Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(8)
Which meant bearing it without betraying a hint of emotion on his face.
“He always was an overachiever,” Captain Somerset said fondly. She and Nero were best friends. How she managed to be friends with an angel while remaining perfectly human was nothing short of a miracle.
“Yes, he really is,” I agreed. “Which is why he’s being promoted.”
“Nero is being promoted because the First Angel wants him in a different office than you. You two are too much trouble together. You’re a bad influence.” She said it like it wasn’t a bad thing.
I pointed at myself and formed my face into an expression of pure innocence. “Who me?”
“Yes, you, Pandora,” she chuckled.
Nero had come up with my nickname, and it had stuck. Nowadays, everyone at the Legion was calling me Pandora. It’s almost as though they thought I was the official herald of the second apocalypse, the bringer of chaos.
“During your recent adventure to the Lost City, you and Nero broke fifteen separate regulations.”
“Only fifteen? I always aim for at least twenty.”
“I’m glad you find this so funny.”
Not really. Humor was the bandage I was sticking over that awful experience in the Lost City. I’d been captured, tortured, forced to see visions, and shot with an immortal weapon. No magic could completely heal the mark of an immortal weapon. I’d carry the scar for the rest of my life. If it would just hurry up and scar over already. It had been two weeks, and the wound was still not closed. I had to keep a bandage on it when training or going out on missions. All it took was my body moving the wrong way, and the delicate threads of my skin popped open and I bled out all over.
The wound in my stomach, coupled with Nero’s continued absence, was a constant reminder that breaking the rules had a price. But sometimes the price for toeing the line was even worse. If I’d played the good little soldier, the immortal weapons of heaven and hell would have fallen into the hands of a psychopath on a mission to kill each and every supernatural in the world.
Nyx, the First Angel of the Legion, the most powerful angel of them all, was well aware of the fact that my and Nero’s rule-breaking had saved the supernatural world. She hadn’t wanted to punish us. Nyx liked our rule-breaking as much as she liked rules. The First Angel was a dichotomy like that. She was cool. I liked her—when I forgot to be afraid of her.
“Actually, you helped me and Nero break quite a few of those rules,” I said, keeping the smile planted on my face. Just keep smiling. Keep smiling. No matter what.
She winked at me. “Shush. Don’t tell anyone. I want to keep my bad behavior under the table.”
“Aspiring for a promotion yourself?”
She snorted. “I’m too busy covering your asses to worry about a promotion. But it might come knocking just the same. Our new leader Colonel Fireswift doesn’t care if someone is ready for a promotion,” she added grimly.
Colonel Fireswift had stepped in to take charge of the Legion’s New York office, filling the power void Nero had left. We all hoped his presence was temporary, but he hadn’t yet shown any signs of leaving. He was too busy killing us. The Legion needed high-level soldiers to counter the expected demon activity. Colonel Fireswift’s solution to the problem was to promote everyone and see who lived. He’d taken the Legion’s level-up-or-die philosophy to the next level.
The Legion was usually cautious, only submitting someone for promotion if they thought the soldier had a good chance of surviving the Nectar. It didn’t make sense to kill off perfectly good soldiers.
Colonel Fireswift didn’t care about casualties. He only cared about results. If a promotion ceremony resulted in a hundred Legion soldiers with new magic and twenty corpses, he didn’t even blink. Those were acceptable losses to him. And Nyx gave him free reign. She was all right with his methods, even though the promotion ceremony death toll at the New York office had exploded. Did I mention Nyx could be inhumanly frightening?
“Wait,” Captain Somerset said, indicating tracks in the snow. They looked like boot prints. She crouched down beside them. “Two sets. Spaced far apart, like they were running. But no normal human has that stride. The spacing between them is too large. They must be vampires or someone else with supernatural speed.”
I looked from the prints to her. “Wow, I’m impressed. You’re brainy. I thought you only knew how to hit people over the head with a hammer.”
Captain Somerset smirked at me. “Don’t flirt with me, Pandora. You’ll make Nero jealous. He’ll attack me in a rage.”
“He’d never do that. You’re his best friend.”
“So was Harker,” she said, her face suddenly solemn.
Nero and Harker, best friends, had once fought because Harker had given me a little party Nectar. That’s the first time I’d seen Nero’s hard exterior crack. He’d attacked like a man without conscience or compassion. Like an angel. It had been one of the most terrifying things I’d ever witnessed.
“What’s wrong?” I teased her. “Don’t think you can handle Nero?”
“Mmm, let me see. A fight against an angel.” She pretended to consider her odds. “Of course I can’t beat him. Not if I play fair anyway.”
“You’ve beaten him before?” I asked, intrigued.