Dark Halo (An Angel Eyes Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

unafraid of the strange bat-like thing before me. He has no muscle to speak of, his legs curled and useless beneath him. His wings are nothing but a warped skeletal frame, the charred remains of feathers clinging like melted wax to black bone. He grips the uppermost branches of the tree with talons that are brittle and cracked, his nose sniffing at the air. Like Damien’s, his body is coated with fear. It drips down the branches of the tree. With my celestial vision coming piecemeal, it looks like he’s melting in the sunlight.
    “This is what Damien feared he’d become,” I say.
    “Precisely.”
    “Why is he here?”
    “Because Darkness has gathered. It’s thick here, a canopy of demons caging the town in. One thing that’s fairly certain is just how scared humanity is of the dark. Vultures feed on fear, spread it if they can. But mostly they’re trying to survive. There will be others, Elle. They will carry terror to the citizensof Stratus, tainting the dreams they’ve been given, turning them dark. Fear will spread like the disease it is.”
    “It’s hard to believe he was once an angel like you.”
    I watch the Vulture a moment more. His weak, pained form might conjure sympathy from another, but I s next to Canaan’s.t for aee him for what he is. He’s a parasite. A leech.
    “Do you know what your name means, Gabrielle?”
    I turn away from the sickly demon. “It comes from Gabriel, doesn’t it? One of the archangels. He is a messenger,” I say. “A Herald, right? He appeared to both Mary and Joseph. And to the shepherds the night Christ was born. Good tidings of great joy and all that.”
    Canaan’s eyes sparkle down at me. I’ll take that over a gold star any day.
    “Gabriel is your namesake, yes, but it means ‘God is my strength.’”
    I imagine that phrase as a tattoo inked onto my shoulder blade, as the etching on a shiny Roman breastplate I’d wear into battle.
    “Let God be your strength, Gabrielle. You cannot do this alone. We don’t have time for you to try.”
    “I won’t,” I promise, feeling every bit of that responsibility.
    He pulls me against his chest, and I’m surrounded by six and a half feet of angel. He smells of fire and sky. He smells of promise.
    When he releases me, his terrestrial form is gone. He’s transferred to the Celestial. His lips are still, but I hear his voice in my head.
    “It never occurred to me that I’d come across another human I could trust as much as Jake. I thank the Creator that I have you. I’m honored to fight alongside you, Brielle.”
    His white eyes stir, as though a wind has brought a fresh supply of oxygen to the twin flames there. All four of his wings spread wide. The inner ones are sinewy, visible mostly in the way they smudge th such an evil

4
    Jake
    A chunk of sandy brown hair hangs in Jake’s face. He tries to raise a hand to brush it away, but pain flares through his body. Something’s wrong with his arm, but he refuses to move again; his breath is nothing but gasps and spit as he stares at the gray floor beneath him. And that’s Army of Light above.
    Pain has made his focus lazy, and it takes a minute for his surroundings to come into view. They do not inspire confidence. Aged and crumbling walls of faded brick contain him. A rectangular window, high and narrow, is cut into the block on his right, its glass thick and dark. The light that makes its way through is dirty and succeeds only in coloring the room in shades of shadow. A metal staircase is screwed into the wall opposite him, a flickering bulb swinging on a chain above it. The stairs seem to curve slightly as they make their way up, but he can’t be sure;everything about the room feels misshapen. Still, he’s fairly certain he’s being held in a basement.
    Teetering racks line the wall to his left, but even the shelves are sparse—a canned good here and there, everything thick with dust. The place smells of mildew and rot, and the thing that roused him moments