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A white flash of lightning lit up the stormy sky, and for a brief moment, its thunderous boom buried the cacophony of the raging battle between the forces of heaven and hell. Funny how something so mundane could drown out something so divine.

From here on the grassy plains, I could not see the battle between the gods’ Legion of Angels and the demons’ Dark Force, but the song of metal and magic rising from the battlefield could be heard from miles away. I had followed those belligerent booms all the way from Ruin, a Frontier town about twenty miles back. I’d run the whole way across the gloomy countryside—mud and puddles beneath my feet, swirling storm clouds above my head.

Hard, needle-sharp rain bounced off my poncho. Sludge stained my boots. The mushy, water-logged ground continuously collapsed under my feet, and I couldn’t see much past the curtain of rain—but it wasn’t all that bad. Since joining the Legion of Angels, I’d been through much worse than a rainstorm. At least I hadn’t met any monsters on this trip.

And the end of this rainy run was close at hand. I could see it now, lit up like a night light in the darkness. I was coming up on a large war tent. A pair of wings, the emblem of the Legion of Angels, was printed on the canvas exterior. Here was where I’d find the officer commanding the Legion’s army for this battle against the forces of hell.

I stopped in front of the tent and drew in a deep breath before I entered. The sweet aroma of pine needles hung in the air, coupled with the scent of slowly-decaying plants. A pack of wild wolves had passed through here yesterday, but the battle must have scared them away. I could still smell the beasts, just as I could smell the blood on the battlefield so far away. Supernatural senses were just one of the magic powers you gained when you joined the Legion of Angels.

My breath froze in the chilly air. A few miles down the road, the countryside was experiencing the height of summer. Back there, the scorching heat was frying the dry grass like an egg sizzling in a pan of hot oil. Here, on the other hand, the manic weather was only a few degrees short of this rainstorm transforming into a snowstorm.

We had the monsters to thank for the wild, unpredictable weather. Out here on the plains of monsters, the laws of nature no longer applied.

I strode into the Legion tent. It was dry in here—and warm too, thanks to the magic fire burning inside an enormous iron cauldron. A few paces from that cauldron, a man dressed in a black leather Legion uniform stood inside a magic web of glowing dots. It was a map of the Legion’s battle with the Dark Force. The man was studying it closely, his forehead crinkled in concentration as he tracked his soldiers’ progress.

He looked up at me in agitation. My arrival had clearly disrupted his concentrated strategy session—and the fact that I was tracking muddy footprints into his clean, dry tent was not endearing me to him either.

“Captain Walker,” I said.

The name on his jacket read Walker. The emblem pinned to his chest, the symbol for telekinesis, or Psychic’s Spell, identified him as a sixth-level soldier. A captain.

Captain Walker frowned at my squelching, muddy boots. He was clearly not at all impressed by my arrival. His uniform was spotless, his face clean and freshly-shaved. Not a hair was out of place on his head. The brown hairs were perfectly combed and closely-cropped; I bet that if I’d measured them, I’d have found them all to be precisely the same length.

The Captain had wide shoulders and a tall, upright stance that bespoke confidence. Even beneath all that leather, I could tell his body was muscular. The Legion’s training was rigorous, but he’d clearly added some extra training of his own on the side. So he was ambitious. He  wanted to do that little bit extra to move up the ranks faster. And his plan must have been working out perfectly for him. His eyes shone with the sort of easy arrogance bred by continued success.

His war tent exuded the same unwavering duty to orderliness. And then I’d arrived, dripping and dirty, leaving wet, muddy footprints all over the tent’s clean interior.

“Sorry about the mess,” I told him because, yes, I did feel bad about dripping raindrops everywhere. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere to freshen up. We were on the plains of monsters, not inside a luxury resort.

The visor of my hood was already steaming up in the warm tent, so I flipped it back from my face. Steam rose and the flames inside the cauldron sizzled as my accumulated raindrops splattered the magic fire. An agitated crinkle formed between the Captain’s eyes.

“Captain Walker, your battle with the Dark Force is taking too long,” I said. “You need to bypass their blockade, not fight every Dark Force soldier that stands between you and the Black Forest. There’s a tunnel passage a few miles from here that will lead us right to where the dark angel Leon Hellfire is holding our angel Colonel Beastbreaker prisoner. I’ve taken the liberty of clearing debris from the tunnel, so we can bring your soldiers through it.”

He stiffened at my words. He didn’t like that I was telling him what to do. No, he didn’t like that at all.

“Which office did you come from?” he said coolly, silkily. It was that same kind of smooth, beautiful silk you used to strangle someone to death.

“You asked for reinforcements. I was sent here from the Berlin office by General Silverstar,” I replied.

“Where are the rest of my reinforcements? Where are all the other soldiers?”

“I’m afraid it’s just me,” I told him. “Most of General Silverstar’s soldiers are currently otherwise occupied in an important mission.”

“More important than this?” He huffed like he didn’t believe it.

“Call the General if you’d like.” I arched my brows and held out my phone to him.

He said nothing, nor did he make a move to accept my phone.

Since he didn’t take me up on my offer, I dipped my hand under my poncho and slipped the phone back into the pouch around my waist. “Don’t worry, Captain. General Silverstar wouldn’t have sent me here if he didn’t think I could help you.”

Captain Walker looked me up and down, clearly not impressed with what he saw. I supposed I couldn’t blame him. Even with my poncho covering much of my torso, it was obvious I was skinny, not muscular. I did not look like a frightening soldier, a shining example of a Legion soldier, one who instilled fear into the hearts of our enemies.

But I didn’t let Captain Walker’s disappointment deter me. I was used to it by now because, well, I got this reaction a lot. Appearances were everything in our world. People had been underestimating me even before I’d joined the Legion.

“The tunnel is the fastest way to the Black Forest, where the Dark Force is holding Colonel Beastbreaker,” I said. “Giving the demons’ soldiers bloody noses along the way was just supposed to be a bonus, Captain. It wasn’t supposed to interfere with your main mission objective: the safe return of Colonel Beastbreaker.”

The frown hadn’t left Captain Walker’s face since I’d walked into the tent. Maybe it was permanently engraved there. Like a tattoo.

“How long have you been at the Legion?” he asked me.

“Five years.”

Which was the blink of an eye to an immortal being, such as a soldier in the Legion.

Captain Walker nodded knowingly, that arrogant spark shining brightly in his eyes. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. I have fought and won many battles,” he declared proudly. “We can accomplish both goals, primary and secondary. We can free the Colonel and bloody those dark soldiers’ noses along the way.”

“Captain—”

“We need to hit back at the demons,” he cut in. “We need to stop them whenever we can, wherever the opportunity presents itself. The Dark Force’s numbers are growing faster than our own. They are a threat, and they must be stomped down every chance we get. It is our holy duty.”

I sighed. So Captain Walker was one of those crusader types. His ‘holy duty’ was going to get all of his soldiers killed.

“An angel’s life is in danger,” I said. “We must save Colonel Beastbreaker before it’s too late.”

“You’re new,” he replied with a patronizing smile. “Your eyes still gleam with the first taste of Nectar. It’s only natural that you’re still in awe of the angels. They are mesmerizing. But sooner or later, you need to stop allowing yourself to be blinded by their light. They are more resilient than you think. Colonel Beastbreaker can hold out longer than you can. And he would approve wholeheartedly of our dealing a major blow to the demons’ initiative on Earth. As would General…”

His eyes fell to the name printed on my poncho.

“Silverstar,” he finished, his voice lower, quieter.

“You are General Silverstar’s daughter. The archangel’s daughter.” His gaze flickered down to my name again. “The Legion…” He stopped himself before he said the word.

But I knew all too well what he’d wanted to say: Legion brat. That was what the other soldiers called the offspring of angels who served in the Legion. We were pretty hard to miss since we carried the honorific name of our angel parent. ‘Legion brat’ wasn’t a very honorific title, though. People called us that behind our backs and behind close doors. They seemed to think their name-calling never got back to us. They were wrong.

“I believe ‘Legion brat’ is the phrase that you’re looking for,” I supplied.

Captain Walker flinched. He covered it well, but not well enough. Not fast enough. I caught the beginning of the flinch before he swallowed it up.

He pulled himself together quickly, his confidence returning as he spoke once more, “I’ve worked with several Legion legacy soldiers before.”

Legion legacy soldier. That was the polite alternative to Legion brat.

“You are a talented bunch, to be sure,” he said. “But no amount of talent is a substitute for experience, don’t you agree?”

“Of course,” I said, smiling.

“And neither is an inherited angel name a substitute for rank.” He looked at me again, obviously expecting a response. And the response he wanted was nothing short of my complete and total agreement.

“Oh, yes, undisputedly,” I told him. “No name is a substitute for rank.”

“Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, I believe it would be best for all of us if we started over from the beginning.” He twirled his finger in the air. “From the time you entered the tent.”

“As you wish.”

I walked back to the entrance of the tent. Then I spun around and very slowly walked toward him as I peeled off my rain poncho.

“Captain Walker, your battle with the Dark Force is taking too long,” I said once more.

His eyes honed in on my chest. No, he wasn’t checking me out. With my poncho gone, he had an unobstructed view of the metallic flower pinned to my jacket. Just as his psychic-hand pin told me he was a soldier of the sixth level, my flower pin told him I was a soldier of the seventh.

The pieces were coming together in his head. I could see it. He’d now realized that I was not only the daughter of an archangel, but also one of the officers next in line to become an angel. And more importantly in this case, a lot closer than Captain Walker was to becoming an angel. I outranked him, and he’d just come to that unhappy discovery. The look on his face right now made the whole previous discussion—and his treating me like a clueless, new recruit—totally worth every second.

In an instant, he went from frozen, to saluting me.

I might have laughed if not for the seriousness of this mission. And the imperativeness that we continue on and rescue Colonel Beastbreaker as quickly as possible.

“You will disengage from this battle immediately, Captain,” I told him. “Then you and your army will follow me into the tunnel I have prepared.” I pointed to the magic lights floating in the air that represented the tunnel. “We will follow the tunnel until it opens up at the edge of the Black Forest, where the Dark Force is holding the angel Colonel Beastbreaker prisoner. We will rescue the Colonel and bring him safely back to Berlin. If some of the demons’ soldiers get bloodied along the way, then so be it. But we will not do anything to compromise this rescue mission or Colonel Beastbreaker’s life. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Major Silverstar.”

I grabbed my rain poncho and pulled it back on. “And just to be clear, I am neither lovestruck nor blinded by angels. I am personally aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and how resilient they are, just as I understand their critical importance in this immortal war. Something you would do well to remember, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

As I left the tent, I finally remembered to breathe. My father had trained me to be a leader, to have commands slide smoothly and naturally off my tongue.

And I could command with the best of them.

But it had never felt natural, and I doubted it ever would. I had to channel my father just to pull it off.

I knew I’d have to do that again before this job was done, no matter how uncomfortable it made me feel. My father had sent me here to command these soldiers, to rescue Colonel Beastbreaker. The angel’s fate was in my hands, and I wasn’t about to fail him. There was a huge force of the demons’ soldiers waiting for us at the end of the tunnel. And like me, the demons were well aware of an angel’s value. Their soldiers were not going to give him up easily.