Prologue

  God is dead, and the world remains as ruined as before. Imagine for a moment the two entities most people in the world blame for their actions. God and Lucifer. Good and evil, right? Now imagine they’re gone. Who is left to blame for your choices? Your failures?

  Lucifer finally figured out how to get rid of their greatest obstacle in and outside of life. It was so simple that they wondered why the strategy never occurred to them across the billions of years prior.

  God and the Devil. An equation of balance between alleged evil and hypothetical righteousness. For God to disappear, it would only take the Devil doing the same. They need each other, though none of their followers know it. Or knew it. They know now.

  Lucifer challenged the Almighty to one final showdown, and in his wisdom or arrogance or exhaustion, the Lord agreed.

  Because they’d always hated New York City, that’s where Lucifer met their opponent. The Duel lasted all of 45 seconds, and it ended with the entire city in ruins. Nine million people died before they knew their home had become the stage for the Devil’s final gambit.

  In the end, Lucifer got what they wanted. And the shockwaves of that Duel ruined modern life for the entire continent, plunging North America into an apocalypse of its faithful’s own making. No internet. No electricity. No phones. Unpredictable weather patterns. Mummified riverbeds. Randomly blighted crops.

  Anyone with the sense and means left to rejoin the modern world that remained further South or across one of the oceans. And it wasn’t just humans. Many of the supernatural folks that called North America home and had for centuries, if not a millennium or two, felt the spiritual seismic blast of God and the Devil destroying one another. With the ruin that soon settled came a mass exodus of life, including mortal, semi-mortal, and immortal.

  Those who stayed behind fell into two groups. Those who could not leave. And those who simply chose not to.

  With God dead, most of the angels soon had their hands full trying to maintain Heaven, a repository of souls collected through the years. And with Lucifer no more, the demons fractured, many dissolving into petty wars for a poisonwood throne that still sits empty.

  The humans and less-powerful supernatural beings who remain on the now-dark, quiet continent find themselves in a semi-lawless frontier. As before the Duel, there are predators. There are prey. There are good souls and wicked minds. Miracles. Murders. Magic of different sorts.

  Now and again, folks show up from abroad with noble and ill intentions, trying to rebuild what once stood for a handful of centuries. But none are successful. For ruin clings to the land in a hungry and jealous way.

  Part of the continent was once called the United States. But now, it is simply called Nameless by those who remain. As before the Duel, those with power shape the fates of those without. Some righteous. Some vicious. Some uncaring of either. The year is 2050. And in a well-hidden tavern called Maeve’s Place, a half-breed angel sits and drinks, falling into all three categories depending on the day or even the hour.

  Chapter One

  Nobody came to Maeve’s Place without reason. That was the first rule of her enchantment concealing it. The second rule was that nobody could enter the space with malevolent intent. That one was a little more iffy because ethics exists on a spectrum with an expiration date long past. The final rule for the enchantment was that if Dysella wanted to continue living within Maeve’s Place, she had to hear at least five pleas for help every month and act on one of them.

  And so, on July 7, 2050, the half-breed angel found herself sitting on a creaky barstool, holding a bottle of devilpiss, and sighing while a splotchy, pale-skinned 12-year-old carrying a pistol much too large for her hands begged for help.

  “It’s the last thing I have from my family, and they’ve taken it,” the girl said, greasy black hair matted to her face with mud and dried blood. Her accent would have once been described as Bostonian, but few cities remain in Nameless. And Boston wasn’t a place many wanted to be anymore.

  Dysella sat, eyes forward, not looking into the child’s pleading stare because she was fucking tired. This was the second request she’d heard this month, and it wasn’t much more appealing than the nun she’d turned away asking for help escorting her wounded sister to what remained of Concord.

  Honestly, how one could even consider being a nun in this day and age is a more confusing matter than I care to consider, Dysella remembered thinking before throwing an old napkin at her.

  “I said no. Get lost, Sister.”

  “B—but you’re an angel. You have to help me,” she pleaded. They always tried to use that in a last-ditch effort. Like it was some kind of secret ace up their sleeve. As if saying that sentence automatically activated Dysella’s noble programming, a righteous sleeper agent eager to serve the masses.

  And most of the time, it just pissed her off. Because she knew it wasn’t just angel blood that ran through her veins.

  Subject: Dysella Thorn

  Age: 50

  Species: Half-breed angel (angel dominant/demon recessive)

  HP: 110/112

  Current Status: Partially inebriated

  The half-breed angel scratched the top of her head. Her long crimson hair bounced in response. She swished her bottle around. It was half-empty, and she was full bored. Her black jeans were torn at the knees, and the gray tank top she wore had seen better days. In fact, Dysella had seen better days.

  Her left arm was covered in random burns, and the other was scarred from where it’d been bitten at least 22 times by feral vampires. Most of them dead now. Well, more dead. The not-moving kind of dead.

  Boots with yellow thread sewn around the edges kicked against the bar and protected Dysella’s feet.

  “Stop kicking my bar, Dice,” a Black woman in a soft blue dress warned. She wore an apron over the garment that said “Kiss the cook. (I’m not the cook).”

  Her ears were pointed, and the bartender bore eyes greener than any remaining vegetation across Nameless. A wild magic hummed through her.

  Subject: Maeve Maxwell

  Age: ???

  Species: Fae (Godmother, Retired)

  HP: 316/316

  Current Status: Irritated with her boarder

  Maeve frowned at Dysella.

  “Why don’t you just go help her? You know as well as I do that when you start kicking the bar, you’re bored or restless or both. And I don’t want you around when you’re those things,” the bartender said, crossing her arms.

  “So you don’t want me to help a child in pursuit of finding my more noble self. You want me to do it because I’m annoying you. Is that it?” Dysella asked, taking a long drink from the brown translucent bottle.

  With a scowl, Maeve said, “You can either help this child recover her stuffed bear, or I can turn you into a flea and drown you in what’s left of that bottle.”

  The half-breed angel quickly chugged what remained of her devilpiss.

  “Now you can’t,” she said, carrying it over to the trash.

  Grumpy and sloppy as she got, Dysella knew better than to leave trash around that Maeve might find. Restless as she was, the half-breed angel knew her room here was an abode compared to the rest of Nameless.

  “Take your sword,” Maeve said as Dysella was halfway across the tavern. The squeaky wooden floors groaned under her boots. Sunlight screamed in through the windows by the front door, and Dysella’s feet were nearly in the light.

  “To recover a girl’s lost teddy bear? You really think that’s necessary?” Dysella said.

  Maeve put her hands on her hips.

  “You’ve yet to ask her what’s keeping her from the bear, dear. Sifting through the finer details was never one of your strongsuits.”

  Dysella’s eyes, one red, one gold, looked over at the wall behind the bar. Mounted next to four shelves of booze was a long sheathed blade, its crossguards detailed to look like wings, a pomel crafted with a steel knot on the end.

  It rattled against the hooks mounting it to the wall for a moment as the half-breed angel’s will traced over the blade. And then it lifted a few inches, spun through the air, and quickly landed at Dysella’s side. As if tied by an invisible belt, the sheath lined up with the annoyed warrior’s hip and fell in step with her.

  Equipment: One double-sided longsword

  Name: Mollie

  Material: Faerie Steel

  Damage: 12 when piercing/10 when slashing

  Abilities: Moves with Dysella’s focus and willpower, able to float and zip at great speeds. Flamechanneling (Can be used to channel two different types of flames across the blade with Dysella’s focus, mortal and hellfire. Adds 5 damage for orange flame. Adds 10 for black flame.)

  Before Dysella turned away, she saw Maeve blowing her a kiss. Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, the half-breed angel turned her cheek until she felt the trace of her girlfriend’s lips meeting her skin.

  All the things fae could use magic for, and she does this, Dysella thought, turning to leave.

  Walking out the front door, Dysella and her new companion stepped into a patch of forest north of a little town called Bravehaven that’d sprung up in the decade since God’s death. To those outside of the tavern, it would appear as though the pair exited from a large cave entrance sloping into the ground. As it had since the Duel, Maeve’s glamor kept the tavern well-hidden from prying eyes.

  “Do you live in town?” Dysella asked, pointing south toward a hiking trail in the forest. The July sunlight beat down on her bare shoulders, and she heard cicadas from every direction.

  It must have been close to 92F outside, and within just a few minutes, she already felt boob sweat crawling down into her black sports bra. Her back was sweating, too.

  Bravehaven was just a five-minute hike downhill from Maeve’s Place.

  The girl shook her head and pointed west.

  “My family’s house is two miles west of here, on the edge of the treeline.”

  Dysella sighed.

  And together, they started hiking through the forest.

  After about 10 minutes of hiking, the girl turned to look Dysella up and down.

  “I heard angels had wings. Where are yours?”

  The annoyed warrior scoffed.

  “Let’s focus on the basics. What took your stupid bear?”

  With a deep frown, the girl balled her fists and said, “She’s not a stupid bear!” The girl shoved her hands into the pockets of her jean shorts. Her sandals crunched down on a dried flower.

  “Her name’s Ramona, and. . . she’s the last thing my mom gave me before she got sick.”

  Dysella bit her tongue and stifled a curse.

  Above the pair, a hawk circled the cloudless sky. It cried out with a mighty shriek and dove into a different part of the woods, having sighted prey.

  “I know you’re an angel, and it’s probably different, but. . . haven’t you ever had something taken from you before?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Gritting her teeth, Dysella tried not to picture their faces. The memory screamed in the back of her head. “Get her out of here! Go!” a man’s voice yelled. Stopping for a second and closing her eyes, Dysella quieted a growl threatening to rip from her throat.

  As the girl turned to look at her in confusion, Dysella wiped her forehead with a handkerchief from her pocket and continued hiking.

  “Course I have, kid,” Dysella grumbled at last.

  Silence fell over the pair as they crossed a two-lane highway and continued onward into more forest on the other side.

  More cicadas sounded off as they walked along.

  At last, Dysella cleared her throat and spoke again.

  “What took Ramona?”

  The girl looked at the forest floor in thought.

  “Same thing that took my family’s house,” she said.

  Dysella stopped under a large oak tree.

  “So I’m not just getting your bear back, but an entire house? Don’t you think that would have been important to mention before we left?”

  “Why? Your girlfriend still would have sent you with me either way, wouldn’t she?”

  The half-breed angel put her hands over her face.

  “It’s logistics, kid.”

  “My name is Tonya,” she asserted.

  “I don’t give a shit,” Dysella growled. “It’s logistics. We can slip in and grab a bear. Then I can drop you and Ramona off with kind souls in Bravehaven and never see your face again. A house is different. You can’t grab that and run unless maybe you live at the top of a goddamn beanstalk.”

  Tonya frowned and crossed her arms over a picture of Minnie Mouse on her t-shirt.

  Thirty feet away, a doe heard Dysella’s bitching and decided to make herself scarce, retreating into the foliage.

  “I don’t need the house back. I just want Ramona,” Tonya said.

  “Fine. What took your house?” Dysella asked, rolling her eyes.

  With a shrug, Tonya gave no further response.

  “What does that mean?!” Dysella yelled. Red was creeping across her face as she lost her temper in the July sun.

  Tonya looked down at the ground again.

  Quietly, she said, “I don’t know. But there were four of them. And they broke in when it was dark. I barely got away.”

  Shaking her head, Dysella moved past Tonya in the direction of her family’s home.

  “Do you have some sob story to accompany this? Those things killed your parents, maybe? They held the monsters off so you could run off into the night crying?”

  As Dysella asked this, she grabbed a low branch and held it back so Tonya, who was near tears, could walk past and take the lead.

  “No,” the kid finally said. “My parents were gone long before the monsters showed up.”

  After this, Dysella clammed up.

  When they were just a few minutes away from Tonya’s house, the sound of a jet above them caught their attention. Tonya jerked her head toward the sky.

  “Do you think someone from Nameless is flying that thing?” she asked.

  Dysella shook her head.

  “None of our planes have worked since the Duel. This is probably a jet from Europe or something. Who knows?”

  Tonya kept watching the plane.

  “Can your angel wings take you up there?”

  With another flinch, Dysella felt Mollie rattle a bit at her side. She felt the shaking in her hip. And then, with a bit of force, she pushed those feelings down. The angel’s shoulders ached with memories of hellscapels meeting her flesh. Sweating harder, Dysella shook her head.

  “That’s not how angel wings work. They don’t take you up. They take you to places in the blink of an eye.”

  Tonya raised an eyebrow.

  “You mean you could have just teleported us to my house, so I didn’t have to sweat my butt off walking through the forest?”

  Dysella didn’t smile at her remark.

  “No, kid. Look, whatever rumor you heard about me that brought you to Maeve’s Place, it’s not accurate. People might call me an angel, but I’m just some fucked-up half-breed, okay? And the wings I used to have only took me to places I’d been before. Now come on. We should be pretty close, right?”

  Tonya slowly nodded and started to lead the angel up a steep hill at the edge of the treeline.

  “So you don’t have your wings anymore?”

  Dysella sighed.

  They were nearly at the top when she mumbled, “No.”

  When they crested the hill, Dysella looked down upon a farmhouse in front of a dirt road. It was isolated with no neighbors in sight. A white shed sat in the backyard. Empty fields that once grew squash surrounded the property.

  The home was old and had painted blue shutters. The front door had been torn from its hinges and lay flat in the grass 10 feet away. An old pickup truck sat on cinder blocks in the sideyard.

  A tired wooden fence surrounded most of the fields. It came up to Dysella’s shoulders in height.

  A large ash tree provided shade for most of the front yard.

  “How long did you say you lived here?” Dysella asked, turning to Tonya.

  “I was born here. Been living in that house my entire life,” she said.

  The half-breed angel considered this and started down toward the road. When she got to the driveway, a gust of wind whipped by, carrying some dead grass out of the yard and depositing it at Dysella’s feet.

  Stopping, she narrowed her eyes at the house. From this angle, she could see a white sofa pressed against the wall, covered in blood. A dead man lay atop the couch, his right arm broken at an odd angle and barely touching the floor. He looked old.

  Tonya didn’t gasp. She just looked up at Dysella.

  “When did the creatures show up?” she asked.

  Tonya thought for a minute.

  “Last night? Why?”

  Dysella’s peachy skin paled as sweat rolled down her cheek. Her eyes glowed as she slowly scanned the house from left to right.

  Ability: Angelsense

  Description: Angels and their offspring possess the ability to focus on a small area and identify any uncloaked monstrous creatures or beings within. Angel offspring may only identify creatures they’ve seen before.

  “Tonya. Go back to the trees,” Dysella said, unsheathing Mollie and stepping into the front yard. She started to follow.

  The angel turned and barked at her.

  “Trees! Now!”

  Shaken, the child started back toward the forest they’d walked out of. But she stopped instead at the bottom of the hill, once she was sure Dysella wouldn’t turn around and yell at her again.

  The sun was inching toward the horizon as a man wearing a red button-down that matched his eyes stepped into the doorframe. He moved without noise, as was common for his kind. Pale, hissing skin warned him the sun was still up as he looked toward the horizon. But he leaned against the doorframe all the same, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Something I can help you with, friend?” he asked, stroking his thick brown mustache. His bare feet stood upon a thin gray carpet.

  Dysella’s mind screamed in primal fury at the sight of him. She bared her teeth and took a step toward the door. The man just smiled, revealing a pair of elongated fangs.

  In Dysella’s mind, a memory from years gone by played on repeat while Mollie and her scabbard rattled violently.

  The memory was something Dysella found herself trapped in at random points throughout the day. A man in thick glasses, carrying an empty rifle, turning toward her, and pointing at a little girl crying against the cave wall. He threw down the empty weapon and yelled at Dysella.

  “Get her out of here! Now!”

  Hisses sounded in the distance as a fresh horde of vampires descended upon them, the nest far larger than even experienced monster hunters could predict. A burst of flame exploded, creating a wall to buy them a few extra seconds. But a sweaty, bleeding girl wrapped in a long black jacket yelled, “That’s it! I’m tapped!”

  In the memory, a heavily-wounded Dysella grasped a sword of pure fire and took a step toward the hissing noises. But the man in glasses grabbed her by the armor and slammed her into the cave wall.

  “Goddammit! We’re buying you time to get Sam out of here. Now go, or I’ll shoot you myself!”

  Everything after that was a blur. The man grabbing a pistol and loading it with his last cartridge. The bleeding woman in the jacket pulling out a knife. A snarl from further in the cave as a friendly beast fought to the last breath. Sam being thrust into Dysella’s hands as her angelic wings appeared one last time, and she dropped her sword.

  She wasn’t able to return until hours later when. . . when. . .

  “Friend, are you in need of assistance? Because my friends and I would love to help you if you’d step into the house,” the man’s voice said, bringing Dysella out of her memory.

  She ground her boots into the dried soil of the front yard. Narrowing her eyes, Dysella hissed, “No vamps within 20 miles of Bravehaven.”

  “What was that, dear?” the man called from the doorway.

  Dysella stepped into the shade of the ash tree.

  “That’s the rule. Any vampire caught within 20 miles of Bravehaven dies. No mercy,” she said, her shoulders tensing.

  The vampire cocked his head to the side as the sun sank a little lower. His red eyes paled a bit.

  “Is that what the rule is? Well, nobody informed us when we moved in. Maybe the HOA should have stopped by and dropped off a flyer.”

  The sun sank even lower, just on the cusp of the horizon now. Shadows grew long in the grass, and Dysella moved yet closer to the front door. Her eyes were awash in rage, half here, half watching her friends in imagined final moments.

  “Anyway, who’s going to enforce such a rule? Last we checked, there were no Rangers north of Pittsburgh.”

  The vampire licked his fangs. And his eyes darted to the horizon as the sunlight finally disappeared, leaving only hints of gold and pink light in the sky.

  With what he was convinced to be superior agility, the vampire hissed and thrust his body toward Dysella, mouth wide and ready to sink his fangs into her throat.

  Creature: Vampire #1

  HP: 54/54

  Abilities: Superhuman agility and strength. The ability to transform into mist or a bat. Minor hypnosis. Flight when in direct moonlight. Regeneration.

  Direct Weaknesses: Sunlight, holy water, otherworldly fire, wood piercing their hearts, otherworldly blood, and decapitation.

  Attacks: Fangs capable of tearing most flesh (each bite does 5-9 damage and recovers a small portion of health that varies depending on the attack’s victim). Claws (each slash does 4 damage).

  But with a flinch, most of the air in the front yard went up in smoke as Dysella snapped and yelled, “Me! I enforce the fucking rule!”

  She gripped Mollie tight with her left hand as a column of devilfire erupted from beneath the half-breed angel’s feet, bathing her in feral rage.

  Technique: Devilshift

  Description: Activating her demon blood, Dysella pulls black flames straight from Hell, giving her boosts to stamina, pain resistance, and a large increase in strength and speed on par with most supernatural creatures. Mollie channels the black flames for additional damage. Using this technique directly drains Dysella’s life.

  Duration: 5 minutes

  Dysella’s HP: 80/112

  Black blood ran down Dysella’s eyes as the devilfire’s force blew her attacker into the house’s front wall. When the column of flames cleared, two curved horns had sprouted from her temples, and the half-breed angel's eyes were the color of coal. Her peachy skin took on an ashy hue as if she’d walked through a housefire.

  Obsidian flames covered Mollie as glowing indigo runes revealed themselves in the blade’s center, stretching from tip to crossguard.

  Before the vampire could recover, Dysella darted across the lawn and thrust Mollie into his belly. Drawing the blade back, she stabbed the vampire several more times, a little more devilfire filling his body each time and cutting off any counterattack he might have tried.

  He screamed as the black flames continued to eat away at the inside of his body, the smell of graveyard soil and charred flesh filling the lawn.

  As he perished, the vampire’s body dissolved into ash.

  Before Dysella could draw back, two vampires rushed her, crashing through windows on either side of the half-breed angel. Twins. Girls. Each had hair the color of mud. One sank her fangs into Dysella’s scarred arm, and the other clawed at her sword, knocking it from her grasp. It went flying across the yard, fire dying after losing contact with the angel’s hand.

  Creature: Vampires #2 and #3

  HP: 42/42 & 45/45

  Dysella’s HP: 71/112

  The vampire with its fangs buried in Dysella’s arm drank deeply from her blood, sucking at the open wound. Dysella hissed and ignored her, facing the vampire that disarmed her. She cursed and opened the palm of her hand, reaching for a world beyond sight, one only accessible to her.

  Technique: Angel-pocket

  Description: Every angel and angelspawn has access to an extradimensional space accessible only to them. They can reach into this space at a moment’s notice. Any object the size of their body or smaller may be stored within this pocket dimension and pulled out at a time of their choosing.

  In the blink of an eye, a worn handgun with brown grips appeared in Dysella’s open hand.

  Weapon: Ruger Mark IV Competition

  Description: A silver .22 caliber handgun loaded with a cartridge of wooden bullets (5 damage per shot when used on vampires, unless the heart is struck).

  The vampire that bit Dysella reared back with a loud cry of pain, smoke flying from her mouth as black blood dripped down the sides of her lips. She fell to the ground, body starting to heave beyond her control. Her flesh shriveled as she died.

  Meanwhile, the half-breed angel shot her other attacker three times in the arm. Smoke drifted from each open wound, but the vampire didn’t bleed. She hissed and fell back against the wall of the house, next to the first pile of ash.

  Vampire #2’s Health: 27/42

  Vampire #3’s Health: —

  “Wait! Wait!” she shouted, but all Dysella could hear was her friend screaming, “Get her out of here!” in her mind. Eyes wide with rage, the half-breed angel emptied her cartridge into the vampire’s chest, watching the body shake with each hit. Two or three bullets struck the heart, killing the vampire and reducing her to ash seconds later.

  The final vampire erupted from the roof and leapt down upon Dysella. He looked younger, about the age of a college student, with a shaved head and red eyes wide with hunger.

  Creature: Vampire #4

  HP: 28/28

  With the twitch of her finger, Dysella’s firearm vanished, and she summoned Mollie back to her grasp.

  The long blade spun and flew back into the warrior’s palm, instantly aglow with devilfire once more. Dysella thrust her blade skyward and caught her opponent with surprising speed. She drove the sword right through his heart and roared as the vampire hissed in agony and quickly dissolved to ash.

  “No more, Robert!” she yelled before panting. “No. . . more vampires, Jane.”

  With black blood still streaming from her eyes, Dysella, aglow with rage, stomped across the road to the hill where Tonya stood, hands at her sides. The stare she gave Dysella lacked all manner of fear.

  Normal children would see this demonic visage and run away screaming, unable to sleep for days. But Tonya? She looked. . . more impressed than anything.

  “There. Was. No. Bear,” Dysella growled.

  “What?” Tonya asked, eyes widening.

  The warrior advanced on the child. She took a step backward.

  “I patrol these woods every week, Tonya. I know the men who lived in that house until those fucking bloodsuckers showed up. Gabriel and Thomas never had children.”

  Tonya shook her head.

  “Th—that’s impossible. You must be confused.”

  At this, Dysella screamed at the top of her lungs in frustration and impatience. She slashed Mollie a few inches into the dirt between her and Tonya, drawing forth a large wall of devilfire.

  When it died down, Tonya was gone. In her place, sweating and staring up at Dysella with fearful brown eyes was a woman in her late 20s. Wavy blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders. She was dressed in an honest-to-god black tuxedo with fishnet stockings and a top hat. A glowing amulet around her neck dimmed with fading magic.

  “That’s more like it,” Dysella said, holding Mollie an inch away from the woman’s throat. “This is your last chance to give me the truth. Last. Chance.”

  Swallowing nervously and trying to compose herself, the woman said, “My name is Chloey.”

  Name: Chloey Smith

  Age: 29

  Species: Human

  Class: Magician (But with real magic)

  Abilities: ??

  Items: Largely unknown except for an amulet that grants its wearer the ability to thoroughly disguise themselves.

  “Why did you lure me to a fucking vampire nest?” Dysella growled.

  Chloey chuckled nervously.

  “Lure is such a negative word—” she started before the enraged warrior drew back her sword to strike.

  “Wait! Fine! Fine! I needed to make sure you were an actual angel. I need an angel,” she said, closing her eyes and holding up her empty hands.

  Dysella narrowed her stare.

  “Did anything you just saw look angelic to you?”

  Chloey shook her head.

  “I told you the rumors of an angel in Bravehaven are exaggerated. You can thank Maeve for that, I think. I’m a half-breed.”

  “Half-angel. . . half. . . demon,” Chloey almost whispered.

  Dysella nodded.

  “Why do you need an angel?”

  Chloey opened her eyes again and sighed.

  “I’m robbing a Hell Baron in a month. And I need an angel for the job. Now that I think about it, a fae would come in handy, too.”

  Dysella’s black flames faded, and she returned to her normal self, bleeding from the wound on her arm. Hissing and looking at the gash below her elbow, the half-breed angel sighed.

  “Why on Earth did you think I’d help you rob a Hell Baron?”

  Chloey slowly stood as Dysella sheathed Mollie.

  By now, it was fully dark outside, and the sounds of crickets and a few spring peepers filled the woods. A quarter moon hung close in the sky.

  “He has my daughter,” Chloey said, dusting her stockings off as best she could.

  Dysella waited for more information.

  “The Hell Baron is my ex-husband.”

  The half-breed angel threw up her hands, uttered a series of expletives that would make the nun who recently visited weep, and started limping back to Maeve’s Place.

  “Hey! Wait. I still need your help,” Chloey said.

  Dysella didn’t turn back.

  “Go fuck yourself, Chloey. I’ve technically done my good deed for the month.”