by Ella Summers
Harker was injured. In a fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Colonel Fireswift would destroy him. The Legion would lose another angel, and I would lose a friend.
Colonel Fireswift swung a punch at Harker. I slid between the angels, catching Colonel Fireswift’s fist between my hands and pushing back. Surprised, the angel stumbled back a step.
“Get out of my way,” he snarled at me, magic flashing in his eyes.
“No.”
He swung a punch at me. I tried to evade, but he was too fast. Pain exploded in my body as his fist crashed into my stomach. I doubled over, coughing up blood. He moved around me to get to Harker, but I mirrored his movements, making myself the shield between the two angels. The look Colonel Fireswift shot me declared loud and clear that he had no qualms about breaking right through me.
The rational part of me knew I was no match for Colonel Fireswift, but the rebel in me refused to listen. Sure, he was faster, stronger, and had buckets more magic than I did. By the rules of this universe, I didn’t have a chance in hell of beating him. But I also didn’t play by the rules.
As he moved in for his next barrage, I hit him hard with my siren magic, locking it around him. “Hasn’t the Legion lost enough today?” I said, my voice as soft as my magic was hard. “We can’t afford to lose Harker too.”
He slowed but not enough. He was still moving.
“Would the First Angel want you to kill an angel?” I asked him.
He stopped, his breathing slowing. The fog of his rage must have cleared enough for him to recover his mind and realize what he was doing. Disgust washed across his magic—disgust that even for a second, he hadn’t been in complete control of himself.
His hands trembling in anger, he glared at me. How dare you put your unclean magic around me, he growled in my mind.
My magic isn’t dirty. It is the same as yours, Colonel. It comes from the same Nectar as yours.
Your magic is nothing like mine, he replied, disgusted.
Normally, Colonel Fireswift didn’t have a problem telling me off in front of everyone, but he wasn’t shouting at me now. It wasn’t for my benefit; he just didn’t want to show weakness in front of his soldiers. He didn’t want any of them to know that my magic had frozen him, if only for a moment, just long enough for him to regain control of himself.
I come from a long and prestigious legacy of angels. You came out of some trashcan on the Frontier.
I’d have liked to give him the benefit of the doubt and said it was his pain talking now, but he was always like this. He made it really hard for anyone to feel sorry for him—which, I guess, was completely the point. He thought anyone worthy of sympathy was weak by definition. He didn’t get it at all.
I did feel sorry for him and Jace, though. My friend’s face was pale, his eyes red. He was trying really hard not to cry right now. As far as I was concerned, he had every right to cry. He’d just lost his sister.
The Legion did not agree. It was expected of Jace and his father to show no emotion. That’s what it meant to be a soldier in the Legion of Angels, to be above mortal affairs and human emotions.
“Finish your report, Sunstorm,” Colonel Fireswift barked at Harker.
“We managed to get the magic barrier back up, but not before a few hundred monsters poured through the hole.”
“The city?”
“Memphis was destroyed by the monsters in the aftermath of the wall’s collapse,” said Harker. “We hunted down and killed the monsters, but it cost us. Half of our team is dead, killed by monsters or Venom bullets.”
“And the traitors?”
“None survived,” Harker told him.
“Why did our own soldiers turn on us?” I asked.
“I questioned one of the dying Legion traitors. He told me the Pioneers were pulling their strings.”
“The Pioneers?” I gasped.
“So you’ve heard of them.”
“We’ve exchanged blows,” I said darkly. “What in the world would compel six Legion soldiers to help the Pioneers?”
“Leverage,” he replied. “The Pioneers abducted the soldiers’ loved ones and threatened to kill them if they didn’t cooperate.”
“Teenagers?”
“Yes.”
“Abducted from their homes or vacation spots all across the Frontier?”
His brows arched in surprise. “Yes.”
So that’s what the Pioneers had been up to when they’d kidnapped all those teenagers. They’d targeted the loved ones of Legion soldiers. To not arouse the Legion’s suspicion, they’d taken lots of other teenagers as well and sold them as slaves to rogue vampires. The rest they were keeping as leverage. The question was, what were the Pioneers planning next?
“Only six Legion traitors were involved in this catastrophe,” I said, thinking it through. “Only six, and they took down a large part of the wall. If the Pioneers manage to extort enough Legion soldiers, they could take down the whole wall. The barrier that has stood for hundreds of years between civilization and the wild lands would fall, and monsters would flood through the gates. They would kill our people and lay waste to our cities. Centuries ago, we built the walls and pushed the monsters back. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to do the same again. This could be the end of humanity.”
“The Legion’s defenses are only as strong as its weakest link,” Jace spoke, emerging from his cocoon of misery.
He had a point. Whether or not the Legion wanted to admit it, its soldiers still had some of our humanity and ties to the mortal world.
Jace pulled out his phone. “I have the names of the kidnapped people who are still missing.”
Jace was trying to pull himself together, to push through the pain. Even as his father struggled to stay calm, to not explode again, Jace was really stepping up.
“We need to check which missing teenagers have a connection to a Legion soldier,” he said. “We should lock up those soldiers now, just to be safe. We can sort out the guilty later.”
Harker nodded. “Agreed.”
Jace began reading off the names of the people still missing. He paused when he got to Tessa and Gin, giving me a pointed look. It was the sort of look that reminded me of Colonel Fireswift. He was really channeling his father right now.
“I haven’t received any blackmail notes from the Pioneers. They haven’t tried to coerce me into doing anything. And if they’re stupid enough to try, they’ve got another thing coming. They’ve picked the wrong person to manipulate. I’m not betraying the gods or the Legion. No way, no how. I won’t help the people who took my sisters. I am going to make them pay for what they’ve done, for all the lives they’ve ruined and all the people they’ve hurt. And they will woe the day they took my sisters,” I finished, my voice ringing with emotion. Anger flushed my cheeks, conviction pounded in my pulse.
Harker and Jace exchanged glances, then returned to the list, apparently satisfied by my answer. Because it was all true. I would make those bastards pay. After what they’d done, they deserved nothing less.
What I didn’t say was that this wasn’t just about manipulating Legion soldiers. There was something bigger happening. My sisters’ magic was playing into the Pioneers’ plans in some other way. But how? What exactly were Gin and Tessa, and why did the Pioneers want them so badly?
21
Psychic's Spell
The night was long and full of heartache—sorrow for those who were gone, fear for those who had not yet returned. The training hall had become my midnight refuge, the sanctuary where I fought insomnia, slowly wearing my body into exhaustion. This was starting to become a habit, and I wasn’t sure it was a good one.
It had been nearly a day, and Nero still wasn’t back. Had he been killed or captured? The urge to go track him down was overwhelming. I had half a mind to run off after him, even as reason spoke to me, telling me I didn’t have a clue where he was. No one did. The last anyone had seen or heard of him, he was chasing the last remaining horde of monste
rs through the ruins of Memphis.
If only we’d exchanged blood the last time I’d seen him, then I could find him now. Then I wouldn’t be so powerless. I really hated being powerless.
I was training old school tonight. No magic and no flashy barriers. Just obstacles that required raw strength, speed, flexibility, and endurance. I’d gone back to basics, back to the very beginning of my Legion days. The whole point was to hurt my body so hard that I couldn’t feel anything but the pain in my muscles, not the pain eating away at my heart.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I could almost hear the deep echo of Nero’s unwavering voice resounding off the gym walls, shouting at me to get off my ass and keep moving. The memory of him hurt more than my abused muscles.
“Leda Pierce,” a voice said as I reached halfway up the wall of spikes.
Surprised, I slipped, cutting my hand on one of the spikes as I tried to catch myself—and failed. I fell off the wall, smacking the ground like a sack of flour.
I glanced up, my eyes meeting those of my unexpected visitor. It was Aleris, the God of Nature, and I’d fallen to the floor right at his feet. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.
He looked down at me, a reserved expression on his face. He was dressed in plain beige robes decorated with nature. Flowering vines crisscrossed his chest like a breastplate of armor, and glossy black gauntlets covered his forearms. At first glance, they looked like metal, but they were nothing so common. They were made from thick wooden vines intertwined to form a thin magical armor I bet was as strong as any metal.
“Are you in the habit of falling to your knees before the gods?” he asked me. There was no humor twinkling in his eyes or echoing in his voice. Sarcasm probably wasn’t even in his vocabulary.
I rose to my feet. Rather than replying with something snarky, I said, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Lord Aleris?”
“The other gods are all focused on you right now.” When he spoke with that quiet arrogance of his, his voice was like the wind, soft but projecting far. “They seem worried. I wanted to see what’s gotten them so worked up.”
I took a long, slow drink from my water bottle, wondering at his bluntness. Why would he admit that the gods were worried? Then again, they had every reason to be unsettled right now. The Legion was crumbling to pieces from the inside, its own soldiers coerced to work against the gods’ will.
“There’s a lot going on right now in the Legion and in the greater world,” I said.
Aleris watched me in reflective silence, not giving away anything more. Of course not. After all, he was a god. He was less confrontational than the other gods, but his goal was the same: for me to tell him everything I knew. Well, it was high time we turned the river of knowledge in the other direction.
“And what do you think?” I asked him.
“I am still undecided about you and your place in everything. One thing is for sure, however: you are at the center of all the chaos. Whenever trouble breaks out, you aren’t far away. What I’m still trying to ascertain is whether you are drawn to the chaos, or the chaos to you.”
And then he was gone, just like that. Just like a god.
I was still looking at the spot where Aleris had disappeared when Harker entered the gym. Though his injuries had healed, he still looked as bad as I felt. He was haunted by what he’d seen, the sight of the Venom destroying his comrades from the inside. And like me, he was worried about Nero too.
I managed a small smile. “You couldn’t sleep either, huh?”
“No.”
I snatched two swords from the rack on the wall and tossed one of them to him. We both needed to get our minds off of our worries.
“So, are you going to ask out Bella again?” I asked him, trying to lighten the mood.
Harker parried my strike. “I don’t know. The last time I asked her, she said it wasn’t a good idea. I have the feeling she doesn’t quite trust me.” He set his sword on fire and swung it toward me.
I countered by casting a frozen sheet of magic across my blade. Fire clashed with ice. The flames went out, the frosty glass shattered into tiny icicles, and we were both back at square one.
“Of course she doesn’t quite trust you. You did try to poison her favorite sister, you know,” I pointed out.
“You’re not ever going to let that go, are you?”
I smirked at him. “Nope.”
I didn’t mean it. Harker had made a mistake. He’d thought he was serving the gods, but Faris had just been manipulating him, using his faith to gain the upper ground over the other gods.
“Your past mistakes don’t matter,” I told him. “What matters is what you’re doing now. And what you will do in the future.”
He moved quickly, sliding under my defenses. He locked my arm in his grip and pulled hard. Pain blossomed in my shoulder as he popped it out of its socket.
I sidestepped his followup attack, cradling my pulsing, aching arm. “Though maybe you should be less…less like an angel,” I said through my teeth. Grimacing, I popped my shoulder back in.
“What do you mean, ‘less like an angel’?”
“Angels have an annoying habit of deciding things for people—and for always knowing what’s best for them.”
I snatched hold of his arm, sinking my magic through it. His hand shifted into a gargantuan tortoise shell that dropped to the ground like an iron ball, taking him down with it. He tried to lift his arm off the floor, but the shell that was his hand did not budge. He shot me an irked look.
“Like feeding Bella your blood,” I said. “Especially when she didn’t know the consequences.”
He pushed against the enormous weight of the shell, his muscles bulging from the strain. “I did that…” He locked his free hand around his trapped wrist and heaved. “… to protect her.” His face was turning red. “… to save her.”
I swung a punch at his head to end our fight. He was glued to the floor, and he still somehow managed to duck to the side. In a world without magic, that would have been impossible. In a world with magic, it was still cheating.
“You know, the ‘I’m just protecting you’ excuse is the same failed logic that got Nero into trouble,” I warned him.
“I don’t get your point. Nero marked you and you threw up a big fuss to make him remove it, but in the end, you are his.”
He evaded my next punch as well. The laws of gravity didn’t even seem to apply to him. His leg swept out, kicking my feet out from under me. My back smacked the floor.
Harker looked down at me. “You didn’t just accept your fate. You embraced it.”
I kicked back up to my feet. “See, that’s the angel talking again. Yes, I’m his, but he’s mine too. Angels and gods think so one-dimensionally. The road to heaven is paved in one-way streets. But for a relationship to work—to really work—it needs to go both ways.”
Harker was silent for a moment, as though considering the idea. “There might be something in that,” he finally said.
I grinned at him. “Don’t be shy to tell me I’m right, Harker. After all, I managed to glue you to the floor.”
He gave his arms a hard heave. The shell launched off the floor, his arms following in a smooth arc. He held the shell over his head for a moment—just to show that he could—then he slammed it down like a hammer. My spell broken, the shell cracked into a thousand tiny pieces, then dissolved to smoke.
I just gaped at him.
“As much as you’d like to make yourself out to be a badass, independent, take-no-shit rebel, you’re one of us, Pandora.”
“One of what?”
“An angel. Not in name but in nature. You make decisions for your family, for your subordinates, and even for your superiors. You couldn’t be more of an angel if you had wings.” Harker’s smile widened as mine faded. “You marked Nero. I can sense it on him—your magic, your scent, your unique magical perfume. It is the mark of an angel, faint but unfading. That is the first mark from a non-angel that
I’ve come across. How did you do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps love is more powerful than magic,” I added with a mischievous wink.
Harker laughed. “Who would have guessed that you’re such a romantic.”
“Yeah, you know me. All flowers, sunshine, and lacy petticoats.”
He snorted.
I gave him a sly look. “But we’re not here to discuss my love life. We’re here to discuss yours.”
“I was under the impression that you thought I wasn’t good enough for your sister.”
“No one is good enough for my sister,” I told him. “But she likes you. I can see it in her eyes when she talks about you. I can feel it when you’re around her. And, besides, you did a very brave thing.”
Actually, he’d done two very brave things. One, he was playing double agent, spying on Faris and reporting back to Ronan and Nyx on how the God of Heaven’s Army was plotting against the other gods. And two, he was protecting the secret of Bella’s origin. But I didn’t elaborate. There could have been gods watching.
“And you care about her.”
Harker said nothing.
“It’s not a mortal failing in an angel to care about another person,” I told him.
A dark look crossed Harker’s face. “Nowadays, Leda, it just might be. The Pioneers exploited our weaknesses, our human connections. Legion soldiers betrayed us in order to protect the ones they loved. None of us can afford to have weaknesses, especially not angels.”
“We’ll get the Pioneers, Harker. They won’t use our people again.”
Determination gleamed in his eyes. “Yes, we’ll get the Pioneers. And the next threat. And the next one after that. We will always get them in the end. But what about the people we put at risk in the meantime? What about the people we lose?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Stop,” I said gently. “You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking like this. You can’t isolate yourself from the world.”
“That’s how the Legion wants us to be: isolated, alone, no weaknesses in our armor.”