Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel by Nia Davenport

learning to fight daemons alongside the rest of our training class. Then three years later we were broken off from our peers. My mother has been the Sect Leader of Orlando since before I was born, and she doesn’t run it in quite the pseudo-democratic fashion that Bennett runs the Atlanta Sect. What she says goes, and she doesn’t ask for anyone’s input. She told the sect members that she’d deemed the twelve of us more advanced than our peers and were placing us in a special group to sharpen our considerable skills. She convenes with the Archangel in his incorporeal form frequently, and together they personally oversaw our training. It was then that him selecting us as his Chosen Ones were revealed to us along with the fact that our job wouldn’t be to simply patrol the city for daemons. The task he assigned to us was to hunt and kill the Brethren that are still on this plane. The real reason I happened upon you in Five Points last night was because I was tracking him the Brethren that attacked you. That is also the real reason I transferred to the Atlanta sect. The Archangel sent me here to deal with the city’s influx of Brethren. Now it’s your turn. If you’re not a Chosen One how does Bennett know about them? The Archangel claims we are the only ones who do and is insistent upon it staying that way.”
    He was right. I did need a drink now.  
    “So did Michael tell you all, the Chosen Ones, about the prophecy?”  
    A beat ticked in Chase’s jaw. “No. The Archangel isn’t very forthcoming with information or answering questions. The jackass only tells you what he wants you to know.”
    “Now that’s not very nice. I almost feel insulted Chase.”
    Who and where in the hell had that come from?! I looked around the loft for the owner of the foreign voice, but drew up short seeing nothing.
    Chase jumped to his feet and stood facing the fireplace built into the wall adjacent to the couch. His posture was rigid and his fists were clenched tight at his sides. He looked like he wanted to hit something. “You say that like I give a fuck.”
      Then the fireplace lit itself and I was on my feet too. The outline of a face appeared in its flame. “You have a bad habit of toeing the line Chase. One of these days you are going to cross it and then I am going to have to do something about it.”
    “If that was a threat it was a pathetic one. Getting rusty in your old age?I know you can do better.”
    The flames shot out of the fireplace, making a ring around Chase’s feet. They licked at his lower half without actually singeing the white carpet. The shape his face contorted into made it clear he wasn’t as unaffected by them. My mouth moved open, perhaps to scream, but no sound came out. Then the flames jumped back into the fireplace place just as quickly as they’d jumped out.  
    “How is that for a suitable threat?” The disembodied voice echoed smugly throughout the apartment.  
    “What.Do.You.Want.” Chase bit off.
    “For you to do your damn job,” the voice snarled. “Which, fortunately for you, you did not make a complete clusterfuck of doing correctly. The Nephilim knows about the prophecy now and the Brethren so you did not do much damage by revealing my Chosen Ones’ purpose. But she was considering telling you the details of the prophecy and that I cannot allow. It has too great a potential to alter events that I have already set in motion.”
    Archangel or not, I blanched at how he knew what I’d been grappling with divulging to Chase when I’d asked a question, fishing to see how much of it he already knew.  
    The flames flared and I suddenly felt my body temperature rise by about ten degrees. It wasn’t painful. I didn’t feel as if parts of my body were being burned alive, but it sure as shit was not comfortable.
    “I will be extremely displeased if you tell the Chosen One what you recently found out of the prophecy.”
    Okaaay. That combined with my rapidly escalating temperature