Free Angel Burn by L. A. Weatherly Page A

for taking care of this sort of thing, don’t you?”
    “Yes, I’ll give the order right now.”
    A few minutes later, Raziel clicked off his cell phone and looked down at the details he’d just taken from Paschar. A half angel. Unbelievable. The very thought was obscene. Even if Paschar hadn’t had his vision of catastrophe, they’d have to do away with the thing — such a travesty couldn’t be allowed to exist. Picking up the piece of paper, Raziel rose to his feet.
    “What’s wrong?” asked Lailah.
    “You won’t believe it,” he said grimly. “I’ll tell you in a minute.” He went into the outer office and dropped the paper onto Jonah’s desk. As his human assistant looked up, Raziel said, “This  . . .  thing must be destroyed. See to it.”
    Jonah nodded, his gentle brown eyes worried. “Of course, sir. I’ll take care of it immediately.”
    Raziel gave a curt nod. “See that you do.” Then he went back into his office and shut the polished wooden door.
    On his own, Jonah sat regarding the slip of paper, feeling troubled. It must be another of the traitors.
    Serving an angel was an almost unbelievable honor, and one that Jonah gave thanks for every day. But his position meant that he often knew things that disturbed him, and the existence of traitorous angels was one of them. How was it even possible that some of the angels could turn on the others, attempting to put an end to the good works they did for humans? The idea caused his stomach to tighten anxiously. A world without the angels would be  . . .  unthinkable.
    Thankfully, a few months ago, an efficient means of dealing with the problem had presented itself — a solution so subtle that hardly any of the angelic community knew what was going on, much less the human one. Giving a brief prayer of thanks to the angels for allowing him to be of service to them, Jonah took out his cell phone and carefully texted the address on the paper to the contact number. He felt relief as he snapped the phone shut again. There, problem solved. The traitor would be gone in a matter of days; it would never even know what had hit it. How could it?
    Their method was so secret that not even the assassin knew the truth.

ENEMY SIGHTED, PAWTUCKET, NY. RESIDENCE: 34 NESBIT ST.
    Alex got the text in his Aspen motel room on Thursday night and was packed and checked out in less than twenty minutes. He spent the next day and a half driving. Finally, in the early hours of Saturday morning, he reached Pawtucket, a sleepy-looking town crouched in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. Heading for the main drag through town, he found a GoodRest Motel — there was always a GoodRest; they were as dependable as clockwork — and checked into a room to get a few hours’ sleep. The temptation, as always, was to go after the angel immediately, but he knew better. When you were this tired, you were likely to mess up and do something stupid.
    He awoke at dawn, instantly alert. Taking a quick shower, he let the hot water beat down upon him and then got dressed. As he pulled on a T-shirt, the tattoo on his left bicep, an
AK
in black lettering, disappeared under the shirtsleeve. The motel did a breakfast of sorts — it was food, anyway — and so he went to the main building to grab some donuts and coffee, which he ate back in his room as he checked over his gear. A habit left over from his days out hunting with Cully.
Respect your weaponry, and it’ll respect you,
the big southerner had said over and over. Maybe there had been a time when Alex had rolled his eyes a little, but now he knew that Cull had been right. No matter how prepared you thought you were, it only took one mistake to kill you.
    Alex loaded a full magazine into the semiautomatic rifle, then clicked it home and sighted along the rifle’s length before replacing the weapon in its case. The pistol he tucked into his holster, which was worn under the waistband of his jeans and almost invisible if you