The Fallen Hunter: A Codex Blair Novel

by Izzy Shows

  And, as I had pointed out, I had learned how far I could push someone before they’d succumb to the pain.

  All in all, not a bad day’s work.

  But that didn’t seem to be Lilith’s opinion, because she was still so full of rage that she couldn’t seem to find any words to throw at me anymore.

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  “Not even close.” Her lips were twisted into a snarl, and I had the feeling she wanted to throw something at me, but perhaps even that wouldn’t be good enough for her now.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t exactly rewind and go easier on her, and to tell the truth, I don’t know that I would. We got rather good results today.”

  “How can you possibly see it like that?”

  “Because those are the facts, Lilith. And there is no room for anything other than facts in this life.”

  She gaped at me for a moment before she snapped her mouth shut. “Were we not just talking about your ability to empathize with others?”

  I snorted. “And what good does it do me to beat myself up for something like this? I don’t want the feelings that have been foisted upon me, and as far as I’m concerned, if I can shut them out even a bit, I’m going to do that. I have no interest in self-flagellation.”

  That wasn’t entirely the truth. For quite a while now, I had been indulging in it, whipping myself over Blair time and time again, unable to get that record to stop playing in my head. I hadn’t been able to focus on anything else, so consumed had I been with what I’d done and what I might have been able to do instead.

  But I was sick of feeling that way, and I had no interest in doing it again. So, I was knee-deep in denial again, refusing to acknowledge the battering ram of emotions in the back of my head.

  Because, yes, they were there. The concern for Jeziah was present. It was like a person standing on the other side of a glass door. I was aware of it, but it hadn’t touched me yet, and I was intent on holding it off for as long as possible, because for the first time in a long time, I felt a semblance of peace.

  Or rather, emptiness. I would take a life devoid of emotion if it was offered to me at this point. It was far superior to the alternative.

  “I can’t believe you,” she said. “I can’t believe that you actually believe the shit you’re spewing.”

  I stood up. “I’ve had about enough of this, Lilith. I don’t want to beat myself up, and I’m done having you beat me up instead. You can go now.”

  Her eyes flared with unspent rage, and she stormed to the door, yanked it open, and then looked back at me.

  “You’ll never be as good as her.”

  Pain flickered inside me, but I squashed it.

  “I think that matter was decided at birth.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Before Lilith could storm out, one of my lieutenants appeared behind her.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said, not making eye contact when Lilith whipped around to glare at the intruder.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” she snarled. “I was just on my way out.”

  And then she shouldered past him, practically body-checking him to get him out of her way.

  I sighed, shaking my head at her display of emotion. That was another reason she terrified the demons so much—she represented something they were never going to be able to understand. The concept of true emotion was foreign; the feelings they were given to were pale imitations at best.

  A demon capable of feeling was a terrifying thing when you had never encountered one before, and when all signs pointed to that being an impossibility.

  Which was exactly why I needed to head off these emotions before they could get the better of me, and keep them bottled tightly inside. Fear was one thing; you could rule with fear, but with the terror it inspired… If my soldiers saw that same kind of thing in me, were made to feel the same way, they would never follow me.

  They would seek out ways to be rid of me as soon as I left Hell and they were alone with their thoughts, and I couldn’t risk that.

  It was just too dangerous.

  So, I regarded the officer with a calmness I didn’t entirely feel. He looked rather uncomfortable, clearly not knowing how to deal with the fact that Lilith had just stormed past him.

  But he put himself back together quickly enough and stepped inside the office.

  “What is it?”

  I wasn’t in the mood to be interrupted, and I wished the man would go away. Lilith had aggravated me enough.

  “I thought you would want to know about the woman—Jeziah—that you treated earlier, sir,” he said.

  Great. Now someone else is going to tell me what I did wrong.

  I would have to devise some sort of punishment for the audacity this man had to reprimand me for anything I had done. It was entirely unacceptable, and if I allowed it to stand, I would lose the respect of my people.

  That could not be allowed.

  “What about her?” I asked, steel in my voice, a warning I hoped he would take.

  “She’s lucid, sir. She wanted to express her gratitude, but she… She doesn’t want to be near you, sir.” He seemed hesitant, afraid of how his words would come off.

  But I understood why she wouldn’t want to be near me. I had hurt her in ways she had never imagined possible, and it would take time for her to come to terms with that, if she ever did. She would need to get to a place where she could be in the same room with me without allowing her fear to show, of course, because I would not give a soldier in my army a wide berth just because of this—but that was something I would allow to take time.

  I wouldn’t push it on her too soon, not in the way that I had pushed the cure on her.

  This was fantastic news, though. Emotion flooded through me, exuberance being the primary one.

  “Thank you. You may go,” I said, my voice as flat as ever to disguise what I was feeling.

  The man nodded and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  As soon as I was alone, I allowed a giant grin to take hold of my face and jumped from my chair.

  “Yes!” I crowed, giving in to the joy I was feeling for the first time in what seemed like ages.

  I had done it! She wasn’t quite fixed; I was sure of that. It would take several more sessions, and I would need to allow for more time between sessions for her to recover, but still, I had gotten somewhere with this. I had gotten an infected soldier to the point where they were aware of what was going on and were able to control themselves for at least long enough to express a desire to be rid of the taint.

  It did not control her anymore, though it was still present.

  I had accomplished something, and I refused to let that victory be tainted by the hatred Lilith had spewed at me.

  This meant that I really could save my friend. Cassiel would not be left to the taint, to be hunted and killed by the time Heaven discovered what was wrong with her.

  I could save my friend. Without Blair.

  Why did that thought hurt?

  Twenty-Eight

  Purging the taint is a painful process, and that cannot be overstated.

  Even hours after I had done it, I still tasted in my throat the bile that had come with it as it had exited my body. I had a new appreciation for Blair, for how she had handled the process when she’d cured Lilith. She hadn’t let on how horrible it really had been, and that took an amazing amount of strength.

  I wish I could tell her.

  It seemed like every day, there was something new I wanted to go to her about, to talk over with her, to share with her. I wanted to share this experience, to compare notes on what it had been like for her and what it was like for me. I wanted her to know I admired the strength of will she’d displayed during the entire process, because I felt like I hadn’t shown that enough at the time.

  I wanted so much to be near her, and it wasn’t getting any easier with time, unlike what Lilith had told me.

  Maybe she’d lied t
o make me feel better in the moment. I wouldn’t put it past her. A certain part of her would always be human, and humans lied all the time.

  It was a nice lie, too. After all, it would be a pretty horrible thing to tell a person that they would be stuck with that level of pain for the rest of their life. But I had figured out that she’d lied, so it was pointless now.

  Thinking of Lilith made me regret our previous interaction. I wished she could understand my point of view, instead of always arguing with me. For a time, it had seemed like we’d gotten to a good place, and then it’d gone downhill again.

  But that was how it always was with Lilith. It had only been with…with that other woman that we had been able to be around each other for prolonged periods of time without descending into heated debates that ended up with the other severely wounded.

  We had loved hard, and hated harder, and it hadn’t been a system that worked. The other woman had fixed that for us.

  I’d hoped we wouldn’t go back to that now that we had removed the romantic angle of our relationship, but it seemed like that had only tempered things so we didn’t resort to violence with one another.

  Ah, well. Lilith would come around with time. Our relationship came and went in waves, and soon the next wave would pass and we would be friends again. Perhaps even by the time I went home tonight, she would be willing to move on to something else and we would pretend this argument hadn’t happened.

  I cheered myself with that thought and focused on the paperwork in front of me.

  It wasn’t the most important thing to be doing right now. In fact, I should be down in the cells, working on the other infected demons. Just because I couldn’t touch Jeziah right now didn’t mean I couldn’t help the others. But the interaction with Lilith following Jeziah had left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and I didn’t want to go back down there.

  Didn’t want to deal with it.

  I would go back later, work on a few of them, and then go home. Right now, I was going to enjoy my little victory without allowing something else to sully it, as it always inevitably did.

  Hours passed while I pored over file after file, going through the mundane actions of reading reports and making the hard decisions. It was boring work, but someone had to do it, and I couldn’t really trust my generals with most of it. They would get something wrong because they weren’t clever enough, or they would get ideas into their heads and decide to make a move.

  It happened from time to time that a general would get too big for his or her britches and want to challenge me. That was a different beast from a full-blown rebellion, and rather easily handled. It wasn’t difficult to cut down one general.

  It was the mass challenge of a thousand cambions that would really prove an issue. But that hadn’t happened since the beginning, and I doubted it would happen again.

  Especially after the warning I had given them at the beginning of all this, when I had thought that was what really was happening. It would be new in their memories now, how I dealt with traitors, and they would hold that near and dear to their hearts any time they harbored thoughts of rebellion.

  That was good. I needed them to fear me. Needed them to know there was no other way of life than what I offered to them.

  Couldn’t let them get any ideas, after all.

  Hypocrite.

  The thought came from nowhere, unbidden, calling me out. I tried to shrug it off, but it came back to bite at me.

  You hated your Father for treating you that way. For giving you no options in life, for ordering you to follow commands. You left him because of it.

  What was this? I let out a low growl, trying to turn my mind from those thoughts, but they wouldn’t go.

  Wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Because they were right: this was exactly what I had hated about my Father.

  But why was I questioning myself now? All these centuries, I had gone on this way, and it had never been a problem before. I had never doubted the way I ruled, had never thought there was anything close to a problem with it.

  Now, it seemed a part of me didn’t feel that way.

  It’s the emotions. The guilt. The feelings that Blair passed on to me.

  I realized that with a sickening feeling. The pain was one thing, but guilt over the life I had been living was not something I was willing to entertain.

  If I had to be a hypocrite, then, fine, I would be a hypocrite. I could accept that if it meant that the damn feeling of guilt would leave me the hell alone.

  How had these feelings even come to me in the first place?

  It didn’t make sense that they had appeared because of my proximity to Blair. I had spent time with others in the past, and it hadn’t…

  You forget.

  No. I wasn’t going to think about that. About her.

  “Hello, brother.”

  The voice of Asmodeus jarred me out of my thoughts, making me realize that I had been so deeply rooted in them that I hadn’t even heard the door open.

  Now, all of my brothers were standing in my office, looking quite at home.

  Rather than reprimand them for invading my space, I chose to lean back in the chair and fix my expression to appear unaffected.

  “What brings you to my little slice of Hell, brothers?”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Bael snorted. “You’ve got the biggest piece, and you know it.”

  “And so does everyone else,” I said, grinning. “What can I do for you?”

  Bael dropped into one of the chairs in front of my desk. “How go things with Cassiel?”

  Pain sparked through me at the mention of my friend, but it was quickly followed by an almost blindingly bright hope. It hurt to think of how Cassiel was infected, but now I knew I was going to be able to help her. She was going to be fine, and I didn’t need to worry about her anymore.

  “All in good time,” I said. “I’ve been busy here, but the situation with Cassiel will be handled soon enough.”

  “Are you enjoying your little game of tag?”

  “Immensely,” I said, for I couldn’t let them know what had happened to Cassiel, or that it bothered me.

  “I’ll never understand your relationship with that angel,” Mammon said. “It makes no sense at all.”

  I spread my hands before me. “What’s the harm? It’s all good fun. A little distraction to occupy my time when I get bored.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not normal. You shouldn’t be playing games with an angel.”

  “Just because you prefer to treat yours like a robot doesn’t mean I have to as well. I choose to find my fun where I can.”

  “Speaking of fun,” Asmodeus interjected. “We were hoping you’d join us in a party this evening.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “A party?”

  “Yes. It’s been a while. Besides, we saw the fun you were having at yours before you dragged your ass back down here, and thought we’d get in on that action.”

  Hesitation claimed me for a moment. “I have things I should be doing…”

  Bael smirked. “I wouldn’t be terribly interested in a random party, either, if I had someone I’d rather be spending time with.”

  Inwardly, I bristled, but I maintained the calm façade outwardly. He was referring to Blair, still. How they had not gotten the message that I was done with her and that she didn’t matter to me anymore was beyond me.

  I didn’t know what else I had to do to prove it to them, but it seemed that this party was going to be the only thing they’d accept. Maybe once I had done this, they would understand that she was in the past for me and leave well enough alone.

  Somehow, I doubted that.

  I let out a sigh and rolled my eyes. “Fine, fine, I’ll come to your party. Lay off with that bullshit, though. I have a lot on my plate.”

  Asmodeus grinned broadly. “All right, now it’s gonna be good! My house, ten eastern standard time, all right?”

  “I’ll see you there,” I said with a placid grin.

&nb
sp; The lot of them voiced their approval and left the room, leaving me with a feeling of annoyance.

  I didn’t want to bother with their party any more than I wanted to bother with the infected demons.

  But it wasn’t just because I wanted to get to Cassiel and cure her—it was because I knew I would have to play the part of the unaffected Fallen for them. Play with the people they brought for me, pretend to be interested in them.

  Why did that leave me feeling almost nauseated?

  Twenty-Nine

  The room was dim, but what lighting was there was vibrant and multi-colored. The music was loud, and the entire setting had the feeling of a rave to it.

  Men and women in various states of undress polluted the room, grinding against one another in time with the music. In almost every shadowy part of the room, there were people engaging in sexual activities or indulging in drug use.

  I stood in a corner watching the entire debacle, feeling rather removed and isolated from it.

  My brothers hadn’t bothered me since I had arrived. They had all been far too busy with their own little pets to be interested in what I was doing. I enjoyed that respite from having to partake in the activities.

  It would have been different if Blair had been there, as trite as that was. If she had been here, willing, I would have enjoyed the party with her. Danced with her, laughed with her, and perhaps we would have danced with others as well.

  I didn’t mind the idea of sharing her. In fact, I enjoyed it, but that was only so long as I could hold on to the idea of having her as well. Knowing she wasn’t mine… The very thought of her with someone else while she wasn’t mine turned my stomach. And the idea of engaging with someone else when I didn’t have her as well was almost physically repellant.

  But I couldn’t let anyone else know that, save maybe for Lilith. Lilith understood, she always had, but she wasn’t here tonight to be my buffer.

  It wasn’t like the party I had thrown in my own apartment, or any of the number of parties I had thrown before that, where I had allowed myself to sink into a self-loathing sort of despair, drink myself to distraction, and pretend that a warm body against my own belonged to the white-haired beauty I longed for.