Angels of War (Angels of War Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

its solid gold metal. “This is taking some time, my past is floating towards me in pieces.”
    “Grab them,” the archangel said. He reached out with his right hand to grasp at the cool damp air. “You’re missing one thing.”
    Joan’s body took on a soft glow. Large white wings expanded out from behind her, dove’s wings. The muscles in her back bulged and worked as she flapped her wings. The large feathers played against the air with a hypnotic rhythm. A delightful smile graced her face along with shivers and tiny pleasure bumps down her body.  
    Michael raised a finger. “Now, without my help, get down to your office. I’ll be waiting.” Michael dropped through the roof like a vapor.  
    Joan remained on the rooftop alone with her thoughts. Above, oatmeal colored skies sprinkled rain upon her armored body in a gentle spray. A sudden loneliness filled her. Joan remembered this same loneliness before she met her husband Charles. Always an outsider and never able fit into the regular world, the otherness she once experienced returned to her as she beheld Atlanta’s early morning sky.  
    Her armor pulsed with a subdued golden light. She stirred her wings and ambled up to the parapet. Her steady gaze from beneath her helmet passed out over the city not yet awake. Her eyes took in the skyline, jagged with new spires, and outlined with flat green country blanketed in bad weather and semi darkness.
    Joan contemplated the dark empty streets beneath her sandaled feet. The streetlights cast the area in dreary yellow light, as if no one would ever enter the city again. Rain fell past her, down the one hundred stories to turn into a gray mist below. Each tear shaped drop fell into the mist to create oil-smeared rainbows on the macadam.  
    She stepped upon the delicate parapet. Her balance improved a thousand percent. Joan’s wings outstretched, the feathers fluttered against the cool wind. She pushed her toes off the parapet and leaped.  
    The angel, reborn through the imminent chaos caught the wind as her wings held the air. Her leap off the Roaner Building confirmed the reality she struggled to face.
    Joan glided downwards. Windows blurred as she passed them. Wind and rain buffeted her armor and face. She plunged to the thirtieth floor and stopped. She floated and her weightlessness startled her, as if she buoyed underwater.  
    Beyond her office window, the archangel Michael stood in the office dressed in civilian clothes.  
    Joan floated forward and eased through the thick shatterproof glass. She settled her feet upon the soft carpet and changed from her battle armor into blue jeans and a green blouse. She expected the archangel to cheer, yet his face remained stern and inquisitive, a pure poker player’s appearance. He gazed with half-mast eyes at the brown-skinned woman.  
    “They are coming. Be ready in three weeks,” he said.
    “I’m hoping to stop them sooner.”
    “Yes, three weeks. They are coming, Joan. Their curses and shouts fill my ears.” Again, the archangel’s eyes fell away from the present world.
    Joan shut her eyes and used her new angelic powers. A lump, heavy and black, moved deep underneath the earth, an almost distant and angry buzz and hiss joined the blackness, as if hornets and snakes fought their way upwards from Hell. Red heat prickled her brown skin joined by a sweet rotten stench conjured from dead flesh.  
    Sweat broke across Joan’s forehead. Her eyes snapped open. She coughed and gagged. “My good God, thousands are headed this way. A black thing is following them, like a tumor the earth is reluctant to expel.”  
    She forced her fright down like an unsavory meal. “I’ll deal with them, Michael,” she said.  
    The archangel gave her a silent nod. “Time for me to go, Joan. Do what you must.”  
    He turned and headed for the office door. “Much suffering will occur, but even more if you fail.” He stopped. Grim faced he stared back at her.  
    “Many will die.