19

His aim was shit. The flames didn’t hit the angels, but they did get their attention. Nero and Damiel stopped fighting. Nero snapped out of whatever trance he’d been in, and when he saw Valiant donning the weapons of heaven and hell, he grew dangerously still.

Valiant didn’t bother with banter. He went straight for the killing blow. He swung the sword, shooting the blue flames at the angels again. Damiel used magic to block. Surprisingly, his spell dissolved the blue flames. Wasn’t the sword’s magic supposed to be stronger than an angel’s?

Valiant was clearly wondering the same thing. “Why aren’t you working properly?” he demanded, shaking the sword. “Maybe it needs to warm up.”

Nero and Damiel weren’t giving him a chance to test that theory. They blasted magic at him, trying to knock the sword out of his hand. Their psychic spells slid uselessly against the silver armor. That seemed to be working. It was supposed to nullify enemy magic.

Encouraged by the armor’s success, Valiant blasted more blue fireballs at the angels, but Damiel’s super-shield held.

“I think you’re doing it wrong,” I commented.

“Shut up.” He shook the sword again.

He was focusing on the sword. His eyes weren’t on the angels. Damiel motioned to Nero to go right, and Nero nodded.

I wasn’t in any condition to fight right now, especially not against the relics of heaven and hell. I knew I had to distract Valiant so the angels could move in unnoticed. I could do that. I could talk. At least talking would help me stay conscious, help me fight the warm wave of lethargy consuming my body one muscle at a time.

“You were the one who hired these armored men, who hired Osiris, to find the relics. And the Legion never suspected a thing?”

It was an invitation for him to talk about how clever he was. Villains liked doing that. This particular villain had done a lot of planning and plotting. He’d fooled the entire Legion, and he was dying for a chance to toot his horn.

He took it. “You make good soldiers at the Legion. Powerful, forceful brutes. But you are not thinkers. You’re not clever. The other Legion soldiers are blinded by duty and honor and ambition. But you, Leda. You are just naive. Fooling you was easy. Maneuvering you right where I wanted you was easy.”

I glared at him.

“I told you right what I needed you to know, piece by piece, to make you do what I wanted you to do. Or did you think it was an accident that I shared that piece of poetry with you, the key to the puzzle? It had to be you to open the door. I’ve heard about you, Leda Pierce. What you’ve done. Your magic.”

“Light and dark.”

“Yes, light and dark, the perfect vessel for the memories of the relics of heaven and hell,” he said. “The Legion is arrogant, so used to everything being something they understand, something they can control. Black and white. They can’t see past their well-established hierarchy, their tired view of the world. They can’t read between the lines. They can’t see how special you are. But I knew from the moment I heard about you. And when I read that poem, I knew I would need you to open the way. To lead me to the relics.”

“Your hired guns were talking about a spell that unlocked my memories?”

“Another useful bit of knowledge I found in my research.” He smiled like he was in awe of his own genius. “They performed the spell when we first came to the ruins. That unlocked your memories, memories the Nectar had already brought to the surface of your mind.” He smiled at the sword. “Finally, after all these years, it’s mine.”

Valiant spun around, slashing. Magic lapped on the blade, powering his strike. He drew blood from both angels, and they fell back against the wall, clenching their teeth against the pain. Two angels, top of the Legion, as tough as they came, each one barely keeping themselves from screaming out in agony.

“Perhaps it’s working after all. This sword can kill an immortal,” Valiant taunted them. “It’s made me powerful, more powerful than an angel. I am a god. And I will destroy the gods and demons with their own weapons.”

“What happened all those years ago?” I asked him, drawing his attention back to me. I wanted nothing more than to go to Nero, to make sure he was all right, but I had to keep the Pilgrim talking. I had to give the angels a chance to heal.

“I can see the pain in your eyes, Valiant,” I said. “And the hatred. Why do you hate them so much? You serve the gods.”

“Those who serve the gods suffer most of all. My wife and my sister died in my service of the gods, two pointless deaths in the war of titans, victims of the monsters the gods and demons unleashed on this Earth. We all went out there, drawing the monsters away from the town. Only I returned.”

“You feel guilty that you were the one to survive,” I realized.

“No,” he denied it. “I don’t feel guilty. I feel fury.”

But I could see it in his eyes. He couldn’t stand that he’d survived and those he’d loved had died. I almost felt sorry for him—if not for the fact that he wanted to go out and kill a bunch of people.

“I was powerless to save them,” he said. “But I’m not powerless now. Not now, not ever again. I will tear through the armies of heaven and hell. I will pluck the gods and demons from their thrones. I will defeat the monsters and return the Earth to humanity.”

I didn’t think anyone would survive his kind of war. A war built on vengeance was just a self-perpetuating cycle. It would keep going until everyone was dead.

Nero and Damiel came at Valiant from either side, not allowing him to use the sword against both at once. After feeling the mortal bite of the blade, they were more cautious now. They were evading his strikes, but the relics’ magic had made him as strong and fast as an angel. It was only a matter of time before he drew blood again.

A memory crashed against me. An angel cut at her with her own sword.

Valiant cut across Nero’s chest, slicing through the leather. I screamed out.

She looked up, seeing her own death in the angel’s eyes. The sword came down—and then just stopped, frozen. It was fighting him. It was fighting for its true master. It turned around in his hand and stabbed him in the chest.

I ran forward, calling out to the sword in Valiant’s hand, a stolen weapon that had never been meant for him. It flew out of his hand.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

I kept moving forward, a flash of adrenaline burying my pain. “They’re not yours.”

The shield sank to the ground. Valiant pulled on it, but it didn’t budge.

“They see the hatred in your heart,” I said.

The armor shifted, constricting. Crushing.

“And they want no part of it.”

Valiant’s hands darted to the armor clasps, trying to open them. The silver metal began to glow.

“What are you doing to me?!” he howled at me, pounding at his chest, desperately trying to get out of the armor.

The sword lifted into the air, then plunged through his neck. The armor split open, and Valiant’s body fell to the floor.

Damiel’s eyes darted from me, to the dead Pilgrim, to the pile of weapons and armor beside him. “Spectacular.” He reached for the relics.

Nero got to them first. Damiel didn’t try to stop his son as he lifted the relics off the floor.

“You have a big mess to explain,” Damiel observed.

“Osiris Wardbreaker and Valiant were after the relics. Their forces clashed. Valiant died,” Nero told me.

“And what about Osiris?”

Nero gave his father a hard look, then said, “The rogue angel died too. The armor’s magic overloaded and killed him after he killed the Pilgrim.”

“Perhaps you do understand loyalty to your family after all,” said Damiel.

“Stop talking,” Nero told his father, then tossed me a roll of tape. “Bind him in that tape. It’s strong enough to hold an angel. The more he struggles, the more his magic is drained.”

Damiel watched in silent amusement as I bound his hands.

“The relics of heaven and hell were destroyed,” I told Nero. If the Legion got those weapons, the power would destroy them from the inside, turning angel against angel.

“Agreed,” Nero said, putting them into a bag.

The room chose that moment to lurch. Nero caught me before I fell. His mouth hardened when he saw the bullet wound in my stomach. The rest of me probably didn’t look so great either.

He set his hand on my stomach and magic flowed from him to me. “Hold on, Leda.”

Everything went black. I was blind.

“…is not healing.”

“Gunshot…she…shot by an immortal weapon.”

“You’re not dying,” Nero told me.

My body felt numb.

“You still have to save Zane. I order you not to die.”

I held onto that thought, drawing myself back into the pain.

“Bossy,” I muttered.

He kissed me with lips wet with his own blood. A drop fell onto my tongue, jolting me awake like a shot of pure caffeine. I opened my eyes, and looked up at him.

“I can see again,” I said.

“Can you walk too?”

I rose to my feet, swaying but not falling. “We have to get your father and the relics out of the city without Colonel Fireswift seeing them.”

“His forces are outside the gateway.”

“There’s a secret passage.”

It was all coming back to me now, the fragmented memories solidifying. I pressed my hand to the wall, one without even a symbol to adorn it. I led them down the passage that Sierra had taken many times before. I hoped it hadn’t collapsed since then.

The passage was clear. It brought us to the edge of the city. Later, as we rode Calli’s motorcycle across the Black Plains, I realized that was one of the only things to go right all week.

Pressed between Nero and Damiel on the seat of the motorcycle, I drifted in and out of consciousness. I vaguely recalled entering my house, but I had no clue how we’d gotten past the soldiers on the wall.

I heard Calli shouting at Nero for getting me nearly killed. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t his fault, but I couldn’t seem to move my tongue. My eyes grew heavy, and I sank into dreamless sleep.