Another thinner figure joined her, and her eyes were visible to Raphael. What had once been brown was now liquid fire. As if the flame that had cleansed Favashi of infection had become part of her. Her Cascade-born power was rumored to be control over the winds, but it was liquid fire that she wrapped around Lijuan, trying to burn her down to the bone.
From the other side of the battlefield came another massive bolt of energy, this one holding the poignant beauty of the sea aurora.
Alexander fired at Lijuan at the same time, the silver of his wings brilliant in the blasts of energy lighting up the sky.
Raphael shot more wildfire at Lijuan, even as beside him, Elena used her crossbow to take down a flyer who’d come at them. He wanted to tell her to go back to a rooftop where it was safer, but no place was safe in war. And if this was the end, then they’d go into it side by side.
Then Lijuan managed the impossible and broke away from the combined attack.
Alexander fired after her.
Lijuan made an unpredictable move to the left.
Elena moved at the same instant to shoot out the wings of one of Lijuan’s generals who was raising his hand to fire at them.
The bolt of Alexander’s silver energy came straight at Elena.
72
Elena!” Raphael smashed into her, and the bolt hit him while the two of them were connected . . . but there was no pain. It bounced off him and as it did so, it changed form to become wildfire. White-gold and blue. Midnight and dawn.
Lijuan avoided that blow to rain down her own violence at him.
Even as he blocked it, Raphael’s mind was racing. But it was his consort who yelled, “A mirror that’s a channel! Tell everyone to throw their power at us!”
Raphael reached for his consort’s hand. “Hover,” he told her, knowing it would make them targets. But he also knew their people would protect them to the end. “Ready?”
“Always,” she said, as if they weren’t about to put their lives on the line.
Fire at me, Raphael told the surviving archangels. Do not hesitate! Fire at me!
It was Alexander who obeyed first, the metallic brightness of his wings flashing in the distance as he fired directly at Raphael. Then came Favashi, Titus, and Aegaeon. Cassandra and the sea aurora angel fired at the same time. Their combined power was a huge and old thing, and it stunned with its force. But Raphael and Elena stood firm under the barrage, and the mirror they became together bounced all the energy toward Lijuan.
It became wildfire that engulfed her. So much wildfire that it filled her mouth, lit her eyes, became her skin, burned in her hair. But still she didn’t die. They hit her with more and more, as around them, her troops slammed obsidian rain at the archangels to try to take them down, and Raphael’s people fought back with blood and fury.
He saw Jason eliminate a proxy, Aodhan another, Galen a third before he took a sword blow to the chest that made him stagger and fall. Jason came to his aid and a bloody Andreas took up Galen’s fight.
Battle raged.
In the center of the vortex of power, Lijuan was an eerie mass of wildfire. Throwing back her head, she screamed, and wildfire erupted from her mouth to scar the sky. That was when two of Lijuan’s troops managed to slam into Aegaeon. Illium’s father had been in the process of firing more energy at Raphael. It went wide.
The vicious power of an Ancient punched into Elena before Raphael could shove her out of the way.
ELENA!
He would never have a clear memory of the moments that followed. There was too much power in the air, too much fear in his heart. He just felt energy flow violently into his body from hers. He threw the power at Lijuan almost instinctively, though his eyes were searching for Elena through the blaze of light around her.
I’m right here, Archangel. A little breathless but that was definitely his hunter’s voice. Her fingers tightened on his.
Heart thundering as the other archangels stopped firing, the sudden change in pressure causing his ears to pop, he turned to see the new ball of wildfire he’d thrown crash over Lijuan. It spread over her as with the others . . . but this wildfire was different. It had a verdant green heart so brilliant it was the kiss of spring, the lush grass under your feet, the rustle of a tree in full bloom.
That green speared into Lijuan’s mouth, her eyes, leached through to her cells. Leaves erupted over her skin, only to curl up and die. Her hair turned into vines that blackened and fell away. More leaves erupted on her face before being destroyed.
But underneath it all, her skin was steadily going green.
“Um, Archangel. Remember when I grew that tree in the lobby?”
He looked for his consort again . . . and saw her. The blaze of energy had faded to reveal an Elena whose clothing was scorched—badly. The black leather had gone a strange greenish silver at the solar plexus, where she’d taken Aegaeon’s rogue blow.
It spread out from that point in lighter shades all the way to scorched brown edges at her shoulders and her thighs, curled around her waist. But no skin showed through and what he could see of her body was undamaged.
Her eyes were locked on Lijuan.
He followed her gaze.
Lijuan was screaming soundlessly as leaves poured out of her mouth.
“Life,” Raphael murmured. “Despite all the efforts of the Cascade, all the efforts of immortality, you are raw, defiant life, hbeebti. And she is death.” The two could not exist together in the same being.
Roots erupted out from Lijuan’s body and though they shriveled away, they left holes in her. The wildfire infiltrated even more of her until Lijuan was a being of pure wildfire become an explosion of searing white light.
Raphael’s arm flew up to shield his eyes, even as he pulled Elena close.
The wildfire explosion seemed to go on forever, and when it ended, he could only see white spots in front of his eyes. But he could feel Elena in his arms, her hair soft against him and her hold strong.
“Can you see?” Her voice, dulled and distant, as if his ears had taken a pounding.
“Barely.” A minute later, the spots began to clear at last.
There was no Lijuan in the air.
Thousands of bright green leaves fell to earth in a gentle rain.
“Jeez, don’t tell me I turned her into leaves and she’s going to get together and become a zombie tree.”
Unfamiliar laughter in their minds, an old voice saying, Child, she is dead. There is no future line for her. It ends here.
You’re certain? he asked Cassandra.
Her line in time has been permanently severed. She stops forever.
“It’s over.” Elena exhaled on a shudder. “It’s really over.”
Before he could answer, he saw golden fire arc up from a rooftop to hit Xi. Lijuan’s most trusted general had been a bare meter away from Elena, his sword raised and his eyes red with battle lust, but he died there, in a single blow from Illium.
No longer able to create the obsidian fire, more and more of Lijuan’s generals fell to Raphael’s people and to the other archangels. Their dead-eyed brethren literally fell, crashing to the earth or onto rooftops without control.
Hundreds, thousands, of broken dolls over his city.
He and Elena flew toward the closest fallen fighter in silence.
The putrid smell was a noxious wave in the air before they landed. Body already partially decayed, the fallen angel’s arm rotted off in front of them.