8

“The night is dark and full of monsters,” I commented as I reloaded my gun.

Beside me in the truck, Drake snickered.

Captain Somerset glanced at us from the driver’s seat. “Less joking. More killing monsters.”

I shot at the metal, roughly man-shaped giant chasing after our truck. The ground shook beneath its feet with every heavy stride. The fiend looked like a monster born out of the metal debris of the fallen cities and shattered roads of the Black Plains. See, monsters weren’t just made of flesh and blood. They could be plants. They could be made of metal or wood, of glass or mud, of water or fire. Of basically anything you could imagine and then a whole lot more.

This metal giant was a whole lot more. Its armor was seamless, as hard as dragon scales and as flexible as steel. The only things we had that worked against the monster were bullets filled with a magical agent that corroded metal, making it rust. We just had to keep hitting it until it had enough holes in its armor for the big cannon on top of the truck to blow it to pieces. That was taking a long time. Even longer than it had taken us to take down the other two metal giants.

“We’re going to run out of ammunition,” Drake said.

“Just keep shooting,” Captain Somerset commanded us.

Morrows didn’t need to be told twice. He hadn’t stopped shooting since a trio of these metal monsters attacked us outside the Windy Woods, one of the many haunted forests on the Black Plains. Cupcake handed him a new gun whenever he ran out of bullets, so the party never stopped.

“Are you sure you’re actually hitting the target?” I asked Morrows.

“Come a little closer and find out for yourself.”

“I think I’ll pass,” I said as one of my corrosive bullets hit the monster in the eye. “There’s no space over there.”

Since the Pilgrims had taken one of our trucks, we all had to squeeze into this one. Twelve Legion soldiers—eleven right now since Nero was flying ahead to clear our path of monsters—and enough weapons, ammunition, and potions to take out a legion of monsters.

“You can sit on my lap, baby,” Morrows offered. “I’ll even let you hold my gun.”

“No, thank you. I don’t want to pet your cannon.”

Morrows roared with laughter. “You’ve got spunk, Pandora. No one can deny that.”

“Too much spunk,” Lieutenant Lawrence said, each word dripping scathing disapproval. “I cannot fathom what Colonel Windstriker could possibly see in you.”

“The fact that she doesn’t wear underpants probably helps,” Claudia said, snickering.

“I thought I was the only one who’d noticed,” Greer said.

“No.” Morrows grinned. “We all noticed.”

My cheeks burned. “I’m pretty sure there’s some Legion rule about staring at your comrade’s ass,” I muttered.

“No, just about touching it,” Claudia informed me, looking at Morrows.

“I can feel you burning a hole in the back of my head, Sergeant Vance,” he said gleefully.

“This is all incredibly asinine,” Lieutenant Lawrence said.

She scored a perfect shot in the metal monster’s mouth. Bellowing in anger, it hurled a boulder at us. Captain Somerset managed to swerve to the side in time. Barely.

The monster’s next step was a misstep. Lieutenant Lawrence’s bullet must have hit something important inside of its body. Smoke began to rise from its ears. That was Claudia’s signal to let loose with the cannon.

“Beautiful,” Morrows said in appreciation as flaming metal chunks fell from the sky.

Another two metal monsters burst out of the woods, throwing trees and rocks at us. They seemed to be spawning from the plains tonight, rising from the broken shards of fallen cities. At least these new fiends were smaller than the previous ones, less than half the size of the giants. Claudia used the cannon to blast a leg off of the first. The corrosive bullet I shot at the second monster melted its feet to the cracked asphalt road.

“Take that, you oversized walking trashcan!” I laughed.

“You know what the Colonel says. If you can laugh, you’re not working hard enough.” Captain Somerset was laughing too, though.

“I follow a very different philosophy,” I replied. “If you aren’t laughing, you’re not having nearly enough fun. And you should think about a new line of work. I could see Nero as a male model. Or maybe a driving instructor.”

“You’re joking,” Captain Somerset said, speeding up as another two mini-giants saw us.

“What gave it away?”

“I know you’ve been in a car with him when he was behind the wheel.”

She swerved to the right to avoid a monster, then took a sharp left to avoid the other. The truck spilled over the edge of the road and rolled down the lumpy landscape.

“You’re one to talk,” I said.

“If my hands weren’t busy, I’d slap you for insubordination,” she told me, grinning.

“Nero is actually a good driver. He just drives at least a hundred miles per hour too fast. Maybe he should be a race car driver.”

The two monsters sank into a bog of bubbling black fluid, and Captain Somerset drove back up onto the road. “I’ll be sure to tell him to go to you for career advice.”

I looked across the plains. Nero was way ahead of us, a shadow in the sky. I couldn’t see what monsters he was fighting, but whatever they were, they weren’t faring well. Fire rained down from him like bombs falling out of a plane, exploding on the monsters.

“But I guess you don’t need me to talk to Nero,” Captain Somerset said. “You two are quite chatty. First on the train, and then your date. How was the date, by the way?”

I wasn’t surprised she knew. She must have seen us go off together. Or heard us talking before we left the temple. Supernatural senses could penetrate walls, which was why the walls at the Legion office in New York were so thick.

“It was short,” I told her. Too short.

“There won’t always be an emergency.”

I saw something in her eyes, something I couldn’t decipher. Humor? A challenge? A dare?

We continued to drive at top speed across the Black Plains. Maybe Captain Somerset should think about race car driving. She drove the big, top-heavy truck like it was a sports car.

The Lost City loomed in front of us, its ruined walls aglow with moonlight. We parked at the edge of the city, right next to the other truck. At least that meant the Pilgrims had made it across the plains without being eaten. Never underestimate the power of dumb luck. I’d been saved by that special mysterious power more than once in my life.

We moved quickly across the city. Having walked these rickety bridges and decayed buildings just hours ago, the path was familiar. We knew the ups and downs, the craters and missteps. But the Lost City was different at night, just like the Black Plains that surrounded it. We came upon a street frozen over in black ice. No, not ice. It was the road itself that shone with that eerie darkness, as though magic had warped its physical properties. Who knew what else magic had warped around here.

“We’ll go around,” Captain Somerset decided.

We cut around the black ice street, heading for the chasm that led to the sunken city sections. Nero flew down, and we followed slowly, restricted to ropes. A pair of wings sure would have come in handy.

The voices of battle rang in my ears, growing louder the deeper I descended. Before I’d left New York, Jace had told me the phantoms of the past still lingered in the Lost City, waiting to be released.

I wasn’t sure I believed any of that. The voices didn’t feel like spirits or phantoms. They felt like memories. The question was whose memories they were. And why I was hearing them when no one else could.

“This place is even creepier at night,” Drake said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, putting up a mental shield to block the voices in my head.

Passing the Spiral Tower, we walked through the thick carpet of dead snap dragons that covered the street. We traveled deeper into the sunken city. Water dripped down the walls, a hollow, rhythmic echo. It popped over the low hum of distant voices. And these voices weren’t just in my head.

“It’s Nero,” I said, recognizing his voice.

“You can distinguish his voice from here?” Captain Somerset asked.

“Yes.”

Her brows drew together. “How about the others?”

“I…” I listened as we continued moving toward the voices. “Nero is ordering them to leave. He sounds mildly annoyed, so I’m guessing he’s talking to the Pilgrims, not the man in the hood.”

“…can’t refuse…gods’ orders…isn’t up for debate…I am in command here, not you.”

I could see Nero now. He stood facing Valiant and the other two missing Pilgrims—and he looked just as happy as he sounded.

“We are not abandoning our search. The hooded bandit is still out there, looking for the Lost Relics.” Valiant waved his hand to indicate the underground city.

“You don’t know that,” Nero told him.

“Why else would he steal my notebook? No, Colonel. We’re staying right here. You might as well make yourselves useful since you’re here anyway.”

Nero looked like he’d just exhausted his supply of patience for the year. “I’m going to make this easy for you. You can either leave willingly, or I can carry you out and tie you all to the top of the trucks. That will give you front row seats to the monster attacks during our return trip to Purgatory.”

Valiant’s companions paled, but Valiant himself just planted his feet in deeper. “You wouldn’t dare treat holy Pilgrims in such a manner. We are the voice of the gods.”

“You might be the voice of the gods, but I am the hand of the gods. And I am fully prepared to use that hand to knock you on your ass.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Nero met his defiant stare and was unimpressed. “We are sworn to protect you, and you are making that difficult. You didn’t just put yourselves in danger by coming out here. You put my soldiers in danger.”

Nero’s voice was as cold as ice. I shivered in the balmy air. He sure was scary when he was pissed off. His anger was barely contained, boiling hot below the icy surface of his self-restraint. Gold and silver swirled in his eyes, pulsing with the shifting shades of his anger. Only two hundred years of practice in controlling his temper was keeping him in check.

He spun around, his sword a silver arc of death. For one horrible moment, I thought he’d actually lost it, but then I saw the spasming tentacle hanging from his blade—and the monster he’d severed it from. The creature wasn’t a creature at all. It was a curtain of twisting vines sliding down the building behind him. Before my eyes, the severed vine regrew into two new vines.

“Great, just what we needed. A hydra plant,” I commented.

Thick fog rose from the ground, moaning. Haunted fog was another thing we didn’t need.

More vines poured down the building like a green waterfall. They struck out, snapping like a whip, wrapping their thick coils around us. Nero set a bundle of vine monsters on fire. They swelled fatter, larger. He tried frost next. The monster froze, and Nero cut his blade through the frost-bitten plant. It shattered to pieces.

“Use ice spells,” he told us.

I reached for my potions kit. I couldn’t cast elemental magic, but I had a few potions that would produce a similar effect. I tossed a snowy powder over a nearby vine beast. Once it was frozen, Drake shot the monster, and it exploded like a shattered mirror.

We were just starting to make progress on the Lost City’s weed problem when the sparkling fog showed its true nature. A patch of dew-dripped light shifted in front of me, forming into the shape of a man. Before I could move, the smoke had turned to solid rock. The man-shape slammed its stone fist into my side. Pain exploded in my ribs. The monster had broken two of them. Biting back the agony, I swung my sword at the monster, but my blade passed right through it. It had changed back into smoke.

A cyclone turned inside the sunken city, a whirlwind of magic that sucked the smoke in. Nero stood at the center of the spell, his hands twisting and turning to keep the air spinning—and the fog monster trapped. But how long could he keep it up?

The rest of the team was busy with the vines. Beyond the battlefield, Valiant was retreating deeper into the city. He was going alone, going after the relics. The other two Pilgrims weren’t far from me.

“Come,” I said, channeling the siren. I knew it had worked when their terrified faces went blank. “Stay with me.”

Holding to my side, I ran toward Valiant. Those relics were going to get us all killed long before we even found them.

“Stop!” I called out to him. “You can’t go alone, Valiant. There will be more monsters.”

“Then come with me. You I can trust.” He frowned. “But not that angel who threatened to tie me to his truck.”

“Nero is trying to protect you,” I told him as the other two Pilgrims came up behind me.

“You can protect me.”

I glanced down at my broken ribs. My breaths came out in uneven gulps, each one like a stab from a hot needle. “I can’t. We need Nero. We need everyone. And most of all, we need to come back after dawn. It’s not safe here.”

“No, we can’t delay. The hood—”

“Is not here.” I held out my hand. “Come on.”

Valiant’s eyes flickered from me, to his companions, then back to me. I didn’t have enough magic left in me to compel him too, so I was just going to have to count on his survival instincts.

It seemed I’d overestimated his will to live. He turned and ran off.

He didn’t make it far, though. He slipped on a patch of black asphalt ice and fell, bumping his head on the street. From the sounds of it, he’d broken something too. Good. The pain would succeed where common sense had failed. It would keep him from running off.

“Gods, I’m thinking like Nero more and more every day,” I muttered to myself as I went after him, careful to avoid the black ice.

Valiant stirred, letting out a pained moan. And then my vampiric senses smelled it. Blood. The vines screeched and changed direction, drawn to that same smell. I hurled ice potions at the vines, but that hardly slowed them down. The blood had incited them, bringing out their most primal need: hunger. They crashed through their frozen kindred, shattering and splitting them apart in their need to reach the source of that blood.

I was all that stood between the wave of vines and the three defenseless Pilgrims. Unfortunately, I was out of elemental spells, and my sword did nothing but sprout new baby vine monsters.

“Our chances don’t look good,” I told the two mesmerized Pilgrims beside me.

They only nodded, watching the monsters with disconnected interest. The vines were so busy fighting one another to get to the blood that it was slowing them down.

Valiant lay on the black ice. He’d fallen on a sharp rock, which had penetrated his arm all the way through. On the plus side, the rock had kept him from sliding too far. He was still close enough for me to reach without having to step onto that black ice. Beyond him, the shimmery black ground slowly dipped…and then disappeared into a chasm. I could work with that. I hoped.

“Valiant, I need you to listen to me, and do exactly as I say,” I said. “Can you do that?”

He nodded, his eyes wide with horror.

“Don’t look at the monsters. Look at me.”

His gaze flickered to me.

“Good. Now I’m going to come get you. When I pull you off the ice, throw yourself on the ground. Got it?”

He nodded. I didn’t think he realized he was impaled on a rock or how much it would hurt when I lifted him off of it.

“You two, stay down and out of the way,” I told my Pilgrims.

They obeyed, and I stepped up to Valiant. The vines were coming, so it was now or never. I pulled him off the rock. I tried not to jostle him, not completely succeeding. He was bleeding out all over now. I helped him off the ice, quickly cutting his shirt off of him. He dropped to the floor, and I launched the bloody bundle of fabric across the ice.

The vine monsters shrieked, taking the bait. I threw myself over Valiant as the vines shot over me, straight for the blood-stained shirt. They skidded when they hit the black ice, sliding over the edge into the chasm. Rising to my knees, I pulled out a healing potion and poured it into Valiant’s mouth.

“Thanks,” he coughed.

“You can thank me by promising to listen to me next time.”

A burst of magic slammed into my chest, throwing me onto the black ice. The fog monster had broken free of Nero’s spell. It was spinning, twirling out of control around me, speeding me along on my way to the edge. I looked for something—anything—to hold onto. There was nothing. My fingers slipping off the glossy lip, I fell into the abyss.