by Ella Summers
“Agreed.” He allowed himself a sigh. “So let’s not go back inside. Let’s just go…” His voice trailed off as he looked through the chain-link fence, toward the Magitech wall that stood between Purgatory and the Black Plains.
“Nero,” I said, grinning. “Are you asking me to elope with you?”
“Would you accept?”
I looped my arms over his shoulders, leaning into him. “In a heartbeat,” I whispered against his lips.
His mouth came down hard on mine. He wasn’t slow or gentle, and he didn’t tease. We hadn’t shared each other’s bodies in a long time, so I was more than happy to dispense with the pleasantries and cut right to the chase.
Rough, impatient, and savagely erotic—his kisses devoured, his touch seared. Heat flashed through my body, a perfect storm of wrenching pleasure and raw need. I grabbed his collar, pulling him in. His rock-hard chest slammed against mine.
His head dipped, his mouth tracing my neck. He expelled a breath, long and hot, against my skin. I shuddered, my blood surging beneath the surface. A cascade of feverish sensations crashed against me, pulling me under. My self-control lay unraveled at my feet.
“Nero.” A soft moan brushed past my lips. “I’m ready to go.”
He took my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine.
But our escape was intercepted before we could even kick off the ground. Legion soldiers hopped down from the fences from all sides. They closed in, their expressions detached, their guns pointed right at us. Our disguises obviously hadn’t fooled them.
“So much for eloping. Thwarted by my ever-vigilant chaperones,” I sighed.
Damiel landed in front of us, his dark wings spread wide. “Getting caught with your pants down, Nero? Very sloppy.” His smirk was at once disapproving and amused.
“Why are you here?” Nero demanded, all disapproving and not at all amused.
“I’d meant to make it for Leda’s introduction ceremony, but I got held up,” Damiel said. “As it turns out, I have caught a person of interest.”
He paused, obviously waiting for us to ask who it was.
I obliged. It was not like I had anything better to do. Well, I’d had something better to do, namely elope with Nero, but then all these Legion soldiers had surrounded us. Their guns were still pointed at us.
“So who is this mysterious person of interest?” I asked Damiel.
“The head of the black-market operation Potions and Poisons,” he revealed. “And he’s shared some very interesting information with me. For one, the person from whom his company bought the Nectar they were dealing a couple of years ago. The seller was an angel, and that same angel sold Potions and Poisons the complete set of Meda’s research notes on monster manipulations.”
23
On the Wrong Side of Civilization
At Damiel’s statement, the annoyance on Nero’s face faded, displaced by pure, dispassionate professionalism. “Who is this angel who betrayed us and sold Nectar to a black market magic supplier?” he asked his father.
Damiel proceeded to drop another surprise. “Gauging from the memories of the mastermind behind Potions and Poisons, the treacherous angel is none other than Colonel Battleborn.”
“Colonel Battleborn couldn’t be selling Nectar to monster traders. He died several months ago, in the battle at Memphis, killed by Venom-laced bullets,” I pointed out.
Damiel shrugged. “And I died two hundred years ago, at the hands of my son, who was mourning the death of his mother, who it turns out is also not dead.”
He had a point. You couldn’t always believe what your eyes showed you.
“There’s also the possibility that Colonel Battleborn sold the Nectar before he died,” said Nero.
He had a point too.
“Where is Colonel Battleborn’s body?” I asked Nero.
“There was no time to bring him back with us before the monsters overran our forces. Colonel Battleborn’s body lies on the battlefield of Memphis.”
And Memphis now lay on the plains of monsters.
“Then Memphis is our next stop,” I decided. “We need to see if Colonel Battleborn’s body is still there, if he’s innocent—or if he has, in fact, fooled us all.”
Nyx swooped down from the sky. She set down so close to me that the force of her landing nearly bowled me over. “We’ll leave immediately.”
Half an hour later, Nyx, Ronan, Damiel, Harker, Nero, and I were flying south in a Legion airship. And a few hours after that, we were standing outside the fallen city of Memphis. The hour was early, the ruins cast in shadow. The sun wouldn’t rise for at least an hour, but a full moon dominated the night sky. It was particularly big and bright this night. I couldn’t decide if that was a good omen or a bad one. At least it lit our way down the broken highway into the city.
At my back, a Magitech barrier sizzled across the stone wall. As the city had been lost, overrun by monsters, the former second line of defense had activated. It was now the only line of defense, all that separated civilization from the plains of monsters. Memphis now lay on the wrong side of civilization, in the wilds—and we were now heading into those wilds.
As we approached the city, Jace came down the old highway to meet us. Memphis, at least what was left of it, was located in the South Territory. Jace’s territory.
As I watched his approach, I could hear growling monsters within the city that lay behind him. The sound of bricks, falling and shifting, mixed with the growls. I couldn’t shake this cold feeling, like something sinister was looming over my shoulder, watching me. The ruined city felt like an old ghost town—with monsters.
“This place gives me the creeps,” I muttered.
“Commentary, Pandora,” Nyx said sharply.
She was chiding me for my very un-angelic comments. Angels didn’t get creeped out. They had seen everything and could handle anything.
Nyx needed to relax. There were no subordinate soldiers here to hear me, no humans, no supernaturals. It was just us angels and the God of Earth’s Army. And they were all used to my commentary by now.
Well, ok, so there were monsters nearby too. I didn’t think they were eavesdropping—or could even understand my words, for that matter—but still I said nothing more about the creepy atmosphere. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to practice being angelic.
“I have six teams already in the city, tracking the monsters’ movements,” Jace reported to Nyx and Ronan. “And another team working on repairing the Magitech generators that power the wall.”
Our mission here was twofold: to find evidence of Colonel Battleborn’s death, and to repair the wall so we could reclaim the city from the monsters. The Legion was efficient like that. With a god and six angels here, we might just have a shot at reversing this recent loss.
“In the Battle of Memphis, Colonel Battleborn went down at the southwestern end of the city,” Nero said.
“There is a lot of monster activity in that area,” replied Jace. “They are also concentrated around the Magitech generators.”
Ronan pulled out a map. He had it all color-coded and everything. “Windstriker, Dragonsire, you’ll search sections one through ten for Colonel Battleborn. Sunstorm and I will take sections eleven through twenty.”
The four of them spread their wings and flew off toward the southwestern end of the city. That just left me, Jace, and Nyx.
I glanced at Jace. “Maybe we should help the team repairing the Magitech generators.”
“Not so fast, Pandora,” Nyx said. “You’re sticking with me.”
“Jace said there are a lot of monsters around the generators. His teams might need our help. Why won’t you let me jump into the thick of things?” I smiled. “It’s good practice.”
“You certainly don’t need any practice jumping into the thick of things,” she countered. “You do that far too frequently already. Flying, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.”
“You can’t fly?” Jace asked me.
“I can
flap my wings and launch into the air. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.”
Nyx’s granite stare cut Jace’s laughter short. He quickly reformed his face into a serious expression worthy of Colonel Fireswift’s son.
“The three of us will go up to the Obsidian Tower,” Nyx decided. “Flying up there should give you all the practice you need, Pandora.” She kicked off the ground, shooting into the air.
“The First Angel can be so cheeky,” I told Jace, then flew off after her.
He flew beside me, looking considerably more coordinated than I did. “She can hear you, you know.”
“I know.” I winked at him, then closed in on Nyx. “Why are we going up here anyway?” I asked her, wobbling a bit in the air as a gust of wind bumped my body. “Afraid I’ll run off screaming in fear of the monsters?”
“You? Run in fear? No, I’d rather expect you to charge straight at them and get yourself killed. I’m not about to let that happen.”
“Come now, Nyx. Let’s not get all sentimental.”
“I am not sentimental,” she said as we set down atop the Obsidian Tower. Besides the missing tip, the building was still pretty much intact.
I looked down across the entire city—and to the plains beyond, lit up by the big round moon. It was all so beautiful.
“Oh, maybe you’re not sentimental about me,” I said. “But you are very sentimental about my freaky magical compatibility.”
She frowned, clearly unimpressed by my attempts at humor. “You don’t take things seriously.”
“If I did, I’d have your job.
This time, she did laugh. “Was that a challenge or a joke?”
“It was what you needed, nothing more or less.”
She looked perplexed.
“You needed a laugh,” I explained. “You’ve been stressed out lately. You really should talk to him.”
“Who?”
“Ronan.”
She closed herself off, her face devoid of expression, her eyes as cold as ice.
“Well, you should talk to someone at least,” I told her.
Her dark brows arched together. “And you think that someone is you?”
“I’m here, you’re here, and you’ve made it very clear that you’re not letting me out of your sight. As though I’m going to suddenly drop dead.” I sighed. “Besides, we have a lot of time to kill. I’m sure we’ll be here for a while. It’s a big city, and there are a lot of monsters to kill.”
Nyx gazed off into the distance, distracted, almost dreamy. Then, suddenly, her gaze snapped back to me. “Grab control of every monster you can and send them all at the Magitech wall beyond the city. Now.”
“If you really don’t want to confide in me, just say—”
“Our teams are in danger,” she cut in. “They’ve been overrun.”
She pointed down there, down into the city. You really could see everything from this spot, especially when you had supernatural vision. I watched Ronan and Harker as they were surrounded by monsters. Another pack of beasts was attacking Nero and Damiel.
Nero! Panic surged in me, the need to protect taking over. My magic, turbo-charged by the Fever, exploded. I grabbed for the minds of the monsters attacking Nero and the others. Then, my control over their wills locked in, I sent the beasts running at the Magitech wall. They exploded against the new border of civilization, like fireworks bombarding the night sky.
“I can’t keep doing this for very long,” I said over the booms and bangs of the wall’s defensive magic.
“Running out of steam already, Pandora?” Nyx asked sharply.
“Not at all.” Sweat dripped down my neck. “But the impacts of the exploding monsters will eventually overwhelm the Magitech barrier. And if the barrier goes down, this line of defense will fall and the monsters will advance deeper into civilization. Their territory will grow, not shrink, which isn’t really what we’re trying to accomplish here.”
“Can you make the monsters fight one another rather than run at the wall?” Nyx asked.
“Just like my ability to fly, my monster control isn’t that fine-tuned yet, at least not on the scale of thousands of monsters. I can make them all run mindlessly in a single direction. That’s about it.”
“How long before your team finishes repairing the Magitech generators?” Nyx asked Jace.
He glanced at his phone. “They are ready now. But the city is still swarming with monsters. If we put up the barrier now, we’ll still have thousands of monsters on the wrong side of the wall, here inside the city with us.”
Nyx looked at me. “Leda, can you send all the monsters out of the city, far out onto the plains?”
“I guess we won’t know until I try.”
I grabbed control over all the monsters now, not just those close to Nero and the others. The sheer weight of their wills, thrashing against my control, was overwhelming. I felt like I was drowning inside the storm of so many beasts.
Nyx caught me as I swayed sideways. “When the monsters are all out of the city, we’ll activate the Magitech wall,” she told Jace.
I directed the monsters toward the plains. Like rivers of moonlight, they streamed out of the city. I pushed harder, even as the monsters slipped from my control. There were just so many of them. A part of me was vaguely aware of Nyx talking on her phone, directing our teams to kill the monsters who’d broken free of my Siren’s Song.
I kept pushing, my heart beating so fast I thought it might explode. It was like a sledgehammer pounding inside of my chest, shaking me. My whole body vibrated. Each beat of my heart rattled my ribcage.
I’d never expended so much magic at once. It was burning off of me so fast, my skin tingled, lighting up my halo. I was glowing like the sun’s corona, the sheer brilliance of it blinding even myself. I tried desperately to hold on to every monster, even as more and more of them slipped away.
A thunderous roar shook the city. The Magitech barrier flared up across the inner wall that bordered the city’s western perimeter. I collapsed to my knees, heaving in air, my lungs burning like I’d just run all-out for hours. Had it been hours? The rising sun was just now cresting the horizon.
Nyx locked her forearm with mine and helped me to my feet. “You did well.”
I coughed. When it came to corralling monsters, I was seriously out of shape. As my heartbeat slowed, I could hear the steady, quiet hum of the Magitech generators down in the city.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to sit down for a few minutes.” Exhausted beyond belief, I went over to a piece of debris and sat down.
Jace was talking on his phone to his soldiers who’d just arrived, directing those teams into the city to clean up the mess. Nyx was communicating with our existing teams on the ground. No one paid me any mind. I was totally fine with that. I just needed to rest my head against this wall for a few moments…
Someone shook me, and I jolted awake. I looked up, meeting Nero’s eyes. I didn’t know how long I’d nodded off, but the sun still appeared to be in roughly the same spot in the sky, so it couldn’t have been very long.
Behind Nero, our airship was hovering over the Obsidian Tower.
“We’re leaving?” I asked Nero.
“We are. Some of Jace’s soldiers are staying behind to begin the city cleanup.”
“Did you find Colonel Battleborn’s body?”
“Yes. Ronan used Aleris’s glasses, drawing out the memories imprinted on Colonel Battleborn’s body to make sure he really is who he appears to be. And that he wasn’t involved in any shady operations prior to his death.”
“So Colonel Battleborn didn’t sell Nectar to a black market operation?” I asked.
“No,” Nero confirmed. “Colonel Battleborn did not. And he died here, at the battle of Memphis.”
But if Colonel Battleborn wasn’t the angel who’d sold Nectar to Potions and Poisons, who was?
24
Confessions of an Immortal
Monsters had reigned over Me
mphis for far too long. There was a lot of damage to repair. It would take months for Jace’s soldiers to restore it to its former glory.
The airship carried us to the Legion’s New Orleans office, from which Jace ruled over the South Territory. A breakfast fit for a king—or an angel or deity, as it were—waited for us there, tucked inside a private dining room. The room, awash with opulent marble, gold, and good old solid oak, was the equivalent of the New York office’s head table. The room was normally reserved for angels and officers level six or above. This morning, it was reserved for six angels and the God of War.
A big, black box with a big, white bow was waiting at my spot. “My next present?” I asked Nero.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps it’s another sleeping cushion for Angel.”
I glanced down at the sleeping cat nestled between my feet. “Yes, watching the battle from the airship must have been absolutely exhausting,” I told her.
She peeked up at me through half-open eyes, then went right back to sleep. And I returned my attention to the box. I unfastened the bow and lifted the lid to find a shiny silver-and-red shield inside.
“Not a very comfortable sleeping cushion.” I turned the Shield of Protection, one of the weapons of heaven and hell, over in my hands. “Wait, there’s more?” Silver armor, the final piece in that set of immortal artifacts, was at the bottom of the box. I now had the whole set.
“With all that went on yesterday, I didn’t have time to give you your gift yesterday. So here are two days in one,” said Nero.
“How did you acquire the weapons of heaven and hell from Faris?” Ronan said casually, as though asking Nero where he’d bought an umbrella.
“I asked him for them,” replied Nero.
“And he simply handed them over?”
“Yes.”
Ronan’s brow furrowed with suspicion. “Faris never does anything without a reason. Without a carefully-crafted plan.”
“Nor do I,” Nero said stonily.
“What are your plans for the weapons of heaven and hell?” Ronan asked.
