21

Nero’s hand locked around mine, snapping us both back into the airship. As our feet hit the floor, his wings folded in, then faded away in a puff of golden smoke. But our problems weren’t over. A wall of flames raged in front of us, crackling and swaying in the wind blowing inside from the big hole at our backs. Nero waved his hand, but just like last time, nothing happened.

“This is aggravating,” he said.

“Never had performance issues before?” I quipped, smirking as I pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall.

He gave me an inscrutable look. “You live dangerously.”

“Because I’m teasing an angel?”

“Among many things.”

It took the entire contents of the fire extinguisher to put out the flames, so I hoped there weren’t any more fires. I wasn’t counting on luck, though. Another explosion rocked the ship. It sounded like it had come from the other end. Just how many bombs had the shifters hidden? So this was their contingency plan. They were going to blow us up along with them so no one ever knew what they’d done, so that the Legion wouldn’t punish the entire shifter community for their crimes. If Luna and her pack weren’t so murder-crazy, I might have admired their self-sacrificing bravery.

“We have to wake up the witches,” I told Nero. “And get them working on finding and disabling those bombs before any more of them go off. And we’d better move fast. We’re already losing altitude.”

“That wasn’t an explosion,” he replied. “We hit something.”

We ran for the bridge, where we found the pilot dead against the wall. Nero sat down at the controls, trying to coax the ship away from the building we’d hit. I ran into the party room. There, the sleeping witches were slowly blinking back into consciousness.

“We’re with the Legion of Angels,” I said. “A group of saboteurs has hidden bombs throughout the ship. Are any of you a Steam Witch?”

Ten people stepped forward. I’d hoped for more, but I’d have to make do with what I had. I waved at the woman in front, the one wearing a dress that looked like lingerie. Even in that outfit, she had an air of competence about her. “Come with me. I need the rest of you to search the ship for bombs and disarm them.”

Then I turned and walked back to the bridge, the lingerie engineer following close on my heels. Nero didn’t look up from the controls when we entered the room.

“We’re still dropping,” he said.

The engineer hurried over to a display on the wall. “We’re leaking gas. One of the tanks was damaged.”

“Then fix it,” I said.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Let me make it easy for you. If we can’t get this ship back up, we’re going to crash and die. So I need you to fix that tank no matter what it takes,” I said, shoving a tool box into her arms.

Tension melted off the witch’s shoulders, her stance relaxing. “Of course,” she said with perfect obedience, then turned around and walked out of the room.

“How did you do that?” Nero asked as I sat down beside him.

“I have a scary smile. I was channeling you.” My head was pounding with the beginnings of one monster-sized headache.

“Your eyes are glowing.”

“Are they? Weird.”

He gave me a strange look.

“Forget my eyes,” I said, looking out of the front window. “Worry about that!”

We were headed straight for a wall of skyscrapers, and with the airship sinking by the minute, we couldn’t get over them.

“I see it. I’m turning the ship to go around it,” he replied with perfect calmness.

“The ship doesn’t feel like it’s turning,” I said, my voice anything but calm.

“It turns slowly.”

Any normal person would have closed their eyes tightly and waited for this to all be over, but I’d given up the luxury of normalcy the day I’d traded in my old life to join the Legion. I had to be brave and strong and smart, even if I didn’t feel like any of those things right now. Right now, staring at the skyscraper growing bigger and bigger in the window, I feared it was the last thing I’d ever see. Maybe it was that fear that compelled me to do what I did next—or maybe it was just an acknowledgement of how short life was. Whatever my reasons were, I took Nero’s hand and squeezed it. The ship was still turning, but it wouldn’t be enough. I just knew it wouldn’t be. I drew in a deep breath…

As I exhaled, the airship lifted, and we slipped over the top of the buildings, missing them by mere inches. The engineer had come through! Nero’s hand slid out from mine, and his fingers began flashing across the controls with inhuman speed.

“I’m taking us out of the city,” he said. “There’s less to hit out—”

A ragged thump pierced his words as the airship dropped, grazing the top of a building. A moment later, we rose again. That was the good news. The bad news came when I turned to look at Nero—and found him passed out on the controls.