Relief washed across their faces, coupled with a touch of awe and a pinch of fear. But it was a good fear, as though they liked the taste of a little danger—as long as that danger was on their side. Legion soldiers had a fearsome reputation for upholding the gods’ order with an iron fist. When we came to save you, though, you knew whoever had you, no matter how scary they were, would fall. The Legion of Angels gave your greatest nightmares some nightmares of their own.
I scanned the group of prisoners. There were about twenty teenagers, but Carmen was the only one I knew by name. There were a few other girls I’d seen around in Purgatory—and there were a lot of girls and guys I’d never seen in my life. My little sisters, however, were nowhere to be found.
“Where are Tessa and Gin?” I asked Carmen.
“Another group of mercenaries took them away, along with some other prisoners,” Carmen told me. “They were already bought by a slave trader.” Her fear and outrage reverberated in her words.
There was no slavery allowed on Earth according to the gods’ laws, but out here on the plains of monsters, beyond the borders of civilization, these things happened far too often.
I led the prisoners into the fog, to where Bella was brewing a potion pot.
“You have to help Calli,” she told me. “A bunch of the mercenaries have cornered her.”
I went to the edge of the fog, peering out. The mercenaries had Calli surrounded, their weapons and magic aimed at her head. They didn’t realize she was a person. They only saw the monster. And they were going to decapitate her. That was the surest way to kill a monster.
I darted out of the fog, knocking out a mercenary with a quick punch to the head. I ran back into the fog and circled around to strike at the next. One by one, I took them down, unseen, like a ghost. The fog swelled and swallowed them. Plants shot out of the ground like lassos, capturing and dragging the others to me.
“Good job, Leda,” Calli said as the last mercenary fell to the ground. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my own face back.”
“Why? I think this look is good for you,” I teased, even as I removed the shifting spell from her. The monstrous trimmings dissolved from her body.
Calli and I tied up the unconscious mercenaries, then headed back to Bella and the prisoners.
We didn’t make it more than two steps before an arrow shot through the air and plunged into the earth at our feet. Lightning sizzled across its shaft, a telltale sign of magic.
I scanned the ridge. A man in black danced down the near vertical wall toward us, his long cloak rippling in the wind. Another elemental mercenary? I’d not seen him with the others. Where had he come from?
I ran out to meet him, dodging the telekinetic blast he shot at me. No, not an elemental. He swung his sword at me, moving with the speed of a vampire. As he cast a shifting spell on my hand, merging it with my own sword, I came to one unhappy conclusion: only a Legion soldier possessed all those abilities in combination. And Legion soldiers didn’t work with mercenaries and slave traders. He was a deserter.
A band of new arrivals jumped down the ridge, a hodgepodge of five different supernaturals. The telekinetic softened her companions’ fall, then shot them at Bella and Calli. My sister threw a potion bottle at her feet, and a protective barrier went up around her and Calli. As they fought off the two werewolves, the telekinetic, the fire elemental, and the vampire, I concentrated on the fallen Legion soldier.
“So a Legion deserter left and started his own mercenary band,” I commented, shaking off his shifting spell to free my hand.
“You can’t tell me that you haven’t considered the same.” The deserter’s eyes twinkled with devilish delight, like someone who’d been caught doing something naughty and was proud of it. If he hadn’t been trying to kill me, I might have even described him as charming.
“Deserting the Legion?” I said as our swords clashed. “Not really.”
“The poison they call gifts. Never knowing if you will survive the next sip, or the next battle. Watching all of your friends die around you. Or watching them move up and leave you behind.” He set his sword on fire.
I froze my sword, countering his flames. “You’re oversimplifying.”
His dark brows arched. “Am I? What about the control over who you can love, over who your friends are?”
He hit me in the stomach with a telekinetic punch. It went through me like an iron ball through a piece of tissue paper. I cringed, enduring the pain. He studied my face, calculation gleaming in his eyes. He knew he’d found my weakness.
For some reason, though, he didn’t press his advantage. Either he was playing with me, or he really liked to hear himself speak.
“But the biggest problem with the Legion is the angels,” he said. “Those cold, cruel, sadistic monsters are far worse than any you find out here beyond the vicious veil of civilization.”
“Who are you working for? Why are you kidnapping people?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that we will change the world.”
It was the tired line of only every criminal mastermind ever. Even so, at least he knew what was going on, unlike the clueless werewolf I’d questioned in Purgatory. I just had to pull at the right end, and the whole plot would unravel at my feet.
“How will you change the world?” I asked him.
He flashed me a grin. “You can’t compel me.”
I wouldn’t bet on it.
The iron gates of his mind slammed shut, and I was too busy fighting him to try to break through them.
He was very good. He could wield telekinetic magic, so he must have been at least a level six soldier before he’d deserted the Legion. And he was well-trained—faster, stronger, and far more experienced than I was.
But he didn’t fight dirty like I did. Though he’d left the Legion, his Legion training hadn’t left him. He fought like a proper and dignified soldier in the gods’ army, not like a down and dirty mercenary.
He stood behind me, his arms locked around my body like a cage, pinning my arms to my sides. But I still had my feet. I shot my magic down my body, straight through my foot. An icy spike shot out of my heel, and I slammed that heel down on his foot. Like it was made of steel, the ice spike punctured his boot. He roared in pain. I slammed my icy heel down again, this time cutting through the other foot. A sheet of ice spread over the ground. His grip loosened.
I broke free and spun around, hammering my fists against the sides of his head. He stumbled back, disoriented. I ran at him, intending to finish the job and knock him out, but he darted away. His footsteps were so fast that they almost seemed to float over the ground.
“You’re as good as they say, Leda Pierce,” he told me. “Don’t throw your life away fighting for the wrong team.”
Then he snatched a potion bottle from his belt and threw it at his feet. Glass shattered, shrouding everything in a sparkling purple mist. When the smoky amethyst tendrils cleared, the deserter was gone. And so was his team. Damn it.
A tiny click echoed off the rocks, then our truck exploded. I gaped at the burning remains of our vehicle that would never run again. The deserter was getting away, and we had no way to chase after him because he’d seen fit to blow up our truck. I stormed over to a boulder and punched a hole in it, venting my frustration. The agonizing pain was almost worth it.
“We caught a few guys from the other mercenary bands,” Calli said, watching me cradle my hand.
I didn’t want the other mercenaries. They were clueless pawns. I wanted the deserter. He knew something, and now he was gone.
“A fire elemental was wounded in the last fight. He didn’t escape with the others,” Bella told me.
Hope sparked in me. The fire elemental worked for the deserter. Maybe I would get my answers after all.
“Let’s go have a chat with him,” I said, joining Bella beside the wounded mercenary.
“He was knocked out by your ice spell,” she explained, indicating the patches of frost covering his skin in icy swirls.
Elementals were weak against the opposing element. In the case of a fire elemental, that meant ice and water. I grabbed a potion bottle from my pouch.
“What is that?” Bella asked.
“Winter’s Kiss.”