The Fallen Hunter: A Codex Blair Novel

by Izzy Shows

  Damn it, Malphas! Focus!

  I turned my attention back to the generals. They were waiting for me to speak, waiting for me to decide what was going to happen next.

  “Even if you are not actively keeping things from me, that does not mean that you are not still keeping things from me,” I said. “It only means that you are not out to keep things from me.”

  “And? So what?”

  My gaze jerked to the new speaker, anger flaring inside of me.

  “You are too busy to care about what happens here, so what if we keep it under control for you? Is that not what you wanted us, trusted us, to do? Why do you deviate from your plan now?”

  “You dare to question me?”

  My voice was low and soft. I could smell the indignation coming from this man, knew that he hated being spoken to like this, knew he had grown too big for his britches.

  I lifted a hand and ran it through my hair, gazing up at the ceiling.

  A sound of pain came from the man who had challenged me. Still, I did not look at him.

  He did not deserve my gaze while I tortured him. While I boiled him from the inside out.

  “Please,” he coughed, his voice rough.

  I turned my back to him and looked at the wall. Still, I kept the boiling going. Still, I tortured him. He would have to learn, as the commander had, that I was not to be toyed with. I would not kill him; his arrogance was good, in a way. I needed strong generals. I needed them to rule with an iron fist in my absence. Needed them to keep control.

  But I also needed them to respect me, and right now I would earn that respect through pain.

  I heard the sound of his body falling from the chair, and at last I let up. I turned around to see him twitching on the floor, sweat coating his forehead.

  “Do not think to question my motives again,” I said. “You would all do well to remember that you live only by my grace and that you rule only because I allow it to be so. If I desire to be rid of you, then I shall be. At the moment, I do not require your deaths, so you may rest easy about that.”

  Relief relaxed the features of the other generals. No doubt they had been worried that I would visit pain upon each of them, punishing them all for the insults of the one who had spoken. But I was not a malevolent god. I did not require the pain of all to pay for the misfortune of one.

  I walked to the door and opened it before I cast a backwards glance at the lot of them. “You all must look at the soldiers you command. Find each and every one of them who has proven to be a problem. I want a list of them, and I don’t want anything left out. I want to know who is causing problems. I want to know what has gotten into them, and I intend to find out through any means necessary. You are dismissed.”

  I left the door open as I walked out.

  Eight

  I had scarcely made it three steps out of the room before a foot soldier barreled into me. He bounced off my chest with an audible grunt and fell back to land on his ass. He lifted his head to stare up at me with wide eyes filled with a mixture of determination and fright.

  “My lord…” he whispered, gasping for air. “I…apologize. It wasn’t… I didn’t mean…”

  He couldn’t seem to get out whatever had been so important that he’d run through the hallways at breakneck speed. What had he been thinking? He would have slammed into the door if I hadn’t come through it.

  I regarded him with narrowed eyes, contemplating my next course of action. In a normal situation, it would be expected that I would destroy this cambion for such an insult as touching me without my explicit consent, but something stayed my hand.

  The determination in his eyes.

  “What brought you here?” I asked at last, and watched as relief spread across his features.

  He ducked his head, drew in a few more breaths of air, then looked up at me once again.

  “Ten soldiers—cambions—left for Earth. Five minutes ago.”

  It was evident on his face that he expected me to explode into a rage, but this was not the way. Perhaps for the cambions or the nephilim, it would be appropriate to give voice to their emotions in such a fashion, but not for the Fallen.

  We were above that.

  I straightened my shoulders and cast a look over one shoulder at the generals who were gathered behind me.

  “We require only seconds to ready ourselves to assist you, sire,” said one of them.

  I raised an eyebrow. “That will not be necessary. I will take care of this myself.”

  To their credit, none of my generals allowed even a flicker of emotion to cross their faces, but that did not stop me from sensing the emotions rolling off of them.

  Doubt.

  It was time to remind them who was in charge. I was their leader, and like any good leader, I would not allow my generals to take care of things for me while I rested on my laurels. I would get my hands dirty just like everyone else.

  “Ensure that the perimeter is secure and that no one else leaves,” I said, then turned and strode away from them.

  I heard them rushing about behind me, bustling from the room down the multiple hallways that branched off from the main one so they could accomplish their mission as quickly as possible.

  They might doubt me, but they certainly still feared me.

  It took me only moments to reach the departure room, from which I could more easily leave Hell. There were several of them scattered about our various strongholds, but they were the only way the demons could leave, and normally they were heavily guarded.

  I would have to find out who had been so lax as to allow the ten to go through.

  But it was not necessary for me to leave through one of these. My brothers and I had the ability to come and go as I willed. It would be no great difficulty to leave from my office, but it was easier to leave from here.

  And why make things more difficult than they needed to be? I saw no purpose in that.

  I stood in the center of the room, across from the shimmering portal that lay against one wall, and flexed.

  Immediately, black and red armor appeared from thin air to surround my body, and a sword of pure black energy appeared in my dominant hand. My head was covered by a black helmet that opened about my face, though the magic imbued in it hid my face from view.

  Instead, anyone peering into it would see a black shadow with two piercing red eyes glowing from within. It might seem an odd choice to change the appearance of my eyes only when I donned my armor, but it was a calculated move.

  Fear was a powerful weapon, and my armor of choice struck fear into my enemies on sight.

  I muttered a spell that would shield me from the eyes of mankind so that only the supernatural would be able to see me as I walked the streets of Earth, then I stepped through the portal.

  This would be fun.

  Nine

  The air tasted of a mingling of hope and despair—the most prominent emotions in humans, ones that poured off of them in violent waves. The lot of them felt so loudly that it was impossible to tune them out.

  I had long ago learned to ride the wave of human emotions, and now was no different. I let them wash through me and pass on by, not bothering to fight them, for that would have only prolonged the experience.

  Instead, I surged through the streets of the city I had been drawn to when following the trail of one of the ten deserters.

  I tilted my head back for a moment to sniff the air again.

  Chicago.

  How odd. I hadn’t spent time in the United States in quite a while, so preoccupied had I been with Blair and her city.

  You’ve been too preoccupied. Even now, when you should be hunting those who challenged you by leaving without permission, you think of her.

  I reprimanded myself with the thought and held tight to it, knowing that it was right and that this was a situation I needed to get under control. I could not allow myself to be distracted by Blair when I had more important things to deal with.

  Shoving her from my mind, I
continued along the streets, following the scent the demons gave off—a trail of dementia. They sought to torment the humans, to take their perverted sense of joy from them.

  Had they applied for such a pleasure trip, it likely would have been granted to them in time. It was not their activities that I took issue with, but rather that they had taken it upon themselves to go without permission.

  That could not be allowed. It was a direct challenge to the power my brothers and I held in Hell, and any leniency that might have been given to them would be interpreted as weakness.

  They would die for their insolence.

  It took me only minutes to track down the first one—the first three, actually. They had stayed together, oddly enough. That was abnormal; they should have wanted to break apart to take whatever they could for themselves, rather than face the trouble of having to share with one another.

  No matter. It only served to make my job easier. Two fewer to hunt down on their own, after all.

  “Hello,” I said, my voice coming out as a soft purr. “Enjoying ourselves, are we?”

  The demons stiffened. They had previously had their backs turned to me, and had been entertaining themselves with some human in the back alley within which they stood.

  As one, the three of them turned to look at me. As soon as their eyes alighted on me, I saw fear strike their hearts. And yet, there was something else there, something that was decidedly wrong, but I could not put my finger on what it might be.

  Defiance? No, that wasn’t it. Where there might have been defiance, there was instead that fear and the desire to keep their lives. It would lead them to fight for their last breaths, but only because they valued their lives. Not because they found fault with me.

  What was it?

  I regarded them with narrowed eyes, trying to figure it out.

  “Lord Malphas,” one of them said. “I did not expect to see you here.”

  I began to walk forward, and instinctively, they began to back up.

  “Why should you not think to see me here? It is I who can come and go at my pleasure, not you. It is you who should not be here. You have not been given permission to touch this human,” I said, gesturing with my sword at the man on the ground.

  The man’s eyes were darting back and forth at the cambion, and I saw both confusion and terror on his face.

  He did not understand who they were talking to, for he could not see me.

  A rumble began in one of the cambions’ chests. “We should not be kept from the surface for so long.”

  Ah, there was some defiance then.

  “That is not for you to decide. Submit to your punishment and it will be swift. Fight, and you will die slowly.”

  Now, all three of them bared their teeth at me, snarling.

  I smirked.

  There was the true nature of the cambions that I had been looking for—their fierce refusal to give in to anything. It took ages to beat them into submission so that they would learn who ruled in Hell. These three should have learned that long ago, but it appeared that something had stripped the lesson away from them.

  It was a pity I could not allow myself the pleasure of teaching it to them again, but they would not live long enough for that.

  Their snarls being all the answer I needed, I crossed the distance between them and me in a second, bringing my sword up in a soft arc to slice through the leg of one of them.

  He crashed to the ground, howling and clutching his leg as the poison began to work its way through his system. Its path would be slow and torturous, and it would claim his life if I did not end it quickly for him.

  But had I not promised them pain?

  The two who remained standing jumped away from me as soon as their comrade hit the ground, their eyes wary as they tried to determine a plan of attack.

  I sighed. It would do them no good. They could not hope to triumph over me.

  There was no scenario in which they could win.

  And yet, a certain appeal came with the idea of playing with them. I could allow them to think they had a chance.

  One launched himself at me, his nails having extended to claws as he lashed out with an open hand.

  At once, I allowed my sword to dissipate and brought one forearm up to block his blow, shoving my weight behind it to throw him back several paces.

  It was an enjoyable fight, the two of them coming at me together now as we engaged in a battle of fists. They came at me with claws, but I simply deflected their blows for the moment.

  One came dangerously close to my face, attempting to get in through the opening of my helmet, but all it took was a bowing of my head to slam into his open palm and send him reeling back. He clutched his hand with a soft cry, nursing the pain that had been done to him by the spikes on my helmet.

  “Give in, children. This fight cannot be won,” I said.

  Truly, they must see that now.

  “Never,” one of them said, and he launched himself at me again.

  With a sigh, I determined that it was time to end this fight. It had not been half as much fun as I had thought it would be. I called my sword to my hand again and sliced through the air—and their necks.

  Their heads rolled to the ground, where the life ebbed slowly out of their open eyes. Their bodies began to dissipate, to turn to smoke and ash so that none could claim the power of a demon’s corpse, but I held a hand over them and uttered a spell that would keep their heads intact.

  I would need them.

  I turned to the first cambion, whose leg I had removed. He lay twitching on the ground. The poison would have made it way to his torso by now, slowly crawling up to his heart.

  “Take heart, soldier. I have lost interest in this game and have decided to show you mercy,” I said, then swiftly decapitated him as well. I performed the same spell to hold his head on the plane of reality, then let his body dissipate as the others had.

  It took a few seconds for the second spell to send his head back to Hell to wait for me in my office. I then did the same for the other two heads, and left the alley.

  I paused at the mouth of the alley, scenting the air.

  The other cambions had not come to Chicago, it seemed, for I could find no trace of them here.

  But they would not escape me. They were blood of my blood, my grandchildren, as the ’humans would say, and they would forever be tied to me. Their lives were mine to do with as I wished, and I wished them dead.

  I closed my eyes and sent my power surging through the Earth to seek them out.

  It took just a few moments to locate the next cambion, and I wasted no time in teleporting to his location.

  He was standing in the courtyard behind a bar with a lecherous grin on his face as he watched the door. No doubt he planned to wait for some human woman to come outside for a breath of air, or a cigarette, and then he would take her.

  Not tonight.

  I gave no warning, did not give him the opportunity to submit, but simply stepped behind him and cut off his head. I sent his head back to my office as well, and let his body leave the plane.

  Four down, six more to go.

  I made short work of the other six, flitting from one location on the Earth to another, crossing several countries to find all of them. Unlike the first three, I did not offer them a chance to fight for their lives.

  I was bored.

  The tenth and final cambion was in Cambridge. It was as easy to kill him as it had been the others, and I sent his head back to my office, but I hesitated before following it to Hell.

  There was something in the air, something that called to me.

  It whispered of longing, of joy that was yet to be had, of bittersweet memories.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, taking the scent into my lungs so that I might identify it, though I knew as I did that that it was a mistake.

  Go back to Hell. Do not waste your time with this nonsense, I told myself, but I could no more do that than cut off my own arm.

 
Her.

  It was her scent. Dancing on the wind, calling me to London. Urging me to abandon the mission I had before me, find her, and remind her whom she belonged to.

  Mine.

  I shuddered with the surge of possessiveness that came over me.

  She is not mine. She never was. She can never be claimed, no matter how much I might wish to.

  That was the truth of the matter. Blair would never belong to me.

  Just as…

  No, I could not think of that now.

  I shoved the thoughts away, pushed her to the back of my mind, and tried to distract myself from the pain her scent had brought me.

  Better to go back to Hell, where she could not torment me.

  Ten

  I materialized in my office rather than going to the departure room this time. With a simple twitch of my fingers, the armor and sword were gone, and I was once again in my normal attire of black slacks, black shirt, and a red tie. I ran a finger through my shaggy black hair, slicking it back, and surveyed the room.

  The ten heads had appeared at random throughout the room, and now they all sat staring at me with their empty eyes. Waiting for me to finish the job.

  And yet, the longing to return to the surface was still there.

  Get on with it, Malphas. You do not have time for this.

  Correct.

  I took the heads by the hair, five in each hand, and stalked out of the office and down to the mess hall. I passed several cambions and a few nephilim on my way there, but none of them attempted to speak to me. They all saw the dark look on my face and got out of the way as quickly as possible.

  For my part, I did not acknowledge them.

  No one was deserving of my time at the moment, not with this insurrection going on. Everyone was a potential threat, and everyone had to learn what happened in such situations.

  It had been eons since we had last entertained a rebellion of the cambions—the nephilim had always known better—and it seemed that they had forgotten what had happened then.

  How one managed to forget their comrades being cut down a thousand at a time was beyond me. You would think a lesson like that would stick in their minds, but in their defense, there were several hundred new cambions who hadn’t been around for that.