Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
She was about to ask more about this Cascade when the world turned a black that was flat and hard and cold. So, so, cold. Akin to the inside of a human crypt. With it came a silence that felt like a pressure on the lungs, a crushing force that would snap the spine and crack the skull. Then . . . the screams. Shrill, ugly, the most horrific sounds she’d ever heard.
“What is this cacophony!” Firelight in hand, she searched for an enemy, found none. “No archangel I know wakes with such darkness!”
“You do not know her.” Alexander’s tone was grim as he came to hover beside her, his wing just brushing hers. “Her name is Lijuan.”
That was how Zanaya first learned of the Archangel of China, this being who could make the dead walk—and who believed that the shuffling corpses she produced equaled “life.” Alexander told her that Lijuan had named her creatures the “reborn” but it seemed to Zanaya that they were nothing but the fetid and despoiled dead, blank and mindless.
“This Cascade,” she said to Alexander some time later, after she’d absorbed all she could of the current world, “isn’t like the others.”
They’d both lived through other Cascades, many small, several large. None had threatened to break the world, leave it a crumbling ruin.
“No,” Alexander agreed, his face tired in a way she’d never before seen it. “Lijuan treats us all with contempt, believes herself a goddess above even her former brethren in the Cadre.”
Standing side by side with Alexander on the balcony of his fortress, Zanaya stared out at the snow that still draped his lands. The two of them had helped clear multiple regions of the crush of ice, but she knew without asking that such actions were only a temporary solution. “How do we stop her?” That was the true test, the true question.
“The Cadre is to meet soon.” Alexander rubbed a hand over his face, then put his hands on his hips again, his eyes trained on the lands beyond. “Too many of us are awake, Zani.”
She might’ve teased him for thawing enough to fall back into using his old pet name for her. But that Zanaya was a creature of peacetime. Now was the time for her warrior avatar. “We must be needed,” she mused, setting aside the shock that still reverberated through her at his earlier comment that Caliane had woken before he did.
If he’d woken, that meant he’d Slept at some point in time.
Zanaya wanted to ask him what or who had convinced him to take that step. Because Zanaya hadn’t been enough—and yes, that wound throbbed to this day.
The pain of the woman, however, could wait. Today, it was the archangel who needed to reign supreme. “Perhaps it’s the only way to defeat this Lijuan.” And though she’d long forgotten fear, that was a terrifying thought. How could one archangel be such a power that the Cascade would wake so many Sleepers to stand against her?
There were more surprises to come—including a Cadre meeting beyond her experience. She’d expected them to fly to a central meeting point, or for it to be assumed that they’d use a mental power that was only of the Cadre—though Zanaya would’ve refused the latter, the price it demanded too high. To use the archangelic ability was to lose their empathy for at least half a day, become cold and heartless monsters.
Zanaya had used it exactly once. Never again. She would not allow herself to go into the Quiet, become the very creature her mother had tried to raise her to be.
If that meant flying a significant distance, so be it.
Alexander knew all of that and had never pushed her to use her power. So she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t bring it up. She was surprised when he led her into a large internal room with flat black paintings on the walls.
“If this is a new style of art, lover,” she muttered, curling her lip, “I have no faith in the current state of civilization.”
A chuckle before he could remember that he was meant to be angry with her. “It’s a communications system,” he explained. “I can’t tell you how it works. I leave that knowledge to the young. All I know is that it’s useful.”
Intrigued, Zanaya went outside to what Alexander referred to as the “control room” and watched a vampire named Richmond push buttons and touch what he told her were called “screens.” His voice was crisp and clean and held the precise rhythm of a language unknown to her—but the language he used when he spoke to her was the old angelic tongue, which—per angelic law—had to remain unchanged in certain key aspects.
New vocabulary could be introduced to include new things in the world, but the old had to stay and the underlying structure of the language itself had to remain the same as when it had first been spoken. An event that had taken place so long ago that no one in Zanaya’s lifetime had had any knowledge of it. Any natural evolution was forcefully crushed or pushed in the direction of the offshoot of the angelic tongue used in everyday life.