I brushed my finger across my lips. I could still taste him.

“Everything you’ve done so far has led up to this point,” said Nero. “Everything you do from now on out will determine your future at the Legion. And it begins now with your first mission.”

A few people groaned quietly, but no one said anything.

“We will break you up into three teams. Major Locke will distribute your assignments now. If you get a one, you’re with me. Two you’re with him. And three you go with Captain Somerset.”

Harker went around the room with a bowl of folded slips of paper, and the initiates took turns reaching in. When it was my turn, I got a one.

“It looks like you’re with me, Pandora,” Nero said right behind me.

I turned around and gave him a wary look. His face had returned to that expressionless marble mask befitting of an angel. He’d given me a very different look back in that hallway.

Stop! I chided myself. There was no reason to think about that. No good would come of remembering that moment of temporary insanity.

Captain Somerset led her group out of the club first. Harker and his new soldiers went next. The rest of us followed Nero to the train station.

“Where are we going?” one of my teammates asked. He still looked ill from the Nectar. If only I’d had such an innocuous reaction to it.

“You’ll find out when we get there,” Nero said, motioning us onto the sleek, silver train.

12

Back to Purgatory

The highlight of the mission was when Lucy, one of my teammates, puked right next to my shoes during the train ride. Everything just went downhill from there.

Our voyage by train took only an hour, and I was surprised when we pulled into the station at Purgatory. My home town hadn’t changed in the month since I’d seen it last. And yet… Everything seemed different. Fuller. It was as though a blanket had been torn from my senses, allowing them to truly breathe for the first time. My new eyes penetrated the shadows of the poorly-lit street. Every face was crisp, every street sign sharply in-focus. I could hear so much more—every step, every whisper, every breath. I could have done without my newly heightened sense of smell. I’d never realized before how much Purgatory smelled of garbage.

We all walked in silence behind Nero. He didn’t explain why we were here of all places, in my home town. And I didn’t ask. Neither of us even mentioned that it was my home town. It didn’t matter anyway. Whatever we were doing here, it didn’t have anything to do with me.

As he moved through the town, everyone stopped and stared. We’d changed into our new uniforms during the train ride. We certainly were an impressive sight to behold, seven soldiers of the Legion of Angels, decked out in leather blacker than the night itself. And the citizens of Purgatory were clearly impressed. After all, it wasn’t every day that the Legion came to town.

Nero led us to the Legion’s local office. Unlike the impressive skyscraper that housed the New York branch, this one was just a room attached to the Pilgrims’ temple of worship. The Pilgrims greeted us as we arrived. I recognized a few of them from all the times they’d cornered me on the streets to spread the gods’ message. They didn’t seem to recognize me, however; they didn’t see past the Legion uniform. To the Pilgrims, the Legion’s soldiers were the next closest thing to gods. Especially the angels. The raw adoration in their eyes when they looked at Nero made me downright uncomfortable, but he didn’t seem to care. With professional efficiency, he ushered us all into the Legion office, then closed the door, leaving the Pilgrims alone in the hallway to finish another round of bowing and praising his unerring holiness.

A smile tickled my lips as I wickedly wondered what the Pilgrims would have thought about Nero’s recent lapse in ‘unerring holiness’ with me back at Firefall. He wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t a machine. He was a man.

The realization intrigued me almost as much as it scared me out of my wits. Nero was powerful, dangerous, and though he’d demonstrated that he did sometimes succumb to the darker side of the human psyche, I wasn’t sure there was room enough for any other feelings in him. Compassion just wasn’t his color.

So I pushed all thoughts of his humanity out of my mind, returning my attention to the matter at hand—and the very small and sterile room we were standing in. A jail cell covered one wall of the room. A desk with a single chair sat in the other. And we stood awkwardly in the middle, trying not to bump or step on each other’s toes as we waited for Nero to tell us why we were here.

He didn’t keep us waiting long. “A group of unregistered vampires recently passed through this town.”

‘Unregistered’ meant they’d been made outside of the system, just like that vampire I’d caught here a couple of weeks ago.

“Over the past two days, Legion soldiers have discovered dozens of dead bodies in New York,” Nero continued. “We’ve linked those deaths to this group of vampires. They’ve fled into the Frontier, past the wall. We are going after them. The preference is on capturing them alive, so we can interrogate them. Kill only if necessary.”

“How are we supposed to fight vampires?” Lyle asked. “They are so fast and strong.”

“So are we. Fast, strong…” said Jace. “Brave.” He smirked. “At least some of us are.”

The Nectar of the Gods might have been a great indicator of someone’s magic potential, but it was a shitty judge of character. Any one of the six initiates who’d died tonight was nicer than this jerk.