Free Angel Burn by L. A. Weatherly Page B

didn’t know it was there. He preferred the rifle, but it wasn’t always possible to use it if people were around. Finally, he took the pistol’s silencer and stuck it in his jeans pocket.
    He was ready. He gulped down the last of his coffee, then shrugged into his leather jacket and loaded his car, programming the GPS for Nesbit Street. A moment later, he was pulling out onto Highway 12, the main road through town.
    As he followed the robotic voice’s directions, he took the place in with mild curiosity. Pawtucket was like a thousand other small towns he’d seen. The business center downtown had been slowly eaten away by shopping malls, leaving everything looking run-down and frayed around the edges. The high school ( THE PAWTUCKET LIONS KNOW HOW TO ROAR! proclaimed the sign) was the largest building in the place.
And once the students graduated, they probably hit the ground running and never look back,
thought Alex dryly. The only thing the place had going for it was its backdrop of the Adirondacks, with autumn splashes of color covering the mountains like a patchwork quilt.
    There weren’t many angels in upstate New York. He knew that the one up here most likely had a clear field — Christ, it had probably fed on hundreds of people already.
    The GPS directed him to a tree-lined avenue of Victorian houses. Alex passed an early-morning dog walker with a basset hound; apart from that, the street seemed quiet, the grass still damp with dew. As number thirty-four came into view, his eyebrows rose. Ohh-kay. So this one was into kitsch in a fairly big way. That wasn’t something he’d seen before — they usually liked to keep a low profile; the neighbor who you knew was there but never caught sight of. Maybe this one had decided that you could hide better by being blindingly obvious. Or maybe it just liked plastic wishing wells a whole lot.
    He parked the Porsche a few doors down. Apart from the circus in the front yard, the house just looked shabby: flaking green paint with gray wood showing through. Two cars sat in the drive: a brown Subaru and a blue Toyota. Alex turned off his engine, then leaned back in the leather seat and closed his eyes. A few deep breaths later, he had lifted his focus up through his chakras and was carefully exploring the energies in the house.
    There were three of them. And they were all asleep.
    One of the energies was a middle-aged woman. No, wait a minute — two were. They were similar. Sisters, maybe? Except that one of them was  . . .  odd. Childlike. Someone with mental problems, perhaps. But definitely both human. OK, disregard those two. The third  . . . 
    He frowned. Time seemed to slow as he probed this new energy with his own. “What the hell?” he muttered.
    It had the same “kick” that angel energy had, the same rush of power, but there was no trace of the cold, slimy sensation that he associated with angels. Alex slowly opened his eyes, staring at the house. Human energy fields were instantly recognizable. When you touched them with your own, you simply knew that you were touching like with like. This energy just felt  . . .  bizarre, as if someone had taken a human energy field and an angel one and mixed them together somehow.
    A slight breeze stirred, and the front yard came alive: tiny kites bobbed; little wooden windmills creaked industriously. The cutseyness of it suddenly struck Alex as ominous. He tapped the steering wheel, hardly aware that he was doing so. He had to get a look at what was in there so he’d have an idea of exactly what he was dealing with. And frankly, he’d prefer to do it now, while the thing was still asleep.
    Checking the two human energies again, he sensed that they were both in deep delta sleep. Out of it. Good. There was a metal box under the passenger seat; Alex pulled it out and extracted a set of lock picks. He gazed speculatively at the house, jingling the picks in his hand. The front door was out — he was too likely to