Nalini Singh: Angels' Blood

Raphael knew Elena was under the rubble, could still feel the essence of her life though her mind was cloaked in blackness. Live, he ordered again, as he rose to fight an evil that couldn’t be allowed to run unchecked. He was aware of people screaming and running below as fireballs smashed into nearby buildings, bringing things crashing to earth. A car screeched to a halt, then another, then another, all the drivers looking skyward.

Raphael flew under a bolt, returned the volley, and had the satisfaction of singeing Uram. Bleeding from a cut on his face, the other archangel threw back a firestorm generated by the life energy of stolen blood, and intensified by the toxin that had become fused into his very cells. Once an angel turned to blood, there was no going back.

“After you are dust,” Uram taunted, flying at Raphael with hands blazing fire, “the city will be mine!”

Raphael evaded the attack but knew he’d moved a fraction too slow even before he felt the agony of angelfire crawling over his wings.

He shot upward, into the clouds, higher than angels weremeant to go, until his head ached and the fire died for lack of oxygen. Then he plummeted, using his momentum to launch angelfire at Uram’s body. The Angel of Blood dodged all bolts but one, taking the hit on his thigh.

Raphael could feel his wings straining as the wounds—both new and old—started to hurt. It wasn’t disabling, not yet. But it would be soon. Uram had gotten enough angelfire onto him that pieces of it had stuck. Those pieces would continue to eat through his flesh until they were dug out. He had less than ten minutes before his wings weakened to the point that he couldn’t fly. Then he felt a tendon snap and remembered.

He was a little bit human now.

So be it. He’d rather die a little human, he thought with strange clarity, than become a monster. Elena! Live! He continued to send that order even as his own strength waned and more and more of Uram’s bolts seared his skin, his wings. You must live. She had to survive. Her spirit burned too bright to be so easily snuffed out.

And he realized . . . that fragile, mortal life wasn’t just important to him. It was more important than his own. Wake, Guild Hunter!

He finally got close enough to Uram to chance another blow, but his power reserves were running low. Below him, the city was a spreading darkness as they both sucked power from the electricity grid, from anything they could. Cars stalled and died, batteries went flat, pylons overloaded. Still Raphael kept pulling. But he knew his body was going to give out long before the available power did.

He hit Uram’s wing and it wasn’t enough. The Angel of Blood had glutted himself on his kills and, even weakened, his wing healed faster than an ordinary angel’s, faster than even an archangel’s. Uram laughed and created another ball of angelfire. But this one he shot toward the half-destroyed apartment.

Elena!

Raphael intercepted the blast, taking the hit on his shoulder. Pain seared through his body as the fire touched bone and began eating its way through. Blinking away the sweat falling into his eyes, he kept fighting, hovering above the apartment so Uram couldn’t destroy it.

“You fool,” Uram taunted. “You’d give up immortality for a mere woman?”

Raphael answered by staying where he was, deflecting the angelfire Uram shot his way with unrelenting force. He could sense his men coming closer. He warned them to stay out of range. Only an archangel could withstand angelfire for longer than a few seconds. Then one of Uram’s bolts hit his uninjured shoulder.

The fire had already eaten through one side to expose the whiteness of bone. His load-bearing muscles were failing one by one. But he kept fighting, hitting Uram several times, vaguely aware that Manhattan was now completely without power, pitch-black under his feet. Farther out, in Queens, in the Bronx, lights continued to go out in a slow, dark, wave.

More power lay beyond those areas, but his body was close to giving out. Filling it with as much energy as he could contain, until the glow of it blazed from his skin, he readied himself for a final, suicidal clash. If he could make contact with Uram’s body, he might be able to burn them both up. A high price to pay, but an archangel turned Angel of Blood could tear the world apart, end civilization itself.

Throwing back just enough angelfire to keep Uram from coming closer, but not enough to drain himself, he watched for a gap in his opponent’s defenses, for a single mistake. But when his chance came, it wasn’t because Uram made a mistake. No, it came because of a hunter too stubborn to surrender to evil.

Gunshots fired from the open side of the torn apartment building, ripping through the bloodborn angel’s wings.

Uram screamed and began to spiral down, shooting angelfire as he fell. Raphael flew toward the tumbling archangel, leading with his hands. As one hand impacted on Uram’s chest, he held on to to the bloodborn angel with his other and thrust. His hand went through Uram’s rib cage to hit his heart.

“Good-bye, old friend,” he said, knowing that nothing of the angel he’d once known remained in this monster. Then he released a final, shocking blast of angelfire. It spread through Uram’s body like a fever—the dying archangel’s grabbing hands threatened to take Raphael down with him. But Raphael had to live. Because if he didn’t, Elena would die.

He wrenched back an instant before Uram exploded in a burst of pure white light, lighting up the whole of Manhattan in a single second-long blast. Then it was over and Uram was not only dead, but erased from the cosmos. Not even dust remained.

Bleeding from wounds that continued to worsen as the angelfire dug in ever deeper, Raphael should have landed. Instead, he beat his barely functional wings upward.

One of Uram’s last, desperate bolts had hit the building. Raphael knew Elena had to have been on the very edge of the eight-story structure when she’d shot up at Uram. That edge was now gone, but he could feel Elena’s life, feel her dying flame. Elena, answer me.

Quiet, peaceful, a hush of sound. Then, Stay a little human, won’t you, Raphael?

A request that was almost not a sound at all. But it was enough. He followed the mental thread to discover her broken body on the narrow ledge provided by a precariously hanging neon sign. Her back was shattered, her legs twisted in a way that was nothing natural. But she smiled when she saw him. And her hand still held the gun that had saved more lives than anyone would ever know.

He dared not touch her, afraid he’d cause her to slip over the ledge. “You are not to die.”

A slow blink. “Bossy.” It was a sound bubbled through with blood. The voice isn’t working so good.

I hear you.

Tell me the secret now, won’t you? How do you Make vampires?

He could hear the teasing even in that fading whisper. Our bodies produce a toxin that needs to be purged at regular intervals. The older we are, the longer the intervals.

Uram waited too long.

Yes. We build up an immunity, but only to a point. After that, the toxin begins to bond with our very cells, mutating in the process. However, that base immunity meant an archangel always had a certain level in his blood. Enough. It would be just enough.

The only way to purge the buildup before it goes critical is by transfer to a living human. Angelic history told of a time when they’d given in to despair at the loss of so many mortal lives, and tried to purge it into animals. The resulting carnage had been such that even Lijuan would not talk of it. We know we get something back from the transfer, something that keeps the toxin stable, but even after all these millennia, we know not what.