Lijuan hadn’t moved since this began; he hoped that held true for another second.
Two of the pellets were smashed out of existence by falling shards, but the other five punched into Lijuan’s heart.
Lightning lit her up from within. Blood trickled out of her mouth.
Raphael didn’t take that for an advantage of any kind. The only reason he’d achieved so much with so little was because she was already wounded. But wounded or not, she had plenty of firepower in her. She targeted him alone with the next volley.
His shield collapsed, the wildfire dissipating under the rain of black.
Raphael had nowhere to go that wouldn’t put his troops in the line of fire. An angelic squadron was retreating below him. He used angelfire to disrupt the starlight obsidian. It couldn’t eliminate or cancel out Lijuan’s poison, but it was strong enough to send it off course.
The shards smashed into the buildings on either side of the squadron; they flew out of danger moments later. It was the ground troops he had to worry about now—they were too deep in enemy territory. It’d take them time to retreat to safe ground. Even had the subterranean network of tunnels survived the aboveground detonations, they’d been designed for lone operatives, not large numbers of troops.
Lijuan laughed and the sound was incongruously lovely. Why do you fight so? A chiding tone to her mental voice, almost of the archangel she’d once been. You have only the power in your flesh. I am a goddess. I have the power from my people. Another hail of pain and death clothed in beauty.
He had nothing left. No wildfire. No angelfire. Nothing but his swords, with which he’d attempt to deflect some of the shards, so his ground troops would have a slightly higher chance of a safe retreat.
Gray bodies suddenly filled the sky in front of him.
His Legion took hit after hit, each body falling limply to the earth as the black poison ate them up from the inside out.
Bronze lightning fell from the sky at the same instant, aimed directly at Lijuan. One got her in a direct strike, burning great swathes of flesh from the healthy side of her wildfire-riddled body. She screamed and aimed her firepower up above, but the person there was invisible against the smoke-hazed sky.
Raphael recognized that lightning but he couldn’t spot Michaela, either. Infuriated, Lijuan shot another hail of black at the Legion, poisonous shards that they blocked with their bodies. Michaela hit Lijuan with another direct strike—this one succeeding in destroying a wing. Lijuan’s face faded and then her body rippled and she was gone, no doubt to feed again.
Raphael had survived the skirmish but the damage done was catastrophic. For the first time, he saw despair in the faces of his people. It had cost them so much ingenuity and skill and blood to gain that ground. Only for Lijuan to claw it back in a matter of minutes.
Elena. Fly with me. He needed his consort in a way that had nothing to do with war or power—and his people had hurt Lijuan’s forces enough that they weren’t pursuing the retreating soldiers, just holding their side of the line.
Stormfire wings rising from one of the rooftops. “We’ll get that land back,” she said when she reached him. “We did it once, we’ll do it again.”
“No, Guild Hunter. You know as well as I do that the explosions gave away one of our only advantages—Lijuan’s people will even now be scouring any buildings within sight for booby traps.” He just hoped Naasir, Janvier, Ashwini, Demarco, Holly, and the others would make it out. “It is not the loss of territory that worries me, it is what that loss is doing to our people.”
Faces looked up at him from rooftops and even in those who had managed to hold on to hope, the hope held a ragged edge. “They just saw their archangel consummately defeated. Had the Legion not stepped in and taken the blows meant for me, I would not be here speaking to you now.”
“You’re in pain.” Elena’s tone was sharp. “She got you.”
“Twice,” he told her. “Once on the shoulder very close to my neck, and the second at the side of my rib cage. It’s eating away at me.”
“The wildfire,” Elena began.
Raphael cut her off with a shake of his head. “There is nothing left. I am out of power and I know you gave me the last droplets in you.” He deliberately brushed his wing across Elena’s even as Lijuan’s starlight obsidian dug scalding channels of agony in his ribs and shoulder.
He’d be in the same shape as Antonicus if not for the fact the two hits had been glancing and his ability to generate wildfire seemed to come with a limited immunity. But that would only slow the process, not stop it. Already, the black poison was attempting to get to his heart, the channels all aimed in that direction.
A couple of minutes later, her stomach a nauseous knot, Elena stood on a high Tower balcony and looked up at the sky to see a meeting akin to one that had taken place during her first meeting with Raphael. Two archangels in the sky, one with wings of gold and white, the other with feathers of shimmering bronze.
Michaela was even dressed in a long-sleeved bodysuit as she’d been that long-ago day. When the Archangel of Budapest landed on the balcony with Raphael, the bodysuit proved to be a dark green with a slight shimmer to it. Her hair was the same silken tumble down her back, her face startlingly beautiful. The milk chocolate hue of her skin was rich despite the night darkness, holding a warmth that Elena had always thought at odds with the biting edge of her personality.
Today however, there was no sarcasm, no curl of the lip. Michaela just nodded at Elena—her gaze narrowing slightly at the sight of Elena’s stormfire wings—before turning to Raphael. “I saw reports from this city, knew I had to come.”
“What about your territory?” Raphael asked with no indication of pain in his voice, though Elena knew it had to be torturous. “The reborn infection? The children.”
“If she wins this war, it will not matter that my territory is clean of infection.” A gravity to Michaela’s presence that Elena had never before felt, the sudden sense that this woman was an archangel. “If we beat Lijuan here, then we have a chance to salvage my territory.”
“You have made a difficult choice.” Raphael inclined his head in an acknowledgment between equals. “Your babe?”
A tightening of her features. “The Cascade gave me the ability to create power constructs that survive outside my body. I built Keir a shield that protected him and my babe—he says it held until he was nearly to the Refuge. They are safe.”
Elena found herself exhaling a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. The idea of Keir and a newborn dodging the death stalking the world had been a horrific one.
“My power did damage to Lijuan,” Michaela said. “Is it possible I can assist you to victory?”
To Elena’s surprise, Raphael nodded. “My wildfire in her likely increased the impact, but you read slightly differently to my healing senses—there remains an imprint inside you of the life you so recently birthed. It is fading but not yet gone.”
And Lijuan was a creature of death.
“Good. I will assist you in ending her, then I will return home.”
“What is the situation on your side?”
Elena knew Raphael had to have that critical information, but panic clawed at her—the poison was eating at him from the inside out. Already, she could see the creeping edge of blackness on one wing.
“Bad,” Michaela said shortly, her face grimmer than Elena had ever seen it. “When I left, Alexander and Zanaya were attempting to drive the reborn into a single valley so that we could scorch them with fire.” The vivid green of her eyes took in the smoldering city around them, smoke yet rising to the sky from the earlier detonations. “I have told Alexander that this is more important. It is where we win or lose the world. But he sees coming here as abandoning his people. He is a fool.”