11

After leaving the master smith, I continued on to the Tranquility Pools. The magic here was peaceful and calm, very different from the intense, high-density magic of the Dragons’ training rooms. Palm trees swayed in the warm, balmy breeze. A velvet-soft bed of sand surrounded the pools of cool water. The sweet scents of coconuts, pineapples, and other tropical fruits flooded my senses.

I was the last one to arrive. Everyone else was already sitting in the lounge chairs on the stone patio, playing cards and sipping tropical drinks out of festive-colored straws. All of the candidates were here. All of the mentors were here too, with the notable exception of Kendra Fireswift. Either she’d refused to come, or she hadn’t been invited.

There was food packed onto every side table. Fruit salad and hamburgers and pizza and ice cream. There were a few bowls of chips too. The main table was clear of food to make room for the cards. As I approached, I recognized the deck. They were playing Legion, a popular card game that its makers boasted to be an authentic representation of the Legion of Angels. In truth, it was a watered down version of the real thing. The paranormal soldiers loved to play Legion, something we Legion soldiers constantly teased them about. It was impossible to ignore the irony of a group of Legion soldiers, in the midst of special training, playing the game.

“Leda,” Nerissa greeted me, moving over to make space for me on her chair.

“Hey, Pandora,” Alec said, casting a long look down my body. “Nice outfit. I like it.”

“Thanks.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “I can even see your nipples through your shirt.”

“Glad you could make it,” Nerissa said quickly, before I could knock Alec upside the head. “So you beat Jace’s time.”

I shot a triumphant grin across the table at Jace. “By nearly two seconds.”

“Until tomorrow.” There was a sharp, competitive edge to Jace’s voice. I had no doubt that he was going to beat my time tomorrow—and that it wouldn’t be by a small margin.

“Pay attention to your cards, Fireswift,” Alec told him. “You’re already losing badly enough. You could at least try to present a challenge. It’s no fun to beat someone so bad at the game.”

“I’d rather be good at the real Legion than at a card game.”

Alec laughed and gave Jace a hard, friendly slap on the back. Wow, they sure were chummy. I’d always assumed they hated each other. In fact, everyone here was acting real friendly. I noticed the sizable pile of empty liquor bottles on the ground. Well, that explained it. Alcohol didn’t make us as drunk as it did humans, but it definitely made us more amiable.

Alec dealt me into the next round. I grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl balanced on Nerissa’s lap. She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling like gemstones. Wait a minute…

I grabbed the liquor bottle out of Jace’s hand and took a sip. A sweet, intoxicating flavor danced across my tastebuds. “It’s laced with Nectar drops.” I put the bottle down before I was tempted to drink it all down.

“Of course it is,” Nerissa said, picking up the bottle. “After the week we’ve had, we need to unwind a little.”

A few others raised their bottles in agreement. Nectar drops were a very, very diluted version of the gods’ Nectar. Being a soldier in the Legion of Angels was the most stressful job on Earth. Legion soldiers drank Nectar drops to destress. Because we’d already built up some immunity to Nectar through the promotion ceremonies, the drops didn’t kill us. Instead it reacted to the magic inside of us. Essentially, it made us drunk.

“You need to unwind too,” Nerissa told me, offering me the bottle.

I waved it away. “Not a good idea. I’m too sensitive to Nectar.”

“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug, then took another swig.

“Ladies, are you in or not?” Alec asked us.

I dropped a handful of chips into the large pile at the center of the table. “I’m in.”

Alec grinned. “Finally, someone who’s taking this game seriously.” He matched my bet.

I played a weak character. I wasn’t surprised when Alec topped my card. I followed up next turn with the Fire Dragon card. He countered with an angel.

“Giving up, honey?” he asked me when I paused to consider my cards.

“I don’t give up.”

Alec grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

I continued playing. Alec beat my card every round. He beat everyone else’s cards too.

“You must be really unlucky in love,” Soren grumbled.

“My dance card is always full, my friend.”

Soren shot him a skeptical look.

“It’s true,” Nerissa told him. “The number of women who’ve come to my office with bizarre injuries after a night with him is simply staggering. I’m not even sure how some of those injuries are anatomically possible.”

Alec winked at her. “I’d be happy to stop by your room and demonstrate, Doc. All in the name of science, of course.”

“I think I’ll pass,” she said. “I prefer to keep my knees pointed forward.”

He chuckled. “Suit yourself. I’ll be right over here if you change your mind.”

“I don’t believe it. No one that obnoxious can get laid that often.” Soren shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t believe this either,” Jace said as Alec bested his card.

We played a few rounds, Alec winning every one. He certainly had a talent for cards. Around round six, I felt my head going all funny. It was then I realized that I’d been absentmindedly taking sips from the bottle. With all that Nectar in me, it was a wonder I could still think straight.

“Hey, love birds,” Alec said. “Are you in or not?”

Sometime during the last few rounds, Nerissa had relocated to Soren’s chair, and they were now making out like there was no tomorrow.

Nerissa slid off Soren’s lap with a coy smile and returned to the chair she’d been sharing with me.

“Good move,” Alec told Soren with an approving nod. His gaze slid down to the card Soren had played this round. “Unlike that move. That was a very stupid move.”

Nerissa leaned in closer to me. “So, rumor has it you’ve been having clandestine meets with our favorite angel Nero Windstriker,” she whispered. “And that Colonel Fireswift marked you. What an idiot.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I eavesdropped when you and the Colonel were chatting outside my lab.”

“You heard that?”

“Sure. I can wallow in self-pity and eavesdrop at the same time.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nerissa was the gossip queen of New York.

“Colonel Windstriker marked you too, didn’t he? That’s how you got rid of Colonel Fireswift’s mark.” She sniffed me. “So why don’t I smell him on you?”

“Nero marked me without asking. I made him remove it.”

“You convinced an angel to remove his mark?” she gasped in shock.

“I told him I refused to be stuck in the middle of this pissing contest between him and Colonel Fireswift.”

“What did he say?”

“He brooded a little, then he removed his mark. But not before giving me a lecture about the ways of angels and how I needed to get used to them because this is my life now. He thinks I can’t accept him for what he is.”

“Can you?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. The ways of angels are so cruel. They think they know what’s best for everyone, and they don’t hesitate to enforce their will over you. I’m not sure I can accept that.”

“Angels are cruel, yes,” she said. “But that’s not all there is to them. Colonel Windstriker removed his mark. He gave you a choice. He’s a good man. But a wicked angel.” She licked her lips. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He cares about you. If he just wanted to screw you and leave, he wouldn’t be doing this.”

“That doesn’t make this easier,” I said. “It makes it harder. He marked me, Nerissa. It’s just so… crazy.”

“He’s an angel. Those are their ways. And, for the rest of us at the Legion, they are to a lesser extent our ways as well. Your ways. A bit of a culture shock, isn’t it?”

“You could say that. I didn’t expect this to be the hardest thing about the Legion,” I admitted.

“No one ever expects that. They think the hard part is the fighting or gaining new magic. But it’s the same story for everyone who joins the Legion. We change. Or we die.”

“And marking your territory?”

“That one is just the angels. They are very competitive. And territorial. It might seem they are acting impulsively, out of anger, but every move they make is calculated to achieve their desired result. It’s a big game of strategy.” She waved her hand at the table. “Like this card game, except the stakes are much, much higher.”

“It sounds like an exhausting way to live.”

Nerissa’s brows lifted. “Angels have a lot of stamina.”

I groaned at her joke. She was almost as bad as Alec.

“I’ve heard angels can have sex like twenty times in a row,” said Darren, one of the Los Angeles candidates.

Oh, great. My private conversation with Nerissa had an audience.

“Twenty times in a row?” Alec looked at Jace. “Is that true?”

“How would I know?”

“Your father is an angel,” Alec pointed out.

Jace looked ill. “We’ve never discussed his libido. And I would appreciate if you didn’t either.”

Alec’s gaze shifted to me. His expression was one of pure innocence—or his version of it anyway.

“No,” I said firmly.

“No what?”

“No, I don’t know the answer. So don’t bother asking me.”

“I’ve done studies in angel fertility and sexuality,” Nerissa said, taking a swig from the bottle. “It’s a fascinating subject. The Nectar the soldiers of the Legion drink is a poison, the strongest on Earth. Because we’ve survived the strongest poison, it’s hard to poison us. We hardly ever get sick either. Even when we do fall ill, we typically fight off diseases quite quickly.”

Alec swallowed a yawn.

Nerissa wasn’t deterred. “But the same poison that made us immune to most illnesses and poisons also has a downside. Legion soldiers are notoriously infertile. The more Nectar you’ve had, the more magic you have, the less fertile you are. Naturally, that means angels, who have consumed the most Nectar, are the least fertile of us all. But they are also the ones the Legion pushes hardest to procreate. Because the child of an angel has a significantly higher magic potential, a higher chance of becoming an angel.”

Her eyes lit up, the scientist shining through. Alec was resting his weight on one of his elbows. He looked like he just wanted her to get to the ‘sex’ part of this sexuality lecture.

“Female soldiers of the Legion are infertile most of the time, having a fertile cycle only once every few years,” Nerissa said. “For female angels, it is even less frequent.”

“So they just have to keep going at it. For years.” Alec grinned. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“When a female soldier of the Legion has a fertile cycle, she knows it. Her libido jumps,” Nerissa said. “And when a female angel has a fertile cycle, everyone knows it.”

“We had that at my old office last year,” said Lieutenant Gardner from LA. “They had to send her off into isolation, far away to another region.”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Her presence became disruptive.”

“A fertile female angel puts off hormones that drive everyone, male and female, into a sustained state of heightened agitation,” Nerissa explained. “They become more violent, more aroused, depressed, excited, reckless. The whole emotional range. It’s like everyone is high on Nectar, all at once. Fights break out. There are crying fits, heated arguments, fights.”

“Orgies?” Alec asked.

“It’s been known to happen.”

He grinned.

“It’s not pretty,” she told him. “Breaking down the control of hundreds to thousands of highly-disciplined Legion soldiers has disastrous results. People have died.”

“I know the guy the Legion mated to the female angel I mentioned,” Lieutenant Gardner said. “The Legion sent him off with her for a week. He said it was the best week of his life, so good that he could barely walk without it hurting for the rest of the month.”

Gods, what had the angel done to him?

Nerissa must have seen the shock in my eyes. “Sex, Leda. Lots and lots of sex.”

The guys at the table let out a collective sigh.

“They are insane,” I commented to Nerissa.

“No, they’re just men.”

“Are we playing or not?” Jace demanded. He was the only guy here who didn’t look excited by the prospect of being screwed until he couldn’t walk.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Fireswift. We’re playing.” Alec set two cards facedown on the table.

We all did the same.

“How long after a woman becomes an angel does this…phenomenon happen for the first time?” I asked Nerissa.

Alec flashed me a grin. “Thinking of becoming an angel, Pandora?”

Lieutenant Gardner cast a long, leisurely look down the length of my body. “She would make a fine angel.”

There were some grunts of assent from the male delegation. That’s what I got for wearing a bikini to a pool party full of soldiers high on Nectar. I should have worn a robe. Or a suit of armor.

“Is that your own hair?” Darren asked me, reaching across the table.

I batted his hand away before he could touch my hair. “Yes, mine. My hair. My space. Invade it and I’ll break your wrist.”

The guys kept on grinning. Apparently, Legion soldiers saw threats of violence as foreplay. They really were just like angels. But that meant…so was I. Before joining the Legion, I’d never threatened anyone with violence. I’d instead plotted what pranks I could use to get back at them. Whether I liked to admit it or not, I was changing. And I didn’t like it.

“Each level of the Legion we gain, we get a progressively larger dose of Nectar,” Nerissa told me. “The jump to becoming an angel requires Nectar twice as potent as the previous level. It spikes the poison in your system so high that you’re not fertile for years, maybe even decades.”

Thank goodness. Maybe it was a stupid thing to worry about this far out, but I was determined to become an angel and acquire the power to find my brother Zane. I didn’t have time for games and wonky hormones. I wanted the powers, but not any of the nasty side effects. Nero would have called me a hypocrite for thinking that, and maybe he was right. But I wasn’t just going to wait around and pray for someone else to save my brother. I was taking matters into my own hands. I’d save him and worry about the angel side effects later, when I had time.

Everyone else at the table had already flipped over their two cards—and lost to Alec’s twin captains.

“Ok, let’s see what you’ve got, angel.” Alec blew me a kiss.

I flipped my cards. His smile melted when he saw my angel and Sea Dragon.

“It can’t be.”

“And yet it is,” I said cheerfully, claiming the pile of chips that I’d just won.

“You lost every round before this. How can you win?” Alec demanded as I dealt out our new cards.

“It’s not about the battles,” I told him. “It’s about winning the war.”

Darren laughed. “She is as cunning as an angel.”

Alec blinked. He still couldn’t believe it.

“I wasn’t playing those rounds to win. I was playing them to see how everyone else played, how you ticked, how you responded to different cards. I’ve got you figured out, Alec Morrows.”

“I’m not that predictable,” he stated, setting a card face down on the table.

“You just played a strong mid-level card, either a captain or major.” I watched the flicker of his eyes. “No, a Dragon.”

“Flip the card, Morrows,” Darren said. “Let’s see if she’s right.”

Alec’s lips pressed together into a hard line, and he flipped his card. The Earth Dragon stared back at me.

Jace laughed out loud. I’d never seen him do that. He must have had way too much to drink.

“Your strategy is to be unpredictable,” I told Alec. “But that strategy falls apart as soon as someone finds the pattern in your unpredictability.” I tapped the card he’d just set facedown on the table. “Your card is something really low, like an initiate. You want to force the rest of us to waste our strong cards.”

When Alec didn’t turn his card, Jace turned it for him. The picture showed a scrawny initiate, one of the weakest cards in the whole deck. This time, Jace wasn’t the only one who laughed.

“This is getting really annoying,” Alec grumbled.

“On the contrary, it’s just starting to get interesting,” I declared, claiming the pile of chips.

“What’s he going to play next?” Jace asked me.

“I’ll tell you after everyone has played.”

Jace frowned at his hand of cards. “That’s not helpful.”

I shrugged. “I have to beat you at something.”

We all played our cards facedown. I declared that Alec had played an angel card.

“That’s uncanny,” Nerissa gasped when I turned out to be right.

“Pure logic,” I said.

“This isn’t logic,” Alec griped. “It’s sorcery.”

“Your facial expressions give it all away,” I told him. “Your gaze lifts slightly to the left when you’re about to play an angel card.”

“Remind me to bring sunglasses along the next time I play cards with you, Pandora.”

“Sure thing. If you think that will help.” I flipped over my own angel card, winning the round.

“I never get tired of looking at that face,” said Lieutenant Jenson, Alec’s mentor.

“More than just the face,” sighed Liana, a candidate from LA. She slid her finger across the painted chest of Nero Windstriker. The artist had exaggerated every muscle on Nero’s body—and given him a sword too long for even an angel to wield.

“Colonel Windstriker is definitely the hottest angel,” said Lieutenant Greer, Liana’s mentor.

“Definitely,” Nerissa said, giving me a wicked look. “Don’t you think, Leda?”

“He’s all right,” I said casually. “If you can get past the insufferable know-it-all angel demeanor.”

“But you got past it, right? What is it like to kiss Colonel Windstriker?” Liana asked me.

Like kissing lightning—and not in a bad way.

“What does his blood taste like?” Lieutenant Greer asked.

Like the sweetest Nectar I’ve ever known. And how the hell did she know I’d tasted Nero? It’s not something I’d advertised. The Legion didn’t forbid blood exchanges between their soldiers, but it did frown upon the practice.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, it would appear most of you are nearly out of chips,” I declared, trying to change the subject.

“I knew I played my angel card too soon,” Lieutenant Greer said.

“I waited too long to play mine,” said Darren.

“Which one did you have?”

Darren looked at Jace. “Colonel Fireswift.”

“Colonel Windstriker is much better. He has the better stats,” Lieutenant Jenson said.

Nerissa nodded in agreement. “And word is he’s going to be promoted soon. They’ll have to update his card.”

“If he survives,” said Lieutenant Gardner. “The jump to level ten is supposed to be unlike any other promotion. It’s not just drinking Nectar. There are a whole bunch of trials leading up to it.”

Liana sighed. “Kind of like these trials.”

“No, harder,” Lieutenant Gardner told her. “Much harder. But no one knows anything about them. They are shrouded in secrecy.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Someone knew about the level ten trials, and he was willing to help Nero pass them too. Damiel. Nero needed his father’s help, whether he was willing to accept that or not. Nero would never ask for Damiel’s help. He was far too proud. So I’d just have to ask Damiel to tell me everything he knew about the trials, and then I’d use the knowledge to help Nero survive.

“Hey, daydreamer, time to deal the cards. You can fantasize about Windstriker naked later.”

Alec’s voice brought me out of my mind. Cards, right. I began dealing them out.

“Just for the record, I was not fantasizing about him naked,” I told Alec.

He braided his fingers together and hit me with an innocent smile. “Your gaze lifts slightly to the left when you’re thinking about Colonel Windstriker naked.”

“Actually, it’s to the right.”

I snapped my head around, nearly falling off my chair. Nero stood in front of the open door. He wore a black leather suit that fitted his broad chest perfectly. His thick arms, built by centuries of continuous physical exercise, were folded across that chest. His blond hair was slightly windswept, a few strands out of place, as though he’d flown all the way here. His eyes shone out like a laser, sharp and deadly. Being here, in Nero’s shadow, I felt so small, so mortal. I’d been so wrong. The artist of Nero’s card had captured the angel’s essence perfectly.

No one said a word. It was like all the air had gone out of the room. I had to remind myself to breathe. I rose slowly and walked over to him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him quietly.

“Basanti told me of your performance,” he replied coolly. “I’ve come to put your ass into gear.” He looked over my shoulder to address the others. “Leave.”

His voice was cold, loaded with command. Like a weight pressing down, crushing all freewill out of the room. Everyone scrambled to their feet and hurried away. A telekinetic tug from Nero slid the door shut behind them.

I gaped at him in shock. He’d just compelled nine hardened soldiers into a state of cold panic.

“Put my ass in gear, you say? Did you come all the way here to give me that little pep talk?”

“No,” he replied patiently. “I came all this way to train you so that you’ll survive the next promotion ceremony.”

Despite the fact that I was still upset with him over the whole territory-marking thing, I was also glad to see him. If he was glad too, he didn’t show it. His face was perfectly neutral, completely professional.

I dared to take another step toward him. “You came all the way here, taking time out of your busy schedule preparing for level ten, just to help me?”

“Not entirely. Nyx asked me to come here.”

“Why?”

“It’s one of the tasks I must complete before the trials.”

“What task?” I didn’t think he was talking about helping me.

“Colonel Leila Starborn, the Fire Dragon, was not called away on Legion business. That’s just the cover story Nyx told the other Dragons, the one they tell anyone who comes here.”

“If Colonel Starborn is not on a mission, then where is she?”

“That’s the thing,” Nero said. “No one knows. She has vanished without a trace.”