20

Unlike the hundred witches who’d been partying just a few seconds ago, Nero and I were still standing. Pyralis Carver and his shapeshifting friend shot us a surprised look, then jumped up and ran, their footsteps thumping over the soft heartbeats of the sleeping witches. Thank goodness the partiers weren’t dead.

Nero was already running after the assailants. Leaving the witches, I pushed through a side door and followed him into the underbelly of the airship. Dull, blinking lights illuminated our path down a very industrial-looking corridor. We passed exposed pipes screwed to the ceiling, and cables spilling out of holes in the walls.

The dark corridor ended in a storage bay. Six people dressed in black—plus Pyralis Carver and the shapeshifter dressed in the witch style—stood in a solid line blocking our path. As we ran through the door, thick steam shot out from either side of the frame, enveloping us. It burned my skin everywhere it touched. And in my current outfit, it touched a lot of places. I closed my eyes to shield them. Supernatural senses were a two-edged sword. Being ultra-sensitive wasn’t always a good thing, particularly when flesh-burning gas was involved.

A shock wave of air shot out from beside me, blasting the gas away. The burning sensation on my skin faded, and I opened my eyes. Nero stood with his hands extended in front of him, the distinctive pale blue glow of air magic sparkling on his fingers. He was blinking hard, obviously trying to clear his vision. His senses were even more developed than mine—and even more sensitive. I tried to take a step forward, but my leg wouldn’t move.

“It didn’t work,” said one of the women in black.

Pyralis Carver frowned. He pressed a button on the small remote in his hand. Steam billowed out of the doorframe, smothering us in that vile poison a second time. The burn was stronger this time, piling pain onto the first dose.

“They’re supposed to be dead,” the woman growled at him, gold light flashing across her brown irises. She was a shifter.

“A minor miscalculation.”

“We’re sick and tired of your ‘minor miscalculations’.” The woman looked at the men and women who’d clustered around her like she was their leader. They nodded, their eyes burning with that same gold light of shifter magic.

“If it were so easy to poison Legion soldiers, someone would have done it already,” Carver said.

“You said you could do it.”

“Enough.” Nero’s voice was hard, the golden gleam in his eyes rivaling their own. His hand shot up, and a psychic wave blasted the seven shifters and one witch across the room. Their backs slammed against the wall, where they remained stuck. “What are you doing on this ship?”

The panel beneath Nero’s feet exploded, dousing him in a green liquid that immediately burst into flames. He waved his hands calmly, but the fire didn’t go out. A savage growl born of agony and fury bellowed out of him. I tore against the spell holding me frozen, trying to free myself. I might as well have tried to move the sun for all the good it did me. I was stuck. All I could do was watch in horror.

As Nero battled against the fire consuming him, the magic holding the shifters weakened. His prisoners dropped from the wall. One of them, a young man with a shaved head and a dark goatee, lifted his gun. He didn’t look like he trusted the fire to handle an angel. He was going to shoot Nero himself.

I couldn’t let that happen. I continued to fight the spell holding me. There had to be a way out of this. Nero had broken the spell. How?

Stop fighting, stop pushing. Don’t try to break the magic holding you, Nero’s voice said in my head. Let yourself fall through the spell.

Any other time, I might have questioned the voice—and my sanity—but I was out of options and had no time to question anything. So I listened. I stopped fighting. I let go and let myself fall. I could feel the spell shatter all around me, its grip on me broken. I stumbled forward, quickly turning that stumble into a single-minded dash toward Nero. I had to help him.

I didn’t know how I was going to put out the fire on him. I had this odd feeling that if I could just touch him, everything would be fine. I jumped at him, throwing my arms around him. A gun went off, but the bullet sliced past us. And the moment Nero and I collided, the flames died. He stepped back, catching our fall before we hit the floor.

“Are you all right?” I asked, lifting my hand to his cheek. The skin was red and hot to the touch, but the fire hadn’t scorched him like it should have. He must have used magic to protect his body from the heat.

“Fine.” He glanced down at his arms. The flames had burned off his shirt sleeves to the elbows, and the exposed skin was freckled with blisters. Apparently, his magic hadn’t protected him completely. If that fire had gone on any longer, it might have actually killed him.

“How did you do that?” Carver demanded, his dark eyes glaring at me. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that!”

I didn’t have a clue how I’d put out the fire on Nero, but I wasn’t going to tell the witch that. I smirked at him instead.

“Another failed spell, witch?” the pack leader said.

“What does it take to kill them?” commented the woman beside her.

“A bullet in the head,” the goatee guy said, lifting his gun to shoot at us again.

Nero’s eyes flashed gold, then melted to silver. He lifted his hand, flicking the shifter’s gun away with a crack of psychic magic. A second blast glued them all to the wall again.

“Let’s try this again,” Nero said, striding up to them, every step dripping with pure menace. “What are you doing on this ship?”

“Screw you,” Mr. Goatee spat out.

A psychic wave shot out of Nero, slamming the shifter’s head against the wall. Nero watched him cooly, even as blood dribbled down the wall in crimson streams.

“You,” Nero said, his head snapping around to Carver. “You are a witch in a band of shifters. Why are you working with them?”

The witch laughed with the kind of desperate glee that bordered on madness. “What makes you think they’re not working for me?”

“Your days of commanding others are long gone,” Nero said, his eyes merciless. “Now answer my question.”

Carver’s eyes danced between Nero and the shifters. “I want immunity. I know what the Legion does to its prisoners. If I tell you what you want to know, I go free. You don’t kill me, and I don’t end up a permanent resident in the Legion’s prison.”

“Very well.”

“On your honor as an angel.”

“On my honor as an angel, if you tell me what I need to know, I won’t kill you or take you prisoner.”

Carver’s eyes flickered to me. “And you won’t order her to do it either. Or any other member of the Legion. Or anyone outside the Legion acting on your orders.”

“Are you finished?” Nero looked almost amused, which Carver should have known was a bad sign in an angel.

Instead, he appeared relieved. “Yes.”

“All right. Now that you’ve miraculously evaded death’s door, tell me what you and your furry companions have been up to.”

“They hired me to—”

“Pyralis, you tell them, and I’ll kill you!” the pack leader snarled.

“Sorry, Luna,” he said. “I’m more afraid of him than I am of you.”

“Only fools join the Legion of Angels, and only fools make deals with them,” said Mr. Goatee.

“Silence.”

Nero’s voice snapped, and for a brief moment, it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. The shifters opened their mouths to speak, but no sound came out. Hey, that was a neat trick—and very disturbing. The shifters were shouting their heads off, and I couldn’t hear a single word. Gods, I sure was glad Nero had never performed that spell on me.

“Not you,” Nero said to a gaping Carver. “You need to talk. Now.”

“Luna came to me a couple of weeks ago, right after the Legion put an end to the demons’ army recruitment in New York,” the witch spoke quickly. “The Legion inquisitors’ investigation has hit the city’s supernaturals hard, but especially vampires, witches, and shifters.”

We’d found those three supernatural groups had been infiltrated, so it made sense Nyx’s people were concentrating on weeding out the defectors in their midst.

“Among the shifters, Luna’s pack was hit the hardest. Five of her own turned, and she didn’t even notice.” Carver looked at Luna, who was shouting soundlessly, her voice still held captive by Nero’s spell. “So she decided to take the heat off of the shifters.”

“By putting the heat onto someone else,” I realized. “She set up the witches. That’s why she came to you. Only a witch could use those powerful potions. Luna needed you to make it look like the witch covens were killing all those people.”

“Yes,” said Carver.

“I was at the shifter club earlier today. You almost killed your own people,” I said to Luna, the bitter taste of disgust coating my tongue. “You did kill nearly a hundred vampires. And for what? Because you were too weak to keep control of your own people—and to deal with what they did.”

With her mouth out of order, she resorted to flipping me off.

“She believed an attack on the shifters would draw suspicion away from the shifter community,” said Carver. “And she had attacks planned against all supernaturals in the city except the witches themselves. The Legion would have eventually taken the witches into custody.”

And the inquisitors wouldn’t have listened to their pleas of innocence either. When the witches didn’t break under torture, Nyx’s team would have decided the demons’ spell prevented them from confessing, just like the other witches. Luna had worked everything out. Well, almost everything.

“Your mistake was to attack the Legion,” Nero told her.

“She assumed if you were attacked, you would immediately take the coven leaders into custody,” said Carver.

“You should never venture to make assumptions about the Legion of Angels. Well, except that if you misbehave, we will catch you.” He shot them a hard smile. “You can always assume that.”

Carver cringed.

“The Legion found evidence of a fight between vampires and witches in some tunnels outside the city. The same poison used in the Brick Palace was found there. What was that about?” I asked him.

“That is where Luna had me test the poison to prove it worked.”

“You’re all sick.”

“The world is sick,” Carver told me. “Surely, the Legion has taught you that.”

I frowned. “If you want to frame the witches by attacking all of the other supernaturals, then why are you trying to kill the witches here?”

“This isn’t an attack. It’s a retreat,” said Nero. “They’re here to steal the ship. You are the thief.” He looked at Carver. “You’ve been stealing poisons and explosives from the witches. As a former coven leader, you know your way around the university—and around their wards. But you’re not as clever as you think you are. The witches caught you in the act tonight, and you fled. When we took chase, you realized the game was over.”

“You shouldn’t have been able to track me here,” said Carver. “I took precautions.”

“You accounted for our magic and our technology, but not for the human element,” Nero said, glancing at me.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“New York is a busy city,” I told him. “There are people everywhere, and a ninja is kind of hard to miss.”

“You bribed them.” Carver laughed. It was a sad, defeated laugh. “I never would have expected that from the Legion. You consider yourselves so holy, too dignified for such base things.”

“I’m neither holy nor dignified.”

Carver looked at me for a few seconds, then he said to Nero, “She is the most dangerous weapon the Legion of Angels has.”

I was about to dispute the accusation, but Nero spoke first. “Yes. She is.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“You aided the shifters in their attacks on a hundred and fifty people,” Nero said to the witch. “You poisoned vampires, tried to poison shifters, and tried to blow up Legion soldiers—twice. You stole highly dangerous materials from the witch coven leaders of New York in an attempt to frame them. In doing all of this, you impeded a vital Legion investigation. Demons are no laughing matter. The last time they gained a foothold into our world, the Earth was nearly torn apart. You might not have helped them directly, but you prevented us from catching the people who did. And all because of your childish need to enact revenge against the witches who removed you from power.” Nero’s words dripped icicles. “The Legion of Angels are the protectors who stand between monsters and civilization, between hell and Earth. You have not simply betrayed us. You have betrayed all of humanity.”

“You promised not to kill me if I told you what you want to know,” Carver spluttered nervously, his hands quaking against the invisible bonds holding him to the wall.

“Yes, I did.”

“You also promised not to torture me.”

“Indeed.” Nero’s smile was almost feral.

“And you said you wouldn’t order anyone to kill me.”

“I don’t have to.” Nero waved his hand, and Luna fell off the wall. “She already promised you she would kill you, and she isn’t the sort of person to make empty threats.”

Luna advanced toward Carver, gold flashing in her eyes as she drew a knife.

“You can’t kill me!” he squealed. “That’s what he wants.”

“I don’t care what he wants. I made a promise to you, and I’m going to fulfill it.” She flipped the knife around in her hand.

“He’ll just kill you afterwards.”

Her mouth pulled back into a snarl. “But you’ll die first.”

Carver shook and thrashed against the psychic spell Nero had cast to hold him in place, but he didn’t have the magic to overpower an angel. He wasn’t moving an inch unless Nero allowed it.

“Wait!” Carver shouted, his terrified gaze darting to Nero. “If they couldn’t get away, they were going to blow this boat out of the sky. There are bombs all over the ship.”

“Where are these bombs?” Nero asked.

“Here,” Luna said with a demented smile. Her hand darted to a button on her wrist band.

The wall behind her exploded, taking her and the rest of her pack with it. The blast shot me and Nero across the room. His body closed around mine, shielding me from the force of the explosion—and from the impact as we slammed hard into a metal beam. I got to my feet, my body groaning in wretched protest. I looked back at Nero, who was shaking his head like it wasn’t on right.

“Are you ok?” I asked him.

“Fine,” his voice ground out. Gods, he sounded even worse than I felt. Of course he did. He’d been soaked in poison twice, set on fire by magic flames, then nearly ripped apart by an explosion.

A rush of movement caught my eye. Carver was running for the big, gaping hole the explosion had blown in the side of the ship. Luna must have miscalculated when she’d blown up herself and her pack. She must have thought she’d take Carver and us with them. Carver was taking full advantage of her mistake.

Nero waved his hand at the witch. Nothing happened. Frowning, he grabbed one of his knives and hurled it at Carver, but the witch was already on his way out. I ran to the hole, staring down as a parachute ballooned up. He’d come prepared. Nero drew another knife, aiming it for the parachute. Before he could throw it, however, a second explosion went off, blasting us out of the airship.