We passed under the wall and drove out onto the Black Plains, rolling over scorched earth and blackened fields. The place looked like it had been hit by one enormous bolt of lightning. I let Calli drive. My mind was too preoccupied, too busy with thoughts of what had happened with the werewolf mercenary.

Back in my days living in Purgatory, life had been simpler. Back then, my biggest worry had been whether I would survive a dangerous job I’d taken so my family could eat. I hadn’t dealt with these bigger issues of the soul, the fear that I had lost myself.

“Leda, you sure have learned to take charge,” Calli commented, bringing me out of my thoughts. “When you talked to Sheriff Wilder back there, you were literally glowing. You looked so alive, so in your element. This is who you are. It is your destiny.”

She sounded proud—but also sad. And her words reminded me once again of how much I was changing.

Calli glanced sidelong at me from the driver’s seat. “You’re worried.”

“Yes. Who hires a team of mercenaries to abduct teenagers? The sort of people I don’t want to have my little sisters, that’s who.”

“We’ll get them back,” Calli told me.

“Hopefully, before it’s too late.”

“Gin and Tessa are tough. Tessa is so resourceful that I have her do all our shopping. I can’t believe the deals she gets.”

An image flashed into my head—that of Tessa with pink shopping bags dangling from her arms, each one filled with medical supplies, ammunition, and machine parts.

“And Gin has a good, level head. She’s been working in the garage, keeping the Magitech and vehicles for Pandora’s Box in good order.”

Pandora’s Box was the bounty hunter company Calli had started long ago. Last year, I’d been preparing to take over from her, but then Zane was taken, and all our plans went to hell.

“I’m sorry about the burden I put on you by leaving,” I told Calli. “I wish I could help more. If you would just take some money—”

“That’s your money, Leda,” Calli said, her jaw hard.

“I don’t need it. But if you take it, you can improve your lives. You don’t need to work in these conditions. You don’t need to live in constant danger out here. Take the money. It’s the least I can do for you after all that you’ve done for me.”

“I never wanted you to take the burden of the whole world on your shoulders,” said Calli.

I didn’t tell her about the bounties I funded for them.

“Believe me, neither do I. The whole world just keeps falling apart whenever I’m around, and so I sort of feel obligated to put it back together.”

“You certainly have a knack for attracting trouble,” Calli chuckled.

“Once we get the girls back, you all can come to New York and get an apartment,” I pushed on. “At least there I can look out for you. At least there you’ll be safe.”

“Your heart is in the right place, Leda, but no one is safe. Not as long as monsters walk the Earth.” Her expression softened. “And the monsters aren’t confined to the wild lands.”

She was referring to the recent threat in New York, when Stash’s army of supernaturals had tried to take over the world. And she had a point. Nowhere on Earth was completely safe, at least not as long as humanity was caught in the middle of this war of gods and demons.

“Besides, I can’t abandon the people of Purgatory, not as long as the district lords rule,” she told me.

“I know.”

“Don’t feel bad about leaving, Leda. You made the ultimate sacrifice. You left your whole life to join the Legion, not knowing if you would survive the gods’ gifts of magic that kill so many. And you did all of it to save Zane.”

“Lately, I’ve been wondering… well, is it really so much of a sacrifice? My life is nice. Sure, there’s danger, but I actually like what I do. I like solving big problems. I like making a difference. I like my friends.”

“And your angel,” Bella said.

“Yes.” I sighed. “I’m so selfish.”

“You’re not selfish for wanting to live a little,” said Calli.

“I’ve been having trouble with telekinesis, the next ability. It isn’t coming to me, no matter how much I train. It’s like I’m blocked.”

“You’ll get through it,” Calli said with confidence.

“See, that’s not the point. Maybe I’ll figure it out and maybe I won’t, but the Legion won’t put me through the next ceremony until I’m ready.”

“So?”

“So there’s no consequence to me for failure,” I replied. “It’s somehow too easy, too cushy of a life for me. I’ve become complacent.”

“You’re the first person I’ve ever heard refer to life at the Legion as ‘cushy’.”

“You’ve been working harder than anyone, pushing yourself, leveling up like no one else,” Bella added.

Except Jace was leveling up faster. Even knowing that he was the son of an angel and had all those magic genes to help him, I couldn’t help but feel guilty, like I could be doing more.

“What is blocking me from reaching the next level?” I wondered. “Can I even reach the next level? Most Legion soldiers never go this high. What if this is it? What if I’ve sped up the ranks only to hit a wall that I can’t power through? What if this is the end of my potential? What if I fail Zane?”

“This isn’t the end, Leda,” said Calli. “It’s just a challenge, something to overcome. Not everything comes easily. You just need to figure out what’s wrong and how to solve it.”

I wasn’t sure I could figure it out, but I wasn’t giving up. That’s how Calli had raised us all. She hadn’t taught us to be quitters.

A shrill shriek echoed across the plains, cutting through my thoughts like a bolt of lightning. Tiny dark dots danced across the barren field, and they were moving fast toward us. Like a stream, the dots took a wide loop around our truck. Now that they were closer, I got a better look at them. Each black dot was a small, raptor-like dinosaur with long claws and pointy teeth. Together, they made up a pack of a few dozen monsters. Swirling closer, moving as a perfect swarm, they watched us with vicious, hungry eyes, fully prepared to tear us apart.

One of the raptors leapt at the truck. It landed on the door, its claws scratching across the metal body. I hit it with a gust of air magic. The raptor went flying, bowling over a section of its own pack.

Agitated, the monsters let out a collective shriek that made my eardrums scream in pain. I took a closer look at them. The monsters’ skin had an iridescent glow to it, like it wasn’t completely opaque. A pulsing light shone from within, the light of their magic. What kind of magic was that?

I got my answer when one of the raptors opened up its mouth and spat a fireball at us. Calli jerked the steering wheel hard, swerving to avoid the flames.

“Since when can raptors spit fire?” I spun my sword around, slashing apart the next monster that launched itself at the truck.

“Lately, the monsters here are mutating, breeding with other monsters,” Calli explained. “They are evolving faster than ever before.”

I continued to slash at the dinosaurs. Charged with lightning magic, my blade cut right through them. “Evolving into what?”

“I don’t think any of us want to find out,” Calli said darkly.

The final raptor dropped dead to the ground, but we had little time to celebrate. Again, an ear-splitting shriek tore across the plains. Another pack of raptors was coming.

Except it wasn’t just a single pack, I realized as I looked across the plains. It was many packs. They covered the blackened fields before us, stretching out to the horizon. There were over a hundred of them, and they were charging straight at us. I wouldn’t be able to take them out one by one. They’d tear us apart long before that.

I turned to Bella. “I have an idea. Do you have a flood potion?”

It would take too much of my magic to create a whole flood. There was no water nearby, so I had nothing to draw on but my own magic. It was much easier to redirect a river than it was to create one from scratch.

“I do. Well, it’s more of a puddle than a flood. A big puddle,” she added quickly.

“Big enough to cover all those monsters?”

“If they stand really close together. And don’t move at all.” She gave me an apologetic look.

I glanced at the monster horde. There sure were a lot of them.

“How long do you need them to stand still so the flood can cover them?” I asked Bella.

Bella looked at the field of monsters too. “Fifteen seconds.” Her voice shook a little. “Twenty for maximum coverage.”

I took a deep breath, then told Calli, “Keep driving at them. Right before we hit the horde, swerve off.”

“Only you would try to play chicken with a horde of dinosaurs,” she said in disbelief, but she kept driving straight at the monsters.

The raptors were getting close. I could smell the acidic tang of their breath. Closing my eyes, I reached for their minds. They popped up in my head like tons of tiny lights in a sea of blackness. Taking a long, slow breath, I snatched their minds, locking them inside my siren magic. One by one, I crushed their wills. My magic rippled across the horde, starting fast but then slowing as I met resistance. It hurt like a hammer to the head to hold so many monsters’ minds at once, but I kept pushing on. The monsters were slowing down.

“How are you doing this?” Bella gasped in wonder.

I couldn’t answer. I was putting all my power, all my concentration, into grabbing the monsters’ minds and overriding their will to fight. Nero had once told me that it was easier to control someone or something if you moved with the flow, working with their nature and their instincts rather than fighting against them.

Well, there was no way around that with these raptors. This was an uphill battle, a fight against their very nature. They wanted to kill me and my family. They wanted to swarm us and rip the flesh from our bones. They didn’t want to stop charging at us. Raptors were hyper, agitated monsters. They couldn’t ever sit still. They were always moving, running, twitching, tearing. Making them stop in their tracks was as easy as making it snow in the scorching desert.

“Get ready to throw the potion,” I said through clenched teeth. My head was pounding so hard I thought it would split open.

“Leda, your nose,” Bella said.

I wiped away the blood dripping out of my nose. “No matter.” I kept conquering the monsters’ minds, winking out their willpower. Almost there.

And then, just like that, all the monsters suddenly stopped. They were frozen, suspended in time. The lands were silent, all but the roar of our truck. We were almost upon them, but they didn’t move. They didn’t even blink. They looked like dozens of statues someone had placed on the plains.

But underneath their plaster-like facades, I could feel their minds pushing and clawing at me, trying to break free. If my plan didn’t work, the beasts would explode out of my spell and tear us apart with all that bottled-up angry energy.

“Now!” I shouted.

Bella tossed the potion. The bottle landed in the center of the dinosaur army, shattering. A pool of clear water swelled up beneath the beasts’ feet, slowly spreading outward even as it grew higher.

Calli swerved the truck away.

Turning, swirling, the whirlpool consumed the statuesque raptors. Soon, they were all caught in the whirlpool. I lifted my hand in the air, drawing on the lightning magic in the dark storm clouds above. The clouds swelled, growing heavier, darker, even as the pressure in the air grew thicker.

I unleashed all that magic at once, crashing down bolt after bolt into the whirlpool, electrocuting the raptors. The whirlpool stopped spinning a few seconds later and washed out across the plains.

Calli stopped the truck and we just all stared at the blast radius of my spell. The ground was burnt black and peppered with dead black raptors. Not a single monster had survived.

The crisis over, I slouched down into my seat, exhausted.

Calli drove us onto the old, broken road once more. The truck thumped and shook as the wheels rolled over the dinosaur graveyard.

“Where did you learn to control monsters?” Calli asked me after a few minutes of silence. “That’s not a Legion thing.”

“No, it’s pretty much a me thing.”

“I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”

“According to the gods, it’s not supposed to be possible. If they found out, they’d probably kill me. Or study me.” I yawned. My head felt so heavy. Using all that magic had drained me down to the bone.

Calli glanced at me. “No one is killing you, kid. Not on my watch. You rest your eyes for a bit.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, closing my eyes, drifting into sleep.

In my dreams, the ground opened up beneath us and swallowed the truck. We fell into the fiery pits of hell, where a dark angel tried to convince us to part with our truck for five dollars. But Calli wouldn’t take anything less than twenty dollars. They eventually settled on ten dollars, but the dark angel had to throw in a pack of Venom beer to sweeten the deal.

The dark angel and I were shaking hands on the deal. His grip was so tight I thought he’d pull my arm off.

I jumped awake. Torn out of the dream, I looked around wildly. My hand moved toward my sword.

I looked down at Calli’s hand on my shoulder. I relaxed. She’d shaken me awake.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Status?”

Calli smirked, then she said in a very no-nonsense voice, “We’ve arrived at the edge of the Doorway to Dusk, Lieutenant. I’ve parked us out of sight so we can approach undetected on foot. With your permission, of course.”

“Cute,” I said, snickering.

Her eyes twinkled at me.

We all climbed out of the truck and began hiking up the rocky path. When we reached the crest of the hill, we looked down, staying low to the ground. In the rocky valley below, a group of prisoners were chained to a cluster of boulders. Mercenaries surrounded them. They were everywhere. And every single one of them was armed to the teeth.