“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m a tough girl.”

“My blood would heal you.”

“I’m not going to drink from you, Nero. That would weaken you. I can manage.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It doesn’t hurt any more than training with you.” I smirked at him.

“Don’t be cute with me, Pandora.”

“I’d never dream of it, Colonel.”

He made a gruff noise that might have been a snort. “The Magitech generators should be in there.” He pointed at the brick building across the street.

“Great,” I said brightly as we headed for the power building. “Let’s give them a power boost, get the barrier back up, and then get the hell out of here. This will be easy. I bet we can get it done in record time, well before you lose all your magic. The gods will be so impressed. In addition to promoting you, they’ll grant you any favor you want.”

“Grant me any favor I want? Obviously, you don’t know the gods very well.”

I gave my hand a dismissive wave. “Don’t be a party pooper, Colonel Hardass.”

His brows lifted. “Colonel Hardass?”

“Just a little nickname that Ivy and I used to call you when we first joined the Legion, way back when you were making our lives a living hell.”

“I had no idea you took an interest in my ass so early on in our relationship.”

“Relationship? The only relationship we had back then was of torturer and trainee. I hated you with every aching fiber of my being.”

The grin Nero gave me was almost evil. “I knew you’d come around eventually.”

“How could you possibly know that?” I demanded.

“You have a dangerous habit of always trying to see the best in everyone. Even in angels. And I am a patient man.”

“Oh, you were plotting to win me over, were you? You must have realized that pushups are the surest way to a girl’s heart.”

“Your training was completely independent of any intentions I might have had.”

I gave him my most skeptical look.

“All right. My intentions might not have been entirely honorable. Especially when I was sitting on you while you were doing pushups,” he admitted.

“Ha! I knew it! You should be ashamed of yourself, Colonel.” I shook my head. “Seducing a sweet, young initiate with promises of pushups.”

“I’m crying inside.”

I snorted. “I’m sure.”

“If it makes you feel better, next time you can sit on me while I’m doing pushups,” he said with a sly smile.

Heat scorched my cheeks. I didn’t know why I blushed, but I knew it was all his fault.

“So,” I said. “When the gods grant you a boon for your stellar performance here…” I stopped when his lower lip twitched in amusement. “What’s so funny?”

“The gods don’t grant boons, Pandora.”

“Thinking is being. Be positive.” I slapped him on the back. “You could ask for your old job back. Then you’d come back to New York and kick Harker out of your office.” I grinned at him. “We’ll do it together. It will be fun.”

Nero stopped and stroked his hand down my face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing.” His mouth brushed against my neck.

I blushed—again. “What if the gods are watching?” I couldn’t see them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching us. In fact, I was pretty sure they were.

“Let them watch.”

His words were as smooth as honey, as decadent as silk. And when he kissed me, heat poured out of his mouth, igniting my blood, burning away the cold ice of the gods’ potion. I dug my nails into the hard muscle of his back, drawing him in closer.

He pulled away, breaking off the kiss. “Later,” he whispered against my ear.

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” he replied.

“I’d hate to disappoint an angel. You angels are such a moody bunch.”

“Yes.” Gold flashed in his eyes. “We are.” His face grew serious again. “We need to get to the Magitech generators and fix them before I lose the power of witchcraft. This test was designed to challenge me, so we can be sure that restarting these generators won’t be easy. I will need all the technical knowledge and magic I have left.”

“So if we don’t hurry, we might not have the knowledge and magic to be able to fix the generators?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I said, swallowing hard. “On the bright side, none of that will matter if the monsters eat us.”

I pointed at the giant spider headed our way.

5 Human Again

Giant was perhaps an inadequate word to describe the monster closing in on us. Enormous? Gargantuan? Colossal? None of those words captured the horror of staring down a spider twice my size. As black as tar, it glistened and gleamed like a pool of oil in the rising moonlight. The wind was agitated, buzzing, rustling. When the beast moved, it sounded like the sharpening of a hundred knives at once.

“That is a highly poisonous spider,” Nero told me.

Of course it was. As though I’d ever doubted it. This place was hell on Earth.

The spider rushed us, slashing out with its pointy-tipped legs. Each slash whistled through the air like a steel sword. They cut like a sword too.

“That spider moves really fast for a beast its size,” I said, ignoring the throbbing pain in my left shoulder where the beast had cut me.

We struck at the giant spider with our swords. Our blades scraped against the beast’s belly, hardly scratching the hard shell. It was like hitting a shield.

The spider reared back and ejected a white bundle of goo. I ducked out of the way, and the web shot past me, splattering against a nearby building. It stuck right where it had hit. I couldn’t afford to let the spider trap me in its web. Or poison me with those shiny silver pinchers.

I considered going around the beast to get to the Magitech generator building, but another spider jumped into my path—and this one was even larger than the first. Nero went to greet the new arrival, leaving me to battle the first spider.

My spider rushed forward, slashing with its hard, armored legs as it ejected another sticky white bundle. I ducked low to avoid the web. Then I grabbed the beast’s leg with both hands and heaved with as much power as I had. The leg crunched, cracking into two in my hands. The spider fell.

It tried to get back up, but with a leg missing it was a circling, panicking, horribly uncoordinated mess. It snapped and hissed at me, shooting out bundles of stinking white goo, one after the other. The damn thing was a machine gun.

I rolled under the spider and jumped up, shoving my sword through its open jaws. My blade sank into the soft inner flesh of its mouth and pierced the top of its head. The lights went out in those hellish eyes, then it dropped dead to the ground. A moment later, Nero’s spider landed on its body. It was dead too. I looked at the pile of spiders, and I had to admit I was feeling pretty damn badass.

That victory song died in my head when I saw the stream of giant spiders flying down every building in sight. There were dozens of them, and every single one of them was determined to eat us alive. Nero blasted one of them off the building with a psychic spell. The spider fell dead to the ground. So they were weak against magic. Unfortunately, Nero and I were a bit short on magic right now. His spells weren’t nearly as strong as they used to be.

A cold, foreboding flash shook my body, a silent tremor that warned me of the larger quake to come. Soon my vampire powers would leave me completely, and then I would be as weak and slow as a human. I wouldn’t be able to fight off the spiders in that state. I would be a liability. I hated being a liability, especially to Nero. He wouldn’t be strong enough to kill them all alone if he had to worry about saving my human ass.

Nero pummeled the spiders with psychic energy, one blast after the other. He didn’t slow down, but I could see the strain in his face. He was weakening. His magic was not as potent as he needed for this battle. I’d always thought Nero was a bottomless well of stamina, but watching him fight those beasts now, I could see his limits. He wouldn’t hold out for much longer.