“You are just as fast and strong as a vampire now,” Nero said. “You have the power. Now it’s only a matter of waiting and seeing if you can tap into it.”

Hence this little mission, no doubt. Piece by piece, the Legion was weeding us out until only the strongest were left. It was abhorrent. And yet here I was, playing right along with it. Desperation could drive people to do insane things.

“How many vampires are there?” Lucy asked quietly. She was still looking queasy.

“We estimate ten.”

“Ten,” Toren echoed, shaking his head.

Nero opened the door. “Let’s get moving.”

We followed him down into the underground garage, where our ride awaited. Big, tough, and ugly, the off-road vehicle comfortably seated nine. As we piled in, I resisted the urge to point out that seven Legion soldiers plus ten vampires equalled eight more seats than we had. For all I knew, Nero was planning on tying our prisoners to the roof.

Jace and Mina sat in the back row, and they wouldn’t let anyone else join them. Apparently, that row was just for the cool kids. Lyle, Lucy, and Toren squeezed into the middle row, which left me staring at the seat between the two brats. Jace tapped the back of the seat rest, his eyes daring me to sit back there. Yeah, this was going to be fun.

Nero stuck his head out of the window and called out, “Up here, Pandora. I want to keep my eye on you.”

Jace and Mina burst into gleeful chuckles as though the world’s biggest present had just landed in their laps. I slid the door shut and went to sit in timeout beside the teacher. There was a solid wall between us and the two other rows of seats, which at least meant the others couldn’t hear Nero tell me off.

“I haven’t done anything,” I told him under the growl of the starting engine.

“Yet,” he said. “But you have a talent for trouble. I need you focusing on this mission, not tying up two of your teammates with that spindle of cabling sitting in the trunk.”

“I was doing no such thing.”

“Not yet. But you were thinking about it.”

“They are insufferable spoiled brats,” I muttered. “And just because they have an angel for a parent, they think they can bully everyone else. That’s just not right.”

“And you have to fix it?”

“Yes.” I folded my arms across my chest and tried to burn a hole through the windscreen with my non-existent laser beam magic. “Some things are just begging to be fixed.”

“And some things will sort themselves out on their own,” he said as the gate opened before us.

Beyond the borders of the wall, the Black Plains waited. The final battle of the war had raged here over two hundred years ago, but the lands were still scorched, a black mark that refused to fade. Maybe it would never fade, even if we managed to drive the monsters from the Earth.

Overhead a storm was brewing, swirling up the yellow-green clouds. The air was heavy and stank of monsters. I didn’t see them anywhere, but I knew they couldn’t be far away. They were never far away. There was a static charge in the air, a spark just waiting to go off. I hoped we wouldn’t be here when it did.

“When I joined the Legion, we too had our fair share of insufferable angel spawn,” Nero said, unbothered by the coming storm. I didn’t think he was afraid of anything.

“What did you do about them?” I asked him.

“I was one of them.”

I turned to look at him. “You?” I checked my surprise. “Wait, no. What am I saying? Of course you’re one of them. You spent the last month making my life a living hell.”

“That’s my job.”

But I wasn’t done. “And you’re all too pretty. Too perfect.”

His lips twisted into a slight smile. “You seemed to appreciate that earlier tonight.”

“I…” My cheeks flamed. “I don’t know what came over me. The Nectar scrambled up my brain. I shouldn’t have… Can we just forget that whole embarrassing incident happened?”

“As you wish.”

If only I could forget. But the memory of his blood and magic coursing through my body like a burning river, priming every nerve, caressing every curve and peak—it overwhelmed me. I threw up my hands to cover my descending fangs.

“Sorry,” I said through my hands.

“You need to learn to control that.”

“I know. I’d always criticized vampires for being so weak-willed, so out of control. Controlling this—whatever it is—is even harder than I’d ever imagined.”

“Unlike the vampires, we consume the magic straight from the source, so the urges hit us even deeper. That’s why I have to be so hard on all of you. Without willpower, you had no chance of surviving Vampire’s Kiss.”

“You needn’t worry about me. I have stubbornness to spare.”

He chuckled, low and sensual. Wait, no, not sensual. That was just the Nectar talking again. There was absolutely nothing sensual about the angel sitting beside me. No reason whatsoever to reach across and touch… I yanked my hand back before I did something else I’d regret.

“The magic hit you harder than anyone,” he observed. “That happens sometimes, that someone has a low magic tolerance.”

“What can I do about it?” I asked hopefully.

“Nothing,” he told me, dashing those hopes. “It’s just a part of you.”

I slouched. “A weakness.”