by Ella Summers
Phantom Weapon
Like a good angel, I sat in my designated spot beside Harker at the head table in the canteen, eating pasta with vegetables, which was supposed to be very healthy. Even before the first bite, I was already wishing for a dessert. But what kind of example would that set for the other soldiers, an angel eating dessert for dinner?
I sighed. Setting a good example wasn’t all that much fun.
“In the past two days, Nerissa has run every test on the three soldiers that she could think of, and she’s found nothing,” I told Harker. “All three are acting perfectly normal again. No one else has been affected either. If this thing is contagious, it works slowly. The two soldiers went berserk two days after Soren, so we might be due for another incident soon.”
“Have you found any possible explanation for their odd behavior?” Harker asked me.
“I found that all three soldiers were in the New York office when the incidents occurred. No other Legion office has reported a similar incident, and there have been no reports of soldiers acting oddly anywhere on Earth. All three ate at this canteen in the days leading up to their outbursts, but so did all the rest of us. Two of the soldiers have not been out of the city in the last month; the third went on a mission to the Black Plains last week.”
“The Black Plains.” Harker rubbed his chin, his face contemplative.
I knew what he was thinking. “She wasn’t the first soldier affected, though, so this isn’t some curse she brought back from the wilderness. Basanti was in charge of that mission, and she’s just fine. So is everyone else on the team. Not a single one of them has displayed any symptoms.”
“Not that the three affected people are showing any symptoms anymore either,” Harker pointed out. “What else did you find?”
“I thought the Nectar might be contaminated, but none of them were promoted in the same cycle. Soren was promoted last year. Sergeant Mackerel was promoted two months ago. Corporal Dunn has not been promoted in years.”
“You’re grasping at straws now, Leda.”
“Straws are all this thing’s made of.”
Harker made a give-it-to-me gesture with his hands. “Continue.”
“Sergeant Mackerel works as a nurse in the medical ward.”
Harker perked up at that. “Has any unusual illness gone through the medical ward recently?”
“No.”
“Leda, do you enjoy torturing me?”
I gave him a half-smile. “Maybe?”
“Did you find anything of note?”
“No. I couldn’t find any origin for the demons’ weapon, and I don’t have any idea how it spreads. Nerissa couldn’t find any sign of anything in their bodies or in the bodies of anyone with whom they work closely. It is a phantom weapon.”
“You seem to have covered all the bases.”
“For all the good it did us,” I said glumly.
Sighing, he glanced down at his dinner like he suddenly found it as unappetizing as I found mine.
“Two days, and I didn’t accomplish anything.” I gritted my teeth. “It feels like crashing into a wall. Repeatedly. Or like treading in water, not going anywhere but down, struggling just to keep my head above the water.”
“You’ve mastered many magics, Leda,” Harker said. “But not patience.”
“I guess it’s more fun to blow things up than to sit by, helpless and idle.”
“So true,” Harker laughed. “So what’s your plan now?”
“Wait for another incident, and bring the affected soldier to Nerissa so she can test them while they’re still acting strangely.”
“So, wing it?”
I smirked at him. “The perfect strategy for an angel.”
“Speaking of winging it, in the meantime, I have some exercises to keep you occupied.”
“Not flying exercises, I hope.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I thought you wanted to fly.”
“I do. I just always thought flying involved more being in the air and less falling out of it and crashing into things.”
“It will,” he assured me. “Just give it time.”
“You could fly right away after becoming an angel.”
“And you can play ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ on yogurt containers. We each have our own special talents.”
He was referring to my performance at the Legion talent night in the New York office a few months ago. Most people had showed off their prowess with a weapon or how they could masterfully weave spells. I had gone for a decidedly different approach—much to the amusement of the audience, but not the angels. Harker had buried his face in his hands. While Nero had looked positively scandalized.
“Do these exercises of yours include pushups?” I asked Harker.
His brows lifted.
I sighed. Of course the exercises involved pushups. This was the Legion of Angels.
“Wing pushups,” he told me.
Goody.
“How many?” I asked.
“That depends.”
“On whether or not I’ve been a good girl?”
He laughed. “On how long you can stay conscious.”
“You’re as bad as Nero,” I told him.
“The wing pushup routine is actually Nero’s. He gave it to me to strengthen my wings so I could prolong my flight time.”
“How many wing pushups can you do in a row?”
“Two-thousand-three-hundred-and-fifty-two is my record.”
I stopped my jaw before it dropped. “I guess I’ll knock out a quick three thousand and then see how I’m feeling,” I said casually.
“You’re crazy,” he chuckled.
“It sure beats being boring.”
A ripple of excited whispers buzzed across the canteen. The soldiers parted away from the main aisle, making way for a new arrival. A small white kitten trotted down the aisle, her tail poised in the air, strutting like she owned the place. Like she was the queen.
“Her Majesty has returned from the hunt,” Harker commented.
My cat had something in her mouth. Her prey. I took a closer look. It was a dead seagull. The little kitten had grown a lot in the last two days. Her new abode suited her. She hunted in the gardens, catching her own food.
“Have a good hunt?” I asked her.
Purring, the kitten sat at my feet and dropped the dead bird into her ivory dish.
“Angel?” Harker read the name on the dish. “As in the cat of an angel? The property of an angel?”
“Angel, as in the name of an angel’s cat,” I told him.
“You named your cat Angel?”
“Yes.”
He snorted.
“It’s better than Creampuff.”
He watched the kitten eat her seagull. “She can’t be a creampuff. She’s not even white anymore. There’s blood and dirt all over her.”
“Well, she is a paws-on kind of angel.”
Harker’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.
Dramatic opera music sang from his pocket.
“I know that opera,” I said. “It’s the Airship Queen.”
A soprano voice trilled over a dramatic orchestra.
“It’s the story of a witch who is as beautiful as she is clever. Were you thinking of someone in particular when you made that song your ringtone?”
Like my sister Bella.
But Harker wasn’t laughing—not this time. He was staring solemnly at his phone screen.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“There’s been another incident.” He looked up from his phone, meeting my eyes. “Two hours ago.”
“Why are we only hearing about it now?”
Gossip spread faster than that. Within five minutes of an attack at the office, everyone would have been talking about it.
“Because it didn’t happen in New York,” he said. “It happened at the Legion office in Chicago.”
Chicago. That was the next closest Legion office.
“The demon’s curse
is spreading,” I realized.
Harker’s eyes panned back and forth across his phone. “The Legion soldier involved in this latest incident went into a rage. They barely stopped him in time.”
“In time for what?”
“Before he blew up the Legion’s Chicago office.”
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked, my stomach clenching up.
“There were a few minor injuries. No one was killed.”
“And the soldier involved?”
“He’s been locked up,” said Harker. “He remembers doing everything and being completely overwhelmed with fury. But now he’s acting completely normal again. The fury is gone.”
“And with it, our chance to test him while he was under the curse’s influence,” I sighed. “To detect it, to figure out what exactly we’re dealing with—and to try to come up with some way to counter it.”
“You should take a team to Chicago anyway, to see if you can find any clues that you missed here.”
He was right. Before I could abandon my dinner, however, a brisk flick of sharp telekinetic magic threw the doors to the canteen wide open. Colonel Fireswift strode into the room, followed by four soldiers with bright, shiny Interrogator pins on their uniforms. Every person in the canteen fell silent and watched the Interrogator procession storm down the main aisle.
Colonel Fireswift stopped before the head table. “No, you won’t be going to Chicago,” he told me. He turned to address the whole room. “In fact, none of you are going anywhere. Until this situation is neutralized, no one leaves this building. And I promise you, we will get to the bottom of it, even if I have to interrogate every last one of you.”
7
The Interrogator
The Legion’s New York office had grown considerably in the last year. There were five thousand soldiers stationed here. Interrogating them all would take weeks, if not months. To tackle this task, Colonel Fireswift would need a lot more than just the four Interrogators he’d brought with him. Perhaps, more of his people would be arriving shortly. I shuddered at the thought.
The Interrogators started off by confiscating the complete contents of my investigation. They then worked their way through the list of anyone I’d marked as a potential connecting person between the infected parties. I didn’t see the point, given that the latest incident had occurred outside this office, all the way in Chicago. And besides, I’d already gone over everything a million times and found absolutely nothing. What we needed was to test someone while they were acting strangely, not waste time chasing flimsy connections.
Which was exactly what I told Colonel Fireswift when I was called into the Interrogation chamber.
“You are here to answer questions, not to tell me what to do,” he said coolly. “When you are an Interrogator, you can have a say in how these investigations proceed.”
I seriously doubted it. Colonel Fireswift did not strike me as someone who operated his division by popular vote. He commanded and expected his Interrogators to do whatever he said. Blindly following orders was not my forte, nor would I be happy doing so day in and day out.
“You can’t make me an Interrogator, Colonel,” I said. “I’m an angel now. And Nyx doesn’t ever put two angels in the same division.”
“I don’t know how you pulled off this feat—”
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t pull off anything. It was the Everlasting telepath Athan. Unbeknown to me, he slipped Nectar into my drink to make me an angel. Then he placed Aleris’s glasses over my eyes, so I’d see where his sister was being held and save her.”
Which was mostly true, except for the very important difference that Athan had slipped me not just Nectar, but Nectar and Venom together. That had made me an angel and a dark angel in one, something Colonel Fireswift definitely did not need to know about. It was a good thing my magic had calmed down again, so I could mask my thoughts. Colonel Fireswift had no qualms about reading my deepest, darkest thoughts and condemning me for them.
“But I will find out how you skipped the queue to become an angel,” Colonel Fireswift continued, ignoring my interruption. “Frankly, I’m surprised the gods haven’t killed you for it.”
I slid my hands over the cold surfaces of the wide silver metallic chair arms. Thankfully, the restraints were currently disengaged. But in my time at the Legion, I’d witnessed how quickly that could change in the Interrogation chamber. A single word, a single glance, could doom me. My pulse quickened, a nervous pop against my skin.
Colonel Fireswift would hear my racing pulse. He would smell my panic. So I covered my uneasiness with a little humor to distract him—and myself as well.
“Maybe the gods were just so impressed with my performance in the trials that they’ve decided I’m an invaluable asset they simply can’t do without,” I said, smiling,
Colonel Fireswift frowned. “Doubtful.”
“Why?”
“You are wild, unruly, and completely replaceable.”
“If I’m so replaceable, then why are you pushing Nyx so hard to get me into your division?”
He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He seemed to be trying to find a hole in the logic I’d wrapped around myself like a suit of armor.
“Speaking of trials, when are yours?” I asked him.
“The gods have set my archangel trials for next month.” As soon as he spoke the words, his face hardened, as though he were upset with himself for being drawn into my smalltalk. “But we were not speaking of me. This is your interrogation. And if you survive it, you might just learn something that will help you when you become an Interrogator.”
He sure was certain he’d get me in his division, even though I was an angel now. I really hoped he was wrong. Two angels weren’t generally assigned to the same office or division, but I wasn’t just any angel. And Nyx knew it. She would put me wherever she could use me best, and if that meant Colonel Fireswift’s division, that’s where I’d end up. There weren’t any territories available for me to command, so she’d come up with something else for me. I really hoped she didn’t think the place she needed me most was with the Interrogators. Or with General Spellsmiter’s Vanguard.
Thinking about that made me uneasy, even more so than this interrogation.
“What would you like to know?” I asked Colonel Fireswift.
“That’s better,” he said, nodding. “Your own investigation condemns you as closely linked to the infected soldiers.”
Wow, condemned. That was a telling word, like the dour dong of a funeral bell. Nice to know he wasn’t jumping to wild conclusions.
“I definitely did not use the word ‘closely’,” I replied—calmly, I hoped. “I believe it was more like ‘loosely’. And that same investigation listed over two hundred other people in this office who’d come into contact with all three affected soldiers in the month leading up to the incidents.”
“Just over two weeks ago, you became an angel,” Colonel Fireswift said, as though I hadn’t spoken at all.
“And what does that have to do with anything?” I asked in exasperation.
“Shortly thereafter, strange things started happening at the Legion,” he continued.
“You ate bacon and eggs and a glass of orange juice this morning for breakfast.”
“How did you—”
“And a few hours later, one of your soldiers went berserk and tried to blow up the Chicago office and everyone in it.”
“My breakfast had nothing to do with that,” he snapped at me.
“And neither did my becoming an angel.”
“Flippant remarks won’t save you.”
“But my innocence will,” I said. “I had nothing to do with these strange incidents.”
Clearly unimpressed, he continued, “Nine days ago, Major Holmes, the soldier who went berserk in my office this morning, visited the New York office on his way back to Chicago. You had lunch with him that day.”
“So did the seven other people who were sitting at the head table in the cantee
n.”
“Among them, Harker Sunstorm, Basanti Somerset, and Soren Diaz. They are suspects as well.”
Gods, he was annoying.
“None of us have any idea how the demons’ curse came to us, how it spreads, how to cure it, or even how to detect it,” I told him, my patience crumbling against my fake smile.
His eyes narrowed. “You seem quite certain this is a demon curse. Why is that?”
“I am not certain, but given the facts at hand, it’s the best guess I have. The demons are powerful enough to design a magic curse like this, and they have the most to gain from the Legion imploding in on itself. They are the most likely culprit behind these occurrences.”
“You have a lot of experience with demons.”
I had a bad feeling about where this was going. “I’ve faced them before,” I said cautiously.
“For instance, when you spent several weeks with the demon Sonja.”
Yep, my bad feeling was spot on. ‘Spent’ several weeks. Like it was a vacation.
“I was Sonja’s prisoner,” I ground out. “Not her guest.”
“So you say.”
“I was being held against my will, tortured by the demon and Soulslayer, one of her dark angels.”
“Soulslayer, also known as the Legion deserter Balin Davenport, whose magic was inverted by the demons and made a dark angel,” said Colonel Fireswift.
“Yes, that charming fellow.”
“You were a prisoner, trapped far away, not even on this world. And yet here you now are, safe and sound, no longer trapped in a demon’s dungeon.”
“Nero and my family rescued me,” I told him.
“And with them, the archangel Damiel Dragonsire.”
I blinked.
“General Dragonsire has recounted to the Legion his involvement in your rescue.”
“Well, there you have it,” I said. “Straight from the mouths of angels.”
Colonel Fireswift’s mouth was tight, his eyes as hard as granite. “It’s too easy.”
“What’s too easy?”
“Your escape from Sonja. Becoming an angel. These convenient, orderly explanations.
I kept my expression neutral. “I thought the Legion appreciated orderliness.”
