“You believe the demons are pulling the strings this time too?” Nero asked her.

“I cannot ignore the possibility. Why would anyone but a demon want to kill a building full of vampires?”

Nero’s eyes flashed with understanding. “You think it was a sacrifice.”

“We won’t know until we figure out who’s behind this. That residue is our only clue, and it’s pointing at the New York University of Witchcraft. I need you to find a way to investigate how those two substances made it out of the school’s labs. But do it carefully. Otherwise, the guilty party will flee, and if the demons give them sanctuary in hell, we won’t know it. We might never get to the bottom of this. Covert is the key word here.”

That key word was the complete opposite of the standard Legion solution to their problems: charging in swords drawn, guns blazing, blasting down doors.

“I will prepare a mission plan,” Nero said.

Nyx nodded. She was turning to leave when she looked down, her eyes focusing on a tiny drop of blood on the white marble floor. She paused and looked around. The furniture was all in order, but two empty bottles of wine still sat on the dining room table.

“Late night drink, Colonel?” she asked, her perfectly-sculpted dark brows lifting.

Nero’s face was as hard as his marble floor. “Something to unwind before bed.”

Nyx continued to stare at the bottles for a moment, then she turned, stepping over the drop of blood on her way to the door. “I expect your mission plan first thing in the morning,” she told him before she left.

Nero locked the door behind her. I stayed where I was, just in case Nyx was still nearby. Nero must have been thinking the same thing. He crossed the living room with silent steps, then slowly peeled back the door I’d been hiding behind the whole time.

“You were eavesdropping,” he whispered, noting how close I was to the door.

I shrugged and smiled, and as I turned around, I realized where I was.

“You hid me in your bedroom?” I hissed under my breath. “Why don’t you just stuff me under your bed like a dirty magazine?”

“I would have, but I didn’t think you’d go quietly.”

Anger surged through me until I caught that tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Are you mocking me?” I demanded.

“Of course not.”

I clenched my jaw. “You are mocking me.”

“Leda, it was either my bedroom or the bathroom.”

My gaze flickered to the bed, and I suddenly remembered what we’d been doing before Nyx had knocked on the door. “I have to go,” I said, turning to hide my burning face. “I need to get to bed if I’m going to be able to get up for our training session in a few hours.”

“We’ll have to skip tomorrow’s training. I have a report to get ready for Nyx.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more, like he was also thinking about what we’d been doing earlier. But maybe I was just projecting. I nodded and hurried past him, leaving the apartment before I could succumb to temptation. I didn’t slow down until I reached the stairwell.

Nero’s an angel, I thought as I descended the stairs. Can I trust him?

Oddly enough, the first answer that sprang into my mind was a resounding yes. He knew about Zane’s magic, a magic the gods we served would exploit for their own gain without any thought for Zane’s well-being, but he hadn’t told anyone. He hadn’t betrayed my trust. And he never would. Somehow, I was sure of it. I could trust him, at least when it came to helping me save Zane.

But I couldn’t trust him with my heart. Captain Somerset had told me about the many immortal hearts Nero had broken in his many immortal years. And if Nerissa was right, I was next in line. But it didn’t have to be that way. I could stop this now, before it began. I didn’t have time for a broken heart. I’d already suffered through enough heartache in my past. Nero was helping me, but I wasn’t under any delusions. He was an angel, and angels didn’t think like other people. They didn’t see others in the same way. Some key part of humanity was missing from them.

This was only a physical attraction between me and Nero—that and nothing else. He wanted me, I wanted him. We’d have world-shattering sex. Maybe it would last a few happy weeks, or maybe even months. I’d probably fall for him. I kept my heart guarded, but Nero was the sort of man who could break through those guards. And once I fell, I’d fall hard. Eventually, though, he would grow bored of my humanity, and then that would be that. He’d leave me to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart.

No, I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t be broken when I needed to help Zane. So I had to stay detached from that fiercely beautiful angel. I had to resist him, no matter how much I didn’t want to.

5

Something Wicked

Bright and early the next morning, I took an extended shower, then headed down to the canteen. Thanks to my newly heightened metabolism, I wasn’t feeling the aftereffects of last night’s wine. Though I missed many of the things I’d had to give up when I joined the Legion, hangovers were most certainly not one of them.

I didn’t have a training session with Nero today, so for the first time in weeks, I had time for a long, leisurely breakfast with my friends. And I intended to make the best of it. I started off with two donuts, and I only got more ambitious from there.

“Are you really going to eat all of that?” Ivy asked, her brown eyes flickering to my fully-loaded food tray.