Angel Fury (Immortal Legacy #2) - Ella Summers Page 0,39

again—and then he snapped it shut. Surprise flashed in his eyes.

We’d reached the top of a hill. From here, we could finally see the Hive’s fortress. Sparkling purple tendrils swirled around the stone tower, flowing up, up, up. Bright beams of magic shot out of the tower.

And that tower wasn’t alone.

Past it, far in the distance, other fortresses stood all across the flat expanse. I counted six, but something told me there were more. A lot more. I was strangely certain there were towers like these all across this world, each one shooting magic up into the sky.

Had the Hive already set their plan into motion to escape their world? Were Damiel and I already too late?

13

The Magical City of No Magic

I looked up at the magic swirling in the sky. “We need to figure out how the Hive plans to break the spell on them.” I pointed at the beam of light shooting out of the nearest fortress. “And we need to figure out what that is. I think that calls for some reconnaissance.”

“Stealth reconnaissance,” replied Damiel. “We need to be discreet. Here, we are outnumbered, and we’re strangers as well. People are suspicious of strangers. That’s a universal fact.”

“Don’t be so cynical.”

“It’s not cynicism. It’s experience.” He almost sounded tired saying it, as though these universal flaws weighed on him. “We must be cautious. No one will trust us, and I expect there are Hive patrols everywhere. The squad we saw earlier is surely not the only one.”

I swept my hand toward the road. “After you.”

Damiel led the way into town—no, city. Skyscrapers rose high at the other side of the city, but where we now walked was decidedly more modest. None of the neat brick buildings reached more than a few stories high. They consisted mainly of apartment houses—in addition to a few grocery stores, clothing shops, restaurants, and bars.

“This isn’t what I’d expected to find on the Hive’s world,” I commented.

“No, it is not.” Damiel’s eyes swept the storefronts. “There are no armories. No guns on the building towers. No signs of any weapons at all.”

“And no signs of magic either.” I looked up at the street lamps. “The lights aren’t run by Magitech. I think they’re run by electricity, mundane energy, not magical.”

Damiel scanned the people walking along the street. “The people all appear human as well. No one in this city of millions seems to be using magic. Nor is any magic being sold or advertised.”

After seeing the Hive soldiers in action during the battle on Nightingale last week, I’d expected us to find magic absolutely everywhere here. And powerful magic at that.

But this place was, as far as I could see, completely devoid of magic. Well, except for the fortress outside the city.

“A sky lit up with magic over a city with no magic,” I said as we walked through the magical city of no magic. “The oddity of magic and no magic side-by-side. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Damiel. “But I now know that magic has been shooting out of those fortresses into the sky for a long time.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because no one is even looking at the magic swirling overhead They don’t gawk at it. It’s apparently normal to them. It’s become so commonplace that they don’t spare it a second glance.”

“Or maybe they can’t see it?” I wondered.

“Let’s find out.”

Damiel headed toward a bar across the street. Nothing about the bland brick building front indicated it was a bar—except for the business name over the door. It read: Club Catatonic.

“These people have an odd sense of humor,” I commented to Damiel as we entered the bar.

Inside, the floors were wood, and the bar and tables too. Behind a cluster of round tables, there was a target board, something vaguely resembling a pool table, and a few other games. Nothing was run by magic here, neither lights nor the heavy jukebox in the corner.

There was more than one way to interrogate someone. Damiel had been right to come here for information. Bars were where people drank alcohol and loosened up. When people loosened up, it became easier to get information out of them. And if they were drunk, they noticed it less when you started asking them weird questions.

“Those people.” I glanced at a pair of likely candidates, two women who were drinking colorful liquor shots as they played a game that involved tossing small balls into holes in the wall.

Damiel nodded. “Good choice. They are slowly