Page 96 of Archangel’s Lineage

Her eyes zeroed in on Elena. “Yes, you are right,” she said, though Elena hadn’t spoken again. “If the hum is so loud for me, and louder for my closest neighbor than for any other of the Cadre, then we should meet here. Per Marduk, the Ancestors didn’t intend for this to be a test except of cooperation.”

Zanaya nodded. “Yes, it makes sense that the location would be provided once all the subcomponents were active. All we had to do was talk to each other to work it out.”

“We fly now,” Raphael said. “We can’t risk waiting, and there’s no point in coordinating a single arrival time, because it might be that the more pieces in proximity, the louder the signal—but all of us need to be contactable so that we can change route midflight if needed.”

The agreement was total.

“Where is Marduk?” Elijah asked with impatience unusual for the Archangel of South America. “He should be there. We might need the entire current Cadre even if he doesn’t believe so.”

“I’ll bring him with me,” Raphael promised. “Fly safe.” Words he’d never before said to the Cadre at large, but these were uncertain times.

“Remember the storm cells that have been forming over the oceans,” Suyin added. “A storm might not kill us, but it can break our bones and crumple our wings—and speed, as Raphael has pointed out, is of the essence.”

Sober nods before the others signed off.

“Go, get changed into your flight leathers.” Elena thrust the relic into his hand. “I’ll find Marduk.”

They separated without further words, their ability to work as a unit a thing that had grown until it was seamless. All the while, the subcomponent of the Compass hummed like a contented cat in the back of his mind. As the Legion had once murmured, their presence there but unobtrusive.

A clatter of sound, a loud crack.

He shot a look to the window... and saw his sunset-kissed city under assault from a squall of hail the size of small stones.

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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.”

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