I, ANGEL
Angels in L.A. #1
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2020 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Christian Bentulan of Covers by Christian (2020)
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
for R. with love
Contents
Free Box Set!
A Quick Reminder Blurb
1. What?
2. Dreamwalking For Dummies
3. This Is Where You Live?
4. High School
5. P.I. For Me
6. Cold Coffee
7. Aren’t You Going To Get That?
8. It’s You
9. Landlord
10. Malibu
11. Crossed Streams
12. She’s Like You
13. Celebrities And Their Problems
14. What Are You?
15. Kills Many
16. Gaslight
17. Bad Ideas
18. Three Strikes
19. Delicious
20. Movie Star
21. Steve Mcqueen
22. Partners
23. The Roosevelt
24. The Vision
25. The Pool
26. Idiot
27. You Lose
28. Road Trip
29. Hollywood Sign
30. The Hollow Oak
31. Enemy
32. The Reckoning
33. I, Angel
34. Open Doors
What to read next
Join the Light Brigade!
Reviews are Author Hugs
Sample Pages
1 / Back to Normal
About the Author
A Quick Reminder Blurb
Some angels don’t get harps. We hunt demons.
I never asked to be an angel. Truthfully, being an angel kinda sucks.
This gig didn’t come with an instruction manual. No one told me about the mess of powers I’d inherit, with no idea how to control. Or that I’d black out when I fly, waking up naked in random places. Or that I could only sleep in windowless rooms.
Or that every time I pick up a weapon, there’s a good chance someone dies.
Oh, and I can’t drink alcohol anymore, since I randomly start fires.
Pretty hard to maintain a social life, given that––much less date.
But I, Dags Jourdain, do good. Sort of. I mean, I try.
When I’m not hunting demons, I work as a P.I. in Hollywood, California.
One night, I get in a demon fight in an alley, and accidentally save the life of a movie star, and everything changes. Meanwhile, someone opened a hell portal under the Hollywood sign, a dead guy left me his dog, and a homicide detective who hates me from high school is trying to decide if I’m a serial killer.
Did I mention being an angel kinda sucks?
I, ANGEL is the first book in the ANGELS IN L.A. series by USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, JC Andrijeski. It’s a gritty angel urban fantasy, ideal for fans of K.F. Breene, Shayne Silvers, Patricia Briggs, C.N. Crawford, Linsey Hall
Chapter 1
What?
A dog’s wet, slobbery, warm tongue ran up the side of his face.
Dogs liked him. They liked him a lot.
Depending on the day, it was either a blessing or a curse.
In this particular instance, it probably saved his life.
“Pick up the gun, asshole!” the woman yelled. “I threw it right at you!”
Dags stared dazedly at the weapon as it swam into focus.
It lay on the asphalt, not far from the brick alley wall he now vaguely remembered slamming into, some unclear amount of time ago. He even remembered the specific gun.
Looking at it, he recoiled, grimacing involuntarily. His head felt like someone had taken a machete and tried to split his skull open like a cantaloupe, but he still had no desire to pick up the damned gun, much less point it at anyone.
Was that cannon really hers? Had she been lugging that thing around in her purse all this time? Did she have a permit for that thing? And if it was hers, why did she expect him, Dags, to be the one to shoot someone with it? Why didn’t she shoot them herself?
And where did the damned dog come from?
Even as he thought it, some other subset of his mind catalogued the gun in rote:
Desert Eagle. Gas-operated, rotating bolt. Semi-automatic. Designed by Magnum Research Inc. This particular edition was a Mark VII .357 Magnum with a fourteen-inch barrel, stainless steel, accessory mount with a laser scope.
That thing could do some serious damage.
All the more reason to leave it the hell alone.
“I don’t do guns,” he slurred, shoving it away.
It skittered across the alley floor, sliding under a dumpster about ten yards away.
Pushing aside the dog’s cold, wet nose, he scratched its ears out of habit even as he fought to push himself up with his hands.
“Are you crazy?” The woman stared at Dags like he’d just slapped her. Or maybe like he’d just told her he was a unicorn who only ate chocolate-covered strawberries and farted rainbows. “You’re a pacifist? Are you kidding me right now?”
Dags could sympathize.
Not enough to want to go after the gun, but yeah, he got it.
He only made it about halfway to his knees, when a heavy, booted foot connected, hard, with the small of his back. The same part of his mind that catalogued the gun did the same to the weight, shape, and relative precision of that booted foot⏤even as the blow knocked him forward, nearly face-planting him into the asphalt.
Male. Roughly six feet, two inches.
Two hundred and forty pounds.
Fighting ability: expert. At least one black belt in some martial art or another. Probably some military-style training. Weaknesses: Drops right arm when he pulls back from jabs. Telegraphs kicks with grunts and/or heavy breaths. Has a weird habit of grinning right before a lunge. Conclusion: well-trained, but a bizarrely sloppy fighter. Too used to winning maybe, or maybe it had been too long since he fought someone good enough to challenge him.
But all that was just details. The real issue with this guy wasn’t his fighting ability, or lack thereof, and Dags knew it. Hell, that’s why he was here, instead of calling 911 and letting the police handle it.
The guy wasn’t human. Well, he wasn’t only human.
He was something else.
The boot came down again, too hard for a human of that weight and strength.
Dags caught himself with his hands.
He remembered how he got himself into this situation now.
Unlike Dags’ usual m.o., where he followed people for weeks, making sure he knew exactly who they were, what they were, researching them, studying their habits, getting a feel for them, the likelihood they’d hurt someone, this guy, Dags had more or less caught in the act. He’d seen him drag the woman into a dark alley, like something out of an old detective movie.
He saw the guy’s aura.
He knew there was something wrong with it.
By then, the not-human attacker had a hand over the woman’s mouth.
Dags didn’t have time to involve the police, even if he’d wanted to.
He also didn’t have time to game this one out.
To make matters worse,
the woman stuck around, even after he gave her an opening. Even after Dags told her to run.
She wouldn’t leave.
Why the hell wouldn’t she leave?
The guy got the jump on him, which didn’t help. Truthfully, that really threw Dags in the beginning of the fight, but somehow it didn’t bother him as much as the woman just standing there, watching him get his ass kicked.
Anyway, the other thing was Dags’ own fault.
He had the same weakness as the guy currently kicking him in the ribs. He’d gotten too cocky, too used to fighting people who were painfully easy to beat. He’d followed the guy into the alley without the slightest attempt to scope out the scene from a safer angle.
“Get up!” the woman yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dags looked up at her in disbelief.
Seeing her standing there, against the opposite wall, which was covered, funnily enough, in an enormous pair of spray-painted angel wings, he scowled.
He waved a hand at her towards the mouth of the alley.
“Get out of here!” he snapped.
“Get off the ground!” she shot back. “Are you stupid?”
“Why are you yelling at me?” He motioned again with a jerk of his hand. “And why are you still here? RUN! Don’t just stand there like it’s reality t.v. Get your ass out of here! NOW.”
Hands on her hips, she frowned.
Under other circumstances, he might have laughed.
She looked like she was about to ask to speak to his manager.
“GO!” he growled. “GO, damn it!”
She winced when the jerk with the steel-toed boots kicked him in the ribs again.
“I can’t just leave you!” she blurted, stomping her foot.
Dags blinked.
Then, he couldn’t help it… he let out a startled laugh.
It was sweet, in a dark-funny kind of way. It was also totally insane.
Here he was, taking a full-on beating so she wouldn’t see him use his abilities, and she was afraid of leaving him alone.
“Leave me!” he growled. “I’m telling you to leave⏤”
He gasped, absorbing another kick from those damned boots.
She recoiled visibly, wincing in sympathetic pain. He could see her indecision, even as a stubborn expression came to the twist of her full mouth, her hands gripping curved hips as she stared down at him.
Damn it. She wasn’t going to leave.
“Sic him!” the man yelled, kicking Dags again. “Stupid fucking dog… sic. Sic him! What the hell kind of dog are you, anyway?”
That’s when Dags realized whose dog it was.
He hated it when people trained their dogs to attack people.
He really hated that.
Not to mention how bizarre it was, bringing your dog along for a rape/kidnapping.
Then again, this guy had a demon inside him. He probably wasn’t thinking too clearly. Maybe he hadn’t taught the dog to attack people at all. Or maybe the dog just wasn’t obeying him right now because he sensed something off with his favorite human.
Dogs could be intuitive like that.
The woman was still standing there.
Usually, in a case with potential human witnesses, Dags would try to move the fight somewhere else. But he didn’t see any way of doing that without exposing himself even more. He could try yelling at her again, but from what he’d seen of her so far, he doubted it would do any good. He could just grab her and run, but then Dags risked non-human, psycho-stalker guy giving him the slip and maybe grabbing someone else.
Dags couldn’t risk that.
He’d have to deal with this guy in front of her.
He’d find a way to explain it to her later.
If worst came to worst, it was her word against his.
The steel-toed boot once more angled towards Dags’ back.
Twisting sideways, Dags rolled out from under it. Then he pushed himself smoothly forward in a somersault, rippling up in a single leap. He made it from his stomach to his back to both of his feet before the guy realized there was no Dags left there for him to kick.
Usually, a move like that would surprise whoever he was with, even non-humans.
It surprised the woman. Dags heard her gasp in shock.
But when he turned to face his assailant⏤
⏤a fist swung around and connected with Dags’ jaw, snapping his head sideways.
His mind, as always, registered a litany of information.
Left cross, roughly 1,200 pounds per square inch. The human host was probably a boxer, semi-pro, maybe even pro at one point. Southpaw, dropped his hand again, did some time, definitely some military training, maybe even served a few years⏤
The guy swung again.
Dags slid sideways and down, stepping smoothly under the hit, throwing his weight up along with his fist. He caught the other male solidly that time, hitting him with an uppercut to the solar plexus. Using the same momentum, he swung his other arm up and around and down in a Choy Li Fut move to connect with a sweet spot between the boxer’s neck and shoulder.
The boxer let out a gasp.
His eyes shone briefly, picking up light from the mouth of the alley, but Dags swore he saw recognition there.
In that bare second, the guy looked at Dags like he knew him.
Maybe he just knew what Dags was.
That was weird enough.
Dags only noted it in passing.
Some part of his mind had already clicked over, going from eccentric P.I. guy who helped people for money, to⏤something else. His normally clumsy, socially-awkward thing fell away in the same instant, sharpening to a single-point focus as he took in the broad face, the raised, meaty fists, a scar slicing through one eyebrow, a thick silver stud in a pierced ear, the overly dilated hazel eyes, a military tattoo on one forearm.
Dags noticed all of it.
In this state, his mind sucked up details like air.
He let go of the control he normally held over his body.
The rest of the time, his normal, non-working, non-demon-vigilante time, Dags gripped everything inside him like a clenched fist. He walked around like someone endlessly holding their breath, every muscle more or less a coiled spring.
It was part of why he rarely had much left for other people.
Dags rarely had the bandwidth to even pretend normalcy, or carry on a conversation like a normal person. He knew he came off as weird. He even sympathized with people who tried to make things go smooth with him.
Dags wasn’t smooth.
He clenched like that all day, every day⏤while he walked around, while he ate, while he hung out with other people, while he showered, while he sat in coffee shops staring up at Griffith Observatory.
He tried to do it while he slept.
His failure rate on that one was pretty high, though.
Even now, with over a decade of practice, he couldn’t quite master the sleep thing.
The boxer’s eyes flashed with an inhuman red glow, confirming what Dags already knew. The shock of light made Dags blink, and in that pause, the other man threw another punch, indecently fast.
Dags noted the speed and power behind it even as he slid out of the way, gliding right, and hooking around hard to hit the slightly shorter man in the ear.
That time, the guy hissed at him.
As in, actually hissed at him… like a snake. Or a pissed off cat.
“The Phoenix,” the man said, his hiss transforming into words.
Dags froze.
It hadn’t occurred to him until then, but it was the first time either of them had spoken, at least to one another. Dags had spoken to the woman, and the guy had yelled at his dog, but he’d never addressed Dags himself.
The boxer-demon smiled at him.
It was a really damned disturbing smile. It stretched the boxer’s thick, scarred lips, his eyes flashing abnormally bright with that red glow of demon light.
“The Phoenix will burn
. You’re too late, you pious fuck.”
Dags swung, but that time the boxer glided out of the way.
He moved fast enough that Dags frowned, puzzled even as he shifted his weight to compensate, following him. He was usually faster than demons. It was one serious perk since the Change. He was stronger than them, faster than them, usually smarter than them.
Which was the only reason he was still alive.
Dags shifted a shoulder back in reflex when that thick fist came his way again, sliding away and under the blow, but only just in time. He used the momentum to twist back, hooking his fist around. The demon ducked and weaved, and the blow glanced off his shoulder.
There was definitely something off with this guy… meaning, more off than most demons.
Most of them were pretty stupid. Mindless, even.
They wanted drugs, sex, sometimes blood, sometimes children, sometimes women, sometimes even money. Some wanted power and tried to ingratiate themselves into crime syndicates. Some tried for law enforcement, or even political office.
But they weren’t complicated.
Their wants and schemes were usually pretty straightforward.
Dags’ mind and eyes studied the way the other’s body absorbed the blow from his fist. This demon definitely took his hits a little too easily, moved a little too fast, seemed a little too unsurprised at Dags’ own strength and speed.
I, Angel Page 1