Calling All Angels (The Shadow Council Case Files Book 1)

by John G. Hartness

  Jo moved around the ring, circling her opponent with a wary eye. She knew Rochelle was quicker than her size led most people to expect, and her long legs made for some vicious head kicks to the unsuspecting. Rochelle strode in with her hands up, confidence oozing in her every step and blood in her eyes, but just before the women closed on each other, Jake flung open the door of the cage and stuck his head in.

  “Raid coming, ladies. Time to book!” Both women turned to see him gesturing frantically for them to come to him. Jo followed without hesitation, Rochelle snapping into action a half-second later. They fled the cage just as the sound of splintering wood told the truth of Jake’s words—someone had screwed up. The cops had joined the party.

  Guess I’m not getting paid even the loser’s purse tonight. Jo ran behind Jake, then stopped cold. “My bag!”

  Jake turned to her. “Girl, forget your shoes and underwear. We gotta go!”

  “I can’t leave my bag,” Jo insisted. She couldn’t tell Jake that her hammer, her great-grandfather’s legendary hammer, was in the bag. That would lead to all sorts of explanations about why she was carrying a nine-pound hammer in her gym bag.

  Jo spun to the right and dashed off down a deserted hallway, away from the shouting and the stampeding footsteps behind her, toward the locker room where her stuff was stashed. She flung open the door and skidded to a halt, her bare feet slipping on the tile.

  “Shit, sorry, man,” she said to the back of the man in the room. The naked man in the room. The tall, blond, very chiseled man in the room. The man with two long scars on his back making a “V” along the lines of his heavily muscled torso. Well, I guess that’s what they mean when they say “heavenly body.” Da-yum, with extra yum. Jo got her first good look at Mitchell, the current persona of the Archangel Michael, and decided it was pretty angelic indeed.

  The man turned, his blue eyes piercing, and a curl of that impossible blond hair falling just perfectly across one of them to make him even more irresistible. Eyes up top, Joanna. Eyes up—oh my goodness.

  “I told Shel I didn’t want a girl before the fight,” the beautiful man said, a little smile playing across his chiseled jaw. “Come back after I beat this mook, and we can play.”

  “Wait, what?” Oh no, he didn’t. Oh yes, he did. “I’m not one of Shel’s girls. I’m a fighter. And you want to get some pants on and get the hell out of here with me, right now.”

  His smile grew. “I wouldn’t mind leaving with you, sweetheart, but I’ve got a fight in a few minutes. As soon as the girls are done with the warm-up act, I’ll take out tonight’s jamoke and we can go get better acquainted.”

  Great. Not only is he beautiful, and an angel, but he’s a chauvinist douche, too. “I’m still not here for that,” Jo said. “I’m here for that.” She pointed at her bag, which she picked up and slung over one shoulder. “We take turns in the locker room, remember? I was dressing here before you got in tonight. Now it’s time to go. You need to come with me. Right now. The cops are raiding the place, and I don’t think you want to take that pretty face to jail, no matter how good a fighter you are.”

  The grin fell from his face like a boulder. “You’re not wrong there, toots. Let’s skedaddle.”

  Toots? What is this guy, eighty? More like eight million, Jo mentally corrected. I guess he’s allowed to be a walking anachronism. She turned to the door, then back to Mitchell. “You should probably put on some clothes before we run out into the alley.”

  He jumped into a pair of jeans and slipped on a pair of shoes, then followed her out of the locker room. Jake stood at the end of the hall, peering down a long corridor to the gym where the fights were held. “Come on, girl. We got to roll.”

  “I’m coming, Jakey. I’m coming.” She made good on her promise, running to her corner man and looking up at him. “Which way?”

  He pointed back toward the gym. “Looks like all the po-po are down that way, so if we go this way, we should be okay.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “He coming with?” Jake gave a nod to Mitchell, who ran up just then.

  “Yeah, he’s with us. Let’s go.” She started off at a brisk walk in the direction Jake indicated, keeping an ear out for shouts of police behind them. Hearing nothing, they took a left turn at the first hallway, heading in the general direction of the parking lot where their cars awaited them. They stopped short at a pair of chained fire doors, looking at each other as if for new ideas.

  “I guess we look for another way out,” Jake said.

  “I doubt you’ll find anything,” came a new voice from behind them. They turned to see a lone police officer standing in the hallway about ten yards from them. He was almost completely in shadow, but looked...off somehow, like his muscles and joints didn’t fit together quite right, or like he wasn’t used to walking in this form.

  “Get behind me, Jake,” Jo said, pulling open the zipper from her bag and dropping to one knee to reach inside.

  “What’s wrong, Jo-Jo? Nervous? Scared about what happens to pretty girls in jail?” the “cop” asked.

  “Might be more scared of what happens when people dress up like police,” Jo said. She stood up, a nine-pound rectangular maul head in one hand and a twelve-inch handle in the other.

  “Looks like Grandpappy’s hammer needs a little repair work,” the man said, stepping closer. He made no move to draw a weapon, but his posture was full of menace. Jo drew in a sharp breath as the man’s eyes began to glow crimson in the gloom of the darkened hallway. Jake took a step back, muttering “Dios mio” under his breath.

  “No, Jacob,” the “man” corrected, bat-like wings stretching out from his shoulders to fill the width of the hallway. “Not God. Never God. That lazy fuck hasn’t cared about you worthless meat sacks for millennia, no sense praying to him now. You’d be better off throwing up a tweet to Superman. You’ve got a better chance of getting an answer.”

  He turned his attention back to Jo. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was going to rip your guts out and paint the ceiling with your blood.” He stretched out his arms, and Jo watched in horror as his fingers lengthened and narrowed, coming to razor-sharp points.

  Jo pressed a button on the handle in her hand and flicked her wrist. The titanium handle extended to two-and-a-half feet, and she jammed the maul head onto it. The handle and head snapped together with a twist of her wrist and the click of a pair of heavy-duty magnets. She swung the assembled hammer in a lazy circle in front of her.

  “Come get some, monster. It’s been a couple weeks since I splattered demon brains all over something,” Jo said with a grimace.

  Jake gaped at her, then turned and started jerking at the chain on the doors. The demon just laughed and stepped closer, swiping his hands through the air with a terrible snick-whoosh sound as he flicked his claws together.

  Mitchell stepped in front of Jo, shielding her with his body. “Get back, whatever-the-fuck-you-are. Leave this girl alone.”

  Girl? Oh, I am definitely gonna have to have a talk with this dude if we survive this. Jo pushed past the man and gave him a dark look. The demon leapt at her, but Jo was ready. Weeks in the cage had her reflexes honed to a razor’s edge, so she easily side-stepped the creature’s charge and brought the hammer around to smash into the back of its knee.

  The monster went down with an ear-splitting shriek, and Jo slammed the hammer down at its head. The demon was fast, though, and sprang to its feet and lashed out at her with its talons. Jo ducked under the first slash and brought the hammer up to block the second, kicking out at the thing’s midsection with her right foot.

  Pain raced up her leg as her toes crashed into the demon’s chitinous exterior. The dim light revealed more of the monster in all its unnatural glory. It looked like a two-legged insect of some sort, with a glistening exoskeleton and razor-sharp mandibles protruding from what passed for a face.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” Mitchell asked, his voice hushed with fear.

  “It looks like the world’s ugliest
ant,” Jake said.

  “It’s a demon,” Jo replied. “And right now, it’s a demon that wants to kill us all, so could we please have a little less chit-chat and a little more kicking demon behind?” She swung the hammer in wide figure-eights in front of her, slowly forcing the demon back but doing no damage. The beast appeared content to bide its time, waiting for a hole in Jo’s defenses.

  So she manufactured one. On the next spin of her hammer, she wobbled just a little, just enough to give a tiny opening. The monster took the bait, charging forward with claws darting in for the woman’s throat. Jo spun to the left and put everything she had into a massive swing at the back of the creature’s head.

  The silvered side of the hammer smacked into the demon’s skull with a sound like an egg hitting the kitchen floor. The hammer buried itself up to the haft in the creature’s brainpan, and the force of Jo’s swing carried it and the weapon around to smack into a wall of lockers with a resounding clang. Yellow-grey brain matter and blood splattered along the wall and coated Jo, Mitchell, and Jake with a healthy splattering of demon goo.

  Jo planted her foot in the monster’s back, grimacing at the feel of the slimy carapace under her bare foot, and yanked her hammer out of the crushed skull. The weapon came loose with a wet sucking sound, and Jo staggered back, almost slipping but pinwheeling her arms to catch her balance at the last moment. That’s all I need, to land flat on my ass in demon guts in the middle of a deserted high school that I’m already trespassing in.

  The trio stood in the darkened hallway staring at each other for a long moment before Jake finally broke the silence. “That was damn gross, Jo-Jo. What the hell was that thing?”

  “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was a demon.”

  “You say that like it ain’t the first time you’ve seen this kind of thing,” he continued. Mitchell just stared at her like she was from another planet.

  “I wish it was, Jakey, I wish it was,” Jo said. “But we still need to be somewhere else, and pretty soon. I can’t hear anything from the other end of the building, but that doesn’t mean all the cops are gone.”

  “Well, you can’t get in a car with all that goop all over you, and I know I can’t go home looking like this,” Jake said. “My Daniella is an understanding woman, but if I start dripping demon-snot all over her rugs, I better look for someplace else to sleep at night.”

  “Yeah, let’s go find a bathroom, get cleaned up as best we can, and get out of here,” Jo agreed. She turned to Mitchell. “You okay, big guy? You haven’t said a word since that thing came at us.”

  He looked at her, a haunted expression on his face. “I knew that thing. I knew it was a demon, and I knew it the second it opened its mouth.”

  “Okay...” Jo said.

  “How did I know that?” Mitchell asked. “I’ve never seen a demon before. I don’t know anything about demons. Shit, lady, I don’t even go to church!”

  Jo sighed. “We’re gonna need to go ahead and deal with this, aren’t we? Okay, let’s get the worst of the muck wiped off and get somewhere better lit. With coffee.”

  “How about someplace with whiskey?” Jake asked. “I got a feeling we’re gonna need something stronger than coffee.”

  “Whiskey it is. But first, a bathroom. I think I’ve got demon brains between my toes, and I really need to pee.”

  5

  “So, Mitch, what else do you know?” Jo asked. The three of them were seated around her small kitchen table, with the warm yellow glow of the bulb overhead holding most thoughts of demons and monsters at bay for the moment. The steady drip-drip of the coffee maker in the background and shuffle of Cassandra’s slippers on the worn linoleum were the only sounds in the house.

  Mitch looked at Jo over folded hands. “I don’t know what I know. And I don’t know how I know it.” The big man looked confused, with a healthy dash of frightened. “Why was there a demon in the schoolhouse, and what did it want with us?”

  “I think that’s probably more of a ‘you’ than an ‘us,’ pal,” Jo said, accepting the mug her mother brought to the table. Jo took a long sip from the “World’s Greatest Grandma” mug and let out a sigh. Cassandra knew how she took her coffee—two heaping spoonfuls of sugar with a dash of Kahlua for good measure.

  “Why do you think the thing was after me?” Mitch asked. “It seemed like it wanted to kill you pretty bad, too.”

  “Yeah, but I was just a bonus,” Jo said. She looked over at her mother, who gave her a little nod. “Mitchell, I think there are some things you might not understand about yourself, and it might be better if I showed you rather than tried to tell you.”

  Jake and Mitch exchanged perplexed looks and shrugs as Jo got up from the table. She walked to the small living room, got down on her hands and knees, and reached under the sofa. She fished around under the couch for a moment, then pulled her arm back with a cloth-wrapped bundle in hand. She stood and walked back to the table, unwrapping her prize as she did.

  Jo laid the sword on the table, hilt toward Mitch. “Do you recognize this?” she asked.

  “It’s a sword,” Mitch replied.

  “That’s right, but is there anything familiar about the sword?”

  “No, I’ve never seen it before in my life.”

  “I don’t think that’s correct,” Jo said. “Why don’t you pick it up and take a closer look?”

  Mitchell shrugged and reached out his hand for the weapon. The second his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the blade of the sword burst into flames, and a sound like choirs of angels rang through the minds of everyone in the room.

  Jo felt like a grenade of sunlight had gone off in her chest, and light and goodness and right filled her almost to overflowing. Then, in an instant, the flames winked out, the light vanished, and Mitchell toppled out of his chair with an unceremonious thump.

  “Holy shit!” Jo said, springing to her feet and hurrying to where Mitch lay curled up in a ball on the floor. “Mitch, are you okay? What happened? I mean, I know what happened, but what happened to you?”

  Mitch shook his head, then snapped to full awareness and shoved Jo back. “Get away from me! What the fuck did you do to me? Jesus fucking Christ, what was that?”

  Jo sat back on her heels, stunned, but Cassandra leaned over and slapped Mitch right across the face. “You keep a civil tongue in your mouth when you speak the Lord’s name in my house, son.”

  Mitch rolled to his feet, glaring at the seemingly frail older woman, but she didn’t flinch. After a few seconds of silent confrontation, Mitch turned, righted his chair, and sat. “My apologies, ma’am. I’ll try to contain myself.”

  “I appreciate that,” Cassandra said, a tight smile playing across her lips. “Now,” she looked around the table, “why don’t you tell us what happened, and what you thought was gonna happen, sweetheart, because they are obviously two very different things.”

  Jo nodded. “You’re not wrong there, Mama. I expected something to happen when Mitch touched the sword, but I didn’t expect it to knock him on his butt, and I sure didn’t expect to almost burn down my kitchen.”

  “Sorry about that,” Mitch said.

  “Not your fault,” Jo replied. “There’s no real good way to say this, so I’ll just throw it out there. You’re an angel. You’re actually kinda the angel. You’re the Archangel Michael, the warrior of Heaven, and this is your sword.”

  “Huh?” Mitch looked at Jo like she had grown a second head.

  “Jo-Jo, did that girl crack you across the face one time too many last night?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know, Jake. Did we get attacked by a giant bug-demon in the halls of a high school tonight?” Jo shot back.

  “Good point. Stranger things on heaven and earth and all that, I guess,” Jake said.

  Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Hamlet?”

  “Hey, I read!” Jake protested. “Plus, it was in that movie with Ethan Hawke and Bill Murray.”

  “Anyway,” Jo said. “T
here’s a whole thing going on where a bunch of the archangels are kinda on vacation and neglecting their duty, and a friend of mine really needs their help. So, me and a bunch of other friends are hunting them down, and we’re supposed to be able to use their implements to wake them up and get them back to acting like angels.”

  “Implements?” Mitch asked.

  “Apparently each of the archangels has an iconic item associated with them. Michael’s is his sword. It’s the flaming blade he wielded in the War on Heaven when Lucifer was cast out and the rebellion of the angels was put down. We thought that when you touched it, you’d remember who you are, and that would be all we needed to do. But apparently that’s not how it works. At least not with you.”

  “How has it worked with the other angels you’ve found?” Jake asked.

  Jo didn’t answer right away, just took a long sip of her coffee and wished for much more liquor in the drink. “Well, that’s the thing...”

  “I’m the first one you’ve found,” Mitch supplied.

  “Yup,” Jo agreed.

  “Why me?”

  “Well, we already had the sword, so we were halfway there. And when the spell led us to Phoenix, it made sense to start with you, since I already live here. So, I started looking for warriors, and that led me to this undefeated fighter kicking tail all over the underground fight scene.”

  “But how do you know I’m really your guy?” Mitch asked.

  “Remember the whole sword bursting into flames thing?” Jo asked with a smile.

  “But maybe that’s just some kind of switch or trigger that I couldn’t see,” Mitch said.

  “Jake, pick up the sword,” Jo said.

  “Why do I got to pick up the fiery angel sword?” Jake protested.

  “Because you don’t know where the mystery switch is, so if it’s there, you’re as likely to hit it as Mitch.”

  “That makes sense, I guess,” he said, reaching for the hilt. He picked up the sword. Nothing happened. He stood up and waved it around a little. Nothing happened. He slashed through the air, and Cassandra ducked.