by Ella Summers
I draped my arms over his shoulders and moved in, kissing him lightly. “I like the way your wicked mind works, Windstriker.”
12
Surprise
I awoke early in the morning, as the first rays of the sun hit the house.
I sat up on the sofa and looked at Nero. “You were supposed to take the first watch, not stay up the whole night while I slept.”
“I like watching you sleep.” He leaned over me and tucked a wayward strand of hair away from my face. “You snore so contently.”
“Angels don’t snore, remember?” I kissed his hand. “I even read it in one of my textbooks.”
Nero pulled me up and drew me in close to him. He kissed the top of my head.
I glanced behind us and saw Calli’s bedroom door was open. So were Zane’s, Tessa’s, and Gin’s.
“The four of them left early to go shopping for a potion Bella said would help her heal and calm her nerves,” Nero told me.
Purgatory’s potions market opened early.
“So it’s only Harker and Bella here in the house with us?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“How are they doing?”
“Bella has been asleep all night. And an hour ago, I ordered Harker to take a nap because he looked like shit.”
I laughed.
“Harker tried to argue with me, but he backed down when I told him he won’t be able to protect Bella properly in that sorry state. He fell asleep immediately.”
“Yeah, I can hear him snoring,” I chuckled.
Nero’s brows arched. “I thought angels don’t snore.”
“You tell me. You’ve read every book in the Legion’s extensive library.”
“Perhaps not every book.”
“But most of them.”
“Yes,” he said, a bit smugly. “I had considerably more time on my hands before you came around.”
I winked at him. “But considerably less fun too.”
“True.”
“We’re effectively alone in the house.” I gave him my best rendition of bedroom eyes.
“I know that look.”
“What look?”
“The look on your face, Leda. It means trouble.”
I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Me? Trouble? Never.”
“It runs in your whole family,” Nero told me. “Your sister Tessa blew me a kiss as they all headed out of the house this morning.”
“Oh, was my sister flirting with you?” Butterfly laughter fluttered in my stomach—or maybe that was just last night’s dinner.
“Your sister always flirts with me, except when she can flirt with Damiel.”
“Then I’ll make sure to invite your father the next time we come over here. And your mother too. It wouldn’t be a real family dinner without some drama.”
“Leda, you enjoy stoking the fire far too much,” Nero said, wrapping his arms around me.
“Was that an invitation to stoke your fire, General?”
He snorted. “I hope your jokes improve as the day progresses.”
“I doubt it. I wasted all my weekly snark on Colonel Fireswift yesterday. And he didn’t even flinch. Ok, maybe he did flinch once or twice. In horror.”
“Fireswift will survive. And suffering builds character.”
“More words of wisdom from your father?” I teased.
“Damiel isn’t wrong about everything.”
That was high praise among angels.
“Nice to hear you two are getting along better,” I said.
“We haven’t tried to kill each other yet this month.”
“Oh, come now. Don’t be so melodramatic.” I leaned in and kissed him. “Even though I know melodrama is very befitting of an angel. Especially the male angels. You’re such drama queens. That’s why Tessa loves you all so much.”
Nero’s face was as hard as granite. “You don’t say.”
“But I think my sister is just messing with you and Damiel to get a reaction out of you.”
“I wonder where she could have learned that,” Nero said drily.
My smile was pure innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The first time we met, you propositioned me.”
“I did no such thing!” I protested.
“You did,” he replied with a smooth smile. “When I asked why you wanted to join the Legion, you said, and I quote, ‘I hear angels are great in the sack’.”
“That was not a proposition. It was my aggravation shining through at being asked that question twenty million times.”
Nero pressed on, undaunted. “And then you offered to tell me your bra size.”
“That was a joke!”
“Later you made mention to me of a ‘second date’.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know, for someone with such a picture-perfect memory, you sure have a talent for rearranging reality to suit your purpose.”
“Those are hardly mutually-exclusive skills. In fact, they are quite complementary. As I’ve told you many times, Pandora, you have to know the rules inside-out in order to bend them to your needs.”
“Or outright break them.”
He nodded. “If necessary.”
“Necessary.” I chuckled. “While we’re on the topic of the sins of our first encounter, my love, was it truly necessary for you to interview me by sending me after three vampires? What do the Legion’s regulations say about that?”
“An angel is given great leeway when it comes to commanding his territory and everyone in it.” His words were possessive, his eyes glowing with magic.
“I wasn’t yours yet,” I told him.
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Pandora.” He tucked my hair behind my ears, his touch featherlight. “You were mine from the moment we met.”
He was so close, only a sliver of space separated our bodies. If I drew in a deep breath, I’d brush against him.
“And I was yours from the moment I saw you in my dreams, the night before we met.” His voice was melodic, drawing me in. “Something reached out to me across time and space and drew me to you.”
“Grace.”
“No, not Grace. She only sent me the dreams. There are forces greater than gods or demons at work here, Leda.”
“Don’t allow the gods and demons to hear you say that.”
“We were always meant to be, Leda. The song-and-dance between us that started the moment we met was only a formality.”
I wet my lips. “A very fun formality.”
“Yes.”
I finally dared to breathe—and brushed against the hard wall of his chest. His hands were on my hips, gripping me to him. My fingers scraped down his back. His tongue ravaged my mouth.
“Nero, I want you so much,” I muttered.
I hadn’t had him inside of me since we’d found out I was pregnant. And I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Climbing onto his lap, every moment without you is agony.” I ground myself against him in desperate anticipation.
“Stop it, Leda,” he whispered.
But he wasn’t stopping. His kisses had grown fiercer, his hands savage.
“Yes,” I moaned. “Like that.”
“We can’t,” he said, his voice rough. “You know that.”
“I don’t care about the rules, Nero. And neither do you.”
“No, right now I don’t care about any rules.” He kissed me. “But I do care about you. I love you.” He slid lower to kiss my belly. “And I love you,” he said, speaking directly to our daughter.
He slid up and kissed me once more on my lips. Then he pulled me into an embrace.
“I knew I should have thrown my panties at you,” I grumbled.
Magic flashed in Nero’s eyes. “Don’t make me handcuff you to the desk, Pandora.”
Then we both had a good laugh over that particular memory.
“How scandalous of you to make out in Callista’s living room,” a voice echoed off the walls.
I knew that voice. I glanced over the back of the sofa and met Damiel’s amused eyes. Cadence stood beside him, her hands folded in front of her, looking very serene.
“What do you want, Damiel?” Nero demanded.
“You don’t look very happy to see me,” Damiel said.
“How observant of you.”
Damiel wasn’t fazed. His smile persisted. “Being observant goes with the job,” he said lightly. “I was the Legion’s first Master Interrogator, after all. And, honestly, I’m surprised Nyx hasn’t offered me the job again.”
“The position is already filled,” I told him.
Damiel gave his hand a dismissive wave. “By a brute. Xerxes Fireswift has all the subtlety of a bloody spiked mace.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“The fact that Nyx hasn’t offered you the job has nothing to do with Fireswift—and everything to do with you,” Nero told his father.
Damiel laughed softly. “Indeed. I’m not very popular with the other angels. Perhaps I should join Leda in taking remedial angel lessons.” His eyes twinkled. He looked very amused—at my expense.
“Yes, you should join me,” I shot back. “I’m sure Colonel Fireswift would enjoy telling you how a proper angel must behave.”
Damiel laughed out loud. I thought the walls might tumble down from his amusement.
“Shush,” I chided him. “You’re going to wake up the sleeping angel.”
“Sunstorm could sleep through an earthquake.” But Damiel gave me a graceful bow; the walls stopped trembling.
“What are you doing here anyway?” Nero’s eyes hardened. “And how did you make it past the defenses I set up?”
“The magic defenses guarding this house are very impressive, but you need to rethink your strategy, Nero,” Damiel replied. “The alarms go off when someone or something physically crosses the perimeter. Your mother and I never crossed the perimeter because we teleported right inside of it.”
Nero seemed to be mulling that over. He was likely already trying to think up a workaround to the inconvenience caused by teleportation magic.
“As to your other question,” Cadence said. “We’re here because we need to tell you something important.”
Nero looked concerned, like he was expecting another disaster. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
“What’s happened?” Nero said it like he was asking who’d died.
“Oh, it’s nothing like that, Nero. Nothing tragic. It’s good news actually.” Cadence’s gaze flickered to Damiel. She took his hand. Then she looked at Nero again. “I’m pregnant.”
13
Apocalypse in the Plural
Nero just sat there and said nothing. I could understand his surprise. Not long ago, he’d thought both of his parents were dead, and now they were not only alive, they were going to have another child. A sibling for Nero, right when he was about to become a father.
Nero’s gaze shifted from Cadence, to Damiel, then back to Cadence. “How did this happen?”
“I trust I don’t need to explain how babies are made.” Damiel’s gaze dropped to my belly, then his eyes met Nero’s and he winked.
Cadence was more serious. “As you know, after your wedding, Damiel and I went on a quest to retrieve several immortal artifacts. During that quest, I had the Fever. And now we’re going to have a baby.”
I stood up, grasping her hands in mine. I gave them a squeeze. “That’s great.”
Cadence looked so happy she could hardly contain herself. “After Eva and Jiro learned of my pregnancy, they asked us to come back to them and train as Keepers. An Immortal child has not been born in so long. This truly marks the rebirth of a dying race—or, as some people thought, a completely dead race. We had plans to find others of Immortal blood, those who escaped the hunters.”
“But those plans can wait,” Damiel said. “The fight will come here soon, and Earth will be ground zero for the war between the Guardians, gods, and demons.”
“Damiel and I aren’t going to sit this one out. This is my home first and it will always be,” Cadence declared.
A sudden shrill, ear-splitting noise tortured my eardrums.
I covered my ears. “What the hell is that?”
“My alarms,” Nero told me. “Someone has tried to penetrate my defenses. Let me wake up Harker to guard the house, then we’ll check it out.”
“No need.” Harker came out of Bella’s room, rubbing his eyes. “That racket is loud enough to wake the dead. Go. I’ll keep watch here.”
We all ran outside, our magic primed. We found the intruder at the front fence. It was Nyx. The First Angel was battling the barrage of spells Nero had cast to trap any and all intruders who crossed the property line.
“Windstriker, this is your magic,” Nyx growled. “I can smell it.”
Nero waved his hand, and his spells stopped attacking Nyx. The clotheslines disengaged from her wrists and ankles, snapping back into place. The trees grew still again.
The First Angel approached us. She brushed a broken string from the clotheslines off of her uniform, then said to me, “This is your bad influence, Pandora.”
I glanced sidelong at Nero. “So this is more dignified than paintballs?” I said, snickering.
“More effective anyway,” he replied.
I grinned at him. “Nyx is right. I have influenced you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Nyx told me. “My angels used to know how to behave themselves.”
Her tone was stern, but her eyes were amused. That was the whole duality of Nyx. She was the most dignified of all angels—and yet she had a better sense of humor than she cared to admit.
We all walked back to Calli’s house and went inside. Harker was waiting there, on the sofa. He rose to his feet as soon as he spotted Nyx.
Nyx looked around the house, perhaps remembering the only other time she’d been inside, after Nero and I had returned here from the Lost City. I’d been sporting a fresh wound from an immortal weapon at the time. I still had the scar.
After she looked around, Nyx’s eyes fell on Nero and me. “Well, you’re still here.” She sounded a bit annoyed.
“My sister was attacked last night,” I said, defensively. “We think whoever is behind the attack might try again.”
“Don’t be so feisty, Pandora. Of course you can’t let your sister die.”
I thought maybe Nyx was allowing herself to show sympathy, that she understood the importance of family.
Until she spoke again. “If the Angel of Purgatory can’t even protect her own family in her own territory, then she would appear as very weak to our enemies. And those enemies would grow bold.”
Yeah, angel mind games. I should have known. So that’s where this sudden burst of supposed sympathy had come from. It wasn’t sympathy at all; it was strategy. Nyx wasn’t letting out her softer side tonight after all.
The front door flung open. Tessa and Gin rushed inside, holding Zane between them. He was bleeding. Calli brought up the rear. She closed the door after her, then holstered her guns.
Tessa and Gin set Zane down on the sofa, and I immediately started healing him.
“What happened?” I asked them.
“We were attacked outside of the potions shop. Zane was shot,” Calli told me.
“More ninjas?” I asked.
“Two people, dressed in black, yes.”
I poured more healing magic into Zane. “I did not just get back my brother only to lose him again.”
“The bullet only grazed me. I’m fine, Leda.”
“But the people who did this to you won’t be.” I’d finished healing his wound. I rose to my feet. “What happened to the ninjas?” I asked Calli.
She frowned. “They got away.”
“Leda, I don’t think this is about Bella and the grimoire we’re looking for,” Tessa said.
“What do you mean?”
“Zane was there with us last night, right next to Bell
a when the shot went off. She pushed him out of harm’s way. I think the ninjas were aiming for Zane, not Bella.”
“Someone is after Zane.” I clenched my fists. “The Guardians are after him. She was telling the truth.”
“Who was telling the truth?” Harker asked.
“The rogue Guardian. River. She said Zane was important to helping me, that he was important to my success in defeating them. Now that he’s out of the Sanctuary, the Guardians are trying to kill him.”
“You may bring your family with you,” Nyx told me.
“Am I going somewhere?” I asked.
Nyx didn’t answer my question. Instead, she looked at Cadence and Damiel. “You didn’t tell them?”
“We were leading up to it,” Damiel said.
“What could telling us that Cadence is pregnant possibly be a lead up to?” I smirked at him. “Unless you’re going to tell me that you’re moving in with us, so we can all be one big, happy family.”
“There’s been an incident.” Nyx’s voice was hard and sharp, like a crack of lightning. “Two angels were killed.”
My smirk faded. My chest tightened. “Who?”
“General Spellsmiter and Colonel Silvertongue.”
The angels General Kiros Spellsmiter and Colonel Desiree Silvertongue were brother and sister. They commanded the territories of West Australia and East Australia respectively, dividing up all of the continent between them. General Spellsmiter was also the Head of the Vanguard, an elite squad of Legion warriors.
“How were Spellsmiter and Silvertongue killed?” Nero asked Nyx.
“I sent them to the Sienna Sea.”
I’d never been to the Sienna Sea, but I knew of its reputation. Located in Australia, it was a vast expanse of red rock and no trees. And monsters. Lots of monsters. Some of the most ferocious ones in the world, in fact.
Nyx continued, “It all started when a Legion team found something unsettling during a mission on the Sienna Sea: the ruins of Darkstorm’s fortress had disappeared.”