Elena whistled. “Sounds like an invitation to war.” Especially since angelkind wasn’t exactly united right now.
“Yes—which is why no one refuses an invitation. It’s not worth the aggravation when all possible threats will be at the meeting with you.” Raphael nodded to behind her. “Aodhan is dodging crossbow bolts.”
Swiveling on her heel, Elena spotted the angel who seemed created of pieces of light, a thousand rays of sunshine sparking off the filaments of his wings, the glittering strands of his hair; he was darting this way and that while an entire squadron shot at him. The members of the squadron were wearing wraparound sunglasses in an effort to track the piercing blaze of him in the sky.
Aodhan, meanwhile, dropped and dodged with uncanny skill.
“And the prize for most bored goes to . . .”
Raphael moved forward to stand beside her, his wing sliding over her own. “He’s just staying in shape for the battle to come.”
Unfortunately, that was true. The battle would come and that damn shoe would drop. “This group that has the power to force the Cadre to meet, what’s it called?”
“The members call themselves the Luminata. They are a spiritual sect—not religious in the human sense.” He paused, as if thinking of the right words to describe them. “The closest mortal analog is likely the Buddhist search for enlightenment. The Luminata seek to understand themselves individually and angelkind as a whole; their self-imposed task is to discover who and what we are in the greater scheme of the universe, and to accept whatever answer may come. They call it a search for luminescence.”
Spreading his wings, he folded them back in a susurration of sound she’d never associate with anyone but her archangel. “Many mortals believe in gods, but when death is but a faint glimmer on a distant horizon that may never be breached, such beliefs fade into confusion. The Luminata attempt to find luminescence in the now, rather than hoping for it on the other side of that distant horizon.”
“I met a holy man once during a hunt in India,” Elena found herself saying. “He lived as a hermit, had nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, but his eyes . . . such peace, Raphael. I think he’s the most peaceful being I’ve ever met. Even Keir doesn’t have such a well of peace inside him.” And the revered angelic healer had lived thousands of years.
“From what I know, this is what the Luminata search for.” Raphael continued to watch Aodhan’s movements in the sky ahead of them. “A purity of soul that leaves them with no earthly questions or concerns.”
“Have they had any success in their quest?”
“The only Luminata I’ve ever met are those who have been asked to leave the sect, and the once-novices—those who walked away from the life after a short attempt. So I have no basis to judge the luminescence of those who follow the path.”
Elena raised an eyebrow, but kept silent, interested in this sect that could call a Cadre of archangels to order.
“At some point in our past,” Raphael told her, “a point so far back that no one remembers—”
“Did you ask the Legion? Their memories of the past are fading but they’re not totally gone.”
“I did.” Raphael’s eyes went to a nearby high-rise, one that had a shape unlike any other in the city, and that was covered in the fresh green of living things, a building that was designed to be a living thing. For the Legion were of the earth and it was in earth, in growth, that they thrived. “But those memories, if they existed, are gone. The Legion know the Luminata only from more recent times.”
“Recent” being a relative term, Elena thought. “So a long time ago in a land far away, the Luminata . . .” she prompted.
Raphael’s laughter was a caress of sunkissed waves over her senses, the power of him no threat but a promise. “I wonder what the sect will make of you, Elena.” Love surrounded her, so deep that she felt it in her bones. “As you say, long ago the Luminata were entrusted with a certain task. This task was given to them because it was—and is—believed that they are the only group that can be trusted to be impartial with it.”
He raised one hand to stroke it over the arch of her wing, the touch an intimate one between lovers, as, not far in the distance, Aodhan took a crossbow bolt in the thigh. Pulling it out, he threw it back and kept dodging. Yeah, Elena thought, he might be training to stay in shape, but he was also bored. So was Illium, if the screams floating up from the city streets were any indication.
He’d clearly kept up the dive bombing.
“I think,” Raphael said, “I must tell your Bluebell to stop scaring our citizens.”
Illium appeared in view a few seconds later, a grin on his almost too handsome face that Elena could see from here. Dipping his wings toward the Tower in acknowledgment of Raphael’s order, he joined Aodhan’s “dodge the bolts” game.
One bolt went crazily wild at nearly the same instant, heading straight for Elena.
Snatching it from the air with a single hand, Raphael passed it to her. “Whoever this is needs further training.”
Elena recognized the markings on the shaft, grinned. “Izzy.” The young angel was still a baby in angelic terms. “You have to admit, he’s brilliant for his age.”
“Galen wouldn’t have recommended him for a Tower apprenticeship elsewise,” Raphael said before continuing to speak about the Luminata. “By dint of their spiritual quest, the Luminata have no earthly ties and no loyalties beyond that to their quest for luminescence. They take no lovers, participate in no wars, and when they become Luminata, they sever all blood ties.”
“A perfect neutral body.”
“Yes. Such neutrality is a necessity because the task with which they’re entrusted is to call a meeting of the Cadre should a certain span of time pass with no sighting of an archangel.”
Elena nodded slowly. “A safety measure of sorts.” It made sense given the staggering impact the archangels had on the world. “Though,” she said with a frown, “two years isn’t that long in immortal terms.”
“The period of time that must pass before a meeting is called has never been specified,” Raphael said, his eyes on Aodhan even as he spoke to her. “As a result, at some point—and weighing up all available knowledge on the situation—the Luminata must make a judgment call.” Taking the crossbow bolt from her, he threw it with archangelic strength. Aodhan barely avoided it before the bolt fell victim to gravity, to be intercepted by the squadron tasked with making sure none fell to skewer the mortals below.
The squadron had been intelligent enough to set up nets to catch the spent projectiles.
“The purpose of the meeting,” Raphael said as Aodhan and Illium began to dodge bolts in tandem, “is to determine if the missing archangel is dead or has gone into Sleep. If so, the archangel’s territory must be divided, archangelic borders redrawn.”
Elena now understood why Raphael had never met a practicing Luminata. After Uram’s death, the Cadre had apparently met within months to divide up his territory. Even when Alexander went to Sleep and his son attempted to take over the territory by hiding his father’s withdrawal from the world, she’d learned the Cadre had rectified the situation within a relatively short period of time.
Yet it had been two years since Zhou Lijuan, Archangel of China and Goddess of Death, disappeared from sight.
2
“We all know Her Creepiness isn’t dead.” Elena’s lip curled at the thought of the archangel who’d sought to rain death on New York, and whose reborn were shambling mockeries of life. “That would be too easy.”