“Faith didn’t have anyone to teach her,” I said.
“Which is exactly my point. She is immature and reckless.”
“I did some pretty stupid things when I was sixteen,” I reminded Calli.
“Maybe so. We all did. Stupidity is a rite of passage. But it’s something we just can’t afford right now. Not if we’re going to stop this curse.”
“Faith is already here. We can’t just leave her alone in the wilds.”
“I know.” Calli sighed. “I just wanted to remind you not to confuse this girl with yourself, Leda. Don’t think you can use her like you can use the other bounty hunters, like she was a younger version of you. Faith’s inexperience and recklessness are a liability to the whole team. And if you aren’t careful, if you don’t get Faith under control, then she is going to get us all killed.”
Calli had a point. Faith was foolish enough to get herself into trouble, but she was missing the other part. She wasn’t yet clever enough to get herself out of trouble. I hadn’t just felt obliged to save her when the monster had cornered her; I’d wanted to save her. I guess I felt protective of her. Like she was my little sister.
Faith brought back memories of a simpler time. A time when the whole world hadn’t hated and blamed me for everything that was going wrong. A time when I’d been just another nobody going about my business. When I hadn’t had any influence or magic to speak of. Back when I’d been nothing more than a simple bounty hunter, trying to make a living to help support my family.
Those times were gone now, and they weren’t ever coming back. I was an angel. And much as I often lamented the baggage that came with my angelic magic, I was glad that when the shit hit the fan, when the world was in jeopardy, I had the power to do something about it.
I looked out across the wilds, toward the doorway to civilization. A golden glowing wall stood there, tall and mighty, the final line between the frontier of humanity and the plains of monsters. I saw the town Damiel had told me to visit. Pandemonium. And it was on fire.
24
Nine Lives
The airship docked at the edge of town, and my bounty hunters and I hurried to the burning building. What we found wasn’t another case of backfiring magic; it was a case of fear. The street was filled with fighting people, all of them human.
I pulled aside one of the paranormal soldiers who was trying to regain order. “What happened here?”
“About half an hour ago, a fight broke out in that grocery store.”
He pointed at the burning building, which the town’s firefighters were trying to save. The angry mob wasn’t making their job any easier. I cast a storm cloud over the building. It rumbled, then dumped water all over the fire, drowning the flames. The fire was out. That took care of one problem. And thanks to my bounty hunters—and a little help from my cat Angel—the paranormal soldiers had quelled the fighting crowd.
“What started the fight?” I asked the paranormal soldier beside me.
“Two men both wanted the same can of beans.”
“This whole fight is over a can of beans? Why?”
“It was the last can of beans in town.” A dark look shadowed his face.
“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, is it?”
“No. As soon as the Legion issued the order for all supernaturals to stop using their magic, the citizens of Pandemonium panicked and started buying up everything they could. It’s been one fight after the other ever since.”
“Why are they buying up everything?” Faith asked.
“Because without magic, witches can’t brew potions or produce the gadgets that people use,” Gypsy told her. “Though what magic has to do with a simple can of beans is anyone’s guess.”
“Fear is contagious. It knows no bounds,” Calli said. “It ignores the bonds of friendship and camaraderie. It is resistant to reason and immune to logic. Fear is the destroyer of worlds. It is a plague on the very fibers of human civilization.”
Jinx rolled his eyes. He’d never been very philosophical. Or poetic, for that matter.
“How big is your local sheriff’s office?” I asked the paranormal soldier.
He looked upon the mass of handcuffed rioters and arsonists as his team led them away. “Not nearly big enough.”
“This culture of fear is an ugly thing,” I commented to Angel.
Then we turned and followed the procession of prisoners to jail.
We managed to squeeze the worst offenders into the tiny jail, but we were forced to let the others go due to the shortage of prison cells. Pandemonium wasn’t prepared to handle the current situation. The world wasn’t prepared to handle it.
News reports flashed across the television screen in the sheriff’s office. Scenes of riots, fires, and destruction. We liked to believe humanity was so intelligent, so evolved, but there was little evidence of that in this video montage. Civilization was coming apart at the seams. Supernaturals turning against one another, and humans turning against them. Every so often, there was a tiny beacon of light in the dark. Like the story of a brave stranger taking a stand to protect a young supernatural girl that his neighbors tried to kill.
“Trying times like these bring out the worst in people and the best in people,” Calli commented.
I just stood there and watched in horror. I had wished that the media would stop focusing on me. Well, I’d gotten my wish, but it hadn’t turned out at all like I’d wanted. These scenes of hate and violence and humanity at its worst were so much more painful to watch than anything the reporters had ever said about me.
I didn’t know how to fight this kind of thing. The enemy wasn’t a monster this time; it was fear itself. An angry, explosive fear that drove people to do all kinds of unspeakable things. Watching it play out like this—it hurt in my heart. It hurt in my soul. I wanted to fix it now. I couldn’t let it go on a moment longer.
But I had to do just that. I had to go. My only hope of healing humanity was to put an end to this terrible curse.
“Move out,” I told my team of bounty hunters. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
One of the paranormal soldiers had seen the shifters leave town and set out across the wilderness earlier this morning. We had to keep going. We had to follow that trail and chase the shifters down—and hope that something they’d seen during their time as the vampires’ guards would help us end the curse.
We boarded the airship again. The paranormal soldier had seen the shifters head through the Black Forest, so that’s the way we went. From above, the Black Forest was actually many small forests, each one dominated by a different variety of wild tree. I’d read that some of those tree varieties were actually monsters. I hadn’t met many monster plants, but the ones I had encountered weren’t any friendlier than the animal sort. We had to be prepared to fight.
“There.” Calli pointed at one of the small forests below. “They’re emerging.”
I looked. There were four people: three men and a woman. Clearly all shifters. I knew that from the quick pace they maintained as they ran out of one forest, toward the next. I knew it from their stereotypical denim-and-leather shifter outfits. And I knew it from the crackle of anticipatory magic in the air around them.