Caldwell, New York

As Jim Heron stood on the front lawn of the McCready Funeral Home in Caldwell, he could picture the inside sure as if he'd already been in the brick two- story: Orientals on the floors, paintings of foggy flower arrangements on the walls, bunches of rooms with double doors and lots of floor space.

From his limited experience with them, funeral homes were like fast-food restaurants--they all kind of looked the same. Then again, he guessed that made sense. Just like there were only so many ways to doctor up a burger, he imagined dead bodies were likewise.

Shit . . . he couldn't believe he was going in to see his own corpse.

Had he really died just two days ago? Was this now his life?

With the way things were going, he felt like some godforsaken frat boy who'd woken up in a strange bed going, Are these my clothes? Did I have a good time last night?

At least he could answer those: The leather jacket and combat boots he had on were his, and he had not had a good time the night before. He was responsible for battling a demon over the souls of seven people, and although he'd won the first contest, he was gearing up for the next one without knowing who the target was. And he was still learning the tricks to the angel trade. And, hello, he now had wings.

Wings.

Although maybe bitching about that was a lie, as his pair of magical feathered flappers had gotten his ass here from Boston, Massachusetts, in lickety- split time.

Bottom line? As far as he was concerned, the world he once knew was gone and the new one in its place made his years as an assassin in XOps seem like a desk job.

"Man, this rocks. I love the creepy shit."

Jim looked over his shoulder. Adrian, last name Vogel, was precisely the kind of whack job who'd be into a bunch of stiffs having a lie-down in refrigerator units: Pierced, leathered, tattooed, Ad was into the dark side--and given what their nemesis had done to the angel the night before last, it was a two-way street: The dark side was into him as well.

Poor bastard.

Jim rubbed his eyes and glanced at the saner of his two backups. "Thanks for the assist. This won't take long."

Eddie Blackhawk nodded. "No problem."

Standing in the stiff April wind, Eddie was his usual biker-ass self, that thick braid of hair running down the back of his leather jacket. With his square jaw, and his tanned skin, and his red eyes, he reminded Jim of an Incan war god--fucker had fists the size of most men's heads, and shoulders you could easily land an airplane on.

And what do you know, he wasn't exactly a Boy Scout, even though he had a heart of gold.

"Okay, let's do this," Jim muttered, knowing that the infiltration was outside the scope of his "employment" so they'd better shake a leg. But at least his new CO hadn't had a problem with it: Nigel, the tight-ass English archangel, had given permission for this morbid persion, but there was no reason to take advantage of the leeway.

As Jim and his boys dematerialized through the brick walls and took form in . . . yup, yup, a big open foyer with a chandelier and a bunch of dour rugs and enough space for a cocktail party . . . he looked around, wondering where the hell the bodies were kept.

And just standing in the place reaffirmed the fact that this was a persion he simply had to make. He might be in the business of saving souls, but right now a man's life was on the line: Isaac Rothe had bolted from the XOps fold, and Jim was supposed to kill him for it.

File that under Fuck No.

Except here was the problem: The way Matthias the Fucker worked, if Jim didn't off the AWOL soldier, someone else was going to do it . . . and then an operative would come for Jim.

Little late on that one, boys--he was already dead.

His immediate goal? Fake out his former boss and find Isaac. Then he was going to get that soldier out of the country and safe . . . before returning to his day job of going head-to-head with Devina.

He hated the delay because no doubt that demon was already gearing up for their next battle. But stepping out of one life and into another was never simple and never cut-and-dried. Inevitably, there were tendrils of what had gone before that you had to snip and cast off, and that took time.

The truth of it was: He owed Rothe. Back in the desert two years ago, when Jim had needed help, the man had been there for him, and that was a debt you didn't walk away from.

It was also probably why Matthias had given Jim the assignment. The fucker was well aware of their connection and of what had transpired that night on the other side of the globe: At the time, their boss might have been in and out of consciousness, but he'd tracked enough during those dark hours of transport and flight and medical intervention to know who was around and what was doing.

Right. Focus. Where were the stiffs?

"Downstairs," he said to his boys as he strode over to an Exit sign.

On the way to the stairwell, the three of them walked past all manner of motion detectors without setting the things off, and then they ghosted through a closed door one by one.

Bringing Adrian and Eddie on this little excursion was safer, because God knew Devina could be anywhere at any moment--plus Jim was still learning all the tricks that came with being a fallen angel, and Eddie was the master at them. Spells, potions, magic--that wizard and wand shit was Blackhawk's forte.

He'd clearly gotten his PhD in Abracadabra and didn't that make the SOB handy.

Down on the cellar level, everything was stark and clean, the cement floor and walls painted gray. The sweet smell of embalming fluid drew Jim to the right, and as he strode along, he felt like he'd jumped back in time. Fucking weird. This sneaking-around routine was exactly what he'd excelled at for all those years with Matthias--and precisely what he'd been determined to get away from.

Yeah, well, all the best-laid plans of mice and men, yada, yada, yada . . .

In his first battle with Devina, he'd required some information--and Matthias the Fucker had been the only place to go for it. Naturally, when it came to that bastard, things were strictly quid pro quo, so if you wanted something, you had to give something and the "quo" had been killing Isaac. After all, there were no pink slips for the fired or gold Rolexes for the retired in XOps--you got a bullet in the head and, if you were lucky, maybe a coffin for your corpse.

And yet he was curiously grateful: Being assigned to assassinate the guy was the only way to help him; otherwise there would have been no way to know that Isaac had taken off and was now a hunted man: Jim was the only one who'd been let out free and clear.

But then his situation had put the "by your short hairs" in Matthias's "extenuating circumstances."

He stopped in front of a pair of stainless-steel doors marked STAFF ONLY and looked over his shoulder. "Keep your hands to yourself, Adrian."

God knew the angel seemed willing to fuck anything that moved--which made you wonder if not moving would be a rate-limiting step for him. With a curse, Adrian went all holier-than-thou. "I only touch if they ask."

"What a relief."

"But you know, reanimation is possible."

"Not tonight it isn't. And certainly not in this place."

"Man, you could suck the fun out of a strip club."

"Pass."

Ghosting into the large, clinical room, it was damn obvious why horror movies used morgues for settings. Between the green security lighting, the rolling gurneys, and the drains in the floor, the place was the perfect backdrop for a case of the heebs.

Even though he'd died and gone to heaven and all that crap, his adrenal glands still waved its flag well enough. Then again, the twitches were probably less about the other dead guys and more about the fact that he was going to look his own corpse in the face.

As he headed for the massive refrigerator unit, with its rows of cold flats, he knew exactly what he was doing. When he didn't kill Isaac on schedule, two things were going to happen: Someone else would and somebody would be sent out looking for Jim.

And that was the reason they were here. His old boss was going to want to make sure Jim had bought the farm, so to speak: Matthias didn't believe in death certificates, autopsy reports, or photographs because he knew all too well how easy it was to fake that kind of documentation. He also didn't trust funerals, burial sites, or weeping widows and mothers, because he'd substituted too many bodies one for another over the years. Face-to-face verification was the only way to be sure in his book.

Usually Matthias sent his second in command to do the double-check, but Jim was going to make certain the big man himself was the one to do it in this case. The bastard was hard to flush out of hiding, and Jim needed his own face time with the guy.

The only way to make that happen was to use his own frozen ass as a lure.

And a little of Eddie's magic.

Checking the nameplates set into the holders on the front of the doors, he found himself between D'Arterio, Agnes, and Rutherford, James.

Flipping the latch, he opened the three-foot-by-two-foot door . . . and pulled his dead body out of the refrigerator. There was a sheet covering him from head to foot, and his arms had been neatly tucked in by his sides. The air that wafted out of his hole was cold and dry and smelled like antifreeze.

Man, as many stiffs as he'd seen over his violent and bloody life, this skeeved him out.

"Give me my marching orders," he said to Eddie grimly.

"Do you have the summoning object?" the angel asked, coming to stand on the other side.

Jim reached into his pocket and took out a small piece of wood that had been carved many, many years before in the tropics on the far side of the planet. He and Matthias had not always been at odds and Matthias hadn't always been the boss.

And back when they'd both been grunts on the floor level of XOps, Jim had taught the guy how to whittle.

The miniature horse was done with surprising competence, considering it had been the first and only thing Matthias had carved. If memory served, it had taken about two hours--which was why it was being used: Apparently, inanimate objects did more than just collect dust. They were sponges for the essence of whoever owned or made or used them, and what lingered in the space between the molecules was very useful if you knew what to do with it.

Jim held the horse up. "Now what."

Eddie whipped the sheet off Jim's gray, mottled face. For a moment, it was hard to concentrate on anything but what he looked like forty-eight hours dead. Holy hell, the Grim Reaper was no makeup artist; that was for sure. Even Goths had better complexions.

"Hey, don't be harshing on my peeps," Adrian cut in. "I'd do one of us way before some SoCal bimbo with plastic melons and a spray tan."

"Stop reading my mind, motherfucker. And you'd do the bimbo anyway."

Adrian grinned and flexed his heavy arms. "Yeah. I would. And her sister."

Yup, that angel appeared to be over whatever the demon Devina had done to him the night of Jim's official "death." Either that or all the self-medicating with living, breathing Barbies had exhausted any introspection right out of him.

Eddie took a metal file from his pocket and presented it handle first. "Grate some of that carving onto the body. Anywhere is fine."

Jim chose the flat pads of his chest, and the scraping sounds were soft in the tiled cavern of the cold room.

Eddie took the tool back. "Where's your knife?"

Jim took out the hunting blade that had been given to him way back when he'd first joined the armed services. Matthias had gotten an identical weapon at the same time--had used it to carve the horse, matter of fact.

"Slice your palm and hold the object hard. As you do, picture the person you want to come here clearly in your mind. Remember the sound of his voice. See him in memories that are specific. Watch how he moves, the gestures he makes, the clothes he wears, the smell of his cologne if he uses it."

Forcing his head to focus, Jim tried to call up something, anything, about Matthias the Fucker. . . .

The image that dove into his frontal lobe was stunningly clear: He was back in the desert on that night, with the chemical stink of the explosive in his nose and the ringing sound of time-to-get-a-move-on banging in his ears. Matthias had no lower leg, his left eye was nearly gone from the socket, and his digital fatigues were covered with pale dirt and bright red blood.

". . . Dan . . . ny . . . boy . . . my Danny boy . . ." he was saying.

Jim put the blade to the center of his palm and dragged it through his skin, letting out a hiss as the steel bit deep and clean.

Eddie's voice cut through the memory and the icy pain. "Now take your palm and rub it on the wood shavings. Then get out your lighter and fire it up. Lifting your hand, blow across it into the flame and onto the body, keeping that picture in your mind."

Jim did as he was told . . . and was amazed to see a blue glow coalesce on the far side of his Bic, like the thing had magically turned into a blowtorch. And the hey-check-its didn't end there. The flare settled around the body, blanketing it in a shimmer.

"You're done," Eddie said.

Jim flicked his Bic off and just stared down at himself, wondering what Matthias was going to think.

There had been a time, long ago, when he and the guy had been tight. But as the years had passed, the bastard had gone one way, Jim another. And that was before the whole being-dead, fallen-angel thing.

But this wasn't about him and Matthias.

Jim pulled the sheet back into place, covering his own face and wondering how long it was going to take for the spell to call Matthias here and for Jim to see the guy again.

He slid the table into the refrigerator and shut the door, cutting that phosphorescent blue glow off. "Let's blow this joint."

He was quiet on the way out, lost to the bad memories of what he'd done and who he'd killed while in XOps. And what do you know. In addition to his adrenal glands, it seemed like his personal demons had also survived his death. In fact, he had a feeling his regrets were eternal luggage: The not-so-hot part about being immortal was that there was no endgame to be had, no prospect for getting off the ride that you could hold on to when things got rough and overwhelming . . . and you despised yourself.

As he and his comrades reemerged onto the funeral home's side lawn, it was back to the hunt for Isaac Rothe.

"I've got to find that man," he said grimly. Although it wasn't likely they'd forgotten what they were doing.

Closing his eyes, he summoned that which would carry him over the miles between Caldwell and where Isaac had been seen last. . . .

Jim's massive wings unfurled on his back, the span of iridescent feathers stretching out and flexing like limbs that had been cramped. When his lids lifted, Eddie and Adrian were sporting theirs as well, the two fallen angels magnificent and otherworldly in the light of the streetlamps.

As a car drove by on the street, it didn't screech to a halt or get derailed from its lane. The wings, like him and Eddie and Adrian, were neither there nor not there, real nor unreal, tangible nor intangible.

They just were.

"You ready," Eddie asked.

Jim glanced back at where his earthly form was now not only frozen stiff but a beacon for a man he'd come to hate.

Even though he'd saved the fucker's life.

"Yeah, let's do this."

Up, up, and away, and all that shit: In the blink of an eye, they were flying through the dark heavens and the sparkling stars on the strong, steady wings of Angel Airlines, as he called it.

Aloft and alive, he resumed his hunt for a hunted man . . . and headed off for Boston with all proverbial guns blazing.

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