Psychic's Spell (Legion of Angels #6)
Ella Summers
Story Summary
In the immortal war between gods and demons, one woman’s past holds the key to humanity’s future.
One year after joining the Legion of Angels in New York City, Leda Pierce returns home to visit her family in Purgatory, a rough and rugged frontier town that borders the plains of monsters. Leda’s family reunion is cut short, however, when her little sisters are captured by supernatural mercenaries.
Together with her angel lover Nero, she sets out to save them. Besieged by monsters, assailed by powerful foes, Leda knows this rescue mission won’t be easy. What she doesn’t expect is that it will bring her face-to-face with the secrets of her buried past.
Psychic’s Spell is the sixth book in the Legion of Angels series.
Preface
There are a lot of revelations surrounding Leda and her family that unfold during the course of Psychic’s Spell, but there’s one that plays out before the book even begins. Wicked Witchcraft, a short story that takes place between books 5 and 6 of Legion of Angels, features Leda’s sister Bella. Here’s a short description:
Dark magic is brewing at the New York University of Witchcraft. Witch-in-training Bella teams up with angel Harker Sunstorm to get to the bottom of it. Wicked Witchcraft is a new short story set in the Legion of Angels world.
This short story is exclusively available as a free download for my newsletter subscribers. To receive Wicked Witchcraft and other bonus stories, join at www.ellasummers.com/newsletter
Prologue
Have you ever had a moment of perfect clarity? You’re wandering in darkness, confused, unfocused—and then, snap! A light penetrates the fog of uncertainty. All the pieces of the world fall into place, and your life finally makes sense.
I’ve never encountered this elusive ‘light bulb moment’ myself. Not in my journeys across the plains of monsters. Not in the great cities of Earth, nor the Frontier towns that sit at the sunset of civilization.
Honestly, I think light bulb moments are pretty much reserved for normal people. When you’re a soldier in the gods’ army, when you dance with angels and battle the forces of hell in an immortal war—you live in a different world. It’s a world where the normal rules simply don’t apply.
I’d love to proclaim that unearthing my past was the answer, that it filled a hole inside of me and made everything all right. But as you can probably guess by now, my past was just the beginning. And unlocking it was opening the biggest can of worms the universe has ever known.
After all, I’m Pandora, and chaos is my middle name.
1
Next Stop: Purgatory
“Next stop: Purgatory,” the intercom roared over the rumbling of the train.
The announcement elicited a chorus of chortles from my fellow passengers. Looking up from the book I was reading, I glanced across the aisle. The proud owners of that merry laughter were six twenty-somethings—college guys, their matching fraternity rings told me. They looked like the sort of guys you’d expect to find flexing their muscles in some posh gym. Their shoulders were wide, their faces clean-shaven, and their haircuts straight out of an expensive New York City salon. A bunch of rich kids living their lives on trust funds and no-limit credit cards, toeing the line between doing stupid things for the sheer fun of it and keeping in daddy’s good graces.
“Purgatory,” one of them snickered. He was distinguished by the tangerine-orange cowboy boots on his feet.
“They have got to work on their marketing campaign,” said his companion with the tan suede jacket. It had a hundred tassels dangling from it, which was at least a hundred too many. “Paradise.” He mulled that over. “Yes, I like the sound of that.”
“People don’t come out here to experience paradise,” said their friend in the black-and-white cow pattern pants. All that was missing was an enormous cow bell around his neck. “They come here to experience the wild Frontier life.”
“And the brothels,” commented Orange Boots, which elicited cat-calls from the others.
An angel had once told me that rolling my eyes wasn’t becoming of a soldier in the gods’ army, so I kept the eye-rolling to myself.
My hometown of Purgatory didn’t usually get many tourists. Soldiers, yes, but not tourists. That was the consequence of lying at the far end of the civilized world.
But this was a special time, the one week each year when tourists left the comfort of their cities and flocked to the edge of the Frontier for the Party at the Wall festival. Tourists and townies alike partied at the base of the towering wall that separated civilization from the plains of monsters.
“I can see it,” declared Suede Jacket.
They all gathered in front of the large, wood-framed window, each one trying to catch their first glimpse of Purgatory. The window was like a looking glass that took you back in time, back to a rougher era. It was a world of rugged charm and frontier justice, a world of cowboy boots and big belt buckles—or so the tourists thought.
In reality, no one out here dressed like that.
One of the college guys had peeled away from the others. He was standing in the aisle, a concentrated squint to his eyes as he swung his gun between his fingers. The gun was glossy silver, so shiny that it reflected off the swaying iron lanterns that hung from the ceiling.
Cow Pants glanced over and commented, “Hey, you’re pretty good at that.”
“I’ve been practicing in front of the television,” Gunslinger told him.
While watching old cowboy movies, no doubt. That was how they saw the Frontier, like one big cowboy movie marathon.
Gunslinger’s grip slipped, and his gun let out an impressive, thunderous boom.
“That hurt!” Suede Jacket yelped, clutching the back of his jeans as he hopped around.
Luckily for him, his friend’s gun didn’t shoot real bullets. It just shot cartridges filled with potions that dissolved upon impact, leaving the unlucky victim with a mild burning feeling.
Suede Jacket’s friends were laughing at all the fuss he was making, but there was nothing funny about shooting people, not even with fake bullets. Guns were designed with a single purpose in mind: killing. They weren’t toys for boys playing at being men. Right now, I didn’t have to resist rolling my eyes. This time, I was resisting the urge to grab these jokers by the collars and clunk their heads together, to knock some sense into them, to show them that pain was no joke. They were naive, irresponsible even. They’d never seen the world outside their mansions and penthouses, and it was high time someone taught them a lesson.
I stopped myself at that thought. Gods, I was thinking more and more like an angel every day.
So I didn’t grab them and clunk their heads together, nor did I pull out the gun in my backpack or the knife tucked inside my boot. I couldn’t say I wasn’t tempted, though, especially as they continued in their foolish games.
They were now pretending to shoot one another in their vision of a Frontier shootout, the kind you’d see in an old cowboy movie. And this time when one of them shot another, it wasn’t an accident. It was a game. They’d come to the Frontier to play out their fantasy, hitting all the stereotypes, then they would return to their normal lives of comfort, none the wiser.