Tag: Kathryn Ann Kingsley

New Release ~ Fall of Angels ~ by ~ Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Title: Fall of Angels
Series: Halfway Between #3
Author: Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Genre: New Adult Paranormal Romance
Release Date: March 3, 2020

 

 

Asmodeus lied to me.
While I shouldn’t be surprised, to say my feelings for the archdemon are complicated is putting it lightly. But now, I don’t even know if I’ll ever have the chance to decide how I feel about him.
Unfortunately, I know the terrible truth.
Asmodeus told me that I was the only homunculus he made that survived—but there’s another one. The leader of the deadly cult that’s been abducting archangels and archdemons, Octavian, is just like me. He’s a creature made from the flesh of others and given a life he didn’t want.
I’m Octavian’s prisoner now. He’s a sadist and a monster, and I can’t die. That’s a terrible combination. He’s eager to tell me all of what he knows, and why he’s been killing people and taking angels—but it’ll come at a price.
A price I don’t know if I can afford to pay. But I get the feeling I don’t have a choice. I just hope Michael, Azrael, and the others can find me before it’s too late.
I might not be able to die, but there are far worse fates than death.

 

 

 

Chapter One


“Hello, sister.”
Horror caught her voice in her throat as she looked up at Octavian. At the man—at the thing—that was perched on top of her, straddling her thighs. On each of his arms was etched an archaic and ceremonial magic circle. Each was a combination of two names—an archangel’s merged with one of their fallen brethren’s. She knew them on sight. She wore identical ones, after all.
Only instead of ink like hers, the marks on his arms were carved into his flesh, oozing and bleeding. They didn’t look fresh, but instead like they had never healed.
It was impossible.
He was impossible.
He’s just like me.
She yanked on her restraints, but the leather straps were etched with symbols she knew rendered them unbreakable no matter how hard she tugged. And even worse, the magic on the table made it inescapable even for someone with her talents. The writing held her soul as skillfully as the leather held her body.
The smile on his beautiful features was beaming, proud, and jubilant, like he had just won the lottery. Like he’d dreamed of this moment, and now it was real. Blond curls fell in front of his crimson eyes. It was clear he was having a blast. At least one of them was.
“I know, I know, it’s not fair to call you my sister. We’re not really anything, you and me. We’re just puppets of flesh and clay, homunculi made for the amusement of others. We’re no more related than two dolls on a shelf. I just wanted to be dramatic, I suppose.”
“Who…who the fuck are you?” It was a stupid question, but she didn’t know what else to say.
He chuckled and let out a long sigh as he sat back on her thighs. He was lithe and thin, and his weight on her felt like next to nothing. “The doll that sat on the shelf before you until I was much more trouble than I was worth, and I went in the trash. I’m just the prototype. Your prototype.”
She shook her head dumbly, not understanding. No, she understood, but she couldn’t process what she was hearing. “Asmodeus…made you?”
“Mmm, see, I don’t know if I should give you that one for free or not.”
“For free?”
“I wanna play a game with you, darling.” His crimson eyes trailed from her face down to her collarbone. He reached out and placed his fingertips there then drifted up her throat, and she realized he was tracing a vein underneath her skin. “A game you won’t want to play, so I’ll pay you in information.”
She didn’t want to ask. She figured she already knew the answer. But he was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to ask with an overeager, excited look on his thin features. “Okay. I’ll bite. What kind of game?”
“It’s easy! You ask me a question, and if I think it’s valuable enough…I’ll tell you the truth, but I get to kill you after. In whatever way I want.” He shivered, as if overcome with some sort of thrill.
Oh. Yeah. He was insane. A special kind of nuts. “Octavian, I hate to break it to you, but that’s a shitty game.”
“Oh, come on!” he whined. “You get to know all the details about my evil scheme, and I get to play with you the way I want to. And then, you can’t be mad at me for it. Because we had a deal.”
“I don’t think that’s how this works,” she shot him a narrow glare, “seeing as I’m your prisoner.”
“Mmh, details.” He sighed and leaned back again, still perched atop her thighs. The man had to weigh maybe a hundred pounds total. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you this bit for free. Asmodeus made me.”
They paused. Him, smiling expectantly, and her, looking up at him wondering where on the scale from one to Hannibal Lecter this guy registered. “Am I allowed to ask follow-up questions? Or are you going to start stabbing me if I do?”
He gave her an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to pay up. Come on.” He poked her in the ribs, and she jolted. “I’m trying to be friendly.”
“Right. Sure. This is friendly.” She avoided rolling her eyes. But, man, she wanted to. At least his weird, childlike joy and bizarre friendliness with her was dulling down her shock at what he really was. “When did Asmodeus make you?”
He grinned, glad she was playing along for now. “On November first, 1860. Fifty years to the day before he made you. That makes you my little sister.” He giggled—actually giggled. “Sorry. There I go again. Can I call you my sister, though?”
She blanched. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“You’re no fun.” He pouted and slid down until he was lying half next to her and half on top of her. She went stiff, frozen still, as he nuzzled his head into her neck, and let out a long, contented sigh. He was cuddling her. Honest-to-God cuddling her. “You smell so nice. I smell like blood, no matter how hard I try to scrub it off.”
Octavian had been a six on the Hannibal Lecter Scale of Crazy. Now he was pushing up toward an eight. Maybe eight and a half.
“Are you cold?” There was genuine concern in his voice. “I turned the heaters up for you, but this place doesn’t really have central heating.” He giggled. “Doesn’t really have heating at all.”
“Where are we?”
“Oh! Oh, that’s a good one. Maybe that’s the first one to trade for.” He pushed back up to sit on top of her again. The man seemed to be too excited to sit still. “Yes. I think I’ll trade you for that. It’s a good one. Let me kill you, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I’d hate to point this out, um…but you could just kill me anyway.” She yanked on her wrists. “Kinda stuck.”
He laughed. “Oh, I know. I can, could, probably would if you didn’t agree. But…this way it’s much more fun. I’ll tell you where we are. But it means you won’t beg me to stop when I kill you.”
“One small problem in your sick plan. The first time you kill me, Azrael will know where I am. They’ll be here in a heartbeat to stop you.”
“Ah, no, they won’t. Telling the others where you are means getting involved in saving someone from a life or death scenario. Even if you don’t stay dead, it still counts as suffering. It would break his sacred vow.” He poked her on the end of the nose. “Right?”
Veil swallowed thickly. He was right. No matter how bad things got, Azrael would keep his mouth shut about where she was. He wouldn’t do anything to save her. Damn it. Octavian was right. This definitely counted as “suffering,” and Azrael never stepped in to stop it. She let out a long growl and shut her eyes. This was going to suck.
“But! It is a useless piece of information, I suppose. Since Azrael will know in a few minutes anyway. So, I’ll tell you what. I’ll make it a quick death. Small piece of information? Small death.”
“How utterly magnanimous of you.” She couldn’t keep her sarcasm out of her voice.
He laughed. “Fair. That’s fair. So, darling, do we have a deal?”
She looked up at him narrowly. “Let me get this straight. Let me just…recap. You’re going to start trading me information for murdering me over and over again. Which you could technically do anyway.” She snorted. “No. How about no? If I say no, do I get to not take a trip on the U.S.S. Stabby?”
He grinned at her joke but then tried to school his features into something more businesslike. It was a sad attempt. “Now, before you get to be too hasty, think about this. Azrael won’t come to save you, but what about the rest of what I have to say? The rest of all that I know? Oh, he’ll be happy to relay what I’m willing to tell you. Can you imagine what Michael and the others will do when they learn I’m a homunculus? Don’t you want to warn them about Asmodeus’s deceit? All it takes is one little death, and then they know what kind of freak I really am.”
Damn it.
Shit!
She really hated it when insane people made sense. 
She sighed heavily. Damn it all! Yes. They really did need to learn what they were up against, and this was the only way it was going to happen. She growled and thrashed uselessly on the table in a last bid to get free. Octavian let it happen, still smiling above her, seeing that he was winning. “Fuck! Fine. Fine!”
He made a happy and excited squeak and clapped his hands. “Oh, thank you, darling. Thank you. This is going to be so much fun!”
“For you.”
“Yeah. That’s fair.” He chuckled and ran his hands through his chin-length, blond, and curly hair. Some of it was stained a little red with crimson. “Well. Here it is. Where are we? We haven’t gone far at all. We’re still here in Mount Auburn Cemetery.” He spread his arms out at his sides in his big reveal. “We’re in a crypt I took over for my headquarters. This one is particularly stupid. I’m not sure why anybody ever needed a crypt this huge and lavish. An over-extravagant final home for a bunch of over-extravagant corpses, I guess.” 
Octavian pointed. Following his gesture, she saw the walls were etched with names. She hadn’t noticed at first, having been too distracted by the knife in her lungs and the madman on top of her. 
“It’s a rather uncomfortable home, but it’ll do for now. No one thinks to look in a crypt for the living, do they? Not to mention, they won’t think to look anywhere close to where I took you. The best hiding spot is often right underfoot. No pun intended.” Again, he flashed her that beaming smile. “There we go! Was it worth it?”
“Clever, I’ll give you that.” She sighed. “Now you’re going to kill me?”
“Are you cold?”
“I—” she stammered, unsure of how to respond to that. He had just changed topics like a hummingbird changes direction. “What?”
“You never did tell me if you were cold.”
He said he was going to cut her limbs off. Told her he was a homunculus like her. And he was concerned that she was cold? Holy shit. Now he was an eight and a half on the Hannibal scale, officially. “I’m…I’m fine, thanks.”
“Good.” He suddenly lay down on her again and snuggled closer to her. He let out a long, contented sigh. “I do get to kill you. Doesn’t have to be now, does it?” He seemed so…sad, suddenly. So lonely. “I want to talk some more first. Okay?”
“Sure.” Not like she was going to rush to the front of the line to get stabbed to death. 
“I’m just so happy to meet you. To really meet you. I’ve waited for this day for so long.” He tucked his head up against her neck. She could see the blood on his back, soaked into the gauze in three circular patches, hiding the symbols she knew were there. “I was there when he made you, you know. I helped design you.”
She cringed. This was just going from creepy to worse. If she thought trying to reconcile Azrael as her dad and Asmodeus as her lover was bad, trying to figure out what the hell Octavian was in her life was another giant can of worms she didn’t need.
“I didn’t know you existed. I thought…” She paused. He was right; he smelled like blood and cologne. It was an odd combination.
“That you were the only one? I don’t blame you. I hate to tell you, but I wasn’t his first attempt. Just the first one that lived.” He leaned up on his elbow next to her, smiling warmly down at her. There was friendliness there, a tenderness that shocked her. It was more terrifying than if he had been cruel. He ran his fingertips gently along her chin. “You and I come from a long line of failures. A pile of corpses that were all made by him. His little human dolls.”
She cringed and looked away, but he turned her head back to look up at him with a press of his bloodstained fingers against her chin. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to react to him. She wanted to know why Asmodeus had done all this. Why he had lied to her again.
The sting of his betrayal must have made her wince. She really was too much of an open book sometimes. Reading her correctly, Octavian let out a small hum. “Don’t be too angry. He feels too much. That’s his curse. They call his twin the archangel of love, but I don’t think that’s quite true.” He tilted his head thoughtfully down at her. “I bet that’s why he didn’t interrupt us in the bar when he saw me.”
“Why?”
He grinned and answered her question with two more. “Do you know why he made us? Why he made you in particular?” 
“For some hot sex that won’t up and die on him.” She couldn’t help but grin. “I mean, I don’t mean to presume or anything.”
Octavian burst out laughing. Not derisively, not cruelly, but honest-to-God laughter. He smiled down at her and poked her in the ribs lightly. The action still made her jolt. “No, silly. We were never like that. Besides, if he wanted immortal sex, he has plenty of that at home. Incubi and succubae ready and happy to do his every whim, not to mention the rest of the population of Hell. No. He loves humanity. But he hates mortality. He wanted a human, immortal family. You, his bride. And me? Well…” He trailed off thoughtfully. “A son, I suppose.”
“A family,” she repeated dumbly, trying to sort it all out.
“You were his goal in all this. You were clearly his only desired outcome. Me? Just the prototype that hung on.” He shrugged. “But that’s why he didn’t barge in on us at the bar at first, I think. He saw us together, saw his family, and just couldn’t ruin it. He had a chance to kill me a long time ago. He couldn’t do it. He loves me, and I him, even still. Not to mention, he’d have to ’fess up to you that I was your sketch model.”
Something wasn’t quite adding up. “How did he make you, though? Azrael had nothing to do with you.”
“You want another freebie?” he teased.
She sighed, disgruntled.
He chuckled. “Okay, okay. I guess since I told you I’m a homunculus, I might as well give you all the details with that. I’ll play fair. Did Death make me? No.” Octavian wheezed and turned his head away to cough. She could hear the rattle in his lungs. He spat onto the ground. She didn’t need to see it to know it was blood. He dug in his pocket for his handkerchief and cleaned his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was disgusting.”
Of all the things to apologize for.
He turned back to her and smiled again, his teeth tinged red. “No. I am the sole creation of our favorite archdemon. He realized after I turned out, well, broken, to put it nicely, that he needed help. It was my being a failure that sent him to his brother.” He wheezed again and coughed. “I haven’t eaten in a while. Forgive me.”
“What do you mean, you haven’t eaten in a while?” He’d threatened to eat her, after all. She assumed he was just a sicko. But the way he said it implied it had a connection to his illness.
“I eat human flesh to survive.” He smiled sweetly again like it was a perfectly normal confession.
“Holy shit.” She grimaced and would have recoiled from him if she weren’t strapped to a table. “You’re just a giant pile of fucked up, aren’t you?”
“If it matters, I don’t really enjoy it.” He shrugged one thin shoulder. “Well. Not too much, anyway. I’m always hungry for more of what I am. What I was made from. I consume it, and it becomes part of me. Heals me. But it works less and less as the years go on.” At the look of nausea on her face, he chuckled. “Don’t worry. Like I said, you’re useless to me for that. We’ll have our own fun, though.”
He slung himself off the table, coughed again, and reached down to pick up his bloodstained shirt. He put it back on without any care for the wet crimson splotches. Walking to a nearby chair, he fiddled with something next to it. She watched him curiously as he lifted a clear plastic mask to his face and inhaled. An oxygen tank, maybe?
He took a series of deep breaths from it before dropping the mask back onto the top of the tank. He pulled in a long breath, seemingly experimenting to see if he would cough again, before letting it out with a puff. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was dying, Selina.”
“How, exactly, are you alive at all?”
“I wasn’t lucky enough to have Azrael take my death away, no.” He smiled at her look of surprise. “Oh, yes, I know exactly how you were created.” 
None of this made any sense to her. None of it fit with anything she knew. Correction—anything she thought she knew. “So how did Asmodeus give a bunch of stitched-together human corpses the breath of life?”
Octavian walked back over to her and sat on the stool next to the table. He looked so sweet and innocent, but she knew the threats he made hadn’t been lies. She knew he was going to cut her to pieces. It was just a matter of when, with what, and how badly. He folded his arms on the table and propped his chin on top of them again, watching her. His blond curls fell around his thin, delicate features.
He picked up the surgical knife from the table and toyed with it, moving it between his fingers like somebody might play with a pen. “You know how his puppets are made?”
“Binding a living soul to a wooden puppet. When the body dies, the soul transfers over. But the soul doesn’t die.” She couldn’t help but watch the edge of the blade as he lazily moved it through his fingers. She knew it was going to be plunged into her body soon enough.
“Imagine what would happen if you bound a living soul to a living body instead of a dead lump of wood. Imagine if you used all your dark magic to take the willing, living flesh of mortals and twisted them into something new without killing it—something more pleasing. Imagine if you bound the living soul of your most devoted servant to the heap of sputtering blood and bones you made. What would you have then?”
Her eyes went wide. She watched him as he stood slowly, leaning over her, his face tilting down close to hers. His lips brushed over her cheek then hovered close to her ear.
“You think you’re a monster?” He chuckled quietly, his breath ghosting over her skin as he tilted his head. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He kissed her, his lips searing against her skin, thick with the taste of blood, as he drove the knife deep in between her ribs. She felt the slide of blade against bone, and she screamed, muffled against his lips.


***


Richard sat with his head in his hands. The driver’s side door of his best friend’s Pontiac was open, and he was sitting on the driver’s seat with his feet on the asphalt. He had taken Veil’s car and found his family by the front gate but found he couldn’t go any farther.
Not because he didn’t want to run.
Oh, he very much did.
Not just from Octavian. He could run from that madman without shame, but what he couldn’t run from was his accountability. That, he couldn’t stomach. That, he knew would eat him from the inside out like a cancer.
Chelly had oohed and aahed about the old muscle car and wanted to play with all the dials. But she was also exhausted, and sleep warred with her curiosity as she poked at the screen while rubbing at her eyes. Now, she was passed out asleep in his wife’s lap in the back bench.
He had found Veil’s phone on the passenger seat. Flicking it on, he unlocked it using her four-digit code. They knew each other’s codes—not just in case one of them had an emergency, but because they simply knew each other that well.
And I betrayed her.
He’d like to think she understood. He’d like to think she would offer herself up in trade to Octavian to save his life. He suspected that was precisely what happened. She was too smart, and had been in this business too long, to not have seen such an obvious trap coming. Which meant that she had come to the cemetery tonight fully aware of what was going to happen.
It didn’t make the sting any better.
Another text from Conrad. 


Conrad: 1 min away don’t do anything stupid.


Richard didn’t bother responding. There was also a voicemail on the phone from a number he didn’t recognize. It was new, having been left in the past few minutes. Hitting it, he raised it to his ear out of curiosity. It might be important.
“Selina. This is a trap you are walking into. Do not go. Do not go near Octavian. You cannot imagine the cost. We will save your friend Richard together. Wait for me. Please, Selina. I love you.”
Asmodeus. A desperate-sounding Asmodeus.
“We should go, Richie,” Chris said from the back seat.
“No. I need to explain to them what happened.”
“But we don’t know anything. They didn’t tell us a single thing.”
“That’s not the part that needs explaining.” Richard sighed and put the phone on his friend’s dash. It was big enough to hold a lot more than a single cellphone. Old cars. They were just needlessly huge. He supposed it was part of the charm. “I’m sorry, but I need to do this.”
He glanced back at his wife and tried to offer her a faint smile, hoping she’d understand. He needed to face judgement for his crime. And if it couldn’t be through Veil, let it be through her new friends.
Chelly was out cold in his wife’s lap. At least she didn’t seem to suspect anything was wrong, only that things weren’t “right.” She knew the adults weren’t telling her something, and that was enough to put her on edge. Not enough that she stayed awake, mind you.
He hoped she didn’t wake up when the yelling began. He knew there’d be yelling. Likely at him. But his girl could sleep through a bomb blast. Here’s hoping it isn’t worse than that.
The sound of engines and wheels screeching turned his attention back to the graveyard. In that moment, six large black SUVs tore out of the darkness and through the gate, swerving onto the main road. Tires squealed, and the smell of burning rubber was thick in the air as they peeled out and took off into the distance, engines roaring.
Octavian and the rest.
Gone. Taking Veil somewhere.
He squeezed his eyes tight and lowered his head, feeling tears sting his eyes. He wanted to weep. But he wouldn’t. Not yet. Not in front of his wife and daughter. Chris’s hand settled on his shoulder, reaching through from the back seat to console him. He slipped his hand over hers and squeezed it.
“You did the right thing.”
He nodded weakly. It didn’t feel like the right thing. It felt like the coward’s choice.
Another minute or two passed before another car pulled up, the headlights sweeping over them then sending him back into darkness as the other driver stopped. The engine flicked off, and four figures climbed out of the black sedan.
His face had bloomed with heat, that strange kind of adrenaline rush one got when caught in a lie or an embarrassing situation. Like when he had accidentally sent an email he thought was a simple reply, but was a reply-all, disparaging several of the people to whom he had unwittingly sent the email.
This was far less mundane. This was serious. Now he knew what that feeling of adrenaline was really for.
He knew Gabe and Conard, who climbed out of the front of the vehicle. He didn’t know the two men who climbed out of the back. But he knew, instantly, that they weren’t exactly normal.
One of them seemed to embody every vision of danger, sexuality, and masculinity in human culture into one well-dressed and towering form. Green eyes swung to him immediately, and Richard recognized the piercing gaze, even if he didn’t know the form it wore. He had seen this creature come back from the spirit world carrying Veil. Asmodeus.
He was slightly less terrifying as a mortal. Slightly.
The other man he truly didn’t know and couldn’t guess. He was built like a quarterback. Broad shoulders, muscular, and dressed casually in a well-loved brown leather coat, a t-shirt, and jeans. Short blond hair. He was handsome—almost too much so. It made his humanity instantly suspect.
Richard stood and closed the door to the car, wanting to separate Chris and Chelly from what was going to happen, even if only a little. It was a meaningless separation, but it made him feel like they were somehow safer. He was a fool grasping at a safety blanket. He stood in the presence of two priests who were plenty dangerous, and at least one archangel, fallen or otherwise. Maybe two.
“Hello, brothers.”
Three.
The voice had come from beside Richard unexpectedly, and he would have screamed if he hadn’t also choked at the same time. He looked over at Azrael, who had appeared there without warning. Richard pressed his hand to his heart, feeling it thud painfully in its cage. “Wh—f—” was all he managed.
Azrael barely cast him a glance. There was judgement in those blue eyes that exactly matched Veil’s. Judgement, sadness, and…age. Those eyes had seen a hundred thousand years of suffering, and now they were looking at him. Judging him for adding more to the pile.
“Hello, Richard,” the archangel greeted him. It felt more like the whisper of a winter wind than a hello.
Instantly, Richard felt his face run cold. He shrank away from the archangel of death. The one whose daughter he had just betrayed. Guilt crashed through him like a runaway train. “I’m so sorry. I—I—”
“He will not harm you.” A deep voice, rumbling like thunder, distracted him. It only added to his fear. He glanced to the man who must be Alistair Solomon. The other creature whose creation he had betrayed.
Richard retreated, trying to keep the hood of the car between him and the approaching dark cloud. The “man’s” face was a schooled mask of indifference. But those green eyes of his glittered in rage.
The archdemon was stalking toward him. He had never felt more like prey in his life. Images of memories flashed into his mind. Of being trapped in that cage, in that bloody basement, listening to his mother and sister scream as they died. 
“Please, I—” His voice sounded small. Weak. He was that eight-year-old boy once more.
“You have nothing to fear from the archangel of death,” Alistair assured him. But it was not a comforting promise. He sensed the razor’s edge of danger in the man’s voice. “Azrael does not interfere. He will not take revenge for your betrayal. But me? Mark me, human…” He grinned sadistically, a flash of white teeth that reminded Richard of a wolf. And then the beast struck. “I live by no such rule!”
When Alistair jumped toward him as if to grab him and do some unspeakable horror that Richard couldn’t imagine, he leapt back, tripped over his own feet, and landed painfully on the pavement. Azrael took a step back to let the scene unfold, his hands clasped behind him.
Alistair had him by the front of his coat and dragged him to his feet. Two fists twisted in his peacoat and shook him hard. “What you have done, you will pay for dearly, little mortal. You—”
“Back off.” A pair of arms separated them, pushing Richard back. A body stepped between them, facing Alistair. The other man from the car who he didn’t know. The blond in the brown leather coat. “Back the fuck off, Asmodeus.”
Alistair bared his teeth in a snarl and went to shove him off, but he saw it coming. He put his shoulder into the archdemon’s chest and shoved Alistair back, nearly sending him sprawling to the ground. “I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“And why not? Do you suddenly protect every human life?” Alistair growled at the mystery man. “How quaint.”
“Nope. But I’m gonna do it when I can.” The other man grabbed the edge of his leather coat and gave it a stiff tug to straighten it. “I’m pretty sure I’d get my angel card revoked if I let you squish some poor mortal asshole in front of me.”
“Angel card…?” Richard hadn’t realized he had spoken until it was too late.
“Oh. Hey.” The man turned to look at him and offered him a casual salute. “Michael. Nice to meet you. You must be V’s friend.”
Michael.
Michael.
He staggered back against the car and would have fallen again if the vehicle hadn’t been there to stop him. He shook his head rapidly in disbelief. “Oh, no. No, please, no,” he murmured. The world began to spin and grow fuzzy around the edges. He was getting nauseated and felt both flushed and cold at the same time.
“Aw, is he gonna faint?” Michael scratched the back of his neck. “I hate it when they get all floppy on me. Sit down, bud. Deep breaths. No big deal.” The archangel seemed almost…embarrassed. “Man, I hate being a celebrity.”
It might have been funny if Richard weren’t about to pass out. He paced farther back and leaned against the trunk of the car to try to steady himself. When a hand touched his arm, he nearly leapt out of his skin.
“Easy, easy…” Conrad and Gabe were there, looking at him in deep concern. “Just us. Just the humans.”
It was ridiculous that he found that as comforting as it was. He nodded and forced the air into his lungs to slow down and go deeper. Soon, his dizziness began to fade.
It was Gabe who asked the question Richard dreaded so profoundly. But the one he needed to answer. “What happened to Veil?”
Kat has always been a storyteller. With ten years in script-writing for performances on both the stage and for tourism, she has always been writing in one form or another. When she isn’t penning down fiction, she works as Creative Director for a company that designs and builds large-scale interactive adventure games. There, she is the lead concept designer, handling everything from game and set design, to audio and lighting, to illustration and script writing. Also on her list of skills are artistic direction, scenic painting and props, special effects, and electronics. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Theatre Design, she has a passion for unique, creative, and unconventional experiences. In her spare time, she builds animatronics and takes trapeze classes.
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New Release ~ Blood of Angels ~ by ~ Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Title: Blood of Angels
Series: Halfway Between
Author: Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Genre: New Adult Paranormal Romance
Release Date: February 4, 2020
When I learned the truth of what I was seventy years ago, let’s just say, I didn’t take it well. 

 

 

 

I’m not human. I never was.
I’m a homunculus crafted by two creatures for their benefit. Azrael, the archangel of death, made me to be his daughter and Asmodeus, the archdemon of lust, created me to be his wife.
That’s the simplest part of my life right now.
Now, there’s a murderous cult in the city of Boston who’s abducting angels and demons. I thought this had nothing to do with me, but Octavian, the cult’s leader, wants to show me how very wrong I was.
I’m trapped between my desire to fight the cult, and fighting my desire for Asmodeus. He loves me, and I loved him once. But in the face of all his lies, I’m not sure if I can—or should—love him again.
With Octavian closing in, taking more and more of the archangels and archdemons for some mysterious purpose, I may never get the chance to decide how I feel.
I may not make it through this at all.

 

 
Chapter One

Boston 
April 1939

Selina stood and looked down into the open grave.

A coffin sat at the bottom of the deep trench, lowered there by the men with their ropes as they carefully set the polished wooden box into its final resting place. Atop it sat a wreath of flowers and several more single blooms added by the mourners who stood gathered…all of whom had already gone back to their motorcars or walked down the street from the graveyard.

Forest Hills was a beautiful cemetery, by all accounts, scattered here and there with monuments that were truly impressive and dominated by a large pond in the center. It was, in her opinion, exactly what all graveyards should be—part park for the living, and part a place for the dead to reside. Picnics here were neither uncommon nor discouraged in the large swaths of grass, even if the lawn was peppered with carvings to those who had passed.

It was long after the final words had been said. But he would not leave. Alistair stood at the edge of the grave, looking down upon the dark wood box and at the lacquered surface reflecting the warm glow of the sun overhead. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his long black coat.

If it weren’t for the tick in his jaw, she would have thought him a statue like those of granite and marble around them. He was handsome enough to be one.

The man in the grave had been one of Alistair’s own, a high-ranking, long-lived member of his association. Osmund Reinhardt had come from Europe when he was just a boy, many years back. A widower, he had died of an illness brought on by old age. It had happened fast. His children, grown adults now, had not made it from their respective homes around the country before he passed. But Osmund had not died alone. Alistair had sat at his side as it happened, for Osmund had been a dear friend.

Selina had known Osmund well. He had been a broad, stern man with a serious disposition. He talked with a thick German accent that had gone starkly out of favor in the past few years since the war began. She believed Germans always sounded angry, and therefore she didn’t hold his gruffness against him. Alistair and Osmund had argued frequently. Osmund served as one of the seniors of his society, and often had the gall to disagree with the archdemon he served.

“If I didn’t want to disagree with my leaders, I would have stayed in my homeland,” Osmund had told her when she pressed him on the curious behavior. She would never forget what else he had said that day. “Arguing with the men who control us is our right. Remember that.”

She had seen him briefly when he had been ill. Death did not scare her…but the moments before it did. For the broad, strong, mountain of a man who glared at Alistair like he was a petulant child had been reduced to a shadowy reflection of a man. A shallow, pale, and empty effigy that seemed less like the original and more like a mockery of what they were supposed to represent.

Walking up to Alistair, she forced her hand into one of his pockets. She fished his out and wove her fingers in between his and held it tightly. He squeezed back. It was the most she had gotten out of him in an hour.

She pressed herself close to his arm, resting her head on him. She shut her eyes and let the feeling of his presence sink into her. She would never get used to him. Never forget how it felt the first time she saw him and what raged within him. Like a thunderstorm in a glass jar. Every time she stood close enough to him to feel it crackle beneath her touch, she felt in awe of it. Of him.

Normally, she could break him out of his moods. Alistair wasn’t one for long bouts of sulking or brooding, but, from time to time, she would catch him lost in thought. Reliving his memories, as he would say. But one touch from her, and he would snap out of it. It was a heady kind of power she had over him, and it was addictive, to say the least.

But this time, it didn’t seem to work. Not at first. It took a few minutes of them standing there in silence before he finally broke it, his voice a quiet rumble. “I despise death.”

“That’s awfully rude of you. I thought you two were friends.” She looked up at him with a light smile. The sunlight caught the strands of his dark hair.

He chuckled once, nearly silently, and looked up at the sky and the clouds overhead. He was like a dark blot against the light blue sky. He didn’t fight the smile that came to him from her bad joke. “Well played.” He paused thoughtfully. “More accurately, I will say that I despise the emotion of grief.”

She leaned her cheek on his arm again and looked off into the graveyard. At the hundreds of tombstones, crypts, and monuments. “Everyone experiences grief. It’s much worse to live a life that no one is left to mourn, isn’t it?”

“It’s more humane, in a way, but I see your point.” Alistair shifted, freeing his arm from her grasp only to wrap it around her and hug her to his side. She nestled in against him and smiled at the scent of incense that seemed to follow him everywhere. “I have lost thousands of souls I have loved as family…and the burn never ceases to hurt me as fresh as the first. You will come to realize that immortality in a world of fragile humans is a cruel, sick, painful joke.”

“You could avoid them. Sit in hell and befriend nobody but demons and other fallen. Like the others.”

“That, then, is the same kind of man who lives the life no one will mourn. A life without the love of others is not one I am interested in living. I’ve tried. It doesn’t last long. I have miserable self-control.”

She laughed. That was true. He was like a kid with a candy jar. His restraint was a thing measured in seconds. She had experienced firsthand his extreme lack of self-control many times.

She furrowed her brow as she realized something and tipped her head to look up at him without lifting it from his chest. “It isn’t goodbye. He will go to serve you in Hell, though, won’t he?”

His expression grew tight. He looked down at her, emerald green eyes searching hers. There was pain there—sadness now tinged with regret. “No…he won’t.”

“He couldn’t possibly have been taken to Heaven. Not after spending his life serving an archdemon.” She grinned. “Unless they severely lowered the bar.”

His trademark lopsided twinge of the lips broke through his sadness, and he leaned down to kiss the top of her head. His mood simmered back down to a dour one. He pulled her around to stand in front of him, resting his hands on her hips. He filled her vision, standing this close to her, and she placed her hands upon his chest. She felt the strength there, hidden behind the layers of his formal clothing. She ran her fingers along the texture of his wool vest and let her gaze travel back up to his sharp features. He was so utterly beautiful, so perfect, it was hard for her to be distracted by his serious mood.

“I have a confession, my love. But you have to promise to keep it a secret.” He pulled in a breath and let it out. She felt his chest heave then sink again as he did.

His concern worried her. He was never afraid to tell her something. “Of course.”

“I have lied to you. It’s a lie I tell to all, even those who serve me. One that even some of those born from Heaven or Hell believe.” His eyes slipped shut. “You will find out on your own eventually. If I don’t tell you now, I know who will soon enough.” He paused again. “Human souls do not come to us.”

She blinked. She had heard him, but she couldn’t help it. “What?”

“There are no souls resting in Heaven or burning in Hell who were not created there. Osmund is gone to me now, for all eternity. This is my last goodbye to him.” Grief painted his features once more.

“Where…do they go, then?”

Alistair laughed, a dry, weak and humorless sound. “That is the best part of it all. We do not know. Azrael takes them to a…he describes it as a doorway or a gate. He takes them there, and they pass through it. After that? He knows not where they journey. But it is not to his realm or mine.”

“Why the lie, then? Why tell the humans otherwise?”

“If we were to let them sit in their ignorance, they would invent their own beliefs. That surrenders power. To control the narrative is to control faith. To control faith is to control the populace.” He let out a thoughtful hum. “It used to be, anyway. They’re catching on quicker as of late.”

“But why control them at all? If Heaven and Hell are not in a battle for souls, why does anybody care what humans do?”

Alistair smiled down at her. “You are always asking the correct questions. What a good student you have turned out to be.” His gaze darkened, and she felt the familiar nervous excitement as it turned distinctly predatory. His hand slipped under her chin, his thumb on one side, his fingers on the other, and tilted her head back further to face him. “I will have to reward you later.”

“You’re dodging the q—”

His lips crashed against hers. Like a roar of a fire consuming a home, he descended over her. The embrace was demanding, bruising, and shoved all thoughts of anything else to the back of her head. His hand slipped around behind her, and his arm now cinched her to him possessively.

She was helpless. She always was. He was a tiger in the darkness hunting his prey, and she would never win. She never wanted to win. When he finally broke the kiss, she was breathless. He was unfazed. The pad of his thumb rested lightly on her lower lip, swollen from his attentions. She felt his breath rush hot against her cheek as he leaned in to whisper to her.

“Heaven wishes to control all. Every variable must be inside their command. They cannot abide to let anyone, or anything, stray too far from their light. In their eyes, humans are sheep who must be herded, and they care as little for where the soul of a human goes as the shepherd does the souls of their livestock.” He let out a small, appreciative purr as she curled her fingers into the hem of his vest and pulled herself against him. She opened her eyes to meet his emerald gaze.

“What about us?”

“Wolves like me…we are a threat. We must be put down. And you? A doe who comes to sleep at the side of the beast?” His lips twisted up again in his lopsided and smug smile. “You are even worse. To them, you’re an abomination. No one should be able to love a creature like me, after all.”

***

Modern Day

“Michael…how good of you to come.” Alistair’s greeting was neither warm nor welcoming. 

Today had gone from awful, to fucking awful, to just-fuck-me-up-the-ass-with-a-baseball-bat-already awful.

Veil wasn’t afraid of dying. She had a very good reason to not be. She’d done it a few dozen times, and she would never get any farther than that cold and frozen lake in her mind that existed just before the door to true death.

But now, staring at the glowing, shining, metal-clad figure that took up the whole of the doorway into the church, she was starting to second-guess what she had previously accepted as fact. 

Michael. That was Michael.

If anyone in this universe could kill her, or at the very least make her wish she could die, it was going to be him. She wasn’t interested in finding out what the champion of the archangels was going to do to her. Veil shrank back from the two creatures standing at the threshold of the church and figured there had to be another way out of here out the rear.

Now, she realized, she was afraid of what was on the other side of the door she thought she’d never cross.

She hadn’t made it two feet in the opposite direction before she was forced to draw up short as something impacted the wood frame of the door in front of her face. It was one of Michael’s metal “feathers.” Really, it looked more like a razor-sharp blade. It stuck inches into the surface like a surgical knife. It didn’t even splinter the wood.

Yup. Today sucked.

“Stay,” the archangel commanded.

The blade yanked free of the wood from some invisible command and whipped past her face back the way it had come. She turned to follow its path back to the archangel and demon in the doorway. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Conrad and Gabe were both on their knees, struck with awe by something that looked that…well, holy. Gabe’s head was lowered in prayer, while the Irishman was staring, wide-eyed and gaping at the archangel.

The feather he had sent to intercept her rejoined his wing, spinning back in place where it had left with the sound of metal sliding against metal.

Asmodeus growled low, and the shadows that seemed to gather around him in this form darkened, coalescing like a living thing. It was only then that she realized she had never seen Asmodeus really fight. Not really. She couldn’t imagine the kind of damage the two of them were about to wreak on the building around them. If not the city itself. “Leave here, archangel,” the archdemon growled.

Michael jumped forward suddenly and without warning, shoulder-checking Asmodeus into the wall. Metal shards shot forward from his wings, pinning Asmodeus to the wood behind him. The metal stabbed through his wings, his legs, his arms, even his torso. The archdemon howled in pain but couldn’t move. He hadn’t been expecting an attack so suddenly from the warrior and was likely still working off the pain of having been trapped in the spirit realm for so long. 

Michael stepped back to observe his work, and seemingly content with it, he turned to walk toward Veil. Asmodeus howled and roared at him, yanking on his own limbs to try to free himself. Electricity arced from each of the metal shards, and the archdemon screamed in pain. The more he struggled, the worse it became. He went limp, slumping against the wall. Blood, black as pitch, ran from the wounds.

Veil was now backing away from Michael, retreating from his massive metal-clad form as he approached. The shards of his wings were constantly rotating and spinning on each axis. He would be beautiful if he weren’t so damn terrifying to her right now.

“Whatever you’re going to do, don’t. Just let me go,” she said to the creature in the shining armor. She raised her hands in front of herself in a useless attempt to show she meant no harm. She’d disappear into the spirit world or dash away through the wall, but she was too exhausted. After the events of today, she wouldn’t risk it. She’d make it ten feet before she wouldn’t be able to hold herself there, and then she’d probably wind up on the ground, passed out.

“You freed him.”

It was a statement, not a question. It was flat, emotionless, and even without an ounce of damnation in his tone, she couldn’t help but feel that she was on the stand. He was her proverbial judge, jury, and quite possibly her executioner. “I had to.”

“Oh?”

“This cult. Aren’t they after all of you? I know you don’t care about Mammon, but don’t they have Chamuel?”

He didn’t respond. Still, Michael kept walking toward her. Still, she retreated up the aisle toward the altar of the church. The flood of light through the entrance had faded, but the creature before her still glowed. Light glinted off his armor and his metal wings without any source that she could see.

She made more excuses. “They said he knew what they were after, that he had information on—”

“And you believed him?” He huffed a derisive, hollow, and metallic laugh. “After all the lies he’s told you?”

“Azrael said—”

“Azrael is adorably gullible. He agreed to help make you, didn’t he?” The tinny emptiness of his voice was worse than if he had just been outright judging her or had been angry. He was merely stating facts.

Veil’s foot caught the edge of the stairs to the altar as she continued to retreat from Michael. She yelped as she fell and landed hard on her ass on the stairs with a pained unf. Before she could react, he was standing at her feet. Towering over her.

She might be about to die for real.

Or dragged to Heaven and tortured.

Her mind raced with all the possible options of how this could go very poorly for her. He lifted his sword and hovered the point of it over her chest. Death by angel was something she hadn’t done before. Another one for the bingo card. “You freed him in hopes of stopping the cult that is hunting us.”

“Yeah…”

“Not because you’ve forgiven him for creating you?”

She shook her head.

“Not because you still love him?”

“Leave me alone, Michael.” It took her a second to realize she had clenched her fists. “I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“That wasn’t a no.” The tip of his sword moved closer to her, and she was forced to lean back to avoid letting it touch her. “Half-lies and partial statements don’t work on me. He has been my brother for much longer than you’ve been his student. I’ll ask it this way. Do you hate him?”

She glared up at him and remained silent. Screw him if he thought he would be able to back her into a corner. Screw him for asking questions she suddenly realized she didn’t have the answers to. She went to stand, but he pressed the tip of his sword against her throat. It felt impossibly sharp, razor-thin. The kind of knife that cut without pain. She leaned away from it. He’d called her bluff, and she had nothing in her hand.

“Don’t lie to me. I’ll know.” Electricity, yellow-gold and white, curled around his gauntlet and down his sword from hilt to tip. She drew back reflexively, worried they might ground out into her. “I’ll ask a third time. And it’ll be the last time.” Michael moved closer to her, his feet between hers, as he poised the sword over her throat, ready to drive down. “Do you hate Asmodeus?”

Once, the archdemon was her whole world. Once, she would have done everything and anything for him. She had. She had adored him and went every day wanting to be at his side. But then it all changed. She learned what he was capable of. The lengths to which he had gone to create her, to lie to her, to sculpt her into what he wanted her to be. A plaything and a permanent toy for his amusement.

She was furious at Alistair, yes.

But right now, she loathed herself more.

Because she wasn’t sure.

Tears stung her eyes, born out of frustration and hatred, not sadness. Born of how much she hated herself, and how Michael had very easily and very quickly dredged that to the surface. She didn’t know how to answer him. She didn’t know how she could. But she wasn’t eager to find out what that sword and his power were going to do to her. She fixed him with a glare, angry the archangel was dragging this out of her. 

“I don’t know.”
Kat has always been a storyteller. With ten years in script-writing for performances on both the stage and for tourism, she has always been writing in one form or another. When she isn’t penning down fiction, she works as Creative Director for a company that designs and builds large-scale interactive adventure games. There, she is the lead concept designer, handling everything from game and set design, to audio and lighting, to illustration and script writing. Also on her list of skills are artistic direction, scenic painting and props, special effects, and electronics. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Theatre Design, she has a passion for unique, creative, and unconventional experiences. In her spare time, she builds animatronics and takes trapeze classes.
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New Release ~ Shadow of Angels ~ by ~ Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Title: Shadow of Angels
Series: Halfway Between
Author: Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Genre: New Adult Paranormal Romance
Release Date: January 6, 2020
The first time I died was November 1st, 1945. That might’ve been the first time, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
 
My name is Veil, and my life has been far from normal. Everything I thought I knew about myself had been a lie. Every single thing. Turns out, I had been in the care of a cult dedicated to a King in Hell and fallen archangel.
 
But after learning the truth of who—or what—I am, I devoted my life to stopping them and everyone like them.
 
Which is why when I learned that Boston was under siege from an occult society who was slaughtering innocents, I had no choice but to come and stop them. Even if it meant it would take me piece by piece through that past I’d spent seventy years trying to avoid—and right into the presence of the archdemon I’d been running from for so very long. Asmodeus.
 
Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I realized once more that I had no clue what was coming next…

 

“Raise your hands if you love villain romance! **Thrusts her hand in the air.** Kathryn is back with a new series! Shadow of Angels was a great beginning, and I can’t wait to read more.” – USA Today Best Selling Author, Tiffany Roberts

“Throw out everything you thought you knew about angels and demons and get ready to be swept off your feet with a kickass heroine in Shadow Of Angels!” – Julia from Red Hatter Book Blog

Veil was dying.

Again.

At this point, she was on a first-name basis with the sensation of her body shutting down. All her organs were struggling valiantly to soldier on, even though things were entirely out of place and had gone very much awry. A golf-ball-sized hole had been punched straight through her chest. But her body only had one job, keeping her alive, and it was trying so very hard to do just that.

She was lying on the floor. A bullet had been what put her there. A particularly large caliber one, judging by the pain. The gun the man had used packed a damn good punch.

It was also likely enchanted and holy.

She figured it went with the territory.

Now she found herself examining the ceiling tiles of a charming little coffee shop. It was trying to make the vintage thing work at all costs, even if it meant putting up fake stamped copper tiles. I bet they’re plastic from Home Depot or something.

It’s amazing what came to mind when the brain was struggling for oxygen and blood. The thoughts were always the most random, trivial things. Never anything salient or prophetic. Never anything interesting.

The bullet might have nicked her heart. It had definitely punctured her lung. She knew this, because when she went to breathe, it felt as though she had liquid in her chest. It gurgled like trying to suck air through a snorkel with too much seawater in it. The sensation was just as unpleasant.

It’d be over soon enough, she knew. It wasn’t the first time this’d happened. It wouldn’t be the last. While every kind of death carried its own unique form of pain, she likened it to flavors of ice cream. Sure, it all tasted different, but down at the core it was the same thing. How she got there might be new and interesting, might be double-fudge or salted caramel, but it all got her to the same place.

Man, I could seriously go for some ice cream right about now.

Lifting her hand, she touched it to the wound in her ribcage. It was sticky and wet. And big. She picked her hand up to look at the blood dripping off her fingers. More out of morbid curiosity than anything else. It was painful to breathe, so she opted not to. It would just get it over with easier that way. The darkness that was creeping at the edges of her vision would come faster. The quicker that happened, the quicker she could get on with her day.

Death obeyed, and she felt the darkness at the edges of her vision rush in closer. The bullet had punched its way easily through bone, flesh, and sinew. The man was also an excellent shot, she’d give him that.

Y’know, Yul Brenner made a weird villain in West World. Again, with the random-ass thoughts. It almost made her laugh. She would have, if she had the air and the lungs to do it. Just another weird thought popping up out of nowhere as her brain struggled to survive.

Veil knew the telltale signs that the end was coming soon. She shut her eyes as her lungs burned and willed her body to just give up the ghost and let it end. When a hand grasped hers and clutched it, she blinked in confusion and looked up at the man kneeling over her.

He had long, chestnut hair in a ponytail and sharp hazel eyes. He wore all black, save for a white clerical collar that only made him look tan by comparison. He held her hand gently, and with his other one with two fingers aloft, gestured in the shape of a cross in the air in front of him. Earnestly, he began to pray in Latin.

It almost made her laugh again.

“Don’t bother,” a familiar voice said from the table nearby.

“What?” the priest kneeling over her looked up, appalled and offended.

“Give her a minute.”



***



Two days prior.

Boston.

Once, not very long ago, the city had been Veil’s home. Well, it was the only place she had spent enough time in to qualify for the title, anyway. And for exactly those reasons, she avoided it as best she could.

Every street seemed to dredge up bad memories and feelings she didn’t want to experience again. She hadn’t been back in…oh, fifteen years, give or take, and another twenty before that. Once and a while she had to pass through, but never long enough to really let the cloud settle over her.

But her work had called her here. There were only a few things that could drag her back here, nearly kicking and screaming. Death on a large scale was one of them.

Death in the city of Boston was something she was familiar with.

This was where she had been raised. This was where she had spent time in the only semblance of a family she had ever known.

And this is where she had killed them all. This is where she had abandoned him to rot.

Veil shuddered. It had nothing to do with the overly-dry, overly-chill hotel room air. It had everything to do with the image that flashed into her mind. The glint of candlelight off a silver blade that was poised to drive into her chest and into her heart.

That had been the first time she had died and the exact moment everything had gone wrong. The moment she had learned everything had been a lie. She shoved the miserable memory to the back of her mind for the millionth time. It came back to her enough without having to dwell on it.

One foot in front of the other. Always. Immortality was going to drag her down the pavement anyway, she might as well stand up and walk. Besides, there was work to do. There were probably demons to hunt, and more importantly, the humans who brought them here.

She was standing by the window, looking down at the street and busy intersection below. They were staying at the Omni-Parker House Hotel. It was supposed to be one of the nicest hotels in the city. It was the oldest, anyway. It showed, if she were honest. It wasn’t a bad hotel, but it wasn’t her favorite. Namely, she wished she could open the window. She’d much prefer the heavy air of the city and the constant honking, shouting, and shrill whistle of the valet driver below, over the rush of the fan and the stifling feeling of the over-recycled air.

But, there was no use trying to get the windows open. They were screwed shut. Any jumpers might mess up traffic more than usual, and the city might not survive that. It was School Street down below her, and it was bumper-to-bumper in the evening rush hour traffic. That one-lane example an utter failure in city planning was already a majestic cluster-fuck on a good day without somebody turning themselves into street pizza adding to the mess.

Boston was a place built not on top of the old, but around it like a bad jigsaw puzzle. It was trying to do its best to cling to the old streets and old buildings that defined it. Unlike New York or Chicago, that hadn’t minded blasting down a few streets to fix problems, Boston was proud to let it linger.

New York and Chicago also had taken advantage of having mostly burned down at some point or another and used that opportunity to build streets in such novel concepts as “straight lines” and “grids.”

Not in Boston.

Major city improvements also never did quite go as planned. The Big Dig was testament to that. It made the populace a little less eager to take on new ones.

This intersection was a perfect example of Boston’s problem. Three lanes of road meeting two lanes meeting one. A seventeenth-century church, a nineteenth-century hotel, and two large glass structures of two very different styles all met at the same point.

School Street, meets Tremont, meets Beacon. Really, School Street should have been bulldozed a long time ago, if it weren’t for the string of historic buildings. Although, one of them seemed to have been turned into a Chipotle somewhere along the way, so there was that.

Old and new, woven around each other to try and make a cohesive whole.

She resembled the city. Maybe a little too much for comfort. Maybe that’s another reason she hated it so much.

Her thoughts strayed and tried to lock onto her opinions of the city below. Anything to keep them from the matter at hand. Anything to keep away from dwelling on what brought her to her former home.

But like a bad yo-yo, her thoughts spun out, ran dry, and let her dangling on the end of the string without anywhere to go. She had to wind it all back up and face the facts. The TV behind her was buzzing away, the local news personalities yammering pointless observations and speculations about one very undeniable thing—this was a city gripped in fear.

People were afraid to go out. They were afraid to leave their houses and apartments after dark. They had a perfectly good reason, by her estimation.

There had been murders.

Messy murders.

One person getting beheaded in an alleyway was awful, but not international news. Two people being dismembered, blood streaking the walls like it had been caused by a piece of rogue farm equipment, and people began to take notice.

But it didn’t stop. Every night, people went entirely missing…or were found in pieces. The sickest part was that the more apt description would be “pieces were found.” The dismembered bodies were never whole. Bits were being taken, but not just any bits. The important ones you’d notice, like the head or the whole torso. They only ever left the limbs behind, if anything other than just the blood.

Nobody had caught sight of what was causing the mayhem. At first, Veil had ignored the news, chocking it up to human, non-magic using crazies, until the blood left behind by one was scrawled onto the wall in a symbol. It was a circle, with angled triangles and pentagons inside of it. It bore all the hallmarks of a kind of ceremonial magic that she was all too familiar with.

It was dribbly, dripping down the cement surface, put there by hand by whoever—or whatever—had murdered the man left crumpled in a heap of torn up parts nearby. The writing was sloppy, the Enochian was mangled, but it had been clear enough.

After that, no matter her hatred for the city and her desire to never come back to Boston, she had to do something to stop whatever was transpiring. She couldn’t look the other way.

Neither could her friend, who was currently tapping away at his laptop like a madman. They were a team. He found her the jobs, she went out and did them. They had the same goal—to make sure as few people in this world suffered the same fate that they both had.

Veil’s job?

Cult hunter.

Not like she carried a card, or anything. She called it a job, but it wasn’t like you go off to get certified in it. She had enough background in the topic to be an “expert.” Both in the creatures that stalked the shadows, and the kind of crazies who worshipped them.

Demons were real. Angels could be worse. Even worse than them, were the humans who dedicated themselves in service to them, who prayed and knelt in devotion to one or more of the ancient creatures.

The ones who had their silly little altars and lit their candles and drew their symbols in chalk on the floors weren’t so bad. They were harmless, and she let them slide by. It was the ones who then etched those symbols in human flesh that were the bigger problem.

She hunted them down, one by one, and did what she needed to do to make sure they wouldn’t hurt anyone again. That was her bad excuse for “work.” It didn’t even come with a paycheck. Not really. Once and a while she’d take a gig here and there that came with a dollar sign attached. Missing persons, mostly. It was lame, but they paid extremely well.

She looked back at her friend. Richard was in his forties now, gray at the temples, glasses having grown thicker over the years, as he peered over them and typed away. She had met him when he was eight years old. He had been huddled in a cage in the corner, his head buried in his hands. He had listened to the screams of his mother and six-year-old sister as they were diced to pieces, dissected alive all in the name of glorious Belphegor.

The joke was on them. Belphegor had retired years ago.

She had “dispatched” the cult in the best way she knew how. She murdered them all. She hated taking lives, but they had given up their right to live when they had started chopping up innocent people. She had taken the boy outside and hugged him and stayed by his side until she had to make her exit as the cops arrived. Veil didn’t do well with the police. Too many very good questions that she had entirely unacceptable answers to, like “how did you get through the locked door?” and “does any of the blood you’re wearing belong to you?”

It usually didn’t. That tended to be the wrong answer. Cops got huffy at that kind of thing, go figure.

She’d kept an eye on Richard as he grew up. His family was gone, his dad having been shot by the cultists when he had tried to protect his family from being taken. The poor kid had been put right into child services. He was adopted at around ten years old by a nice family who cared for him. She had made sure he had everything he’d needed. When he went to college—and went on to get his doctorate—she had quietly paid for his tuition and made it look like a miraculous scholarship award.

She’d done her best to stay out of his life and to stay away from him. She only brought trouble, and any association he had with her was going to end poorly. That worked right up until the invention of the internet. Then, Richard had found her. He tracked her down by finding the occult bastards she was after right before she did.

The first few times he pulled that stunt she walked away from him and told him to go away and leave her alone. She insisted that she was dangerous. But the man was brutally stubborn, and he kept at her for years. Finding her targets before she would, texting her the locations—she still didn’t know how he had gotten her phone number—and meeting her at the scene before she went to work.

Finally, she had given up. He was better at hunting down her quarry than she was, that was for damn sure. And, once she’d given up and let him help, they had become fast friends. It was Richard’s digging and connections that had turned up the classified image of the circle painted in blood on the alley wall in Boston.

If it had been any ol’ ceremonial magic circle, she would have come to stop the sect and it wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. It wouldn’t have bothered her or brought up the memories that were pulling at the back of her mind and ruining her mood.

But it hadn’t been just any circle. Ceremonial circles have rules. They work in certain ways, using lines and the right words to draw power. They tap into energies and pull from them. One wrong line, and it’s as useful as a lead balloon. This one…had invented a whole new set of rules. But, much like looking at the first cubist painting by Picasso, she knew it still worked. Even if it defied everything she knew.

The other problem is whose power it was tapping into. Whose name was scrawled in sloppy but legible Enochian. It was one that made her skin crawl. One that she knew quiet well.

Asmodeus.

The sun was going down, and that meant that it was almost time to get going. All the recent murders and disappearances all happened at night. Cliché, but not unexpected. She walked away from the window and slumped down at the opposite side of the table from Richard. Their hotel rooms had a little adjoining living room-ish kind of thing with a kitchenette, and while it was tiny, it worked. Hopefully they wouldn’t be in town for long.

The doctor in philosophical history—she thought that’s what it was, she could never get it right—had quickly taken over the table that was supposed to be used for eating, and had covered it in scraps of paper, notebooks, leather bound volumes, manuscripts, and his laptop. Research.

He didn’t acknowledge her she had sat down. He probably hadn’t noticed. Veil began to absently spin a piece of paper on the table in front of her underneath her fingers. “Any leads yet?”

“No,” he replied after a long pause and without looking up from his screen. “No one’s seen anything like the circle they drew on the wall. It’s…based in the lesser key, but it’s a new alteration. I have a few friends working on it, but nothing’s turned up yet. I still think we should contact the Church and see if they know anything. I’ve heard reports they’re already in the city, and—”

“No. Absolutely not. I haven’t hidden from them for this long only to screw it up now.”

“But—”

“We can solve it ourselves. We can. We always have before.”

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll keep trying. But I can’t make heads or tails of it. It’s entirely new. I can’t figure what they’re after.”

“Well, they need to be stopped. I don’t really care what they’re after.”

“Are they trying to bring him back?” That was the first time Richard looked up over the top of his glasses and screen at her, gray eyes worried.

“They can’t. Not from where I put him. Nobody can. Either they’re too stupid to know that, or they’re after something else.” At least, she was pretty sure of that. She at least sounded confident.

Richard shook his head, and sighed, at a loss. “If you manage not to knock one of their heads off in the process, perhaps we can question them.”

She snickered. “I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.” She stood again and stretched, cracking her back. She walked into her hotel room and grabbed her weapons. Two metal rods, about two feet long each, and otherwise nondescript. They weren’t flashy, but they were more than effective. Flashy got you noticed—flashy drew questions. Two metal rods earned you some squinty-eyed looks from the cops and the locals but could be mistaken for the weirdest new sporting craze, like those people who speed-walk with weights or something.

She slipped them into the holsters she wore on her legs, one on each side, tied her long hair back into a ponytail, grabbed her coat, and headed for the door.

“Be careful, Veil.”

“It’s just some losers collecting hearts because they read somewhere they could cast fireballs with them,” she grinned as she wiggled her fingers at him as if she were casting a cartoonish spell. “Just another day on the job, Richie. I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, yes,” he laughed. “But something feels odd about this one. The public attacks in a major city? And it’s his name they wrote…”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

“And here, of all places, to have his name appear?”

She gritted her teeth and did her best not to yell at him that she was very much aware of the fact that this wasn’t a coincidence, no matter how you looked at it. “Just idiots in robes Richie. Like it always is.”



***



Veil walked down the street, humming to herself, slurping happily on her frappa-mocha-something from the coffee shop. She loved coffee. Adored it. And this was a frilly, far-too-sweet concoction loaded with more sugar and whipped cream than any of the actual caffeinated substance.

Fine by her.

It was seven o’clock, and it was already growing dark in mid-October fall. It was gorgeous in Boston that time of year. Even if it didn’t have a whole lot of trees to turn color, it was worth it. Halloween season was a special time in New England. The whole region seemed to just appreciate the holiday more—you could almost feel it tap into the earth. She used to spend a lot of time up on the north shore in Ipswich in her early years, and she remembered how inherently creepy that whole region was. She had loved it at the time and eaten up every volume of Lovecraft any of her so-called family would bring her. That, along with any scrap of anything spooky or morbid she could get her hands on.

The memories made her smile even as they dug a dagger into her heart. It was a painful kind of hate and fondness that mixed together as she took another slurp from the sugary mess she had purchased. It chased away her melancholy. Hard not to, when it even had little chocolate sprinkles on top.

No self-respecting adult had the right to buy something this stupid with a straight face. And she hadn’t, to be fair. She’d been grinning the whole time.

Focus, you moron. Focus. All the murders and disappearances had centered in and around the center of the city. And so, she started there. Worked her way out in slowly-widening circles. Which, really, were probably squiggly lines knowing the stupid street layout.

But she didn’t plan on walking around all night just hoping to trip over a bunch of assholes trying to summon whoever-or-whatever they were intent on calling. She had a plan. She was just trying to find the right place. It’s surprisingly hard to find a dark and deserted alley when you need one. Maybe they all went out of fashion. Not to mention, a dark and deserted alley that felt right.

Magical hoo-ha and all that stupidity. She didn’t understand it. But she felt it like the weather. People didn’t need to understand why it rained to know it was wet.

Finally, after an hour or two—and long after her sugary monstrosity had run out—she found the right spot. Glancing left and right, making sure she was alone, shed pulled a piece of white chalk out of her coat pocket. Humming and half-singing, murmuring the lyrics to “Black Hole Sun” to herself, she drew on the side of the Mexican restaurant the symbols she needed.

It took her three attempts of one line to get it right, and she had to use the melting ice from her coffee cup to wipe it clean. “Damn it,” she grumbled.



“Penmanship, dear. Penmanship is key.” The hand that settled on the back of hers was warm and gentle. Even if the voice was cold and trying to sound stern, it was clear it was for show. His emerald eyes seemed to catch her in them and hold her. They always had, and they always would.

“Start again, this time, try it with straight lines for a change.”

“A novel concept,” she teased back. “And here I was trying to be artistic.” No, really, she was just awful at drawing straight lines. He could do it with perfect and practiced ease, like it wasn’t even difficult. “Nobody appreciates my talent.”

“There is a time and place for all things.” He chuckled at her sarcastic joke. “Try again.”



Veil bit back the memory and swallowed it hard into the back of her throat. That, or the smell of the rotting dumpster nearby, was making her nauseous. Probably both. But finally, the work was done. She took a step back and eyed her work. It was a little crooked. She could almost hear his voice haunting her, pointing out over her shoulder the bits she had screwed up. He had been a perfectionist in all things.

The worst part was that he had never been wrong. It was hard to argue when he was right, but it hadn’t ever stopped her from trying.

Biting back the melancholy again, she sighed. It wasn’t flawless, but it’d work just fine. She tossed her plastic coffee cup into the offensive dumpster and walked back up to the symbol and put her palm flat against the center.

It was like popping a bottle of champagne. She had created the bottle, the cork, and the fizzy substance that wanted nothing more than to explode. If she didn’t pop it right, she’d take the cork to the face, shatter something, and otherwise just make a massive mess of things.

She shut her eyes and let herself focus on the feeling of it beneath her palm. Like a racing river beneath a smooth, frozen surface.

Some people had to chant to do magic. Some people used symbols. Some people gestured. Most did all three. They were all tools. They were guns, knives, swords, or tanks. They all existed for the same purpose—getting the job done. Magic was about will. Sheer, unadulterated force of will over the world around them.

Veil was shit at magic.

Well, no, that wasn’t true. She was better than the cultists she was always hunting. They sucked at magic. She had always just been surrounded by people far better at it than she was. She had always felt like the child playing adults at poker. And for all intents and purposes, she had been.

At least she didn’t have to chant or flail around like a moron. Her weapon of choice was drawing symbols and using those to tap into the world around her. She felt the lines she had drawn and used it like a fork. Just plunked it into the power around her and willed it to do what she wanted.

And right now, she wanted a compass. Something to show her the way to the fuckers that decided to make murder the new fall fashion statement.

She really had to learn to be more specific.

“Command me, Mistress!”

Oh, no.

Oh, fucking Hell.

Veil jumped back from the wall and watched in horror as an…imp pushed itself forward from the wall. Oozed out of the concrete as it borrowed molecules and substance from the building itself to create its body.

It flapped its little purple bat wings, and it landed on a trashcan nearby with a loud thunk. It was a chubby little bastard, and it looked like its little leathery wings wouldn’t hold up its girth on a good day. It petted its stomach with a toothy grin, tipped its stumpy, piggish face back and snuffed loudly in the direction of the dumpster. “What smells good?”

Veil groaned.

She hated imps.

It stood itself up and flapped its wings, and then landed on her shoulder like a fat, leathery cat. “What is our mission, Mistress?”

She tried to keep the disgust off her face. She was pretty sure she failed. Well, this is what she got for not being very specific in what kind of compass she wanted to create. “We’re hunting cultists. Murderers. They’re out somewhere and the city and I need to find them.”

“Oooh! Yes, yes! I can do these things! Yes!” It pointed a stubby, clawed finger out of the alley. “We should go that way!”

“That’s the only way out.”

“I know!” It grinned toothily. “Exactly! Then it is the right choice!”

She really hated imps.

“Just make yourself invisible. The last thing I need is to cause a panic.”

“I…cannot do this thing.” The imp pouted as he shoved a finger inside his ear and wiggled it, as if trying to get out some wax. She wanted to chuck it off her shoulder, but, she had summoned it, and that’d be rude. “Ah! I know! The humans have a beast for this kind of deed!”

It flew from her shoulder to the ground, and as it landed, its body flashed brightly and changed. She had to turn her head away, and when she looked back, the worlds weirdest looking dog was sitting at her feet, tongue hanging out the side of its mouth, panting happily.

Reaching down to pick up the leash it had the presence of mind to summon with its change, she sighed. “All right. Let’s go.”

It bounced up to its feet eagerly and bounded toward the entrance to the alleyway. But not before stopping to lift a leg and take a piss on a few boxes and empty kegs.

She really, really hated imps.
Kat has always been a storyteller. With ten years in script-writing for performances on both the stage and for tourism, she has always been writing in one form or another. When she isn’t penning down fiction, she works as Creative Director for a company that designs and builds large-scale interactive adventure games. There, she is the lead concept designer, handling everything from game and set design, to audio and lighting, to illustration and script writing. Also on her list of skills are artistic direction, scenic painting and props, special effects, and electronics. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Theatre Design, she has a passion for unique, creative, and unconventional experiences. In her spare time, she builds animatronics and takes trapeze classes.

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