8

We were all changed and ready to go when Captain Somerset returned to show us to Hall 3, which meant we could hopefully forego all spankings. But as I’d soon experience firsthand, there was more than one way to torture an initiate. In fact, there were endless ways.

Hall 3 was a big gym with an obstacle course of barriers and structures at its core. A full-sized track looped around that core, and beyond it lay climbing walls and other obstacle courses. Nero stood with another member of the Legion, a man with cropped blond hair and a relaxed, good-natured smile. Each of them was wearing an athletic suit that drew more than a few whispers of appreciation from my fellow female initiates.

“This is Major Harker Locke,” Nero said, his voice piercing the whispering crowd. “He will be assisting me with your training.”

The major gave us a wave too friendly to have come from a member of the Legion.

“Now let’s get down to business,” Nero continued. “This begins the first stage of your training. You must now train your bodies and minds, to prove that you are truly one of us.”

“Aren’t we already in?” someone asked.

“No.” The word punched through the crowd gathered before him.

“But we took your test and survived.”

“You survived your first sip of the Nectar of the Gods,” Nero replied. “The drink that sparked your magic, bringing to the surface what was hidden inside of you. But it remains to be seen if you have what it takes to join the Legion of Angels. If you do, you will drink from the gods’ cup once more to receive their first gift: Vampire’s Kiss. It will give you strength, speed, stamina, and self-healing—all the powers of a vampire. You will gain the ability to receive a boost in those powers when you consume the lifeblood of another.”

The initiates around me began buzzing with excitement.

“But beware,” said Nero, his words silencing the crowd. “Along with these new powers comes also the other side of vampires: the hunger. You must learn to control it, not let the hunger control you. Become a master of the hunger, the bloodlust, the magic. Otherwise, you will go wild, turning into a monster. And you will be put down.” He tapped the gun at his side. “This magic will either kill you, or it will make you stronger. Remember that, initiates: what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”

Or what doesn’t kill you just kills you later, I thought.

“Whether you live or die is entirely up to you. We will work on your strength, stamina, and willpower to give you a chance of surviving the Nectar. We start now.” Nero pointed to the track. “Ten laps. Go.”

After our ten laps, Nero had us do pushups until we dropped. Then he made us run another ten laps. Rinse and repeat into infinity. He pushed us until our bodies shook and spasmed and we collapsed to the ground. Then he made us go again. And the fun was only just beginning.

“Gather round,” Nero said as my heart made a solid effort of exploding through my chest.

From the looks of my fellow initiates sprawled across the ground all around me, they’d fared the past few hours no better. But we peeled our bodies from the floor and walked over to him.

“Many of you will not survive the first month,” Nero declared, not even a hint of sympathy staining his perfect face as his eyes panned across us. The angel was as soulless as he was beautiful.

“As I said before, we will try to prepare you as best we can,” he continued. “But in the end, whether or not you survive the gods’ first gift is entirely in your hands. This is as much a physical battle as it is a mental one. And that is what we will train now.”

“Now? What was all that we just did?” someone asked.

“Warmup,” Nero replied coolly.

We followed him across the gym and into a smaller room. At the end of that room, a door waited. Splashes of crimson stained its steel surface. Blood. It was blood.

“Who can tell me what this is?” Nero asked us, tapping the door.

I couldn’t stop staring at the blood—or dreading whatever was coming next.

“A blast door. It’s designed to resist the force of an explosion,” one of the initiates said immediately. He had an ashen face, pale nearly to the point of sickly. He was built like a rail, all skin and bones with hardly any muscle. It was a wonder he hadn’t passed out during our previous exercises. Then again, you couldn’t always tell how strong someone was from their outward appearance.

“Yes,” Nero said to him, then addressed us all. “This represents a formidable opponent. You cannot break it. You cannot defeat it.”

“It’s just a door,” someone whispered behind me.

Nero’s eyes darted to the whisperer. “This isn’t just a door. This is you. Your greatest enemy. This is what stands in your way.” He motioned the whisperer forward.

The man came, a half-smirk on his face. Nero’s next words wiped that smirk away.

“Punch the door,” he told the initiate.

“Like for real?”

“You will put your full power into that punch to hit the door as hard as you can,” said Nero. “And then you will immediately punch it again.”

A slow smile began to creep up the whisperer’s lips, but the cold look in Nero’s eyes killed it. The whisperer’s eyes darted between Nero and the door.

“Now, initiate,” Nero told him in a voice that made goosebumps pop up all across my skin.

The whisperer swallowed hard, then punched the door.

“I said to use your full power,” Nero said, his face as hard as granite, his eyes as cold as an Arctic storm.

“But that will break my hand,” the whisperer protested.

“Keep your wrist straight.”

“It will still hurt.”

“That’s the point. What will you do the first time the enemy hits you?”

The whisperer’s mouth dropped. “I… Is this some sort of punishment?”

“This is the exercise I have ordered you to complete,” said Nero.

No one asked what would happen if we disobeyed. I didn’t think anyone wanted to know. The whisperer stared at the door for a second, then his body wound up, throwing a hard punch at the door. His shriek of pure agony wailed over the steel echoes. He dropped to his knees, cradling his broken and bleeding hand. Nero looked down at him, his face impassive, unfeeling.

“I told you to keep your wrist straight. Harker, take a look at his hand.”

As the major healed the whisperer with his magic touch, Nero scanned the initiates for his next victim.

“You,” he said, his eyes settling on Drake. “The football player. Let’s see if you punch better than the truck driver.”

Drake broke away from us and marched up to the door and punched it with so much force that the echoes nearly shook the walls. Drake bit down on his lip, containing whatever agony was boiling inside of him.

“Again,” Nero said, the word cracking like a whip.

Drake looked down at his hand. It didn’t appear to be broken, but it was bleeding.

“Again.”

Drake wound up his fist for the punch—then dropped his hand.

“Your willpower is lacking,” Nero said, dismissing Drake with a crisp flick of his wrist.

The angel summoned us one by one to that damn door until, finally, I was the only one left. I didn’t think this was by accident. He’d given me a front row seat to the pain of all twenty-three initiates that had come before me, and now it was my turn. As I strode toward that door, his eyes followed me, boring into me like a drill that could penetrate my body, cutting through to my raw soul. I turned my gaze from him and stared down that door. Then, before my mind could flinch away from the reality of what I was about to do, I hit it as hard as I could.

Agony exploded on my fist, rushing like a burning river through my nerves, up my arms. Surprise mixed with the pain—surprise that I could even hit hard enough to nearly break my arm. Grinding my teeth against the welling pain, I slammed my fist into the door a second time. My bleeding knuckles scraped against steel, dousing the fire with lighter fluid. I turned and faced down the sadistic angel.

His gaze dipped briefly to the blood dripping from my quaking hands. “You need to work on your form,” he said.

Screw you, I mentally shot him.

His mouth tightened, as though he’d heard me. Maybe he had. An angel of his level had telepathic powers. Just in case he was tuned in to my thoughts, I shot him an image of me setting his wings on fire with a flamethrower. If he’d read my thoughts, he didn’t betray any hint of emotion.

“You must go into any battle expecting to get hurt,” he said to us all. “And you must learn to plow through the pain. If not, you will die. There are no timeouts on the battlefield—or from the magic that will rip through your body when you drink again of the gods’ Nectar. If your will is not strong enough, you will die. There are no quitters here, only soldiers of the Legion and the dead. Remember that the next time you think you can just give up.”

A few of the initiates shifted their weight uncomfortably.

Nero indicated the blood-stained door. “This was an exercise in willpower, in holding yourself together despite great pain. And you failed spectacularly,” he declared. “Except one of you.” He turned to find me. “Congratulations, Leda Pierce, you’ve advanced to the next level.”

Why did that sound more like a punishment than a reward?

Nero flicked his hand at the blast door. It responded to his magic, swinging open, and a wolfish dog bounded out, baring his hellish teeth.

“And now you will fight,” Nero told me.