No Angel by Vivi Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

two sets of double doors leading off the alcove. The first didn’t budge, but the second swung open easily, revealing a small private crypt. To the right of the door, three burial couches were stacked on top of one another in the wall and an etching on the stone identified it as plot 140. Only the middle couch appeared to be occupied, the inscription reading Geryon Smith, but the dates for birth and death couldn’t be right. They were exactly one hundred years apart—but the date of death wouldn’t occur for another ten years.
    Sasha didn’t want to touch the tomb. She’d just as soon leave the pillaging of gravesites to Indiana Jones, but if this was the only way to get to Jay…
    She reached out and tentatively tapped the engraved name. Nothing happened. Sasha licked her lips nervously. “I sure hope you’re not decomposing in there, Geryon,” she muttered before giving the tomb a shove.
    It didn’t creak and groan and reveal a hidden staircase like action movies had conditioned her to expect. The wall just vanished, taking the entire room with it.

Chapter Five
The Blurry Lines Between Heaven, Hell & Hollywood
    Sasha wasn’t in a crisp, gleaming white crypt anymore.
    “What the he—” She stopped herself before referencing Hell, uncertain what the protocol was for swearing in the Underworld. “Hello?” Her voice echoed as if she were on a cavernous sound stage, but the dim, torch-lit room she was in was small, barely bigger than Saint John’s alcove. Sasha spun three hundred and sixty degrees, trying to get her bearings.
    There were no doors, no windows, just a seamless drywall box, but somehow she had been transported here without moving an inch. In theory, that meant she could get out again. Unless the entire quest was a trap. But why would the angels go to such trouble to trap her here? It didn’t make sense. This had to be the entrance.
    Or some kind of waiting room. The only furnishings were a high-backed chair, a freestanding lamp and a coffee table stocked with back issues of Us Weekly and Hello! magazine.
    “Great. The waiting room of Hell. So where’s the damn receptionist?”
    A high, chattering giggle echoed behind her.
    Sasha whipped around, her hand going to the Desert Eagle on her right hip.
    A little man crouched in the shadows.
    “You weren’t there a second ago.”
    He cocked his head to the side. “Wasn’t I?” He giggled again, the sound skittering around the room like a bird fluttering off the walls.
    “Geryon?”
    “Please, call me Gerry.” He stepped into the light from the lamp and Sasha realized what she’d thought was a crouch was his natural height. He couldn’t be more than four-feet tall, but his shoulders were those of a much larger man, broad and heavy. He wore snug black leather pants and a flowing pirate shirt hung open midway down his chest. He had a thin, greased moustache—the kind that hadn’t been popular since the twenties—and when he smiled his face was eerily familiar, though Sasha was sure she had never seen him before. She would have remembered the horns. Not to mention the solid red complexion.
    Nubby horns the size of a thimble ringed his head like a crown, poking out of his oil-slicked black hair, and his skin was the ruddy color of red clay.
    He looked classically demonic, but she’d envisioned the gatekeeper as bigger, more imposing. Maybe breathing fire or with razor-sharp teeth. Not as a chittering Oompa-Loompa with a pirate fetish.
    “You’re the gatekeeper?”
    “Mmm,” Gerry mumbled vaguely as he circled her, peering up into her face. “So you’re the one dating Satan’s stepson, eh? I thought you’d be taller.”
    “Sorry, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Sasha said, beginning to feel like that was all she ever said. “I don’t know Satan or his stepson.” She flashed the invitation. “An angel sent me. I need to get into Hell.”
    And with those words she officially surpassed her daily quota of things she’d