“Help them do what?” Drake asked.

“Build a demon army. And… Oh, shit.” I bounced off the bed, jumping to my feet. “I have to go. Take care of Ivy,” I told Drake as I hurried toward the door. “I’ll be back.”

I ran out of the room and to the stairwell. I took the stairs two at a time, rushing higher and higher. The higher ranked officers of the Legion had their rooms on the top level of the building. Whatever was going on in this war between gods and demons, it went deep. Rose had been turned to their side. What if some of the Legion had too? I had to bring this to the top, to Nero. He couldn’t have been turned. The angel was a stickler for regulations and protocol. To him, disloyalty was a four-letter word. With exclamation points.

Sucking in hot, heaving breaths, I burst into the hallway on the top floor. I ran past doors neatly marked with each officer’s name, silently thanking the Legion for their overly-developed organization skills. Near the end of the hallway I found a door that read ‘Colonel Nero Windstriker’. I knocked on it twice, nice and calm. Half a minute passed—and so did a pair of captains who shot me harsh looks—but Nero didn’t answer. I’d just lifted my fist to knock again when the door across the hall opened and Harker stepped out.

“Leda?” He froze as his eyes met mine, taking in my ruffled appearance. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to speak to Nero. About the mission,” I added quickly as disappointment flashed in his eyes.

“He had to leave the city,” Harker said. “He’s leading another raid on a potential rogue vampire site.”

What wretched timing.

“Maybe I can help you,” Harker said. “I’m in charge until Nero returns.”

I glanced up and down the hall, my mouth tightening. He seemed to realize I was feeling really paranoid about eavesdroppers at the moment because he pushed his door wide open and motioned me forward.

“Please come in,” he said.

I took him up on his offer, following him into his room—no apartment, I realized as I entered a living room that was larger than the dormitory room I shared with five other people. The floors were oak, the windows floor-to-ceiling, and the furniture looked like it belonged in a castle. There were two doors off to the side of the living room. I saw a large canopy bed in one and an in-floor hot tub in the other. Making it high in the Legion certainly had its perks.

But I didn’t have time to stop and admire the opulence. I turned to Harker, who was looking at me like I’d cracked.

“I want to help you, Leda,” he said. “Are you struggling with what happened in the Wilds?”

“What?” I asked, confused until I realized he was talking about the werewolf I’d killed. “No, it’s not that. It’s something else.”

He waited for me to talk, keeping his distance as though he realized I needed my pacing room.

“What if I told you I had a lead on a rogue vampire site inside the city, one that might lead us back to the demons?”

His face was carefully neutral. “How do you know this?”

“It’s just a hunch,” I said. “It might not pan out. But if it does…”

“We could wipe out the demons’ operation in the city.” He nodded. “We cannot allow them to gain a foothold into our world. What do you know?”

I hesitated.

“Leda, you are a soldier of the Legion of Angels. You have sworn to protect this Earth and its people from the demons and monsters. I can help you, but you have to trust me.”

I chewed on my lip, thinking it over. “Ok.” I summarized what I knew about Rose and her deal with the demons, leaving out the part with my brother of course. My first loyalty was still to Zane, Legion or no Legion.

Harker listened to me speak, the perfect audience.

“Ivy’s mother was turned by the vampires, the ones working for the demons,” I finished. “If we find her, we’ll find the demons.”

“She works for them,” he said, frowning as though the idea tasted bitter on his tongue.

“She was dying. In pain. Suffering,” I defended her. “It’s not her fault. We have to save her, not harm her.”

Harker stared at me for a moment, as though he were trying to read my intentions in my eyes. “Ok,” he finally said. “Let’s do it. We’ll save her.”

“Thank you.”

“We learn to deal out punishment here. But we also learn mercy.”

I rushed forward, closing the distance between us to hug him. “We can’t tell anyone in the Legion. They would make Rose suffer for what she’s done.”

I expected him to argue, to tell me I was asking the impossible, but he just said, “This is just between the two of us.”

I squeezed him tightly to me, happy to have discovered that there was something left of humanity after all.

“How will we find her?” he asked me after I let him go.

“With this,” I said, showing him the shipping slip I’d peeled from Ivy’s cookie box.

Harker and I geared up and went to go pay a visit to Deliverance, the shipping company who’d delivered Ivy’s cookies. Back when I’d been a bounty hunter scouting for information, I’d had to do things like this really indirectly. You couldn’t just walk into the office of the world’s largest delivery company and demand to see their shipping records for the last two days. That was, unless you worked for the Legion of Angels. We had the list in under five minutes, along with a hot cup of coffee and a brownie. I could get used to this.