“You’re not human,” I said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Then what are you?”
She smiled. “Something far more mysterious.”
“She’s a dark angel. A demi-demon,” Nero told me. “The daughter of Ava, the Demon of Hell’s Army.”
Well, Aerilyn had said her mother was a soldier. So that’s why I’d thought she looked familiar. She looked a lot like Ava.
Aerilyn blew me a kiss. “Hello, cousin.”
“Do I get to choose whether I’m related to you?” I made a disgusted face.
She laughed. “You didn’t mind me so much earlier. You even tried to recruit me into the Legion of Angels.”
Nero sighed. “Pandora, why did you try to recruit a dark angel into the gods’ army? I’m sure we covered our recruitment policies quite thoroughly during your initiation.”
“I must have been unconscious for that one.” I tried to look contrite. “I just thought she fights well. And she has cool toys.”
Aerilyn chuckled. Nero just sighed again.
“It’s not like I knew she was a dark angel,” I said in my defense.
“We’ll talk about this later, after we’ve neutralized her,” replied Nero. He looked like he wished he’d called in sick to work today and foregone all this nonsense.
“Neutralizing me won’t help you solve your monster problem, Windstriker.” Aerilyn sat down on the edge of the wall. “Not that you could neutralize me.”
Nero took a forceful step forward.
I stepped in front of him. “What do you mean?” I asked Aerilyn.
“What I mean is, this monster problem cannot be solved with force. But you can solve it.”
“You want me to solve this.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Why?”
She folded her hands together on her lap. “Just think of it as a little test the demons have set you.”
“And if I pass?”
“Then they will accept your proposal and form an alliance with the gods to fight the Guardians.”
“This…all of this…” I waved my hands around, indicating the besieged town. “All the danger you’ve put people in, that was all part of some ridiculous test?”
“The test is not ridiculous,” she countered. “It’s very important. The fate of this world—of the universe—hangs in the balance.”
I threw my hands up in the air and expelled a puff of bottled exasperation. “I’m so sick of deities and their stupid power games!”
“That’s why I prefer to remain independent,” she said.
“I hate to break it to you, Aerilyn, but you’re not independent. Not if you’re doing what your mother and the rest of the demons’ council tell you what to do.”
“It’s a job, Leda, not a mantra. You won’t believe how much intergalactic gambling debt a girl can accumulate in a few millennia.” She shrugged. “The demons’ council paid me, so I took the job. It’s not much different than what you did when you were a bounty hunter.”
“I never accepted a job to put someone in mortal peril, let alone a bunch of someones.”
“To each their own, Leda Pandora,” she replied frostily. “Now are you going to put an end to this, or are you too damn stubborn and proud to accept my help to save all these people?”
“You are behind this disaster, and now you want to help fix it?” I demanded.
“I’m just here to guide you. You need to take the final step yourself.”
None of this made any sense, but I didn’t see any other option than to accept her ‘help’. First of all, I needed to figure out the extent of what she’d done before I could even begin to clean it up.
“You attacked the witches at Desert Rose?” I asked her.
“The shock from the overloaded Magitech generators attacked the witches.”
“But you sabotaged those generators?”
“Yes.”
“I take it you also sabotaged the generators here in Pandemonium?”
“Yes.”
“And you attacked Leila Starborn?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She was chasing me. I had to keep her off my back.”
“While you were under the alias of Carver Spellsword?”
“Yes. I’ve been using the Spellsword alias for years. I share that alias with a few others.”
That explained the conflicting reports Alec had found on Spellsword. If more than one person was using the alias, Spellsword could indeed be in several places at once.
“I didn’t take you for a sharing kind of gal,” I said.
“The more jobs Spellsword completes, the better his reputation, which leads to even more jobs. I can’t possibly keep Spellsword always in the limelight all by myself.”
“Why did you invent a fake dark angel at all?” I asked.
“For anonymity, of course. You don’t actually believe I’d commit crimes wearing my own face, do you?” she laughed. “Once everyone knows your face, you can’t go anywhere in peace. They follow you to the grocery store, to the beauty salon, on vacation. No, it’s much better to have a work persona and a free time persona.”
Her statement actually made sense—in a twisted kind of way. Sometimes I wished not everyone in the world knew my face.
“So Leila Starborn was never infected by the curse?” I asked.
“No.”
“And you didn’t create the curse?”
“No.”
Aerilyn had been lying to me since we’d met, so maybe I shouldn’t have believed her, but my gut told me she was telling the truth now.
“The witches at Desert Rose, Leila, and this disaster here at Pandemonium. That’s everything?” I asked her.
“Everything I’ve done lately.”
“What’s the connection?”
She smiled. “That’s for you to say.”
I hated tests.
I began to pace. “Your attack on Leila isn’t connected. You were only trying to get her off your tail. But the other two.” I stopped pacing and looked at Nero. “Magitech barriers. Both here and at Desert Rose, she sabotaged the Magitech generators. But why?”
“To let monsters in,” he said. “If the gods can’t keep the Earth’s cities safe from monsters, people will lose faith.” His gaze slid over to Aerilyn. “And perhaps turn to the demons instead. The demons have tried that ploy before.”
“Yes, they have. You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.” Aerilyn chuckled. “But that wasn’t the trick this time.”
“Both times, at Desert Rose and here in Pandemonium, the Magitech barrier never went down,” I realized. “The barriers weakened a bit. They even got a few tiny holes in them. But they never went down. The weirdest part of all was once the barriers were at full strength again, the monsters on this side of the wall didn’t die instantly as they should. Why?” I set my hand on Nero’s arm. “Do you remember the beasts we found last year on the Elemental Expanse? They were on the wrong side of the barrier too.”
“Because Leila engineered them to have a perfect light-dark magic balance,” Nero remembered. “The barriers’ magic didn’t see them as a threat.”