A novel of Urban Fantasy Noir

It’s the 21st century. Demons have given up the old ways of dealing with humanity. Demonic possession is now old-fashioned; projectile vomiting and luring devout believers into committing sins of the flesh or participating in Satanic rituals is considered silly as well as unprofitable. For years now, ambitious demons have been taking on the guise of humans and insinuating themselves into positions of power and wealth. They have become CEOs of large corporations, politicians, lawyers, police chiefs, mayors, governors, dictators and, some say, even a president. Why dabble in silly black arts when greed and politics make the world ripe for take-over by other means?

Humans are unaware this is happening. Only an ancient and secret society of Guardians stands between the human race and demon ambition. For centuries, Guardians have placed assassins called Raptors in every major population area around the world. Raptors, under orders from the Guardians, fight to maintain the balance between demonic attempts to achieve dominion and the safety of human race.

Ariel is the Raptor assigned to a large city in the Midwest. She has received an order to assassinate an extremely corrupt criminal lawyer and demon named Nicolai Tesslovich. She has been stalking him for days, but he is rarely alone. Finally, she completes her task by breaking into the lawyer’s office through a window and beheading him, only to discover there is a witness. The lawyer has a man duct-taped to a chair in his office. The man turns out to be a private detective named Frank Bishop who has been hired to find a missing child. His attempt to talk to Tesslovich about private adoptions has ended in a beating and the potential for something much more serious. As Tesslovich’s bodyguards start to break in his office door, Ariel makes their escape by throwing both herself and Bishop out the building’s thirteen-story window. By saving his life, Ariel has violated a serious rule that she not ever reveal her paranormal nature and her power to fly to a human. Bishop is stunned, then skeptical when she lands them on a nearby rooftop, convinced that what just happened must be some kind of trick. Eventually, Bishop and Ariel agree to work together to look for not one, but several missing children, including a group of homeless street kids. The search takes them to a café full of young hackers, which leads to the discovery that a famous bio-tech scientist is hiding from his ex-partner in a secret colony under the subway tunnels and a scary trip to a demon bar where Ariel meets her snitches. Bishop soon realizes that strange and scary beings are not just creatures of legend, but actually exist.