Chapter 23

Ireached the deck of the airship just as a flock of gigantic birds decided to protest our presence in their airspace. Their protest came in the form of elemental magic bombs that they dropped on us from above.

"Get to a cannon!" I shouted at Calli as one of those bombs hit the deck.

Luckily the deck was coated in a glaze that both absorbed magic and resisted explosions. The impact still nearly threw me off my feet.

Calli was already running toward one of the two gigantic cannons mounted on the ship. Nolan ran toward the other. Gypsy, Jinx, Gemini, and Sagittarius were all already on deck too, drawn here by the roar of the explosions. That's what separated bounty hunters from the normal, sane folks. Normal people ran away from trouble; bounty hunters ran toward it, hoping there might be profit to be made in all the mayhem.

Gypsy took aim at one of the birds and fired. Her bullet bounced right off the monster's armored plates. It didn't even seem to notice it.

"Mundane weapons won't work against those beasts," I told her. "You need something with a lot more kick."

I popped open an armory chest and pulled out four bows. I handed one of them to each of the bounty hunters.

"A bow?" Jinx sneered at the weapon I'd given him. "You want me to take on six truck-sized armored birds with a damn bow?"

"Just shut up and do what she says," Gypsy snapped at him.

"Magic ammunition." I gave them each a bundle of arrows. "Red is fire-spelled, blue is ice-spelled, yellow is lightning-spelled, and green is earth-spelled."

"What about the pretty pink ones?" Gypsy asked me.

"Psychic blast arrows. You'll need them to knock off the birds' armor plates, so you can get to the weak bits underneath. Calli and Nolan's cannons are loaded with psychic bombs, so they'll help you with that."

The roar of cannon fire punctuated my explanation.

"Once enough armor plates are torn off, then you use the elemental arrows. But be careful. The birds will shift their elemental affinity often. You need to figure out their current affinity, then use the opposing element. Fire against ice. Lightning against earth. And vice versa."

"How do we figure out their current affinity?" Gemini asked.

"Just wait for them to attack you. Then shoot them with the opposite of whatever element they're currently shooting at you," I said.

Gypsy laughed. "So a very seat-of-your-pants strategy."

"There are other, more subtle ways the birds betray their elemental affinity before they shoot at you. Its fire attacks come out of its mouth, so check if the bird is taking deep breaths and puffing out its chest in preparation to breathe fire. When it's going to use its lightning-wind combo blast, it will begin to flap its wings very rapidly first to push the attack at you. Earth is a short-ranged attack that pounds out of its talons; it will need to scoop in close to you first. And if it's going to use ice, a long-range attack that it shoots out of its eyes, it will fly further away. Watch for the bird blinking very rapidly, followed by staring intently."

Sagittarius shot the flock of birds a look loaded with loathing. "I hate those magical monstrosities already."

"Any questions?" I asked the bounty hunters.

"Yes." Jinx frowned at his bow. "Can I use one of those mega-big cannons instead?"

"No," I told him. "Now let's take out those monsters before I lose another Legion airship."

"Another?" Jinx repeated, gaping at me. "Just how many heavily armored Legion ships have you lost?"

I shrugged, then spread my wings and launched into the air. Calli and Nolan had already shot off quite a few armor plates, but there were many more to go. I angled toward the closest bird and blasted it with my telekinetic magic. That knocked off its chest plate. I hit it three more times, tearing off most of the armor on one wing. Then I dove toward the next bird to repeat the process.

All the while, the airship's two cannons roared, and the whistle of arrows, followed by the roar of breaking armor, told me that my team was really putting a dent in the flock's defenses.

Gypsy claimed the honor of taking out the first bird—with a fire-spelled arrow to its icy eye. The arrow's cascade of spells continued long after the monster was dead, going off like fireworks, all the way to the ground.

That left five birds.

I found a bird that Calli had already relieved of all its armor. I flew right at it, punched through its wing, unloaded earth magic into it, then circled around to the other wing and repeated the exercise.

We were down to four birds.

No, make that three birds. After Nolan knocked off a bird's chest plate, Jinx unloaded all of his ice arrows into it. He winked at me as the bird dropped from the sky. So the hyena could shoot a bow after all.

One of the monsters was fighting Gemini and Sagittarius, hitting them with a constantly-shifting array of elemental skills. The husband-wife team demonstrated their perfect synchronicity by taking turns hitting the bird with arrows, splitting the four elements between them, two each. They took the monster down in record time.

And that left two. Unfortunately, both birds had managed to avoid most of the psychic blasts up until now, so almost all of their armor was intact.

I went after one of the two birds. The damn thing was fast. I circled several times around the airship before I caught up with it. Along the way, Calli and Nolan got in a few good shots, so by the time I closed in on the beast, I had only to deal with a few pieces of armor, then electrocute it with several bolts of lightning and it was done.

I'd lost track of the last beast during the preceding chase, so I looped around the ship now, looking for it. I found it stomping across the airship deck. Jinx stood right in front of it, a pink arrow notched. I was too far away to stop him, so I could only watch as I flew as fast as I could, trying to close the distance to the ship.

Jinx unleashed the arrow. The resulting close-range psychic blast knocked several armor plates off the bird—and knocked Jinx back against a large supply box. The shockwave was so potent that it threw Calli away from her cannon and over the edge of the ship. I beat my wings faster, toward her. I snatched her out of her free fall.

"Thanks for the catch," Calli said, her voice uneven.

"You were right," I said. "I shouldn't have allowed Jinx to come. His idiocy nearly got you killed. Unleashing a psychic-spelled arrow at close range! Honestly, what the hell was he thinking?"

"He took a reckless risk to fight a far superior foe who had him cornered," replied Calli. "Honestly, I'd have done the same thing. And so would you. But don't tell him that."

I sighed. "I guess you're right. But I still don't like Jinx."

"No one likes him, Leda. But we can use him. You were right to bring him along. The man's a total ass, but boy can he shoot."

That was no small compliment coming from Calli, the best shot in Purgatory, if not the whole world. Naturally, neither of us would share that compliment with Jinx.

I flew us back around the airship, ready to kill the last monster. As we landed on the deck, however, what I saw made me freeze for a moment. The giant bird's armor was all gone and its wings nonfunctional, but it was far from done. The psychic blast that had hit Jinx hadn't just destroyed the wooden supply box; it had revealed the stowaway hiding inside it.

It was Faith. The teenage girl clutched a broom in her hands, and she was swinging it at the monster. Her blonde hair had come loose from her braids. It swished across her face as she slashed wildly at the beast using nothing more than a wooden stick with a few soft bristles on the end. When the bird set her broom on fire, she dropped it and picked up a mop. And when it snapped that in two, she grabbed a frying pan.

"You have to admire her tenacity," I commented to Calli.

The monster was preparing another attack, so I blasted it off the edge of the deck. With its wings broken, it wouldn't be able to return to give us any more trouble.

Faith whipped around to face me, her bright green eyes peering out from behind a curtain of messy hair. "I had everything under control."

I glanced at the frying pan in her hand. "I can see that."

"I didn't need any help."

"I know."

"So then why did you interfere?" she demanded.

"Because if you'd killed the monster on my deck, it would have been a massive pain in the ass to drag its heavy body to the edge and dump it overboard."

Faith snorted. "I guess we're good then."

"Good. Then how about you drop that frying pan? You're making Nolan nervous."

Faith glanced at Nolan, who actually blushed. Then she put down her stolen cookware.

"Excellent," I said. "Now you're going to explain to me why you not only disobeyed my orders to stay away from this thing, but you also decided to sneak aboard my airship."

"You can't order me around," she said with a defiant lift of her chin. "I'm not one of your soldiers."

"Doesn't ‘hand of the gods' justice' mean anything to you?"

She planted her hands on her hips. "It's a catchy slogan, but in the end, it's all bullshit."

Chuckling, Gypsy stepped up beside me. "Remind you of anyone?"

Absolutely. Faith reminded me a lot of myself. Her smart mouth. Her defiant streak against authority. The way that she fought, using found objects to her advantage. Watching her fight here, it had really made me nostalgic for my pre-Legion days. And that's probably what motivated my next words.

"You may stay and help us," I told her.

I justified my decision by telling myself that Faith would follow us anyway, no matter what I said, as her past actions had shown. But the truth was I felt an affinity for the girl, or at least for how she reminded me of the person I used to be.

"Does this mean we now have to split the money seven ways?" grumpy old man Sagittarius said with a scowl.

Gypsy patted me on the back. "So you're adopting her now. But I wonder if an angel is up to the task of raising a teenage girl."

"I'm letting her come along on one mission. I'm not adopting anyone."

"We'll see." Gypsy smiled, then walked away.

Calli took her place. "Leda, be careful. Don't get so caught up in reliving the past through that girl that you lose perspective."

"She's just trying to find her brother, the only family she has left. I think we can both relate to her situation."

"Faith is not you. She doesn't have a family of people all looking out for one another. She is clever but not strong. Her body is withering away from malnutrition. And she's driven solely by desperation. You can see it in her eyes and in her actions. She stowed away aboard a Legion of Angels airship, risking not only the monsters' claws, but the Legion's ire. You were never that reckless. I taught you too well."

"Faith didn't have anyone to teach her," I said.

"Which is exactly my point. She is immature and reckless."

"I did some pretty stupid things when I was sixteen," I reminded Calli.

"Maybe so. We all did. Stupidity is a rite of passage. But it's something we just can't afford right now. Not if we're going to stop this curse."

"Faith is already here. We can't just leave her alone in the wilds."

"I know." Calli sighed. "I just wanted to remind you not to confuse this girl with yourself, Leda. Don't think you can use her like you can use the other bounty hunters, like she was a younger version of you. Faith's inexperience and recklessness are a liability to the whole team. And if you aren't careful, if you don't get Faith under control, then she is going to get us all killed."

Calli had a point. Faith was foolish enough to get herself into trouble, but she was missing the other part. She wasn't yet clever enough to get herself out of trouble. I hadn't just felt obliged to save her when the monster had cornered her; I'd wanted to save her. I guess I felt protective of her. Like she was my little sister.

Faith brought back memories of a simpler time. A time when the whole world hadn't hated and blamed me for everything that was going wrong. A time when I'd been just another nobody going about my business. When I hadn't had any influence or magic to speak of. Back when I'd been nothing more than a simple bounty hunter, trying to make a living to help support my family.

Those times were gone now, and they weren't ever coming back. I was an angel. And much as I often lamented the baggage that came with my angelic magic, I was glad that when the shit hit the fan, when the world was in jeopardy, I had the power to do something about it.

I looked out across the wilds, toward the doorway to civilization. A golden glowing wall stood there, tall and mighty, the final line between the frontier of humanity and the plains of monsters. I saw the town Damiel had told me to visit. Pandemonium. And it was on fire.