“Just be careful,” she said after a pause. “I don’t feel like spending hours digging you out of the rubble if you get stuck.” Though the words sounded harsh, she reached over to close her hand over his. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
It felt natural to dip his head and kiss those worried lips. “I won’t.”
Releasing her hand with a squeeze, he walked into the dusty building, the floor of which was coated with flakes of debris from the ceiling, and made his way to the steps he could see on the left-hand side. Those steps led down into what appeared to be a large storage area, but he soon discovered another set of steps beyond that.
Heading down those after turning on lights that flickered but still worked, he found himself in a space filled with neat piles of boxes. A thick layer of dust coated the tops—far thicker than could be explained by the lack of movement here since the war.
He opened one, found weapons.
Titus’s cargo master would’ve long since shifted these unused boxes to open up space. Unless, of course, Titus told him that the weapons needed to be kept in place in preparation for a specific action of which his archangel would inform him when it was time. No one would then touch it.
A curious warrior who opened a box would find weapons—nothing unusual in a battlefield. What was unusual was the door concealed behind a set of boxes at the very back. He only spotted it because he’d cracked the earth under Charisemnon’s infantry. The land had shifted . . . and the wall had moved to reveal the lines of what would’ve otherwise been a hidden door.
Invisible. Unseen.
Something smashed above, the building shaking around him. He was considering his next step when he heard footsteps, light and swift, coming down the steps. “I told you to stay upstairs!”
He couldn’t bear it if those wings of indigo and gold were broken, that small body crushed. Not because she was the Hummingbird, a treasure of angelkind, but because she was Sharine, who worried about him and who had a quick wit and who he was finding he could talk to without ever getting bored.
“The building is falling down around you.” She walked over to him, unrepentant . . . as the translucent champagne of her eyes scanned him for injury. “And, as your lordship pointed out, you are part of the Cadre. I’m sure you can protect me should anything happen.” Then she reached out and took his hand, tugged. “Come.”
He realized she’d come to drag him to safety.
Astonishment turned him to stone.
Not simply because, physically, she couldn’t drag him anywhere, much less up two flights of stairs. No, because she’d been worried enough about his safety that she’d disregarded the danger to her own. It was foolishness, but it opened a vein inside him, one so profound that he wove his fingers through her own and said, “I’ve found a hidden door.”
Widening eyes, before her gaze followed his. When he tugged at her hand, she came with him. Only to protest when he put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her close to his body.
“If I’m to protect you from a falling building,” he grumbled, “you must be tight to me.” His bones could take far greater damage, and he’d also wrap his wings around her, protecting her own.
“You’re making sense. It’s aggravating.” With those grumpy words that made him want to smile, she slipped an arm around his back, pressed a hand against his bare skin.
The contact burned . . . and was a strange kind of comfort.
With her at risk, he walked to the doorway without delay. “Stay close,” he ordered, then released her so he could use both hands to pull at the exposed edge of the door. It creaked, its mechanism stuck or warped as a result of the quake.
A shower of dust as he finally wrenched the door off its hinges and put it aside. Sharine coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, the dust swirling in the doorway making it difficult to see beyond until it settled.
“The smell,” she said on another cough. “Decay and neglect and a wetter, more fetid odor.”
“Yes, as if something died within.”
Using the back of his hand to wipe the dust off his own face, Titus told Ozias to stay above. Warn us if you see any sign of movement in the cracks caused by my power. He was certain the earlier shake had resulted from such movement.
Sire.
And, to satisfy your curiosity so you don’t expire from the frustration—you were correct. This building connects to the building hidden beneath the rubble next door. With that, he stepped into the hidden underground bunker, Sharine by his side, their wings rubbing against each other, they were so close.
It was pitch-dark beyond what little light fell into the space from the doorway, and the first warning he had that they weren’t alone was a scrabbling sound as something rushed toward him on a rattle of chains.
41
Punching out his hand with warrior precision, he wrapped his fingers around the throat of what he expected was a reborn. Nails clawed at him as Sharine wreathed her hand with her power. Dim light suffused the room . . . to reveal a reborn such as he’d never seen. Her wings had been clipped so she couldn’t fly, her eyes were reddened, her flesh holding a greenish tinge.
Yet she wasn’t rotting, was alive in some bizarre sense.
His anger at Charisemnon’s malevolent actions a storm, he went to tear off her head out of instinct when Sharine put a hand on his forearm. “No, Titus, don’t!”
He stopped mid-motion, even as the reborn scrambled weakly at his arm, its strength fading at rapid speed. “The creature is a danger, and it’s also cruel to allow it to exist in such a state.” No angel would ever choose this life.
“Look.” That single word was full of horror, her gaze not on the reborn’s face, but lower.
To the creature’s swelling belly.
His stomach revolted so badly that he almost threw up, as might a young soldier faced with the viscera of battle for the first time. “I’ll do it quickly,” he promised Sharine. “I won’t extend its torture.” Such a thing as this was beyond evil. “Women who are with child when attacked don’t survive and rise as reborn—I’ve never seen such.”
But she put her hand in his and squeezed. “Don’t you understand, Titus?” Her body trembled. “I think she’s carrying the cure.”
He stared at her, then at the weak creature in his grasp. There was little flesh on its body—not a surprise if it had been trapped in this room since Charisemnon’s death; it would’ve had only the food the other archangel had left behind for it. That food was apt to be flesh . . . and while the reborn had become smarter, they were nowhere close to smart enough to know to hoard food against a shortage. Their instinct was to gorge.
“Find another light source,” he said to Sharine; he focused on the practical action because the horror would otherwise overwhelm him. “There must be something brighter here if this was Charisemnon’s workspace.”
It didn’t take her long, the room soon drenched in a clinically white light. The space that stretched out in front of them was massive, but it was also open enough that he could see at a glance that it contained no other reborn.
A filthy mattress and a pile of blankets lay in one corner, along with iron restraints that had come off the slightly cracked wall. He looked down, saw the chains dragging from the creature’s ankles. Though it turned his stomach, he carried the now unmoving reborn to that bed—even the chains didn’t add much to her weight.
She’d fouled part of the mattress, but he found a comparatively clean patch on which to place her.
“This must’ve held food.” Sharine pointed to several now broken containers near the mattress. “Oh, sweet mercy.”