The witch’s name was Charlotte. She told Ivy and Nerissa that as they wiped the blood off her body and assured her that she was going to be all right.

Harker stormed into Nerissa’s office. “Are you or are you not soldiers of the Legion of Angels, the gods’ army and upholder of the gods’ justice?” he demanded. He looked angry enough to demolish a few city blocks himself.

I stepped between him and my team. “We are.”

He spoke in a soft, harsh hiss. “Then why, in the name of everything that is holy, did you run from a werewolf and a vampire?”

“They weren’t just any vampire or werewolf,” I said patiently. “They were different.”

Behind me, Charlotte wept softly, as though she were reliving her nightmare in the alley.

“Different,” Harker said flatly, clearly unimpressed.

“Yes, different,” I told him. “They were mutated somehow. Like the water elemental this morning, their own powers were heightened. And they possessed the powers of many more supernaturals. They were like no vampire or werewolf I’ve ever seen before. Nothing hurt them. Nothing. Not even when Alec shot them in the head.”

“Decapitation?” he asked.

“I tried to decapitate the vampire, and it didn’t work. His neck was stronger than my weapon. Even when I poured magic across the blade, I couldn’t get it through fast enough. Just a few hours ago, Claudia killed the water elemental with decapitation. That is no longer a viable solution. This condition, or whatever it is, has evolved.”

“What do you mean evolved?”

“I don’t really know because I don’t understand it myself,” I admitted. “I just have this feeling… See, the elemental didn’t have as many powers as the vampire and werewolf just now did. It’s like they’re gaining more powers as time passes. Even in the fight, they gained more powers as the minutes sped by.”

“The vampire couldn’t put out my fire, and then he suddenly could. Their magic was growing in front of our eyes.”

“And you let two highly dangerous supernaturals, who have managed to steal magic, free in my city?” Harker said coldly.

I frowned at him. “They didn’t give us much choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“Yeah, the choice was to run, or to stay there and fight and let my team and Charlotte die just like the two poor soldiers who came before us,” I snapped. “Is that what you wanted?”

Harker bit his lip. I was pushing him too hard. I was betting on my theory that he needed me alive more than he needed to vent. Actually, his patron god was the one who’d told him to keep me alive, and I was reminding him that I knew all about that.

“You are resourceful,” he finally said. “You always find a way to cheat death.”

And there he was letting me know that I’d escaped death in Nero’s trials. Boy, this verbal sparring match was sure fun.

Or did he know about the trials? Maybe I was just being paranoid. The information surrounding the Gods’ Trials was kept confidential, even from angels. Especially from angels.

“That’s just what I did. I cheated death by not throwing my team into death’s jaws,” I said. “There was nothing we could have done had we stayed there. Nothing we tried did more than annoy the vampire and werewolf.”

“Actually, that’s not true,” Alec spoke up. “You managed to hurt the vampire with your elemental spells.”

“I’d hardly say that hurt him. Maybe it stung him. In any case, it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t hold him off.” I shifted my gaze to Harker. “The vampire and werewolf would have killed us, and then they’d still be free. The only difference is we’d all be dead too.”

“Your spells still worked better than anything else we tried,” Alec persisted. “The vampire survived a bullet to the head. He didn’t even wince. But he hurt when you hit him with your magic. How did you do that?”

Speak a bit louder, why don’t you? I wished I were a telepath so I could send Alec a mental message to shut up. I did not need him drawing attention to this. The Legion didn’t want soldiers with dark magic and light magic. They believed dark magic belonged in the demon’s army. And that you couldn’t have both at once; that you could only give up one to have the other.

“I didn’t do anything special.” I shot Alec a smug smirk. “I just train more than you do.”

Alec snorted. “That’s the truth. I thought I trained a lot. But, woman, you don’t do anything but train, train, train.”

“Of course I train. I’m dating an angel. Training is good for my sex life.”

Ivy gaped at me. Drake coughed. Harker gave me a guarded, neutral look. Alec, however, looked at me like I was his hero. Nerissa chuckled under her breath.

I decided a change of subject was in order. “How is your patient?” I asked Nerissa.

“She’s traumatized, of course. But she’ll live.”

Ivy was holding the witch’s hand, speaking soothing words to her.

“She might need those memories wiped, though,” Nerissa added.

“No,” said Harker. “I need to know what she knows. I need to know how supernaturals have managed to steal magic that is not their own.”

“However it happened, I don’t think they can control it,” I told him. “Not entirely, at least. It is driving them mad.”

“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened,” he said. “About twenty years ago, the demons gave magic to a group of Earth’s supernaturals. They couldn’t control it. They went almost primitive, just like you described.”

“This isn’t demons,” I told him.

“How do you know?”

“Ivy didn’t find any demon marks on the bodies.”

“That just means demons weren’t possessing them,” he said. “Demons could have still given them magic.”

“The source of their magic—the elemental, the vampire, and the werewolf—was light magic, not dark magic.”

His eyes hardened. “Is there any point in asking you how you know that?”

“Light magic and dark magic both hurt when they hit you, but they feel different. They buzz at a different frequency as they tear through your body.”

Harker looked at me like he didn’t buy it.

But it was true. Light and dark magic did feel different. Plus, I’d seen the difference using dark magic against the vampire and werewolf had made. It had hurt them when my light magic had done nothing.

“Their powers come from light magic. I can feel it.” I looked at my team. “Tell him.”

“Much as I want to comply, they didn’t feel any different to me. Light or dark, I can’t tell the difference.” Drake shrugged.

“Same,” said Alec. “I believe you, Leda, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t even know there was a difference.”

“There is a difference,” Harker said to my surprise. “But only angels can feel it.”

Alec leaned back and looked at my back to check for wings. Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to stare at my ass.

“Oh, that’s right.” I snapped my fingers. “I forgot to tell you all that I became an angel when no one was looking.”

“Really?” A spark of hope flashed in Alec’s eyes. He was obviously excited by the idea of me as an angel.

I frowned at him. “No. Of course not.”

“Let’s focus.” Harker gave me a chiding look. “You’re sure their magic was light magic?”

“Why don’t you hunt them down and let them hit you? Then you can see for yourself.” I grinned at him.

Harker rubbed his head, his brows drawing together with strained patience. “Not now, Leda. I’m not in the mood for insubordination.”

“I’m not insubordinate,” I protested. “I’m just wicked.”

A smile broke Harker’s mouth, despite himself. He covered it up immediately, but I’d already seen it.

“Maybe you should ask the gods where these renegade supernaturals got their powers,” I suggested.

Harker frowned. I was pushing him too hard. But it was the truth.

“I know you are not accusing the gods of causing this,” he said quietly.

“Do you know of anyone else with the power to give the supernaturals these abilities?”

Harker bit his lip. He knew I had a point. But he stubbornly persisted in his denial. “It makes no sense. The gods are our protectors. They would not do anything to endanger the Earth’s citizens.”

He was wrong about that. Centuries ago, the gods had turned the Earth into a battleground between them and demons. They’d released monsters onto the Earth. They’d raised an army, the Legion of Angels, giving us powers to counter their enemies. And fight their battles.

I’d stood in the gods’ court, played their games, seen them bicker and make rulings based solely on their mood at the time, or based on how most to annoy the gods they were fighting. And I’d watched them discuss humanity with all the indifference of a farmer speaking about the animals he raised for slaughter. They absolutely would do this if the situation suited them.

“Regardless of who is behind this, we need to put a swift end to it,” declared Harker. “When the demons struck last time, the Legion killed all the tainted supernaturals infected by their power, but not before the death count was in the thousands. We need to head this off sooner this time.”

I remembered what Nero had said, that Harker was under pressure to prove himself, to prove that he could be an effective angel. He couldn’t afford a catastrophe in which thousands of people died.

“You are good at tracking people down,” Harker said to me in an ode to my days hunting down criminals. “Find the tainted supernaturals.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to track them down,” I told him. “You just follow the trail of blood and destruction. But what are we supposed to do when we find them? They are immune to everything we’ve got.”

“Everyone has a weakness. We just need to find it. And we can start by figuring out how this happened.” He looked at Nerissa. “Have you learned anything from the elemental’s body?”

“There are no traces of Nectar or Venom in her blood.”

Harker gave me a victorious look. Ok, so the gods hadn’t done it—this time. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do it. Harker might be blinded by his faith in the gods, but my eyes were wide open. They’d tried to turn my death into a lesson for Nero. Experiences like that tended to give a person a unique perspective into the gods’ minds.

“Other than the absence of Nectar and Venom, I don’t know anything useful yet,” Nerissa continued. “I need to study the body further. It would help if I had more samples. Live samples.” She looked at me.

“If you could tell me what hurts them, I might be able to get you one,” I told her. “But they seem to become more resilient with every passing moment.”

“I’ll do my best. At this point, I can’t even figure out how this change was possible. I have no idea where they got all this magic. I need time.”

“You don’t have time,” Harker told her.

Nerissa sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Leaving the witch in Ivy’s care, she turned her attention to Drake. He had a serious bite from the vampire. She swiped the wound and dropped the sample into a vial. Then she healed Drake’s wound with a few drops of potion.

“Go back to your room to rest and recover,” she ordered him.

“Hey, I need him. Where am I going to find someone for my team who possesses both muscle and a sense of humor?” I teased.

“I take issue with that,” protested Alec. “I possess both muscle and humor in generous quantities.”

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Drake told me, then he left the room.

Nerissa looked at the hole in Alec’s shirt.

A smile curled his lips. “Checking me out, Doc?”

“No.” She peeled back the torn leather to look at the skin beneath. “There’s no wound, but I can tell there used to be,” she said, wiping away the blood. “What happened?”

“The vampire pushed a pole through me.”

“And your body healed that wound?”

“Leda healed it with some funky powder that made my insides feel like they were imploding.”

Nerissa’s fingers brushed across a bite wound on his arm. “It looks like a vampire bite. It’s not serious.”

“Of course not. I knocked the bloodsucker against a building before he could drink from me.”

Nerissa poured a potion over the wound.

“What is the matter with you two?!” Alec howled.

“I am simply healing you,” Nerissa said serenely.

“It didn’t look like it hurt so much when you healed Drake.”

“Maybe Drake is just tougher than you are.”

Alec scowled at her.

“I need theories. Any theories,” Harker said to Nerissa.

He sounded stressed, strained. He knew Nero was evaluating him. And I knew Harker genuinely didn’t want anyone to get hurt. He believed the gods were protecting humanity too. I wasn’t sure anything could rob him of that delusion.

“The absence of Nectar or Venom doesn’t mean the gods or demons aren’t interfering,” said Nerissa. “Supernaturals don’t have Nectar or Venom in them, but they do have magic. It’s just there’s never been anyone with the powers of multiple supernaturals, not besides a soldier of the Legion or a soldier of hell. We didn’t think such a feat was possible without Nectar or Venom.”

“It isn’t possible for long. They eventually lose their minds.” I chewed on that thought. “Maybe the powers aren’t the purpose of this. Maybe they are only a side effect. Maybe the insanity and out-of-control supernaturals wreaking havoc is the point.”

“You think this is an attack?” Harker asked me.

I shrugged. “It sure as hell isn’t a present. An attack is as good a theory as any.”

“How was this condition spread?” He looked at Nerissa.

“A poison perhaps. Or a disease.”

“So this condition could be contagious?”

Glass shattered. Charlotte the witch had jumped up onto the counter, displacing glass beakers. She launched herself off the table at Alec and slapped him hard across the room. She was strong. Too strong. Elemental magic burst out of her.

Harker and I ducked behind a table.

“It appears the condition is contagious,” I said to him.

“And you brought this here, to my office,” he hissed at me.

“How was I supposed to know? Honestly, you really can’t make up your mind. First, you want us to bring in people for questioning, and then you don’t.”

“This isn’t funny, Pandora.”

“I’m not laughing, Harker.”

I peeked over the table and shot a bolt of dark lightning at Charlotte. The witch stumbled back, hissing in pain. My second attack, however, didn’t push her back as far.

“This is the beginning of the transformation,” I commented. “Her power is ramping up. We need to contain her before she grows too powerful.”

Lightning shot off of Charlotte in every direction. More beakers shattered as lights exploded overheard. Tables and chairs tumbled over. The witch bolted for the window.

“She’s trying to get away!” I shouted.

Ivy jumped up, calling out, “Charlotte!”

The witch hesitated for just a moment. It was enough. Nero rushed into the room, grabbing her by the collar.

“This witch is bizarrely strong,” he commented with perfect calmness as she kicked her legs wildly, trying to get free. He pushed the air out of the witch’s lungs until she passed out.

Nero turned to Harker. “Is this how you run my office?” he demanded.

Harker didn’t dispute that this was his office now. He wiped the blood from his lip. Then he grabbed the sleeping witch and dropped her on Nerissa’s desk.

“Here. You have your live sample now,” he told her. “Study the change in action. Figure this out.”