“No,” he replied immediately, like he didn’t even need to think about it. “Ivy needed me, and I was not going to leave her to face this life alone. That’s not what friends do.”
Drake and Ivy had joined the Legion at the same time I had. Everyone had their own reasons for joining the Legion: power, the need to prove themselves, desperation. Drake had joined to be there for his best friend Ivy. She’d joined to gain the power to heal her mother, but her mother already had a plan of her own, a plan that meant making a deal with demons. Those deals never worked out. Ivy’s mother, the reason Ivy had come to the Legion, was dead now, and it was too late for Ivy to leave. The Legion of Angels was a lifetime commitment, and that was a long time for an immortal.
I knew Drake had been a star athlete at a university before he joined the Legion. He had vampires and shifters in his family, but the powers never came to him. Like many of us with supernatural blood but no magic, he was a bit stronger an faster than normal humans. Ok, maybe more than just a bit in his case.
They’d called him ‘the Dragon’ on the football field—the strong, powerful force that could go through anyone. He’d had a future, a long list of professional teams who wanted him after he graduated. He could have been on one of those teams now, in the spotlight, signing autographs, on commercials, on billboards, his image projected on the buildings of New York City. On the buildings of every major city in the world.
Instead he was a relative unknown in the Legion, working his way up like everyone else, eating danger for dinner, and death for dessert. Risking himself every day. He had given all that up for Ivy. And he truly didn’t regret it. I saw it in his eyes.
“There’s a group of paranormal soldiers in the next carriage,” Drake told me.
They must have been the replacement forces for Purgatory. The paranormal soldiers never stayed on the Frontier for long, rarely more than six months. As a child, I’d watched them come and go from Purgatory, standing guard on the wall, the barrier that separated civilization from the savage lands of monsters.
“They’re playing Legion,” he continued, amused.
Legion was a card game roughly based on the Legion of Angels. And I do mean roughly because no card game could come close to the blood, sweat, and tears of the real thing. The paranormal soldiers’ training wasn’t easy, but they didn’t find half of their initiation class dead before the training had even begun. They had no idea of what we went through.
Some people in Purgatory romanticized the paranormal soldiers. My sister Tessa was one of them. I’d never understood why she was so enamored with them, why she considered them heroic and brave. A vampire had once beaten me bloody right in front of them, and they hadn’t lifted a finger to help. They’d never lifted a finger to help anyone else in town either. They were cowards.
At least that was what I’d always thought. Now that I was a soldier myself, I found myself revisiting my previous prejudice. Like soldiers of the Legion, they weren’t allowed to interfere. They were supposed to follow orders to the letter, and getting mixed up in local affairs was not part of that.
“Back when I was a kid living on the streets, I used to play pranks on the paranormal soldiers,” I told Drake.
“Oh?” He didn’t look the least bit surprised. “What kind of pranks?”
“Mostly I just stole their food, but sometimes I’d steal their guns and plant them on their comrades.”
“Oh, really?” His brows lifted in challenge.
“You want me to prank them now?”
“I’m daring you to do it.”
“Sure, why not?” I rose from my seat. “We have some time to kill.”
I slipped off my jacket, evidence of my affiliation with the Legion. This wasn’t going to work if they weren’t at ease—and a soldier of the Legion would not put them at ease. Captain Somerset, seated at the other end of the carriage, watched me strip out of my jacket with great amusement. Beside her, Nero didn’t look amused. He didn’t look much of anything, in fact. His face was a mask of hard marble. The other eight soldiers didn’t even look up from their own card game.
I waved my hand to open the door and stepped into the paranormal soldiers’ carriage. Twelve clean-cut men in well-ironed uniforms looked up as I entered. Their eyes started at my crop top, sliding down to my fitted shorts, then back up again. This was going to be too easy.
“Hey, boys,” I said with a little wave. I wasn’t a first class flirt like my sister Tessa, but I’d found in my years as a bounty hunter, that the words coming out of my mouth were far less important than what I was wearing. “You think I could join you?”
“Of course,” one of them said as they all shifted around to make space for me.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling as I took a seat.
“You know how to play Legion, peaches?” a man with a phoenix tattoo on his neck asked, dealing me ten cards.
More than you do. I’ve survived the real thing, pumpkin. But I just kept smiling. “I think I can figure it out.”
“Just let me know if you need a hand.” He winked at me.
“Or a sword.”
They laughed.
Har, har. I hope you’re all better at playing cards than at making innuendoes.
Phoenix Tattoo opened the game with the vampire card. I let the first round play out before bringing out the real magic.
“Stop,” I said, and they all froze, their eyes blank. “Set your cards on the table, face up.”
They obeyed. My gaze panned across their cards. There was no reason I couldn’t prank the soldiers and practice compulsion at the same time.
“Actually, I don’t need a sword,” I told the man who’d so generously offered to loan me his sword. “But I will take your angel.”
I snatched a card with a half-nude angel on it. With her long black hair and shimmery pale skin, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Nyx—but I’d never seen the First Angel straddling a motorcycle in her lingerie. Who the hell had designed this deck?
I gave him my monster card in exchange, then directed my attention to the other players’ cards. One of them had an angel too, which I immediately nabbed for myself. This angel was the spitting image of Nero, though I’d never seen Nero carrying a fire sword as tall as he was. I turned the card, trying to figure out how you’d even swing a sword that big. I decided it was impossible, even for an angel.
The soldier got my initiate, a fellow with a weak willpower stat, so he probably wouldn’t make it far anyway. I couldn’t help but feel bad for the two-dimensional drawing on the card. Just like in real life, he’d never had a chance.
My exchanges complete, I looked at the soldiers and said, “Resume.”
They picked up their cards and began to play like nothing had happened. The two guys I’d traded with squinted at their cards, confused. They must have been wondering where their angels had gone—or if they’d ever really had them or just imagined it.