HORNS & HALOS
BLURBS:
Demons and Angels have been among us for thousands of years, in many cultures and in many forms. What happens when you set the Mischief Corner authors loose on the vague prompt "Write a story about angels or demons?" The poor unsuspecting world is about to find out.
From Toni Griffin - Archie's Accidental Kidnapping: Hounds of Hell 1
Hell may not have any fury like a woman scorned, but even that's nothing compared to a Hell Hound when you get between him and his mate.
From Freddy Mackay - Internment
Tadashi's life spirals out of control, and he hides away on his mountain taking care of the one place he knows he is safe, and people are safe from him. But the world has a way of interrupting life.
From Angel Martinez - Hell for the Company: Brimstone #1
Shax, the Demon Prince of Thieves, has reconciled himself to exile. He has a grand time careening around the galaxy as a high-end, intergalactic purloiner of pretties. Everything's going just fine, thank you very much, until he comes across an injured angel in a psychedelic alien jungle.
Demons and Angels have been among us for thousands of years, in many cultures and in many forms. What happens when you set the Mischief Corner authors loose on the vague prompt "Write a story about angels or demons?" The poor unsuspecting world is about to find out.
From Toni Griffin - Archie's Accidental Kidnapping: Hounds of Hell 1
Hell may not have any fury like a woman scorned, but even that's nothing compared to a Hell Hound when you get between him and his mate.
From Freddy Mackay - Internment
Tadashi's life spirals out of control, and he hides away on his mountain taking care of the one place he knows he is safe, and people are safe from him. But the world has a way of interrupting life.
From Angel Martinez - Hell for the Company: Brimstone #1
Shax, the Demon Prince of Thieves, has reconciled himself to exile. He has a grand time careening around the galaxy as a high-end, intergalactic purloiner of pretties. Everything's going just fine, thank you very much, until he comes across an injured angel in a psychedelic alien jungle.
EXCERPT:
“What’s the deal with the bloody weather today? It’s hot as Hell.” Cacus bitched and moaned as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
Adze shook his head. “No, it’s not, Cacus. You’ve been to Hell, remember?”
“Don’t remind me, Adze. I don’t plan on going back. Ever!”
“None of us do, mate,” Pyro muttered from where he sat.
It was one of those rare days in February when Melbourne’s temperature skyrocketed to over forty degrees. Adze couldn’t wait for the sun to sink below the horizon and the place to cool the fuck down again. You never really knew what the weather was going to give you from one day to the next here. People talked about Melbourne as the city that had four seasons in one day, and they were right. The weather was all kinds of fucked up.
Nicor, Oriax and Daevas had even taken a break from the research they were doing to head downstairs for a swim, hoping it would cool them off.
Adze couldn’t believe how much the big strong hellhounds around him sounded like whiny little babies. As he’d reminded Cacus, they had been to Hell. All six of them had been born and trained down there and had dealt with much harsher temperatures than this in the past. He wondered silently if they were becoming too acclimated to Earth and if that was a good or bad sign.
When the need for a new team to be sent to Earth had arisen, Adze had received notification from Lucifer’s second that he was to choose five other hounds and make haste to Australia. The previous pack that had guarded the continent hadn’t survived its encounter with their last target.
Adze hadn’t liked the sound of that, but he would’ve done anything to get out of Hell. He hated it there, as well as most of the people that either lived or were confined there. He’d gone immediately to gather his friends and they’d all readily agreed to go. They’d been training as a group for a hundred years so Adze hadn’t expected any of them to turn him down. They had all wanted to get out of Hell as much as he had.
Hellhounds had been charged thousands of years ago with keeping the balance on the surface. They accomplished this by cleaning up the damage the angels did every time they visited Earth and couldn’t keep it in their damn pants.
You would think after the first couple of dozen times a child created by an angel and a human went insane and on a killing spree, the angels would have got it in their heads that maybe Earth wasn’t the best place for them to go and fuck their hearts out, but no, that would have been too easy. Instead, they continued to come, continued to find willing women, bed them, and then leave them whether they were pregnant with their offspring or not, heading back to heaven and their angelic duties.
He wasn’t exactly sure what it was that caused the offspring to go off the deep end, but Adze thought it might have something to do with the fact that angels just weren’t meant to procreate with humans. Their DNA didn’t seem to mesh well and ended up creating all manner of evil beings. Homicidal maniacs, terrorists, rapists, serial killers, bombers, arsonists, you name it.
Nine times out of ten, the person responsible for the atrocities would have angelic blood flowing in their veins. The cases of the responsible party being completely human were getting rarer every day.
There were hellhound packs located all over the globe charged with hunting down the nephilim—half angel, half human—and killing them. If the party was found to be completely human, then Adze and his pack didn’t touch them. That was the job of the local law enforcement.
As the angels refused to keep track of every woman they slept with, things were a hell of a lot harder on the hounds than they could have been. There was no easy way to find an offspring from one of these hook-ups. Only when a hound got close enough to the being could they sense the angelic blood in their veins.
Once the hounds got within a couple of kilometers of a nephilim they were able to track it easily. Angels glowed with a white aura that Adze had found in the past to be almost blinding when looking directly at them. Their children’s auras, however, blackened with every evil act they committed, making them stand out amongst all the humans.
“What’s the deal with the bloody weather today? It’s hot as Hell.” Cacus bitched and moaned as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
Adze shook his head. “No, it’s not, Cacus. You’ve been to Hell, remember?”
“Don’t remind me, Adze. I don’t plan on going back. Ever!”
“None of us do, mate,” Pyro muttered from where he sat.
It was one of those rare days in February when Melbourne’s temperature skyrocketed to over forty degrees. Adze couldn’t wait for the sun to sink below the horizon and the place to cool the fuck down again. You never really knew what the weather was going to give you from one day to the next here. People talked about Melbourne as the city that had four seasons in one day, and they were right. The weather was all kinds of fucked up.
Nicor, Oriax and Daevas had even taken a break from the research they were doing to head downstairs for a swim, hoping it would cool them off.
Adze couldn’t believe how much the big strong hellhounds around him sounded like whiny little babies. As he’d reminded Cacus, they had been to Hell. All six of them had been born and trained down there and had dealt with much harsher temperatures than this in the past. He wondered silently if they were becoming too acclimated to Earth and if that was a good or bad sign.
When the need for a new team to be sent to Earth had arisen, Adze had received notification from Lucifer’s second that he was to choose five other hounds and make haste to Australia. The previous pack that had guarded the continent hadn’t survived its encounter with their last target.
Adze hadn’t liked the sound of that, but he would’ve done anything to get out of Hell. He hated it there, as well as most of the people that either lived or were confined there. He’d gone immediately to gather his friends and they’d all readily agreed to go. They’d been training as a group for a hundred years so Adze hadn’t expected any of them to turn him down. They had all wanted to get out of Hell as much as he had.
Hellhounds had been charged thousands of years ago with keeping the balance on the surface. They accomplished this by cleaning up the damage the angels did every time they visited Earth and couldn’t keep it in their damn pants.
You would think after the first couple of dozen times a child created by an angel and a human went insane and on a killing spree, the angels would have got it in their heads that maybe Earth wasn’t the best place for them to go and fuck their hearts out, but no, that would have been too easy. Instead, they continued to come, continued to find willing women, bed them, and then leave them whether they were pregnant with their offspring or not, heading back to heaven and their angelic duties.
He wasn’t exactly sure what it was that caused the offspring to go off the deep end, but Adze thought it might have something to do with the fact that angels just weren’t meant to procreate with humans. Their DNA didn’t seem to mesh well and ended up creating all manner of evil beings. Homicidal maniacs, terrorists, rapists, serial killers, bombers, arsonists, you name it.
Nine times out of ten, the person responsible for the atrocities would have angelic blood flowing in their veins. The cases of the responsible party being completely human were getting rarer every day.
There were hellhound packs located all over the globe charged with hunting down the nephilim—half angel, half human—and killing them. If the party was found to be completely human, then Adze and his pack didn’t touch them. That was the job of the local law enforcement.
As the angels refused to keep track of every woman they slept with, things were a hell of a lot harder on the hounds than they could have been. There was no easy way to find an offspring from one of these hook-ups. Only when a hound got close enough to the being could they sense the angelic blood in their veins.
Once the hounds got within a couple of kilometers of a nephilim they were able to track it easily. Angels glowed with a white aura that Adze had found in the past to be almost blinding when looking directly at them. Their children’s auras, however, blackened with every evil act they committed, making them stand out amongst all the humans.