“The effects are stronger here, at the core of the army, surrounded by the infected on all sides,” Nero observed. “Nerissa’s juice doesn’t work as well here.”

“It worked well enough.” Constantine Wildman steadied his hands and pointed the gun at Stash.

“That won’t work,” Basanti told him. “All the infected have been too resilient.”

“The bullets are spelled. It will work if I shoot him in the head.”

“Maybe we should shoot you in the head,” the Vermillion vampire said. “You don’t look like you have long before you lose your mind and go all primitive on us.”

“I am fine. But soon none of us will be fine, this whole world won’t be fine, not if we don’t stop that shifter.” The witch moved his gun to follow Stash’s movements. “I have a clear shot. A bullet to the head, and this will all be over.”

Harker exchanged glances with Nero. “It didn’t work last time, but we could give it a shot.”

“No. We are most certainly not giving it a shot,” I growled. “I can’t believe we are even discussing this. That’s my friend!”

“He is controlling the whole army,” the witch said. “If we kill him, we end this.”

“No, he is infected too, just like the rest of them. He isn’t behind this.”

“He is the source of this. He is the reason they are infected.”

“How do you figure that?” Harker asked him.

“Because he can control them. That is not insignificant. The infection must have started with him.”

He said it like it made perfect sense. Except it didn’t. Not at all.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I told him.

He gave his hand a dismissive wave. “Of course it does.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you not telling us?”

“I told you what I know: that he is the source of this plague, and he must die to end it. You just stubbornly refuse to believe it.”

“No.” I bit out the word. “You aren’t using your messed-up logic to justify killing an innocent man. This isn’t a witch hunt. What if you kill him, and the others aren’t cured? Are you just going to keep shooting people until there’s no one left?”

“Do you have a better idea of how to end this?” he asked me. “This is how the Legion works. Your hammer hits hard and far, and you pick up the pieces later.”

“He has a point,” Basanti told Nero.

Nero seemed thoughtful, like he was considering the idea of shooting Stash. No, there was nothing to consider!

“This is madness,” I told them all. “You can’t actually be thinking about shooting Stash. This isn’t his fault. He’s a victim, just like the rest of them. We don’t murder victims. We protect them.”

“Honey, you have a very idealistic view of what the Legion does and does not do,” the Vermillion vampire said. “I hate to say this, but I’m with the witch on this one. The shifter is the key to this. It’s us or him, and I have no intention of losing my mind. It’s an easy choice.”

“And this is where you don’t understand the Legion. It’s not a democracy, and you don’t get a vote,” I snapped at him.

“Perhaps I don’t.” The Vermillion vampire looked at Nero. “But he does. What say you, General Windstriker? Listen to your sweetheart and the infection spreads across the Earth like wildfire, consuming humanity? Or listen to reason, and it all ends here?”

Nero’s expression was as hard as marble.

“Nero?” I asked.

But before he could speak, Stash let out a roar, a sonic punch of agony and relief. The magical release rippled through the crowd like a shockwave, hard and heavy. It felt like an enormous building had just dropped on top of us, crushing us into the ground.

The crowd fell to its knees. Basanti, Nero, Harker, and I stayed up. Constantine Wildman’s hands hit the blackened ground. The Vermillion vampire fell down next to him.

Then Stash’s army rose and turned as one, facing us down.

Stash had risen from the platform. He was now several feet off the ground, his wings spread wide. White and silver tipped with orange, they beat in a slow, powerful rhythm. Stash had become an angel.

23 Divine Origins

Stash was an angel. Angel Fever had progressed beyond anything we’d seen before. The name had been meant as a joke, a stab at the Legion of Angels by some of New York’s disgruntled supernaturals. I didn’t think they’d really expected the magic infection to create a real angel. And that was exactly what Stash was now, feathers and all.

Beside me, Nero’s expression was wary, like he was calculating how hard it would be to take out Stash now that he was an angel. Harker wore a similar expression. I could almost see the battle against Stash playing out in their eyes.

Basanti held a gun in each hand, watching Stash like he might explode at any second. She had one gun pointed at him. Her other gun was aimed at Constantine Wildman. The witch was on the ground near her feet, kneeling like all the other infected people.

“This isn’t possible,” Nero said. “For someone to become an angel, it requires divine magic. No spell could have done this.”

“If he’s really like an angel now, it’s going to be a bitch to take him down. We should have shot him when we had the chance,” Harker said.

“How can you say that? He is a victim in this.”

Stash flew up, several of his feathers twirling in the air, as though they were caught in an invisible cyclone. White, gold, and orange—they danced on the wind. His army watched his every move, transfixed.

When he spoke, his voice bellowed, shaking the very ground beneath my feet. “For centuries, we have been pawns in this war between heaven and hell, between gods and demons. The war they brought here. The war that savaged our lands, boiled our oceans, crumbled our cities. But today is the day we make a stand. Today is the day we take back our world and expel these outsiders, gods and demons both.”

His army cheered.

Harker pointed at Stash. “You call that a victim? He’s a threat, Pandora.”

They aren’t wrong, Leda, Stash spoke in my mind. From my friends’ expressions, he was speaking to them too.

He landed in front of me. His glistening wings tucked in against his back.

“I am a threat,” he said to me, speaking aloud this time. “The threat that will end the gods’ injustice once and for all.”

The crowd roared with approval.

Constantine Wildman rose to his feet with difficulty, his face strained. He was fighting back, resisting the magic taking over his mind and body. Nerissa’s potion was helping him. Step-by-step, he moved toward Stash.

But it was not enough. Stash waved his hand, and just like that, the witch dropped back down to his knees. His eyes flickered about, as though caught in a trance. Elemental magic sizzled on his hair.

“The infection has settled in fast this time,” I commented.

“I can turn any one of them in an instant now,” Stash said. “I’ve gained powers you could only dream of, Leda.”

“Listen to yourself, Stash. You are forcing people to do things against their will. That’s exactly what you don’t do, why you’re not in a pack. You believe in choice. You are sick, Stash. This spell has messed with your mind. This isn’t you.”

He let out a pained laugh. “This is me, Leda. It always has been. I just didn’t know it.” His eyes were glowing, dilated. He looked at the witch and said, “Tell them.”

When Constantine Wildman spoke, his voice was distant and dreamy. “Stash is the child of a shifter mother. Her name was Eveline. She was a Chicago werewolf pack leader. Leader of the strongest shifter pack in the city.”

Shifter magic was inherited; you couldn’t be made into one. Not like a vampire. Shifters were born, vampires were made.

“Eveline was scarred at an early age, so she wasn’t considered a great beauty,” Constantine Wildman continued. “But she was one of the best warriors in the world. Her skills were highly prized—and admired. She had no shortage of lovers. One of them was the angel Sirius Demonslayer.”