Excerpt:

Caine was faster and in a flash he had the man by his collar, lifting him a few inches from the ground - which was hard, considering the man was taller than him. ‘So, Guild hunter, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t most of your precious brotherhood extinct by now?’
The man’s handsome face twisted into a hateful snarl. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘Oh, sorry, did I kill some of your friends?’ Caine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then too bad. I’ll have you know that if I were planning to do something nasty to the Heavens I would have already done it instead of sticking with those two ground-bound creatures that you saw me with - one of those is this little blonde one, actually, but I’ll bet you noticed.’ He ignored Naylo’s glare. ‘That Supreme Magistrate of yours needs to die for what he did to me, and for what he may or may not have let the Celestials do to me to give him that opening at all. I also need to get to that fucking dragon turd Hades, for some payback, if you get my drift. Seeing as the Celestials totally overwhelmed me without having to lift a fucking finger, I’m going to need all the help I can get. And that is why I need to find the Blazing Heavens and somehow convince them I need to live if they ever want to get rid of all these bastards.’
It was dead silent in the alley, and the hunter had given up his struggle to get loose, instead staring down at Caine in a mixture of horror and disbelief.
Helpless, the man shifted his gaze to Naylo. ‘Is he telling the truth?’ he asked the small woman.
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. ‘In fact, he is more honest now than he’s been with my friend and me in the past few weeks. He really needs as many people as he can get, and we need him if we want to defeat the Celestials. Even if we’re not really sure that they’ve allied with the Supreme Magistrate, they’re definitely pissed about something.’
‘So...’ The hunter closed his eyes and then swallowed hard, apparently making one of the toughest decisions in his career. ‘... I’ll help.’
Caine smirked and let the man down, even straightened out the collar of his heavy coat for him, then patted him on the chest. ‘Thanks, pal.’
The man gave him a thoroughly horrified look and eyed Naylo again for support. ‘Is he... is he always like this? You know... when he’s not being murderous and scary?’
‘Pretty much.’ She shrugged. ‘You get used to it. The prick can actually be quite amusing.’