Free Charm City (The Demon Whisperer Book 1) by Ash Krafton Page A

squinted and wrinkled her nose. "So, right over there, there's an escalator to Heaven? I don't see anything."
    "Not yet, you don't. We need to cross the circle. Follow and stay low."
    They hunched down and skulked closer.
    "And angels are just sliding up and down and delivering heaps of divine information?" She lost the wondrous expression and lowered her brows. "That sounds very much like interference, doesn't it?"
    "Hey, now. I didn't bring you here to cause trouble. Just—try not to antagonize him, will yeh? He's usually a bit rammy after one of those things. I think it hurts him, you know, being stuck down here like some common mortal. He's obedient to the Will…but he misses home."
    "You mean…" Chiara grasped his arm, half-turning him toward her. "He doesn't want to be here?"
    "He's a Watcher. This is his deployment." He shrugged. "Trouble is, it's not a simple 18-month tour of duty and there's no leave. I always thought it sounded like a prison sentence but I try not to make him feel worse than he does. It's his place to be here. It's his duty. Who am I to judge or to criticize? It's the Will of God. I'm just a puny mortal, a pawn in this great and terrible game."
    They crept toward the swatch of sunlight in the field. No ordinary sunlight…the grass glittered with life, the air held fragrances usually sullied by traffic and pollution. Birds were drawn to the area, filling the air with their songs. Even the wildlife seemed to congregate in the area. All was a sense of peace and serenity.
    The air rippled around them, similar to the wards he'd placed around his vehicle. An invisible line. This one took a hell of a lot more than burning chicory.
    Once they crossed the border into the sunlit space, that serenity vanished. It went from a pastoral picture to the trading floor on Wall Street, the inside of a war room on high alert.
    Urgency was a flavor on the tongue as Simon pulled in the first lungful of tight, charged air. The atmosphere had become a buzz of voices and motion. Watchers, dozens of them with their stunted ghostly wings, gathered around the base of the Ladder, calling with hands cupped around their mouths, shouting and greeting the travelers.
    The travelers didn't gracefully float up and down the ethereal ladder—they shot like they were rocket-launched, speed making them a golden blur. When they got to the bottom, they hovered over the ground to communicate with the Watchers, never touching the wretched earth, held aloft by the spread of their wings—
    Oh, their wings. Simon rubbed his mouth, trying to hide his expression from Chiara. It was impossible to not be affected by a sight like that. The sight of an angel's wings made mortality seem like a petty, crude thing. All a man's concerns and triumphs and tragedies crumbled to mere nothings when faced with that breathtaking sight.
    It stole a piece of a man's soul, seeing those angels. Definitive proof that God exists. It destroyed the very essence of faith. No longer can a man believe there is a God; no longer can he choose to do the right thing, the good thing, in the hopes that he will secure a place in Heaven. No longer does the concept of free will even exist.
    Seeing angels, seeing the proof—it dropped like stones in a garden path, no twists, no turns, no forks in the road. Just a predetermined measure of steps that go from where a man currently stood to the feet of an unavoidable judgment.
    Knowledge and belief were two totally different things. The main difference was the absence of the most vital nutrient a soul received: hope.
    Simon and Chiara spent many long moments watching the angels. Eventually, the clouds shifted and the light shrank upwards, the Ladder dissipating. The Watchers each zapped out of sight, winking out, leaving no sign that they'd even been there.
    Sound returned, too, normal waves of breeze and birdsong and traffic from the highway farther off.
    "Well, that's it for tonight's episode, folks." Simon pushed to his feet,