Army of Stone: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Fallen Angel Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  THANKS FOR READING

  ARMY OF STONE

  FALLEN ANGEL BOOK 2

  LEO ROMERO

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  Copyright © 2017 Leo Romero

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Cover art by Lou Harper © 2017

  Chapter 1

  Being an Angel Enforcer sucked.

  Yeah, I’d been given heightened magic powers since my promotion from bounty hunter, but I still wasn’t happy. ’Cause something else came with it all. Extra responsibility. Something I’m not too hot at. Just ask my eighteen year old daughter, Lucy.

  Now if I’d been put in control of a card school, then there’d have been no problem.

  But seriously, the worst part of that added responsibility was all the damn paperwork. Man, I almost threw up a little just thinking the word.

  I sat at my desk in the Angel Guild—a table in an old gentlemen’s club reputedly once owned by Al Capone—and stared at the three piles of papers sitting ahead of me with despondent eyes. The smallest pile was yellow forms, meaning they were L45s—day outs to Heaven as reward to bounty hunters for doing a good job. The next biggest pile was blue forms. Those were B4s—reports of demon sightings across Chicago, which would need to be verified based on the evidence available and then converted into wanted posters. And finally, the biggest pile of all was gray forms. Z99s—angel bounty hunter death certificates. They sat there like Death himself, a thick pile of them, waiting for my signature.

  I blew the air out of my lungs and looked away. I looked back and they were still there. I didn’t wanna touch ’em. They gave me the creeps. The thought of all those guys and gals sitting there in Purgatory waiting to be processed made shivers tingle up and down my spine. I’d been there done that. Purgatory sucked. More tedious than an eight-hour presentation on the varying shades of beige paint. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yep, they were still there. I suppose I just had to face up to it and start signing them. I had to say, there were a lot of them. Maybe it’s because I just started on the job and I was now privy to information I wasn’t before, but I don’t ever remember hearing about so many bounty hunter deaths. Word spread fast on the grapevine. Yeah, you’d hear whispers—so and so got his or her ass handed to them by a dog demon or tentacle monster or whatever. You’d toast a drink to them, wished them good luck getting through Purgatory and hoped they made it to a happier plane. But seriously, there must’ve been twenty-odd forms sitting on my desk. That couldn’t be normal, could it?

  I told myself there was a backlog after Samuel—the previous Enforcer who turned to the dark side and tried to help Beelzebub raise Hell—stopped caring about his job and just let the work pile up. Asshole. Left me with all this crap to get through. Oh well, it wasn’t gonna process itself. With a sigh, I reached for the top form on the pile. Right as I did, a tear opened up on the air to my left. I rolled my eyes toward it, my hand hovering over the Z99 forms. I caught a glimpse of the Chicago Underworld as a short and tubby guy with gray-blue skin and thinning, cream-colored hair slicked back from his brow came ambling through. His broken and damaged wings fluttered slightly as he turned and closed the portal up. He faced me and grinned, showing me his rotten teeth. He rubbed his hands like an avaricious miser, causing the charms and bracelets adorning his chubby wrists to jangle. It was Duante, one of my dark pixie informers. A shady little so and so if ever there was one. Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could kick him. His greed knew no bounds. But his info was always solid. Oh and by the way, he always spoke backward, don’t ask me why, he just did. Probably trying to sound ancient and wise like Yoda or something.

  “StoneAngel, to you, good morrow,” he said to me.

  Without looking at him, I pulled the top form off the pile and placed it down on the desk in front of me. “What have I told you about visiting me at work, Duante?”

  “For your ears only, urgent news, have I.”

  I picked up a pen and sighed. “Okay, buddy, let’s hear it.”

  “Greenlighted you, the cartel have.”

  I rolled my eyes. Great. Must be because I owed the leader, Lobo, money. I actually had it to give, but like an idiot, I spent it on my daughter’s eighteenth birthday party instead. Amongst other things. Or maybe he’s pissed because he thinks I stole a baby carriage full of leprechaun gold from his meth factory. All a misunderstanding of course. “Anything else?” I asked Duante.

  “Greenlighted you too, the triads have.”

  I grinned. “Superb! Two for the price of one! They could’ve gone halves on the contract and saved themselves some dough.” So the triads and the cartel have put contracts out on me. That meant every vampire and werewolf in Chicago would be after my blood. Purgatory here we come!

  “Ah, Ming’s just pissed that I won her monitor lizard from her,” I said with a flip of my hand. “Anything else?”

  “On the Netherworld Strip, first prize in a card game, a mythical beast is.”

  “Well I’m banned from the Strip so no go there. What’s first prize anyway?”

  “Pegasus.”

  I dropped my pen. I faced Duante for the first time. He was grinning. I arched a brow. “Pegasus?” I echoed.

  Duante nodded.

  “The Pegasus? As in badass horse with wings Pegasus?”

  Duante nodded again, his little beady eyes gleaming.

  I frowned. “Whose card game is it?”

  “Baron Von Blatt.”

  I rolled my eyes. Frogface. I’d already won my mythical shotgun Bam Bam and Aurora the half-siren from his scaly clutches in card games. Now he was hosting a card game on the Netherworld Strip with Pegasus as first prize? He was moving up in the world. “How did Frogface get Pegasus?” I asked Dunate.

  He gave me an exaggerated shrug in response. “A trap, set, he must have.”

  “No shit, Sherlock!”

  “A stupid answer gets, a stupid question does.”

  I grumbled under my breath. “When’s the game?” I asked.

  “Two sundowns.”

  I sat back in my seat and rubbed my chin. Man, to have Pegasus in my Deck of Death would be a great addition to my collection. But, I was banned from the Strip and trick of the light masking spells just wouldn’t cut it. Too many eyes and ears. Plus the big card houses always had a magic detection system in place.

  Duante started to get impatient. He wiggled his stubby fingers on the air. “If you so please, payme
nt.”

  “All right, I suppose you deserve something for letting me know I’m about to die.” I got to my feet. “Wait here while I get you a bottle of Ambrosia.”

  His beady little eyes lit up at the word ‘Ambrosia’. I trudged off to the bar, thoughts of hitmen and flying horses going through my mind. I’d need to watch my back from here on out, make double sure I had Excalibur and Bam Bam with me at all times, and always carry my Deck of Death in my pocket. The thing with mob hitmen was they always struck when you least expected. That way you had your guard down and were easier to take out.

  I got to the bar where Jerome, an Enforcer who doubled up as bartender, stood filling in forms.

  “How are you finding the new job, Gabriel?” he asked as I shuffled past him to reach the bottles behind the bar.

  “Sucks!” I replied, looking over the bottles for Ambrosia. “Too much paperwork.”

  “Come on now, Gabriel. A little pen-pushing never hurt anyone.”

  “There are more forms back there than at the FBI Vault.”

  “Then make haste!” Jerome said in a stern voice as he finished filling in another form.

  “Make haste,” I echoed, mocking him. I scanned the potions ahead of me. Different potions for different things. Potions of strength, stealth, protection. I found a bottle of Ambrosia—a calming tonic straight from Heaven—and grabbed it.

  “Ah, no rest for the wicked,” I said as I slid past Jerome.

  “That’ll be forty-five dollars, Gabriel,” Jerome said, not lifting his head from his papers.

  I froze. “Forty-five dollars?” I exclaimed, staring at the bottle in my hand. “I thought being an Enforcer came with perks.”

  Jerome looked at me, a small smile on his face. “It does. A ten percent discount. It’s fifty dollars for anyone else.”

  My top lip curled up. I jabbed my hand in my pocket, retrieved two twenties and a five, and slammed them down on the bar.

  “Thank you, Gabriel,” Jerome said and returned to his papers.

  I shook my head. “I thought one of the rules was ‘thou shalt not steal’.” I nodded my head toward the crumpled notes. “That’s a damn shakedown.”

  Jerome adjusted in his seat, but didn’t answer or even look, just kept his bald, shiny head in his papers. Asshole.

  I got back to my desk to find Duante hopping excitedly on his heels. I held out the bottle of Ambrosia, and his eyes almost popped out of his skull. He snatched the bottle from my grip like a wolf going for a slice of bacon. He ripped off the cap and began guzzling. I watched him in disgust as he struggled to breathe under the deluge of liquid going down his gullet and spilling down his cheeks. When he was done, he pulled the bottle away from his lips and belched.

  “Bless you,” I said.

  “In all the world, the best drink, this be. Is of the divine, this nectar is of, indeed, is of, is of,” he slurred incoherently, his eyes going bleary.

  Yeah, fae and elves and trogs and such creatures all loved Ambrosia.

  Duante recapped the bottle and turned to leave.

  “Hold up!” I said to his back.

  Duante froze, and then turned to face me, his face wrinkled with puzzlement.

  “You forgetting something?” I asked.

  His brow creased as his brain began to work. Then, “Oh!” he said, his eyes lighting up.

  “Yeah, ‘oh’,” I echoed with a nod. Duante reached into his black tunic and pulled out a small brown bag. He bounced it up and down in his palm a couple of times and placed it down on my desk. I grabbed it, pulled the strings open and checked it out. A generous helping of pixie dust glittered back at me. I nodded. “That’s good. Ambrosia is worth more than info.”

  “StoneAngel, right, you are. Farewell, thee, I bid.” He turned and swiped his claw across the air. That tear reopened, showing me the back alleys of the Chicago Underworld. Duante hopped through, his tatty wings fluttering for a second. The portal closed up behind him and that was that.

  I turned my attention back to the gray form ahead of me. I was reminded of dead bounty hunters, and my heart weighed heavy once more. The realization that one of these forms might soon be for me surfaced in my mind. It would have my name on it. Gabriel Stone. Executed with three bullets in the skull at point-blank range. I shivered.

  I went to pick up my pen when a new voice stopped me. “Hey, Stone, how’s it hanging?”

  I looked up to be met with another bald head. This time with neatly plucked, black eyebrows and equally neat, trimmed goatee. The dinner jacket over a black turtleneck and inverted pentagram medallion resting on his chest made me think ‘beatnik’, but ‘douche’ was next in line.

  I gave him a stern stare. “That’s Mister Stone to you, Zane.”

  “Wow, someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. What is it, woman trouble?”

  “Actually right now, it’s an Anton LaVey knock-off, wannabe necromancer that’s got my goat.”

  He recoiled as if offended. “Wannabe?” he echoed, shaking his head like he’d just been slapped. “One day soon, Mr. Stone, I’ll be so good, they’ll have to change it from the Crazy Four to the Crazy Five!”

  “I wouldn’t give up the day job, kid. Now, what do you want? I’ve told you before you shouldn’t come around here. Dark arts aren’t welcome.”

  “Dark arts? Moi?” He looked offended again. But his smug smile said otherwise. Yeah, he really fancied himself as some kinda necromancer hotshot.

  “Yeah,” I said with a firm nod. “Why don’t you use your talents for good instead of darkness?”

  He arched a brow. “Darkness is more fun.”

  I leaned back. “Yeah, I recently heard another guy say something like that.”

  “Really? What happened to him?”

  “He had his ass melted down in a suit of armor forged out of a powerful demon’s exoskeleton in the seventh circle of Hell.”

  Zane’s face pinched in confusion.

  I pointed my pen at him. “Let that be a lesson to you, Zane. Do something good with your life.”

  He raised a finger in the air. “Now that you mention it,” he said, sitting down on the stool on the opposite side of my desk. Oh man, he’s staying? My day is getting worse.

  “I’ve been working on a potion that will serve the Guild positively.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh boy! What is it this time?”

  He grinned and raised his eyebrows. “A Potion of Invisibility!” He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small scotch bottle that he’d refilled with a glowing, orange liquid. Wouldn’t have surprised me if it had been dish-washing liquid. He held it up for me to see, his eyes wide. “Three years of hard work!”

  I shook my head. “You really are batshit, ain’tcha? Potion of Invisibility? There’s no such thing.”

  “Oh ye of little faith.” He unscrewed the cap. “A demonstration.” He guzzled down the liquid, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his throat.

  I blew air from my lungs as I watched him. Some people really were beyond help. I mean—

  My jaw dropped. The little son-of-a-bitch started to fade from view like Michael J. Fox near the end of Back to the Future. He still had that shit-eating grin on as he turned ghost-like before my very eyes.

  A smile broke out over my face as I watched him vanish into thin air. I was stunned. For the first time in ages, I was pleasantly surprised.

  But to my disappointment, the feeling was short-lived. My grin drooped. I rubbed my eyes in exasperation. “Zane. I can still see your eyebrows and goatee.” They were floating on the air as large as life. He spun his head left and right and I got a side profile of eyebrows and beard.

  “Huh? No you can’t!” he said.

  “Uh, yes. I can. You look like a goddamn puppet show on acid.” I stared at those neatly plucked eyebrows and goatee dancing on the air ahead of me in some kind of weird hypnotic state.

  “Well, don’t worry about that!” Zane said. “You can just shave off an
y facial hair before imbuing. Now, I can produce ten bottles of this a week at fifty dollars a bottle, which is a steal.”

  “Fifty bucks to be turned into a pair of dancing eyebrows?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you a discount for the eyebrows. Forty. Can’t go any lower than that.”

  I huffed and dragged myself to my feet. “I’ve had enough. I’m going home.” I marched past Zane.

  His eyebrows and goatee whipped around my way. “Mr. Stone? What about our deal?”

  “Next time I wanna be turned into a floating vagina, I’ll give you a call,” I said over my shoulder as I marched toward the exit. I stomped up the stairs and burst out of the front door, where Brutus, the lunkhead doorman who I liked to play tricks on, was standing to attention.

  I almost walked into him. “Out the way, Brutus!”

  He turned my way and stared down at me. “Hey, Stone! What’s the rush?”

  I stopped and faced him, letting out a sigh. I was about to give him what for when my eyes widened in concern. “Brutus! Look out! Behind you!”

  He threw his arms over his chest. “Really? You expect me to fall for that one? I’m wise to your tricks now.”

  I jabbed a finger over his shoulder. “No, I’m serious! Behind you! Look out!”

  A flicker of doubt spread across Brutus’ features. He turned his head around, but it was too late. The thing winging in toward us swiped a massive fist across the air, connecting with the side of Brutus’ head. Idiot should’ve believed me. The force of the impact sent him flying across the sidewalk where he smacked into the wall of the Guild. The blow knocked him out cold; he slid to the ground and stayed where he was.

  Without losing momentum, the creature landed on its feet ahead of me with a stony crunch, his green-gray wings flared. Two glowing, red eyes bored through me. I looked him up and down. His muscular body was smooth and hard, tiny chips and cracks running across his limbs and torso. His face was an ugly etching: a snout, pointy ears, protruding teeth and a lolling forked tongue. A gargoyle. And a big one.

  Without hesitation, he threw a fist. My instincts tweaked and I ducked. That fist cut across the air where my head had just been. I stood upright and went for my shotgun, Bam Bam, pulling her from my holster. I hardly took aim before I fired. A magic-laced slug boomed out of Bam Bam’s muzzle, hitting the gargoyle in the chest. He staggered back a pace. I eagerly checked the damage I’d done. Barely a scratch. A couple of tiny chips of stone rained to the ground. I stared down at Bam Bam.