Read No Angel for Free Online Page A

motif, but so did CIA double agents—and she wasn’t being recruited by her government.
    Your mission, should you choose to accept it … But angels didn’t give you a choice. A commission from the angelic host wasn’t something a girl could turn down—even if it wouldn’t have damned her boyfriend to an eternity in Hell.
    Why her? Sasha couldn’t get past that question. What did the angels see in her that was so damn virtuous? Not that the winged bastards were as pure and holy as they liked to paint themselves.
    Angels had their pretty, public face—the blindingly beautiful Archangels making appearances at Christmas Eve masses around the world—but it didn’t take a Paradise Lost scholar to know there was more to the angelic army than a few hosannas. They had a bloody history. A history shrouded in contradictions and questions.
    And demons were no better. They were even more secretive than the angels in their own way. The demons didn’t have Arches acting as poster children. Sasha had always been inclined to think they’d just gotten the short end of the stick, PR-wise, in the Middle Ages, but they’d done nothing to correct their unwholesome public image since.
    She knew they could use demonic glamour to warp perceptions of reality. The popular belief was there were limitations about where and on whom the glamour could be used, but beyond that her knowledge of Hell was limited to Hollywood depictions—and she knew better than most exactly how much of that was complete bullshit.
    Knowledge was a tactical advantage—and in this case she had virtually none.
    Her game plan was woefully underdeveloped. Go in, find Jay, drag his sorry ass out of Hell, somehow managing to keep them both alive and whole on the way out. She didn’t think Jay would be much help there.
    He’d come to L.A. for a career development course in finance and business management. Somehow Sasha doubted her desk jockey boyfriend would be much of a warrior. He’d certainly never shown signs of a killer instinct in the six months she’d known him. It had been one of the most annoying things about him, that she could never get him to fight.
    Fight for her, fight against her, any flicker of a mercenary spirit would have been comforting to see. But she’d resigned herself to the fact that he wasn’t a fighter and decided to love him anyway. She wasn’t the kind of girl to try to turn the man she loved into the man she wanted him to be. Instead, she just obsessed over whether they were really right for each other. He seemed to like her combativeness, but was that enough?
    A heavyset man jostled her and Sasha twisted to avoid bumping into him pistol-first, reminded of the task at hand. She didn’t have time now to wallow in pointless relationship angst. Action first, agonize later. If she couldn’t get Jay out of Hell, none of her doubts would matter anyway.
    Above her, light poured out of the windows behind the alabaster cross and cast a soft glow over the courtyard. Sasha moved close to the side of the building where the crowds seemed thinner, slipping between the wall and the palm trees lining it. She’d never felt the urge to stand in line for four hours just for the privilege of hearing someone with wings tell the story of the Nativity, but there were angel and Archangel masses in every church large enough to attract them tonight.
    Maybe that was why there were no angels available to keep innocent mortals from being abducted by demons. They were all too busy being fawned over by adoring congregations.
    The bronze doors swung open and the distant strains of “Silent Night” filtered out over the courtyard. A cheer rippled through the mob as it surged forward, rushing the doors like Black Friday shoppers.
    Sasha didn’t know how to get to the catacombs beneath the cathedral, but getting inside was a good first step. She flung herself into the crowd, elbows out as a buffer, and rode the tide of people into the cathedral.
    The skyscraper