by Ella Summers
“We were legendary,” Arina said, her voice wavering beneath the armor of her sharp words.
I waited for her to clarify, but she didn’t go on.
“Phoenix Magic Technologies is no more,” Athan explained. “The company was lost in a hostile takeover.”
“Like someone bought them out?” Financial terminology wasn’t exactly my forte.
“No, we weren’t bought out,” Arina said, her eyes haunted. “We were invaded by another corporation’s army.”
So a literal hostile takeover.
“That was the day the Phoenix name died. My family’s company was folded into the invading company. My parents and siblings were stripped of esteemed name. They were assigned mid-tier positions unworthy of their abilities, an insult to our esteemed heritage. But I refused to give up my name. I refused to serve those who’d betrayed us, who’d destroyed my family name. I came here to Earth, far from their influence. Far from them. I am the last Phoenix.”
From the way Arina spoke, that them sounded like a very specific person, and whoever it was, they were obviously at the very top of her shit list. I could understand her feelings. If someone had gone after my family, I’d have held a grudge too.
Arina shot the box in my hands a suspicious look. “Whatever you want to drag me into this time, Athan, I’m not doing it.”
“Oh, but it’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for her.”
Arina’s eyes slid across my body, snagging on the angel emblem pinned to my jacket, that which identified me as an angel in the Legion of Angels. “No way. She smells like trouble.” Her nose crinkled up.
It took a lot of guts to say no to the Legion of Angels. It made me like Arina at once.
“Actually, that smell is my lavender potpourri.” I flashed her a wide smile.
Arina glared at Athan. “Why have you brought the Legion here? Why have you exposed me?”
Exposed her? What did she mean? Was she running from something other than the pain caused by the end of her family’s reign?
“Are you going to arrest me?” Arina asked me, her eyes hard, unafraid. She was terrified about something—and I could tell it wasn’t me—but she wasn’t flinching. She wasn’t rolling over.
“Arrest you?” I asked, perplexed. “For doing what?”
“For working here.”
“What’s wrong with working for a museum—” I stopped. “Unless this is more than a museum.” I glanced down at the device on her desk. “That looks like a personal shield.”
She nodded. “Yes. The shield creates a skintight magic field around a person, protecting them from physical and magical attacks,” Arina told me, her eyes twinkling with the excitement of someone in their element.
“You created this device?” I asked her.
“No, I just repaired it. It’s very old. It’s an ancient device, crafted by the Immortal Sunfire.”
The smith at Storm Castle had told me about Sunfire, the most powerful magic smith to ever live. He was supposedly the first and only person who’d ever possessed the power to create immortal weapons, by channeling the power of immortal souls.
I looked into the box again. There were three other objects: a mundane communication headset, a first aid kit, and a gun that seemed to have been modified. I picked it up, turning it over in my hands.
“It doesn’t shoot typical bullets,” I commented.
“No,” Arina said. “I modified it to shoot capsules, each one containing a spell.”
I popped out the transparent capsules. Inside one of them, a miniature lightning storm raged. Another contained an inferno spell. A tidal wave. An earthquake. A blizzard. Each capsule held an elemental spell.
“When the capsule shatters against its target, the spell expands to full size?” I asked.
“Twice the size of a typical elemental spell actually. I designed them to be quite potent,” she said with well-deserved pride in her work—and well-deserved trepidation. Modifying magical weaponry like this, outside the gods’ control, was pretty illegal.
I set the gun down on her desk. “Why do you need such a powerful weapon?”
“To chase off the raccoons,” she said solemnly. “They keep getting into the garbage dumpsters out back.”
I grinned at her. “I just hate when they do that.”
Gods, it was like we were twins separated at birth. Too bad it wasn’t true. I’d much rather have Arina for a twin than Faris for a father.
“So, are you going to arrest me?” Arina asked me.
I arched my brows at her. “Are you going to tell me why you really need these guns?”
“The museum organizes adventure tours on the Black Plains.”
“Why would anyone pay to take a tour of the Black Plains? There are monsters there.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole point of the tour.”
“People pay to see monsters,” I realized.
“The museum calls them Monster Safaris, and they aren’t on the official menu,” Arina said. “Each ‘adventurer’ is equipped with a survival pack that includes a personal shield, a spell-slinging gun, a communication headset, and a first aid kit.”
“For when the shield fails?”
“For when a fearless adventurer trips over a rock,” she told me. “Despite all the glitz and glamor they’re shrouded in, the safaris rarely venture far from the Magitech barrier. They only ever go deep enough into the wilderness to allow an adventurer to set his foot on the wall’s wild side and stick out his tongue at monsters. As soon as a monster growls back, the fearless adventurers scurry back to safety.” She frowned at the shield device in her hand. “It’s really a waste actually. This shield is powerful enough to hold off an onslaught of hundreds of monsters before it needs to recharge. And they are using it so silly tourists can capture snapshots of themselves on the Black Plains to send back home.”
I looked up at the wall of boxes. “Each of those boxes contains a survival pack?”
“Yes.”
I whistled, low and long. Those were a hell of a lot of survival packs.
“Hey, were you going to eat all of these?” I indicated the box of donuts on her desk. The aromatic explosion of sugary-sweetness was making my tummy growl.
“If I eat them, I’ll have to pay back the calories later at the gym.” She didn’t look excited by the prospect. “So, by all means, help yourself.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed a chocolate donut from the box. “I thought the personal shield artifact was rare. How did you find so many?”
“I only found one of them. I used it as a model to create many more of them.”
Wow, she wasn’t just tinkering with ancient magical artifacts; she was recreating them. Athan had said Arina could craft immortal objects without needing to use an immortal soul to do it. So what did that make her? More powerful than the legendary magic smith Sunfire, for sure.
“I’m not going to do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Make weapons for the Legion of Angels. I don’t make weapons.”
“You made spell capsules for that gun,” I pointed out.
“I isolated the spells’ destructive force.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the spells only work on monsters. If you shot one of the capsules at a person, the spell would just fizzle out.”
“How’d you manage to do that?”
She shrugged. “I’m smart.”
I snorted. “No kidding. You really are.”
“And I’m not going to work for the Legion,” she said again.
“I’m not asking you to.”
“And you’re not going to arrest me?”
“No. It’s not your fault people are willing to spend money to endanger their lives. Believe me, I’ve seen far worse recently.”
Like people bringing monsters into the city, trying to use them as guard beasts.
She frowned, her brow crinkling up in confusion. “If you’re not here to recruit me or arrest me, why are you here?�
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“I brought Leda here because I owe her a favor,” Athan told Arina. “She’s not like the other angels at the Legion.”
Arina looked me over, head to toe—from my glowing hair, to my black leather uniform, all the way to the tips of my purple wings. “I can see that.” Her eyes froze on the name stitched into my jacket. “Pandora?”
“That’s right,” I replied brightly. My angel name was even official now.
“Pandora, the Angel of Chaos.” Her eyes met mine. “I know what you are.”
“An angel. What gave me away?” I smirked. “It was the wings, wasn’t it?”
“You’re the daughter of a god and a demon.”
Her words dropped like a stone crashing into a tranquil lake.
“You have god and demon blood. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
“How can you possibly know this?” I wondered.
“I can see it in your magic.”
“Arina doesn’t just have the ability to craft magic to create immortal artifacts,” Athan told me. “She can also sense the flavor and flow of magic, how it’s composed, how it’s blended together. Her ability to see the anatomy of magic helps her manipulate it.”
I turned to Arina. “You must be the most powerful person in all the worlds.”
“Or the least powerful,” she said. “Because while I can manipulate magic, I cannot make it. Besides my ability to shape magic that’s already there, I have no magic of my own. To create a new artifact, I need to take magic from someone else or something else.”
“What could you make with my magic?” I asked her, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Something with enough destructive power to destroy this world.” She shuddered. “But I won’t do it. I won’t make any weapons for you.”
“I told you, I don’t want any weapons from you. I’m already basically a living weapon.”
“Yes, you were created with purpose.” She looked at me like she could see through me to all the parts and pieces that made me what I was. “It was a rather heavy-handed job.” Her hand captured a strand of my glowing hair, rubbing it between her fingers. “Your parents might have exercised a bit more subtlety when creating you.”
“Yeah, well, since when were deities ever subtle?” I said, laughing to cover my unease at being referred to like an object of power.
“I don’t know what scheme your parents were concocting when they created you, but I am not getting involved. I will not risk exposure.”
There was that word again: exposure. What was she running from?
“Might I remind you, Arina, that you still owe me a favor,” said Athan.
“How is it that every time I pay off a favor to you, I seem to accumulate two more?” she demanded.
He folded his hands together, his face perfectly serene. “One of the universe’s great mysteries, I’m sure.”
Her mouth drew into a hard, tight line. “I always suspected the universe was in your back pocket, Everlasting.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said to Athan. “She owes you a favor. And you owe me a favor.”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
“For someone from a people of non-interferers, you sure interfere a lot in others’ affairs.”
With a smile, Athan bowed his head, then excused himself to the waiting lounge, where he immediately dove into a crossword puzzle printed in the newspaper. Angel sprang up onto Arina’s desk and immediately made herself comfortable inside the survival kit box.
Arina considered my kitten closely. “I haven’t tested my devices’ resilience to cat hair.”
“If the shield can hold off a hundred monsters, it can handle a little cat hair.”
“I’m not so sure. From my experiences feeding my neighbor’s cat, I’ve discovered that cat hair gets into everything.”
“Maybe so, but she’s so adorable.” I looked fondly upon my purring kitten. “So, remember the ‘worse things’ I mentioned seeing recently?” I set the box of collar parts down on a free corner of her desk. “This is it. Some people imported monsters into New York City. They brought them into other cities as well.”
A worry line formed between her eyes. “Here?”
“Not that I know of, but if we don’t put an end to this operation, it’s only a matter of time before it happens in all the Earth’s cities, including New Orleans. The company that sells the tech has people convinced these collars can control the monsters.”
Arina was already looking through the collar fragments. “From the state of these devices, I take it the ‘complete control’ is a bit less than complete.”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine. Do the collars simply not work? Or do they actually work, and their makers purposely turned the monsters on their owners?”
The door to one of the back rooms opened, and two children stepped into Arina’s office. Somewhere around eight years old, the raven-haired girl and boy were dressed in bathrobes. Their hair was still wet. They must have just recently stepped out of the shower—or, I thought, noticing their brightly-colored flip-flops, the swimming pool.
“Mommy, I finished my weekend homework,” the girl said. Her cute voice was soft and high-pitched. She sounded just like a cartoon fairytale princess. “May I color now?” Her manners were perfect, every element of her body language spot-on. This was a girl who could convince a sugar addict to give her his lollipop—and be totally happy with the decision.
Arina smiled at her. “Of course, Kalani.”
The little girl carried her coloring book into the waiting room. My mouth nearly dropped as I watched her casually drop down into splits. My jaw inched lower when she pushed a stack of cushions under her front leg, stretching her splits beyond one-hundred-eighty degrees. She balanced her coloring book on her shin and began filling in a page.
I’d seen a lot of things at the Legion of Angels, but I’d never witnessed such a spectacular display of inhuman flexibility. And it was pulled off by an eight-year-old. Angel was apparently equally impressed with the girl. She hopped off the desk and joined Kalani in the waiting room.
Feeling suddenly terribly inflexible, I made a mental note to work more stretches into my exercise routines.
“And you, Cassian?” Arina asked the boy. “Did you finish your homework too?”
“Why do I have to learn about history?” he grumbled. “It’s all about people who aren’t even alive anymore. This stuff is so boring and worthless. There’s no way I’m ever going to use it when I’m an adult.”
“Sure you will,” Arina told him.
“Oh, really?” he countered, a roguish grin lighting up his face. “Give me one practical use for any of this.”
“When you need to help your kids with their homework,” Arina told him, her grin equally roguish.
I laughed.
“You’re always such a smartypants, Mommy,” Cassian told her.
She looked upon him fondly. “Well, where do you think you get it from?”
I really liked Arina. I was particularly fond of her sense of humor—and her doughnuts. I’d already eaten four of them, and I was still hungry.
“Let your mother work, Cassian,” Athan called out to him. “I’ll help you with your history homework.”
Cassian went into the waiting lounge and sat down beside him. As an Everlasting, an immortal, I’d imagine Athan knew a thing or two about history.
“Is there anything you can tell me about how these work?” I asked Arina, directing her attention back to the broken collar pieces.
“There’s not much left of them.”
“Yeah, they kind of self-destructed.”
“Self-destructed? It sounds like someone didn’t want you to get your hands on them.”
“So it would seem,” I agreed.
Arina took a closer look at one of the larger pieces through her magnifying eyepiece. “This is my work,” she said in obvious surprise.
“You made these collars?”
“No, n
ot these exact collars, but they are based on my designs. Damn copycats, copying my work.” She ground her teeth together. “The collar was one of the designs I was working on the day House Phoenix fell, the day our headquarters was seized by enemy troops.”
“It looks like the family that took over your company sold your designs on the black market.”
“House Dragon, the family that took over mine, did not lead the charge. They have many skilled warriors, but they prefer to pay others to do the grunt work. They hired House Leviathan to provide the troops. When the alarm sounded that we were being invaded, I destroyed all my designs. I didn’t want them to get a single one of my inventions, so I blew up my lab—and all my prototypes.” She frowned. “They must have salvaged one of the collars from the wreckage and sold it to the highest bidder. House Leviathan is a mercenary house. They don’t create anything themselves. They don’t strive to make the universe a better place.” Her words dripped with disdain. “They’re the wrecking ball you hire to unleash on your enemies.”
As she spoke, she put the broken collar pieces back together. She moved quickly and flawlessly, like she could see immediately how the pieces fit together, without even thinking about it. Her spatial reasoning must have been off the charts. She’d make a great jigsaw puzzle partner.
“Any chance you can ask House Leviathan who they sold your collar prototype to?” I asked.
“No. Firstly, House Dragon would have specified in their contract that they claim any and all spoils of war. Breaking contracts isn’t good for future business, and so House Leviathan would never admit that they’d pocketed anything. No one wants to hire mercenaries who skim off the top.”
“Is there a ‘secondly’?”
She took a deep breath. “Secondly, no one knows where I am, including my own family. And I intend to keep it that way.”
“Why doesn’t your family know where you are?”
“It’s the way it has to be.” She looked resigned, but hardly happy about it. “It’s the only way to keep them safe—and me and my kids safe too.”
“You’re running from the people who did this to your family,” I realized. “What would House Dragon do to you if they learned where you are? Would they kill you?”
