Your magic is nothing like mine, he replied, disgusted.
Normally, Colonel Fireswift didn’t have a problem telling me off in front of everyone, but he wasn’t shouting at me now. It wasn’t for my benefit; he just didn’t want to show weakness in front of his soldiers. He didn’t want any of them to know that my magic had frozen him, if only for a moment, just long enough for him to regain control of himself.
I come from a long and prestigious legacy of angels. You came out of some trashcan on the Frontier.
I’d have liked to give him the benefit of the doubt and said it was his pain talking now, but he was always like this. He made it really hard for anyone to feel sorry for him—which, I guess, was completely the point. He thought anyone worthy of sympathy was weak by definition. He didn’t get it at all.
I did feel sorry for him and Jace, though. My friend’s face was pale, his eyes red. He was trying really hard not to cry right now. As far as I was concerned, he had every right to cry. He’d just lost his sister.
The Legion did not agree. It was expected of Jace and his father to show no emotion. That’s what it meant to be a soldier in the Legion of Angels, to be above mortal affairs and human emotions.
“Finish your report, Sunstorm,” Colonel Fireswift barked at Harker.
“We managed to get the magic barrier back up, but not before a few hundred monsters poured through the hole.”
“The city?”
“Memphis was destroyed by the monsters in the aftermath of the wall’s collapse,” said Harker. “We hunted down and killed the monsters, but it cost us. Half of our team is dead, killed by monsters or Venom bullets.”
“And the traitors?”
“None survived,” Harker told him.
“Why did our own soldiers turn on us?” I asked.
“I questioned one of the dying Legion traitors. He told me the Pioneers were pulling their strings.”
“The Pioneers?” I gasped.
“So you’ve heard of them.”
“We’ve exchanged blows,” I said darkly. “What in the world would compel six Legion soldiers to help the Pioneers?”
“Leverage,” he replied. “The Pioneers abducted the soldiers’ loved ones and threatened to kill them if they didn’t cooperate.”
“Teenagers?”
“Yes.”
“Abducted from their homes or vacation spots all across the Frontier?”
His brows arched in surprise. “Yes.”
So that’s what the Pioneers had been up to when they’d kidnapped all those teenagers. They’d targeted the loved ones of Legion soldiers. To not arouse the Legion’s suspicion, they’d taken lots of other teenagers as well and sold them as slaves to rogue vampires. The rest they were keeping as leverage. The question was, what were the Pioneers planning next?
“Only six Legion traitors were involved in this catastrophe,” I said, thinking it through. “Only six, and they took down a large part of the wall. If the Pioneers manage to extort enough Legion soldiers, they could take down the whole wall. The barrier that has stood for hundreds of years between civilization and the wild lands would fall, and monsters would flood through the gates. They would kill our people and lay waste to our cities. Centuries ago, we built the walls and pushed the monsters back. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to do the same again. This could be the end of humanity.”
“The Legion’s defenses are only as strong as its weakest link,” Jace spoke, emerging from his cocoon of misery.
He had a point. Whether or not the Legion wanted to admit it, its soldiers still had some of our humanity and ties to the mortal world.
Jace pulled out his phone. “I have the names of the kidnapped people who are still missing.”
Jace was trying to pull himself together, to push through the pain. Even as his father struggled to stay calm, to not explode again, Jace was really stepping up.
“We need to check which missing teenagers have a connection to a Legion soldier,” he said. “We should lock up those soldiers now, just to be safe. We can sort out the guilty later.”
Harker nodded. “Agreed.”
Jace began reading off the names of the people still missing. He paused when he got to Tessa and Gin, giving me a pointed look. It was the sort of look that reminded me of Colonel Fireswift. He was really channeling his father right now.
“I haven’t received any blackmail notes from the Pioneers. They haven’t tried to coerce me into doing anything. And if they’re stupid enough to try, they’ve got another thing coming. They’ve picked the wrong person to manipulate. I’m not betraying the gods or the Legion. No way, no how. I won’t help the people who took my sisters. I am going to make them pay for what they’ve done, for all the lives they’ve ruined and all the people they’ve hurt. And they will woe the day they took my sisters,” I finished, my voice ringing with emotion. Anger flushed my cheeks, conviction pounded in my pulse.
Harker and Jace exchanged glances, then returned to the list, apparently satisfied by my answer. Because it was all true. I would make those bastards pay. After what they’d done, they deserved nothing less.
What I didn’t say was that this wasn’t just about manipulating Legion soldiers. There was something bigger happening. My sisters’ magic was playing into the Pioneers’ plans in some other way. But how? What exactly were Gin and Tessa, and why did the Pioneers want them so badly?
21
Psychic's Spell
The night was long and full of heartache—sorrow for those who were gone, fear for those who had not yet returned. The training hall had become my midnight refuge, the sanctuary where I fought insomnia, slowly wearing my body into exhaustion. This was starting to become a habit, and I wasn’t sure it was a good one.
It had been nearly a day, and Nero still wasn’t back. Had he been killed or captured? The urge to go track him down was overwhelming. I had half a mind to run off after him, even as reason spoke to me, telling me I didn’t have a clue where he was. No one did. The last anyone had seen or heard of him, he was chasing the last remaining horde of monsters through the ruins of Memphis.
If only we’d exchanged blood the last time I’d seen him, then I could find him now. Then I wouldn’t be so powerless. I really hated being powerless.
I was training old school tonight. No magic and no flashy barriers. Just obstacles that required raw strength, speed, flexibility, and endurance. I’d gone back to basics, back to the very beginning of my Legion days. The whole point was to hurt my body so hard that I couldn’t feel anything but the pain in my muscles, not the pain eating away at my heart.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I could almost hear the deep echo of Nero’s unwavering voice resounding off the gym walls, shouting at me to get off my ass and keep moving. The memory of him hurt more than my abused muscles.
“Leda Pierce,” a voice said as I reached halfway up the wall of spikes.
Surprised, I slipped, cutting my hand on one of the spikes as I tried to catch myself—and failed. I fell off the wall, smacking the ground like a sack of flour.
I glanced up, my eyes meeting those of my unexpected visitor. It was Aleris, the God of Nature, and I’d fallen to the floor right at his feet. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.
He looked down at me, a reserved expression on his face. He was dressed in plain beige robes decorated with nature. Flowering vines crisscrossed his chest like a breastplate of armor, and glossy black gauntlets covered his forearms. At first glance, they looked like metal, but they were nothing so common. They were made from thick wooden vines intertwined to form a thin magical armor I bet was as strong as any metal.
“Are you in the habit of falling to your knees before the gods?” he asked me. There was no humor twinkling in his eyes or echoing in his voice. Sarcasm probably wasn’t even in his vocabulary.