Page 9 of Archangel’s Lineage
Raphael clenched his jaw, fighting the urge to yell into the void.
Ten was the optimum number of archangels to have in the world—it allowed enough space between territories that their overlapping powers didn’t breed aggression, while also having the right number of apex predators to control the vampires.
The post-war uprising had led to a carpet of blood.
His consort still dreamed about it at times, the nightmares streamers of red across her vision.
Eight archangels...
In this time?
Fuck.
He forced his fist to unclench. Quite aside from the logistics, it also meant that every single archangel in this square was now locked in time. They could not Sleep no matter what. Neither could they go into anshara to recover from even injuries so horrific no one would wish for them to suffer the agony. They had to stay conscious and available.
No room for exhaustion. No time to breathe at last.
“What are the chances we’ll get a replacement soon?” Suyin asked even as the thought passed through Raphael’s mind. “It hasn’t been so very long after the end of the Cascade. We could yet be in a period of flux.”
“There’s no way to know.” Caliane shook her head. “Alexander and I have seen that through the ages. At one time, we ruled with seven for two hundred years, and, in the end, had to compress the world and herd the populations into tighter areas. The only other option would’ve been a mass slaughter of vampires to ensure no bloodlust.”
Which would, Raphael realized, have led to a forced Sleep for a large percentage of angels. Because angels needed vampires, a secret symbiotic relationship that had been born in the aftermath of another war so far back in time that it had been erased from their history. He only knew because his Legion had told him so.
Our people, infected with the deadly toxin... made the decision to Sleep eons in the hope the poison would fade. When they woke, it was to find a new people had been born from the ashes of the old, and the toxin had bonded permanently to the blood of the survivors.
Madness and death reigned, until the desperation of a single individual made angelkind understand the fragile new people were their salvation, a gift from their healed world.
Angels were only sane because they could purge the toxin into mortals—thus creating vampires. Remove one element or make it a limited resource and the entire system would collapse. In murdering vampires, angelkind would murder itself—for what mortal would wish to become a vampire once they realized the promise of near-immortal life was a false one that could be wiped out in a single angelic rampage?
Yes, angelkind could force the conversions, but as a whole, they weren’t an evil people. Corrupt with power at times, and arrogant far too often, but they loved and protected children immortal and mortal, and—but for the odd extremist—they did not seek to crush mortal innovations, did not stamp out their glories.
Each Making done without consent would be a bead of poison dropped into the blood of all angelkind, until their entire civilization rotted under the weight of it.
6
“Caliane’s right.” Alexander pinched the top of his nose between thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes shut for a second before opening them to reveal irises of the same piercing silver as Naasir’s. “There’s no guarantee we’ll get a replacement.” The pragmatic grit of a man who had been a general long before he’d ever become an archangel.
“As for the numbers,” he continued, “seven is far beyond brutal. Long-term, it can be terminal. Eight... eight can be done. It’ll wear us to the bone, but it can be done even with a battered and bruised world.” The Archangel of Persia looked around at the rest of them. “We must be as of one mind on this. We cannot Sleep. No matter what the wound, or how tired we get.”
Each and every archangel in the circle agreed without hesitation.
That was the thing about the Cadre that many didn’t understand. Raphael’s kind could be capricious and cruel, and often started petty fights with one another—but when it came to the reason for their existence, they did their job. Checked-out archangels like Qin—and power-crazed megalomaniacs like Lijuan—were outliers when placed against the eternity of angelic history.
“At least two of us need to go to Qin’s territory to confirm the situation.” Alexander placed both hands on his hips. “Then we need to carve up the territories again.” For a man who loved land, he didn’t seem the least bit enthusiastic about having more to watch over.
Because they were done. All of them.
The war might’ve ended some eleven years ago, but it had left them with a destroyed world. Not to mention sporadic clusters of reborn that crawled out of the woodwork without warning. Lijuan had scattered droplets of her venom like confetti across the various territories, one last bitter laugh at their expense.
The entire reason the Refuge ball had come together with seamless ease—and why many people had been talking about further parties—was that everyone just wanted a fucking break. Elena had spoken those words not long ago when they’d been standing on their Tower, looking out over their city.
Manhattan sparkled again, but it carried a scar. A dead patch scorched by Raphael’s angelfire where nothing would grow and no life thrived. He’d been forced to wound his own city to protect it against the infestation of Lijuan’s diseased insects, harbingers of a plague of putrefaction and death.
The land itself was no longer poisonous, but mortals, angels, and vampires all avoided it, as did the animals. Raphael had once stood on the edge of the scorch zone and seen a ground spider reverse its course just as it was about to put one of its eight feet on the devouring blackness.
Their city was far from the only one that carried such scars. Not all were visible, either, many lingering as murky shadows in minds and souls in damage that would echo down through the generations.
How’s the meeting going?