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“Tell me.” Young Leda pressed her palms together in a pleading gesture. “You can trust me.”
“You picked a fight with two bigger and stronger opponents, Leda. Do you know what that demonstrates?”
“Great skill,” the girl answered proudly. “I won.”
“You won this time, but only through unscrupulous means. No, your actions demonstrate that you still have a lot to learn.”
“Julianna, I—”
Aradia’s hand shot up, silencing young Leda. “Someone is outside,” she whispered quietly.
“How do you know?” young Leda whispered back.
Aradia didn’t answer. She grabbed young Leda and pulled her into one of the bedrooms. She had only just closed the girl inside the room and cast a spell over it when the front door of the house flew open. Two men in black uniforms marched inside.
“Those are Dark Force uniforms,” Nero commented.
I recognized them too by the symbol of the Dark Force on their uniforms. That symbol consisted of the nine signs of magic—vampire, witch, siren, elemental, shifter, telekinetic, fairy, angel, ghost—all surrounded by the emblem of hell.
“So that’s who killed her,” I said. “I always thought it was monsters.”
One of the Dark Force soldiers spoke, a big, muscular man with legs as thick as tree trunks and shoulders so wide that they nearly scrapped the doorway as he stepped through. “Aradia Redwood. It’s been a long time.”
“You didn’t honestly believe you could hide from Sonja, the great and powerful Demon of the Dark Force,” the second man added.
He was even bigger and wider than the other soldier. His shoulders actually did scrape the doorway as he stepped through, just as his head brushed against the wooden frame.
“And yet Sonja couldn’t find me, Harrows,” Aradia said, her stance confident. “For ten whole years.”
Harrows glowered at her. “Hiding on Earth was a dirty trick.”
“So was Sonja killing Thea!”
“Enough.” Harrows had a voice that scraped like shifting gravel. “There can be no excuse for your treachery. Sonja is your deity. You were sworn to obey her. You broke that vow, and now Chambers and I will punish you in Sonja’s name.”
“If Sonja wanted me punished, she should have sent a few more soldiers.” Aradia drew her sword. Bright orange flames flashed across the blade.
Harrows and Chambers moved in from either side. They were much bigger than Aradia, and they had her surrounded. That didn’t seem to bother her. She spun like a tornado, flames engulfing her entire body. Harrows tried to grab her but quickly drew his hand away, repelled by the flaming tornado. And when Chambers shot a telekinetic spell at her, it bounced right off the storm she’d swaddled herself in.
The fight continued, even as my younger self remained trapped behind the bedroom door. I remembered that day. Loud as the battle was, I hadn’t heard a thing that had gone on outside the bedroom. Aradia’s spell must have muffled the sounds, as well as trapped me in and everyone else out.
Aradia had the two Dark Force soldiers on the retreat. Harrows grabbed a device from his belt. It looked like a communication device.
Aradia knocked it out of his hand with a telekinetic punch. “You won’t be reporting back to Sonja.” She crushed the device with her boot.
“Sonja already knows we’re here,” Harrows said.
“No, she doesn’t,” Aradia shot back. “You had to be sure you’d actually found me this time. You didn’t want another false alarm. Sonja wasn’t pleased with the last one.”
Surprise flashed across his face. “How did you know?”
“The scars on your arm.” Aradia pointed at his scarred arm. “Those were made by Sonja’s famous chains. She punished you. And she coated the chains in a powerful poison to do it. That’s why your wounds haven’t healed; that’s why they scarred over. I bet it was Nectar, which is poison to soldiers of the Dark Force. Sonja would consider that an appropriate punishment. The irony of hurting you with what gave me, once a Legion soldier, power, would appeal to her. That’s how I know she punished you for failing to find me. Because I understand Sonja much better than you do.”
Harrows knocked the sword out of her hand. “You’ve always been too smart for your own good, Aradia.”
His statement echoed Aradia’s earlier words to me.
He grabbed her by the neck, hefting her off the ground.
