by Ella Summers
Meanwhile, Nero was interrogating the witch. He wanted to know where her husband had bought the monster, whether it was really Wildfoot who had sold it to him, and what had happened in the lead-up to the monster going berserk.
Angel’s tiny meow drew my attention. I followed her across the grass, to where Maxwell lay. Broken shards of metal were scattered around his body. I leaned down for a closer look. The pieces were bloody—and they looked smashed, like something heavy and strong had crushed the metal flat.
I picked up the shards—with my magic, of course, not my hands. I didn’t even know whose blood it was, or what diseases it might contain. Ivy, Drake, and Alec closed in behind me.
“What do you think they are?” I asked them.
Ivy watched the metal fragments floating in the air in front of us. “They look like the remains of a necklace or bracelet.”
Alec rolled his eyes. “Everything looks like jewelry to you.”
“Just look at that.” Ivy pointed at the shards. “Those are pieces of some kind of big ring.”
“Something magical?” Drake wondered.
“If it was magical, it didn’t help him much.” Alec glanced down at Maxwell’s body.
I gave the broken metal pieces a nudge with my magic, dropping them into a small bag I’d pulled out of my jacket. The Legion team Harker had called in was just arriving. They immediately got to work loading the dead beast and Maxwell into their truck.
“Bring these shards to Dr. Harding for testing,” I said, handing the bag to one of the soldiers. “Tell her they were found close to Maxwell Plenteous’s body.”
Then we left them to their work and headed to the next house on Nero’s list, Wildfoot’s second New York client. It was not a long walk. In fact, the house was just two streets over, still inside the Cauldron District.
“It takes a lot of guts to buy a monster and bring it into the city, especially one with a Legion office,” Harker commented as we walked. “Most citizens of Earth are not that bold, at least not those who belong to one of the world’s old money dynasties.”
“I don’t think we’re dealing with typical citizens,” I said, pointing at the monster tied to a grand villa’s front gate.
It appeared that we’d found the second guard beast.
17
Cowboy Witch
Angel turned up her nose at the dead headless monster tied to the front gate. She stepped back, clearly not caring to get too close to it. I was totally with her on that. The stench was almost unbearable.
But Nero didn’t back up. Instead, he moved forward and rang the bell. His willpower was remarkable. His nose didn’t even crinkle up in disgust, even though I knew he could smell it every bit as much as I could.
The house door opened, and out walked a man dressed in a pair of denim tights, high leather boots, and a tan suede jacket with tassels. The cowboy witch wore a coat of black eyeliner so thick and heavy that I could see it from the other side of the gate, clear across the expansive front lawn.
Unlike Maxwell, this monster buyer was still very much alive. He took one look at us—and our Legion of Angels uniforms—and made a run for it, his tassels swaying wildly around him.
The cowboy witch made it only two steps before he slammed face-first into the invisible psychic wall Nero had cast. He bounced back off the magic wall and hit the ground with a thump and a grunt.
As the man lay there, dazed, Nero cast a lightning spell to fry the security system. The gate opened, proving his earlier point that no amount of security could keep out an angel. The witch rose wearily from the ground, his silver eyes darting around. He knew he’d been caught. And that there was no escape.
Nero’s gaze shifted from the monster on the gate, to the man before him. “You bought this beast from Wildfoot.”
“Yes,” the witch croaked out.
“And not only did you buy a monster, you snuck it into my city,” Harker continued.
The man swallowed like there was a lump the size of an egg wedged in his throat.
“Then, to top it all off, you lost control over the monster,” Nero added.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the man protested, his eyes shifting nervously from one angel to the other. Nero and Harker were doing a very thorough job of scaring him out of his wits.
I looked at the beast crucified to the gate. “How exactly did it happen? And how did you survive the beast’s attack?”
“I decapitated the monster with a shovel.”
That would do it.
“And then you mounted the beast on your front gate for all to see,” I said.
That hadn’t been a very clever move. He’d effectively broadcast to everyone in the neighborhood that he’d brought a monster into the city. Not that the guy had to be particularly smart if he’d bought a monster as a guard dog in the first place.
The witch frowned. “I was angry.”
Right now, he was having an obvious ‘oh, shit’ moment. He seemed to have just come to the unhappy conclusion that putting the monster there had implicated him.
“The dead beast is keeping intruders away even better than the live one did,” he said meekly.
I could believe that. The smell was positively rancid. I frowned as the wind shifted, blowing the smell my way. My stomach flopped. Acid rose in my throat.
“What made you think you could control the monster?” Harker asked the witch as I tried my hardest not to throw up.
Vomiting all over one’s shoes was not very becoming of an angel. Unfortunately, becoming an angel meant my magic was stronger than ever, and among other things, more magic meant a more sensitive nose. The dead beast’s stench was testing my willpower in ways that even Nero’s training sessions couldn’t.
“Wildfoot had the monsters completely under control. He was using special control collars,” said the witch. “My beast was outfitted with one. Wildfoot promised the collar had made the monster tame, controllable.”
“It seems it didn’t work at all,” I said.
“The collar was working,” protested the cowboy witch, his tassels swishing in irritation.
I gave the monster on the gate a pointed look.
“At least the collar was working until it short-circuited when the beast went for a swim on the property.”
I arched my brows. “You would think he’d have thought to make the collar waterproof.”
“The collar was waterproof,” said the witch. “The beast had swum in that very same pond many times before. But something was different this time. Something triggered the incident.”
“Where is the collar?” I asked him.
He reached his hand into an inner pocket of his suede jacket. He handed the collar to me—or at least what was left of it. It was in pieces—three pieces, to be exact. What a strange thing to carry around.
The fractured collar bore a striking resemblance to the pieces of metal I’d found at the previous house. Maybe it was the remains of a broken control collar that I’d discovered beside Maxwell’s body.
I looked over the broken collar in my hand. Though it wasn’t nearly as shattered as the pieces from Maxwell, both collars seemed to have broken in the same way. Maybe the collars possessed the same design defect.
“Potions and Poisons?” I read off one of the pieces.
“The name of the company that designed the collar,” the witch told me.
“That company sounds totally aboveboard,” I commented.
“The collar is black market stuff,” he admitted.
Real shocker.
“Potions and Poisons makes experimental tech like the collar,” said the witch. “The collar monitors the beast and injects a potion when needed. That potion controls the beast. You can buy refill potion cartridges for the collar.”
Trust it to a witch to understand the science behind the product that he’d bought. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid after all. He must have studied the tech and decided the science was sound. So what had gone wrong?
“W
here can you buy refill potions for the collar?” Nero asked.
If we followed the refill potions trail, it might lead us to Potions and Poisons, the company behind the collars, the company whose collars were encouraging people to import monsters beyond the wall. To bring beasts into our cities, endangering everyone.
“You can buy the potion cartridges at the waterfront, right at the border between the city’s witch and vampire districts,” the witch said reluctantly.
Harker looked at Nero. “We should pay that market a visit.”
“Agreed.” Nero turned his hard, granite stare on the witch. “When is the market in operation?”
“Between two and four o’clock each afternoon.”
The witch was certainly quick to share information. Maybe he hoped his cooperation would save him from being punished for his crimes. But that wasn’t how the Legion worked. Surely, he must have known that. On the other hand, hope might not be a particularly good strategy, but it was all he had left at this point.
“Do you still have any of the refill potions?” Nero asked him.
The witch pulled a vial out of his jacket. How much else did he have stored inside those hidden pockets?
Nero turned the small glass vial over in his hand. “Look familiar?” He showed it to Harker.
“The bottle does,” replied Harker. “It’s the same shape—has the same design—as the vials of Nectar we confiscated from another black market operation two years ago.” He popped the cap and took a sniff of the potion. “Smells like there’s Nectar in the mixture too.”
Nectar? How the hell had someone gotten hold of that? Neither gods nor angels would sell it on the blackmarket. The substance was very difficult to produce—too rare to waste by selling it off to the highest bidder. And it was too powerful to risk it falling into an enemy’s hands.
“What do humans and supernaturals want with Nectar?” I wondered. “It’s poison to them.”
“The most effective poison known to man,” said Nero.
“You’re saying people bought Nectar and then used it to kill others,” I realized.
“Yes. Shortly before you joined the Legion, Harker and I stopped one of these blackmarket Nectar traders and confiscated all his goods.”
“Did you interrogate him?”
Nero gave me a flat look. Of course he’d interrogated the man.
“Well, did he say where he’d gotten the Nectar?” I asked.
“He claimed he’d stolen them from a Legion storehouse,” Nero said. “And there had indeed been a break-in recently that seemed to confirm his story.”
“It sounds like it was all neatly wrapped up.”
Nero frowned. “Too neatly, come to think of it. Back then, an explanation was right there and obvious, and so we took it. We closed the investigation and moved on to other pressing matters. In retrospect, perhaps we were too quick to accept the easy solution, especially now that it seems more Nectar has found its way onto the market. No Legion storehouses have been hit lately.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “At least not that I know of.”
Harker’s cleanup crew had finished up at Maxwell’s house and joined us here. They cuffed the cowboy witch and loaded him into their truck, along with the dead headless beast, broken collar, and the Potions and Poisons vial.
The rest of us headed for the waterfront between the city’s witch and vampire districts. It was nearly two-thirty in the afternoon, so the black market should be in full swing right now.
18
The Chosen Ones
Nero, Harker, and I took the lead. Ivy, Drake, and Alec walked behind us. Alec had a gun in each hand and a broad smile on his face. We hadn’t done much more than glower at criminals and look at dead monsters today, so I’m sure he was excited at the prospect of a battle at the black market.
As we passed out of the residential Cauldron District, into the witches’ business district, private villas gave way to high-tech high-rises made of steel and glass. Beyond that—standing tall, dark, and gothic in the background—were the vampire district’s stone palaces and spiked towers. Sculptures of angels, monsters, and vampires adorned the buildings’ roofs and windows.
Like a valley, a few square blocks of squat buildings were nudged between the witches’ and vampires’ high structures. The market at the waterfront between these two districts was not any different than any other I’d seen. Homemade crafted goods, fruits, and vegetables were being sold from canvas stalls. I scoured the rows of merchandise, looking for anything illicit. I found nothing. Angel, however, found a cat toy that she liked. She pounced up onto the pet stall counter, purring at a little toy mouse.
“She seems very taken with it,” said the pet stall lady. She was an elderly woman with a weathered, wrinkled face—and bright blue eyes.
Maybe there was catnip hidden deep within the fluffy stuffing. That would have been a very clever sales trick to pique a cat’s interest.
“She really doesn’t need it,” I said.
The woman smiled, deep dimples forming between her wrinkled skin. “I’ll give it to you, free of charge.”
Angel meowed in approval.
“Move along, Angel,” I told her.
The kitten hissed at me.
I sighed, looking at the pet stall lady. “Why would you just give it to me?”
“You’re an angel.”
She looked at me with deeply devoted eyes. Worshipping eyes. I won’t lie. It made me feel terribly uncomfortable. I had to remind myself not to squirm with discomfort. Angels didn’t squirm. They didn’t get embarrassed by others’ admiration. They basked in it.
“Thank you,” I told the woman. “But she really has enough cat toys.”
Ivy had seen to that. The cat had more accessories than I did.
“Please, angel. I insist. You would honor me by accepting my offering.” The woman held out the cat toy in her open palms, head bowed.
I kind of felt bad for mesmerizing her. Though I hadn’t meant to mesmerize anyone. I sighed. Well, what the hell. I guess I could find room for one more cat toy.
“At least let me pay you for it,” I said to the woman.
She shook her head. “Your acceptance of my gift is all the payment I require.”
I tried to haggle, but she wouldn’t take my money, no matter how many times or how much—or little—I offered her for it. When I finally acquiesced, she packed up the cat toy in a nice bag, happily humming the Hymn of the Gods the whole time. She even put a bow on the fancy bag. Angel would enjoy tearing the bow off the package almost as much as she’d enjoy the toy inside. I should just buy her a bag of ribbons and bows instead of cat toys.
Harker came up to me as I left the pet shop stall. His gaze fell on the bag in my hand. “Shopping for wedding lingerie?”
“Haha. If you must know, Angel took a fancy to a cat toy, and the seller wouldn’t let me leave without accepting it as a gift.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“To what?” I asked.
“To the way people look at you like you’re holy. To the way they try to win your favor in the desperate hope that you’ll erase all their sorrows. And make all their wishes come true.”
“I’m not a genie.”
“No, you’re an angel, immortal and all-powerful. An elite soldier in the gods’ army. One of the chosen ones, an angel made and selected by the gods themselves.”
I shook my head. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“I know that. You know that.” Harker’s eyes panned across the marketplace. “But they need something more powerful than reality: faith. The gods do not show themselves to the people of Earth. We are the closest these people will ever come to the gods. You have to play the part they need us to play.”
“Who needs us to play? The gods? Or the people of Earth?”
“Both. You are an angel now, Leda. Embrace it.”
“It would be easier to embrace without the feverish consequences that come with it.”
“T
hat will pass.” Harker moved toward Nero.
“Did you find any signs of illicit activity?” I asked Nero as we closed in beside him. Harker, my ever-vigilant chaperone, positioned himself between us.
“Not yet.” Nero’s eyes honed in on the bag in my hand. “But apparently you did.”
I tucked the small bag into my jacket. “No, it’s nothing illicit. It’s just a toy that caught Angel’s eye. The pet stall lady insisted on giving it to me.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Nero said, mirroring Harker’s earlier words.
“People looking at me with, at the same time, blind devotion and gripping fear? Like I might kill them on the spot because I feel like it? And yet they are so happy just to catch a glimpse of me? How can you possibly get used to that?”
“With time. It’s not a bad thing, Pandora. Their adoration and fear is what keeps the Earth safe, keeps them safe. It keeps them from doing things that endanger everyone. Just look at what happens when they forget their adoration and fear for even a moment.”
“They buy monsters and bring them into the city as guard dogs.”
“Or worse. The second monster buyer we visited today was fortunate to escape with his life.”
Of course, by now the cowboy witch was in a Legion Interrogation chamber, which most people considered a fate far worse than death. Not that I wanted him to be free. He was suffering from a severe lack of good common sense. Who knew what dangerous thing he’d try next.
“And the first buyer lost only his own life,” Nero continued. “If he hadn’t fatally wounded the beast, it might have killed his wife. Or broken out and gone into the city. Many could have died before we got there to put it down. That’s why we angels need to maintain this image. That’s why people must fear and adore us. That’s why they must desire our favor and fear the consequences of any misdeed. Because the moment they stop worshipping and fearing us, the cities of Earth become far more dangerous than even the plains of monsters.”
