed corner, where no one would ever find it. He knew his enemy would regenerate his mouth but no one would hear him when he screamed. Then, for millennia, the archangel would fly back at regular intervals to destroy any part of his enemy’s body that had regenerated.
“The enemy remained forever a head, sitting there oozing on the bloody stump of his neck, screaming into the void. It’s said that he is there still. Insane beyond all understanding, a thing no longer sentient.”
He lunged his head toward Sharine.
She screamed.
Titus burst out laughing, shaking so much with mirth that he was barely aware of her hand slapping his shoulder while she called him “a fiend.” “I thought you were narrating a true story! Who came up with that hideous tale?”
“One of my sisters.” Still chuckling, he found his gaze dropping to the sweet plumpness of her lips, had to consciously force it away before he gave in to temptation and broke about a thousand unwritten laws of angelkind. “I was perhaps five decades old.” The midpoint between child and adult. “I spent the next five years searching every gorge I could find for the decapitated head of the insane archangel.”
“Did you never wonder about the identity of the other one? The one torturing his nemesis for eternity?”
“I was fifty.” A boy ready for mystery and adventure. “And it’s a very good story. Charo has always had a great talent.”
Sharine sat up in his arms, her inhale sharp. “Your sister is Charo of the Tales?” Her mouth fell open at his nod. “How did you spring from the same stock that produced such a glorious wordsmith?”
“I’m a gift,” he shot back.
She parted her lips to reply, when her attention was caught by something else. Pointing down, she said, “Do you see that?”
“Yes.” Another group of reborn, these ones moving in a crablike crawl, their heads hanging forward and their bodies hunched. “This area is uninhabited for many miles in all directions, and these reborn appear heavily lethargic from lack of food. I predict we’ll find them in much the same place on our return.”
“Yes,” Sharine said, “you’re right—it’s more important that we unearth the strangeness I saw in that village.” No amusement or bite in her voice now, simply a deep vein of sadness. “Why do we do this? Destroy that which we love?”
The golden filaments in her feathers glinted in the starlight. “Charisemnon loved this landscape as much as you do—he visited Lumia twice during my time there, and we watched the sunset together. We spoke of the animals and the sky and the colors of this land, and I would’ve staked my life on the fact that he was honest in his love.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Titus’s sorrow was more complicated, bled through with hate and disgust. “I, too, once sat beside him—it was long ago, soon after I became an archangel. We shared a tankard of ale, and we spoke of how lucky we were to have this land as our territory.”
Then, Charisemnon had been content with his half of Africa, had welcomed Titus as his neighbor. “There are differences as you fly from the north to the south, but in the end, there’s a feeling to this continent that you can’t find in any other. It sings to my soul and it sang to his.”
Titus could barely remember that Charisemnon. “But the thing is, he grew to love power more—or perhaps that hunger always existed in him. He chose power and vanity over his love for this land and for his people. In pursuit of that power, he poisoned our land of life and wonder, and he turned our people into prey. For that, I will never forgive him. Had he a grave, I would spit on it.”
25
Sharine didn’t disagree with Titus’s judgment, harsh though it was.
The Archangel of Northern Africa that she’d gotten to know had been jaded and dissolute in a way that was difficult to explain. It was oft said that power corrupted, and archangels were the most powerful beings in the world—but archangels also had to deal with myriad problems to maintain a healthy territory, from keeping a firm hand on vampires, to—at the basest level—ensuring the population had work and didn’t starve. That didn’t even take lethal territorial politics into account.
An archangel couldn’t simply sit pretty and “exist.”
It was unlikely that Titus thought of himself as a crouching threat over the other members of the Cadre, but he was, as were they in turn. Power such as that of an archangel didn’t sleep. It watched and so by default, the members of the Cadre watched each other. Friendships, love, logic might stop them from making constant war, but the threat of it loomed always.