It's Raining Angels and Demons

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Title Page

  It’s Raining Angels and Demons

  (Slacker Demons 2)

  Jennifer Stevenson

  ...

  An imprint of

  Musa Publishing

  Copyright Information

  It’s Raining Angels and Demons (Slacker Demons 2), Copyright © Jennifer Stevenson, 2012

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  ...

  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

  ...

  Musa Publishing

  633 Edgewood Ave

  Lancaster, OH 43130

  www.musapublishing.com

  ...

  Published by Musa Publishing, October 2012

  ...

  This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

  ...

  ISBN: 978-1-61937-305-1

  ...

  Editor: Rory Olsen

  Cover Design: Kelly Shorten

  Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna

  Content Warning

  This book contains adult language and scenes. This story is meant only for adults as defined by the laws of the country where you made your purchase. Store your books carefully where they cannot be accessed by younger readers.

  Dedication

  For Rich, as always

  Chapter One

  I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN it was too good to be true as soon as they gave me sealed orders.

  But at first I was optimistic. Here I sat in the belly of one of our biggest black ops helicopters with forty-nine of my fellow demons, stripped naked to our bat wings and our fanny packs, ready to make our entry into the field at oh-one-hundred.

  We were hovering over a sleepy little neighborhood in Chicago, a place I’ve only seen on television.

  But we weren’t moving.

  Because not content with launching an all-out assault, the Regional Office was coordinating, if you can imagine that, the assault with a similar vehicle from the Home Office. Two immense, cumbersome bureaucracies, so old and sloppy they’re like zombies with dead parts dropping off all over, coordinating.

  Just trying to picture fifty naked angels in one of their gooney-bird airships, my mind boggled.

  Still, as I say, I was chuffed to be back in the field. After manning a desk for centuries, I tingled in places I’d forgotten I had.

  I flexed my wings and tested my talons. Yup. Not too rusty.

  We hovered.

  As I sat there, wearing nothing but a fanny pack containing the essentials—credit card, toothbrush, condoms full of holes, and my orders—I realized that something had gone wrong.

  What was holding things up?

  I could hear explosions below us, reaching almost as high as our helo. Surely no earthly weapons could have an effect on us?

  The team captain yelled the order.

  Guys ahead of me were bailing out of the open bay now. Flashes of brilliant-colored light went off intermittently. I smelled sulfur, though that could have been me. They were jumping down into it.

  By the lingering glow of one long red blast, I furtively pulled out my orders. This was strictly against procedure, but I was a field operative for only four centuries. I’d been a desk clerk a lot longer.

  I didn’t trust the Regional Office not to fuck something up.

  I peered at the orders sheet.

  Boy, was I surprised. At the name of our lone target most of all. This whole operation, fifty ops from each office, a joint task force, the whole unfathomably complex and bureaucratic rigmarole, just to get one guy?

  Oh well. Mine not to reason why. Mine but to get out there and make somebody else die.

  The line in front of me dwindled rapidly.

  Geronimo.

  Or something like that.

  As I bailed out, I saw the red, bat-winged figures of my teammates below me. They weren’t descending in tight, vulture-like, controlled spirals.

  They were falling like rocks.

  Occasionally a wing would catch the air and a guy would slow, twirling insanely like a maple seed.

  Then—bam!—I could hear them hitting rooftops, the ground, cars.

  Holy Moses.

  So, again contrary to orders, I veered sharply as I exited the helo, gliding westward away from the landing zone. Now I saw my opposite numbers exiting their gooney bird, and they, too, were falling like rocks, like albatrosses winged and flailing.

  Those colored sparks were mostly gone, although I could now see a huge blaze of multicolored fire below, arranged in a squarish form. Rooftop, I guessed. And then foom, just as I was congratulating myself on escaping whatever had gotten the rest of the task force, another shell went off from that rooftop.

  I descended through a cloud of green sparks.

  I smelled ashes and cinders in the air as I skimmed over the landing zone. It was those almost-extinguished, darkened sparks that had got my teammates, I was willing to bet.

  Shit, and I was headed right down into the stuff.

  I soared down in a tight spiral through sparks that stung and numbed me.

  Unbelievable. Had those ground-bound land mammals finally figured out how to fight back against heaven and hell?

  Unthinkable.

  Unless it wasn’t them at all, but this one guy we were after.

  That made sense. He’d always been a smart one.

  My wings had gone numb. I felt myself beginning to spin out of control.

  I saw a wall and a vast area of darkness beyond it.

  Another tremendous green flower erupted in the sky above me. I was temporarily blinded.

  When my eyes cleared, I saw I was very close to hitting that wall. I had just enough time to realize this, to try sticking out a wing to divert, and to see the last of the angels skimming just below me.

  He hit the top of the wall and flipped over it like a Chinese acrobat, hitting my thigh a glancing blow with his wing.

  The two of us tumbled over the wall.

  We fell twenty feet into a pond.

  Keek and I were putting ourselves to sleep by complaining about men when we heard a commotion in the street. She peeked out first. Something banged like two cars smacking each other good. “Oh my gosh!” she yelped.

  I came to the window. “What is it? I’m in my nightgown.”

  “This guy just fell off a building and hit that car. Oh my God, there’s goes another one!”

  I looked past her. A guy was indeed lying on his back on the hood of a parked car. It seemed he had landed on a sheet, something white anyway. A woman came running out of the apartment building across the street and flung herself on him. That was weird.

  “Should we dial 9-1-1?” I said. Then I noticed the other guy. He’d landed on the sidewalk, where he lay apparently in a puddle of blood. No—was he lying on a big red cloth? And some woman was bending over him, kissing him. “Super weird.”

  “Hey, fireworks!” Keek said, pointing.

  Just as I looked, a huge blast of green spark
les erupted in the sky and then faded. Something white whizzed past our window, swooped, and went up. I gaped. It was a man, a naked man, and he had huge, white, feathery wings.

  A moment later, a naked man with huge, red bat wings followed him.

  They skimmed over the cemetery wall and disappeared into the darkness.

  “I’m going out there,” Keek announced, grabbing her keys and jamming her feet into her shoes.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “You don’t know what’s happening!”

  “Yes I do,” she said. “Take your mouth guard out. You’re scary enough with your hair down your back as it is.”

  “Wait, what’s happening?” I shrieked down the stairs after her. “You’re in your pajamas!”

  Her voice floated up to me. “It’s raining men!”

  I was waving my orders sheet, trying to dry it out enough to read it, when the angel dragged himself out of the pond. He had a long cut on one thigh that streamed blood.

  “Let me see your orders,” I said.

  “What happened?” He seemed dazed.

  “C’mon, c’mon.” I snapped my fingers. “This is war. Pay attention.”

  He hunted in his own fanny pack and came up with his own soaking-wet orders sheet. I unrolled it.

  “Here we go. No, bless it, there’s no mission target listed on this one.” I looked at my own orders sheet and got a shock.

  The name and address of the guy we were after was gone. Big ol’ blank spot on the page.

  Good thing I’d read it illegally before we jumped.

  I looked at the angel’s orders again. There, in the CCs, was his own name, Jioffriel, carefully circled in pencil. But where the target’s name and address had been, it was blank.

  What could this possibly mean?

  Whatever.

  We were cut off from our teams. All I had to work with were incomplete orders and this doofy-looking, injured angel.

  “We’d better share names,” I said. “If one of us gets into trouble, we can extract each other.”

  “I’m Jioffriel. Jeff to my friends,” the angel said faintly, holding his hand over his bleeding thigh.

  “Mutmumtazarek,” I said. “Mutt to you.” I looked at the blood running out between his fingers. “We’d better get moving.”

  He squinted. “You’re a demon, right?”

  What kind of field ops had the Home Office scraped up? I gave him a smack upside the head. “You seem a little fuzzy, bro. That why they circle your name on every memo?”

  He put his hand on his head, transferring some of the blood running from his thigh to his face. “Ow.”

  “Or is it to keep all those kajillions of angels busy?” I looked past him and saw the cemetery gate. “There’s the exit. Let’s reconnoiter.”

  We limped through the shadows of the trees and peered down the driveway at the world outside the tall, barred gate.

  The first thing I saw was an angel lying on his back on the crushed-in hood of a car, not thirty yards away. A woman who seemed to be in pajamas knelt on the hood, her hands on each side of his face. She seemed to be sucking on him.

  Beyond them, I could see another woman bending over a demon who’d fallen on the street. His red leather wings twitched and flopped helplessly. As I watched, she bent to him and opened her mouth, completely fearless.

  I backed into the deep shadow of a chestnut tree. Jeff staggered. I put my shoulder under his.

  “Angels and demons helpless?” I muttered. “Being vampirized by—by sleepwalkers?”

  What was happening?

  I admit I sweated with fear.

  When I looked again, I saw someone quite close by, silhouetted against distant car headlights, grasping the iron bars of the gate.

  An angel! And she wasn’t stunned or dead!

  I felt a momentary relief, until I remembered that there were no girl angels on the task force. Home Office prejudice. Of course, there were no girl demons on the task force either, but we’re supposed to be chauvinist pigs.

  Sure looked like an angel, though.

  She was tall, with long, fluffy, fair hair that caught the light of car headlights behind her, and she wore a long, light-colored gown or robe. I could see the outline of her big, curvy body whenever the headlights flashed.

  So she couldn’t be an angel. That meant she was one of the vampire women. And she’d found us.

  It’s raining men!

  My heart gave one crazy thump, and then I went pelting down the stairs after Keek, stuffing my keys into the pocket of my flannel granny nightgown and nearly falling because I was trying to scuff my feet into my Crocs at the same time.

  Keek was already in the street, running for the cemetery gate.

  The girl on the guy on the car looked up and hissed as we passed. “Mine!”

  “All right, sheesh,” I muttered, puffing to catch up with Keek.

  Keek turned. “Are you coming?” She saw the woman kissing the guy on the car hood and stopped, her mouth hanging open. I ran across Ravenswood Avenue to the cemetery gate.

  And there they were, walking out of the deepest darkness of the cemetery, appearing and disappearing in flashes as they passed under the heavy-leafed trees. A pale man, limping, caped in white wings. And beside him, with an arm under the pale one’s shoulder, a dark man.

  I put my hands on the cold iron bars of the gate. My breath stopped.

  He was winged, too, but his wings were dark, bat-shaped, with pointy bits going up and down. He was kind of helping the angel-winged guy along. As they approached the gate, they stopped and looked at us.

  He was bare naked.

  I breathed shallowly and quietly, in case he should disappear.

  The big light on top of the gate shone down on them.

  The angel was holding his hand over his thigh, which seemed to be bleeding.

  The other one—oh my.

  The other one was sculpted like a Greek god, all bulk and flat planes of muscle. His skin tone, in the yellowish streetlight and the whiter light from the cemetery gate lamps, seemed to shift from a rich brown to mahogany red.

  As he turned, putting his hands on the angel as if to say, “Stay here,” I saw that he had a thick shock of reddish-black hair that stuck up all roostery, like a Mohawk, and it bristled all down his back—but it wasn’t a ponytail. It grew all down his neck and down his back, tapering until it disappeared in the middle of his back.

  And, oh, that back.

  I have a weakness for muscly backs.

  When he turned back to face the gate, he seemed to grow taller. His shoulders got bigger. His wings rose up behind him a moment. And his big pale demon cock stood like a truncheon at his crotch.

  He looked ready to pounce.

  I should probably have backed away from the gate.

  I couldn’t move.

  He came about three feet away and stopped, looking down at me, his eyes full of danger. Big dark eyes. Strong chin. His face looked battered, all man. Lovely cheekbones, though. Little—ulp—little red horns curving out of his brow.

  My mouth was totally dry.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  And in that moment, I knew he was afraid.

  “Mine,” I heard that woman on the car hood hiss again.

  His gazed flicked past me. What must he think?

  “Mutt,” said the angel faintly.

  The man in front of me—okay, the demon, I couldn’t kid myself he was anything else—turned toward him, snarling.

  Suddenly I thought, He’s afraid.

  Somehow he’d fallen into this place, and strange things were happening, strange things he didn’t understand.

  He was big and beautiful and dangerous and scared. Like a puma trapped in an inner city alley, lost outside his natural habitat of forest and barren rock, he was freaking out.

  I didn’t want to scare him worse.

  I didn’t even care if he was a demon.

  I breathed his name. “Mutt.”

  Isn�
��t there some kind of rule, if you say their name three times, they show up? Or is that just in the movies?

  His head snapped around. Our eyes met. I leaned into the gate, feeling my nightgown billow around me, smelling linden flowers perfuming the air, gripping the iron bars so hard I didn’t realize they were cold.

  Something inside me opened up like a door.

  I realized how very large I felt inside. Big enough to cradle a puma.

  He stood in front of me, his shoulders bulked up, his wings high behind him, his hands fisted at his sides, his chest heaving and running with sweat.

  He’s so afraid.

  I wanted to reassure him. Gentle him somehow.

  “Mutt, I don’t care,” I began. I don’t care if you’re from hell.

  Bright light flashed on his face from behind me. He winced.

  “Come away from the gate. The cemetery is now closed.”

  In that moment, Keek screamed in my ear.

  “The blood! Oh my God, he’s bleeding! The blood!” She stood beside me, clawing through the bars.

  I looked past Mutt. The angel was collapsing onto the driveway. Mutt turned and ran to him.

  “The cemetery is closed for the night. Come away from the gate.”

  Damned cops.

  I pried my fingers off the bars and took one step back.

  Mutt picked up the angel in his big, maroon, muscly arms and loped away into the darkness.

  The cop’s loudspeaker blared on and on.

  Reluctantly, I turned away.

  I was probably the only person who had heard the blonde whisper my name.

  Damn Jeff for telling her!

  I was panting as if I’d flown a hundred miles.

  Every hair on my body stood up. I felt a crazy urge to throw Jeff to the ground and run back to her.

  Mutt, she had whispered. Mutt, I don’t care.

  My arms trembled, holding Jeff. If she said my name again, I’d have to go…

  The amplified voice came again, ordering them away from the gate. Police?

  Anyway, they distracted the blonde. I hitched Jeff into my arms and ran away along the wall, out of sight line of the gate. The shrieker woman was talking to the police, babbling about an angel bleeding inside the cemetery.