The Fallen Hunter: A Codex Blair Novel Read online

  “No one tells me what to do in my house,” I said at last.

  Asmodeus grinned then, clearly pleased that I had said that. Almost as if he had been waiting for me to say it. “A little bird told me that a certain someone does.”

  Death. Death to everyone.

  Rage clouded my vision. I didn’t have the time or care to panic; I only knew that I wanted to rip my brother’s throat out and toss it into a fire. How dare he speak to me like that?

  And how did he know I had acquiesced to some of Blair’s requests?

  If I had been a mortal man, I might have shuddered then.

  Instead, I felt a calm, cold mask settle over my features. All at once, I threw the girl from my lap into Asmodeus’ arms. He caught her, just barely, and surprise flickered through his features.

  I stood up and raised a hand. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, get out of my home,” I said, my eyes fixed on my brothers. The message was clear. I didn’t want them to stay, either.

  Various humans began grabbing at articles of clothing in a desperate rush to get dressed before they left. I didn’t stay to watch them. I stormed out of the room.

  Three

  My office was my sanctuary. No one was supposed to enter it without my permission. Lilith had always respected that, thank goodness, or else I would have had to do something about it.

  But brothers are a special breed of stupid altogether. They don’t know how to respect limitations, don’t know how to show proper respect. They’re the kind of people who will always try to push your buttons, no matter how many times you slam their heads into concrete or throw them into a fiery pit.

  You know, just brother stuff.

  I sat in the chair behind the cherry wood desk, turning so that I faced the wall of bookshelves behind the chair. I knew that my brothers would follow me—and sure enough, there were the footsteps that gave them away—but I didn’t have to look at them.

  I couldn’t look at them, to tell the truth. My rage had escaped the calm mask and was writ across my face. I could feel it twisting my features, and I knew that I had to get it under control before I turned to face them again.

  Rage that they would think to mock me with Blair’s existence.

  Underneath the rage was the concern that I didn’t dare look too closely at. I knew that, down in the pit of my gut, I was worried that I would lead them back to Blair and that they would harm her. That was what we did: we hurt humans, and it was fun, and we didn’t think about it. No one ever thought about whether or not what we were doing was right.

  That kind of concern was for humans, not for the Fallen.

  We had disputed the rule of God, and these were his creations. It was only fitting that we prove how much we hated him by ruining that which he had created. That which he had held over us and thought of as his perfect creations.

  I glowered at the bookshelves. It wasn’t God that I was angry at, for once. It was my brothers.

  “Malphas, you are full of surprises today.”

  “I can’t think of why,” I said, the retort leaving my lips before I could decide whether it was safe or not. No matter; I would just have to exercise more control with anything else I said.

  I had to keep my cool, otherwise they would know just how much the human girl meant to me, and that would not be good.

  “You lose your temper very easily now. I wonder when that happened,” Asmodeus remarked dryly. “It has been an age since we’ve seen you. You cannot blame us for being curious as to your activities.”

  “I don’t enjoy being spoken to in such tones, little brother,” I said. “You would do well to remember your place.” Now, with my body under my control again, I turned to face them.

  Asmodeus lifted his hands, palms facing out, and took a step back. “I apologize if I have overstepped, brother. I had only heard that you had a new little pet, and wondered why you hadn’t brought her around. You’ve never hesitated to share with us before.”

  That was the truth of it. There had never been a human we had kept solely for ourselves, and that was the oddity that was Blair. I had wanted her for myself, hadn’t wanted to share her with my brothers—though I had no problem sharing her with her human friend Shawn. I had recognized what he was from the very beginning: a passing fancy, a safe outlet for her frustrations. I didn’t mind it, although I suspected that if Shawn hadn’t been around, then perhaps she would have turned to me instead.

  Hm. Perhaps I should have minded.

  That was neither here nor there, though.

  I hadn’t shared with my brothers, and that was what had tipped them off to the problem in the first place. My own stupidity.

  “I have lost interest in her,” I said with a shrug. “I am sorry that it occurred before she could meet you, but you know how humans are. Their lives can only be interesting for so long.”

  Bael laughed, tilting his head back as he did so. “Malphas, I am sorry, but I do not believe you for a moment,” he said.

  I arched an eyebrow, steeling my hands in front of me. “And why not?”

  “What effort would it have taken to bring her around?”

  “As you have been staying home for quite some time, it would have taken quite a bit of effort,” I said, sighing. “I don’t bring just any human to Hell.”

  Asmodeus nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. Though I wonder at how quickly you lost interest in her.”

  I fought the urge to throw something at them, though I knew that would only betray my true feelings on the topic. No, for her own safety, I would have to play this as cool as I could.

  “When was the last time you had interest in a human for more than a year, Asmodeus? Come, now. Surely, you must understand that even the most interesting human can’t hold you for long. And she was hardly interesting to begin with.”

  The lie burned my tongue. She was the most interesting human I have ever met.

  Asmodeus took a seat in one of the chairs in front of me. “Very well, then. You make a good point. I think my longest streak since Victoria has been…oh, three months?” He shook his head. “They just don’t make them like they used to.”

  “It’s the Information Age,” I said, shaking my head as well. “The thirst for knowledge has turned to a thirst for gratification, and they just aren’t the same anymore. We have to change our qualifications from quality to quantity.”

  Bael sat beside Asmodeus. He was still looking at me with suspicion in his eyes, but he didn’t push the subject any further.

  Good. I was tiring of this line of questioning. I knew that it could only go on for so long before they would tire of it as well, but I had to hope that they would drop it at last.

  “That isn’t the reason we came to see you,” Asmodeus said.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Oh? You didn’t claw your way out of the pit just to tease me about a pet?”

  It was obvious that wasn’t why they had come around. There had to be something else, some underlying concern.

  And the look on Asmodeus’ face told me I had been wrong before. He certainly looked as though this was a grave concern, something I needed to be worried about.

  I relished the very thought of it.

  “Cassiel is hunting you again,” he said. Concern was in his eyes. Genuine, brotherly concern.

  My eyes lit with a fire I hadn’t felt since I’d last seen Blair.

  Cassiel was an angel, one of the Holy. He had not Fallen, and he and I had made a game out of hunting one another. Quite like my little agreement with Riordan the Dragon: we played pranks on one another. We never tried to kill each other. It was an entertaining game, a more lethal version of the children’s game ‘tag.’ Something we’d been doing for centuries now.

  It was exactly the type of distraction I needed.

  Four

  My brothers left soon after warning me about Cassiel.

  Warning me. I snorted at the thought. It was going to be such a pleasure to have something I could sink my brain into. Fighting with Cassiel wa
s an enjoyable way to spend my time. It would certainly do the trick of distracting me from the Blair situation. I couldn’t waste time thinking about her when my life was on the line.

  Lilith walked into the doorway and leaned there, not entering the room. She knew better than to come in but apparently had figured out a loophole to that particular rule.

  I would have to amend that.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “What can I do for you, Lilith?”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts, letting out a deep sigh. “I’m disappointed in you, Malphas.”

  I rolled my eyes and stood up from the chair, walked in front of the desk and leaned against it with my hands on either side of me. “What have I done this time?”

  “The same thing you’ve been doing.”

  I tensed. This was not a conversation I wanted to have again. I darted a look past her, ensuring that my brothers were truly gone. I couldn’t risk them finding out about Blair, but Lilith had to know that. She was choosing her time carefully.

  Not carefully enough, though. She should know that I was more than tired of speaking about Blair. I had already fought with her about it once this evening, and I had just dealt with my brothers. It was something I wanted to leave buried.

  I couldn’t get over Blair if she kept bringing the damned girl up at every turn.

  “What are you going to do about Blair?”

  I lifted a hand and ran it through my shaggy hair. “Nothing. I’m not going to do a goddamned thing about her.”

  She entered the room and strode right up to me. “You know good and well, that’s the dumbest decision you’ve ever made. You need her.”

  “I need NO ONE,” I roared, so loudly that she flinched. I looked down and saw my hand shaking. I clenched it into a fist. Needing someone was a weakness I could not entertain. Needing someone meant I couldn’t continue without them, that my life would be incomplete without them.

  And, certainly, I felt like a hole had been ripped through my chest now that Blair was gone, but that didn’t mean I needed her. All it meant was that I needed to get over her, to remind myself what it meant to be Fallen. Remember that everything was temporary, and that her life would be over before mine had progressed even a little. Remember that she couldn’t ever be anything to me, because that wasn’t the way my life worked.

  Remember that I was Fallen, and that meant I didn’t have a conscience.

  I pushed off the desk and walked back around it, focusing on the bookshelves, looking over the titles as if I might find something I wanted to read there. In truth, I was attempting to regain control of myself. I didn’t like that I’d lost my temper, didn’t like that I had shouted at Lilith.

  She had been a pleasant companion in a house that would otherwise have been empty. I enjoyed having her around again, but I didn’t need her nagging. She was constantly after me about my behavior.

  She was so different from the succubus she had been when we were together. I wondered what had happened to the carefree demoness who had ruled the world at one point in time.

  “You need to get your shit together, Malphas. Why the fuck are you acting like this?”

  I turned and looked at her, lifting an eyebrow. “Language, Lilith.”

  “Ugh.” She shook her head. “Well, what do you expect? I can’t seem to get through to you. I don’t like—”

  “If you don’t like it, then get. The fuck. Out.” The words came out in a rumbling growl that started deep in my chest.

  And then, to my great shock and surprise, she threw one of the desk clocks at me. It struck me square in the head, I was so caught off-guard by it. I stumbled into the bookshelf, lifting a hand to touch my head. I looked at it and found a spot of blood on it, but I knew I would be fine in a matter of moments.

  “Someone has to stop you from self-destructing,” she retorted, then turned and stormed out of the room.

  All I could do was gape after her retreating figure.

  Five

  I awoke from the dreams that haunted me with great difficulty. How hard it is to extract yourself from a dream that’s so much better than reality. I had begun to contemplate whether or not it would be better to do without the sleeping I’d become accustomed to over the years.

  The fact of the matter was, I didn’t need to sleep, didn’t require it to keep me moving. Sleep was for mortals, and it was a luxury I had afforded myself until now.

  Could I force myself away from the dream world where she came to me? I didn’t know if I was strong enough for that.

  An incessant buzzing sound came from the living room, and a growl rumbled in my chest as a response. Who dared to come to me at this hour of the day? A quick look at the clock on my nightstand confirmed what I already knew: it was six o’clock in the morning. No one should be visiting me.

  I thrust myself from the bed, not bothering with dressing. I was wearing only boxer shorts that clung to my form; my chest was bare. Barefoot, I padded into the living room and pressed the call button.

  “What is it?”

  “Sir, it’s urgent. This communication channel isn’t safe.”

  It had been a while since anyone had called me ‘sir.’ I had been away from my command for a few years, trusting my generals to keep the soldiers in line. It must be urgent indeed if they had come all the way from Hell to call on me.

  I pressed the button to allow them access, then returned to my bedroom and shut the door behind me.

  I dressed quickly, pulling on a pair of black slacks, a white button-up, and my signature red tie. I glanced in the mirror, running a hand through my black hair. I had no time to put it in its place, though; the man would be coming up already. I returned to the living room and waited impatiently for the lift to arrive.

  It took longer than I would have liked, but at last the lift chimed its arrival and the doors parted to reveal one of my generals. I crossed my arms over my chest, lifting one eyebrow lazily.

  “Who allowed you out of Hell?”

  He stiffened, ducking his head. “It was an emergency, sir. I didn’t secure permission.”

  An offense punishable by death. Demons weren’t allowed on Earth without explicit permission from one of the Fallen. From my brothers. He had better have a damned good reason for this trespass if he wanted to keep his life. But then again, he wouldn’t have come directly to me if he had just been on a pleasure stroll.

  I walked to the couch and took a seat, crossing one leg so that my ankle rested on my other knee. “What is it, then?”

  “Things are…unusual in Hell,” he said, hesitating.

  “Out with it, man. Your life hangs in the balance.”

  I regarded my fingernails. The message was clear: he meant little to me in this moment, and he needed to figure a way around that.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. I watched him swallow nervously. “There’s…um…some funny business going on.”

  I growled. He wasn’t giving me any more information, just repeating what he’d already said in another fashion.

  “What I mean to say, is, well…” He darted his eyes around, as if someone were watching him. Other than me, of course. “The demons, the cambions, they aren’t behaving properly. There’s been infighting, and some of them have broken out of Hell. They’re just odd. Torturing souls without permission. They appear to have gone rogue, sir.”

  My back stiffened, and all the blood in my body cooled at once. I stood up, careful to keep my face under control. It wouldn’t do to allow this nephilim to think I was bothered by this news, but it shook me to my core. The cambions had never behaved in this fashion. They knew their place.

  They were the children of the nephilim, demons once removed from the Fallen. Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but they made good foot soldiers. Some of them were occasionally given access to the Earth, and some of them were occasionally called on by the Wizards, or in rare cases by the mages.

  Without betraying my emotion, I walked to the glass doors that led out to my ba
lcony and gazed out at the city of London. “Who?”

  I didn’t look at him, but I could feel his anxiety spike. His emotions were pouring out of him at such a volume that they would be impossible to ignore, even if I hadn’t had the natural talent of picking up on them.

  “Sir, I don’t know their names…”

  “Do not toy with me, General. It will not go well for you,” I said, keeping my voice soft, controlled, dangerous. I would rip his throat out if he lied to me. It would be a pity, since he was a good general, but he was not irreplaceable. There were plenty of nephilim who would jump at the opportunity to be promoted, and more were created every day.

  My brothers were not careful with that, unlike me. I had created a slew of nephilim back in the day, but I had ceased in the past century. I didn’t see the point in needlessly inflating our ranks with creatures who could one day turn on us if they grew in numbers too much. You could never trust them.

  They were demons, twisted forms of humanity, and they would always lust for power. Even now, this nephilim was eager to garner my approval and was terrified of enraging me because he wanted to be recognized for his loyalty.

  Well, his loyalty had better give me the names of the cambions who had gone rogue.

  “I don’t know all of their names,” he said at last. “It is not just a few of them who have gone rogue. There are five in my quadrant, but I have heard reports that it’s happening in other quadrants as well. Felix, Ralf, Aurora, Jonas, and Liam appear to be exhibiting symptoms in my quadrant, sir.”

  I could hear the guilt in his voice. He didn’t want to get his brethren in trouble. No doubt one of the five was his own progeny, and he feared the repercussions that would be visited upon them. I couldn’t promise him that they would make it out of this alive. More likely than not, they would have to be killed. They would have to be an example of what happened when you tested the might of the Fallen.

  A part of me was almost sorry for him that he would have to watch his progeny being killed in such a fashion, for it would be brutal indeed. I squashed that feeling with cold control. There could not be sympathy in me, for that was a weakness that no Fallen knew. It was a passing fantasy, something left over from my times with the humans.