How do you know if you’re one of the damned? As a child, Don wanted to become a priest. Now a grown man mostly at ease with being gay, he’s left the Catholic Church and has chosen instead to help people through his work as a parole officer. His strong faith is shaken when his latest assignment turns out to be Michael, a young man Don hasn’t seen since he took Michael to church as a child -- and saw his parish priest cast Michael out of the church as a demon. Meeting him as an adult re-ignites the obsession Don had with the boy he couldn’t save. But can Michael be saved at all? Or is the strangely compelling demon with a taste for risky sex as damned as he believes himself to be?

Angel

And now, it seemed, Michael Andras was all he couldthink of.


He’d studied the man’s file until he knew it by heart. Had read reports of his trial and conviction. He’d even looked up erotic asphyxia on the internet and found out a great deal more about risky sex than he’d ever thought he’d want to know.


The one thing he hadn’t done was pray, and the guilt dragged at him like an anchor around his heart. Surely the right, the Christian thing to do was to pray for Andras’ soul? But if Holy Water burned him, might not prayer do even worse?


It was almost midnight the following Friday, a weary drizzle falling, when Don found himself on Fourth Street. He’d taken to walking in the evenings, hoping to stave off the dreams with exhaustion.


Chapter 4