Chapter 13

Beyond lay at the edge of Harker's territory. It was very affluent, a comfy suburb where people went to raise a family, rather than a typical rugged Frontier town where people stayed because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else.

The town was certainly nothing like my hometown Purgatory.

Beyond was laid out in a tidy grid pattern of perfectly straight streets and cozy houses that pretty much all looked the same. There were schools and shopping malls, restaurants and gyms. The town even had its own ice rink.

As I walked with Harker down the street, the stark differences between this town and all the other ones on the Frontier were impossible to ignore. Those differences lay not only in the fancy facilities and perfect little houses. The mood was simply more cheerful here. Smiling strangers greeted us as we passed them on the street. They doted on Angel, who trotted beside us, her feline head held high as she basked in their attention. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter and warmer in Beyond.

And yet, despite all their money and cheer, this town had seen death too. Four elementals had died here today. Tragedy hit all kinds of places.

From a newly-established town like Inspiration, which was still building up.

To Purgatory, the poor town that had just managed to pull itself free from the oppression of the district lords.

To this fancy, middle-class suburban town that had been thriving for years.

"The fire elementals were found dead in that house over there." Harker indicated a blackened plot with a blackened pile of wood, the missing tooth in an otherwise perfect row of houses.

Beyond lay within his territory, but I shared the Frontier with him and the other angels. The Legion considered the Frontier—and the Plains of Monsters—to be the key to the Earth's future, and it wanted many angels on the job. That's why earlier today I'd worked with Leila at Inspiration, a town in her territory. And it was why I was here now, working with Harker.

"The ice elementals, two sisters, lived in a house further down the street. They died in a freak snowstorm that hit their house—and only their house—this morning," said Harker.

I looked at the burnt-down house. "It looks like the flames touched only the fire elementals' house."

Harker nodded. "Yes. It's weird. A fire that big doesn't just stay contained to one house like that."

"And a summer snowstorm doesn't hit only one house either," I said. "This is magic."

"Of course it's magic, Leda. But a fire elemental dying by burning? And an ice elemental dying from cold exposure? Those are their elements. They are supposed to be resistant to them. They aren't supposed to die from their own kind of magic. Just as vampires aren't supposed to die from drinking blood. And technology isn't supposed to turn against the witches who created it. Don't you see? These cases are all connected. Something—or someone—is turning supernaturals' own magic against them and killing them with it."

"You think we have a serial killer on our hands," I said.

Harker nodded. "And a prolific one at that. The first incident at Inspiration happened not even twenty-four hours ago. Two witches were wounded there, when their own tech turned against them; I bet the culprit meant for them to die, but something went wrong. Sixty-eight vampires died in Purgatory, poisoned by the life blood of their immortality. And four elementals died here."

"This serial killer isn't only prolific," I said. "They're arrogant enough to get a kick out of killing people with their own kind of magic. And they're smart enough to figure out how to do it. But who would do a thing like this?"

A dark look fell over Harker's face. "Far too many people, if they only had the chance. There are a lot of people who hate magic and hate the people who wield it."

I thought of the hate crowd that had gathered outside the vampire nest in Purgatory. Harker was right. There were a lot of people out there who hated magic. And a lot of people who just wanted an excuse to hate something. Maybe this wasn't even just one serial killer. Maybe it was the work of a larger organization.

"Wouldn't these mysterious magic-hating perpetrators need to possess magic in order to kill people with it?" I wondered aloud.

"Not necessarily," replied Harker. "They could have rigged the machines to overload. And they could have poisoned the vampires' blood supply by injecting their prisoners with something."

"And the elementals? A human could have set the house on fire and maybe even simulated a snowstorm with the right tech, but how did they overload the elementals' resistance to their own elements? And how did they confine the fire and the snowstorm each to one house?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"And how does the monster Leila and I killed, the one who can survive on this side of the wall, tie in to all of this?"

Again, Harker said, "I don't know."

I sighed. "That makes two of us."

"Perhaps our investigation of the two houses will provide some clues," he suggested.

"I hope you're right."

We turned off the sidewalk and walked down the path to the burnt house. The fence that had once stood along the property border was no longer white or perfect or even still standing. Neither was the house. There was no building for us to enter. All that was left was to dig around in the burnt and blackened debris.

"How's Bella?" I asked him, seeking out a happier note in this dreary scene.

"I haven't seen her since we returned to New York," he replied. Something in his tone bespoke trouble.

"Why is Bella mad at you, Harker?"

"She's not mad. Your sister never gets mad."

"No, my prim and proper witch sister just gets this irritated crinkle between her eyes as she stares at you in quiet disapproval."

Harker frowned, and I knew it wasn't just because of the lack of useful evidence we'd found in the first debris pile.

"Ok, Harker. Spill the beans. What did you do to annoy Bella?" I asked him.

"What makes you think I did anything?"

I folded my arms over my chest and shot him a hard look.

"Bella didn't want to go back to New York," he admitted. "She wanted to stay and help you. But I told her it wasn't safe."

"You did more than tell her, didn't you?"

"I escorted her back to the New York University of Witchcraft."

"And?"

"And I ordered the department heads not to allow anyone to leave their campus until further notice."

I choked out a laugh. "No wonder Bella isn't talking to you."

He stiffened. "It's for her own safety. And considering what's going on right now in the world, all the supernaturals being targeted and killed, she's safer inside those walls."

"And I suppose you told her exactly that?"

"Of course."

"Harker, that's not how a relationship works. You can't just decide what's best for her and ignore what she wants—"

I fell silent, suddenly reminded of my argument with Nero. And I wasn't on the right side of my own lecture.

"You're suddenly uncharacteristically quiet," Harker commented.

I shook myself. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I like you better when you don't talk." He flashed me a grin.

I snorted. "Come now, Harker. Don't waste your best lines on me. Save them for Bella."

"Something is wrong."

"Yeah." I expelled a sigh of pure exasperation—and the crazy thing was, at least half of that exasperation was directed at myself. "I can trust you, right?"

His brows drew together. "Is this a trick question?"

"Yes." I forced a smile, but it faded as soon as it touched my lips. "Nero isn't speaking to me right now."

"Why not?"

It's a long story,I thought, knowing he would hear me. I didn't dare speak about this aloud, considering the highly illegal nature of my actions. Before our wedding, I got Nerissa to give me a potion to prevent conception because I won't bring a child into this world when Faris, Grace, the gods, demons, Guardians, and who-the-hell-knows-who-else would all try to take her from us and use her as a weapon. Nero found out and now he's mad that I didn't tell him what I was doing, but you know how things were leading up to the wedding. Nyx had stationed armed guards to keep me and Nero away from each other until the ceremony. We weren't even allowed to be in the same building. I couldn't get to him to tell him what I had to do. He's being very unreasonable about the whole thing and hasn't spoken to me since he blew up at me in Nerissa's office last night. I frowned. Ok, I think that about covers it.

Harker didn't say anything for a few moments. Finally, he declared, "Well, that explains why Nero has been in such a foul mood today."

"Maybe you can try to talk some sense into him?" I asked—ok, pleaded.

"Oh, no." He took a step back. "I am most certainly not getting in the middle of this, Leda."

"But you think I'm right, right?"

"I can see both sides," he said diplomatically.

I glowered at him. "Thanks a lot for all your help."

"If you're really looking for help, I could text Nero and ask him to meet me here because I require his professional expertise in this case."

"When he finds me here, it will only agitate him."

"Leda, you've made a habit of agitating Nero since you two met."

"It's different this time. This isn't a matter of I tease him, he growls back, and then we kiss. He's actually mad at me this time." I clenched my fists. "And I'm mad at him. If he doesn't want to talk to me, then I don't want to talk to him."

"That's not a very mature attitude, Leda."

"Neither is Nero giving me the third degree."

Harker shook his head. "I've never met a more stubborn pair of angels in all my life."

A rustle on the roof of the house next door drew my attention. "I heard something."

He looked up at the roof. "It's a bird."

And sure enough, a bird hopped off the roof and took flight. Funny, I could have sworn I felt like someone was spying on us. Someone who was not a bird.

"Do you smell cookies?" I asked Harker.

"No."

"I smell chocolate chip cookies, freshly baked with the chocolate bits still all gooey and warm."

Harker gave me a concerned look. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Last night, but that's beside the point."

"Leda, I think that is very much the point. You should eat something. Preferably something more nourishing than a cookie."

I shook my head. I didn't smell cookies anymore, and there wasn't anything sinister spying on us from the neighboring roof. Maybe I was suffering from a double case of hunger and insanity.

Obviously, I still had cookies on the mind. I really needed to grab lunch. Or dessert.

I walked toward the house next door.

"Leda, this here is the crime scene," Harker called out after me, but I didn't listen.

There, at the border between the two properties, I found a piece of torn leather stuck to one of the few fence posts that was still standing. An odd symbol was stitched into the leather. It looked like a skull that had been turned into a drinking goblet. Weird.

I returned to Harker and showed him the leather piece. "Recognize this symbol?"

"Should I?"

"I'm not sure." I folded the piece of leather and tucked it into my jacket, just in case it turned out to be a clue. "Did you find anything?"

"No," replied Harker. "Let's check out the other house."

So we did. The home of the two ice elementals didn't stand out from its neighbors—except for the rather thick layer of frost coating its entire surface. It glittered in wintery defiance of the hot summer sun.

The fire elementals had been burnt to ash—which really made me wonder how hot that house had gotten—so there hadn't been any bodies to recover. The ice elementals had frozen to death, so there were bodies here. But it wasn't the frozen corpses that caught my attention; it was the living, breathing woman in a hooded cape that stood over them.

As soon as she saw me and Harker, she ran for the nearest fence and scrambled up it. It wasn't the two of us she should have worried about; it was Angel. My cat sprinted forward and sank her claws into the hooded stalker. Angel's grip was strong, and she managed to drag the woman back down to the ground all by herself.

"Good kitty." I patted Angel's head as she dropped the woman at my feet.

"What the hell kind of cat is that?"

The woman rose to her feet, her hood falling back to reveal a youthful face obviously hardened by a tough childhood. She couldn't have been over twenty-five, but her eyes told me she'd lived through her share of trouble. And her sassy smile told me she'd taken it all in strides.

"Her name is Angel," I told the woman. "And she is my kind of cat."

The woman laughed. "She's cool." She looked at my cat, whose white fur was now suddenly speckled with glittery gold highlights. "Does she always change color like that?"

"No." I grabbed the end of my ponytail and saw that the same gold glitter strands sparkled inside my pale blonde hair. "This is the first time actually."

"A chameleon cat. Cool."

"Yeah." I couldn't stop gaping at my transformed cat. "She is."

"Angel appears to be picking up more than just your bad habits, Leda," Harker commented.

"So it would seem."

But how had this happened? Looking upon Angel now, seeing her fur mimicking my hair, I couldn't help but wonder if it was fate that we'd found each other, fate that she'd become my cat. Like so many things, that was a question to explore in another time and place.

Right now, I had another question. "What are you doing here?" I asked the woman.

"Hunting."

"Hunting?"

"Bounty-hunting to be precise." She extended her hand to me. "The name's Gypsy."

Gypsy had long, brown hair, dark eyes, and a can-do attitude that made me like her immediately. She was dressed in denim tights and a red tank top that matched perfectly with her hooded cape.

"And what are you hunting here, Little Red?" I asked her. "Big, bad wolves?

"No." She winked at me. "I'm hunting big, bad angels."

Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of a gang. And I meant gang. As in street gang. There were seven of them, men ranging in age from eighteen to fifty, but they all wore the same ugly expression on their faces. It was an expression of pure, undiluted hatred—and it was aimed right at us.

I folded my arms over my chest and stepped forward to greet them. "How can I help you, gentleman?"

"Get out," growled a middle-aged man in a navy sweater vest over a sky-blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked like a distinguished professor, not the kind of person who would join a gang.

"Get out and never return," said the young man next to him.

He was about thirty years younger, but otherwise looked almost exactly like the man I assumed was his father. And he too was dressed like he was ready for a day at the country club.

The other five men looked exactly like stereotypical thugs—and nothing like the father and son. Weird.

When those weak warnings failed to scare us off, one of the thugs elbowed the professor in the back.

"Our town was a perfect paradise before you people started coming around," squawked the professor.

Perfect paradise? Did they not realize they were sitting on danger's doorstep, right at the plains of monsters?

I stepped forward, my arms wide open. "Look, guys. We're here to help you. Someone is killing people. We want to stop them before more people die. So how about you go back to your perfect paradise, and we go back to protecting the planet?"

Another of the thugs pushed the professor's son forward, toward us. The boy spat at our feet.

I was starting to realize what was going on here. The father and son were locals, spooked by the quadruple murder in their quiet hometown. And the five thugs were members of the same kind of hate gang that had gathered outside the vampire nest in Purgatory. Hell, the five thugs probably didn't even live in Beyond. They were just using the locals' fear to further their own agenda.

"You two may go," I told the father and son. I saturated my words with siren magic. "You five." I shook my head at the thugs with mild disapproval. "We're going to have a little talk about taking advantage of vulnerable people."

The two locals had already hurried off. The thugs watched them go, and when they turned back to look at me, the ugly hate on their faces had grown even uglier.

"You're not as hot shit as you think you are, Leda Pandora," snarled one of the thugs.

"And yet you're still every bit as full of shit as I think you are," I snapped back.

The man looked startled. "Are angels supposed to talk like that?" he asked one of his fellow thugs.

I smirked at them all. "I'm not like other angels."

"Sure, you are! You're all the same, you filthy angels!" The thug's voice was loud and obnoxious, and I was pretty sure he was drunk.

I brushed the invisible dirt off my pants. "Who are you calling filthy?"

But the man wouldn't take a hint, and he wouldn't shut up. "You all hide behind your flashy magic, but you're only hiding from the truth. The truth that without your magic, you're nothing. Nothing special. Nothing but traitors to humanity, who have sold your souls to some con artists who call themselves gods. And for what? A few parlor tricks!"

There was an audible creak of leather armor as Harker took a step forward. He was totally going to punish the loudmouthed thug, not only for daring to taunt an angel, but for speaking ill of the gods.

The thug laughed at the flaming sword in Harker's hand. "See? More tricks. More magic. Without it, you're nothing."

A slow smile curled my lips. "Oh, really?"

"Pandora, don't let them taunt you into doing something stupid," Harker warned me.

"Why not?" I winked at him. "It will be fun." I pointed at the drunk. "You with the big mouth, I accept your challenge."

He blinked in surprise. "What?"

"A fight, right here, right now, on the streets of this lovely town. The two of us…" I pointed at myself and Harker. "…against the five of you. No magic. No guns or knives or swords. Just good old fists, boots, and whatever else we can find lying around on the street."

The loudmouthed thug was suddenly very silent.

"Unless you're scared?" I said, allowing my brows to lift with my voice.

The thug glowered at me. "How do we know you won't cheat and use your magic?"

I set my hand over my heart. "I promise. And angels are too arrogant to cheat anyway."

Beside me, Gypsy snorted.

"All right," the thug drawled. "The four of us will fight you and the pretty boy." He pointed at the youngest thug. "You pull out your phone and record the whole thing to make sure they don't go back on their word."

"Her word," Harker corrected him. "I want no part of this circus."

I shrugged. "Your loss. More fun for me."

Gypsy stepped forward. "I'll fight beside you, Leda Pandora."

I patted her on the back. "This should be interesting." I looked at the thugs. "Ready to go, boys?"

"First, you turn to the camera and promise not to use any magic," said the loudmouthed thug.

"Fine," I said, impatience straining my voice. I looked at the thug with the phone and declared loudly, "I, Leda Pandora, Angel of Chaos, swear not to use any magic whatsoever as I thoroughly kick these hoodlums' sorry asses."

One of the thugs rushed at me, but his loudmouthed leader held him back. "Save it for the fight."

The eager thug glared at me, and I blew him a kiss.

"Now, you," the thug leader told Gypsy.

"All right," she replied. "But I'm not kissing him on the lips."

"Not the kiss," growled the thug leader. "You need to turn to the camera and promise not to use any magic."

Gypsy laughed, and she didn't stop laughing until she was nearly out of breath. "I'm not a supernatural, you idiot. I'm every bit as human as you are. The only difference between us is my stellar good looks. Oh, and the fact that I'm not a moron."

"Those are fighting words," grumbled one of the thugs.

"Yeah, because we're about to fight." She rolled her eyes at him. "Unless you're backing down."

"Never."

"Good." Gypsy waved Grumbling Thug forward. "Then bring it on."

The big, bald thug tried to attack me, but Angel darted between his feet and tripped him over.

And as he hit the ground, Leader Thug roared, "What the hell are you doing, you idiot?! How could you allow yourself to be taken down by a cat?!"

But the tumble had knocked out Big, Bald Thug. I started to laugh.

Grumbling Thug gaped at Angel, who was celebrating her victory by grooming her face.

"The cat isn't supposed to fight. She didn't promise not to use magic," Grumbling Thug complained.

"She's a cat, numbskull," snapped Leader Thug. "She can't talk or use magic."

"Oh, right." Grumbling Thug scratched his head.

"They're so dumb, I almost feel bad that we're going to totally kick their asses," Gypsy commented to me.

Eager Thug grinned at her. "Don't count your turkeys before they hatch, honey."

Gypsy laughed. "It's chickens, not turkeys, you big turkey."

Eager Thug's smile soured, and he swung a punch at her. She evaded and aimed a solid kick at his knee. The thug must have been smarter than he looked because he easily blocked her kick.

By now, I was busy fighting Grumbling Thug, so I couldn't follow the play-by-play of Gypsy's fight, but I did notice she was favoring strikes to her opponent's knee. It wasn't a bad idea. If she did manage to land one, she could knock him out of the fight.

So far, she wasn't having much luck, but I had an idea of how I could help her.

"Switch?" I asked her.

The slow curl of her lips told me she knew what I was up to. "Love to."

We crossed paths and each aimed for the other's opponent. Gypsy landed a strike to Grumbling's knee, and I took Eager down with a blow to the head. Since Grumbling had guarded high against me and Eager had guarded low against her, it worked perfectly. They'd been too slow to realize we'd switched opponents. Eager Thug fell unconscious on top of Big, Bald Thug, and Grumbling limped off, clutching his knee.

I turned to find our last opponent. Angel was keeping Leader Thug at bay with some scrappy cat fighting.

"You damn devil cat!" he hissed at her.

As he swooped down to grab her, she flicked both paws across the ground and hit him with a face full of dirt. Then, while the thug was lumbering around blind, she leapt onto his back and sank her claws into him. He jumped with a yelp and nearly collided with Camera Thug.

"Leda, you have the coolest cat I've ever seen," laughed Gypsy.

The youngest thug leaned down and waved his phone in front of his gang leader's blinking face. "I got it all on camera, boss. Just like you said."

Growling, Leader Thug grabbed the telephone and smashed it against the ground. He shot us all a look of pure loathing, then he turned and ran away. Camera Thug picked up the shattered remains of his phone, his eyes wide. He stood there for a moment, staring at us like he wasn't sure where this had all gone so horribly wrong. Angel trotted over to him and let out a low hiss. The thug jumped into the air in fright, then scurried off after his leader.

"And don't come back, you big bullies!" Gypsy shouted out after them. Her gaze slid across the two unconscious thugs on the ground, then up to me. "Leda, girl, I've never known an angel to fight like that."

"We aren't supposed to fight like that," Harker said with a long-suffering sigh.

Mischief danced in Gypsy's eyes. "Want to wake them up so we can do it again?" Her gaze flickered to the sleeping thugs, then back to me.

I chuckled. "Maybe another time. I have work to do."

I really liked Gypsy. She reminded me a lot of how I'd been back in my bounty hunter days. A wave of nostalgia washed over me. Sometimes, I really missed those days. The days before the Legion. Before magic and politics. Before angels and gods and demons, and all the drama that came with them.

Gypsy glanced at the two frozen elementals on the ground. "Looks like they tried to flee this storm but couldn't get away."

"Yeah," I agreed. "But who killed them?"

"Carver Spellsword," she said unexpectedly.

"Who?"

"Carver Spellsword," she repeated. "He's a rogue dark angel."

The name sounded familiar.

"There was a Legion notice about him recently," Harker told me.

"What did it say?" I asked him.

"The usual. He's considered highly dangerous. Capture alive if possible, but do not hesitate to kill if there's no other option."

"Hmm." I looked at Gypsy. "What makes you think Carver Spellsword is the person behind these killings?"

"I don't know for sure," she said. "It's just that the style of the kills fits his profile. Spellsword enjoys dramatic irony. He would relish the idea of a supernatural being killed by their own kind of magic."

Her fingers drummed across the pair of pistols holstered at her hips. She hadn't tried to use them in the fight. That told me her moral code was strong enough that she followed the rules. And watching the way she fought had told me that within those rules, she'd take every advantage and utilize every dirty trick.

"I'll be seeing you around, Leda Pandora," Gypsy said with a curtsy and a wink.

"She reminds me a lot of you, Leda," Harker said as we watched the bounty hunter walk away.

"Yeah," I agreed.

Gypsy wasn't afraid or intimidated by me, even though I was an angel. She talked to me like I was an actual, real-life person, not some high and lofty paragon to be worshipped and feared.

"Back when I was human, I was equally saucy to the first angel I met." My smile wobbled at the memory.

"Nero," said Harker.

"Nero," I sighed.

Harker set his hand on my shoulder. "Leda, you need to resolve things with Nero. It hasn't even been a day, and his mood is the foulest I've ever seen it. The longer Nero stews, the worse this will get. And an angel's pain has a way of spreading to the rest of the world."