The Fallen Hunter: A Codex Blair Novel

by Izzy Shows

  “Cassiel!” I closed the distance between us, grabbed her arm, and yanked her around so she would have to look at me. “Can you hear me? Do you know where you are? Do you know who you are?”

  She wasn’t speaking now, but her lips kept moving, and slowly the white receded from the center of her eyes. Her pupils reappeared, and she locked eyes with me.

  “Malphas,” she said.

  The first word she’d spoken since our first fight when she’d begged me to come back to the fold. Relief washed through me.

  “Oh, good. All right, so you’re still in there. That’s good, very good. Listen, Cassiel, you’ve been infected with something. I’m not sure what it is yet—no one is—but I know how to get rid of it. I’m going to save you. There’s a way back from wherever you are. You don’t have to do this anymore.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she yanked her arm away from me, putting space between us.

  “You will die, demon,” she said, her voice echoing throughout the field.

  “Cassiel, don’t do this. I can help you,” I pleaded, trying to get through to her, though a part of me knew it was no use. She wasn’t going to voluntarily allow me to cure her; the taint wouldn’t allow that. I would have to best her and take her somewhere safe, where she could be held until she was cured.

  I could do it at my apartment, like I had done with Lilith. The room was still vacant, the chains still attached to the wall, as if it was waiting for her. As if I had known I would need it again and hadn’t gotten rid of it for that reason.

  “You will die,” she repeated. Her sword appeared in her hand, and her eyes glowed as she stared at me.

  I grew uneasy. I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to have to fight her just to get her to a place where I could heal her, but I didn’t see any alternative.

  “This is your chance, Cassiel. You have to fight the thing inside of you. I know you can do it. You’re stronger than this. Fight!”

  But she didn’t heed my words, or if she did, she interpreted them differently, only hearing the call for her to fight.

  She launched herself at me, letting out a war cry. I called my sword to hand just in time to block her blow, which came dangerously close to my neck.

  We danced in the field like that, exchanging blows for what felt like eternity, neither of us giving ground. She was just as strong as she’d been last time, stronger than I, and I feared that she might be able to take me down.

  But I couldn’t let that happen. I had more at stake than she did. I cared about what I was fighting for.

  It wasn’t like last time, because last time I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the weight of the emotions I’d been burdened with. Now, I could use them to my advantage.

  I put my heart into every swing of my sword, allowing my fear for her life and the pain at the thought of losing her to fuel my spirit, refusing to give in and let her win.

  She couldn’t do this to me, couldn’t leave me alone in the world. She was my friend, whether we had ever said the words to one another or not. She was my oldest friend, and I wasn’t willing to let go of her, not yet.

  “I’m going to save you, Cassiel. Whether you want it or not.” I didn’t care that she couldn’t seem to hear me anymore, didn’t care that it felt like there wasn’t any hope left in what I was doing.

  All I cared about was saving her.

  Desperation inched its way into my heart, but I tried not to let it slow me down. I kept on blocking her blows, but somehow, I let myself slip into a defensive position, not able to press her anymore.

  She came at me hard, slamming her blade into mine time and time again, pushing me back across the field.

  The difference in us wasn’t just that I cared and she didn’t, but rather that she was out for the kill and I wasn’t. She was willing to end my life, and I was fighting to save hers.

  And I wasn’t going to let her stop me.

  I swung hard at her next blow, going past blocking it to driving her backward so I could take the advantage again. Now, it was I who hammered into her, pushing her back, refusing to allow her to attack.

  I drove into her with every fiber of my being, ignoring the sweat that poured from my brow into my eyes, ignoring the pain that ached in my bones and muscles from the ferocity of the battle I was locked into.

  With another blow, I knocked her to the ground, and her sword went flying to the side.

  “Kill me, demon, or I will kill you,” she snarled, looking up at me from the ground.

  But I couldn’t do that. “I will not end your life, Cassiel. I intend to save it.”

  I cast my sword to the side and lifted my hands to begin the chant that would bind her so she couldn’t fight me any longer, so I could transport her from this field back to my house.

  But before I could get the words out, she raised her own hands and sent her white energy through me, launching me back across the field to land with a dull thud on the ground.

  My ears were ringing and my vision was all but gone as I struggled to maintain consciousness. Cassiel had never hit me with her energy like that before, and I hadn’t been expecting it. I’d thought she would keep to her sword, that the infection would prevent her from accessing the holy powers she got from God himself.

  She shouldn’t have been able to do that.

  My thoughts were fading, and I struggled to grasp of them. I knew it was important that I fight against the darkness that threatened to claim me, but I was losing my will, losing sight of what was so important.

  Just want to sleep. It’s been so long since I got a good sleep. Just need a minute…

  But, no, I couldn’t sleep.

  Why couldn’t I sleep?

  I felt panic grip me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was there for. Why was I so worried? The darkness was calling to me, and I wanted to give in to it.

  I just wanted a moment of peace, when everything had been painful for so long.

  The world was growing fuzzy, but my ears stopped ringing, and I heard the crunching sound of boots on grass.

  Someone was coming closer to me, but who was it? And why did it matter?

  I knew it mattered, but I couldn’t remember why. Couldn’t remember what I should have been doing, when all I wanted was to keep lying here on the ground.

  Cassiel’s face came into my line of sight just then. She was standing over me, and everything around her was so fuzzy that she was the only thing in focus.

  “You will die, demon.”

  Thirty-One

  Pain.

  There was pain all around me. Too much of it. I couldn’t think, couldn’t remember who I was or where I was, or what had happened.

  But something had happened, hadn’t it?

  I felt a niggling at the back of my mind, something trying to break through the haze of pain, but I hurt too much to give it any attention.

  A new wave of pain took hold of me. I felt a rawness in my throat and heard the sound of a dying animal.

  No, that was me. That was my voice being wrenched from my throat. That was me screaming.

  I had never heard myself sound like that, but I was sure it was me.

  It felt like my flesh was on fire. But, no, that was wrong. It was everything inside of me that was on fire, and I needed to stop the burning.

  I knew if I didn’t, I was going to die, but I couldn’t figure out where the pain was coming from or how to stop it. The pain was too much, and I felt a wave of darkness crash over me, beckoning me back to a place where I wouldn’t feel anything.

  Fight! Fight for your life, Malphas!

  A clear thought broke through, and I knew it was a matter of life or death if I didn’t grasp it, so I clung to it with all my might.

  I grappled with the darkness inside me, shoving it back to the far corners of my mind, and fought for the ability to think clearly. I needed to get my wits about me—but no, God, no, a new wave of pain had come, and it threatened to send me back to the abyss.

  Another scream was
torn from my throat, and along with it came a sob.

  I felt a wetness on my face, and somehow it eased some of the pain.

  I was crying, I realized belatedly. Crying, and I didn’t know why.

  Something horrible was happening, something that was almost certainly going to kill me.

  I had to think, had to fight…

  How?

  Think, Malphas, think. You have to fight this.

  The words echoed in my mind. They sounded familiar.

  I had said them, not long ago, to someone else. I had told someone that they had to fight what was in them, but they hadn’t listened to me.

  And then there was a scraping feeling on my backside, like my flesh was being torn from my body, and I decided that enough was enough.

  I was done just feeling these things. I had to do something about them. I had to get myself back in action so I could stop whatever was happening.

  I forced my eyes to open, and the world was blindingly white for a moment before it readjusted to the dimness that was the actual lighting of the place I was in. My eyes darted around wildly as I took in my surroundings and realized I was in a warehouse.

  With a quick glance up, I saw that Cassiel was above me, one of my arms in both her hands, and she was dragging me across the floor. She cast a quick look at me, then looked forward again, never slowing her pace.

  The memory of everything that had happened came back to me in a rush.

  Cassiel was infected, and I had found a cure. When I had tried to take her and cure her, she had beaten me, and rather than kill me, she had decided to bring me…here. To do what, I didn’t know, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be good.

  I was going to have to move quickly to have any hope of heading her off.

  As if she knew what I was thinking, she sent her energy searing into my skin, and I howled like a wolf gone mad. It burned a path through my arm to my heart, scorching my insides and leaving me dizzy.

  I knew that prolonged exposure to her energy would kill me. I was Fallen and she was holy, and the two were never meant to mingle.

  “Cassiel, stop. You have to stop,” I gasped, tugging on my arm.

  She didn’t look down at me. It was as if she didn’t hear me at all. She just kept moving, kept trudging along and dragging me across the warehouse.

  Bits of debris bit into my skin, and I was certain I had been dragged over nails, but there was nothing I could do about it. She was stronger than I now; the taint had given her power she hadn’t had before. If I tried to fight her, she was going to kill me.

  At least right now, she was set on doing something else, although I didn’t know what that something else was.

  It had to be better than dying, though, and maybe it would give me some time to put a plan together. Now that my mind was working again, I had a chance, after all.

  We reached wherever Cassiel had been headed, and she threw me against a wall. My head smacked the concrete with a sickening cracking sound, and I lost my vision for a second.

  When I got it back, I saw she was carrying chains toward me. My eyes widened as I realized her intent.

  Those weren’t just any chains. The sigils burned into every link contained the power to bind a demon. If I allowed her to wrap them around me, there wasn’t going to be a damn thing I could do to stop her from whatever it was she was hell-bent on doing.

  “Cassiel…” I started to say, but I couldn’t think of what would get through to her. I struggled to stand, holding out a hand in front of me as though that would stop her. “It’s not too late. You can still come back from this.”

  “I have decided to be merciful, demon,” she said, but her voice was not her own. “You will find the Light again.”

  What the hell was she talking about? Her words gave me pause, and it was enough time for her to reach me. She slammed her light into me again, straight into my chest.

  My body contorted with pain, and I could do nothing but try to survive it. Dully, I felt her dragging one of my arms to the side as she chained me to the wall, then the other. She did my legs next, then one wrap of the chain around my waist.

  I was confined. There was nothing to be done about that. As soon as the chains were in place, she spoke the ancient words that activated them, and I felt all my power depart.

  It was as if someone had reached inside of me and taken out a critical part. I didn’t know how to exist without my power; there had never been a day when it was gone. Now, it felt as if she had cut off one of my limbs. A piece of me was missing, and I didn’t know how to survive without it.

  Panic set in, and I struggled against the chains, but every move I made sent pain searing into me where the metal touched my skin.

  “Your struggles are futile, demon. You will not get out of those chains,” she said. And then she reached above me and began to chant again, drawing with her finger on the wall above me.

  I could hear the sound of concrete melting as she burned into the wall, drawing a circle around me and then inscribing it with more marks.

  A demon trap.

  The chains weren’t enough for her. She had to set up a fucking trap as well.

  There really was no getting out of this. I should have fought her while I was still on the ground, because at least then she might have killed me quickly. Now, I was looking at a long, drawn-out death.

  Torture. That was what she had in mind.

  She grinned. Clearly, she had guessed where my mind had gone.

  “You will not die, demon. I said I had chosen to be merciful, and I always keep my word.”

  Then she went to some area of the warehouse I couldn’t see, because she’d gone to my right and turned down some passageway.

  I tried to push against the chains, but again they burned me. I reached for my power, knowing it was futile, but there was nothing to grasp.

  I might as well have been human, because there was nothing I could do. I was absolutely useless.

  And then something cold touched my head, and a scream was torn from me again. She was dripping holy water on me, and it was going to burn its way through my body.

  But, no, it was just a drop, then another, and another. Perfectly spaced so that my body could heal itself before the next drop came, but quick enough that the pain wouldn’t abate.

  I gasped for air, trying to drive the pain from my body so that I could think, but there was no rationalizing this away. I hadn’t ever had to learn that kind of trick. I hadn’t ever known pain like this.

  Blair knows how to do it. Blair can handle more pain than anyone I’ve ever seen.

  What good did that do me right now? Blair couldn’t take my place in this, and even if she could have, I wouldn’t want her to. I wouldn’t want her to even see me like this.

  Besides, Blair had to learn that. Blair had been subjected to more pain in her life than most humans ever would, and she’d learned to compartmentalize it. I hadn’t ever really had to deal with pain; I was always the one dealing it out. My fights with Cassiel had been the closest I’d ever come to pain, and even that hadn’t been very much.

  It had been a kind of pain I could enjoy, that I didn’t entirely want to get rid of.

  This was excruciating in a way that I couldn’t entirely describe. The drip of the holy water against my head, then trailing down my scalp onto my cheek and burning a path all the way, the chains burning against my skin with every move I made… No, this was worse than anything I could have imagined.

  “Do you feel it, demon? Do you feel the power of Heaven?” Cassiel’s voice came to me before she did, echoing in my ears moments before I saw her.

  I struggled to keep her in my vision, but she kept wobbling and fading, and I knew the pain was driving away my ability to focus. But I had to focus. I had to keep my thoughts straight, or I wasn’t going to get out of this.

  No one was going to come for me, and if I didn’t figure out how to get out of this on my own, I was going to die.

  “Why are you doing this, Cassiel? Do
n’t you remember who I am? Don’t you remember what we do?”

  “You are a demon. Your soul is impure, and I have to cleanse it if you are ever going to be allowed into the fold again. I will purify your soul, and the Father will see that you are good, and we can be together again,” she said.

  She really looked like she believed it. She was buying her own shit.

  Never mind the fact that forgiveness had always been on the table, and there had been no clause about needing to be purified first. Father had simply wanted us to admit that we had been wrong and that we wanted to come back, and then he would open his arms for us. She had told me that often enough that I had the damn speech memorized.

  But she seemed to think it was different now, that she had somehow gotten it wrong.

  What could I say to remind her of the way things really were? What could get through to her?

  Nothing, I feared. Nothing would get through the insanity that had gripped her and taken her away from me.

  She was lost, and I had failed. I had failed her, and she was going to be lost forever because I hadn’t been strong enough to act quickly. I had faltered in our battle, hesitated before I could use the words that would bind her, and now she had triumphed over me.

  There would be no one to guide her back to reality.

  Thirty-Two

  Her sword seared into my flesh, and she left it there for a moment. Left it burning inside me, destroying me from the inside out. I strained against the chains although they burned my flesh, because I couldn’t stand still while she tortured me, though I knew it would grant me the least amount of pain.

  Instinct drove me to fight, instinct that was wrong, but I was more animal than man at this point, doing only what my body told me to do. I was desperate for the pain to end, but there was no way out.

  Cassiel thought she could purify me, for some reason. She didn’t seem to understand that that was an impossible thing. It wasn’t something she could do on her own. I had to want it, had to seek out the forgiveness of my Father. That was the only way to wipe my slate clean.