House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Read online

  It took all two centuries of Isaiah’s training on and off the battlefield to avoid flinching at that voice. To turn slowly toward the angel he knew would be leaning against the doorway, wearing his usual black battle-suit—an angel who reason and history reminded him was an ally, though every instinct roared the opposite.

  Predator. Killer. Monster.

  Hunt Athalar’s angular dark eyes, however, remained fixed on the window. On Bryce Quinlan. Not one gray feather on his wings rustled. Ever since their first days in the 17th Legion in southern Pangera, Isaiah had tried to ignore the fact that Hunt seemed to exist within a permanent ripple of stillness. It was the bated silence before a thunderclap, like the entire land held its breath when he was near.

  Given what he’d seen Hunt do to his enemies and chosen targets, it came as no surprise.

  Hunt’s stare slid toward him.

  Right. He’d been asked a question. Isaiah shifted his white wings. “She hasn’t said a word since she was brought in.”

  Hunt again regarded the female through the window. “Has the order come down yet to move her to another room?”

  Isaiah knew exactly what sort of room Hunt referred to. Rooms designed to get people to talk. Even witnesses.

  Isaiah straightened his black silk tie and offered up a half-hearted plea to the five gods that his charcoal business suit wouldn’t be stained with blood by sunrise. “Not yet.”

  Hunt nodded once, his golden-brown face betraying nothing.

  Isaiah scanned the angel, since Hunt sure as Hel wasn’t going to volunteer anything without being prompted. No sign of the skull-faced helmet that had earned Hunt a nickname whispered down every corridor and street in Crescent City: the Umbra Mortis.

  The Shadow of Death.

  Unable to decide whether to be relieved or worried at the absence of Hunt’s infamous helmet, Isaiah wordlessly handed Micah’s personal assassin a thin file.

  He made sure his dark brown fingers didn’t touch Hunt’s gloved ones. Not when blood still coated the leather, its scent creeping through the room. He recognized the angelic scent in that blood, so the other scent had to be Bryce Quinlan’s.

  Isaiah jerked his chin to the white-tiled interrogation room. “Bryce Quinlan, twenty-three years old, half-Fae, half-human. Blood test from ten years ago confirmed she’ll have an immortal life span. Power rating near-negligible. Hasn’t made the Drop yet. Listed as a full civitas. Found in the alley with one of our own, trying to keep his heart from falling out with her bare hands.”

  The words sounded so damn clinical. But he knew Hunt was well versed in the details. They both were. They’d been in that alley, after all. And they knew that even here, in the secure observation room, they’d be fools to risk saying anything delicate aloud.

  It had taken both of them to get Bryce to her feet, only for her to collapse against Isaiah—not from grief but from pain.

  Hunt had realized it first: her thigh had been shredded open.

  She’d still been nearly feral, had thrashed as they guided her back to the ground, Isaiah calling for a medwitch as the blood gushed out of her thigh. An artery had been hit. It was a gods-damn miracle she wasn’t dead before they arrived.

  Hunt had cursed up a storm as he knelt before her, and she’d bucked, nearly kicking him in the balls. But then he’d pulled off his helmet. Looked her right in the eye.

  And told her to calm the fuck down.

  She’d fallen completely silent. Just stared at Hunt, blank and hollow. She didn’t so much as flinch with each punch of the staple gun Hunt had pulled from the small medkit built into his battle-suit. She just stared and stared and stared at the Umbra Mortis.

  Yet Hunt hadn’t lingered after he’d stapled her leg shut—he’d launched into the night to do what he did best: find their enemies and obliterate them.

  As if noticing the blood on his gloves, Hunt swore and peeled them off, dumping them into the metal trash can by the door.

  Then the male leafed through Quinlan’s thin file, his shoulder-length black hair slipping over his unreadable face.

  “Seems like she’s your standard spoiled party girl,” he said, turning the pages. A corner of Hunt’s mouth curved upward, anything but amused. “And what a surprise: she’s Danika Fendyr’s roommate. The Party Princess herself.”

  No one but the 33rd used that term—because no one else in Lunathion, not even the Fae royals, would have dared. But Isaiah motioned to keep reading. Hunt had left the alley before he’d learned the entire scope of this disaster.

  Hunt kept reading. His brows rose. “Holy fucking Urd.”

  Isaiah waited for it.

  Hunt’s dark eyes widened. “Danika Fendyr is dead?” He read further. “Along with the entire Pack of Devils.” He shook his head and repeated, “Holy fucking Urd.”

  Isaiah took back the file. “It is totally and completely fucked, my friend.”

  Hunt’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t find any trace of the demon that did this.”

  “I know.” At Hunt’s questioning glance, Isaiah clarified, “If you had, you’d be holding a severed head in your hands right now and not a file.”

  Isaiah had been there—on many occasions—when Hunt had done just that, returning triumphant from a demon-hunting mission he’d been ordered to go on by whatever Archangel currently held their reins.

  Hunt’s mouth twitched slightly, as if remembering the last time he’d presented a kill in such a manner, but he crossed his powerful arms. Isaiah ignored the inherent dominance in the position. There was a pecking order among them, the five-warrior team who made up the triarii—the most elite of all the Imperial Legion units. Micah’s little cabal.

  Though Micah had appointed Isaiah the Commander of the 33rd, he’d never formally declared him its leader. But Isaiah had always assumed he stood right at the top, the unspoken finest soldier of the triarii, despite his fancy suit and tie.

  Where Hunt fell, however … no one had really decided in the two years since he’d arrived from Pangera. Isaiah wasn’t entirely sure he really wanted to know, either.

  Tracking down and eliminating any demons who crept through cracks in the Northern Rift or entered this world through an illegal summoning was his official role, and one well suited to Hunt’s particular skill set. The gods knew how many of them he’d tracked down over the centuries, starting from that very first Pangeran unit they’d been in together—the 17th—dedicated to sending the creatures into the afterlife.

  But the work Hunt did in the shadows for the Archangels—for Micah, currently—that was what had earned him his nickname. Hunt answered directly to Micah, and the rest of them stayed out of his way.

  “Naomi just arrested Philip Briggs for the murders,” Isaiah said, naming the captain of the 33rd’s infantry. “Briggs got out of jail today—and Danika and the Pack of Devils were the ones who busted him in the first place.” That the honor hadn’t gone to the 33rd had irked Isaiah to no end. At least Naomi had been the one to apprehend him tonight. “How the fuck a human like Briggs could summon a demon that powerful, I don’t know.”

  “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Hunt said darkly.

  Yeah, they fucking would. “Briggs has to be ten kinds of stupid to have been released only to go for a kill that big.” The leader of the Keres rebels—an offshoot of the larger rebellion movement, the Ophion—hadn’t seemed dumb, though. Just a fanatic hell-bent on starting a conflict to mirror the war raging across the sea.

  “Or maybe Briggs acted on the sole chance of freedom he had before we found an excuse to bring him back into custody,” Hunt countered. “He knew his time was limited and wanted to make sure he got one up on the Vanir first.”

  Isaiah shook his head. “What a mess.” Understatement of the century.

  Hunt blew out a breath. “Has the press gotten wind of anything?”

  “Not yet,” Isaiah said. “And I got the order a few minutes ago that we’re to keep it quiet—even if it’ll be all over the news tomorrow
morning.”

  Hunt’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve got no one to tell.”

  Indeed, Hunt and the concept of friends didn’t mesh well. Even among the triarii, even after being here for two years, Hunt still kept to himself. Still worked relentlessly toward one thing: freedom. Or rather, the slim chance of it.

  Isaiah sighed. “How soon until Sabine gets here?”

  Hunt checked his phone. “Sabine’s on her way downstairs right—” The door blew open. Hunt’s eyes flickered. “Now.”

  Sabine looked barely older than Bryce Quinlan, with her fine-boned face and long, silvery blond hair, but there was only an immortal’s rage in her blue eyes. “Where is that half-breed whore—” She simmered as she spotted Bryce through the window. “I’ll fucking kill her—”

  Isaiah extended a white wing to block the Prime Apparent’s path back out the door and into the interrogation room, a few steps to its left.

  Hunt fell into a casual stance on her other side. Lightning danced along his knuckles.

  A mild showing of the power Isaiah had witnessed being unleashed upon their enemies: lightning, capable of bringing down a building.

  Whether ordinary angel or Archangel, the power was always some variation of the same: rain, storms, the occasional tornado—Isaiah himself could summon wind capable of keeping a charging enemy at bay, but none in living memory possessed Hunt’s ability to harness lightning to his will. Or the depth of power to make it truly destructive. It had been Hunt’s salvation and destruction.

  Isaiah let one of his cold breezes sift through Sabine’s corn-silk hair, over to Hunt.

  They’d always worked well together—Micah had known it when he put Hunt with Isaiah two years ago, despite the entwined thorns tattooed across both their brows. Most of Hunt’s mark was hidden by his dark hair, but there was no concealing the thin black band on his forehead.

  Isaiah could barely remember what his friend had looked like before those Pangeran witches had branded him, working their infernal spells into the ink itself so they might never let his crimes be forgotten, so the witch-magic bound the majority of his power.

  The halo, they called it—a mockery of the divine auras early humans had once portrayed angels as possessing.

  There was no hiding it on Isaiah’s brow, either, the tattoo on it the same as on Hunt’s, and on the brows of the nearly two thousand rebel angels who had been such idealistic, brave fools two centuries ago.

  The Asteri had created the angels to be their perfect soldiers and loyal servants. The angels, gifted with such power, had relished their role in the world. Until Shahar, the Archangel they’d once called the Daystar. Until Hunt and the others who’d flown in Shahar’s elite 18th Legion.

  Their rebellion had failed—only for the humans to begin their own forty years ago. A different cause, a different group and species of fighters, but the sentiment was essentially the same: the Republic was the enemy, the rigid hierarchies utter bullshit.

  When the human rebels had started their war, one of the idiots should have asked the Fallen angels how their rebellion had failed, long before those humans were even born. Isaiah certainly could have given them some pointers on what not to do. And enlightened them about the consequences.

  For there was also no hiding the second tattoo, stamped on their right wrists: SPQM.

  It adorned every flag and letterhead of the Republic—the four letters encircled with seven stars—and adorned the wrist of every being owned by it. Even if Isaiah chopped off his arm, the limb that regrew would bear the mark. Such was the power of the witch-ink.

  A fate worse than death: to become an eternal servant to those they’d sought to overthrow.

  Deciding to spare Sabine from Hunt’s way of dealing with things, Isaiah asked mildly, “I understand you are grieving, but do you have reason, Sabine, to want Bryce dead?”

  Sabine snarled, pointing at Bryce, “She took the sword. That wannabe wolf took Danika’s sword. I know she did, it’s not at the apartment—and it’s mine.”

  Isaiah had seen those details: that the heirloom of the Fendyr family was missing. But there was no sign of Bryce Quinlan possessing it. “What does the sword have to do with your daughter’s death?”

  Rage and grief warred in that feral face. Sabine shook her head, ignoring his question, and said, “Danika couldn’t stay out of trouble. She could never keep her mouth shut and know when to be quiet around her enemies. And look what became of her. That stupid little bitch in there is still breathing, and Danika is not.” Her voice nearly cracked. “Danika should have known better.”

  Hunt asked a shade more gently, “Known better about what?”

  “All of it,” Sabine snapped, and again shook her head, clearing her grief away. “Starting with that slut of a roommate.” She whirled on Isaiah, the portrait of wrath. “Tell me everything.”

  Hunt said coolly, “He doesn’t have to tell you shit, Fendyr.”

  As Commander of the 33rd Imperial Legion, Isaiah held an equal rank to Sabine: they both sat on the same governing councils, both answered to males of power within their own ranks and their own Houses.

  Sabine’s canines lengthened as she surveyed Hunt. “Did I fucking speak to you, Athalar?”

  Hunt’s eyes glittered. But Isaiah pulled out his phone, typing as he cut in calmly, “We’re still getting the reports in. Viktoria is coming to talk to Miss Quinlan right now.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Sabine seethed. Her fingers curled, as if ready to rip out Hunt’s throat. Hunt gave her a sharp smile that told her to just try, the lightning around his knuckles twining up his wrist.

  And fortunately for Isaiah, the interrogation room’s door opened and a dark-haired woman in an immaculately tailored navy suit walked in.

  They were a front, those suits that he and Viktoria wore. A sort of armor, yes, but also a last attempt to pretend that they were even remotely normal.

  It was no wonder Hunt never bothered with them.

  As Viktoria made her graceful approach, Bryce gave no acknowledgment of the stunning female who usually made people of all Houses do a double take.

  But Bryce had been that way for hours now. Blood still stained the white bandage around her bare thigh. Viktoria sniffed delicately, her pale green eyes narrowing beneath the halo’s dark tattoo on her brow. The wraith had been one of the few non-malakim who had rebelled with them two centuries ago. She’d been given to Micah soon afterward, and her punishment had gone beyond the brow tattoo and slave markings. Not nearly as brutal as what Isaiah and Hunt had endured in the Asteri’s dungeons, and then in various Archangels’ dungeons for years afterward, but its own form of torment that lasted even when their own had stopped.

  Viktoria said, “Miss Quinlan.”

  She didn’t respond.

  The wraith dragged over a steel chair from the wall and set it on the other side of the table. Pulling a file from her jacket, Viktoria crossed her long legs as she perched on the seat.

  “Can you tell me who is responsible for the bloodshed tonight?”

  Not even a hitch of breath. Sabine growled softly.

  The wraith folded her alabaster hands in her lap, the unnatural elegance the only sign of the ancient power that rippled beneath the calm surface.

  Vik had no body of her own. Though she’d fought in the 18th, Isaiah had learned her history only when he’d arrived here ten years ago. How Viktoria had acquired this particular body, who it had once belonged to, he didn’t ask. She hadn’t told him. Wraiths wore bodies the way some people owned cars. Vainer wraiths switched them often, usually at the first sign of aging, but Viktoria had held on to this one for longer than usual, liking its build and movement, she’d said.

  Now she held on to it because she had no choice. It had been Micah’s punishment for her rebellion: to trap her within this body. Forever. No more changing, no more trading up for something newer and sleeker. For two hundred years, Vik had been contained, forced to weather the slow erosion of the body, now plainly visib
le: the thin lines starting to carve themselves around her eyes, the crease now etched in her forehead above the tattoo’s twining band of thorns.

  “Quinlan’s gone into shock,” Hunt observed, monitoring Bryce’s every breath. “She’s not going to talk.”

  Isaiah was inclined to agree, until Viktoria opened the file, scanned a piece of paper, and said, “I, for one, believe that you are not in full control of your body or actions right now.”

  And then she read a shopping list of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol that would stop a human’s heart dead. Stop a lesser Vanir’s heart, too, for that matter.

  Hunt swore again. “Is there anything she didn’t snort or smoke tonight?”

  Sabine bristled. “Half-breed trash—”

  Isaiah threw Hunt a look. All that was needed to convey the request.

  Never an order—he’d never dared to order Hunt around. Not when the male possessed a hair-trigger temper that had left entire imperial fighting units in smoldering cinders. Even with the spells of the halo binding that lightning to a tenth of its full strength, Hunt’s skills as a warrior made up for it.

  But Hunt’s chin dipped, his only sign that he’d agreed to Isaiah’s request. “You’ll need to complete some paperwork upstairs, Sabine.” Hunt blew out a breath, as if reminding himself that Sabine was a mother who had lost her only child tonight, and added, “If you want time to yourself, you can take it, but you need to sign—”

  “Fuck signing things and fuck time to myself. Crucify the bitch if you have to, but get her to give a statement.” Sabine spat on the tiles at Hunt’s booted feet.

  Ether coated Isaiah’s tongue as Hunt gave her the cool stare that served as his only warning to opponents on a battlefield. None had ever survived what happened next.

  Sabine seemed to remember that, and wisely stormed into the hall. She flexed her hand as she did, four razor-sharp claws appearing, and slashed them through the metal door.

  Hunt smiled at her disappearing figure. A target marked. Not today, not even tomorrow, but at one point in the future …