22

While Nero brought Harker to wherever misbehaving soldiers of the Legion ended up, I went back to my dormitory to check on Ivy. She was sitting with Drake on her bed, but she jumped up as soon as I entered the room.

“I heard you nearly got killed. I’m so glad you’re all right.” She hugged me. “What happened?”

I sat down on her bed, patting the mattress to invite her to do the same. Then I told her and Drake about what had happened with Rose and the vampires tonight. Ivy cried, then fumed, then she cried some more. Finally, she threw her arms around me and hugged me like a sister.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes wet, my mouth dry. “I shouldn’t have brought Harker there. This is my fault.”

“I don’t blame you for my mother’s death.” Her eyes narrowed. “I blame him. I know that’s stupid. She was spearheading a revolution against the gods. She did terrible things. And yet…”

“You still love her,” I said.

“Yeah. I do.” She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“Love is crazy. It’s not rational at all.”

“Yeah.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Speaking of me being irrational, where is that Harker? I know he was just doing his job, but I really need to go kick his ass.”

“He says he killed her out of mercy. He says they would have tortured her.”

Ivy sniffled.

“And Harker isn’t here,” I said quietly.

Drake met my eyes. “What happened?”

“Nero is bringing him before the High Angels.”

“For killing my mother?” Ivy asked, blinking in confusion.

“No, for giving me a vial of pure Nectar.”

“The food of the gods,” Drake gasped. “Where did he get it?”

“And why did he give it to you?” Ivy asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

She took my hand. “I love long stories.”

“Especially with happy endings,” Drake added, taking my other hand.

“The ending remains to be seen,” I said, then looked toward the door.

A gentle tug at the periphery of my senses had told me Nero was standing in our open doorway, and there he was. If only that little trick could always work, then he’d never be able to sneak up on me.

“Leda,” he said.

“This must be serious if he’s not calling me Pandora,” I told my friends.

The statement clearly didn’t amuse Nero as much as it had them. His face remained inscrutable. “I wish to speak to you.”

I glanced at Ivy.

“Go,” she said, waving me away.

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes flickered to Drake, and I understood. She wanted to be alone with him, to let him comfort her. So I got up and followed Nero into the hall. We walked side-by-side in silence until we reached his apartment. Even larger than Harker’s, its white marble floors shone like ice. A large leather sofa sat opposite a television that covered most of the wall. It was all very nice, very posh even—but none of it felt lived in. This might have been where he slept, but it wasn’t his home. I wondered where that special place was for him.

“So, when I’m an angel, will I get such an awesome place?” I asked.

“I’m sure it will be much better.”

I jumped at the brush of his words against my ear, so close that each syllable caressed my skin. I hadn’t heard him approach. Those angels were way too quiet. We stared at each other for a few moments, the angel and I. The silence was positively deafening. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“How did it go with Harker?” I asked him, just to break the silence.

“I brought him to the High Angels. What they do with him remains to be seen.”

The silence returned with a vengeance, stretching on to eternity.

“Your plan is insane,” he finally said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. What made you think you could simply join the Legion of Angels and jump up to the ninth level just like that?”

“Dogged determination,” I told him with a smile.

The angel remained unimpressed.

“Ok, I didn’t think it would be just like that,” I said. “I knew it would be difficult.”

“What you’ve faced so far is nothing compared to what is to come, to the horrors you will face. You will be tested in ways you cannot begin to imagine.”

“If you’re trying to scare me—”

“I’m trying to help you,” he told me.

I thought about that for a moment, and it just didn’t make sense. “Why?”

“Because Harker was right about one thing. You are different. There’s something about you.” He stared me straight in the eye and didn’t even blink. “You will have an important role to play in this world, Leda Pierce. I can feel it.”

I shrugged. “I’m just a girl from Purgatory.”

“Not anymore,” he told me, his hand brushing across my jaw. “Now, you are a soldier in the Legion of Angels. And you will make it to the ninth level. I will make sure of it. This I promise you.”

“Nero…I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

“You can thank me by letting me help you, instead of going off after vampires and gods know what else and trying to do it all by yourself, thinking that will protect everyone else. Promise me now that you won’t do that again. You nearly died, Leda.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” I said with a coy smile.

“I will train you,” he said, immune to my charms. Or maybe I wasn’t nearly as charming as I thought I was. “I will help you get through the levels.”

No one had ever made it through the levels of the Legion faster than Nero. I couldn’t have asked for a better coach.

“I will be tough on you,” he warned me.

“Oh, I never would have guessed. You’ve been so easy on me up to this point.” I smirked at him.

“You might hate me by the end of it.”

“I can live with that.”

He snorted. “There’s one more thing. Something we can try if you wish.”

His gaze dipped to my lips briefly before it jerked back up to my eyes. I was suddenly and totally aware of how close he was standing to me. I didn’t answer him, uncertain if this was his way of propositioning me. And what I would say if he was.

“I can help you see your brother,” he told me. Whatever next words I’d expected, those weren’t it.

“What?”

“Just for a second,” he clarified. “I can connect to him.”

“But I thought that the better you know someone, the more easily you can link to them. You don’t know my brother at all.”

“No, but I do know you. I can use your connection to your brother to find him.” He paused. “If we exchange blood.”

The last time I’d drunk his blood, I had been so crazed with lust than I’d nearly jumped him in the club’s hallway. I hadn’t been able to think straight. All I’d wanted was him. Things had been hardly better when he’d drunk from me. Whatever was between us, if I gave into it, it was going to drive me mad. But if it would help me figure out where Zane was, it was worth the risk.

“Let’s do it,” I told him.

* * *

Nero pulled the curtains closed and dimmed the lights in his apartment. Then he pulled fifty candles out of a gigantic box and set them up all around the living room. They looked pretty and smelled better: like vanilla and strawberries and peaches. Nero waved his hand, and the flames flickered to life on all the candles at once.

He extended his hand to me, motioning me forward. Swallowing my doubt, burying it beneath a mountain of resolve, I walked up to him and took his hand. He took my other hand too, his hold firm but not rough. Slow and smooth, he lowered into his knees, and I followed the motion of his body, lowering with him.

He met my eyes. “Are you ready?”

I nodded.

He released one of my hands and drew the knife strapped to his thigh. He pricked his finger with the tip. As blood beaded on the surface of his skin, heat flooded me, a wave of fire washing from my head to my tiptoes. My mouth ached—no, my whole body ached. Ached for his blood. For him. I felt my fangs descending, searing my gums with savage need.

“Sorry,” I said, pressing my lips together. My back arched forward, pushing out my breasts. My hips rocked toward him, opening. I realized what I was doing and pulled back. “Sorry.”

He caught my retreating hand. “Don’t be sorry.”

“I have to learn to control this.”

“You will.”

“When?”

He chuckled, and I realized I had my hand on his thigh. I dropped it hastily.

“A few months,” he said. “Your body is still getting accustomed to the new magic raging through it.”

There was something more than magic raging through my body. Hormones. Raw, savage hormones that were telling me to throw that gorgeous angel to the ground and have my way with him right here and now.

I felt a cool breeze on my chest, and I realized I’d pulled off my shirt and tossed it aside. And even though I knew I should have been embarrassed, all I could think about was that I was still wearing too much clothing. And so was he.

“What is wrong with me?” I asked him, clenching my teeth against the raging desire inside of me.

“You’re just more sensitive to magic than most people.”

And sensitive to him. Why him?

He flicked the tip of his knife, pricking my finger too. Blood surged to the surface like a swimmer gasping for air. I pushed my hand into his face, demanding that he drink from me.

“Steady,” he said. “Just a drop each. That’s all we need to perform the spell.”

I didn’t care about that damned spell. And only one drop? Screw that. I wanted to bathe in the glorious ecstasy of his blood, to relish in the euphoria of his magic melting into mine.

His grip tightened around my wrists, holding back my grasping hands. “Leda, you are stronger than this.”

No, I wasn’t. Not when it came to his blood. It tasted like Nectar. A little drop of heaven. Something about it made me lose my mind.

“Think about your brother. About Zane.”

The sound of my brother’s name on his lips drew me out of my madness. I took a deep breath, blocking out the pounding, aching pulse in my veins. I cleared my throat and looked at Nero’s finger, counting back from ten. On one, I dipped my head very slowly to his hand, showing him that I was in control. My tongue darted out and licked the drop of blood from his finger.

I stood very still, even as a tidal wave of need crashed through me, setting every nerve in my body on fire. I gasped, quivering, resisting. Nero watched me with intense curiosity, his gaze boring into mine even as his tongue flicked out and licked the drop of blood from my finger.

I sensed a change in him immediately. He grew oddly still, like he was struggling every bit as much as I was. His eyes lit up, glowing with magic. His mouth softened, his lips parting. Slowly, languidly, his tongue slipped out to trace the inside of his lower lip.

It took every shred of willpower in me not to pounce on him. Willpower was in short supply here. I could see Nero struggling to retain his composure. His hands shook as he extended them out to me, palms up. As I set my hands on his, a burst of something I’d never felt before surged through me. It was as cold as a whispering winter’s night, and it was that breath of ice that froze the desire right out of me.

Bright blurs of light danced before my eyes. Snowflakes. I blinked down hard a few times. No, not snowflakes. Dandelion seeds. Millions and millions of them dancing on a warm summer breeze. Beneath the dandelion sky, children held hands and danced in circles across a grassy field, barefoot and free. There were no buildings, no wall, no black prairies or rotting forests—nothing but pristine nature in sight for miles and miles. The children’s laughter melted the ice from my skin. The frosty particles rose in the wind like shards of broken glass, dissolving into the sky.

The sun flashed, and then I was standing in a room lit up by a ceiling of sparkling magic lanterns. And Zane stood before me, holding out his hands to me, a smile on his face. I tried to call out his name, but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth. Everything around me began to unravel, the streamers of its existence slithering away as the magic of the spell faded, hurling me out of this vision.

I jumped to my feet in Nero’s apartment, adrenaline raging in my veins, desperation fueling my steps. I needed to get to Zane, but I didn’t know where to go, so I channeled the energy into pacing back and forth across the floor.

“Did you see?” I asked Nero as he rose to his feet. “Did you see him?”

“Yes.”

“That place. Such beautiful, peaceful nature, untouched by monsters. There’s no place on Earth like it. We have only scorched expanses of nothingness—and cities built past the walls we hide behind. What is that place we saw? Where is my brother?”

“I don’t know. It is not any place I know of.”

“He looked happy,” I said. “I think…well, I just have this feeling that he’s safe there, wherever there is. At least for now. But I have to find out where he is. I have to see him, to know for myself. To talk to him.”

“Leda.”

I kept pacing, faster and faster. “I had a dream earlier. A battlefield of death. Or maybe it was something else. I don’t know. I feel like something is happening here. Something beyond us.” I laughed. “Listen to me, going on about dreams and doomsday premonitions. Am I going crazy? Is this what madness feels like?”

Nero reached out and grabbed my hand. “Leda.”

I pivoted around to face him. “I need to find Zane.”

“And you will,” he said. “I promised I would help you, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts,” he told me. “You need to calm down. For the moment, your brother is not in danger. You need to focus on what’s important.”

“Gaining the magic I need to find him,” I said.

“Exactly. This is the path you have chosen, the path you were meant to take,” he said. “Your new training starts now. You must push yourself harder than ever before.”

He took two swords off of his wall. “I will not relent.” He handed one of the swords to me. “And neither can you.”

“I won’t,” I promised, holding to my weapon.

“Good.” He raised his sword. “Then let’s see what you’ve got.”