Angel of Chaos (Imp Book 6) by Debra Dunbar Page A

trail soon, and once it’s discovered you’re harboring the Nephilim, there will be an army at your door.”
    Ah, just what I wanted to know. I’d be facing one at a time. Now if only I could find out how they knew about the baby and where Harper was, I could nip this whole thing in the bud.
    “Who do you report to?”
    Dead silence. I wasn’t surprised, but figured I’d go ahead and ask more questions he’d refuse to answer.
    “What choir are you in? How did you know there was a Nephilim, and that the woman carrying the baby was here?”
    Nothing.
    “Do you know who the father is? Did he put you up to this in order to scare Harper into giving the baby up?”
    “Seriously? I’m tasked with killing Nephilim, not scaring innocent human women into sinful compliance. If the sire wanted to do that, he wouldn’t be working with me.”
    At least that got a response. This Ben angel wasn’t off the hook, though. I hadn’t liked his attitude from the moment I saw him at my door, and Harper’s story just lowered him further in my estimation. No, angel–boy wasn’t about to let some demon raise his child. He was up to something. But in the meantime, I needed to know more about this angel swinging from the side of my barn, and what I might be facing in the next few months.
    I watched sunlight glint off the bag, sending spots of color onto the side of the barn. It might remind me of a disco ball right now, but my original impression had been piñata, and that’s what I was going with.
    The wooden handle of the pitchfork hit the net with a solid thump. The angel grunted as he swung wildly around. I kept up my rhythm, demanding answers to my questions in time with each blow. No candy came out, but a drop of iridescent liquid formed and fell to the ground. I hesitated, eyeing it with surprise. He was bleeding. He wasn’t healing. I knew these nets kept us from using our raw energy to repair wounds, but I’d never imagined they’d keep angels from healing themselves.
    “Sad way for an angel to die.” I poked the bag a few times to make my point. “Beaten to death by a demon while hanging in a sack.”
    “You’ll be signing your death warrant if you kill me,” he snapped.
    “Hmm. An angel body is found bruised and bloodied, with no sign of demon attack. What makes you think they’d suspect me? Your death would be a great mystery, pondered for millennia, the subject of all sorts of academic papers and conspiracy theories up in Aaru.”
    His silence dragged on. “Fourth choir. I report through the Grigori chain of command.”
    I felt suddenly chilled. He didn’t just report to Gregory, he was part of his choir. Had my own angel betrayed me? No, I wouldn’t believe that. If he wanted Harper, he would have just taken her the other night as I’d slept. It couldn’t be Gregory, but having one of his angels hanging from my barn wasn’t going to make him a happy angel.

–10–
    T ell me about Ben.”
    Harper and Nyalla were sitting on my couch, each facing a different direction to better watch the entrances to my house. I noticed the pregnant woman was once again clutching a knife, several others jammed through her belt. Boomer, the most effective of their weapons, snoozed on the floor, his body half under the coffee table.
    The dark–haired woman pursed her lips. “I really don’t know much about him. I originally thought he worked at the hospital in Alaska, but after I went back to Colorado, he was there. Strange — in any other circumstance, I would have thought he was some creepy stalker, but I was always so happy when he was around. It was a fuzzy kind of happy, like when you’ve had a few too many glasses of wine.”
    Angels. No doubt Ben had worked his mojo on the woman. I’d seen Gregory entrance humans to get his way in airports and shopping malls. If Baby–Daddy had even one–tenth of his power, it was no wonder Harper had fallen in line with whatever he wanted.
    “I went back to work, but I felt