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Holly stared and stared, wonder filling her heart to overflowing

“This is so beautiful” Soof pure, unadulterated life

Whispers surrounded her, co from so many throats that she couldn’t separate one froion after all Creepy was their nor around her on wings of silence and she thought, Oh shit

“You are new,” said the Legion being who’d brought her inside “They have never seen you”

It was a strange way to put it Not so like you, but you “You’ve seen Venom,” she said “He’s like me”

“He is a one being, too,” her guide said, as the others continued to whisperwithouttheir mouths “Like you but not you Different”

Since the Legion was staring full-out at her, Holly decided to stare back She’d heard it said that when they’d arrived during the cliht between Raphael and Lijuan, they’d all looked exactly the saray hair without color, eyes utterly translucent, no sense of sunlight to their skin, wings as devoid of pigment as their hair

These beings, however, while as similar as brothers, weren’t identical Hair colors varied in subtle shades, skin tones were beginning to diverge in minute incres of pale blue and pale green and pale brown and pale hazel Only the one she’d first , the color closer to Raphael’s intense blue

“Why are your eyes so freaky pale?”

“We are beco, too,” said a hundred voices, maybe more “You are an echo who is not an echo You are new”

Holly was starting to understand why Elena looked as if she wanted to pull out her hair after she’d been talking to the Legion “What does that even mean?”

But the Legion had gone quiet A motionless, silent second later, they flew off on their batlike wings to settle all over the inside of the building—or to fly straight up to the roof exit that sat open to the ray

Only one was left, and it was the one who’d led her inside

“Tell me what that means?” Holly asked softly “Please?”

“That you are an echo who is not an echo You are new” He flared out his wings and was gone before she could reply

“You guys are like the worst possible version of souru!” Holly shouted up

They kept looking at her with that strange and oddly innocent curiosity “Coether After you are not an echo”

Throwing up her hands, Holly stoht her by the upper arms She broke the hold and scowled, her face reflected back by the lenses of his sunglasses “Do you kno to speak Legion?”

A slow smile “Did our friends turn cryptic on you?”

“I asked a question” She just barely stopped herself fro on them

“No one speaks Legion except the Legion,” Veno with tiny jewel-like drops of rain “The sire and Elena are still atteion said to theion first landed in New York”

Holly looked over her shoulder, where the plastic flaps disturbed by her passage had already gone still “Do you think they get off onwith people’s heads?”

“No” A pause “The Legion aren’t anything hu an eon of knowledge inside you, of knowing so much that explanations are redundant I think, in their ownperfectly clear”