1

War of Willpower

“Stash, give me another one,” I said, clunking my shot glass down on the counter with fervor. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and this party was just getting started.

Now, any reasonable person might have wondered what I was doing at the Magic Formula, a witch bar in New York City, taking shots of glowing alcohol mixed with magic at this early hour. It wasn’t depression, a broken heart, or lamentations of a wretched life that had brought me here. It was my training with the Legion of Angels, an elite unit of supernatural soldiers with powers gifted to them by the gods themselves.

Stash looked at me, stroking the dark stubble of his two-day beard in thoughtful silence, like he was considering cutting me off. Instead, he poured me another shot of magic-tinted pink alcohol.

“Smart man,” I said.

He snorted.

“I can handle it,” I assured him, throwing back the shot. It burned like lighter fluid on the way down, just like it was supposed to.

His eyes followed the shot glass as I set it daintily back on the counter. My hand didn’t even shake. Compared to what I was used to, this fizzy pink stuff was child’s play.

“I have no doubt of that, sweetness. You eat poison for breakfast.”

Stash was right. Nectar, the drink of the gods, was essentially poison, a magical substance that either killed you or leveled up your magic. That’s what they gave us at the Legion of Angels when we were up for a promotion, a do-or-die sort of test. The Legion was big on do-or-die.

He leaned his elbows on the counter, the corners of his mouth lifting. “So, what is a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

I laughed at his feigned attempt to flirt. Outside of my family and the Legion, Stash was probably the closest thing I had to a friend. A shifter who’d gotten kicked out of one of the city packs, he now did odd jobs for other supernaturals in the city. We’d met in a fairy bar a few months ago. He’d been earning money armwrestling the bar’s patrons. He hadn’t counted on my Legion status, that I was stronger than most supernaturals, even a big, tough shifter like him.

“Sorry, buddy, this visit is strictly business,” I told him, turning my head toward the stage where a live band was playing under a turning light show of artificial colors.

On cue, a vampire burst out of the bathroom and streaked naked across the stage, zigzagging around instruments and band members, red and green light bouncing off his pale, naked ass. Laughter and cheers rose up from the crowd as all across the bar, people lifted their drinks in salute, a thank-you to the vampire for that brief moment of amusement.

They were thanking the wrong person. The vampire hadn’t come up with the brilliant idea to give these people something to cheer about. That had been all me. I’d put the idea into his head—literally, with magic. It had many names: compulsion, enchantment, charisma, the siren’s song. It was a tricky beast of a spell, and I’d been spending the past four months practicing it nonstop. This was necessary training for the next Legion level.

“Pretty good, right?” I said, turning to look at Jace.

“You convinced a drunk male vampire to part with his clothes. Bravo,” he replied drily.

Jace had been my practice partner over these four months. He was a Legion ‘brat’, an endearing term for a Legion soldier with an angel parent. They had all the magic, discipline, and arrogance you’d expect from people with their esteemed heritage, but Jace wasn’t so bad once you got a few drinks into him. Real drinks, laced with drops of Nectar. These witchy shots and cocktails didn’t seem to effect him at all.

“It doesn’t matter. I was successful, so you have to drink,” I told him.

Jace drank his fizzy blue shot, then set the glass down in front of Stash.

“Oh, yes, I can see you’re working real hard, Leda,” the werewolf said to me.

I grinned at him. “Work and play. Killing two birds with one stone, my friend.”

“Just how many stones are you planning on throwing in here, sweetness?”

“Until the birds start throwing back.”

Eventually, it would happen. I’d run out of steam or I’d pick the wrong target, someone strong enough to resist my still-weak magic. Compelling people was hard work, so I’d had the idea to bring it to a bar and make a drinking game of it. Every time either Jace or I successfully compelled someone, the other had to take a shot. I hadn’t counted on my opponent in this game being immune to alcohol.

I looked at Jace. “Your turn.”

His eyes panned across the club, finally settling on a female fairy with a pixie cut of bubblegum-pink hair. Putting down her drink, she slid her hand down to the leather strap of knives fastened to her thigh. It was common practice to go to a supernatural bar armed to the teeth. The fairy’s fingers danced across the knives, throwing them in quick succession at the opposite wall. Even though the crowd was as thick as molasses in winter, she hadn’t hit a single person. What she had done was spell out ‘Jace’ on the wall with her knives.

“Good one,” I told him, laughing. I took a shot from the glass Stash already had waiting for me.

“This is the most bizarre drinking game I’ve ever seen,” the werewolf told me. “And I have seen a lot of weird shit.”

A vampire on the other end of the bar was staring at me, his mesmerized eyes locked on my pale hair. He was looking at it like he wanted nothing more than to stain my platinum ponytail with my blood. Vampires had a thing for my hair. I’d never understood why, but something about it made them want to bite me, sparking hunger in even the most satiated vampire.