CHAPTER 1 Noel had been given a promotion in being assigned to the lush green state of Louisiana, but the position was a double- edged sword. Though the area was part of Raphael’s territory, the archangel had assigned the day–to–day ruling of it to Nimra, an angel who had lived six hundred years. Nowhere close to Raphael in age, but old enough— even if age alone was not the arbiter of power when it came to the immortal race. Nimra had more strength in her fine bones than angels twice her age and had ruled this region for eighty years; she’d been considered a power when most of her peers were still working in the courts of their seniors. Hardly surprising when it was said that she had a will of iron and a capacity for cruelty untempered by mercy. He was no fool. He knew this “promotion” was in truth a silent, cutting statement that he was no longer the man he’d once been— and no longer of use. His hand fisted. The torn and bloodied flesh, the broken bones, the glass that had been driven into his wounds by the servants of a crazed angel, it was all gone courtesy of his vampirism. The only things that remained were the nightmares… and the damage within. Noel didn’t see the same man he always had when he looked in the mirror. He saw