The Angelfire Chronicles

By Brigitte Delery

Sara Martin lives in war-torn Seattle, a formerly bright and active city now ravaged by fighting between two forms of angelic beings, the Rising and Fallen. As one of those Fallen, Gaviel’s existence is dedicated to finding a way out of the city where he and his kind have been unceremoniously dumped while trying to avoid the Rising factions that want them dead. When Sara and Gaviel meet, both of their lives change in a single night, and something starts to develop that neither expected. In this city where an ongoing angelic war affects everything, Sara and Gavin must decide whether the goals they thought were important are really worth risking their chance at love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094410586

Book preview

Part One: Dark Wings and Angelfire

Dim moonlight filtered through the tall windows at her back as Sara Martin finished arranging the contents of an open case on the table in front of her. Beneath her feet, the abandoned houseboat rocked gently as water from Lake Union lapped in a constant repetitive rhythm along the hull outside.

Sara’s hands trembled as she fit another small box into the case. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of misty air. There was no time to get nervous, no time for second thoughts. This shipment was too important, and the risk grew greater the longer she remained in Angelic territory to retrieve it.

Doing her part to keep the rest of the small human community alive made Sara feel useful. She was expendable, anyway, she mused. Anyone who might have once cared about her had fled Seattle years ago when the barriers came down and cut the city off from the rest of the world.

One of the smugglers poked his head through the open doorway. She didn’t know his name, or the names of his two companions. They were just anonymous strangers tasked with getting her into this graveyard of floating homes and leading her to the drop. Sara was anonymous to them as well, simply a woman they’d been told to meet to exchange a case of something illicit for a bag of hard-to-find medicines she’d already handed over to them. They might not even know exactly what was in the case, since her enclave had never been able to trace the source of their smuggled goods back much further than the shadowy figures who had sent this group of men. She looked up as the man entered, and he growled out a question.

You almost done?

Double-checking that everything is safe for transport, Sara assured him. I’ll be five minutes, max.

He ducked back out and resumed talking in low tones to his companions on the front deck. Sara returned to her task, focusing her attention on cushioning each box to minimize breakage of the vials inside. A breeze rocked the boat and Sara looked up, trying to identify why she suddenly felt uneasy.

The men’s voices were gone. So was the repetitive sound of waves hitting the boat.

The moonbeams streaming into the small dining cabin flickered and wavered, as though clouds had shifted across the sky. Such complete stillness could mean only one thing: One of the Angelic must be nearby.

Sara tried not to panic. She needed to stay quiet and work through what was happening. Which variety of angel would it be? Light or dark? Rising or Fallen? If it was a Rising, one of the Angels of Light, she might be able to plead for mercy, or possibly even sneak past as something far beneath their concern.

The Dark Angels, the Fallen, were less predictable. If a Fallen found her here, there was no telling what it might do. This entire area was disputed territory between the two factions, but humans were strictly disallowed. If they discovered what her case contained, death was almost certain.

Sara shifted to the side of the table, plotting a path through the boat’s dilapidated compact kitchen and out a back bedroom window. If she could reach the long pier fronting the lake, she might be able to escape back into humans-allowed territory unnoticed.

Then a quick glance at the open door ruined all her plans.

A dark silhouette filled the frame, rimmed by light from the deck beyond. As Sara’s eyes adjusted, a figure came into view: dark wings, pulled in tight to fit through the doorway, and a lean, muscular body clad in black leather pants and a shirt made of what looked like genuine silk. Black hair fell in waves around a bronze-toned face, and intense brown eyes met hers with impassive coldness that seemed to turn to confusion as he stared. All thoughts of running fled from Sara’s mind as she faced the first Fallen she’d ever seen up close.

Section Break

Gaviel didn’t particularly want this assignment tonight, but at least it broke the monotony of constant war. He’d never really wanted the war, either.

Being thrown down from Heaven was the price he — and all of his kind — had expected to face when they dared to question their increasingly unbalanced deity. His decisions had become erratic — one moment demanding unquestioning obedience, the next confusing them with contradictory commands that they couldn’t possibly obey simultaneously. It was almost as though He had been trying to push them toward some kind of choice. Or as though He were completely insane.

When they finally fought against the strange behavior, they all thought they’d end up tossed into Hell, down where the last batch of rebels resided. Their punisher, in his ever-worsening disorientation, had thrown them to Earth instead.

The mad god’s personal warriors came next, intending to hunt the newly Fallen before they could escape to Lucifer’s domain. Then the gates locked shut behind them all, creating a chaotic war between the Fallen who couldn’t find a way down and the Rising who believed they had to complete their task before being allowed back up. The entire affair was an exhausting mess.

Now Gaviel stood in the doorway of a small room inside a decaying houseboat, three men fleeing down the dock behind him and a nervous figure standing before him with a case full of angelfire. He’d been tasked to intercept the case on its path to Rising territory after a chance discovery had alerted his flock leader that a smuggling operation was underway. He had come prepared to encounter a hardened criminal or streetwise smuggler trying for a big score. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find a Rising or two come to collect their prize from the humans who’d somehow acquired it. If his leader had gotten wind of the smuggling going on under their noses, the Rising were likely to know about it as well.

Whatever he’d been prepared for, it wasn’t a human woman with strawberry-blonde curls in a white floral sundress who looked terrified that he might tear her head off if she so much as moved. As they stared at each other, her expression changed. The terror in her bright green eyes shifted, and something determined took their place.

This sudden change in attitude intrigued him. It was almost as though she were looking right at him, like he was just another person standing there, not a creature designed by his maker specifically to inspire fear. It was unnerving and incredibly intriguing.

Leave the case and you can go freely. Gaviel wasn’t sure why he made the offer. Most of his brethren wouldn’t hesitate to destroy her where she stood. He had his own code, though. No killing women or children unless they were a direct threat.

Not that he encountered many human women or children — or really any at all. As far as he knew, they typically remained in human enclaves doing whatever their kind did to survive. They certainly didn’t appear on broken-down houseboats in Angel territory messing up what was supposed to be a simple retrieval job. Nonetheless, he could let her go on her way and complete his business once she was gone. She wasn’t a threat to him or his task.

The woman