Free Angel Burn by L. A. Weatherly

solution in the end, you know. Very clever.”
    Lailah started to say something else, then stopped as the cell phone on the desk rang. Stretching forward, Raziel answered it. “Yes?”
    “It’s Paschar,” said a voice.
    “Ah, Paschar, hello,” said Raziel, dropping back in his chair again. “And how are things in upstate New York? Still enjoying your little empire?” Paschar was the only angel within a hundred-mile radius in the rural neck of the woods he’d settled in. At his local Church of Angels, he was like a fat, contented bull in a meadow full of cows. Though that would probably change once the Second Wave arrived, doubling the angels’ present numbers.
    “We’ve got a problem,” said Paschar shortly.
    Raziel’s eyebrows rose at the lack of banter. Paschar was another angel who had spent a lot of time in this world; the two of them went back a long way. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    “I’ve been feeding off some new humans in a place called Pawtucket,” said Paschar. “It’s a little far afield, but I was bored with the local offerings — and today I sensed that one of the females has been touched by something angelic. Something that wasn’t me.”
    Raziel frowned in confusion. “And? Are you saying that no one else is allowed to feed off your human?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. The energy that had touched her was like our own, but not. It was
human
 . . .  but still angelic.”
    Raziel sat up in his seat. “What are you talking about?” Across from him, he saw Lailah cock her head curiously.
    “Listen to me. I went to this creature’s house and touched her mind with my own. She looks like a human teenager, but she’s not one.”
    “What is she, then?” asked Raziel blankly.
    There was a long pause. Across the miles, he could hear Paschar take a breath before he said, “She’s a half angel.”
    For a moment, Raziel couldn’t speak. Angels didn’t breed; they were beings of energy that had existed since long before any of them could now remember. Though in their human form they functioned as humans do, angels were fundamentally different — conceiving offspring together should be a biological impossibility.
    “That can’t be,” he said at last. “You must be mistaken; such a thing can’t happen.”
    “Raziel, I could sense her angelic form as clearly as my own, but it was tainted, intermingled with her human one. She’s an organic mix of the two; there’s no doubt about it. Half human, half angel.”
    “How?”
    “How should I know? A fluke, somehow. But given her age, it must be one of us who was coming across to this world even before the Crisis who’s responsible.”
    There could be almost a thousand possible contenders in that case. “Oh, wonderful,” murmured Raziel. He sat rubbing his temples, trying to decide whether they could get away with not telling the Council about this. What some angels did in their human form was already controversial enough, without throwing this new complication into the mix.
    “But, Raziel, there’s more,” said Paschar. “Something requiring urgent attention.”
    Raziel stiffened as he heard the dread in the other angel’s voice. “What?”
    There was a long pause. “I saw a flash of the future when I touched this  . . .  creature’s hand. She has it in her to destroy us.”
    Now I know he’s going mad,
thought Raziel. But unfortunately, he didn’t believe it. Paschar wasn’t given to exaggeration, and his psychic skills were as strong as any angel’s Raziel had ever known. “Who do you mean by ‘us’ exactly?” he asked.
    “
Us.
All of angelkind. I don’t know how, but it’s a possibility that’s there within her — a strong one. She will have both the ability and the desire to destroy us all.”
    Raziel felt himself go cold; distantly, he saw Lailah staring at him, mouthing,
What is it?
    “She’ll have to be done away with, then,” he said.
    “Immediately,” agreed Paschar. “You’ve got a means