4

We followed Nero down the tunnel. I had to run to match the pace he’d set.

“Your father is killing vampires?”

Nero looked at me, his mouth a hard, determined line. “It seems I underestimated Damiel’s magic. Early this morning, my security alarms alerted me that he’d broken through the magic field containing him. I tracked him here.”

“But why did he come here? And why is he killing vampires?”

“House Rune has turned many vampires. But it has also welcomed other rogue vampires with open arms. Before we met Damiel in the Lost City, he was searching for one of those vampires, a man named Raven Rhodes. Damiel believes Rhodes might be one of the last people who saw my mother before she disappeared.”

“And now he’s hunting down the vampire in the hopes of finding his wife,” I said.

So the Kane coven hadn’t come here seeking revenge. That was good for the witches. It wasn’t so good for Damiel. The Legion thought he was dead. They had ordered his execution.

“He’s risking exposure,” Captain Somerset said, voicing my concerns. “If the Legion finds out he’s alive—and that we’ve been hiding him—we’ll be the ones stuck in the Interrogators’ chair.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Nero promised her. “Damiel is coming back with me, whether he likes it or not.”

“I don’t think it will be that easy, Nero,” she replied. “If he came all the way out here, he’s not going to leave quietly. And if you fight him, there won’t be a single person in all six castles who doesn’t know he’s here.”

She had a point. When angels fought, they didn’t do it subtly. Nero and Damiel would probably blow up half of the castles on the mountainside.

“I will reason with him.”

Captain Somerset snorted. “Reason with an angel? Good luck with that.”

He shot her a hard look.

“You’re not the most reasonable person, Nero,” she told him. “And neither is Damiel Dragonsire.”

“Which is why I’m going to make sure we both get what we want. I’ll help him find Rhodes, we’ll interrogate the vampire, and then he will quietly return to his apartment.”

“Now that sounds like a reasonable plan,” Damiel said.

A second ago, there hadn’t been a soul in this hallway except for the three of us. Now, Damiel stood facing us, his pose reminiscent of Nero’s. The two angels faced each other, their eyes alight with fire—one blue, one green.

“So you agree?” I asked Damiel.

“To hunting down and interrogating the last person who saw my wife? With pleasure.” His words dripped dark intentions.

“There was another part to the deal,” Nero said with strained patience.

Damiel gave his hand a small, dismissive wave. “Yes, very well, Nero. I will return quietly to my gilded cage afterwards.”

“You might want to begin your quiet return to sanity by telling your fog to stop attacking Legion soldiers,” I said.

“I assure you, I am only hunting vampires. The fog probes their minds to find the location of Raven Rhodes.”

“And that requires killing them?” Captain Somerset asked with quiet skepticism.

“No, I just believe in keeping a clean workspace. The fog unfortunately isn’t all that intelligent. It would waste precious time probing the same vampires over and over again. That’s simply not an efficient use of time or magic.”

That was angel efficiency for you, brutally cold to the last drop.

“You did attack a Legion soldier,” I told him. “His arm is now covered in blisters.”

“Oh, him.” If Damiel weren’t an angel, I might have described his expression as sheepish. But I knew better than that. “I didn’t think you would mind if I gave Colonel Fireswift’s son a little scare, considering how his father’s been treating you.”

“You tried to cover Jace in poisonous fog to give him a ‘little scare’?” I said in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Jace is my friend.”

“You are friends with the son of the man making your life a living hell?”

“It’s not his fault his father is a psychopath.”

“I see.” Damiel looked at his own son, his mouth twitching with mild amusement.

“Enough,” Nero told him. “Stop the fog. The Legion needs those vampires alive.”

“Very well.” Damiel blinked once. “It’s done. I’ve already located Rhodes anyway. He’s headed this way. Conveniently, so are your friends.”

The roar of gunfire echoed through the halls.

“Ah, they’ve found one another,” Damiel said casually. “Another group of vampires is coming up on your friends from behind.”

“Basanti,” Nero said.

“I’m on it,” Captain Somerset replied, running off down the hallway.

A few moments after she turned the corner, the gunfire died down.

“Whoa, you came out of nowhere,” Drake’s voice said.

“The vampires are still alive,” Jace said.

“We’ll pick them up later. There are more of them headed this way. Let’s go,” she said.

Their footsteps tapped off in the opposite direction from us. By the time we reached the vampires, they were moving to their feet. Nero raised his hands. A distortion crackled in the air, and then four pairs of handcuffs popped up over his shoulders, bobbing slowly up and down like buoys on the ocean. Flames ignited on the handcuffs. They shot toward the vampires so fast I couldn’t even track their flight. One moment the vampires were backing away, and the next the flaming handcuffs had them chained to iron hooks on the walls.

The vampires kicked their legs in hopeless panic, like fish caught on a fisherman’s hook. One of them pushed against her handcuffs, hissing in pain when the restraints bit back. The smell of burning flesh filled the tunnel. They all stopped struggling real fast.

Nero stepped up to the dangling vampires. “Which of you is Raven Rhodes?”

The vampires remained silent.

“You can answer me or a Legion Interrogator. I’m considerably more amiable.” Nero’s face was granite, his voice ice.

He was playing the bluff well. The Legion wasn’t looking for Raven Rhodes, not any more than they were looking for the rest of the rogue vampires.

“That’s Raven,” the female vampire pointed at one of her comrades.

Nero flicked his hand, and Raven fell to the ground.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Damiel said brightly.

A flash of light flared up, as bright as a star. I shielded my eyes. When I opened them again, all that remained of Raven’s companions was a cloud of ash floating slowly down on him like black snow.

I frowned at Damiel. “You weren’t supposed to kill any more vampires.”

He shrugged. “They were witnesses.”

I looked at Nero.

“He’s right. They saw him. They had to die.”

Nero was a lot more like his father than he cared to admit. He was channeling his inner angel now, watching Raven with the cool patience of a predator stalking its next meal. By the time Nero spoke, the vampire was hyperventilating, impressive considering that vampires didn’t need to breathe.

“Tell me about Cadence Lightbringer,” Nero said.

“The angel?”

“You saw her nearly two hundred years ago, days after her supposed death.”

“I was human back then.” The vampire’s left eye twitched erratically. “Memory’s a bit fuzzy.”

A psychic blast shot out of Nero, slamming Raven against the wall. “Where did you see her?”

“I saw her wandering in the Western Wilderness. Dehydrated, starving, and dirty. Her body was covered in cuts caked over with dirt and blood. Her frayed wings dragged on the ground. She didn’t have the strength to fly. She didn’t even have enough magic left to retract her wings again.”

I recognized the calculation in Raven’s eyes. I knew his kind. He was the sort of person who built his fortune on the misfortune of others. He had neither morals nor compassion.

“You captured her. You were going to sell her like some animal, weren’t you?” I realized, my eyes burning with anger.

“Your hair,” he gasped. “What the hell is wrong with your hair?”

I glanced down at my glowing braid. A red light was spreading up from the tips.

“Never mind that. It does that sometimes.”

The vampire definitely minded. In fact, he couldn’t look away from my glowing hair. His eyes were locked on it, transfixed. It was a good thing Nero’s magic had him pinned to the wall, or he’d have probably tried to bite me by now.

“What happened to Cadence Lightbringer?” I asked him.

His eyes were dilated. He didn’t blink. “She escaped her cage one night. I followed the trail of blood, but when I reached the end, she was gone. She’d vanished. I never saw her again.”

He spoke the words in a dull monotone. There was something weird going on with my hair, and it wasn’t just the glow. I felt my magic growing stronger. I’d somehow managed to compel a vampire who didn’t want to be compelled. In his situation, he should have fought my mental control every step of the way. I could feel a spark of resistance in him, but it didn’t make it through the trance my hair had put him in. I knew he was telling the truth. Right now, I had him so far under my spell that he couldn’t have lied to save his life.

“That was remarkable,” Damiel told me as the red light faded from my hair.

I swayed to the side, barely staying on my feet. I felt like I’d just run back-to-back marathons. Compelling the vampire had used up every drop of magic in me, and my body was screaming in protest, a hammer pounding inside of my head.

“I must admit I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

The fact that an angel of Damiel’s age had never seen anything like my glowing hair worried me. What was I?

“Well, this was fun.” Damiel drew his sword and severed the vampire’s head in a single slash of his burning blade. “And now I believe Nero and I must be going. Your friends are on their way.”

I caught Nero’s hand as he began to lead his father away. “Be safe.”

“You too. Try to stay out of trouble.” His hand brushed softly across my cheek. “I’ll see you in New York.”

I couldn’t stop the smile that was spreading across my face. “You’ll be there?”

“Race you there,” he said with a wicked twitch of his mouth.

Then he and Damiel were gone. And not a moment too soon.

“What happened here?” Drake asked as he came around the corner with Captain Somerset and Jace.

“The vampires didn’t come willingly,” I said.

Drake’s brows arched. “So you burned them to ash?”

“Captain Somerset set my sword on fire before she ran off to save your asses,” I said.

I hated lying to my friends, but Nero’s secret wasn’t mine to tell. Besides, if Jace found out about Damiel, I wasn’t completely sure he could keep it to himself. He might tell his father. That’s what the Legion would want him to do. But doing the right thing in the Legion’s eyes would get Nero and Damiel into hot water—not to mention me and Captain Somerset.

“You need to be careful with that sword, or you’ll set your pretty hair on fire,” Captain Somerset told me with a smirk.

“I’ll try to remember that,” I replied. “So, how did you fare?”

“The castle is clear. Thirty-two vampires captured, including Charles Rune himself,” she told me. “The other teams are also done with the other castles, so let’s get these rogues down the mountain.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked.

“You’re going to carry them, of course.”

My bones groaned at the promise of more pain. “All of us?”

“No, I’m going to observe while the three of you carry them.”

I frowned at her. “You’re stronger than I am, so you should carry them.”

Captain Somerset snorted. “Pandora, you keep forgetting that the Legion of Angels isn’t a democracy.”

I sighed. So much for not being life’s bitch. “Ok, show me these vampires.” Only the prospect of seeing Nero again soon kept the despair out of my voice.