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.”

The witch paused, as though for dramatic effect. That must have been Stash conducting his performance. “Another of her lovers was a god of heaven. And it was that god who fathered Stash.”

I blinked at Stash. So that meant…it meant he was a demigod. Like Nyx.

I thought back, running through every time I’d seen Stash. I tried to find any hints that would have clued me into his divine origins. I couldn’t think of a single thing.

“Twenty years ago, my mother fell in love with the god,” Stash said. “But matings between gods and mortals are frowned upon. Gods guilty of such matings lose face with the other gods. When my father found out she was pregnant, he tried to kill her.”

“That’s horrible,” I said. But it wasn’t surprising.

“My mother barely escaped with her life. She made a deal with a witch coven who had recently grown very powerful. It was said they could perform miracles. They cast a spell on her. The next time my father came for her, he stabbed her in the belly, and she died. He thought he’d killed me too, but I lived, protected inside a magic shell in her womb.”

“How did the witches have enough magic to fool a god?” I asked. I’d never heard of any witch possessing that kind of power.

“They didn’t. They used my mother’s life force to shield me. She faced my father knowing she wouldn’t survive. When she died, the power of her magic, of her life, fueled the spell.”

Just like the gods had expected Nero to use the magical release of our bond—of my death—to power the Magitech barrier in the City of Ashes.

“My aunt later recovered me from my mother’s body and ran far away. The witches’ spell didn’t just cloak me from my father. It buried the magic I’d received from him, hiding what I really was. I had only my mother’s shifter magic. People who knew her believed that Sirius Demonslayer was my father, and that the two of them—and me, their unborn child—had died in battle.”

“And you never knew the truth?” I asked him.

“No. Angel Fever brought out the magic I’d received from my father. At first, I didn’t realize what was happening. It took some time before my mind could focus. I didn’t remember the flashes of my power returning, piece by piece. It wasn’t until all my powers returned that I realized what had happened to me. That’s when I fled to the Black Plains.”

“How did the contagion start?” I asked him. “Who did it? Who unleashed Angel Fever?”

“It was you and Nero Windstriker.”

I blinked. “We did this?”

“Not intentionally,” Stash said. “When you broke the seal in the City of Ashes, you released the sirens trapped inside the vault.” He looked at Constantine Wildman. “It turns out the witches who made a pact with my mother had grown strong by stealing talismans and other immortal objects of power from a siren clan. The sirens came knocking at the witches’ doorsteps, seeking revenge. They planned to expose the witches’ trickery, including my escape from death. To keep their secret—and keep themselves safe from my father’s ire—the witch coven trapped the sirens inside the vault in the City of Ashes. It took all the magic in their stolen immortal artifacts to do it.”

“So when Nero and I broke the seal…”

“The sirens escaped their twenty-year prison.”

I gestured toward the witch. “How is he involved in this? Do you know?”

“I can read every thought in his scheming head. When the sirens got free, they decided to plot their revenge on the witch coven who had betrayed them.”

I found myself unsurprised that Constantine Wildman had stolen magic from the sirens. He really was a sleazeball.

“The sirens wanted to expose the witches’ trickery of my father, knowing he would come down hard on them. So they traveled to New York and found Constantine Wildman. Disguising themselves, they met with him. They played on his greed to sell him a spell that would make his coven more powerful than any other witch coven on Earth, a spell that would give them powers to rival the Legion of Angels itself. The witches had grown tired of not being powerful warriors like the vampires and shifters. They took the bait.”

“But they didn’t get what they bargained for,” I said.

“Oh, they did. The witches gained powerful magic. The sirens simply failed to tell them that their bodies couldn’t handle this unnatural flux of magic. Everyone the spell touched would lose their mind.”

“Those sirens sound very vengeful,” I commented.

“They were locked up for two decades, Leda. Of course they are vengeful,” he said. “But we don’t have only the sirens to thank for this. The witches played their part as well. In their greed, they forgot one very important thing: making a deal with a siren never ends well. Sirens are master negotiators and every deal they make comes with two prices: the price you make in payment and the unexpected price that comes later.

“The sirens knew the spell the witches had used to hide my magic because it was one of their own, a spell cast using an amulet. If Constantine Wildman remembered the amulet twenty years later, the sirens compelled him, making him forget all about it. When one of his witches put it on, the seal holding my magic shattered. My angel magic slowly returned to me, one power at a time. But a piece of my magic broke off and went into the witch who had worn the amulet to perform the spell. The first time she used my magic, the song of the siren’s spell infected her opponent’s magic. It jumped from person to person, spreading across the supernatural population.”

“They all have a piece of you in them. A piece of a demigod’s magic,” I realized. “That’s why they have these powers.”

“The sirens knew about my divine blood. And they knew the spell would spread across the supernatural populations of the city. And then beyond. Angel Fever will soon cover the Earth.”

“What do the sirens want?”

“To expose me. And, in doing so, to expose the witches to my father’s wrath.” Stash pounded his fist against the palm of his other hand. “But the gods won’t be killing any of us,” he promised. “The sirens’ spell had unintended consequences, even for the sirens themselves,” he said. “Because I am the reason they have their abilities—because a piece of my magic lies within them—I have power over anyone infected. I summoned them here for a purpose.”

“To raise an army.”

“Yes.”

“Against their will.”

“Yes,” he said. “My true self has finally revealed itself.” He indicated the army around him. “And so you see, Leda, I am a monster.”

“No, you aren’t,” I argued “You are a good man.”

His mouth dropped into a sad smile. “You always want to see the good in everyone.”

“You are good, Stash. That werewolf last night was you, wasn’t it? You saved us from the infected vampire.”

“Yes.”

“See? Even mad with magic and power, you still looked out for your friends.”

“Stop trying to paint me as a saint, Leda. I have done horrible things. Killed innocent people. I put everyone here under my spell to grow my army, to challenge the gods. I am no better than the sirens. My soul is black. I want revenge every bit as much as they do.”

“You weren’t yourself. You still aren’t.”

“No, for the first time in my life, I am completely myself. And this is what I am: a monster.”

“You’re just having trouble controlling the sudden influx of magic,” I said, setting my hand on his arm.

He stepped away from me. “That is an excuse psychopaths use. The gods’ laws of magic are very clear. We are responsible for our own acts. Lack of control is not an excuse.” He looked at Nero. “Tell her.”

“He speaks the truth,” Nero confirmed.

“So you see, the gods do not share your opinion of me. In their eyes, I caused this. And they will punish me. My father will want to punish me most of all, whoever he is.” Stash clenched his fists. “You should all get out of here. There is a storm of fury boiling inside of me, and I don’t think I can control what I’ll do.”

“Like take on the gods?” Basanti asked.

Stash smirked grimly. “You know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

I looked at him in confusion.

“You are blind. You are all blind.” Stash’s gaze shifted to Nero. “Even you. For next to the power of a god, even an archangel is nothing. Next to the power of a demigod, you are nothing.”

Green and gold magic burst out of his hands. It slammed into Basanti, peeling back layers of illusion, dissolving them. She wasn’t Basanti at all. The strands of the shifting spell melted away, revealing Nyx, the First Angel of the Legion.