Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Today

Illium swept past the sleek skyscraper that pierced the white clouds of an early spring day, so close that his wing threatened to brush against black glass tough enough to withstand an angelic strike. It made sense that the innovation had come about in New York—born in the mind of a mortal who had been “sick and tired” of angelic battles leveling his beloved city.

No building, not even the most reinforced, would survive should an archangel turn their ire on it, but archangels had armies for a reason. War was fought on many fronts, and that mortal, his name and history immortalized in the records kept in the Refuge, had given New York a critical advantage: its buildings would not fall easily in any engagement, would instead provide cover for counterstrike after counterstrike.

As it was, in the hundreds of years since the invention of this new material, New York had come under only the mildest of attacks—in all cases as a result of Illium’s asshole of a father being pissy that his son would rather serve another archangel. But even Aegaeon hadn’t had the heart for a true war, so New York hadn’t fallen again since the end of the War of the Death Cascade. But why be stupid and arrogant? Better to build ever tougher.

A tall woman with striking facial bones ran to a window of the skyscraper to wave at him. He dipped his wings in acknowledgment. She’d worked in that corner office for half a decade, was a senior associate as of two years ago, and her face still lit up every single time he flew past. Because she was family. Part of the clan that Catalina and Lorenzo had created when they fell in love countless mortal lifetimes ago.

The most extraordinary thing of it all was that his beloved friends’ little bakery in Harlem had survived the inexorable passage of time. The home of the city’s famous angel-wing alfajores thrived still in that old building where the recipe had first been born—a building that had never lost its warm heart, no matter how often it’d been repaired and renovated. Because every generation of Catalina and Lorenzo’s family birthed a passionate baker who wanted to carry on their legacy.

Illium had purchased the entire block piece by piece to ensure the little bakery would always have a home, that it’d never be forced out by progress or simple change. Harlem might morph and alter around it like a chameleon forever in flux, but even when that part of the city had gone dangerously gray for a period, become the haunt of vampiric excess and mortal pain, no one had dared come for the bakery.

The entire city knew that it sheltered beneath wings of a vivid, unmistakable blue veined with fine filaments of silver.

Using those wings to ride the air currents coming off the ocean, Illium flew through the crisp bite of spring. It whispered of snows not long past, was even more acute in the fine mist that kissed his skin as he rose through the clouds to fly at a higher elevation.

Other skyscrapers speared through the clouds around him, and lush floating habitats appeared to sit atop the puffy white, but none came close to the soaring wonder of Raphael’s Tower. The tallest point in the sky at any given time, built to offer clear lines of sight in every direction, it, too, had undergone many an iteration over the passage of time, but always, always it had been a beacon of power and light. No black glass for the Tower, its body a steel gray that glittered with metallic highlights. The windows were reflective at the top levels, the levels that would be the most important in any battle, and they intensely annoyed Illium the man, who was as curious as his pet cat.

First General Illium, however, well understood their facility and had been part of the team that had designed the Tower when it came time for a new build. He’d also made sure the entire building was technologically connected in ways unlike that of any other archangelic stronghold in the world. The one thing that had never changed, however, was the waterfall of railingless balconies from which angels took flight.

He caught sight of a pair of wings opening up in flight just then. Feathers the shade of dark mahogany, hair a touch lighter, the flight form of a warrior.

Andreja.

Seven and a half millennia of age or so—she’d forgotten her actual birthing day eons ago—she wore the amber of an angel far younger than her. She, who’d vowed never to lock herself to one lover. But even tough and battle-scarred Andreja wasn’t proof against Laric’s patient determination. When she’d told the healer he was too young to tie himself to her, he’d simply waited her out.

“He asks me every time he clocks up another century—and reminds me that we’ve clocked up another century together,” Andreja had complained to Illium. “Man is relentless.”

Illium’s lips curved at the memory; he knew all about quiet, relentless types. He also knew that Andreja had been so terrified of commitment because of how much she loved Laric; she’d been scared he’d fly away after he was healed of his own terrible pain. But Laric was like Illium: they loved deep and true only once…and for always.

Sweeping down through the clouds with his own lover’s smile in his mind’s eye, he dropped to the first set of nonreflective windows, got a wave from a passing vampire with hair of liquid jet that reached her lower back.

Her black bodysuit boasted a jagged cutout over the shoulder and upper chest area that peaked at one shoulder, and her boots had chunky heels of clear glass so high that he had no idea how she walked so effortlessly in them. While her hair had been black this past century, Holly’s eyelashes changed color with the day and her mood.

Venom green, came the laughing comment into his mind before he could ask the question, Holly’s ability at mental speech excellent. Not every vampire developed that ability, but Holly had been Made by an archangel. An insane one, but one of the Cadre nonetheless.

I’m feeling mushy in love today. She blew him a kiss before vanishing around the corner.

Three floors farther down, a wing of angels took off, with Sameon at the head. Illium would recognize those brown wings tipped with black anywhere, as he would Sam’s intense style of flight. The angel of some seven hundred years of age—give or take a few decades—had learned under Galen, but he was a much more contained flyer than the Barbarian—a direct contrast to his openhearted personality. Should the Tower hold a popularity contest, Sam would win.

Everyone loved the dark-eyed wing commander and loyal member of Elena’s Guard.

Today, Sam took his wing out over the glass and metal of the city and toward the crystalline blue of the water. That hadn’t changed, either—the glass and the metal that was New York. Different, yes, with more skyway bridges, the subways sleek with self-driving transports, and the buildings and floating habitats designed to be full work-life environments, including sprawling internal gardens brought about by the quiet influence of the Legion’s green legacy.

But the soul of the city?

It beat loud and clear in the traffic that buzzed along the streets, and in the distinctive yellow color of the autonomous cabs. The technology could’ve long ago moved into private vehicles, but while vehicles with the option for autonomous operation were popular—with the driver in control of switching it on or off at will—there’d been no demand for fully self-driving cars after a few unfortunate incidents where the safety features had caused the vehicles to come to a halt due to sensing “pedestrians.”

Said pedestrians had been frothing-at-the-mouth vampires driven by bloodlust who’d smashed into the vehicles and made a meal of the hapless passengers.

Turned out mortals could have immortal memories when it came to fear. Didn’t matter how the manufacturers tried to push upgraded vehicles they promised wouldn’t turn their drivers into sitting blood banks; no one was buying.

Illium, lover of tech though he was, couldn’t blame them.

Flying cars, of course, had never stood a chance in a world populated by angels, the risk of collisions too high.

He grinned as, just then, he spotted two street vendors yelling at each other across a busy avenue, no doubt complaining about patch poaching. The cabdrivers might have been superseded by technology, but the people were still there—and they were still New Yorkers. Hot dog stands, coffee carts, vendors hawking tourist tchotchkes, the colorful parade continued unabated.

All that had changed was the way of it: the stands and carts were flight capable these days—the sole land vehicles that had an exception to the usual flight rules, but only to claim or leave their assigned spots on rooftops and in habitats. They also had a ponderous maximum speed, and were limited to highly specific pathways at assigned times of the day.

No one wanted a hundred superpowered carts blundering about in angelic airspace.

“Markets have existed since time immemorial,” his mother had said to him during one of his visits to Lumia, as the two of them walked the bustling lanes of the local market accompanied by a gaggle of children who adored Sharine, the Hummingbird. “I cannot foresee any future in which they die a total death.”

Neither could Illium. The age of online convenience had been followed by a return to open-air markets—the young rediscovering that which their ancestors had disavowed—until the world now stood at a midpoint that had held stable for two hundred years.

One of the vendors saw Illium just then. The man’s top half was painted a vivid glowing pink, his bottom half apparently clothed but who knew. Illium was all for self-expression but he’d never been tempted by the trend for paint-closets that decorated their users each morning. At least the Tower had put a “must wear actual physical underwear” law in place.

The painted man lifted up a hand in a wave before going back to his argument.

“Aren’t you afraid that being so friendly with the mortals will make them no longer respect you?” a much younger Sameon had asked Illium after the then-youth was first stationed to the Tower, his dark curls atumble and his brown eyes painfully sincere. “You’re the only battle commander I know who has mortal friends, and smiles more often than he scowls.”

Awash in memories of friends who had laughed with him over the centuries, Illium had clasped the bright-eyed angel on the shoulder. “Respect, Sam, isn’t a matter of fear. Respect is power used to protect and to shield—and to go on the offensive when needed. This city knows I have and will again spill my blood for it. I don’t need to put on a grim mien to be respected.”

He was still thinking of the cheerful, mischievous boy he’d watched grow into a powerful man when he flew over the Hudson—wider now, its path cutting away part of the city that had existed when Raphael first set up his Tower.

The river had already begun to do its slow, steady work by the time Sameon came to the city, wet behind the ears and with his whole heart full of devotion for Ellie, but it had eased up after a period, as if content with its new channel. So many years had passed since then. Funny to think that Sam was now older than Illium had been during the Lijuan years.

The years of horror and pain and a Cascade of Death.

It struck him, not for the first time, how awfully young he’d been at the time. Yet the Cascade had tried to shove him full of a power his mind and body had been nowhere near ready to control. It would’ve killed him had Raphael not interceded. Illium had been ecstatic when the world went back into balance, taking with it the threat of an early ascension—and he remained as happy when it became clear he’d been bypassed for ascension.

After stabilizing during the time now referred to as The Rise of Marduk, his power had never again spiked. He knew the spiteful in angelkind whispered that he must be disappointed in his “decline”—as if he wasn’t one of the most powerful angels in the world outside the Cadre—but Illium had never wanted to ascend, never wanted to become one of the rulers of the world.

He loved this city, and he loved being one of Raphael’s Seven, part of a tight group that had survived so long as a unit that they were legend even among angelkind.

No other archangel could claim to have warriors so loyal and so true.

Illium was content to serve millennia as Raphael’s first general.

As he was content to live in the Enclave home he’d built with the man he loved beyond reason or sense. Situated not far from Elena and Raphael’s own home, theirs was a simple thing of large glass panels and a soaring ceiling nestled in the trees, but beside it stood a much larger building designed to capture light from every angle.

The studio was, however, also engineered to ensure that Aodhan could create shadows or semidarkness as needed; furthermore, he had the ability to turn all the windows opaque, should he wish to remove from passing angels the temptation to peek at his works in progress.

Illium landed in front of the open barn-style doors.

And there was Aodhan in the center of that cavernous space awash in sunlight, the dazzling brightness of him scowling as he worked on a tiny sculpture that had him clenching his jaw and muttering under his breath.

A cat with fur of darkest gray and one white paw usually lay curled up on another part of his workbench, dozing in the sun. Shadow, of the line of Illium’s beloved Smoke, was far more attached to Aodhan than she was to Illium—and Illium well understood that.

He, too, would choose Aodhan over anyone and anything.

Today, his lover wore a loose linen shirt of the kind he’d long preferred, with an opening at the neck and no buttons, the color a faded cream. He’d pushed both the sleeves hard back, the hem of the shirt flirting with pants of a fine brown canvas splattered with color from how often he wore them while painting.

While Illium had tested new styles and fabrics over the years, Aodhan knew what he liked and stuck to it. “It means I never have to worry about horrendous images from the time when transparent plastic was all the rage.”

“Hey! Even I drew the line at that,” Illium had protested. “Though I admit the puffball season was a bad idea on my part.”

Truth was, he loved Adi for being so content in his skin and in his being.

His warrior-artist’s shoulders pushed against the linen as he twisted to better see the sculpture, his thighs rigid against the canvas, and his hair—that pale hue coated with what appeared to be shattered diamonds—falling out of its rough queue to tickle his cheek. It almost reached his shoulders this season, and Illium knew he’d lose patience with it soon, but for now, Illium enjoyed playing with the softness of it when they kissed…or when they just lay on the grass together under the stars, their wings overlapping and fingers interlinked.

He’d never understood the perfection of a moment until he’d spent hours just watching the stars emerge overhead on a dark night in a hidden forest with Adi by his side. His entire being had been happy in a way that was the universe contained in his skin, the energy inside him in no hurry to be anywhere else.

It might’ve taken the two of them time to figure out who they were to each other, then again to understand how to go forward not only as best friends but as lovers, but once they had, that had been it.

Two strong temperaments meant they’d clashed over the years, but love…love was a generous thing, each of them easy to forgive the other. And any moments of temper were but minor irritants in an eternity of love.

Illium couldn’t imagine life without Aodhan.

Who looked up just then, his extraordinary eyes—shards of translucent blue and green shattering outward from a pinpoint black pupil—filled with storm clouds. “Tell me again why I’m making these ridiculously tiny fairies?” His skin was starlight, the beauty of him a wonder of muscle and power and hands careful enough to handle the delicate lines of the whimsical creature in his hand.

“Because they make people happy—and they always seem to find their way to the person who needs them most.” The two of them had never discussed the whys and hows of that, but it was understood that Aodhan had an unknown power that he was able to impart into these artworks he made once every decade or two.

Tiny statuettes that brought wonder even in the heart of darkness. “Where’s Shadow?”

“In the house.” Aodhan put down his work in progress with infinite care, then shoved a hand through the diamond-bright strands of his hair. “She can sense that there’s a storm coming, doesn’t like how it feels on her fur.”

The sky was a piercing blue topped by fluffy white, but Illium knew Aodhan wasn’t talking about that. It was the energy that had begun to gather in an invisible tempest over the past few days, a prickling that made the tiny hairs on Illium’s arms rise, his senses on high alert. “Someone’s going to ascend.”

It wasn’t always forecast this way, with a rising tension in the air. The last ascension—Suyin’s, straight after the end of the War of the Death Cascade—had been a sudden, violent thing, Suyin’s injured body smashing through a wall of the Tower’s infirmary to spear into the sky.

No buildup of power in the air that was a heavy pressure on the skin.

No taste of a strange and lovely metal on the tongue.

No whisper of a mysterious scent on the breeze.

Only a sparkling black rain that had lasted hours—and that had started even as she ascended.

“When I spoke to Mother yesterday,” he added, “she said it happens this way sometimes. As if the world knows before any sentient being.”

Aodhan’s eyes met his, but there was no question in those astonishingly beautiful shards. Aodhan, more than anyone, understood that Illium hated the idea of ascension. He wasn’t in the least jealous of the person who’d have to play Cadre politics and leave the people he loved to set up a whole new territory.noveldrama

He began to step through the door just as Aodhan turned to walk toward him.

A distant hum. A rising wind. A sun exploding in his chest.

No!