“Leda, they’re gone.”
“It can’t be. Not again.” I tried to free my hand, but he didn’t give an inch. I stopped struggling long enough to glower at him. “Nero, let me go.”
“No.”
“I have to do something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” A heavy sigh rocked my chest. “Something. I can’t let any more people die. These fairies tried to save the sirens, and this is what happened to them.” Desperation, anger, fear—they tore away the angel I was supposed to be, leaving only the raw, helpless person I really was. “They showed kindness, and they died!” Tears streamed down my cheeks. I had all this power, all this magic, and it didn’t mean a damn thing. “It’s just not fair!”
“No, it’s not,” Nero replied quietly. “But life is rarely fair.”
“You think that’s supposed to make me feel better?” I demanded. “Empty platitudes?!”
“I’m not finished.” His eyes were as hard as granite. “Life is rarely fair. That’s why we angels exist: to even the odds and protect humanity.” His hand flashed out and snatched my other wrist. “To do that, we must be strong. And we can’t ever give up.” His arms wrapped around me, holding me to him.
And for one brief moment, my pain was gone. Nero had made himself my shield. He’d wrapped himself around me, and he wasn’t letting anything through that might hurt me. I relaxed into him, holding him to me, resting my head on his chest, listening to his steady heart. Nero was my rock, my tether in all the world’s madness. I needed him.
At the same time, it seemed as though we’d been apart for no time at all, and also like an unbearable eternity had passed since he’d held me like this. I felt like everything was all right between us again. Maybe it was horrible of me to find a moment of comfort in this graveyard, but I couldn’t help it. I’d missed him so much.
“Nero.” I glanced up at him.
“Leda.” His voice was soft, even gentle.
I reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “It’s grown longer.”
“Things have been busy. I haven’t had time to cut it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Cut it?”
I smiled. “You look so roguishly handsome this way.”
His chest was pressed against mine, his heart beating in time to my own. “Maybe I won’t.”
“Cut it?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll cut it? Or yes, you’ll take my advice?”
“Just yes, Leda.” He dipped his mouth toward mine.
My breath caught in my throat.
But then he changed direction and pulled away from me. My shoulders sagged in disappointment.
“Am I interrupting something?” Nerissa asked.
I turned to find her standing in the open doorway to the dilapidated building. Seeing her here, I was hit with a foreboding feeling. Something bad was about to happen; I just knew it. Or maybe I was being paranoid. Because the last time Nerissa, Nero, and I had been in the same room together, everything had gone to hell.
I cleared my throat, then told Nerissa, “There are two dead fairies over there.”
As she went to check them out, I glanced at Nero.
He looked up from the phone he’d pulled out of his jacket. “There have been two more incidents reported, each on the west coast.”
“It’s spreading beyond the Frontier.” I shook myself back to the here and now. “Who was affected?”
“A telepath in hiding went insane because he could suddenly hear the thoughts of thousands of people but not filter anyone out,” Nero said. “The other incident involved a pair of psychics. Their telekinetic blasts bounced back on them, smashing them through a brick wall. Most of the bones in their bodies were shattered. They are in critical condition, and the doctors says it’s even odds whether they will survive the night.”
“Five, six, seven, eight,” Nerissa said, walking up to us.
I blinked in confusion. “What?”
“It’s how dancers count down before starting their dance.”
I’d never known Nerissa was a dancer. I guess there were a lot of things I didn’t know about her. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, I might have teased her for being a dancing doctor, but I didn’t feel like jokes right now.
Neither did Nerissa apparently. “The countdown to disaster has begun,” she said solemnly. “But will we be able to stop it?”
“We must do whatever is necessary to stop it,” Nero declared. “This curse kills supernaturals when they access their magic. So as of now, no supernatural may use their magic until we’ve figured out how to stop this curse.”
Nero was standing in for the First Angel right now while she was away, so he had the authority to issue this mandate. And it wasn’t a bad idea either because a supernatural never knew when their magic might suddenly turn against them. The question was how the Earth’s supernaturals would react to his command.
“Do you think supernaturals will obey?” I asked him.
“They will do as they’re ordered.”
I wished I had his confidence. No one had ever before told supernaturals not to use their magic, so I doubted they’d be pleased.
“What about the Magitech barriers?” I asked.
“The barriers aren’t living beings, so they should be ok. But no witch can use their magic to repair them.”
The Earth was completely dependent on supernaturals and their magic. If all of them suddenly stopped using their magic, that meant no witches to brew the potions people used and tech they needed. It meant no fairies to heal the injured. Water elementals could not fight fires. Earth elementals could not quell quakes and care for the growing of food and plants. And vampires could not drink blood anymore. If this stretched on too long, the vampires would grow so hungry that even the sensible ones would devolve into savage beasts.
Alec and a few others helped Nerissa load the surviving siren and all the bodies into the truck. When Nero, Angel, and I stepped out of the old house, the crowd was waiting. They were still all the way down the alley, behind the yellow tape, but there were a lot of them and their voices carried.
“People are dying everywhere!” shouted someone in a state of panic.
“You’re angels!”
Cameras flashed.
“All powerful!”
Boots stomped.
“Chosen by the gods!”
“Champions of humanity!”
Their shouts echoed off the empty night sky.
“You can’t let this happen!”
“You must do something to stop it!”
Nero rested his hand on my back, a silent signal to me that we had to go now. The crowd was obviously too riled up to listen to anything we had to say. Sure, we could compel everyone to calmness, but what would that accomplish? We couldn’t compel everyone in the whole world. We shouldn’t be fighting angry mobs; we had to fight the actual problem. So I grabbed Angel, then Nero and I spread our wings and we flew off.
“Return to your crystal castles and hide behind your gilded gates!” someone shouted.
I was pretty sure it was one of the incendiary reporters, determined to rile up the crowd some more.