Archangel's Legion

45

Having landed on roofs as far as the eye could see, the gray ones sat crouched like living gargoyles, their wings arched, fundamentally changing the landscape. Birds sat on the shoulders and bodies of many of them, silent and watchful.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Elena asked Raphael, trying to make some sense of what she was seeing, and failing.

From what she’d witnessed in the battle as the gray angels fought around her, there was no color to them—gray eyes, pale smooth skin, hair of gray, gray wings. Yet they were humanoid, had faces with the clean lines and strong bones of the immortals. Their wings, however, had no feathers, instead formed of a leathery texture that reminded her of the wings of bats. The shape of those wings, too, was similar to the nocturnal creatures.

“No,” Raphael said after a long moment, as heavy clouds passed across the sky to drop a curtain of snow on the city, the sun blotted out to cloak the world in darkness.

It created the perfect muted background for the strange angels who crouched all over New York.

“These gray ones are an enigma.” Eyes of violent blue took in the eerie scene, everyone so silent it seemed impossible this was a city of countless souls. “Come.”

The gray angels didn’t stop them as they flew back through the snow to the Tower, Illium by their side. Coming to a stop on the Tower balcony, Elena took her place beside Raphael, their eyes on Manhattan. Dmitri flanked him in silence, while Illium acted as a winged sentry. Naasir, she realized, had to be handling the enemy vampires still in the city.

Take one step forward with me, Elena.

Guessing it to be some kind of angelic protocol, she did so without argument . . . and one of the gray ones flew toward them from a nearby building. Tall, with broad shoulders, his wings silent in the snow and his hair brushing his nape, Elena couldn’t have picked him out from any of the others. It was as if they’d been minted from the same press, one after the other.

Landing right in front of them, he placed his sword horizontally in front of his body and went down on one knee, head bent.

Elena bit down hard on her lower lip to stifle her gasp. The mark on his nape, she said, eyes on the primal black lines of it as the male’s dusty gray hair slipped to either side, it’s a mirror image of yours.

“Sire,” the unknown fighter said at the same instant, “we come as called.”

Raphael’s answer was accompanied by a freezing wind that swept through the deathly silent city. “None who fought so bravely should kneel.”

The gray angel rose to his feet on Raphael’s words. This close, Elena saw his irises weren’t truly gray; they were so pale as to be barely distinguishable from the whites, but for the black pinpricks of his pupils. It should’ve reminded her of Lijuan, but it didn’t, because where Lijuan carried death and a putrid evil in her eyes, the being that looked through those colorless eyes was near to a blank slate. As if he hadn’t yet decided who he would be.

“You call me Sire.” Raphael’s wing was heavy against her own as they stood side by side, their bodies aligned under the falling snow that was a cold, welcome kiss on the wounds that scored her flesh. “Tell me why.”

“We heard your voice in our Sleep.” It was a flat, toneless statement. “We hear only the voice of the Sire or his consort.” His eyes locked with Elena’s.

“Elena,” she said through a dry throat, forcing herself to remember this deadly creature was a friend, not foe. “You can call me Elena.”

He looked at her as though she were speaking a foreign language. “You are the consort.”

Okay, Archangel, I think this is more your speed than mine.

I’m uncertain these gray ones are anyone’s speed. “What do you call yourselves?”

“We”—an absolute hush, the wind frozen—“are the Legion.”

Elena felt her stomach drop, as if she’d learned something terrible.

The Legion.

Raphael had heard those words before, a long, long time ago. They are, he said to Elena, the threat used to scare badly behaving angelic children.

Have a nap or the Legion will come get you? Like the bogeyman?

Precisely. Except it appears our bogeyman is real. “You have been gone from the world an eon.”

“Yes.”

Raphael, look at his eyes. They’re starting to gain color. And his hair . . .

Doing as Elena bid, Raphael saw the gray one was indeed no longer so gray. His hair was darkening into black and his irises now boasted a fine rim of blue—the same blue as Raphael’s eyes. “You are now my Legion.” Not a question, the mark on his face a quiet thrum that told him the truth, told him, too, that the Legion waited for his command. “Your first task is to assist my troops in securing the city and fixing the damage to the Tower.”

A quiet nod, his wings folded with military tightness. “Sire.”

“You are their leader. I need a name for you.”

A pause. “I am not the first primary,” he said at last, “but that is what I am. The Primary.”

“All right,” Raphael said, accepting what appeared to be a rank rather than a name. It was becoming clear the Legion was not in any way an ordinary angelic—if they were even angels—squadron. “Tell the Legion they are to obey the orders of Dmitri and Illium as if they were mine or my consort’s.” He pointed out the two men. “I will make the others of my Seven known to you when they return from their tasks.”

“The Legion has heard and understands.”

“I estimate five hundred in your squadron. Is that correct?”

“Five hundred woke to the Sire’s call in urgency. Two hundred and seventy-seven need more time. They will arrive when their hearts begin to beat fast enough for flight.”

Seven hundred and seventy-seven fighters who functioned as a single cohesive and apparently tireless unit, their skills lethal and their healing abilities unparalleled. He’d seen a Legion fighter beheaded, only to rise again within minutes, his head growing a new body while the old disintegrated into dust.

It was an army no other archangel would easily wish to face.

“We’ll need quarters for the Legion,” Raphael said to Dmitri.

“Sire.” It was a quiet interruption from the Primary, and when Raphael nodded at him to speak, the male said, “We do not sleep except when it is time for us to leave the world.”

“Do you eat?” Dmitri asked. “Need water?”

Another pause, akin to those of older angels who sought to mine their memories for a lost answer. “Yes”—a faint sense of surprise in his tone—“when we are awake, we do need fuel, but we can fight for many days without sustenance or rest.”

I’ll work out the logistics, Dmitri said mind to mind. “Though you may not need a place to sleep,” he said aloud, his words directed at the Primary, “you should have a place where you can be with your men and women—” A frown. “I see no women.”

“We are the Legion,” came the incomprehensible answer.

Eyebrow raised, Dmitri continued. “You’ll need a place where your men can gather at least.”

“Yes,” the Primary said after another pause, his mind seemingly not yet having shaken off the shackles of his long Sleep. “We do not . . . do well if cut off from the group so soon after waking.”

“There are two warehouses next to each other not too far from the Tower,” Dmitri said. “We normally use them for storage, but they can be cleared for temporary accommodation if”—a glance at the Primary—“that wouldn’t be too basic an environment? They’re nothing but large spaces with four walls and a roof.”

“No, such will do well.”

Raphael knew the warehouses could only be a short-term solution. Even with the members of the Legion rotating in and out, the combined space wasn’t designed for over seven hundred winged beings. “Now that you’re awake,” he said to the Primary, “how long do you plan to stay this way?”

“Until it is time to Sleep again.”

Okay, he takes the win for most cryptic statements.

Biting back a smile at Elena’s dry assertion, Raphael said, “We’ll build you a living space suited to your requirements after the repairs to the city and the Tower.” Raphael owned a massive chunk of Manhattan, far more than most people realized, and it made sense to have this force around the Tower. “In the interim, you are welcome at the Tower. You are my people now.”