Gunfire and magic sounded from the front gates. Jace and his soldiers were now inside the castle, but it would take them too long to fight their way here. We didn’t have time to wait for them to help us cut through the guards covering Hardwicke’s escape. We had to get to the prisoners now, before there weren’t any prisoners left to save.
More guards poured out of the courtyard into the building, surrounding us.
“We are completely outnumbered,” Bella said.
“The women of Pandora’s Box know a thing or two about having the odds stacked against us,” Calli declared.
Then she pulled out her crossbow, shooting at the wave of guards sweeping toward us. The bolts, spelled with some of Bella’s potions, exploded. Guards toppled over, clearing a path for us. We sprinted through the opening before it closed. The guards were too busy with the aftermath of Calli’s explosions—and the arrival of Jace’s soldiers—to follow.
The long hallway led us to another tower in the castle. There we found a room that held a small metal cage. Sallow-faced teenagers filled it, their bodies pressed against the bars. The kids were crammed in so tightly that I couldn’t even tell how many of them were in there. I didn’t see my sisters.
Frustration, fear, and outrage flashed hot inside of me, but I couldn’t focus on the prisoners just yet. I had to worry about Hardwicke’s guards first. They stood in our path, each one in a fighting stance. They’d been waiting for us.
As they unleashed their magic on us, I came to one unsettling realization: it wasn’t just many kinds of supernaturals working together here; it was people who each possessed many different kinds of magic. Were there so many more Legion deserters than we’d thought?
I broke through their ranks, leaving Calli and Bella to deal with the remaining guards. I had to get to Hardwicke. I cast a wall of air magic right in front of his nose. He slammed against it and bounced back, falling hard on his bottom.
“Where are my sisters?” I demanded as he jumped to his feet, dusting off his suit.
He shot me a derisive glance. “Get lost.”
I strode forward slowly, each step pulsing with rage. He thought he could kidnap my sisters and sell them into slavery?
“Give me the key to the cages,” I ground out.
Something akin to panic flashed across Hardwicke’s face, and then he attacked me so fast I barely had time to react. He was very strong, certainly not what I’d expected from his fancy suit and shiny watch. He moved with the speed and strength of a vampire, casting a continuous storm of elemental spells at me. He followed that up with a potent telekinetic blast. Before my breakthrough training session with Ronan, the spell would have broken a few ribs; as it was, it only knocked the wind out of me.
Hardwicke continued his attack, his magic more varied and powerful than any of his guards’ spells. He grabbed me and bit down hard on my neck. Pain exploded from the bite. His fangs dug in deep, tearing my flesh. Blood poured down my back.
I knocked him away from me. This had gone on long enough. Anger burning my blood, I went on the offensive.
“I will drain your delicious blood to the last drop,” he taunted me. “But not before I find your sisters, wherever they’re hiding in my cages. I will drain them first. You will watch me suck the life out of them.”
Fury crashed inside of me, like waves against a rocky cliff. Hardwicke’s arrogant smirk faded. He stared in shock at my hair. Shock gave way to wonder as my ponytail began to glow. He froze, his eyes wide, mesmerized. I grabbed my handcuffs and secured him to an iron ring on the blood-stained brick wall. It didn’t take much imagination to picture what went on in this prison. My pulse racing, my breaths heavy, I lifted my sword in the air.
Bella and Calli came up behind me.
“Leda, your hair,” Bella said quietly.
I drew in a few long, calming breaths. “Just a moment.” I took a final deep breath, and the glow faded from my hair.
I snatched the keys from Hardwicke’s belt and tossed them to Calli. She went to the cage, opening the lock. The prisoners walked out on shaky legs. There were ten. No, this couldn’t be all of them. There were supposed to be twenty-six, not ten. Where were all the other missing teenagers? Where were Gin and Tessa?
Fear and anger exploding like fireworks inside of me, I marched up to Hardwicke. Without delay, without formalities, I slammed the hard hammer of my siren magic against his mind.
“Where are the other prisoners you took? Where are Gin and Tessa?” My voice was a horrible, deep growl, stomping down with the force of a falling boulder.
Hardwicke gasped in fright.
Dissatisfied with his answer, I locked him inside my magic and squeezed down, trying to force the truth out of him. I was using the style of siren magic that Faris had used on me—forcing, not encouraging; brute force, not finesse. My magic was an iron cage, my rage a fire burning through Hardwicke. The rush of power was like nothing I’d ever felt before. This was how you crushed minds.
“Your sisters were taken separately. They were put aside,” Hardwicke said in a dull, emotionless voice.
“Why?” I demanded.
“We are building an army, and we need your sisters.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“My allies and I. We call ourselves the Pioneers. We’re revolutionaries, freedom fighters. We’re creating a new order outside the gods and demons. The revolution is coming.”
To anarchists, the revolution was always coming. Over the centuries, many extremists had tried—and failed—to revolt against the gods. But there was something different about these Pioneers. And that something was their magic.
“Are you deserters from the Legion of Angels?” I asked.
“No, only Davenport has ever been a soldier. We have a few supernatural allies, but most of us are people of the Earth.”
In other words, mortals, mundane humans with no magic.
“And yet here you are, wielding magic like a soldier in the gods’ army,” I said.
There was something all-too-familiar about this. It reminded me too strongly of the incident with Stash’s army a few months ago, when supernaturals had suddenly gained more powers, taking on all the abilities of Legion soldiers.
Except Stash’s army had been freed and they were all back to normal. Not to mention, Hardwicke wasn’t crazy like Stash’s people had been. Well, at least not crazy as in feral. He could communicate beyond primitive grunts and growls.
“How did your people get their magic?” I asked him.
He pressed his lips together, resisting the pull of my compulsion.
“How did your people get their magic?” I repeated, clamping down my magic on his mind.
His mouth trembled. He was shaking against his handcuffs like a fish on a hook. The words finally exploded out of his hard lips. “We took a potion that gave us all this magic.”
“All at once?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Bella.
“That shouldn’t be possible,” she told me. “There is no magic bullet. The only potion I know of that can bestow humans with supernatural powers is Nectar. And it doesn’t give anyone all those powers at once.”
In fact, we took Nectar bit by bit, one dose at a time, usually over the course of years. Nectar, the food of the gods, was pure poison. It killed people who didn’t have enough magic potential to absorb it. Legion soldiers had to train hard to increase our chances of survival. This mystery potion Hardwicke claimed existed sounded too good to be true.
“I want to see this potion,” I said to Hardwicke.
“We don’t have any of it here.”
A convenient lie or simply good security? In either case, it was a big, fat dead end.
“What do the Pioneers want with my sisters?” I asked him.
“Your sisters are special. We need their unique magic.”
Just like the elemental I’d questioned had told me. What the hell was up with my sisters’ magic? They’d never shown signs of having any.
“Where are they?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
And he was even telling the truth. There wasn’t anything left of his mind to fight me.
“Who has them?”
“I don’t know.”