Prologue

Dancing orange and red flames cast hellish lights on the surrounding scene. Trees caught fire like giant torches, popping and sizzling madly. Michael knelt on the ground amidst the nightmare turned real, aghast at everything he had just witnessed. A truck driver named Marvin Driffen, under the influence of an angel, had tried to kill Marcy and her partner by ramming his gasoline truck into them. And a demon had sacrificed himself to save the pair. Michael had never seen anything like it. Not in his millennia of service to the High One.

Michael watched the demon expire with sadness and gratitude for the demon’s selflessness, a trait uncommon among the demonic forces. This one might have made an excellent angel. But there was no point in pondering over such a possibility now. Michael veiled himself with heavenly glory and flew to the smaller truck carrying the two women. It had veered off the road and rolled down an embankment. Both women were still alive and only mildly injured, thanks to the protection Michael had been able to give them as they had careened down the hill.

The truck lay on its side, smashed but slightly rocking as the women inside struggled to free themselves from their seat belts. Robin bled from a laceration along her hairline from the steering wheel as she had been bent over fellating her lover just before the incident. She cried softly from fear and pain. Marcy repeatedly told Robin to stay calm. The younger woman had a deep bruise on her left shoulder and a moderate concussion from banging her head on the window. Michael climbed onto the side of the truck and looked down through the smashed glass.

“Are you both alright?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“I think so,” Marcy said shakily. “We can’t get out of our seat belts, and the doors are jammed.”

Michael didn’t dare risk opening the door himself. Further intervention would certainly incite reprisals from the side of the demons, but he could offer information. He sent out a pulse of heavenly glory to communicate with other nearby angels. One Influencer replied almost immediately. She was aboard the ambulance, which had just been alerted by the gas truck’s onboard emergency system. A fire truck was en route, but they were still several minutes away.

“Emergency responders are on their way,” Michael said. “Don’t lose faith. I don’t think your truck is in any more danger.”

Michael stayed with the women until help arrived. Then he veiled himself completely and flew away, following a trail of power he recognized until he found the source of the awful scene.

Gabriella.

She was already miles away, but her heavenly glory left traces, and though powerful she was, she was not nearly as mighty as Michael, one of the first creations of God Almighty. He burned incredible amounts of his glory to close the gap between them, moving at several times the speed of sound. When he finally saw her in the distance, they hovered over the deserts of Mexico.

“Gabriella!” Michael shouted. “Stop!”

Gabriella turned to face him, her face a mask of stoic fury.

“What in the name of God have you done?” he cried. “Attempting to kill a human—a Nexus—without consulting anyone first? Have you lost all sense of yourself?”

“No!” she screamed back. “I have finally found myself. Century after century, we fight and struggle! And for what? Nothing ever changes!”

“Things do change. People change. Every soul is a battle. But you have given up. You possessed a man. You attempted to kill a Nexus. For this, you will be cast down. You have turned to darkness and misery and death as your tactics. These do not belong in the light.”

“Do not cast your judgment on me!” Gabriella bellowed. Her eyes glowed with her rage, but not red or black. Instead, they shone a pale green. “I reject your sentence and the darkness to which you would consign me. I did not possess that man.”