“Good kitty.” I patted Angel’s head as she dropped the woman at my feet.
“What the hell kind of cat is that?”
The woman rose to her feet, her hood falling back to reveal a youthful face obviously hardened by a tough childhood. She couldn’t have been over twenty-five, but her eyes told me she’d lived through her share of trouble. And her sassy smile told me she’d taken it all in strides.
“Her name is Angel,” I told the woman. “And she is my kind of cat.”
The woman laughed. “She’s cool.” She looked at my cat, whose white fur was now suddenly speckled with glittery gold highlights. “Does she always change color like that?”
“No.” I grabbed the end of my ponytail and saw that the same gold glitter strands sparkled inside my pale blonde hair. “This is the first time actually.”
“A chameleon cat. Cool.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t stop gaping at my transformed cat. “She is.”
“Angel appears to be picking up more than just your bad habits, Leda,” Harker commented.
“So it would seem.”
But how had this happened? Looking upon Angel now, seeing her fur mimicking my hair, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was fate that we’d found each other, fate that she’d become my cat. Like so many things, that was a question to explore in another time and place.
Right now, I had another question. “What are you doing here?” I asked the woman.
“Hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Bounty-hunting to be precise.” She extended her hand to me. “The name’s Gypsy.”
Gypsy had long, brown hair, dark eyes, and a can-do attitude that made me like her immediately. She was dressed in denim tights and a red tank top that matched perfectly with her hooded cape.
“And what are you hunting here, Little Red?” I asked her. “Big, bad wolves?
“No.” She winked at me. “I’m hunting big, bad angels.”
Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of a gang. And I meant gang. As in street gang. There were seven of them, men ranging in age from eighteen to fifty, but they all wore the same ugly expression on their faces. It was an expression of pure, undiluted hatred—and it was aimed right at us.
I folded my arms over my chest and stepped forward to greet them. “How can I help you, gentleman?”
“Get out,” growled a middle-aged man in a navy sweater vest over a sky-blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked like a distinguished professor, not the kind of person who would join a gang.
“Get out and never return,” said the young man next to him.
He was about thirty years younger, but otherwise looked almost exactly like the man I assumed was his father. And he too was dressed like he was ready for a day at the country club.
The other five men looked exactly like stereotypical thugs—and nothing like the father and son. Weird.
When those weak warnings failed to scare us off, one of the thugs elbowed the professor in the back.
“Our town was a perfect paradise before you people started coming around,” squawked the professor.
Perfect paradise? Did they not realize they were sitting on danger’s doorstep, right at the plains of monsters?
I stepped forward, my arms wide open. “Look, guys. We’re here to help you. Someone is killing people. We want to stop them before more people die. So how about you go back to your perfect paradise, and we go back to protecting the planet?”
Another of the thugs pushed the professor’s son forward, toward us. The boy spat at our feet.
I was starting to realize what was going on here. The father and son were locals, spooked by the quadruple murder in their quiet hometown. And the five thugs were members of the same kind of hate gang that had gathered outside the vampire nest in Purgatory. Hell, the five thugs probably didn’t even live in Beyond. They were just using the locals’ fear to further their own agenda.
“You two may go,” I told the father and son. I saturated my words with siren magic. “You five.” I shook my head at the thugs with mild disapproval. “We’re going to have a little talk about taking advantage of vulnerable people.”
The two locals had already hurried off. The thugs watched them go, and when they turned back to look at me, the ugly hate on their faces had grown even uglier.
“You’re not as hot shit as you think you are, Leda Pandora,” snarled one of the thugs.
“And yet you’re still every bit as full of shit as I think you are,” I snapped back.
The man looked startled. “Are angels supposed to talk like that?” he asked one of his fellow thugs.
I smirked at them all. “I’m not like other angels.”
“Sure, you are! You’re all the same, you filthy angels!” The thug’s voice was loud and obnoxious, and I was pretty sure he was drunk.
I brushed the invisible dirt off my pants. “Who are you calling filthy?”
But the man wouldn’t take a hint, and he wouldn’t shut up. “You all hide behind your flashy magic, but you’re only hiding from the truth. The truth that without your magic, you’re nothing. Nothing special. Nothing but traitors to humanity, who have sold your souls to some con artists who call themselves gods. And for what? A few parlor tricks!”
There was an audible creak of leather armor as Harker took a step forward. He was totally going to punish the loudmouthed thug, not only for daring to taunt an angel, but for speaking ill of the gods.
The thug laughed at the flaming sword in Harker’s hand. “See? More tricks. More magic. Without it, you’re nothing.”
A slow smile curled my lips. “Oh, really?”
“Pandora, don’t let them taunt you into doing something stupid,” Harker warned me.
“Why not?” I winked at him. “It will be fun.” I pointed at the drunk. “You with the big mouth, I accept your challenge.”
He blinked in surprise. “What?”
“A fight, right here, right now, on the streets of this lovely town. The two of us…” I pointed at myself and Harker. “…against the five of you. No magic. No guns or knives or swords. Just good old fists, boots, and whatever else we can find lying around on the street.”
The loudmouthed thug was suddenly very silent.
“Unless you’re scared?” I said, allowing my brows to lift with my voice.
The thug glowered at me. “How do we know you won’t cheat and use your magic?”
I set my hand over my heart. “I promise. And angels are too arrogant to cheat anyway.”
Beside me, Gypsy snorted.
“All right,” the thug drawled. “The four of us will fight you and the pretty boy.” He pointed at the youngest thug. “You pull out your phone and record the whole thing to make sure they don’t go back on their word.”
“Her word,” Harker corrected him. “I want no part of this circus.”
I shrugged. “Your loss. More fun for me.”
Gypsy stepped forward. “I’ll fight beside you, Leda Pandora.”
I patted her on the back. “This should be interesting.” I looked at the thugs. “Ready to go, boys?”