Psychic's Spell (Legion of Angels Book 6)

by Ella Summers

  A strangled, incomprehensible sound broke my lips. I couldn’t even think straight, let alone speak.

  He stroked his hand down my face. “Oh, Leda. If only we had more time.”

  “Make time.” I was proud of myself that the words had come out. And that I’d sounded so firm, so commanding.

  He chuckled. “Not now, love. I have no intention of rushing it.” His hand traced my side slowly, so torturously close to my breasts. “Indeed I will torture you many times over before the night is through.” His mouth brushed against my neck.

  “Is that a threat or a promise, angel?” I choked out, my voice a tormented, inhuman growl. I resisted the urge to throw him against the wall and give into the agonizing hunger that was consuming me, that was threatening to burst out with every deafening throb of my pulse.

  “Each gift of magic comes with new powers. Magic we use in battle to kill monsters and defeat our foes.”

  Where was he going with this? And why wasn’t he touching me?

  “But that is only one side,” he said. “Each magic gift, each power, opens up new ways to make love.”

  Like the water elemental magic in the pool at Storm Castle, I remembered. The memory was like a phantom, fiery kiss, a wicked twist of pleasure uncurling inside of me.

  He held my chin between his fingers and whispered hotly against my face, “When I return, I will give you a lengthy demonstration.”

  “Lengthy?” My legs shook.

  “Oh, yes. I expect it to last hours.”

  I hiked up my skirt, hooked my fingers under the band of my panties, and tossed them to the ground at his feet.

  His eyes looked at the lacy red panties, then slid across my body. “You’re tempting me.”

  “You’ve proven amenable in the past,” I said without a shred of shame.

  A breeze kissed my skin. Soft and hot, it ran along the inside of my thigh with excruciating slowness. A soft moan broke free of my lips. Gods, I had to have him and it had to be now.

  “What is that?” I gasped.

  “A taste of what’s to come.” Quick, silken, his magic slipped inside of me, drowning me in pleasure.

  “What is to come?” I whimpered. “Death by magic?”

  Chuckling, his chest brushed against my mine, and my nipples were on fire. My back arched, my legs spread, and I dug my nails into his skin, pulling him in closer.

  “Oh, Pandora, you can’t even begin to comprehend how much I want you,” he whispered into my ear, his breath melting against my skin.

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” I said, my voice croaking.

  Nero’s lips brushed softly against mine. “I can hardly wait to have you again,” he whispered into my mouth.

  Then, like a splash of icy water, he pulled away. “But it will have to wait,” he said with a wicked smile. “Back to work.”

  11

  Savage Civilization

  Nero and I left the room and went back to the hallway. He faced the others with a perfectly composed, perfectly professional face. I wished I could have said the same, but truth be told, I was rather distracted with thoughts of his promise. But it was a good distraction. That constant tight knot in my stomach, wound up with worry over my sisters, had loosened a bit, and the memories of me interrogating the mercenaries were no longer playing in a constant loop inside my head.

  I realized that’s why Nero had so thoroughly seduced me. He’d taken me away from my worries and freed my mind from its prison of guilt. Granted, I was still fired up as hell to free my sisters and see the bastards who’d taken them face justice, but I was calmer now, even serene. The rage had fizzled out. Only calm, clear-headed determination remained.

  “So, are you ready to go?” Harker asked Nero.

  His eyes twinkled as he looked from me to Nero. He knew what we’d been doing. And from the looks of it, so did everyone else. Well, let them know. I wasn’t ashamed.

  Frowning, Kendra looked at me like she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Jace, on the other hand, appeared totally uncomfortable, the most awkward I’d ever seen him. It was as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands; he eventually opted for linking them behind his back. He’d diverted his gaze away from me and Nero.

  It was then that I realized Nero had a second purpose to what he’d done. Two purposes, so like an angel. By covering me in his magic, he was demonstrating to everyone here that I was his. The message was obviously directed mainly at Jace.

  “Let’s move out.” Nero motioned for Harker and Kendra to follow him, then pivoted around and walked down the hall.

  Dozens of soldiers had gathered to catch a glimpse of the two visiting angels, but as soon as Nero’s procession started moving, everyone made space for them, folding back to the sides of the hallway.

  I looked at Jace. “Let’s go.”

  We walked down the hall to considerably less fanfare, though I did manage to pick up a few jealous stares from the female soldiers. I wondered how many of them would happily push me off a building to have a shot at Nero.

  We met up with Jace’s team in the armory. The team of four, none of whom I’d seen before, was far smaller than the one he’d had at the Doorway to Dusk. I wondered how many soldiers Nero had taken from Colonel Fireswift’s territory for his mission in the south. Nero’s position as Nyx’s second gave him the authority to do so, a fact which must have had his rival Colonel Fireswift in a rage.

  The muscle of Jace’s team consisted of two big guys with arms as thick as thighs and thighs as thick as tree trunks. The third soldier was a tall and slender man. There was an energy about him, a nimble bounce. An agility. I’d seen that look in street fighters. I knew the soldier would be fast and deadly with the knife on his belt. If I came across this team at night in a dark alley, I would be more concerned about him than with the two big bodybuilders.

  The fourth member of Jace’s team was a female soldier. She was very petite, even tiny. And she had a haircut that I could only describe as ‘cute’—burgundy-red hair with a jagged cut toward her jaw, parted high on the left side of her head and swept back from her face with a silver clip.

  The female soldier’s cuteness evaporated the moment she saw me. Her face fell into a scowl. Her three male comrades were just as displeased to see me. Clearly, Jace’s team had heard of me, and the stories had been far from complimentary.

  “Does your father use me as a shining example of how not to be a Legion soldier?” I asked Jace.

  “He doesn’t need to. Your reputation speaks for itself. You’re notorious,” Jace said, amused.

  I found myself unamused. So apparently my stellar reputation had preceded me to Chicago’s Legion office. And I was notorious. Great.

  Jace introduced me to the team. “Colonel Fireswift has assigned Lieutenant Pierce to me for this mission.”

  The soldiers shot me looks of disgust, tempered with contempt. I hadn’t felt this unwelcome since high school. Here I was an unwanted outsider, a rogue, an intruder.

  But I refused to let that get to me. I put on a big smile and said, “Lovely to meet you all.”

  They looked at me like I was waving around a dead chicken in my hand. Well, I guess we wouldn’t be bonding over marshmallows and campfire songs.

  As Jace began outlining the mission to his soldiers, I pulled out my phone and messaged Calli and Bella.

  Jace stopped. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m talking to my family to coordinate our attack plans,” I told him.

  “I hope you’re referring to coordinating an attack on the dessert buffet.”

  I gave him a flat look.

  “Your foster mother and sister are civilians. This is Legion business, and they have no part in it,” he declared.

  “This is about family,” I said, fire burning in my eyes. “The mercenaries took my sisters, so my family is very much a part of this. Front and center.”

  My four biggest fans in the room muttered a few disgusted comments. I pretended not to he
ar them.

  “What’s done is done,” I told Jace. “Calli and Bella are already a part of this, courtesy of Legion Regulation 136.5.”

  “Compelling support from civilian citizens in a time of emergency,” he quoted the subtitle.

  Shit, he knew that one. What were the chances? The Legion rulebook was a thick tome, a regular chihuahua killer. It was so enormous, so long-winded, that only the most sadistic members in the Legion of Angels had memorized every line. Nero had insisted that I read it, his reasoning being that you had to know the rules in order to break them. So I’d slaved through it line by line until I could quote it by heart. Jace, the son of an angel, had probably picked up the book for a bit of light reading.

  “Regulation 136.5 no longer applies here,” Jace told me. “You’re not stuck in an emergency without Legion support readily available. We have a team of Legion soldiers and resources. And, most importantly, I am in charge of this mission.”

  His soldiers were perfectly still, but I could see the vicious pleasure gleaming in their eyes. I totally loved them all already.

  Until now, I’d gotten pretty far by cherry-picking regulation lines, but that wasn’t working with Jace. He was really motivated to become an angel, and knowing every rule by heart was just another tick on the aspiring angel checklist. He’d decided we were in a competition to see who became an angel first, and maybe we were.

  Well, if this was a competition, then so be it. I could use an added kick to make me advance up the hierarchy, to get the magic I needed to save Zane. Jace was a worthy challenger. He was hard-working, well-trained, and motivated. He’d pulled ahead of me in the race, so I couldn’t afford to slack off.

  “Your family needs to stay out of our way. And out of Legion business,” he declared.

  He was certainly saying all the right things, everything the Legion told him he was supposed to say. Jace lived and breathed the Legion of Angels. For a Legion brat, the offspring of an angel, these rules gave meaning and purpose to their lives. They took comfort in knowing these boundaries were there. Rather than a noose to hang themselves on, they saw the Legion rules as a safety net that would catch them if they fell.

  I knew I shouldn’t have been mad at Jace for doing his job, but some part of me was upset he was sticking to rules that put the Legion’s wishes over saving innocent lives. I tried to swallow that side of myself, that angry voice screaming to get out and tear down the artificial order, to topple those ivory towers and split the marble-paved roads of this savage civilization.

  I shook myself free of those thoughts. What was all that? What was that burning need to destroy and rebuild the world in my own image? It certainly wasn’t me. Or at least it was not who I wanted to be. The stress must have been getting to me. I was just frustrated that I couldn’t do more to save my sisters because there were all these barriers to work around and rules tying me up.

  I pushed those destructive thoughts from my head and swallowed my frustration. Working with Jace, using the Legion’s resources, was still my best bet to save my sisters. I tuned back into the conversation.

  “There’s a snowstorm raging all across the Field of Tears,” Jace was saying.

  That’s what the monsters’ magic had done to the world. It had thrown the weather so completely out of whack that we regularly had impossibilities like snow in summer and hurricanes in the desert.

  “As soon as the storm clears, we’ll head out across the Field of Tears to Crow’s Crown,” Jace continued.

  He instructed his team to load up the truck so we’d be ready to drive out as soon as the storm on the plains died down, then he dismissed them.

  What’s your status? I texted Bella as the four soldiers went off in a very orderly way.

  Calli is looking at guns, Bella replied.

  That would take awhile. Calli shopped for guns like other women shopped for lingerie.

  I’ve restocked on potion ingredients, Bella added. I’ve added more things that blow up. Just for you.

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? On the other hand, well, I did like things that went boom.

  Get some of those fireworks ones like you bought me for my birthday, I told her.

  Magic Cocktails.

  Yep, those are the ones. They’re great, I typed back.

  How long did it take you to go through them all?

  About five minutes.

  Silence.

  See it this way, Bella. I’ve never taken out that many monsters so quickly. I just tossed the Magic Cocktails and then all the beasties blew up. It was rather epic.

  The silence stretched on.

  Bella?

  I’m buying enough ingredients to make another ten Magic Cocktails, she wrote back. That brings us up to twenty altogether.

  Will that be enough?

  Of course, she replied. No one could possibly need more than that.

  Pause.

  Bella?

  Stand by, she wrote back.

  I tapped my fingers against my phone.

  Calli reminded me of who we’re talking about, Bella added. So we got enough supplies for me to make you thirty Magic Cocktails. That’s the most I can carry.

  I’ll try not to blow up any of us, I promised.

  I’ve got a potion for that.

  A cure for being blown up?

  Yes, it’s still in the early stages. Right now, it can regrow as much as a hand.

  Well, let’s hope we won’t need it, I typed. The team is on standby right now. We have to wait until the snowstorm over the Field of Tears clears. I’ll let you know when we head out.

  Tucking my phone into my hoodie’s pocket, I looked at Jace. We were alone in the room.

  “I told you your family cannot be a part of this mission,” he said calmly, confident in the cloak of his authority.

  “But that doesn’t mean they can’t go to Crow’s Crown and try to free the kidnapped victims themselves.”

  “I could declare Crow’s Crown off limits to civilians.”

  “But you won’t,” I told him. “Because despite what you tell your father, you actually don’t aspire to be an asshole.”

  He watched me in silence, mulling over my words. Finally, he said, “You should be careful, Leda. Mixing your personal and professional lives could get us all killed.”

  “My family was tracking criminals across the plains of monsters long before you joined the Legion, Jace. The plains are a rough and dirty place, not orderly, not civilized. My family and I are right at home there. Just as your father proclaims, as your soldiers all believe, I am fundamentally a savage at my core.”

  Jace winced at the statement, of the accusatory tone in my voice and the fire burning in my eyes. Even as outrage gripped me, I tried to calm myself, to remember that Jace was my friend and that he was just trying to do his job. He was living in conflict between two sides: personal friendships and professional aspirations. It must have been really hard for him to find a balance.

  “My family won’t get in the way,” I said, softening my tone. I set my hand on his shoulder. “We are a powerful force together, united, in sync. We might just make the difference between success and failure in this mission.”

  “They are compromising your priorities. If it’s a choice between saving your sisters and catching the deserter, which one would you choose?”

  Then, looking like he knew the answer all too well, Jace left the room—and left me with those thoughts.

  The thing was, he was completely right. I’d choose saving my sisters over capturing Davenport in a heartbeat. I didn’t even need to think about it. Did that make me a bad soldier? Probably. But I would think of a way to do both, to rescue my sisters and capture the deserter. I would make it work. Somehow.

  With those thoughts buzzing around in my head, I headed for the gym. I needed to clear my mind, to take solace in my training, to work so hard that I didn’t have enough energy left to worry.

  In the gym, I went to the panel on the wall and skimmed through th
e training modes until I found the telekinetic challenges. Through it all, through all the conspiracies and my personal soap operas, I had to prepare for the next level, to train my telekinetic resistance so that I might gain the gods’ gift of Psychic’s Spell. Some elusive something was standing in my way, blocking my ability to access this branch of magic. I didn’t know what it was, but I was determined to power through it. As Nero had said earlier, if you hit a wall hard enough for long enough, eventually your persistence would win out and you’d break through. He’d been talking about monsters, but that strategy worked pretty well with most things.

  As I selected the obstacle course from the illustrated menu, I wondered if it was just all in my head. Was it only my own mind standing in my way? Or had I reached the end of the line, the end of my magical potential? Had it been arrogant of me to think that I would just simply rise to the top? Most Legion soldiers never became angels. Not by a long shot.

  But even if I might be doomed to fail, I had to try. I was not a quitter, especially not after I’d come so far. I hit the button for Telekinetic Course 004, and the machines hummed to life, building up the challenges before my eyes.

  My first challenge involved crossing a passageway of spelled telekinetic swords. The path was tight, leaving little room to maneuver around the belligerent swords. I lifted my own sword to parry the strikes, each clash of the blades exploding with telekinetic magic that tore down my arms, rumbling to my core. The surges of psychic energy upset my balance, my equilibrium. I stumbled sideways, twisting my ankle as I hit the wall. Gritting my teeth, I pushed forward and endured, fighting through the swords to the very end.

  The next obstacle followed immediately, allowing no respite. The walls of the labyrinth moved, constantly shifting, making it damn near impossible to navigate. As I was trying to find some pattern in the seeming chaos, a wall slammed into me, as though the labyrinth had grown impatient with me to move faster through the challenges. It must have been programmed by an angel.

  The walls began moving faster. They were twirling and spinning all around me. I ran, sliding and diving between them, trying to make my way through the course. I avoided a wall, only to have another slam into me. It felt like being hit with a hammer of telekinetic magic. As I shook the pain from my body, another wall closed behind me. I was trapped.