3

An hour later, I and eleven other soldiers were on a train headed for Purgatory. No, that’s not Legion humor. Purgatory was the name of my hometown, a tiny pocket of civilization at the edge of the Frontier, the gateway to the plains of monsters. It was where criminals went to disappear into the Black Plains—and where soldiers and bounty hunters went to track them down.

The train that traveled between New York and Purgatory had a carriage reserved for soldiers from the Legion of Angels. The seat cushions were an opulent red velvet, the floors were solid wood, and the snack corner was well-stocked. Someone had decided that chandeliers were the epitome of fanciness and had placed one at the center of our carriage, neglecting to take the low ceiling into account.

The bundle of bells above the door jingled, and Drake came down the aisle, carefully avoiding the swaying crystal branches of the chandelier.

“The cargo is all secure. What did I miss?” he asked, sitting down beside me on the cushioned bench.

“Grass, trees, a few ponds, some wildflowers.” There wasn’t much else out here.

He glanced out the window. Outside, the countryside whisked by at five hundred miles an hour. He was breathing normally, and he hadn’t broken a sweat moving the enormous crates stuffed with supplies for the Legion office in Purgatory.

“Do you miss home?” he asked me.

“Every day.” I sighed. Though I was closer to home than I’d been in months, I felt further away than ever before. I would be right there in my hometown, and I might not even get to see my family. “Do you ever regret joining the Legion?”

“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 and 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 in front of the sensor 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.

I glanced back at the door between the cars. Drake stood there, looking through the glass window, struggling to contain his amusement.

“You’re cheating,” one of the soldiers growled, drawing my attention back to the game. But he wasn’t looking at me. His angry eyes were focused on the man to his right. “That blue fairy card you played was mine. I had it in my hand just a moment ago.”

To spice things up, I’d rearranged some of the soldiers’ cards. That was even more fun than pilfering them for myself.

“Well, that witch coven leader card was mine,” he shot back.

“Where’s my werewolf?”

“My healing potions are gone!”

The soldiers were shouting now, each one louder than the last. Cards flew across the table, mixing together into a sloppy heap. I looked at the door again, expecting to find Drake laughing his ass off. What I found instead made my heart stutter in alarm.

Nero stepped through the door into the carriage, his eyes burning as cold as an Arctic storm. That was the look he always got right before he punished me. The paranormal soldiers froze when they saw the angel, scrambling to their feet to salute him. Paranormal soldiers revered the Legion of Angels nearly as much as they feared it.

“We apologize for disturbing you, Colonel,” Phoenix Tattoo said, bowing his head. “And we submit ourselves to your holy judgment.”

I choked down a laugh. Nero’s head snapped around at the noise, those cold eyes locking onto me.

“Corporal Pierce, come with me.”

I knew I was in trouble when he didn’t call me Leda or even his favorite nickname Pandora. I took a deep breath and followed him. The paranormal soldiers gaped at me in shock.

“It was nice hanging out with you guys. We should play again sometime,” I told them, winking.

They looked at me, horrified, like they were swearing to themselves that they’d never hit on a woman again in case she turned out to be a soldier of the Legion.

I followed Nero through the cargo carriage and then into the driver’s car.

“Leave us,” he told the driver.

The man took one look at the cold fire burning in Nero’s eyes, then scrambled out of there so fast that he nearly slammed into the door.

“Well, that’s nice,” I said to Nero when we were alone. “Now who’s going to drive the train?”

“These things drive themselves. The train can survive without him for a few minutes.”

“A few minutes? I think you are underestimating how long your lectures take.”

Nero gave me a cool look. “I am very aware of how long they take.”

“Oh, have them timed, do you?” I asked, my sass getting the better of me. Again.

“That would be impossible. You defy every law I know, Pandora, including the laws of time.”

I smirked at him. “That must be frustrating.”

“Yes.” His icy expression cracked, revealing frustration, like he didn’t know what to do with me. Nero rarely showed his emotions, but when he did, this expression was a frequent visitor. “What were you doing with those paranormal soldiers?”

“Practicing compulsion.”

His mouth thinned into a hard line. “You were playing pranks on them.”

“I can multitask.” I grinned at him. “I was just trying to pass the time.”

“If you’re bored, I can find things to fill the time.”

The smile died on my lips. Nero’s idea of ‘filling time’ involved running laps and punching a hard metal wall over and over again to build up your pain threshold. But we were on a train, so neither of those things were practical at the moment. Unless he was thinking of making me run across the tops of the train cars as it sped along at five hundred miles per hour. But that wasn’t even possible.

Nero’s mouth quirked up, like he’d heard my thoughts again. Damn it. The look in his eyes was daring me to say it was impossible. Soldiers of the Legion defied the impossible. We weren’t supposed to even contemplate the meaning of the word.

Time to take this in a different direction. “Pass the time, you say?” I arched my brows with deliberate slowness. “What did you have in mind?”

Nero’s gaze followed my hands as they brushed out a wrinkle in my shorts. He went eerily still, fighting temptation.

“You know what? Just forget it.” I shrugged. “I’ll just find some more soldiers to annoy.”

“Leda, wait. Stop.”

The command in his voice made me pause, more out of the desire to know what he was going to say than the urge to obey.

“Your power has grown in the last month. You had those soldiers completely enchanted.”

“Maybe it was my magic, or maybe they were just enchanted by my lack of underwear.”

His gaze dipped to my skintight shorts. The lower half of the Legion’s wilderness uniform looked an awful lot like hot pants.

I smirked at him. “I can’t stand panty lines.”

“Is that all?” His voice going lower, darker. “Is that the real reason?”

My throat tightened under the intensity of his stare. “Yes, of course.”

He stepped toward me, filling the shrinking distance between us. “I’ve missed you. Every hour I’ve been away from you, I’ve thought of little else but you.”

The blunt statement caught me off guard, derailing the smart ass comment I’d had ready to go. “Where have you been?”

“It’s not your place to question an angel.” His whispered words fell against my ear like silk kisses.

“Yeah, well…” I cleared my throat. “You know I’m not good at following orders.”

“No, you’re not.”

He grabbed me roughly, pivoting me around. One hand was on my hip; the other traced my neck. Pulling back my braid, he dipped his mouth to my throat, teasing the throbbing, pulsing vein between his teeth. A soft moan broke my lips.

“I and the other angels in North America have been training with Nyx,” he said against my neck.

I leaned against him, his chest hard against my back, his hand locked around my hip. “Angels still have to train?”

“Of course. The training isn’t over until you’re dead. And I’m half-convinced Nyx designed the training to kill us.”

I laughed softly.

Nero spun me around. “You have such a perfect laugh.” His fingertip touched my lips. “The perfect blend of good and wicked.”

He’d said that before, that I was a perfect balance of light and dark.

“Warm, rich, soft.” His kisses traced my jaw. “Like coffee.”

“I thought you didn’t drink coffee. Caffeine is a weakness,” I teased.

“You are my weakness, Leda. My temptation, the siren’s song that I would willingly follow to my own demise.”

My pulse popped against my skin like a bubbling volcano, building, brewing. I lifted my gaze, meeting the green fire in his eyes.

He kissed me slowly, softly. “I wish to take you to dinner.”

“I already agreed,” I reminded him. “Against my better judgment, I might add.”

I took his lower lip between my teeth, drawing it out slowly. A deep, low moan rumbled his chest, buzzing against my skin, bringing my tired, overworked body back to life.

“I didn’t anticipate Nyx would put us through that training so soon after I asked you to dinner,” he said. “I regret the delay. If you would allow, I plan to make it up to you.”

His voice was laden with unspoken things. It tasted of sweet seductions and wicked promises. My skin tingled with the magic of that promise, the promise of an angel who never went back on his word. He traced a trail of wildfire down my arm.

“How can I refuse an offer like that?” I said, my voice breaking.

He gave me a satisfied smile. He knew he had me. I could see it in his eyes, that arrogance tinted with a touch of naked vulnerability. Like I could penetrate the marble mask of the angel, like I could wound him with a single word. But I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to see those eyes burn with pleasure, not pain.

He kissed me again, his mouth coming down hard on mine. He wasn’t being gentle this time. He didn’t tease or taste; he devoured. Heat flashed through my body, a cascade of feverish sensations and hard, raw need. I grabbed his collar, pulling him against me.

Far too soon, he pulled back. “All in good time.” His hand lingered on my cheek for a final moment before he withdrew it too. “We have a job to do.”

His face had grown serious, cold. It was like a switch had flipped inside of him. The passionate lover was gone, leaving only the colonel.

“Get back to the others,” he said. “The train is coming up on Purgatory now.”