by Ella Summers
“They’re late,” the elemental leader complained.
“Why are you looking at me?” replied the crimson vampire leader. “We have nothing to do with the werewolves.” He turned up his proud vampire nose. It was the sort of nose you’d see on a magazine cover, or on the face of a prince. The vampire looked at the other shifters. “Where are your brethren?”
“Brethren?” the shifter leader said, offended. “We’re not werewolves either.”
“They’re tigers,” said a witch with a high-pitched voice. She plugged her nose. “You can tell from the smell.”
The tiger shifter glared at the witch. “Watch yourself, little girl.” He plucked the strap of her stretchy sport overalls. “You wouldn’t want to end up dangling from that tree over there.”
A vampire rolled his eyes. “Oh, how original. A leather-bound meathead shifter making threats.” He yawned loudly.
“You’re sure one to point fingers, you walking stereotype,” a shifter retorted. “He indicated the vampire’s outfit and hair. “All that’s missing are the fangs.”
The vampire flashed him a pearly-white smile. “You really want to see my fangs?”
“Please, no. I just ate,” an elemental said.
The mercenaries all began talking at once, exchanging insults. This behavior was actually quite common between different supernatural groups. Even on a good day, they didn’t play well together. On a bad day, they were one insult away from open warfare. The human mercenaries just watched them in silence.
“How much longer must we be kept waiting?” a female witch complained. “When will our mystery clients present themselves?”
A shifter put on a big smile. “What’s the matter, pumpkin? Scared out here on the big, bad plains?”
The witch looked at him for a moment, disgust crinkling her brow. “No, pumpkin. I just want to get paid and move on to more profitable ventures.” Her lips curled. “But if the howls of the wilds frighten you, curl up over here at my heels. I could use a pet kitty.”
The shifter growled at her.
She clicked her tongue. “Temper, temper, pussycat.”
Somewhere far out on the Black Plains, a monster howled. The mercenaries grew quiet, listening to see if there would be a followup—and if it was moving closer. When no other monster made itself heard, one of the elementals looked around, shivering.
“This place sits on unholy land,” he said.
“I hate to break it to you, but all of the plains of monsters are unholy lands,” said a vampire in crimson. “If the prospect of being eaten by a ten-foot hairy beast disturbs you, you’d best seek out a different line of work. A nice cushy desk job perhaps.” He sneered. “I hear accountants are in high demand in the city.”
“It’s not just the monsters,” the elemental told him. “The wilds are haunted by vengeful ghosts and spirits, the tormented souls of the people who died hundreds of years ago when monsters overran the Earth, when our world was torn apart by the war between heaven and hell.”
“This place is particularly unholy,” agreed another elemental. “Everything feels off. The elements are all out of whack here. They’re all mixed and muddled, interfering with our spells.”
“The sooner this business is settled, the sooner we can get out of here,” the first elemental declared, sounding anxious.
“If this place bothers you so much, you go on ahead,” a shifter told her. “We’ll send your money along to you.” He grinned.
She rolled her eyes. “Do I look like an idiot?”
“Is that a serious question?” a witch asked.
“What you and your elementals look like are superstitious, scared little girls,” said a female vampire mercenary in maroon.
“Look at that manic twitch in her eye,” a male elemental said to his teammates. “It looks like she’s been sampling the local cuisine too much.”
In other words, drinking the blood of monsters. It wasn’t an advisable diet, even for vampires. Monster blood was unbalanced, unhinged—just like the monsters. It also tended to be incredibly poisonous.
“I’ll open up your throat and sample you if you don’t stop running your mouth,” the female vampire shot back.
The elementals all snickered.
The vampire rushed toward them. She didn’t make it far. The vampire maroon leader stepped into her path and punched her so hard that she flew twenty feet and crashed into the boulders. She got to her feet dizzily, her steps unbalanced.
“You’re embarrassing yourself,” the maroon vampire leader snapped. “And worse yet, you’re embarrassing me. Talk to them again, and I’ll feed you to the monsters.”
The vampire nodded, silent and solemn.
“Charming folks,” I commented to Bella and Calli.
“Indeed,” Calli agreed. “So how about while they’re waiting for their buyers to arrive, we steal their prisoners out from beneath their bickering noses?”
I smiled. “Nothing would please me more.”
“How are we supposed to get to the prisoners?” Bella asked. “The mercenaries aren’t taking their eyes off of them.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I have a plan.”
Creepy smoke and fog floated across the rocky valley to a soundtrack of eerie howls and tortured moans. Dry leaves whistled over the low creak of aged wood.
Bella had really outdone herself this time. She’d created these visual and sound effects with a creative mixture of potions. She was setting the mood. Now it was our job to seal the deal.
A series of wet splats—raw flesh against water—clapped across the ground, and a grotesque zombie emerged from the fog. It was Calli. I’d cast a shifting spell on her to change her from human to monster. I’d taken a lot of creative liberty with her appearance, and the end result was positively disgusting. Loose, discolored skin melted off her face and arms like wax from a candle. Pus oozed from the lacerations that covered her torso. As she walked, she left behind a long line of bloody footprints. All in all, Calli looked like a moaning, oozing, slopping piece of melted and torn flesh.
As soon as they saw her, the superstitious elementals froze. Their fear was thick in the air. I drew on my siren magic to grow the elementals’ panic, feeding it back on itself. Their anxiety spread, infecting the other mercenaries. They all looked at one another—then they ran for their lives.
But we couldn’t let them get away. We needed answers. I split the earth beneath their feet. Half of the mercenaries managed to sidestep the pits, but the rest of them tumbled in, unable to catch themselves. Green vines shot out of the ground, coiling around their bodies.
As Bella continued the special effects to embellish the deception, Calli moved to block the remaining mercenaries. If her grotesque appearance didn’t stop them, a bullet to the leg did.
While Calli and Bella dealt with the mercenaries, I made my way to the prisoners. A few brave mercenaries still guarded them. Unsurprisingly, it was the group of human mercenaries who’d been too professional to join in the insult tournament earlier. They were too shrewd to scare so easily.
Silent and unseen, I snuck up on them and knocked them out with my magic. Most humans had zero magic resistance, so I almost felt bad about doing it. But then I reminded myself that they were working for someone who kidnapped teenagers, and my guilt evaporated.
I hurried over to the prisoners and snapped their restraints. They watched me with wide eyes, completely terrified.
“Don’t worry,” Carmen told her fellow prisoners. “Leda is a soldier in the Legion of Angels, and she’s here to save us all.”
Relief washed across their faces, coupled with a touch of awe and a pinch of fear. But it was a good fear, as though they liked the taste of a little danger—as long as that danger was on their side. Legion soldiers had a fearsome reputation for upholding the gods’ order with an iron fist. When we came to save you, though, you knew whoever had you, no matter how scary they were, would fall. The Legion of Angels gave your greatest nightmares some nig
htmares of their own.
I scanned the group of prisoners. There were about twenty teenagers, but Carmen was the only one I knew by name. There were a few other girls I’d seen around in Purgatory—and there were a lot of girls and guys I’d never seen in my life. My little sisters, however, were nowhere to be found.
“Where are Tessa and Gin?” I asked Carmen.
“Another group of mercenaries took them away, along with some other prisoners,” Carmen told me. “They were already bought by a slave trader.” Her fear and outrage reverberated in her words.
There was no slavery allowed on Earth according to the gods’ laws, but out here on the plains of monsters, beyond the borders of civilization, these things happened far too often.
I led the prisoners into the fog, to where Bella was brewing a potion pot.
“You have to help Calli,” she told me. “A bunch of the mercenaries have cornered her.”
I went to the edge of the fog, peering out. The mercenaries had Calli surrounded, their weapons and magic aimed at her head. They didn’t realize she was a person. They only saw the monster. And they were going to decapitate her. That was the surest way to kill a monster.
I darted out of the fog, knocking out a mercenary with a quick punch to the head. I ran back into the fog and circled around to strike at the next. One by one, I took them down, unseen, like a ghost. The fog swelled and swallowed them. Plants shot out of the ground like lassos, capturing and dragging the others to me.
“Good job, Leda,” Calli said as the last mercenary fell to the ground. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my own face back.”
“Why? I think this look is good for you,” I teased, even as I removed the shifting spell from her. The monstrous trimmings dissolved from her body.
Calli and I tied up the unconscious mercenaries, then headed back to Bella and the prisoners.
We didn’t make it more than two steps before an arrow shot through the air and plunged into the earth at our feet. Lightning sizzled across its shaft, a telltale sign of magic.
I scanned the ridge. A man in black danced down the near vertical wall toward us, his long cloak rippling in the wind. Another elemental mercenary? I’d not seen him with the others. Where had he come from?
I ran out to meet him, dodging the telekinetic blast he shot at me. No, not an elemental. He swung his sword at me, moving with the speed of a vampire. As he cast a shifting spell on my hand, merging it with my own sword, I came to one unhappy conclusion: only a Legion soldier possessed all those abilities in combination. And Legion soldiers didn’t work with mercenaries and slave traders. He was a deserter.
A band of new arrivals jumped down the ridge, a hodgepodge of five different supernaturals. The telekinetic softened her companions’ fall, then shot them at Bella and Calli. My sister threw a potion bottle at her feet, and a protective barrier went up around her and Calli. As they fought off the two werewolves, the telekinetic, the fire elemental, and the vampire, I concentrated on the fallen Legion soldier.
“So a Legion deserter left and started his own mercenary band,” I commented, shaking off his shifting spell to free my hand.
“You can’t tell me that you haven’t considered the same.” The deserter’s eyes twinkled with devilish delight, like someone who’d been caught doing something naughty and was proud of it. If he hadn’t been trying to kill me, I might have even described him as charming.
“Deserting the Legion?” I said as our swords clashed. “Not really.”
“The poison they call gifts. Never knowing if you will survive the next sip, or the next battle. Watching all of your friends die around you. Or watching them move up and leave you behind.” He set his sword on fire.
I froze my sword, countering his flames. “You’re oversimplifying.”
His dark brows arched. “Am I? What about the control over who you can love, over who your friends are?”
He hit me in the stomach with a telekinetic punch. It went through me like an iron ball through a piece of tissue paper. I cringed, enduring the pain. He studied my face, calculation gleaming in his eyes. He knew he’d found my weakness.
For some reason, though, he didn’t press his advantage. Either he was playing with me, or he really liked to hear himself speak.
“But the biggest problem with the Legion is the angels,” he said. “Those cold, cruel, sadistic monsters are far worse than any you find out here beyond the vicious veil of civilization.”
“Who are you working for? Why are you kidnapping people?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that we will change the world.”
It was the tired line of only every criminal mastermind ever. Even so, at least he knew what was going on, unlike the clueless werewolf I’d questioned in Purgatory. I just had to pull at the right end, and the whole plot would unravel at my feet.
“How will you change the world?” I asked him.
He flashed me a grin. “You can’t compel me.”
I wouldn’t bet on it.
The iron gates of his mind slammed shut, and I was too busy fighting him to try to break through them.
He was very good. He could wield telekinetic magic, so he must have been at least a level six soldier before he’d deserted the Legion. And he was well-trained—faster, stronger, and far more experienced than I was.
But he didn’t fight dirty like I did. Though he’d left the Legion, his Legion training hadn’t left him. He fought like a proper and dignified soldier in the gods’ army, not like a down and dirty mercenary.
He stood behind me, his arms locked around my body like a cage, pinning my arms to my sides. But I still had my feet. I shot my magic down my body, straight through my foot. An icy spike shot out of my heel, and I slammed that heel down on his foot. Like it was made of steel, the ice spike punctured his boot. He roared in pain. I slammed my icy heel down again, this time cutting through the other foot. A sheet of ice spread over the ground. His grip loosened.
I broke free and spun around, hammering my fists against the sides of his head. He stumbled back, disoriented. I ran at him, intending to finish the job and knock him out, but he darted away. His footsteps were so fast that they almost seemed to float over the ground.
“You’re as good as they say, Leda Pierce,” he told me. “Don’t throw your life away fighting for the wrong team.”
Then he snatched a potion bottle from his belt and threw it at his feet. Glass shattered, shrouding everything in a sparkling purple mist. When the smoky amethyst tendrils cleared, the deserter was gone. And so was his team. Damn it.
A tiny click echoed off the rocks, then our truck exploded. I gaped at the burning remains of our vehicle that would never run again. The deserter was getting away, and we had no way to chase after him because he’d seen fit to blow up our truck. I stormed over to a boulder and punched a hole in it, venting my frustration. The agonizing pain was almost worth it.
“We caught a few guys from the other mercenary bands,” Calli said, watching me cradle my hand.
I didn’t want the other mercenaries. They were clueless pawns. I wanted the deserter. He knew something, and now he was gone.
“A fire elemental was wounded in the last fight. He didn’t escape with the others,” Bella told me.
Hope sparked in me. The fire elemental worked for the deserter. Maybe I would get my answers after all.
“Let’s go have a chat with him,” I said, joining Bella beside the wounded mercenary.
“He was knocked out by your ice spell,” she explained, indicating the patches of frost covering his skin in icy swirls.
Elementals were weak against the opposing element. In the case of a fire elemental, that meant ice and water. I grabbed a potion bottle from my pouch.
“What is that?” Bella asked.
“Winter’s Kiss.”
Drinking it felt like swallowing a blizzard. I’d taken the potion back when I’d trained my elemental magic at Storm Castle, and it hadn’t be
en a fun experience. It would be worse for him.
I pulled out a syringe. I didn’t have the time to force him to swallow it. I was going to inject the ice straight into his bloodstream.
The elemental jolted awake. His pulse pounded fast in my ears, a deafening, racing drumbeat.
“Who hired you to kidnap the girls?” I asked him.
He spat at my feet. Nice.
Smiling at him, I grabbed his wrists. Ice crystals formed there, creeping higher up his arms. He shook, trying to break free, but I was stronger than he was—and I wasn’t backing down. I couldn’t shake the heavy, foreboding fear that my sisters were in great danger. I had to get to them.
“Let’s try this again.” My smile cut into my cheeks, even as my ice spell cut through him, mixing with the potion to chill his blood. “Who hired you to kidnap teenagers from the Frontier towns?”
His skin was turning blue. I brushed my siren magic against him, warm and inviting. It whispered soothing promises into his ear. He shook, resisting.
So I turned up the cold. I felt a tiny spark—a pop!—the moment his mind broke. His defenses folded and he let me into his mind. Wrapping my siren magic around him like a warm blanket, I repeated the question.
This time he answered. “Arius Hardwicke hired us to kidnap the teenagers. We sold them to him.”
Arius Hardwicke? I had no idea who that was.
Calli supplied the answer. “Arius Hardwicke is a slave trader.” Disgust and anger washed across her face as she added, “A prolific one. He has strongholds all over the world, each one hidden deep inside the plains of monsters.”
What a swell guy.
“Where is Arius Hardwicke keeping the prisoners?” I demanded.
The fire elemental’s face scrunched up. He was fighting me. I yanked the comforting blanket of my siren magic away, and the icy jaws chomped down on him once more.
“We brought them to Hardwicke’s base at Crow’s Crown,” he said, shivering. “They are probably still there.”
Crow’s Crown. Those were some ruins further west, past the Black Plains, out on the vast, open, broken Field of Tears.