Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(39)

No one said a word. It was like all the air had gone out of the room. I had to remind myself to breathe. I rose slowly and walked over to him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him quietly.

“Basanti told me of your performance,” he replied coolly. “I’ve come to put your ass into gear.” He looked over my shoulder to address the others. “Leave.”

His voice was cold, loaded with command. Like a weight pressing down, crushing all freewill out of the room. Everyone scrambled to their feet and hurried away. A telekinetic tug from Nero slid the door shut behind them.

I gaped at him in shock. He’d just compelled nine hardened soldiers into a state of cold panic.

“Put my ass in gear, you say? Did you come all the way here to give me that little pep talk?”

“No,” he replied patiently. “I came all this way to train you so that you’ll survive the next promotion ceremony.”

Despite the fact that I was still upset with him over the whole territory-marking thing, I was also glad to see him. If he was glad too, he didn’t show it. His face was perfectly neutral, completely professional.

I dared to take another step toward him. “You came all the way here, taking time out of your busy schedule preparing for level ten, just to help me?”

“Not entirely. Nyx asked me to come here.”

“Why?”

“It’s one of the tasks I must complete before the trials.”

“What task?” I didn’t think he was talking about helping me.

“Colonel Leila Starborn, the Fire Dragon, was not called away on Legion business. That’s just the cover story Nyx told the other Dragons, the one they tell anyone who comes here.”

“If Colonel Starborn is not on a mission, then where is she?”

“That’s the thing,” Nero said. “No one knows. She has vanished without a trace.”





12





A Storm Is Raging





“Nyx has sent trackers to find Colonel Starborn,” Nero told me. “They’ve all come back empty-handed. They can’t track her.”

“Why not?” I asked.

When the Legion’s regular teams could not find someone, Nyx sent in the trackers. They could find anyone, anywhere on Earth.

“The Legion suspects that Colonel Starborn has gone dark,” Nero said.

It suddenly all made sense. The Legion’s trackers tracked light magic. If Colonel Starborn had switched sides, her magic had switched too.

“The trackers can’t follow her dark magic,” I said. “But you can.” The darkness inside of Nero gave him that power. “That’s why Nyx sent you here.”

“Nyx sent me here to find Colonel Starborn, but I came to find you. I need your help. You can track dark magic even better than I can.”

I possessed what Nero called a ‘perfect balance’ of light and dark magic. Perfect certainly wasn’t the word the gods, champions of light, or the demons, champions of darkness, would use. Both of them believed in the purity of magic; they just disagreed as to which kind of magic should reign supreme.

“I don’t know, Nero. I’ve never tried to track anyone before.”

“You were a bounty hunter before you joined the Legion. You have tracked down many people,” he pointed out.

“That was different. I tracked down humans—or an occasional supernatural when I was desperate for money. I used mundane means to find them, not magic. I’m not even sure how to use magic to track people.”

“You will figure it out.”

Figure it out or die trying. That was the way of the Legion. Of the angels. Even though I had Nero with me, tracking down a rogue angel was at best a recipe for a whole lot of pain. At worst, it was a suicide mission. I’d learned that very well in the Lost City. And I wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. Somehow, I didn’t think the Legion was giving me a choice. Holding onto every angel they had was important to them—and I just wasn’t. I was expendable.

“I hope you’re stronger than Colonel Starborn,” I sighed. “Because I really don’t want to die.”

“She’s been an angel longer than I have. And she was trained by a legendary angel warrior. If it comes to a fight, defeating her will be difficult.”

You had to love Nero’s brutal honesty.

“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to a fight,” I replied. “Maybe we can catch her off guard.”

“Angels aren’t caught off guard.”

I laughed in his face. “You just said that because it sounded good, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” His poker face didn’t even crack.

“So, how do we begin this foolhardy mission to capture a formidable angel warrior? Do we get a team, or is it just the two of us?”

He said nothing.

My heart sank. “Don’t tell me I have to do it alone. Nero, I can’t go after an angel alone. She’ll kill me. You know that. The Legion knows that. And if I’m dead, I won’t be able to bring her back.”

“Relax, I’m going with you,” he said. “But no one else. We need to keep this quiet. No one can know Colonel Starborn is missing.”