Chapter 1: And a Little Child Shall Deceive Them
The young woman smiled and waved at the jeep as it sped by, and her brown eyes turned blue.
Paschar twisted her neck, cracking it as it spun around on her shoulders. She looked down at her hands, stretching her fingers.
“Not bad,” she admired herself, ran her hands across the youthful body, and sat down on the bench. She stared down at her chest. The boobs weren’t much to speak of, but she couldn’t expect much in this form. She had heard stories of humans and puberty, a foreign thing to angels who could masquerade in adult bodies instantly.
Paschar watched the cars zoom by, the school busses pick up children, and the scores of humans rushing off to work. An elderly lady sat down on the bench next to her.
“How you?” she said, looking through her purse.
Pas nodded, afraid to speak. She had never had a body this young before.
Noticing the silence, the woman looked up and clutched her chest with one hand. “Your eyes,” she said in a breathless voice. “I ain’t never seen ‘em that bright before.”
Paschar blushed and smiled awkwardly, thankful to see the bus approaching.
The woman stood, swinging her purse over her shoulder, unable to take her eyes off the young woman with the majestic eyes.
“Go on, baby,” she said, letting Paschar in front of her as the bus came to a halt and opened its doors.
Pas coughed and cleared her throat. “Oh no, that’s okay. You can go.”
“No, it’s alright. And you’re gonna wanna do something about that cough. Put something around those skinny lil arms of yours.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman nodded.

Paschar dropped her coins into the machine and moved to the rear of the bus, and cuddled up to a window seat.
As the bus prepared to take off, it stopped to allow a car to pass and Paschar’s eyes flashed in that familiar way. Her senses heightened as she picked up the familiar scent. Every human had a signature smell to their blood. Like fingerprints, no one was alike.
Pas licked her lips. She didn’t need to turn to see Kayla sitting in the passenger’s seat of Miss Bernice’s car or Micheal sitting in the back. She could practically taste their essence—the purest of energy.
Her eyes twinkled, and her leg bounced up and down. She knew she had to calm herself before she growled. It was all so exciting. Pas could hardly contain herself thinking about seeing Janiyah’s Jeep just moments ago and now Micheal and Kayla. Why had she not thought about this before?
She had had it all wrong. No one cared about Black men. But people were extremely friendly to young humans, naïve even. There were no limits to how far her powers could stretch as a sixteen-year-old in Ethiopian skin.
She felt a coolness come over her as a low, deep throat growl threatened to spill from her mouth.
Paschar leaned back into her seat and exhaled. All was not lost. Her legion might have lost the battle, but she was going to make damn sure they did not lose the war.
She couldn’t wait to start her new job with Janiyah and Tabitha.