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When Good Angels Go Bad

  (an OTS novella)

  Audrey Brice

  Get the blog serial Home is Where the Haunt Is (A Haunted Cottage Mystery) and bonus chapters FREE for joining the Audrey Brice newsletter: https://www.sjreisner.com/newsletter/

 

  Darkerwood Publishing Group

  U.S.A.

  eBook Version 2014

  Copyright © Stephanie Connolly-Reisner as Audrey Brice 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded, or otherwise) without prior written permission from both the publisher and the copyright holder listed above.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

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  BOOKS IN THE OTS SERIES

  Outer Darkness (OTS #1)

  Into Darkness (OTS #2)

  Rising Darkness (OTS #3)

  Ascending Darkness (OTS #4)

  Illuminated Darkness (OTS #5) Forthcoming 

  NOVELLAS IN THE OTS SERIES

  Sunny Satan Arizona (OTS #1.5)

  Dead Man’s Knock (OTS #3.5)

  Rocky Mountain Haunt (OTS #4.4)

  When Good Angels Go Bad (OTS #4.7)

  ALSO BY AUDREY BRICE

  Thirteen Covens Saga:

  A Rising Damp

  Temple Apophis

  Lucifer’s Haven

  Shadow Marbas

  Other Titles:

  The Danbury Ghost

  Samuel

  Home is Where the Haunt Is (Haunted Cottage Mystery #1, Free blog serial in 2017)

  Get the Haunted Cottage Mysteries bonus content FREE for joining the Audrey Brice newsletter: https://www.sjreisner.com/newsletter/

  When Good Angels Go Bad

  An OTS Novella

  Audrey Brice

  I always love the holidays at home, and by home I mean Colorado, with my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but the holidays in Arizona just aren’t the same. Back home it’s too warm, my mom frets in the kitchen like a chicken with its head cut off, my father watches football or something equally vapid on television, and I’m stuck setting the dinner table – bored and warm, longing for snow. It’s just not winter without snow.

  This year I got lucky. My parents decided to go to my uncle’s in Georgia and I politely bowed out and decided Mike and I would be celebrating with his mother, which is partly true. The reality was that Alyssa, Gabe, Mike and I were planning a huge holiday bash at the local Masonic Temple. A Yuletide Ball replete with formal attire, black tie, and a solar ritual in honor of the Daemon Belial. All of the Daemonolaters, Satanists, and Dark Pagans along the front-range had been invited, and so far we had one-hundred-seventy-one RSVPs. The number was still climbing since the response cut off was still a week away.

  I’d put Alyssa and Gabe in charge of the catering since Gabe’s sister ran a huge catering company. Naturally Mike was in charge of security, and I took it upon myself, along with my co-workers at the Black Magick Network, to orchestrate the ritual, which we’d be broadcasting live for our viewers.

  There was a light knock on my office door and Lamont Catrell, our resident alchemist, poked his head in. “Good Morning Liz. How you doing?”

  I frowned at my computer screen. “Programming. Kirk wants me to replace Dark Meditation with Daily Evocation for Evocation Week in March, but if I do that on March fifteenth with these three episodes, Sorath, Kasdeya, and Zagan - we’re opening a hell mouth somewhere and starting the apocalypse. I’m not so sure that’s a smart idea.”

  Lamont chuckled. He got my snarky sense of humor. “Beware the Ides of March?”

  Laughing, I peeled my eyes off of the monitor and smiled at Lamont, who’d become one of my favorite co-workers, and not just because he was easy on the eyes. No, he was the first real hardcore alchemist I’d ever known and we could talk magick and alchemy for hours. His show was my favorite in our lineup. “Something like that. How are you?”

  “Getting psyched about your Solstice Ball. I have a date!” He came into my office and closed the door behind him. He set his I’ll-turn-you-into-a-toad coffee cup at the edge of my desk and took the chair across from mine. “Her name is Lilith.”

  “Ah, the Daemon goddess…”

  He nodded. “I can’t say she’s as serious as I am…magickally speaking.”

  His voice trailed off. I knew exactly what he meant. While my boyfriend Mike was an observant Daemonolater, he wasn’t always practicing. I shrugged. “That seems to be how it goes though. Every pagan couple I know, there’s one who observes while the other actively practices. It’s the nature of the beast.”

  “Hmm.” Lamont considered it for a second. “I think you’re on to something. You know, if you and I had met only a few years earlier…” He gave me a wink.

  I laughed again, trying not to blush. He often joked about what I’d thought a thousand times since I met him. If I hadn’t been with Mike, Lamont and I might have ended up together – a magician power couple in a house constantly active with magick. While I still found that idea intriguing I knew deep down it would never happen. Not only was I happy with Mike, but two strong, ambitious, high achieving magicians in one household just wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. Magicians are egotistical assholes. I should know. So for now, I was just happy we were friends.

  “So you’re working on March?”

  I nodded

  “Am I still on the schedule?”

  Lifting an eyebrow, I looked at my computer screen. “Yes. You haven’t been cancelled yet.”

  “Good. Of course it’s only December.” He looked at his watch. “I actually stopped by to ask if you would mind meeting a friend of mine after work today. She needs some help and I thought of you…”

  “Oh?” I was no longer feeling as flattered by his flirting. Everyone who knew me knew how much I hated being volunteered for things, especially since I was in the midst of planning the biggest event I’d ever planned.

  “It’s kind of a weird situation and I don’t know what to make of it, but I know you deal with strange things all the time. Do you have time? Like maybe a half hour?”

  I have to admit, I was intrigued, and it was only a half an hour. “Yeah, okay. I’ll have to double check with Mike to make sure we didn’t have anything going on tonight, but we’ll plan for it.”

  “Thanks, Liz, you’re great! I suppose I should get downstairs to the set. It’s show time in an hour.”

  I gave him a smile and glanced back at the schedule on my screen. That’s when I realized that I was fretting over March programming and it was only December fifth. “See you later Lamont.”

  “Later Liz.” He exited the office with a bold greeting to Laura in the office next door.

  I shook my head, got up, and began preparing for the morning production meeting.

  Six o’clock seemed to come faster than usual. I called Mike to let him know I’d be late, which was fine with him sinc
e it gave him an excuse to go have a beer with some of the guys from work at Smokey’s, one of the local cop-detective hang-out joints downtown. It was nice having a relationship where we could do our own things without the other becoming suspicious or jealous.

  Closing my office, I made my way downstairs to the set of Alchemy of Da’ath to find Lamont chatting up one of the women on the camera crew. The young blonde blushed furiously, but her smile abruptly subsided when I showed up. That’s often how it worked. The higher up you were, the fewer friends among the crew one seemed to have. Some days it sucked being the Director of Programming.

  We agreed to meet at Marksman Brewery in a suburb directly west of Denver. When I got there, Lamont was already there with his friend, at the front door, waiting for me. He must have known a short cut because he looked like he’d been sitting there for a while. Of course with Lamont you never knew. He always seemed calm and collected regardless of what was going on around him.

  “Kim, this is Liz, Liz – Kim,” he said, introducing me to the thirty-something bottle blonde with a short, sassy cut. She towered almost a foot over me and was thin as a rail. A stark contrast to my own short athletic build and currently auburn hair with magenta streaks.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling with what appeared to be relief.

  Taking the hand she offered, I shook it. She was one of those. The type of person who had a limp handshake that made you not really trust them all that much. I forced a smile. “Likewise.”

  I was about to ask her about her situation when Lamont ushered us inside. It