by Ella Summers
“That’s gods, not angels. And I think the gods have better things to do than watch us eat lunch.”
I scratched the kitten behind its ears. It purred deeply, nestling up against me. The act of petting it was surprisingly soothing. It was then that I realized Nero’s gift of a kitten was about more than having someone to cuddle when he was gone. Petting a cat was relaxing, soothing. Nero knew my emotions were all over the place after becoming an angel, and he was trying to help me regain some equilibrium. It was such a sweet gesture that I nearly cried.
Ivy set her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Swallowing my bubbling emotions, I wiped my wet eyes. “Fine,” I told her brightly. “Just fine.”
I’d thought I’d been handling my wild angel emotions pretty well for the past week, at least in public. And now here I was again, weeping in front of everyone. Talk about regression.
Something crashed. My kitten sprang up into the air, then scuttled under the table. I looked down at the trembling white fur ball hiding between my feet.
I scanned the canteen for the source of the crashing noise. Across the room, a table had overturned. Two female soldiers were locked in a wrestling match, rolling over the scattered remains of broken plates and glasses.
Every soldier in the room was watching them fight. No one even tried to stop them. Weird. Granted, fights didn’t break out that often in the middle of lunch, but if they had, they were quickly subdued. What were the guards waiting for?
“They are waiting for you, Leda,” Drake told me. “You have to step in and stop the fight. You are the ranking officer here.”
Oh, right. Harker wasn’t here, and I was an angel. My transformation had come so suddenly, so abruptly, that it was easy to forget what I was now.
I waved to the pair of Legion security guards standing on either side of the door. They moved in to stop the fight, but the dueling soldiers pushed them back, tossing them right through the window.
I jumped up and moved between the two fighters. They blasted me away with a barrage of firebombs.
“For two people who are trying to kill each other, you sure coordinated that well,” I grumbled under my breath as I pushed free from the debris they’d buried me under.
I pushed out my hands. A powerful, explosive pulse of psychic magic punched out from me, knocking the dueling soldiers unconscious.
A hundred pairs of eyes gaped at me. No one in the canteen was talking, but they were all staring. Some of them were looking at me with wide-eyed devotion. Over the years, I’d seen many people look at angels like that, but it felt so weird to be the object of that devotion.
“It seems like Soren’s weird behavior is no longer an isolated incident,” I told my friends as they closed in beside me.
5
Angel of Chaos
I levitated the two unconscious soldiers with my telekinetic magic. “Finish your meal,” I told my friends. “I’m taking them to Nerissa.” I took a step, then glanced over my shoulder, looking at my kitten huddling under the table. “Here, kitty, kitty.”
She must have decided I was an acceptable companion because she abandoned the shelter of the table to come to me.
As I left the room, my magic carrying the two soldiers down the hall, my little kitten trotting by my side, voices burst to life in the canteen. I knew they were gossiping about me, but I didn’t care to listen.
“Go away,” a harried voice called out from behind stacks of books as I stepped into Nerissa’s office.
“Nerissa?”
Nerissa peeked over the top of the book stacks. “Oh, it’s you, Leda.” She stepped out from behind her desk. “I thought it was Dr. Young again. He’s been nagging me every five minutes, trying to commandeer my magic microscope for his silly vampire blood study. He had a perfectly functional one until this morning. Is it my fault he spilled the leftover milk from his chocolate puffs cereal all over it, now I ask you?”
“I didn’t even know we had chocolate puffs cereal.”
I would have totally gone for that kind of breakfast. It sure beat the unflavored oatmeal the canteen usually served.
“The offending chocolate puffs came from Dr. Young’s private supply. I told him it’s not good to eat where you w—”
Suddenly, Nerissa, the Legion’s gossip queen, stopped and looked at me—or, more accurately, at what was floating in the air before me.
“Leda, why are you bringing me bodies?” Her eyes narrowed, and she added, “Again.”
“They’re alive this time.”
“Well, that’s an improvement at least,” she said drily.
“That remains to be seen. They suddenly started fighting in the canteen.” I set the sleeping soldiers down on two of the cots in Nerissa’s lab. “They were at each other’s throats. I think they would have killed each other if I hadn’t stepped in.”
Nerissa glanced down at them. “More soldiers acting strangely. Like Soren.”
“There are similarities,” I agreed. “Soren fell into a blind panic. These two soldiers fell into a blind rage. They wouldn’t listen to anyone. They knew only attacking.”
“In both cases, their emotions overpowered their minds, their higher reasoning,” Nerissa said. She glanced down at my kitten. “What’s this?”
“My cat.”
“When did you get a cat?”
“Just now. Nero sent her to me.”
Nerissa considered the cat. “She’s cute.”
I grinned. “I know.” I returned my attention to the sleeping soldiers. “Let’s see what they have to say for themselves.” I slapped their faces. When that didn’t wake them, I grabbed two drink glasses and headed for the sink.
“What are you doing?” Nerissa asked me.
I filled the two glasses with water.
“You can’t mean to—”
I tossed cold water on the soldiers’ faces. They both jumped up like they’d been electrocuted. Their eyes darted around wildly, looking for the person who’d attacked them with cold water. Their gaze fell on me—and the fight went right out of them, like a deflated balloon. Rather than murderous as they’d been in the canteen, they looked merely confused.
Right then, Ivy walked into the lab. Her eyes immediately honed in on the puddle. “Why is there water all over the floor?”
“Leda,” Nerissa replied with a sigh. She glanced at the puddle and muttered something about liquids and sensitive magic equipment.
“Take my cat back to my apartment would you, Ivy?” I asked my friend.
The two soldiers were blinking and looking around in apparent confusion. They seemed to be normal again, albeit a bit dazed, but I wasn’t taking any chances. If they went berserk again, I didn’t want them trampling my little kitten.
“Sure thing,” Ivy told me. She lifted the cat into her arms and carried her out of the room.
“Do you know who I am?” I snapped my fingers at the dazed soldiers to get their attention.
“Pandora,” said one of them.
“The Angel of Chaos,” added the other.
“The Angel of Chaos, you say?” I nodded in approval. “I like that. I like it a lot. In fact, I think I’ll adopt it.” I made a mental note to have the seamstress stitch the title onto all my jackets. Then I returned my attention to the two soldiers. “Do you know where you are?”
“In Dr. Harding’s office,” said the second soldier.
“And do you know how you got here?”
“We were talking. Then I was suddenly overcome with rage,” said the first soldier.
“As was I,” said the second. “I jumped at her.”
“And I jumped at her, right over the table between us.”
“We pushed back the guards.”
“We pushed you back.”
They looked at me, guilt painted across both their faces. They were worried that I’d punish them.
“And then what happened?” I prompted them.
“You knocked us out.”
�
��And then we woke up here.”
“And the rage that overcame you?” I asked.
“Gone.”
“Nothing but a distant memory.”
“Just like what happened with Soren,” Nerissa said.
I glanced at her. “Did you learn anything from your tests on Soren?”
“There was nothing unusual in his magic or body. No signs of any foreign influence.”
I nodded at the two soldiers. “And them?”
Nerissa looked at the magic samples she’d collected from them. “They are normal too.”
“This is different than what happened with Stash’s army,” I said.
“Yes. I can find no evidence of anything controlling any of them.”
“Nothing you can detect,” I pointed out. “But maybe you can only detect it when they are acting strangely.”
“Where are you going with this?” Nerissa asked me.
“The next time someone goes berserk, we need to test them while they are berserk.”
“How do you know it will happen again?”
“Experience,” I replied. “I’m the Angel of Chaos, remember? Disasters are pulled in by me. They gravitate toward me. Trust me. Whatever weird thing is going on, it will happen again. And we have to be ready.”
Nerissa returned to testing her patients, and I returned to my room. But first I took a quick detour to the kitchen to grab some snacks. The disturbance in the canteen had cut my meal short.
I met Harker on the final staircase up to the top floor, a corridor reserved for angels and highly ranked Legion officers.
“I heard what happened in the canteen,” he said. “Where are the soldiers involved in the altercation?”
“In Nerissa’s office. She is examining them. They remember doing everything and feeling they had to do it, but they can’t say what made them lose control.”
“That’s strikingly similar to what you wrote to me about Captain Diaz’s odd behavior.”
“Yes, it seems we have an epidemic.”
“But what’s the cause?” Harker said. “And what’s behind it?”
“The demons,” I decided. “I think they are testing a new weapon on us, one that causes our soldiers to lose control over their emotions. Panic in Soren’s case. Anger in the incident with the two soldiers in the canteen. Because if we have no control, it doesn’t matter how much magic we have. The demons’ army will be able to run us right over, and we’ll be too busy cowering in fear or fighting one another to stop them. We’ll never put up a fight.”
“It does indeed sound like the sort of underhanded strategy the demons would employ,” Harker agreed. “Very cloak and dagger.”
“We should have our scientists start working immediately on a way to detect this influence,” I said. “The cause could be anything. Infecting people with a potion. A curse. Telepathic manipulation.”
“That’s a very broad spectrum. We need to narrow it down. Leda, I want you to investigate what the three affected soldiers were doing in the days leading up to these incidents. Try to find similarities. What missions they were on. What they ate. What people they interacted with.”
“I’ll get started as soon as I get changed.” I indicated the slashes in my uniform, courtesy of the two fighting soldiers in the canteen. Rolling over broken glass wasn’t any more fun than it sounded.
“Leda, be careful. There’s a chance whatever this thing is, it’s contagious.”
That was a definite possibility. The demons’ weapon would be most effective if it spread quickly, and the best way to accomplish that was to let us infect one another. It would spread through the Legion like wildfire, consuming us even before we knew it was there.
I smiled. “Am I not always careful?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Harker?” I said as he moved away.
He turned back toward me.
“You ordered my team to subdue me and haul me back here if things got tough out there,” I said, and I wasn’t smiling this time.
“I ordered them to save you from your own foolishness.”
“It was not your call to make. Nyx gave me the mission to find Soren and bring him back here, not you.”
“It was Nyx who instructed me to protect you. With force if necessary,” he added.
I wasn’t surprised. Nyx had her own plans for me. Those plans were pretty contingent on my survival.
“Don’t take it personally, Leda. Nyx’s priority, the Legion’s priority, is to protect the Earth. And that means not letting angels throw away their lives in hopeless situations.”
“It wasn’t hopeless. I saved Soren, and I brought him back alive.”
“Indeed you did,” Harker agreed, smiling.
He looked proud of me. I knew he hadn’t enjoyed telling my team to bring me back alive, in chains if necessary, but he had to follow Nyx’s orders.
“And if I had left when things got tough, if I hadn’t brought Soren back, we would be even further from figuring out what the demons are up to,” I pointed out.
“Everyone is talking about what you did on the Black Plains,” Harker said, his voice low. “How you compelled the monsters to run away, right at the moment when they had you all completely cornered and were moving in to kill you.”
“News travels fast,” I muttered.
“That kind of news does. How did you do it?”
I looked up and down the corridor. No one was around—that I could see. That didn’t mean someone wasn’t listening. I opened my apartment door and waved at Harker to follow me inside.
He frowned. “As you said, news travels fast. I don’t need Nero to hear rumors of me following you into your apartment.”
“Better that than the rumors that would spread if we continued this conversation out here. Besides, Nero knows you only have eyes for Bella.”
“What a man knows means little when emotions flare. These recent incidents have shown us that.” But Harker followed me into my apartment anyway.
My new kitten was waiting inside, perched atop a giant cat cushion. A toy mouse held securely between her paws, she purred in victory. My living room was filled with cat trees, jungle gyms, toys, and food dishes. Wow, Ivy worked fast. How had she gotten all these cat things already? She’d only left Nerissa’s office half an hour at most.
Harker’s gaze fell on the kitten. “You have a new roommate? Or did you shift Nero into a cat?”
“No,” I laughed. “Nero sent me a pet cat to cuddle.”
“It’s smaller than the cat Leila sent Basanti,” Harker said, amused.
“She’s still a kitten. She’ll grow.”
“But I have to say that Basanti’s cat doesn’t have a diamond collar.” Harker chuckled. “Nero probably knew that when he made a move to upstage Leila.”
I shrugged. “Well, no one ever accused angels of being subtle.”
“Neither is your friend Ivy.”
He glanced at the kitten’s giant purple sleeping cushion. It was made in the shape of a mouse with angel wings. It looked completely ridiculous, but my kitten seemed to love it.
“Ok, Leda, spill the beans. What really happened with the beasts on the Black Plains? Rumor has it that controlling them is your unique angel power.”
I gave him a pointed look.
In response, he pulled the blueberry-sized Magitech device out of his jacket pocket and put up a magic privacy screen.
I watched the pulsing yellow ball hovering between us. “Have you acquired any unique powers since becoming an angel?”
“Not yet.”
“Neither have I. Controlling beasts isn’t some new power I’ve acquired with my transformation. I did it before, back when I wasn’t an angel at all.”
“When?”
“I first learned I could control monsters last year when Nero and I went to the Lost City. He showed me how to do it.”
Harker blinked in surprise. “Nero can control monsters too?”
“Yes, but no
t as well as I can. I can control them because of my magic. It’s light and dark, just like the beasts. And the stronger my light magic and dark magic get, the better I can control the monsters.”
“And Nero? How can he control them? He has only light magic.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Your ability to control the monsters grows as your magic does.”
“Yes.”
“The gods must know by now what happened on the plains,” he said. “You saved your team by driving back the monsters, without even lifting a sword, just by looking at them.”
“I had to protect my team.”
“Everyone is talking about it, Leda. You did what the gods have been trying to accomplish for centuries: regain control over the monsters. They will come calling.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Then I’d better be ready when they do.”
“Leda…”
“Will you train with me?”
“You know I will, but I’m not sure it will be enough if the gods come.”
“Maybe not, but it would help considerably if I could at least fly in a straight line.”
“Indeed,” Harker laughed.
“I have to get changed and then get to work tracking the three affected soldiers’ movements over the last few weeks,” I said. “But let’s train tonight.”
“Ok.” He set his hand on my shoulder, looking at me like he was standing in the presence of a doomed woman.
“I’m not dead yet.”
“It’s not your life I’m worried about, Leda. I don’t think the gods will kill you if they find out what you are, not once they realize you can control monsters. It’s your freedom that’s in danger.”
“Thanks for being a good friend. Again.”
He collected his magic orb. “Don’t mention it.”
After he left my apartment, I pulled a fresh leather uniform out of my closet. I emerged from my bedroom clean, shiny, and fully decked out in black leather.
“Ok, kitty,” I said, petting her softly on her head. “Now let’s get to the bottom of the demons’ scheme.”
6
