The wind sliced in between buildings like a surgeon's knife cutting through sinew.   Frigid blasts tore posters off of lamp posts and businesses, while driving icy droplets of rain to fly sideways.  Jack braced himself against the onslaught, pulling his father's heavy coat tighter around his shoulders.  The rain didn't bother Jack as much as what he was about  to do.

As he walked, Jack briefly considered lighting a cigarette.  It was an infrequent habit as his mother had taught him to respect his body and encouraged him to avoid filling it with harmful chemicals.   But in difficult times he found comfort in the gently glowing coals, and the curls of bluish-grey smoke that wound from his fingertips and up towards heaven like a prayer.

Angel.  Her name was Angel.  Light brown hair curled gently around her face and tumbled down her shoulders, framing a pale white face that held agate grey eyes.  Her voice was soft and sweet but belied the vicious nature that lay behind it.

His friend Cornelius had been in love with her, and had thrown himself into taking care of her and her needs.  At first it seemed an ideal match but then Angel's darker nature begin to show through.  Jack clenched his fists, thinking of the emotional, and later, the physical destruction this woman had wrought and how she had brought the best an jack had ever known to an untimely end.

Now it was Jack's turn to avenge Cornelius and make the Angel with the broken halo pay.