After the Rising: Vol. Four
an excerpt

The city skyline was on fire.

Gabriel stood on the bridge far from the carnage, the bridge he'd been taken over only days before, and watched it burn. Roaring red-gold flames and the billow of dirty black smoke swallowed up the shattered Wall and the outlines of the tallest buildings as they began to slump into rubble. A savory mouth-watering aroma filled the air, hit his gut, and Gabriel gagged on a mouth of saliva as he realized it was the smell of cooked flesh, an entire city roasted.

Large hands settled on his shoulders. "This was inevitable," the deep voice of a man familiar intoned. "Any time you assume a level playing field for two teams with not only two different sets of rules, but two completely different competing priorities, this will be the outcome." The fingers tightened.

"One will be eliminated."

Gabriel gasped and the inhalation seared him, super-heated air blistering his throat, his lungs. He jerked, his watering eyes fixed on the outline of the burning city, his city, his *family,* and the world melted away at the sweeping touch of fingers across his brow.

He sucked in another breath, deep and relieved, as the fingers smoothed past his temple and tucked stray hair behind his ear. Gabriel kept his eyes closed a moment longer, relishing not only the touch but the relief of being alive, bizarrely juxtaposed with the image of the fiery skyline that lingered behind his eyelids.

"You're awake," murmured a deep voice, and Gabriel analyzed it, noting the differences. Not the one from his dream. No, that was a man of a different timbre, but one he'd nonetheless recognized.

That had been Granac Bowen.

Dismissing the lingering bad taste of the dream, Gabriel opened his eyes and found himself lifting his head from a crooked arm. "I fell asleep," he said vaguely.

"I noticed," Shemyahza Guile remarked with a note of indulgence in his chocolate-rich voice, his silvery eyes seeking out Gabriel's. He shifted his position until Gabriel met his gaze. "I brought you tea." One large dark hand descended, setting a white mug onto the margin of the table that was not cluttered with plas-film printouts or screen-files.

"Then you are always welcome in my lab," Gabriel said fervently, seizing the mug with both hands and tolerating the touch of Shemyahza's free hand, which had not quite left off stroking the hair at his temple as if he were some big feline found curled asleep at the workstation. "Ahh, the good stuff. Ceylon black...where did you get this?" He regarded the cup in surprise.

Shemyahza leaned against the edge of the workstation, folding his arms. "I have my sources..." he began, and broke eye contact with a grin when Gabriel raised an incredulous brow. "Which are all about Orion keeping their cherished contractors happy."

"Mmm," Gabriel responded, lifting the mug to his lips again and savoring the taste. The Ceylon black was incredibly rare, either imported from one of the astoundingly expensive infrequent trade ships that arrived safely at the harbor, or from even more vanishingly scarce personal family stockpiles from before the Rising. He pulled a long breath, exhaling and ridding himself of a lingering tension, and met Shemyahza's eyes with more of his equanimity than before. "What time is it?"

Shemyahza's generous lips quirked. "Best ask what day it is," he murmured.

"I slept through the night? How could you let--"

"Let, nothing," Shemyahza retorted. "Do you have any idea of how late you worked, Gabriel? Into the early hours, and I left you at your desk working as vigorously as the first time I'd seen you seated there. I stretched out on the sofa because there's no cause for me to sleep-deprive myself, then Roy kindly woke me when he and Kieran left for the upper levels."

Gabriel frowned, casting about the workspace for a chronometer. That didn't answer his question.

"*They* slept," Shemyahza added judiciously.

"That's nice," Gabriel said, "but how much time did I lose?" He glanced at his wrist and Shemyahza snorted when they both caught sight of the chronometer that circled it.

"Would you like some breakfast?" Shemyahza inquired, pushing himself away from the desk, one long-fingered hand reaching out to grip Gabriel's shoulder. "You should have gotten more sleep yourself, you know."

Gabriel closed his eyes briefly, seeing the remnants of fire swell behind his eyelids again, the shape of familiar buildings crumbling to shadow. For the first time he entertained the fancy that the dream might have larger significance, that his unconscious mind was fitting pieces together, and he joined it up with the conversation with Roy that he'd had the night before. Had there been a reason behind the Rising, and was it significant to their current struggles?

Was the annihilation of either human or Nephilim the only answer?