Free bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled by sam cheever

who put her hand on my forehead before I could pull away. Immediately I heard that whoosh of air that told me I was about to take celestial flight. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” I wasn’t even going to be allowed the satisfaction of huffing out of there under my own steam, with my ruffled feathers and my disjointed nose. Apparently I was to be “escorted” out.
    I landed in my office without Myra. My hand still hovered above the door panel where it had been when I’d been shimmered away in the first place. With a scream of frustration I opened the door and slammed it shut about five times. Realizing that slamming the door was seriously juvenile behavior, I slammed it about five more times and then forced myself to calm down so I could use my brain. What I decided was that I wasn’t going to feel better until I kicked some serious butt.
    I stalked across my office and grabbed my purse and coat, checking to make sure my demon laser was in my purse. I also strapped a very large silver knife to my thigh. I wasn’t taking any chances that this little demon jerk would get away from me.
    Glancing at my watch, I left the office, descended to the parking floor and stepped into the Viper. I mashed the buttons on my poor Viper’s directional information unit mercilessly until I’d programmed in the location of the spot where my new client had told me there was a nasty little demon that needed to be taught some manners. The way I was feeling at that moment, I was just the totally pissed off, small but mean, half angel but also half devil, little critter to teach him those manners. And teach him I would do. Sitting back with a sigh, I tried to calm down enough that I could breathe. It only took a few minutes to get there. Then I turned to gaze out at the other traffic roaring by me in the sky.
    Since traffic had taken to the air, about ten years previous, the skies had become increasingly congested. Where, at first, most people didn’t have the guts or the desire to take to the sky in a flying car, over the last couple of years more and more of Earth’s creatures had found out what an exhilarating experience it was to ride with the winged things above the stale, overused air of domestic habitation below.
    When I had first taken to the sky, right after the world government passed the Right to Fly law of 2079, the sky had been wide open and free. Now it was so filled with flying vehicles and floating advertisement blimps that I had to put my repelling shields up just to travel a couple of miles to the corner store.
    I flicked a passing Air Bus the winged salute as it roared by so close that its shield thudded into the Viper’s shield and blew us sideways to skim against a colorless, little air booger on the other side. The driver of the sad little booger cringed away from the window and looked at me with a pale, pinched face and huge, terrified eyes. She looked about sixteen. Must be new to the air. By gross contrast, the driver of the bus grinned manically at me, wagging his tongue suggestively while I gifted him with my best repertoire of swear words, which he couldn’t hear but which made me feel infinitely better for having delivered them.
    Oh for the early days of flight, when it had pretty much just been me and a few confused looking birds up there.
    The Viper touched down in a part of Angel City that had lost the war between modernization and decay when the wrong element had moved in several years earlier. Because of its innate goodness, with its scores of small, tidy family homes, neatly mown and tended postage stamp yards and churches on every corner, Ashland in the northern section of the city had been a perfect target for demonic inhabitance. Nothing draws a demon in like virtuousness. There is no sweeter thrill to a demon than destroying that which is decent.
    I realized with a start that the nightclub I was about to enter was Demonica, the heart and soul of Demondom, a truly trendy nightclub, a really dangerous