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)
53
Elena stared at the round balls of ice at her feet. She’d been forced to drop and take cover under a rooftop restaurant’s hard plastic awning when the storm hit. Thankfully, it had passed as fast as it had arrived, the melting ice the only evidence it had ever been there.
“I’ll stay for a drink next time,” she promised the vampiric proprietor before she flew off the building.
That was when she saw the cracked windows and shattered glass on the street. Hail had hit strong. No wonder Raphael had reached out to her with his mind after it started.
Her jaw tightening, she pushed up her flight speed to maximum. Because the situation would only get worse if the Cadre couldn’t reset the Compass.
In good news, she didn’t have to hunt long for Marduk. She located him crouched atop a building that overlooked Times Square and the surrounding area. It remained one of his favorite places to sit and watch the city—and it offered no cover. “The hail,” she said, her breath coming short and fast. “Were you hurt?”
He gave her the strangest look before saying, “No,” and turning his body in a way so only his scaled skin was exposed, his wings wrapped around him.
Elena whistled. “You carry your own protective shield.”
Unfolding from the crouch, he smiled that Marduk smile that wasn’t quite human in any sense of the word. And waited. Because he was Marduk and didn’t appear to understand the concept of putting others at ease.
“We have eight pieces of the Compass,” she said. “There is a hum. Loud for two of the Cadre, faint for others. We’re assuming the Cadre has to fly to the loudest sound.”
Marduk’s eyes turned slitted and of a great reptile. His wings were slightly spread, and for the first time she realized that they weren’t black at all but a shimmering hue akin to a black pearl. No color, and yet endless colors hidden within.
“That,” he said in his gravelly voice, “is the one thing that is unpredictable. The old ones were powers, but even they couldn’t divine how the Compass would respond to the people of each future time. When first created, the triangulation occurred through beams of light shot up into the sky, to merge into a pinpoint above the base.”
Elena’s eyes flared. “Wow.” She could imagine it, scythes of light strong enough to be seen around the world. “The object glowed with Raphael and me, but that’s it. No beam of light.”
“Then we listen to the sound.” He rose with a final look at the streets below. “This city of yours flows and breathes like blood in the veins or air in the lungs.”
“There are other cities in the world that their folks might say are the same,” Elena acknowledged, “but for me, it will only ever be New York.” She powered up into the air, aware of Marduk coming up beside her.
When they landed on the Tower roof as the last light of the sun’s rays faded from the sky, he shrugged off the need to change for the flight. “I am already in leathers.”
She didn’t comment that those leathers were sleeveless and open halfway down his chest. His pants had laces up the side that exposed skin and scales. But from what she could tell, his scales might as well be armor. Apparently that side made up for any heat loss from his more “ordinary” skin.
Raphael walked onto the roof just then, the Compass subcomponent worn in a secure arm sheath on his left biceps, and his leathers an old and worn-in black. “Marduk,” he said in greeting, before turning to Elena. “Take care of our city, hbeebti.”
“Always, Archangel.” She leaned in to kiss him goodbye, and in the instant that their skin touched, she heard the song of the relic on his arm, a hauntingly lovely melody that made her vibrate from within.
Your eyes are aglow the shade of the object, Raphael said into her mind before he drew back.
Marduk’s chest rumbled with a sound that wasn’t a word. “You must come with us.” An order directed at Elena. “The subcomponent is reacting to you—there’s a risk that you may be needed at the end to complete the Compass.”
Elena thought of the song in her head, the way the relic felt in her palm. I guess, Archangel, she said privately to Raphael, the old ones set it to resonate to archangelic cells, never figuring an archangel would one day literally give away a piece of his heart.
Raphael nodded. “Then we’ll have to go via the plane,” he said, then pointed up when Marduk frowned. “The metal machines that fly in the air.”
Elena didn’t argue; she knew her strength and level of endurance in the air, and there was no way she could make the long flight without several extended rest breaks. But—“You don’t know that I’ll be needed,” she pointed out. “I might not be. You two fly ahead, and I’ll follow. If it turns out you do need me, I’ll already be on the way, and if I’m not, you can solve the issue while I’m still in the air.”