As Bella healed the wounded, I brought Calli up to speed on our encounter with the werewolf mercenaries.

“Why did the shooter on the roof kill them?” I finished. “What was he afraid of?”

“He was afraid the werewolves would be interrogated and give away something. Some information,” Calli said.

“Like where Gin, Tessa, and the other kidnapped people are being taken. And who is behind this kidnapping.”

Calli nodded. “Right.”

“One of the werewolves is still alive,” Bella called to us.

We joined her beside the mercenary I’d frozen inside an ice block. He’d shifted back into human form, but that hadn’t helped him break free. His limbs were still trapped. I glanced at the bullet frozen inside the block. It hadn’t been able to penetrate the magic ice. As Bella excavated the bullet, Calli turned her eyes on the werewolf. Her jaw was set, her mouth hard. She’d put on her interrogation face.

“Your allies abandoned you,” she said. “They turned on you and your pack. They tried to kill you all. They mostly succeeded. You’re the only one who survived.”

His jaw clenched up.

“You are obviously hired guns. Why be loyal to your employer when they were going to kill you to clean up their mess?” Calli asked him.

The man said nothing. What would inspire such loyalty in a mercenary? Why protect someone who’d turned on them?

“He won’t talk.” I could see it in his eyes.

“He’ll talk,” Calli assured me. “With the right pressure.”

“You’re little girls playing at a man’s game,” the mercenary sneered at us. What a gentleman.

Calli glared at him.

“Run away now before you get hurt,” he said, grinning.

“We don’t leave family behind,” I told him, snapping my magic around him.

His grin wilted and he croaked out a choking noise.

“What’s your name?” I was done taking it easy. This was brute force magic.

“Gideon,” he said between clenched teeth.

“And the name of your pack?”

“The Whitefire Wolves.”

Cute name.

“You’re with the Legion.” As he said the words, his eyes widened, terror taking hold of him.

I smiled. “That’s right.”

So he’d recognized the technique I was using, the Legion way. Maybe he’d been questioned by Legion Interrogators before. They weren’t the nicest people, but they sure knew how to break people. And they liked their siren magic hard and cold.

“Why did the Whitefire Wolves abduct people from Purgatory?” I asked.

His shoulders shook under the strain of his resistance.

“Why did the Whitefire Wolves abduct people from Purgatory?” I repeated, tightening the screws on his mind. I had to do it; I had to be tough, to be vicious and cold. It was the only chance I had of saving my sisters and all those other young ladies.

He was biting down so hard on his lower lip that it was dripping blood.

“Why, Gideon?” I pushed harder. I could feel his will breaking under the hammer of my magic.

“We were hired to capture them,” he ground out, still fighting.

Obviously.

“Who hired you?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I hit him with my magic again. His defenses shattered, and his body went limp.

“They want lots of young people,” he said. “They hired us and another mercenary group to come here to Purgatory and get them.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Why do they want these young people?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. We were hired to capture them, not ask questions.”

“So you came here and took these young people from their families, not caring what happened to them. You’re a horrible person,” I told him in disgust.

“I know.” It was honesty, not an apology. I could feel it inside of him—he didn’t feel the least bit guilty.

“Where are you bringing your victims?” I asked.

“To a meeting point on the Black Plains. The Doorway to Dusk.”

Talk about far off. The Doorway to Dusk was halfway across the Black Plains. No one in their right mind ever went beyond the wall, let alone ventured so far out on the plains of monsters. What nefarious scheme were the mercenaries’ employers hatching? And who the hell were these people?

“Who hired you?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“Who hired you?” I repeated, putting more steel into my voice, and more power behind my magic.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.” I pushed hard, my adrenaline pumping as my blood burned through my veins. His will was no match for mine. “Who hired you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, coughing.

No, he knew. He was holding it back, fearing for himself, for his pack. Fearing for what would happen if their client found out he’d confessed everything to the Legion of Angels. Well, he should have feared me more. I would not allow my sisters and those other young people to be sold off like they were things.

I clamped down harder with my magic. One way or another, I was going to force the answers out of him.

“Leda,” Bella said gently.

I snapped out of my rage to see that the werewolf was spasming. And then he was dead. Just like that. I froze, my high crashing, my magic falling. Shock—shock at what I had done—washed away the fire inside of me, leaving me chilled.

Calli set her hand on my arm. “He was dead anyway, Leda. His wounds were too severe. Bella couldn’t save him.”

But I had sped along his demise. The horror of that was eating away at me.

“You were just trying to save the mercenaries’ prisoners,” Calli said.

This wasn’t the first time I’d crossed the line for the greater good, to save the innocents from this world of monsters. Did my actions make me the real monster in this story?

I could justify my actions all I wanted, and eventually maybe I’d even be able to convince myself that I’d had the best intentions at heart. But I couldn’t justify the magic high, the rush of adrenaline, of absolute power that I’d felt burning inside of me as I’d cracked his mind and forced him to spill his secrets to me. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was made just for this, like it was my destiny. My birthright. The feeling that this was as things should be, that I was right at home in these cruel acts—that scared me even more than the acts of interrogation I’d committed.

But now was not the time to be lost. I had to hold myself together if we had any chance of finding Tessa and Gin. Man, it felt like I was always running from one catastrophe to the other, always justifying that I would worry about the implications of my actions later.

Except later never came. I was just thrown into the next disaster, and those concerns—those debates of morality, of what was right and wrong, of what was justified or not—just fell to the wayside. They were pushed further and further into the future until they were completely forgotten, until I’d crossed the line so long ago that when I looked back, I couldn’t even see it anymore. And I could no longer remember what I was so torn up about.

I didn’t want to be that person.

“Why would someone hire a band of mercenaries to kidnap teenagers from Purgatory?” Bella wondered.

“There have been similar kidnappings recently,” Calli said. “The common culprit is vampires. Some of them are addicted to the sweet taste of young blood. They have large appetites and very little self control. Within a few weeks, they drain their victims dry.”

“That’s horrible,” Bella said.

“It’s not only horrible. It’s highly illegal,” I told her. “The gods’ laws always trump any other rules. That gives me all the authority I need to interfere and get Gin and Tessa back. We’re going after them.”

There was some old, obscure Legion rule that allowed me to recruit civilians in times of emergency. A few dozen abducted humans was a pretty big emergency as far as I was concerned. And I didn’t have time to wait for the Legion to send a team. The mercenaries were getting away with the prisoners now. I had to stop the transfer before it happened and the buyers disappeared.

The old Legion rule was probably back from the days shortly after the Scourge, when the Legion was new and small, but I didn’t care. If they couldn’t be bothered to remove the rule, I was going to use it.

“We’ll get them back,” Calli said.

I looked at Bella. “You don’t have to come.”

Bella had never been a fighter. She wasn’t someone who chased after trouble. She didn’t try to grab danger by the tail and run with it.

“They are my sisters too. I’m coming,” she told me, her voice ringing with conviction.

“Leda!”

I turned, watching Sheriff Wilder push through the crowd that had gathered around us. “Carmen was one of the girls taken.” His voice shook. “I’m coming with you.”

Distressed and desperate, Carmen’s father had the sort of look in his eyes that screamed he had nothing to lose. If I let him come with us, he would take crazy risks that might just get us all killed.

“You need to stay here and keep order in town,” I said gently.

“I—”

“We’ll get Carmen back,” I promised him.

The commotion had drawn the Pilgrims out of their temple. They were staring at the horrible scene of destruction, solemn looks on their faces.

I marched up to the Pilgrim who’d showed us to the Legion room earlier. “I am Lieutenant Pierce of the Legion of Angels.”

As soon as I said the words, it was like I was a completely different person to him. I wasn’t a troublemaker. I was a holy soldier touched by the gods’ magic. A Legion soldier of my level wasn’t all that common. Not many people survived so many doses of Nectar. After all, it was the strongest poison on Earth—a poison that literally killed you or made you stronger.

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Not a hint of disgust tainted his tone. His words were professional and polite, even reverent.

“Bring the Legion truck around,” I instructed him. “We’re heading out to the Black Plains.”