“Harker asked you out?” She practically squealed.

“Uh, I don’t think so. He just told me about the party.”

But Ivy wouldn’t hear of it. “Heaven is a VIP club for Legion members, level five and above only. I’d give my right arm to go there.”

“Then you should come with me,” I declared. “But no need to cut off your arm.”

Ivy grinned at me. “Now let’s pick out what you’re going to wear on your date.”

“It’s not a date,” I reminded her as she pushed me toward the closet.

“Honey, by the time I’m through with you, you’ll have Harker eating out of your hand.”

And on that foreboding note, she began pulling clothes out of the closet.

When Ivy and I arrived at the club, the bouncer waved us right in. He didn’t even need to check the list. Harker must have talked to him personally, something Ivy was quick to point out. She accompanied her statement with fluttering eyelashes and lots of loud kissing noises, but her teasing died out as soon as we were hit with the full splendor of Heaven.

“This is amazing,” Ivy gasped.

A circular, three-hundred-sixty degree bar sat at the center of the room, lit up by an array of magic lights that changed color every few seconds. All around the bar island, the multi-tier dance floor stretched to the far corners of the room. There were people dancing on the ground, on the platforms, and even on the stairs that led up to the second level. I knew most of them had to be members of the Legion, but no one was wearing a uniform today. They were dressed just as Ivy and I were.

Well, maybe not entirely as we were. Ivy had missed her calling as a fashionista. She’d put me in a green halter top that made my pale hair stand out beautifully against it. I was wearing it down tonight. Usually super-straight, Ivy had styled it until it took on a waved bounce. My skirt was black and mini, short enough to be flirtatious without degrading into obscene. My boots were over-the-knee, sleek and sexy and comfortable enough to walk in—or to dance in.

Ivy wore a tiny black sleeveless mini dress and a silver gemstone necklace. Her crimson hair, parted on the side, bounced with enviable volume as she walked to the bar with me in her silver sandals. We’d only just sat down when a man in a very suave jacket swooped in and asked her to dance. She gave me an excited wave as she followed him onto the dance floor.

Smiling, I ordered a pineapple juice. When I turned back to look across the dance floor, I was surprised to find Nero sitting beside me.

“You have got to stop doing that,” I told him.

“Doing what?”

“Sneaking up on people.”

“If you opened up your senses, you would notice your surroundings better,” he replied.

Ouch. A lecture. Really? Then again, I wasn’t surprised. This was Colonel Hard Ass after all. He was the only one in the whole club wearing a uniform. He probably didn’t believe in winding down.

“Wow, this is fun.” I drank down my pineapple juice, wishing I’d ordered something harder. “Are you here to let your hair down, Colonel?”

“No.”

Ok, then. “Harker talked to me.”

“About the blood,” he said.

“Yes. He said it’s a big no-no according to the Legion.”

“It is frowned upon.”

“But not forbidden.”

“No,” he agreed. “The Legion recognizes that its members are human and have needs.”

Of course. The ability wasn’t called Vampire’s Kiss for nothing.

“I knew you were human under all those feathers,” I said, grinning at him.

“Yes.”

“Harker says you’re fighting your inner darkness.”

He leaned in closer, his voice dipping. “We all—each of us touched by magic—are fighting that darkness. With me…it’s stronger.”

“Because you are an angel?”

“Because of who I was before,” he said. “My father was an angel. A fallen angel.” He paused to let that sink in.

Sometimes angels went bad and joined the demons. Sometimes they went crazy and set off on mad killing sprees. I wondered which kind Nero’s father was.

“My mother was also an angel of the Legion.”

Wow. There were a few people with one angel parent, but I’d never met one with two. It was no wonder Nero was so powerful.

“When my father went rogue, they assigned my mother to hunt him down,” he said.

“She hunted the man she loved?” I asked.

“She hunted him because she loved him. And because she loved me,” he said. “My father came for me one night and tried to take me away. My mother fought him. He killed her right in front of my eyes.”

I set my hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“I was too angry for sorrow. I ran at my father. I fought him. And I killed him.”

“You killed an angel?”

“He’d already been severely weakened by his fight with my mother. Otherwise, I never could have done it. As it was, I was lucky. I knew even then that if I didn’t kill him, he would kill me.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“I cannot imagine what that must have been like.”

“That day, that moment, marked me for life. It made me who I am today.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger,” he told me for only the two millionth time. It was one of his favorite lines. “You must learn to keep going, to have a willpower that doesn’t die.”