Page 5 (1/2)

Chapter One

Nothing in the world co throughthe curve of h, so far above the domes of the Adirondack Mountains that when I opened h I could reach out and touch the stars or rise straight to the Heavens

Which would be problematic if it happened Somehow I doubted the Alphas would appreciate a Warden suddenly breaching their pearly gates I laughed at the thought; the sound lifted and bleay on the wind One couldn’t just fly into heaven As with Hell, there were doorways all over the world, giving entry to those who kne to find them and had reason to cross their thresholds

During the past three years,in the sky Fe other than pop out babies and raise and teach the young, but none of the males were as fast as me At least none that were around or mattered or

I cut off the train wreck of a thought process before it could derail ht

Down below, the caps of the Adirondacks didn’t seee and unmovable No They appeared soft, like listened like shiny vats of onyx and the forest was thick and virtually uninhabitable Once, I had flown to all forty-six peaks of the Adirondacks, traveling into Canada and then back to Washington County

A burst of wind caught the underside of le as the current lifted e of ats to constrict and I couldn’t pull in enough oxygen

There was a brief spike of panic at not being able to breathe, but it faded in the rush, in that moment when instinct took over and my brain held no control over my body

I freefell, wings tucked in close, eyes wide open and ht, as wasache that usually festered like an untreated wound These ation to my race or threat of death or memories of those I’d loved and lost I cherished those brief, beautiful times

And as always, this one was over too quickly

Halfway back to Earth, I unfurledmy descent so I didn’t pancake into the side of aover the peaks for several lided low over the modest town

Six years later and it was still weird not to worry about being seen by hu the bejeezus out of a huiant bird of prey

The Wardens had stepped out of the shadows,themselves known to the human world when I elve, and as expected, there had been a teeny-tiny bit of chaos aends and myths become a very real truth

For thousands of years,more than the stone sculptures perched upon the rooftops of hooyles And technically, that’s ere?but the depiction of a gargoyle was vastly exaggerated Even the ugliest of all Wardens didn’t have a bulbous nose or fangs jutting froht about it

Leave it to hued the true nature of our kind, humans also had no idea that demons were everywhere Some looked just like the in But everything changed six years ago when there was an uprising in Hell It wouldn’t have been the concern of anyone topside, except that hundreds of thousands, if notGuy, causing them to spill into the human realm at a rate never seen before No one, not even the Alphas, see, but the level of deh the roof Wasn’t like deed to stay in the shadows and in our hu way tooway too human

The Alphas—those who called the shots—had decreed that the Wardens co deer operate without the public knowing about us

So the gargoyle was out of the stone, so to speak

Alphas were like urban legends I’d never seen one with my oo eyes, but I had felt them when they’d come to speak with els and also theAlphas were not warood day They saw things only in terht