One of those herds had just come around a plateau. They looked like a cross between wild horses and bison. The sun’s unrelenting rays shone hard against their long, crimson-tipped horns, giving them a glossy glow—like the beasts had painted their horns with the blood of anyone unfortunate enough to be wandering these forsaken lands. Their equally-crimson hooves trampled across the cracked ground, kicking up a sandstorm of dust that followed in the herd’s wake.
“No time for daydreaming, Pandora,” Nero said behind me.
I turned away from the window and faced him, hastily rebinding my bloody hands. Nero and I had spent the past four hours—basically, every moment since we’d boarded the airship in New York—training in this onboard gym. The God of War hadn’t yet graced us with his presence, so we’d filled the time by kicking ass. Actually, the ass-kicking had been decidedly one-sided, as training often was with Nero. We’d started with endurance training, then moved on to pain resistance. I looked down at my bloody hands. I hated pain resistance training.
Of course, Nero heard my thoughts. “To survive the Gods’ Trials, we will need both our mental strength and will,” he said aloud. “We can’t rely on our magic. The trials will strip us of our powers one-by-one until we have no magic left.”
And that’s what made the level ten promotion different from every one that had come before. We trained for each new level by practicing that power—or, more often, our resistance to that power—to prime our magic for the Nectar. But this was a different kind of test. For this test, the test for the highest angel level, Nero wasn’t priming a power. He would be stripped of his magic and then thrown into some unknown crisis to see how he dealt with it.
“What kind of magic do angels of the tenth level gain?” I asked him.
Every other level in the Legion of Angels was defined by an ability. Each level was named for that ability. Vampire’s Kiss gave Legion initiates the powers of strength, speed, and stamina; it also allowed them to heal quickly when drinking the blood of others. Witch’s Cauldron gave them the powers of potion brewing. Siren’s Song, Dragon’s Storm, Shifter’s Shadow…and so on, all the way up to level ten, the final level. But level ten had no name.
“Level ten has no name because there is no single ability tied to it,” Nero explained. “The Nectar I will drink is pure Nectar. In addition to strengthening my previous powers, I will gain a new power. Or perhaps more than one. You never know before you drink.”
When I’d first joined the Legion, I’d drunk a heavily diluted Nectar. It had killed half of us, but those who survived grew stronger. That tiny hint of Nectar primed our magic. When we’d sipped a stronger Nectar the next time, more of us survived, and those that did gained the gods’ first gift of magic. With each new level, the Nectar was less diluted. Level ten was pure Nectar, the food of the gods. It made angels as close to the gods as any human could be. And so it made sense that every soldier of the tenth level—every archangel—had their own unique powers, just like the gods did.
“We are done with my training for now,” Nero said.
He unwrapped his own bloody hands. He hadn’t healed himself either. He’d told me that the trials wouldn’t be decided by magic but by tenacity. That was just a fancy word for stubbornness.
“It’s your turn,” he told me, walking toward the door.
Yeah, that wasn’t foreboding at all.
“If there’s a monster behind that door, I’m going to let it eat you,” I promised as I tried to salvage what was left of my bloody bandages.
The door opened, and Alec Morrows stepped into the gym. He gave me a long, assessing look, then declared, “Whoa, Leda. You look like shit.”
I shot him a saccharine smile. “Thanks. That makes me feel much better.”
He swept into a bow. “Glad to be of service.”
His dramatics cleared the doorway, allowing Ivy and Drake to squeeze past his juggernaut body. Claudia strode in after them, the battle maiden of New York. She had the kind of voluptuous curves that turned heads wherever she went, but she wasn’t soft. She was stronger than Alec and Drake, the New York Legion office’s go-to muscle men, and she could shoot the eyelashes off a dragonfly from hundred feet away. Or so the urban legend said. I wasn’t sure dragonflies even had eyelashes.
“Hey, Leda,” she greeted me.
Alec winked at her.
“Morrows, direct your eyes higher, or you’ll be staring at my fist.”
“Oh, I wasn’t looking at your assets. Honest.” He was almost convincing. Almost. I knew Alec too well to be fooled. “I was just admiring your new pin, Lieutenant Vance.”
Sure enough, ‘Lt. Vance’ was stitched into her jacket. That must have happened when I was away at Storm Castle, during one of Colonel Fireswift’s mass level-up-or-die promotions. At least Harker was putting an end to those.
“Congratulations,” I told Claudia.
Claudia touched the metal pin on her jacket, the symbol of her magic rank. It was the shape of a wolf paw, the universal symbol for shifting magic. Werewolves weren’t the only type of shifters, but they were the most famous. Or perhaps infamous was the better word.
Claudia smiled at me. “It’s your turn now.”
“Yes,” Nero agreed, as his psychic gust slammed the door shut. “It is your turn, Leda.” He looked at Ivy, Drake, Claudia, and Alec. “Leda is training for the fifth level, the power of Shifter’s Shadow, and she needs your help. Due to my own trials and her role in them, time is tight. I’ve summoned you here because Leda considers you friends.”
Alec gaped at me. “Even me?”
“Na, you’re just here because you hit hard,” I told him.
Alec chuckled.
Nero looked at me. “Shifting has mental and physical components. You can actually change your appearance—what is called a physical shift. Or you can create an illusion—a mental shift, often referred to as glamour.”
I nodded.
“Werewolves and other shifters perform physical shifts,” he continued. “A physical shift is more complete; others cannot see through it. Soldiers of the Legion usually opt for a mental shift because it requires substantially less magic. A physical shift is a constant drain on your magic. It takes so much out of you that you cannot use any other powers at the same time. That works for shifters, whose magic is their strength and their claws. But as a Legion soldier, you use many powers in parallel. For that reason, we tend to prefer a mental shift over a physical one.”
Nero motioned Claudia forward. “We are going to train your shifting magic the same way you trained your elemental magic: by building up your resistance.”
“You want me to resist shifting my shape?” I asked, confused.
“No, I want you to resist the mental magic woven by someone who is casting it,” he explained. “Lieutenant Vance is going to use her shifting magic, and you have to see through the spell. Just remember: the higher the level of the person casting a spell, the harder it is to see through the illusion.”
At a nod from Nero, Claudia waved her hand in front of Ivy, Drake, and Alec. Magic rippled across their bodies, snapping like a rubber band. And then there were four Claudias in front of me.
I blinked. “Amazing. You all look just like her.”
One of the Claudias looked down at her chest and smirked. “We really do.” That was definitely Alec.
“Morrows, what did I say about you ogling my breasts?” the real Claudia warned him.
Alec’s smirk persisted. “They are my breasts now.”
Nero gave them a hard stare. They stopped bickering and stood still, like perfect soldiers.
Then he looked at me. “Close your eyes.”
I closed them. I could hear my friends shuffling positions.
“Ok, Leda,” Nero said.