The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two by G. Wells Taylor

reached out to
God.
    Dark waves of guilt buffeted Cawood’s mind. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your
suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones.
    “Hello?” Juanita’s face moved close; a smile
played at the smooth corners of her mouth. “I hate to
interrupt.”
    “I’m sorry.” Cawood smoothed her hair. “Just
thinking.” Damn it, Able .
    “Well, you just snuggle in here.” Juanita’s
lithe body pressed hot and close. “I’ll try to get your full
attention.”
    Cawood felt a tingle run through her body
from the base of her spine to her breasts. “You’re so sweet.” Her
nipples rubbed the Mormon’s. “I’ve just had an idea.”
    “What could that be, Sister Cawood?”
Juanita’s hands explored her belly. “Oh, dear, I must thank Able.
It is pleasant being your distraction.”
    And as they embraced, Cawood fled from her
lies and her faithlessness. She immersed herself in sin until it
felt like drowning.

    13 – Employer from Hell

    Felon hated the cold. The chill wind that
tore at him rode the crest of a Winter rain. The frigid weather
system was plowing through the day like a glacier, dire and
destructive. Its impact diminished or increased in relation to your
location in the City. The City population created heat and certain
elevations in the Levels trapped it. The metropolis had its own
environment, and it all revolved around humidity and the dispersal
of water dropped by incessant rains. The middle Levels were
warmest, the upper Levels, ironically, the driest and the lowest,
were the coldest. The damp air flowed downhill.
    The assassin pulled his overcoat tight around
his chest and spat a curse. Of all the sensations, cold was worst.
He hated the cold because he couldn’t prepare for it. They could
forecast the temperature, but they’d never be able to tell him how
cold it would feel. And the Change made it entirely unpredictable.
He couldn’t even count on seasons. His business depended on speed
and sensation. He couldn’t afford to be constricted by thermal
underwear and wool suits. Gloves were out of the question.
    Felon clenched and unclenched his bare hands
like he was strangling the air. The fingers were numb; but the
gripping action moved the blood and kept them supple enough to work
the .9 mm automatic in the large front pocket of his overcoat. He
was on his way to meet a Demon. Instead of his client’s luxurious
Level Five office, he’d been given instructions to meet in the
basement of a six-story parking garage on Level One—which had to be
one of the coldest places in the City.
    He parked his rental car two floors up, and
descended the rest of the way on foot. He’d be an easy target in a
car within the cramped confines of a parking garage. A pedestrian
couldn’t be parked in and gunned down.
    Felon took no chances. His client had
exceptional taste, followed the rules of the Unholy Compact, and
dealt fairly in the past. But he was a Demon, and by his nature
unable to easily accept restrictions. The Unholy Compact was a book
of laws that balanced off the equation of the Bible.
    Fallen followed the letter of the Compact
like jailhouse lawyers, convicts who studied law to force their own
release. Knowledge and command of all the loopholes in Cosmic law
was a driving force in their Infernal lives.
    Demons were ungoverned twists of passion, and
subordinate to Fallen for that very reason. They paid lip service
to the Compact, but were not bound by it. They adopted affectations
of sophistication to counter the perception that they were
subordinate. A Demon once explained that they were powerful beings
that predated human civilization. They evolved alongside humanity
from dim dark beginnings and were around before the Egyptians, the
Romans, or the Stone Age Britons invented their complicated
religions. Ancient humans actually begged them to play God. The
association corrupted them all eventually. The arrival of the One
God created a psychological self-destruction