The soldier was standing with two other bulky male soldiers. There wasn’t much to do in Purgatory, so the paranormal soldiers spent a lot of time pumping iron at their private gym.
“I don’t know if you can handle her,” Carmen called back. “She’s a sophisticated city girl, here on visit from New York City.”
Sophisticated? I contained a snort, which was apparently as unseemly for a soldier in the gods’ army as rolling your eyes.
“I’m sophisticated,” the soldier declared.
“Your favorite food is macaroni and cheese,” his comrade pointed out.
“And?” he shot back. “Yours is pizza.”
Mmm, they were making me hungry. I’d missed lunch and it was already dinnertime.
“You’re both savages,” a third soldier told them.
They all laughed.
“Hey, Brokers? How about you?” the second soldier called out. “You’ve joined us from New York City. You’re fancy. You even eat with a knife and a fork.”
A fourth soldier joined us, Brokers presumably. “Whereabouts in New York do you live?” he asked me, a pleasant smile on his face.
“Close to the Promenade.”
The Promenade was a street of high skyscrapers, each one the home of an important global organization. Among them was the black building that housed the League, a worldwide bounty hunting company. Another was the paranormal soldiers’ blue glass skyscraper. And the crown jewel of the Promenade, the focal point of the block, was a sparkling white obelisk, the east coast headquarters of the Legion of Angels. The building shone so brightly, it looked as though diamonds had been crushed into the facade. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if that were actually the case. The angels at the top of the Legion didn’t spare any expense when it came to showing off how superior they were.
Brokers’s eyebrows drew up at the mention of the Promenade. “How close?”
“Pretty close,” I said evasively. Ok, pretty close was a bit of an understatement. “And you?” I added quickly, trying to take the focus off of me.
“I live on the Promenade,” he replied. “I have a pretty good view of the city from my window.”
I lived dead center on the Promenade, at the top of the highest tower. I could look over the whole city from my living room window. I didn’t say that, though. I hadn’t come here to be the center of attention. I’d come here to blend into the crowd—and then find my family and live a few normal days before I had to go back to work.
“After the festival, I’m heading back to New York,” he continued. But he was looking at Carmen now. She was obviously more his type. You know, cuter. Sweeter. More innocent. Less likely to break both his kneecaps if he got cheeky.
As we walked toward the heart of the festival, he kept talking, telling Carmen about where he lived and praising the beauty of New York, filling her head with silly notions about clean streets and orderly garbage removal.
Ok, yes, you could literally eat off the streets of the Promenade. Some people actually did that, believing that brought them closer to the gods. But they were the same sort who scoured the sidewalks and city parks for angel feathers.
When we reached the wall, Brokers parted ways with us, giving Carmen a gentlemanly bow before climbing up the ladder to one of the watchtowers. From there, the paranormal soldiers could stare across the Black Plains, looking for signs of gathering monsters. But they didn’t go out onto the plains themselves. When danger brewed beyond the wall, the Legion of Angels was brought in.
It was only fitting, I suppose, for the gods’ army to clean up this mess. Long ago, the monsters had been the battle beasts of the gods and demons, but the deities had lost control over them, and so the monsters had overrun the Earth.
Humans didn’t know this. They thought the demons, at the eve of their defeat, had unleashed the monsters on Earth. The truth was both gods and demons lost control over the monsters when the beasts began to interbreed, the new monsters of mixed light and dark magic being immune to the deities’ control. The gods had won the war, and the people of Earth were still paying the price. Humanity was protected in our cities past the walls, but we were not safe. Not as long as monsters still lurked past the wall. Not as long as we were caught in the epic war between gods and demons, between light and dark, a war that spanned worlds and stretched back millennia.
“The tourists look happy,” Carmen commented, watching them laugh as they played carnival games and ate deep-fried snacks.
The deliciously unhealthy smell of it made my stomach growl in hunger.
“The locals look happy too,” I said.
“This morning, an extra hundred paranormal soldiers arrived in town. Of course we’re happy. For a few days, we’re all safe.”
That was the point of the extra paranormal soldiers: to keep things safe for the wealthy tourists. It was easy to let the flashing disco balls, the colorful carousels, and the bubblegum music fool you, but at its core the Frontier was a dangerous, uncivilized place to be. A place where the monsters on this side of the wall were as dangerous as the ones out on the plains.
“How bad has it gotten?” I asked Carmen.
“Bad.” Her voice was solemn. “The district lords rule this town now. My father hardly has any power left.”
The sheriff didn’t have the resources to keep the city criminals from flooding to our town and using it as a convenient hiding place. The district lords did have those resources and then some. People here looked to them for help, even as they knew they were trading one devil for another.
“You have to do something, Leda,” Carmen pleaded with me. “The Legion could end this.”
Except the Legion of Angels answered to the gods. And the gods didn’t give a damn about earthly matters. As long as the district lords paid tribute to the gods, as long as they did not impede the Pilgrims, the voice of the gods’ teachings, from doing their work, the Legion of Angels would do nothing. And it was that indifference that the district lords had been thriving on for years.
“We’re not allowed to interfere in local affairs,” I told Carmen.
She frowned at me. “Now that’s just bullshit.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. We at the Legion of Angels, the hand of the gods, dealt only with threats to the Earth, to the gods. We were not supposed to interfere in mortal affairs. We were told that such things were beneath us, that we were not to sully our hands with squabbles between mortals and so-called ‘lesser’ supernaturals. Those were to be left to the local sheriffs and other law enforcement.
Except the local law enforcement didn’t get the resources they needed to keep the people safe. So the district lords had stepped in, and now they ruled like kings. That’s how they saw themselves: as cowboy royalty.
It was disgusting, I thought as I watched one of the district lords walk down the street in his expensive royal-blue cowboy boots and hat, surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards. He was acting like a king, like he owned this town. My town. And he was just one of many district lords in Purgatory.
The royal blue lord crossed paths with a cowboy lord from another district. They took a moment to stop and glare at each other. Tension brewed between them, heavy and thick, approaching a boiling point.
But then, just like that, they each moved along. It hadn’t come to a fight—at least not today. Who knew what tomorrow held? Each of the district lords was a different strain of the same disease, and that disease was consuming Purgatory from the inside. It made me sick.
“I know, Carmen.” I unclenched my fists. “I don’t like it any more than you do.” I had to get a hold on my anger.