Chapter One

She loved her brothers, but honestly, they played too much when they should have been taking inventory of the souls needing saving. Their particular job, in the hierarchy of the Ethereal, was to assess and beguile those on the brink of Decision. To test those whose souls who teetered between eventually going to heaven and going to hell. Existence in either plane was the goal, because living in limbo screwed with the balance of everything.

Though no one soul was ever wholly good or wholly evil, one temperament or the other weighed predominantly in every creature. Even in the self-possessing dragons.

She grimaced and increased her speed. The dragons, like many of the mythical creatures purported to exist at one time or another on Earth, were, in fact, real. They lived buried in the deeper recesses of the world-in the lower realm near the demons-closer to the Earth's core which provided the necessary heat for their precious eggs to survive.

Unlike the humans, dragons knew about the realities of hell and heaven, and remained free to live in whatever realm they chose. Many often took the form of humans to roam above ground, in the middle realm-in the Ordinary. Like her brothers, they lived for mischief, and for anything that glittered. Partial to gold, they also had appetites far exceeding that of a normal human. They took what they wanted when they wanted, and answered to no one, that she knew of.

And the angels thought they were the favored race....

That her brothers had whisked the egg away from its