Welcoming the Darkness...

Welcome, lovers of darkness.

     I hope you're enjoying the blog hop, When the Darkness Falls. I love the dark, don't you?

     Firstly, I have stuff for you. Who doesn't love stuff?

Click here for a FREE READ,

a fun Greek Myth Fantasy Romance novella,

and thanks for stopping by.

          Secondly, drop your email address into a comment for this blog entry, and I'll draw a name and give away an ebook copy of my Angels and Demons/Sci-Fi Romantic Adventure, Vigilant. Learn about Vigilant here. 

     Onto worship of the dark. Don't you love to hide in shadows and mystery, and watch the weak candlelight flickering and failing to fight back the insidious night?

     Suppressing dark thoughts and frightening fantasies, my men hunt demons by orders of the angels. To the  mortal realm, they are I-Marshals, law enforcement with unlimited jurisdiction to police the wildlands of Alliance space. But in the war played just above the mortal realm, the I-Marshals serve as Nephilim demon hunters, the sons of fallen angels, their disgraced bloodlines spawned at the beginning of mankind's history. The Nephilim, the bad and the good, live among us in a future where crime and the hellish forces behind it have no boundaries but the galaxy. Demons, the source of most human misery, are in possession of human forms and at work to drive souls into hopelessness.

     Today, I give you Gangbusters, Book 3 of I-Marshal Stories, a tale of a dark hero who uses his Nephilim talents to accomplish heavenly duty, though he considers his soul condemned. He doesn't even care to be happy in this life as long as he can make up for his crimes.

     Danny is a deep and murky thinker. Disturbed by a childhood of gangland wars and street executions, he can't help it that his mind goes to acts of cruelty when he holds a demon in his fists. Danny is demonseed. Even his role as angel of death cannot deter him from his love of torture. The highest of angels, Metatron worries for Danny's soul.

     And Danny worries for Faith, who will wander, unprotected, into a den of devils for something as stupid as a story. The expose she wishes to write will turn a hidden war of angels versus demons into a galaxywide apocalypse of the mortal realm. How will Danny keep her quiet?

     He'll start with a hot kiss.

Daniel Tierney and his fellow I-Marshals take down the organizations producing the most dangerous substance in the Alliance. But investigative reporter Faith Vedder turns up at the worst times, including Danny’s near-assassination. He’s had enough of her interference and requires her source of information.

Faith won’t tell him anything that compromises her Pulitzer-worthy story, not even under the magic of hot attraction. She doesn’t know she’s surrounded by fallen angels at war. Danny’s not finished making demands. She doesn’t understand until a giant, snorting, winged monster slobbers down her back, threatening to flay her.

The gangbusters can’t delay in their mission to shut down gangs until Danny learns the new criminal kingpin of their world is a man who once held Faith’s heart. In the guise of a gangland executioner named Heretic, Danny will destroy him. Even if it destroys Faith.

Angels are watching. Demons are plotting. Faith is the key.

Come on. Read the creepy stuff.

[ This excerpt is rated R for nasty threats of punishment. Just awful stuff.

And that’s coming from the Good Guy. He means business. ]

         Wherever Calderon went, he opened a gun shop, even on the planets where guns were outlawed. It was his screw-you to the authorities.

          The I-Marshal had a screw-you for Calderon from the entire Alliance, hand-delivered. This was Danny's favorite part of the job, having custody of an invisible super-suit. Hurrah for Alliance technology secrets.

          Unseen, Danny paced into Calderon’s gun store, walked right past the gangster’s bulky guards and into the firing range, not needing to kill the guards to keep them from spotting his talk with their boss.

          The oily Calderon stood alone in a shooting booth, firing a variety of firearms, both projectile and beam weapons. The mobster’s range time was the only time he was without his posse in attendance or women on his arm. The familiar smell of gunpowder made Danny smile. He watched for a while to see if Calderon was a good shot. He was. But it wasn’t going to help him.

          When Danny felt like it, he walked up to Calderon unsuspecting, and he clocked the mobster, sending him to the concrete floor.

          Minutes later, Calderon awakened to find himself hanging upside down a half-meter in the air at the target-end of the shooting range, his hands cuffed behind his back, his body wrapped in and suspended by the cables that operated the target-retrieval system of the range. His eyes rolled upward to find Danny’s gold I-Marshal badge jammed in his mouth and no one in the room.

          No one visible.

          “Go ahead,” Danny spoke loudly into the gangster’s ear. “Scream all you want.”

          Calderon did. He screamed as much as he could, his mouth stuffed with a big eight-point star, and it wasn’t enough to penetrate the soundproofed range. He looked terrified. Good.

          When the criminal scourge of planet Reigna wore himself out squealing like a pig, Danny plucked the badge from his mouth and wiped it on Calderon’s expensive suit.
     “I’m here for a few reasons, demon. First, to avenge the wholesale death, corruption, and misery you’ve caused the mortal worlds for millennia. I’m going to visit all your brothers connected, and I’m going to destroy every one of you.”
     Calderon thrashed in his bonds to no avail. He only swung for his efforts like a pendulum blade.

          “Secondly, I’ve been sent to avenge your wife’s murder, and that of her family.”

          “Who sent you?” the gangster spat, livid to find himself in this vulnerable position.

          “Faith Vedder. You remember her, the reporter who’s on you like…blasphemy on a devil’s lips. You met her today.”

          The crook snorted. “I recognized her right away.”

          “I thought you might have. That’s why I’m here to dismantle you. She actually hasn’t asked me to kill you yet. But she will. That you will be dead before she calls the shot is just a trick of time. Going against you.”

          Calderon shouted again for his boys, and rocked himself in an effort to bring his body down from his bonds. When he tired, he gave up, still swinging from side to side.

          “Keep calling for your buddies. I’ll pick them off like duck targets.”

          “Why are you waiting to destroy me, Marshal?”

          “I want some information from you. What do you know about a street manager on planet Valdeya called Freak? Lie to me, and I’ll call upon Metatron to get the truth from you. If you make me call upon my master, I’ll cut your tongue out, and he’ll have a hard time understanding your answer. You don’t wish to give the highest of angels a difficult time, do you? He will consign you to the Fifth Heaven where your punishment will last an eternity. He has no mercy for corruptors.”

          Calderon sweated like a turkey shown the chopping block. “Freak… He’d been a high-level employee of the Juicers. I’d sold him the job of killing Faith Vedder. I’d been told he’d taken the contract to Boss, who’d given it to Heretic.”

          It didn’t surprise the I-Marshal. Contract killings were often passed through a chain of criminals to erase the true originator.

          “Clearly, Heretic hadn’t done his job. I found him at the woman’s side earlier today.”

          Danny disengaged his invisibility, removed the helmet and the cowl beneath it, and set them down beside him on the floor. The gangster sucked in a slow breath of shock to see him and put it together that his long-time associate from the black-market underground was an undercover I-Marshal.

          “I always do my job. You’re not making any more plans for Faith. She’s fantasizing of your destruction now.”

          “Is a third-rate reporter calling your shots now, Heretic?”

          “Keep mouthing off, and I’ll put my C-breaker down your throat and cook you from the inside out. When was the last time you heard from Freak?”

          The click of Heretic’s switchblade rushed the monster into saying, “Weeks ago.”

          “Before or after Boss’s crew got hit on Valdeya?”

          “Before. A week before, I’m sure of it. I’m guessing Freak died in that hit.”

          Heretic knew Freak had survived his destruction somehow, and he knew Calderon lied.

          “So you didn’t kill Faith Vedder…and you’re screwing her now… Isn’t that against I-Marshal rules?”

          “Don’t provoke me, demon. I’m not a man of limits.”

          The gangster’s vision roamed the target range and his position in it. “Are you planning some shooting practice on me?”

          “What good would it do? We both know that won’t end your sick existence. You’ll just regenerate in a day or two in that body. Unless I give you a thorough destruction.”

          Calderon nervously chuckled, his peace disturbed. “You’ve a bit of a reputation as a torturer, Heretic. Wouldn’t you rather take your anger out on me and let me live, giving you a source of information?”

          “I’d like to take my anger out on you. Especially since I saw you put your grubby demon lips on Faith today, attempting to defile her. I’d carve my initials in your scaly chest for that. Maybe force you to transform completely, let your wings sprout…so I can slip my blade beneath them and cut them from your demon back. Carve the horns from your demon skull. Pull the fangs from your demon face.”

          Calderon shuddered, probably imagining himself stripped of his evil tools.

          “But letting you live for what little info you could provide violates my mission to destroy you and your kind. I’ll do what I must to end your existence. By the way...” Heretic lifted the gold chains hanging around Calderon’s greasy neck with his blade. “I arrest you in the name of the Draco Alliance. Now it’s official.”

          “Stop pretending to be a cop, Heretic,” Calderon growled. “You’re formed from the same dark and wicked flame as me…son of fire.”

          “I guess it’s in my nature to see you suffer.”

          “It’s a sin you love too much.”

***

Don’t stop. Read more.

Investigate steamy, peril-packed excerpts:

http://www.MicheleHart.com/b28-book.htm

 

Don’t hold back.

The angels of madness are calling.

Buy Link: http://www.BookStrand.com/gangbusters

Would you like to watch book trailers? Click here.

Read and live an adventure.

Have a thrilling day,

Michele Hart

Enjoy the Hop into darkness.