And further to the note below it has now been fixed. A big oops for doing it in the first place....

OH NO!!! chapter 5 is missing - and i can't fix it till sunday as i don't have the document with me!!!!!!!!!!!! SORRY, but trust me, there is a chapter 5!!!

Sorry there was a problem with line breaks - all fixed now. But if further on in the story there are any other unformatted scene splits i would really appreciate a heads up - i know how annoying they can be! Also if people have any other editorial/ stylistic suggestions to make, i would more than welcome them.

Hope you enjoy!

Please review and tell me what you think, i really appreciate the feedback.

Now for the summary - which appears on my profile page too...

Agent Mira works for a strange shadowy agency called (imaginatively) the Agency. She's worked there for as long as she can remember, perhaps because the work itself is really quite memorable. It's hard to forget she forms part of the line of defence between good and bad - between Heaven itself and the fiery depths of Hell. However, the section of the defensive line she inhabits is minuscule and quite literally insignificant.... That is until everything changes.

A series of strange apparent 'coincidences' sees Mira pitted against creatures far beyond her skill. It almost seems as if someone has it in for her... But when her misadventures push her straight into the arms of the Agency's finest officer, she gets a little distracted. And then things just get darn right crazy. From the sudden appearance of a child like angel, and her more abrupt insistence that she is Mira's new flat mate, to the terrifying ramblings of a police Inspector - it's no wonder Mira is having trouble keeping up.

All too slowly, however, her hunky top Agent begins to catch up. But will he be fast enough to realise what is happening before its too late? And will he be able to make the distinction between loyalty to a friend and loyalty to the Agency itself?

Chapter 1

Rooftops and Rain

Meet Mira...

The rain fell from above in a light wave. It spattered over her heavy overcoat, which almost dwarfed her diminutive form, as Mira made for the pavement. The grey sky pressed against the buildings above her as it shed its load. The rain agitated the dirt that caked the storm drains and gutters and permeated the air with a sodden musty aroma. Mira screwed up her nose and finally skipped lightly onto the dry pavement under an awning, her long dark brown hair sticking against her back from the rain.

She stood in front of a large, two story brick building, stained a dark brown from the rain. Big plate glass windows let a soft orange light onto the street around her. A quick glance through them told Mira there were hardly any patrons at Boothbys tonight.

But that was still too many.

She opened the door gently, but the bell above it still gave out a distinct tinkle.

People looked up and watched her enter. This was just what she needed – witnesses.

Oh well. Mira jammed her wet hands into the lined pockets of her overcoat and let out a little sigh. She never had any luck. Whether it was with games, bets, the weather or even romance, she could never rely on the good Lady. And as for her job, well that was a whole other level of misfortune.

‘Have you located the target yet?’ The voice rang in her mind. Heard only to her, it spread through her awareness like a soft cloud.

She nodded then quickly shook her head in thin-lipped exasperation. The voice couldn’t see her could it? How many years had she been doing this?

She called up a flicker of concentration with a deeply caught breath and answered: ‘I just got here, what do you expect already?’

‘I expect a little discipline.’ the voice sighed in her mind. ‘ No that’s not right I’d hoped for discipline, I expect you to stuff up as usual with your cavalier ineptitude.’

Her bottom lip stuck forward in a pronounced pout. ‘You’re not helping.’ she almost shouted to the world at large.

‘Just get on with it Agent.’

Well that was easier said than done. Another cursory glance at the three patrons of this dingy establishment told Mira that any one of them could be her target. Any one of them could be harbouring, unbeknownst to them, a slimy evil demon of hell.

She walked towards the large, solid wood counter at the end of the room. Two staircases flanked it on either side, and hidden away in the dark alcoves they cast were two of her fellow customers. Sheesh why did dodgy people always make it so hard to eyeball them from afar? At this rate she would have to strafe right past both of them without letting her search become conspicuous. And that was the really hard bit, demons always knew when you had your eye on them. They’re used to being hunted after all.

The other patron, a short man with a countenance like a buoy bobbing in the ocean, sat at a table next to one of the windows. He had a ray of greying hair around his round head and his nose was buried in the large tabloid he had spread across the table.

She could start with him, cross him off the list at least. He looked like middle-aged middle management – probably the owner and operator of a stationary company. Could there be anyone less likely to be possessed by an agent of evil? Perhaps her angelic self-maybe, but stationary manufacturers would come a neat second. Demons would quickly see that their chances of world domination would be trounced if they signed on with the texta dexter over there.

She took several more steps through the room, picking her way carefully around the tables and chairs, trying to maintain a loose-shouldered nonchalant lumber that would put all demons at ease. The bar tender looked up and blinked at her slowly, probably using some wait staff code of recognition. She took the opportunity to beam back with a wide, mega-cute smile, her deep brown eyes twinkling.

The bar tender turned from her and shuffled off with a steaming mug of something or the other.

Hmmm, people never appreciated her amazing smiles. He probably had the demon if he wasn’t won over by that winning beam though. She quickly flicked her eyes up to closely analyse the figure of the bar tender as he carried the mug across the room. Unfortunately he didn’t have the heavy black pall of the damned.

The bar tender headed for one of the men in the corner.

Mira dug her bottom teeth into her lip and sniffed softly. This demon was hardly going to catch itself and if she waited any longer the damned fiend would get all jittery from late night caffeine.

‘Excuse me!’ She called out with a cute little wave, ‘I’m looking for someone.’ Hands innocently tucked into her pockets, she ran up to the bar tender and shadowy alcove-dwelling customer. ‘And I was wondering if you could help me.’

The bar tender slowly placed the steaming cup on the table with a snow-white knife-like hand and turned to her. His face was equally pale and the dark circles under his sunken eyes only added to his ghostly appearance. One pale thin eyebrow was raised.

She instantly grinned as she tried not to baulk. Her neck still receded into her collar though, and she only widened her grin in an attempt to appear unaffected. ‘Umm,’ her voice was unusually high, ‘I’m looking for someone,’ she repeated before she could catch herself.

The bar tender’s lips parted slowly, like mist rising off a gravestone. ‘And?’

Ewgh this guy was creepy! He was way creepier than a low level demon. Whoever he was, he was definitely into the dark arts. He wasn’t a demon though, she would know by now, but he wasn’t your average bar tender either.

She suddenly realised she hadn’t replied and, quickly clasping her hands together in embarrassment, nodded politely. ‘Well I ah, there’s this guy.’ Her cheeks began to flush with a warm shipment of blood and she realised she was falling apart. Things always went pear shaped when she had to improvise. ‘Annnnnd well he said he’d meet me here...’ her voice trailed into a thin whisper.

The ghostly bar tender blinked rapidly. ‘I see.’

‘Really? Because I’m having trouble following you Angel. If this is how you handle the wait staff I can’t wait to see your style with a demonic agent of hell.’ The voice in her head rang out with a clear and quick tone.

She almost bit through her lip. Her Controller always had it in for her.

‘Who are you looking for?’ the Bar tender prompted, his sunken eyes appearing to recede further into his sallow face.

She let her eyes drift to the man behind the bar tender. He was why she was here after all, she had to check if he was really a red eyed master of death. A closer look revealed nothing but a set of broad shoulders and a rigid, chiselled face and dark swarthy features. He looked more like a stiff lipped gym teacher than Balthazar.

‘Ahh,’ she stalled for time, ‘Bob?’ her voice uncontrollably peaked on Bob like it was a question. ‘Bob,’ she quickly repeated with more confidence.

The bar tender licked his lips with a whip-like dark-red tongue. ‘I do not know a Bob.’

Just as the words left his mouth a figure darted across the base of the stairs. It must have wondered down to catch a glimpse of them. Out of the corner of her eyes, she’d seen it. Seen as it had popped its extended, greyed head around the door, its long boned hand on the wall. One red-rimmed eye had stared at her, unblinking.

Bingo. This must be one of those stupid demons, hallelujah.

‘Ah that’s okay! You know I think Bob might be upstairs!’ She pushed herself quickly, but gracefully, towards the stairs. ‘Bob!’ She threw herself up them, ‘Bob, what are you doing up there?’

‘So much for keeping this quiet, I knew I should have chosen a better Agent.’

She ignored the voice, applying all her concentration on the darked stairway before her.

Way back in the room, something grated as a heavy object shifted its weight.

She reached the top of the stairs and quickly pitched herself into a dive roll. She didn’t even bother to check for danger. There was only one thing she needed to know – the room was pitch dark.

Her back curled against the uneven wood and she lithely jumped to her feet with a thud. Twisting her neck from side to side, she desperately listened for a sound of the erstwhile Bob demon. Heavy breathing, shuffling feet, maybe the swooshing unfurl of a black wings? There was nothing though.

When her eyes had adjusted to the gloom with inhuman speed, she noticed it. A long window was open at the end of the room. It let in the smell of rain and a ray of dim light.

‘Bob! God bless you Bob!’ she took pleasure in the curse, nothing irks a demon like a good old divine blessing.

A heavy, high-pitched grunt cut through the open window.

Winking to no one in particular, Mira sped towards it. With deft pirouettes she avoided the stacked chairs and tables that littered her way.

She sprung at the open window before she had ascertained what lay beyond. For a brief moment she sailed through the open, cold air, unfettered, then landed on the steep roof. Scrabbling against the wet tiles, she slid downwards like a puck across ice.

‘Ah ah ahhhh!’ she desperately tried to pull herself up right and fight the downward pressure of gravity on lubricated roofing.

Finally gaining purchase, she dug both feet into the tiles and pushed backwards, instantly flattening herself against the roof, fingers scrabbling and toes clenching.

‘Errrrgh.’ She was barely centimetres from the gutter and the unpleasant 15-meter plunge to the dirty city street below. Was that luck?

There was a swoosh as something unfurled behind her, blowing a cold gush of air and rain against her back.

‘Ohh... that’s more like it.’

Still pressing her body into the hard tiles, she twisted her head. In the gap between her building and the next floated the demon. Stretched thin like a sheet of plastic wrap and unfathomably dark like a black-hole, it snapped its gnarled head towards her.

‘YOU DARE HUNT ME HUMAN? ME? LORD OF THE DEAD, KING OF THE UNDERWORLD, OF THE PUTREFYING FLESH OF YOUR BRETHREN? BRINGER OF PAIN....’

Mira rolled her eyes and took a deep, reverberating sigh. If you let em, demons would chew your ear off, in more ways than one. ‘Firstly,’ she carefully pushed herself up, ‘The Agency aren’t pleased with you mister.’

The demon let out a shriek, clawing at its face with a hand twisted and bent like a misshapen rake. ‘Agent?!’

She nodded. ‘And secondly,’ she reached into her pocket, ‘you’re not king of anything.’ Demons hated it when you brought them back to earth, ‘you’re just a lowly little foot soldier.’

The demon shrieked again, this time with a terrible high-pitched whir. ‘YOU LIE! YOU WILL NEVER ENCOUNTER A GREATER-‘

Mira leapt forward, her hand whipped out from her pocket and brandished something before her. It was a palm-sized medallion on a heavy chain. ‘Go to Hell!.’ She hurled the pendant at the demon. It arced above the creature and as it reached its ascendency Mira shouted: ‘Seal!’

A blazing, engulfing light cascaded around the demon, trapping it between its luminous rays. The demon shrieked once more, but the shriek was distant and soon cut out all together. The rays shot back towards the pendant, which lay suspended in mid air and soon the light it cast receded into a dim pulse, then nothing at all.

‘Phew, that went better than expected.’ Mira smiled to herself and gave several little claps of appreciation for her own clever self. ‘Now I can go home and watch TV!’

The pendant slowly fluttered towards her, as if on the wings of an angel. She snapped a hand towards it and grabbed it, stuffing it back into her pocket in a quick move.

For a moment she hesitated on the edge of the roof, not sure whether to take the long or short way down. She quickly decided that seeing the ghoulish bar tender wasn’t something she wanted to do before bed, and made for the edge of the roof.

In several quick and calculated moves, she had disappeared.

A cigarette landed on the roof and slid down to the point where Mira had been standing moments before. Its red glow flickered and died against the wet slate.

‘Well,’ a voice said from the open window. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’

------------------------

Mira threw out a hand and managed to catch the edge of the bowl. She pulled it towards her with a caveman grunt, chips spilling across her prone body and cascading over the edge of the coach.

‘What’d you have to go and do that for?’ she scooped up a chip and flicked it into her mouth. ‘Now I’m going to have to pick you all up.’

She made several attempts to corral the loose chips without actually moving, but soon gave up. ‘Be that way then.’ With a sharp wave she dismissed the crumbly mess to some future cleaning frenzy.

She lolled her head back in the direction of the TV and grinned. Just what she needed - a good movie. Not just any movie though – a Brent Double, perhaps the finest looking man since the gods invented muscles and cheekbones. She beamed at the screen and stopped just short of offering a thumbs up.

The Phone rang just as the opening music faded to a frantic car chase full of screaming tyres and women.

‘No, no, no, not now!’ She leapt off the couch, the bowl flying off her belly like a startled bird from the coop.

She sprung towards the kitchen, feet eating into the lush carpet in her mad dash to get there before the phone rang off.

In the centre of the kitchen table was a large fire-engine red phone. It was old school, maybe even retro by now, with its chunky receiver and curled cord. Heaven, after all, never ran with the times.

Hand beset by the slightest tremble, she snapped up the receiver. ‘Erm Hello?’

‘Hello? Hello? Who answers the phone with hello?’

Mira nodded her head slowly and frowned. Hell-o, there was something in that, she conceded. ‘Controller.’ There was no time for pleasantries when your business is protecting humanity from encroaching evil.

‘Your mission was a success Agent, though it lacked finesse.‘

Ohh no ten points off for style, what did they want from her? A fricking lycra body suit and a catch phrase. ‘Yes Controller.’

‘Just yesterday Michael managed to subdue an underground satanic cult, the lot of them possessed by a level 5 demon. Now that was memorable.’

A blush warmed Mira’s cheeks at the mention of the Agency’s finest. She even added a little shake of her shoulders and a twitch of her nose.

‘Jumping through an open window and scrabbling down a roof, doesn’t make it on my list of acceptable agent conduct. Still, I expect a report nonetheless.’ The curt, high-pitched voice cut out.

Mira pulled the phone away from her ear and sneered at it before plonking it back on the receiver.

She waited a moment, the fingers of one hand drumming on the table with a soft rat-a-tat.

A single white feather floated down from above and landed on the table before her. It emitted a soft yellow light and instantly changed into a long short oblong tube.

Angel mail, not nearly as useful as email, though still kind of cool.

She grabbed the tube and quickly pulled out the contents: one demon hunt declaration form, a bill for lodgings and a copy of the Good News monthly. Mira pitched the bill over one shoulder and, with the other two documents in hand, headed back to the couch.

She detested paperwork, and today was no different.

Mira had hardly begun filling in her report when she had been distracted by the Good News’ new shiny cover.

Obviously they had some new blood in their designs department. Whatever it was it was better than recounting her ‘unstylish’ meet with Bob the demon.

Plus, she was supposed to be in this issue. They’d gone and picked random Agent from each level – from the highest to the lowest and yeah, she was the prime example of low in the Agency.

The whole article was something about ‘meeting the foot soldiers of the revolution, the wings behind the work’. She hadn’t been paying attention when the memo had come round, all she’d cared about was selecting the right picture for her bio.

She fumbled quickly through the pages, her fingers searching for grip against the slick glossy paper. There was a lot of faff in this magazine. Interviews with the big wigs, analysis of demon possession trends, even an article on the latest set of revelations to come out of the Eternity Scrolls.

With a nervous grin she finally found her page. The grin quickly morphed, her lips dropping into a pronounced frown. What a horrible picture!

Mira pushed her face into the magazine, trying to find an angle were the small picture of her didn’t look like it showed a frazzled, beatnick yeti with wild boil-like acne. How dare they use such an old, hideous picture!

The bio itself wasn’t too impressive either. It read like a personal add. A bad personal add, the kind of add you might use if you were looking for abject, pitiless rejection.

Her fingers tightened around the edges of the magazine, her knuckles white streaks across her ruddy hands. Whoever wrote this article was mean, mean as Hell…. Well not that mean maybe. Still, this wasn’t very lucky.

After a moment she began to flick through the rest of the article. She rested, inevitably, on Agent Michael.

‘Wow,’ she flicked her eyes across his bio, ‘you really are magnificent aren’t you?’ 260 sealings, 569 healings, 45 commendations, 3 Pure Heart medals and a set of Golden Wings. Lord knew he was the best.

For a slow hour, Mira divided her attention between Brent Double, Agent Michael and her report.

The night outside grew darker and a crisp air fluttered through her window before she eventually reached the final question.

Question 25 was always the hardest. She had to really hold her innate sarcastic nature back. What do you think the demon was trying to achieve? What kind of a question was that? How the Heaven was she supposed to know? Demons don’t stop to fill you in on their plans while they possess the innocent.

She chewed the end of her pen with short sharp chomps. It was getting late and this question was still bugging her. What was Bob up to at that greasy bar? Socialising, eating nuts, drawing caricatures on napkins?

Eventually, with a heavy belly-shaking sigh, she wrote down her answer. There was no evidence to suggest that this was anything other than a random demon attack.

Finally satisfied Mira rested back into the couch and fixed her attention back onto the muscle bound Brent Double.

The perfect end to a hard day’s night.

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