Angel Fever (Immortal Legacy #3) - Ella Summers Page 0,53

different somehow.

“You took a big risk dispatching them to the Interchange,” a Guardian said to the one who’d sent Eva and Starfire away. “If the demons or the gods learn of what we’re doing—”

“I trust they will be discreet.”

“Eva Doren will be discreet,” said another Guardian. “But angels are rarely discreet. They have a nasty habit of allowing their ego to get the better of them. And then getting quite carried away.”

“The last time Idris Starfire confronted the gods’ Legion of Angels, he nearly destroyed the Earth.”

I’d been there that day to save the Earth from Starfire’s spell. Still, I found it ironic that a Guardian was chiding Starfire for getting carried away when this council was right now scheming to decimate the Earth’s population as part of their ‘cleansing’.

“Doren will keep Starfire in check,” said Aleron, one of the few Guardians whose name I knew. The charming fellow had once declared me too unbalanced to be allowed outside the Sanctuary unsupervised—and he hadn’t just been referring to my magic.

“Agreed,” said another Guardian. “Let us move on to the matter of our new arrivals at the Sanctuary.”

It was so easy for them to bring people in. So why was it so hard for me to get out?

“Taron and Giselle have rescued five poor, suffering souls this week.”

I’d tried every spell I could think of to get out of the Sanctuary. None had worked. Neither had any potions I’d brewed or Magitech devices I’d constructed. I’d once overheard Giselle tell someone that only those with the right magic ‘key’ could get out. I’d searched and spied, but I’d discovered nothing about this key. Was it a spell? A potion? An actual, physical key? I had no idea.

“We have one new ghost, two sirens, a vampire, and an elemental.”

“Send the sirens to the Symphony Chamber and the ghost to Eveline. Is the vampire a rogue?”

“Yes, one of the great vampire houses of Chicago accepted her application. When she woke up as a vampire, she was very angry—and quickly realized she was stronger than all of them. She single-handedly massacred the entire vampire house.”

It sounded like a case of magic gone horribly wrong. Sometimes, a new vampire turned out to be insanely strong. The problem was they were also insanely insane. The vampires put them down if they could. If not, they called in the Legion of Angels. It sounded like the Legion hadn’t come fast enough this time.

“The vampire needs to be weaned off human blood before we can stabilize her magic. Send her to isolation to fast for a week.”

Back when I’d served the Legion, I’d sometimes wondered how these powerful rogue vampires suddenly disappeared without a trace. A vampire that powerful should have left a trail of bloody bodies for the Legion to follow. The first time I’d seen Taron and Giselle drag a feral vampire into the Sanctuary, I got my answer. The Guardians had made a habit of ‘saving’ these dangerous, powerful vampires. Just like they saved all other kinds of powerful supernaturals.

“What is the elemental’s specialty?”

“Water and ice. She was the Ice Empress of the Arctic. Her territory remained in tranquil isolation for centuries, free of monsters. But last month, the northern sea froze, and the monsters found their way across the ice to her territory. Within days, they had overrun the icy expanse. She called on the Legion of Angels for help. Instead of sending her an army to kill the beasts or technicians to build a Magitech barrier around her territory, they sent a small team to evacuate her and her people. And then they set off magic explosions which destroyed the monsters—and her territory along with it. The ice island split into millions of tiny pieces.”

“The gods talk about sacrifice. They are so quick to force others to make sacrifices, yet they never sacrifice anything of their own.”

The other Guardians all nodded in agreement, totally missing the irony of the situation. They weren’t the benevolent saviors they professed to be. If they were, this Sanctuary wouldn’t require a key to leave. We could all come and go as we pleased.

“Bring the Ice Empress to Lightbringer. She is also a strong water and ice elemental. If they bond, it will keep both of them appeased.”

For two centuries, the Guardians had been trying to appease me by throwing friends at me. I liked many of them, sure, but I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life trapped in the Guardians’ Sanctuary because I had