Angel Fever (Immortal Legacy #3) - Ella Summers Page 0,17
them. “We are all going to be ok.”
“Does it hurt?” Nero asked Damiel, staring at his bloody bandages.
“Yes,” his father replied. “But an angel doesn’t allow pain or anything else to stand in his way. He does what’s necessary. Always.”
“We should let him rest.” I set my hand on Nero’s back and walked him to the door. I glanced back at Damiel. “And as for you, you are going to relax.”
“Work is relaxing, Princess.” Damiel winked at me.
As Nero and I left the medical ward, a group of Damiel’s soldiers entered. And there were even more waiting outside. He’d turned his hospital room into an impromptu office. The man was incorrigible.
Nero fell into step beside me as I made my way to the roof, where an airship was waiting to bring me to the Interrogators’ prison.
I glanced sidelong at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.” He matched my quickened pace. “To interrogate the prisoner.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I talked to Major Jewell.”
“And she told you what exactly?”
“Everything.”
Nero might not have had magic yet, but Siren’s Song wasn’t the only way to compel someone. He could talk pretty much anyone into anything, including an experienced Legion soldier like Leila Jewell. He took after his father in that.
“An interrogation chamber is no place for a ten-year-old,” I told him, sternly I hoped.
Nero was undeterred. “Father brings me into the interrogation chamber.”
“Your father is not the best judge of the age-appropriateness of activities.”
“He always says I need to be strong. That I need to do whatever is necessary to protect the Earth and its people. Well, that’s what I’m doing right now, by coming with you. We are going to get to the bottom of what Idris Starfire and his master are plotting—and then we’re going to stop them.”
Nero’s words rang with finality. He was only ten years old, but he sounded exactly like his father. He had so much of Damiel in him. Their similarities were more than skin deep.
Like Damiel, Nero was compelled to solve problems, especially ones that affected his family. He did not care that he was at a disadvantage, that he had neither magic, power, nor authority. That he was not even a Legion soldier yet. He had a goal, and nothing would stand in the way of his achieving it. That was the sort of tenacity that compelled an archangel to work from his hospital bed—or a ten-year-old boy to demand that he play a part in capturing the criminal who’d nearly killed his father.
And I was proud of him. Even though the stubbornness he’d inherited from Damiel was pretty damn frustrating to deal with.
I stopped walking and faced Nero. “You can’t come along,” I tried to explain to him. “You don’t have the authority to be in a Legion interrogation chamber. You aren’t even a Legion soldier, and certainly not an Interrogator.”
“Then give me the authority,” he countered. “You have the power. You’re an angel.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Father says you like to make things complicated.”
“Oh, does he?” I planted my hands on my hips. “And what else does your father say?”
Nero opened his mouth, but something he saw behind me made him close it again. And I had a pretty good idea of what it was. I could identify any angel in the Legion by sound alone.
“Colonel Holyfire,” I said, even before I’d turned around to face him.
Colonel Eryx Holyfire led the Central Territory of North America. His office was in Chicago. He’d come a long way—and brought his son with him.
Holyfire had pale blond hair, cropped very short. Every time I saw the man, he had exactly the same tan—just dark enough to show he spent some time in the field, but not too much time. After all, he was an important angel with a territory to run. I liked to think his faint tan was a consequence of his working in dark places, in the shadows beyond propriety.
He was hardly taller than I was, but was built wide. Strong and muscular, like a wrecking ball. In fact, his black leather uniform looked like it could barely contain his shifting muscles as he walked toward me. His hands were big, the kind of hands used to smash boulders—or to wield the long, two-handed sword I spotted on his back.
“Colonel Lightbringer.” The slight sneer to his polished, white grin hinted at the savage spirit that lay within. “I heard you and Dragonsire were overwhelmed on the Elemental Expanse.”