Axes and Angels
Matthew Herrmann
Ramy Vance
Contents
I. Better Demons
1. “A Girl Named Theo”
2. “Digging Myself a Hole”
3. “Guardians of the Gal—er, Cemetery”
4. “The Girl with the Magic Tattoo”
5. “Where’s a Snickers Bar When You Need It?”
6. “I’d Probably Die Without a Smoke Alarm (Literally)”
7. “My Big Fat Greek … Job Interview”
8. “An Aptitude Test Sure to Weed Out Bad Applicants”
9. “Dolla Dolla Bills Y’All!”
10. “Prepping Like a Prepper”
11. “(Not) Alone in the Dark”
12. “My Friend’s a Webmaster (I’ll Show Myself Out Now)”
13. “Cat Heist”
14. “Kung Fu Goddess Bodyguard”
15. “Exes and Ohs”
16. “The Burden of Cat Ownership”
17. “Constellational Down Time”
18. “A Walk in the Park … Yeah Right!”
19. “Dinner with the Fam(iliars)”
20. “The Meaning of SHTF”
21. “Ticket Trouble”
22. “Cheddar Bay Biscuits and Crawl Spaces”
23. “Transparent Patrons”
24. “Russian Roulette—What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”
25. “Tickets to a Different Kind of Show”
26. “Dressed to Kill—er, Steal a Priceless Artifact”
27. “Lich Kings—Never Leave Home Without ‘Em”
28. “A Peek Behind the Curtain”
29. “Outdated Security”
30. “What Happens in Ancient Greece, Stays in Ancient Greece”
31. “A Shocking Discovery”
32. “Rejuvenating the Stone”
33. “Lions and Leather”
34. “Fighting Tooth and Nail—Literally!”
35. “Star of the Show”
36. “Revenge is Best Served Cold—Like Ice Cream”
II. Stuck Between a Halo and a Hard Place
37. “Where My Party People?”
38. “Dude! You’re Playing for the Wrong Team”
39. “On Today’s Episode Of: ‘Cooking With Others’ ”
40. “Reputation—If My Ex-Partner Was A Taylor Swift Album”
41. “If It Takes Two To Tango, How Many Does It Take To Start A Fight?”
42. “Panic at the Disco!”
43. “Stayin’ Alive”
44. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
45. “The Fellowship of the Mortar and Pestle”
46. “Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Haunted Mine”
47. “Language and Other Barriers”
48. “Dem Bones”
49. “Princess of Persia”
50. “Mouse Trap Is My Favorite (Board) Game”
51. “This is the Pits”
52. “I Reaally Hate Dwarven Trap Makers …”
53. “Fear Factor”
54. “Hoarders”
55. “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
56. “Bed and Breakfast (Minus the Breakfast)”
57. “Where’s the Beef?”
58. “Mo’ Beef!”
59. “Oh Yeah!”
60. “No Others Were (Seriously) Harmed in the Making of this Scene …”
61. “Look but Don’t Touch (AKA Mission Impossible)”
62. “Walking (and Fighting) in a Winter Wonderland”
63. “Night Riders”
64. “Gas Stop Contemplations”
65. “My Milkshake Brings all the Familiars to the Cracker Barrel”
66. “The Apollonian Gambit”
67. “A View To A Kill”
68. “Hell’s Kitchen”
69. “Dining With The Enemy”
70. “Beers with the Boys”
71. “The Good Wife”
72. “Can’t Spell Demonstration Without ‘Demon’ ”
73. “Death Takes A Holiday”
74. “Deal or No Deal”
75. “Just Business”
76. “All’s Fair in Love and War …”
77. “Between a Rock and a Hard Gate”
78. “Seeing Stars”
79. “Seeing More Stars …”
80. “Hey, Aren’t You Supposed to be Extinct?”
III. Don’t Axe No Questions
81. “The Only Thing Certain In Life Is Death and Tax—Er, Wait A Minute …”
82. “What Happens When You Die In The GoneGod World”
83. “I Feel So … Transparent”
84. “Trick? Or Treat?”
85. “Life Ain’t Always Beautiful—Neither Is My Hair”
86. “My Mission, If I Choose To Accept …”
87. “Bringing Knives to a Gunfight … Still Effective”
88. “Tunnels Beneath Tunnels … So Many Tunnels”
89. “Lions and Tigers and Bogeys, Oh My!”
90. “Beast Claws and Poker Night”
91. “The Tunnels Have Eyes”
92. “The Descent – Starring Theo Apollonia and Her Familiars”
93. “It’s Not The Fall That Kills You But The Ground …”
94. “Jack and the Wisp”
95. “Bait and Hook Tactics … They Always Work On Me!”
96. “I Love the Smell of Creation Crystals in the Morning …”
97. “A Scorpion Hunting a Girl Hunting a Gate”
98. “Well … Crap”
99. “Tales (And Tails) From The Crypt”
100. “Maximus Attack (‘in Us)”
101. “Sutures And Ladders”
102. “Things Can Always Be Worse, Right?”
103. “Aurora Boreanaz”
104. “The Big, the Bad and the Ugly”
105. “Achy Breaky Heart”
106. “Clash on the Titan”
107. “Love Hurts”
108. “The Darkest Hour is the Bitterest (Like Dark Chocolate)”
109. “What A Girl Wants”
110. “Darkness Has A New Face”
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About the Author
Better Demons Series © Copyright <<2020>> Ramy Vance
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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Part I
Better Demons
“A Girl Named Theo”
“Look, we got the ring, didn’t we? I’m not sure why you’re being so bitchy.”
Yeah … Probably shouldn’t have just said that …
My employer sat across from me in the booth
of the darkened restaurant, glaring like I’d just spat in his face, the skin beside his eye scrunching under the weight of the gold ring pierced there. The sky blue bandana wrapped around his shaved white head wrinkled as his eyes contorted with rage, which kinda made him look like a pirate instead of a furious gang leader. All he was missing was a hook for a hand. Of course, I’m pretty sure pirates don’t have teardrops tattooed at the corner of each eye. From what I knew about this guy, he’d earned those teardrops. That and then some.
Then there were his arms. They were all tatted up with slanted Latin script. Thanks to my classical education, I knew they were all kinds of warding and offensive spells. This guy could throw his weight around if he wanted to … and given I weighed a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, I needed to be on my best behavior.
Oh well. Can’t take the words back.
Blue Rag the pirate—I mean gang leader—stared at me grimly and I wondered if I was moments away from him drawing his gun and blowing me away or ordering one of his cronies to do the job for him.
Yeah … Way to go, Theo.
He didn’t try to blow me away, though. He didn’t order one of the tatted-up gooneys standing in the shadows to do it, either.
He laughed.
I laughed.
He laughed some more. Then his scarred-up fingers tapped the handgun stuffed into his waistband. The motion sent the gold rings on his fingers jangling together.
Seriously, what was it with powerful men and gold? I myself preferred silver. Beautiful and totally useful in killing all manners of supernatural nasties. Gold, on the other hand, was just shiny.
When he was finished laughing, he turned to Orion sitting at my side in the booth. “She’s real funny. Agree?”
Orion just threw up his palms as if he didn’t know what to do with me.
Real smooth, Orion ...
If my partner was the least bit nervous, he didn’t show it. He reclined back in the booth in his brown leather jacket, his shoulders totally relaxed, his weathered face impassive and cool. Even cooler was his perfect, medium-length wavy brown hair.
Blue Rag turned back to me. “Look, I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot. No?”
I didn’t say anything. Words often had a way of getting me deeper into trouble.
“I’ll take your silence … as a yes.” He paused, eyeing us carefully. Schizophrenically. “Yous two caused quite the scene in that cemetery.” He tapped his fingers against the tabletop impatiently. “Yous two weren’t supposed to cause a scene. It was in the contract.” With his Jersey accent, it came out more like can-tract.
Damn Jersey assholes.
“You did read the can-tract, yes?”
Seriously? Who has time to read that stuff? I turned to Orion, who nodded. Orion, I guess.
I tilted my head both ways as I fidgeted in the restaurant booth. “I wouldn’t say it was a scene, per se—”
“Not a scene? Not A Scene?” My employer’s face was now cherry red, clashing with the sky blue bandana. “You think this is funny, girl?”
“Hey there,” Orion finally spoke up, raising his palms while I seethed and tried to hold back my fist, which really wanted to make the acquaintance of this faux pirate’s gold-plated teeth. “She’s a hotheaded woman,” Orion continued. “You know how uh … women can be.”
What …? I flashed my partner a look that said we’d be sharing words after this. He in turn flashed me a look that subtly said, Be careful or this man and his crew are gonna pump us full of lead. Or use one of those tattoo spells to turn us into a pillar of salt. (Yes, Orion and I can express such things with just our eyes …)
“Eh heh,” the gang leader said across from me in the booth. His eyes ran filthily up and down my chest as if mentally unclothing me.
Gross.
“I do,” he said. “But look—”
I raised my finger. “No, you look. We got the ring.”
“Yous two came highly recommended. Very solid resumes. I mean, you found the golden chalice of Mahwarbi. How’d you do that? But I digress. The can-tract said no fuss. No mess. And the fact is … you raised the damned dead!”
Yeah … about that. I should probably start at the beginning …
“Digging Myself a Hole”
6 HOURS EARLIER. JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT …
“Orion, this would go a lot faster if you got down here and shoveled, too.”
“Ayuh.” Orion sat on the back of his pickup’s tailgate, peeling a banana. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “ayuh” is how people from Maine say “yes.” Was Orion from Maine? Not exactly, but I’ll get to that later …
The full moon shone down on him like a spotlight, also illuminating the grave I was unearthing a few feet from the truck’s rear end. “I already dug the first half of the hole,” he said, his breath turning to puffy fog in the autumn air. “And you’ve been saying about how you wanted to more evenly split up the work load.”
I raised a finger at him. “Don’t you …” Grr. I had said that. “That doesn’t apply to digging up graves. You’re the strong man here—use your assets and help me dig.”
Orion was the embodiment of total calm as he sat with his boots dangling over the ground. A picture of him in his faded jeans and leather jacket combined with his trim beard, mustache and brown hair belonged in the dictionary under ruggedly handsome. Not that I was attracted to him. He looked like he was in his thirties, much too old for a striking twenty-five-year-old girl like me. But he was fit, and his face had the sort of youthful glow of those who spend much of their life outdoors.
And that hair …
I boosted another shovel-load of dirt from the grave as Orion took a slow bite of banana, savoring it like he was partaking of some rare delicacy prepared by a Michelin Star chef. He was so weird. It was a banana, for crying out loud.
“Oh?” he said. “It is my understanding that women in this age care about equal opportunity. No special privileges or freebies—”
“Freebies? You calling digging up a grave in the middle of who-knows-where-we-are Upstate New York under a full moon through layers of frozen ground a freebie?” Shit. This man …
He chuckled. “Alright, alright. Let me finish my banana.” He glanced around the cemetery. “I am doing my part, too. Don’t you forget, I have the eyes of an eagle and the ears of a bat. I can sense a person walking through the forest from miles away.”
“Didn’t help you against that scorpion, did it?” I immediately regretted saying that. After all, Orion was a constellation up until four years ago. Then the gods left and Orion quite literally fell from the sky.
But despite being in the night sky for centuries, mocking him about his death at the hands—er, pincers—of a giant arachnid wasn’t a particularly nice thing to do.
If Orion was offended, he didn’t show it. “That scorpion was larger than a bus. I had no issue seeing or hearing it. It was dodging its stinger that I struggled with.” He gave me a wink. At least, I think it was a wink. Orion hadn’t quite mastered modern human expressions, and that wink came off more like an exaggerated one-eyed blink.
“Ah, ha … I see.” I turned to both of my five-inch-tall familiars, one sitting on each shoulder. “You sense any Others around that Orion might not be able to detect?”
“Nope! Nothing to report, ma’am!” Simon replied in a high, musical voice from my right shoulder.
“Nope! Nothing to report, blah, blah, blah,” Garfunkel mocked. “You’re such a kiss-ass.”
My familiars were invisible to all but me, and I was also the only one who could hear them. They communicated with me via a psychic link which, sadly, I could never shut off. Sigh. And since I couldn’t reply through said psychic link, it was common for people to think I was talking to myself. I’d long since learned not to care.
Orion knew about my familiars, so he didn’t think I was crazy when I talked out loud. He also didn’t laugh at the obnoxious 1980s-esque shoulder pads I had to wear with every outfit—my fa
miliars’ protective casings for when things got dangerous. They might be invisible to others, but they were mortal just like everyone else in this GoneGodDamned world.
“Good.” I glanced at my shoulders. “Too bad you aren’t a few feet taller so you could help me”—I cleared my throat with a glance at Orion—“finish digging this hole.”
Orion munched happily and silently from the truck bed. “When you’ve existed as a constellation for several thousand years, it really makes you appreciate the sweet things in life. There are no bananas in the night sky.”
Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1) Page 1
