“You want to beat me in a fair game,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I have an angel helping me too,” I pointed out. “So I think it’s about as fair as it’s going to get.”
“You have a point,” he said, a thoughtful look sliding across his face.
“But this doesn’t have to be a competition, you know,” I told him.
“Tell that to my father.”
I set my hand on his shoulder. “Your father does not control you, Jace. He does not define who you are.”
“You don’t know him.”
“No, but I do know you. And when you’re not trying to be the person your father wants you to be, you’re a great guy.” I smiled at him. “A great friend. Remember that.”
I turned toward the garage.
“Leda, wait.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“Watch your back out there on the Black Plains, in the Lost City,” he said. “Some say the phantoms of the past still linger there, waiting to be released. Others say that the place holds a gateway that leads straight to hell.”
“I’m actually more worried about monsters than phantoms, but thanks for the warning. And good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it. My father’s plan to distinguish me just might kill me instead.” Then he turned and walked back down the hall.
3
Playing Legion
An hour later, I and eleven other soldiers were on a train to Purgatory. No, that’s not Legion humor. Purgatory was the name of my hometown, a tiny pocket of civilization at the edge of the Frontier, the gateway to the plains of monsters. It was where criminals went to disappear into the Black Plains—and where soldiers and bounty hunters went to track them down.
The train that traveled between New York and Purgatory had a carriage reserved for soldiers from the Legion of Angels. The seat cushions were an opulent red velvet, the floors were solid wood, and the snack corner was well-stocked. Someone had decided that chandeliers were the epitome of fanciness and had placed one at the center of our carriage, neglecting to take the low ceiling into account.
The bundle of bells above the door jingled, and Drake came down the aisle, carefully avoiding the swaying crystal branches of the chandelier.
“The cargo is all secure. What did I miss?” he asked, sitting down beside me on the cushioned bench.
“Grass, trees, a few ponds, some wildflowers.” There wasn’t much else out here.
He glanced out the window. Outside, the countryside whisked by at five hundred miles an hour. He was breathing normally, and he hadn’t broken a sweat moving the enormous crates stuffed with supplies for the Legion office in Purgatory.
“Do you miss home?” he asked me.
“Every day.” I sighed. Though I was closer to home than I’d been in months, I felt further away than ever before. I would be right there in my hometown, and I might not even get to see my family. “Do you ever regret joining the Legion?”
“No,” he replied immediately, like he didn’t even need to think about it. “Ivy needed me, and I was not going to leave her to face this life alone. That’s not what friends do.”
Drake and Ivy had joined the Legion at the same time I had. Everyone had their own reasons for joining the Legion: power, the need to prove themselves, desperation. Drake had joined to be there for his best friend Ivy. She’d joined to gain the power to heal her mother, but her mother already had a plan of her own, a plan that meant making a deal with demons. Those deals never worked out. Ivy’s mother, the reason Ivy had come to the Legion, was dead now, and it was too late for Ivy to leave. The Legion of Angels was a lifetime commitment, and that was a long time for an immortal.
I knew Drake had been a star athlete at a university before he joined the Legion. He had vampires and shifters in his family, but the powers never came to him. Like many of us with supernatural blood but no magic, he was a bit stronger an faster than normal humans. Ok, maybe more than just a bit in his case.
They’d called him ‘the Dragon’ on the football field—the strong, powerful force that could go through anyone. He’d had a future, a long list of professional teams who wanted him after he graduated. He could have been on one of those teams now, in the spotlight, signing autographs, on commercials, on billboards, his image projected on the buildings of New York City. On the buildings of every major city in the world.
Instead he was a relative unknown in the Legion, working his way up like everyone else, eating danger for dinner, and death for dessert. Risking himself every day. He had given all that up for Ivy. And he truly didn’t regret it. I saw it in his eyes.
“There’s a group of paranormal soldiers in the next carriage,” Drake told me.
They must have been the replacement forces for Purgatory. The paranormal soldiers never stayed on the Frontier for long, rarely more than six months. As a child, I’d watched them come and go from Purgatory, standing guard on the wall, the barrier that separated civilization from the savage lands of monsters.
“They’re playing Legion,” he continued, amused.
Legion was a card game roughly based on the Legion of Angels. And I do mean roughly because no card game could come close to the blood, sweat, and tears of the real thing. The paranormal soldiers’ training wasn’t easy, but they didn’t find half of their initiation class dead before the training had even begun. They had no idea of what we went through.