Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
It wasn’t only that Elena had stopped aging. All her scars were gone, her skin healthier than it had ever before been. Beth, in contrast, wore the lines of life on her face, had sun-freckles across her nose, and had complained laughingly of her “bad knees” when she rose from her chair.
Raphael enclosed her in his wing. He knew. He understood. He’d been born an immortal, but his best friend had been a mortal. And though Dmitri had become a vampire, his family hadn’t. Elena didn’t know much about Dmitri’s past, but from how little he mentioned it, she could guess that it had been painful. She’d picked up enough over the years to know that he’d had children.
Children who were now gone.
Children Raphael would’ve known.
As he’d known so many of the people his mother had sung into the sea during her madness.
Yes, her archangel understood what it was to mourn mortal lives.
So they sat here in this quiet forest that was a haven, and he didn’t tell her she wouldn’t one day have her heart broken to pieces by Beth, and she tried to breathe through that truth . . . until the earth shook.
Hard.
A blue radiance hit the side of Elena’s face at the same instant.
Raphael’s Legion mark wasn’t glowing. It was blazing. White lightning crackled along the lines of the stylized dragon, and then . . . a pulse of wildfire. Slow, so slow, but a pulse nonetheless.
“It’s as if your mark is echoing the pulse of some great Sleeping creature.” She didn’t know why she spoke those words; maybe Cassandra had whispered them to her beyond her conscious hearing.
“I can feel it,” Raphael said aloud, gritting his teeth as the earth continued to roll around them.
But as fast as it had started, it stopped.
Raphael’s mark blinked out at the same time.
They sat in stunned quiet for a second, the sudden extinction of the glittering blue light making the world feel as if it had gone night-dark. The decision to move was silent, the two of them rising to stand far enough apart that they could take off through the canopy without tangling wings.
Elena’s took her to the sky with ease, well healed now and far stronger than they’d been when she’d first grown them. Vertical takeoffs had seemed an impossibility then, but today she smoothed out into flight beside Raphael without hesitation.
As they were flying too fast to talk, she reached out with her mind. Fly ahead. He could far outpace her. You need to do a damage assessment on the city.
The blue fire in his eyes was a thing piercing. I am not leaving you after I have finally come home. I’ll be in range to receive a report from Dmitri in less than an hour.
Elena’s front jacket pocket buzzed. Or sooner. She reached for the zipper. Someone’s calling.
Ah, I did not charge my phone when I left.
“Are you with Raphael?” was Dmitri’s curt question when she answered.
“Yes,” she shouted over the roaring wind of flight. “Wait!” She held up the phone. Comprehending the silent signal, Raphael flew slightly below her—the span of their wings meant he couldn’t come close enough if they flew side by side.
Now.
She dropped the phone into his hand, saw him put it to his ear as he eased up on his speed at the same time to lower the interference from the wind noise. Instead of easing up with him, she kept on going. He’d catch up without trouble, and this way, she could ensure she didn’t hold them back any more than necessary.
How bad? she asked when he returned to fly next to her.
No casualties reported so far, and while a few buildings have lost windows, the shake seems to have been worse in uninhabited or sparsely populated areas.
Elena frowned. That’s weird.
Yes. A sigh in his voice. I do not want weird, hbeebti. I would far rather deal with a major quake than anything weird. Mind-numbing boredom would be far more welcome than the least whisper of weirdness.
Elena made a face. Yeah, because it’s never just one weird thing, is it? It’s always the start of something, and—“Oh, fuck!”
34
Elena came to a halt in the sky.
So did Raphael.
They both stared down at the swollen creek below. A small enough thing, nothing at all like the vastness of the Hudson. Pretty when it sparkled in the sunlight.
“What is that?” she said, her hands on her hips.
“Looks like . . . scales.”
The word perfectly fit the iridescent patches that rippled over the water, sinuous and strange and unlike anything Elena had ever before seen. “Did Dmitri—”
“No, he said nothing of this.” Raphael pulled out her phone from his pants pocket to make the call. “Dmitri, how does the Hudson look?”
Frowning at Dmitri’s answer, he hung up without goodbyes, the two men having been friends for so long that such niceties weren’t necessary. “He says it appears normal, and that he’d like it very much if I didn’t curse it with my questions.”