Demon of Vengeance: Chronicles of the Fallen, Book 4

A legendary sword isn’t the only thing this merciless demon desires…

Chronicles of the Fallen
, Book 4

Possessed of immeasurable patience and an unrelenting drive for justice, Sebastian, the Demon of Vengeance, has finally met his match.

His mission is to keep the new Guardian safe until the Sword of Kathnesh is retrieved, but the aggravating woman insists on throwing herself into harm’s way at every opportunity.

Finding the sacred relic is Phoebe Mackenzie’s task, and protecting it is her family’s legacy. But when Sebastian resorts to magic to save her life, he unwittingly exposes a secret sealed deep within her—and paints a target on her back no demon can resist.

As Phoebe fights to hold on to her identity, Sebastian’s oldest nemesis vows to use any and all means to force Sebastian into a fight to the death—including targeting his mate. Sebastian will do whatever it takes to preserve the barriers between Earth and Hell. But in unleashing the raging storm inside him, he risks losing the woman he loves.

Warning: Contains a cunning demon notorious for his methodical patience and unquenchable thirst for revenge, and the one woman capable of pushing him past the breaking point. And so continues the journey of six fallen demons and the women who have captured their hearts.

Demon of Vengeance

Brenda Huber

Dedication

I’d like to dedicate this book to the librarians. Here’s to all the women and men who strive to broaden our horizons, enrich our lives, and promote our creativity through fact and through fiction. Here’s to the people who encourage young minds through reading programs and helpful literary suggestions, who teach us not only to explore but also to fall in love with the worlds and the characters who live within the pages.

This book is also dedicated in fond memory of Irene Simonsmeier, the first librarian to kindle within a younger version of me a burning love of books and a driven desire to write them through the simple use of small, gold colored, plastic trophies and summer reading programs. And especially to Angie at the Swea City Public Library, Mary at the Bancroft Public Library, and Darcy, Judy, and all the women at the Algona Public Library. You should all have superhero capes!

As always, I would like to give special thanks to my ever-patient and encouraging agent Jessica Alvarez of Bookends, LLC and to my enthusiastic and supportive editor Holly Atkinson. Thank you both for helping me follow my dreams and for making me a better writer. I couldn’t do any of this without you!

“Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

– Romans 12:19

“Not if I get there first.”

–Sebastian, Demon of Vengeance

Prologue

“Please,
please
, do not tell me I just missed her!”

The balding little man behind the counter jumped at Sebastian’s tone. Sweat beaded the clerk’s brow as he fidgeted with a stack of travel brochures. “Well, I’m sorry, but you have.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder toward the window behind him. “In fact, there she goes now.”

The edge of the countertop cracked beneath Sebastian’s fingertips as he watched the twin engine Cessna taxi down the runway. He’d chased that double damned woman all over this Godforsaken town. Port August, Michigan had become his own personal version of limbo from which it seemed he could not escape. A never ending loop of always being one step behind the cursed woman and never lucky enough to quite catch up. The storm brewing inside him boiled closer to the surface as the front wheels of the plane left the tarmac.

Breathe
, Sebastian reminded himself.

And there she went, slipping through his fingers.
Again.
A red haze winked over his vision for a moment. The little gnome took a cautious step back, sweat streaming down the sides of his smooth forehead now, his eyes wide as saucers behind thick rimmed spectacles.

Just breathe.

Sebastian let out a really, really long breath. His palms sizzled. The little man behind the counter took another step back. The colorful pamphlets in his shaking hands spilled across the counter and fluttered to the floor.

Going demonic and decimating the small airport wouldn’t bring the wayward professor back. Nor would it make him feel any better…at least it wouldn’t once he’d retaken his human form and his conscience caught up to him.

In demonic form, he’d definitely enjoy himself.

Probably a little
too
much.

Seething, Sebastian turned, stalked from the building, and climbed inside the car he’d “borrowed”. Keeping his temper in check took far more control than he was comfortable admitting. Halfway across the parking lot, his phone began ringing. His temper clicked up another notch. He was in no mood to deal with anyone else’s problems today. And that would be the only reason any of the others would call him. Either the proverbial shit had hit the fan, or it was about to. He jerked the device from his pocket and checked the display.

Xander?
He closed his eyes, tipped his head back and groaned aloud.
Damn it. If the Slayer is calling, it’s gotta be bad. Really freakin’ bad.

Sebastian gritted his teeth, teetering on the edge of saying fuck it and smashing his phone rather than taking the call. Somehow, his default role in their merry little band of misfits had become mediator, voice of reason, and general all around shitstorm-cleaner-upper. As a rule, it didn’t bother him. At least, not usually. After all, he had far more patience than anyone else in their crew. Legendary patience he’d used once upon a time to dole out his particular brand of justice. He was, or had been, the demonic version of karma. Didn’t matter how long it took, who you were, or how well you hid, sooner or later, Vengeance always,
always
caught up with you.

Now whenever something went wrong, his brothers-in-arms called him without giving it a second thought. Why? Because they knew he had a long, long,
long
fuse.

Only they had a tendency to forget about the epic bang at the end. Forget about it until it was too late. By then things had already begun to explode and burn, and could the only thing to do was get the hell out of his way until the storm blew over.

Well, the end of that long fuse was getting closer and closer. Every minute, every second, that ticked by and he didn’t have his hands on that damned professor—the Guardian of the missing Sword of Kathnesh—poured fuel on the flames.

His conscience—or whatever meager shreds of decency he had left—got the better of him. Something end-of-the-world-bad had to have happened if Mr. I’d-Rather-Be-Tortured-Than-Talk-On-These-Damned-Things was heating up the airwaves. Sebastian so didn’t have the time
or
the patience to deal with anymore shit today.

He hesitated just long enough that the phone went silent. But he didn’t bother breathing a sigh of relief. He knew what was coming.

And three, two, one…

The phone screeched to life once again.

Yeah, thing about Xander? He didn’t do voicemail. He’d just keep hitting redial until he drove you insane.

“Yo,” Sebastian barked into the phone. “Listen, man. Right now isn’t a good time to—”

“Stolas has Mikhail.”

Sebastian’s entire body went stiff. He scowled at the steering wheel, unseeing, as all the air in his lungs deserted him. His hand fell to his lap, leaving the keys dangling from the ignition as he tried to wrap his mind around this unexpected news.

No. No
way
I heard that right.

“Come again?”

“He wants to trade Mikhail for Maggie.”

“Maggie? Wait, the Halfling Maggie that Gideon was supposed to retrieve?” Sebastian shoved his splayed fingers through his hair. “How the hell did Stolas get his hands on
Mikhail
?”

The Demon of War was the strongest, meanest, most lethal bastard Sebastian knew. Mikhail carried the chip on his shoulder—and its corresponding temper—around like it was his due, and he had the skills and the experience to back it up. If Stolas or one of his minions—or, considering this was Mikhail they were talking about, probably an entire legion of Hell’s finest—could perform a bag and tag on Mikhail, then the Fallen were collectively screwed. And not in a way that might encourage one to bask in a pleasant, post-coital afterglow.

“I haven’t been off grid that damned long. What did I miss here?”

“Nutshell. Best guess, they took Mikhail via portal. The Halfling mated Gideon. She’s pregnant, probably with The Chosen One. Ashïek is involved,” summed up Mr. Twenty-Five-Words-Or-Less. “Clear?”

Ashïek? Son of a bitch!
Just like that, Sebastian’s blood turned to molten lava. The steering wheel crumbled like aluminum foil in his unforgiving grip.

Even as angels, Ashïek and Sebastian had maintained a not-so-healthy rivalry. And that rivalry had only grown more conflicted after the Great Fall, more often than not turning downright bloody…with a
lot
of collateral damage. One of Lucifer’s most favored forms of entertainment had been pitting the two against each other at every opportunity. He’d fueled the flames of hatred by rewarding the one who fought the dirtiest, regardless of who the victor had been.

While Sebastian’s rank had risen quite high in Lucifer’s army, Ashïek was every bit as formidable. The things Ashïek could and would do—the abilities he possessed, abilities like opening aforementioned portals—gave Sebastian a case of the cold sweats. It had taken every last ounce of ruthless, brutal determination on Sebastian’s part to best Ashïek. But best him he had. Many, many times.

To hear Ashïek was involved…well, it didn’t exactly make Sebastian feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“Are you sure this isn’t some kind of trick?”

The words had no more than left his mouth when his phone vibrated with an incoming text.

“You tell me,” Xander suggested. “Best guess, the vortex Ashïek opened up to take Mikhail was something like what he opened for Mortikaï to capture Kyanna and Maggie.”

While Sebastian had yet to meet Maggie, he’d grown quite fond of Xander’s mate Kyanna. The way that leggy blonde Guardian had managed to get under the Slayer’s skin made her worth her weight in gold.

A river of ice sluiced through Sebastian’s veins, chasing the hot glow of hatred. Mortikaï was a slimy bastard. Dear God, what had he done to Kyanna and the Halfling once he’d gotten his deformed hands on them? Nausea roiled through Sebastian at the mere thought.

Damn. Sebastian knew he’d fallen out of the loop a bit while on his wild goose chase, but
WTF
?

Just as quickly as his dread for Kyanna’s safety surfaced, it receded. No way would Xander be chatting it up on the phone if his mate was still in the hands of the enemy. Nor would the demon who’d abducted her still be alive. Xander would have already torn Heaven, Hell, and all of Earth asunder to get his woman back. And had she been seriously harmed—or, God forbid, killed—Earth would already be burning.

So, if Sebastian were a betting demon, he’d wager that Mortikaï’s entrails were already decorating Xander’s cabin in the mountains.

All the same, he found himself asking, “You handle Mortikaï?”

“Gideon did. One piece at a time.”

That gave him a brief moment of surprise. Not that Gideon wasn’t more than capable. Sebastian had just assumed Xander, in his fury, would have beaten anyone else to the kill. From the sound of things, Gideon was just as possessive, just as protective of Maggie as Xander was of Kyanna. Guess this mating business was touchier than Sebastian had assumed.

With a shake of his head, Sebastian opened the text, and let out a foul curse at the gruesome image filling the screen.

Oh, yeah. Stolas had Mikhail all right.

And the Demon of War was in a bad, bad way.

Any plans of chasing after the wayward professor just got shoved to the back burner. “Where do you want to meet? The farm or your cabin?”

“Keep to your mission.”

“But—”

“Secure the new Guardian. She’s the only chance we have of recovering that sword. The rest of us will rescue Mikhail. Just watch your back. So far, there’s no way to predict when or where these damned portals can open. And if Stolas can get to Mikhail, he can get to any of us.” As close to mother-henning as Xander was ever likely to get. “It’s personal now.”

There was just one point Xander didn’t understand, not fully. Ashïek had always made it personal where Sebastian was concerned.

In his short, not-so-sweet, Slayer-typical way, Xander disconnected the call before Sebastian could say or ask anything else. Sebastian wondered what his brothers-in-arms were planning, knowing only that there was no way on God’s green Earth Gideon would ever agree to give up his mate.

His
pregnant
mate.

Dude’s gonna be a daddy.
Sebastian still couldn’t wrap his head around that revelation.

In the Great Fall, along with his wings, Gideon had been stripped of his ability to ever again know the touch of a human. Almost two hundred years ago, Lucifer had…
modified
Gideon’s Heavenly curse when he’d punished the Demon of Temptation for disobedience.

Hypocritical asshole, thy name is Lucifer.

Lucifer had taken Gideon’s curse and run with it, tweaked it a bit, making it so that Gideon
could
touch again. But only while in demonic form. In human form, though he still couldn’t touch anyone, Gideon was temptation incarnate, able to discern a person’s darkest cravings and offer them up on a silver platter. And the moment that person took the bait, it triggered his demonic form. Gideon became death, bloody and brutal. He became the monster.

Problem with that little scenario was Gideon had no control in demonic form. Once Gideon went demonic, once he
became
the Demon of Temptation, he couldn’t differentiate friend from foe. He’d be more prone to kill you than shake your hand.

Sebastian and the others had searched high and low—though they’d been vigilant to never let Gideon know of their quest—for something,
anything
to lift the curse. By unspoken agreement, they’d decided each successive failure would eventually crush Gideon. And fail they had. Again and again. But they’d concealed their search in vain. Gideon had spiraled into a self-destructive depression anyway, a downward plunge from which Sebastian and the others had feared Gideon might never recover.

Which begged the question,
how?
How had he managed to touch the female? Had the cuffs Sebastian finally secured from Asher worked better than anticipated? Heaven knew the cost had been even higher—and more unusual—than Sebastian had anticipated. A sworn blood contract of one favor, unspecified in description, collectible at any given moment.

But if those cuffs had been the cure to the curse, then why hadn’t Asher offered them sooner?

Or had it been the Halfling herself?

However it had come about, Sebastian was just grateful. Gideon’s curse had been broken. So no. No way, no how would Gideon give up his mate. Not even for one of his brothers. And they wouldn’t expect him to.

Mikhail sure as hell wouldn’t expect it of him.

Sebastian understood. He, of all demons, couldn’t blame Gideon for wanting to keep his woman. Not after watching Xander with his fierce little Guardian wife, or Niklas with his feisty, yet all-too-fragile human mate.

Jealousy’s jagged, poisonous claws twisted in his gut.

It was extremely rare for a demon to commit himself to one mate, preferring instead to…well, cavort with as many or as few partners as he desired whenever the whim struck, so to speak. And it was more than a little unnerving to realize just how much Sebastian had come to envy his brothers and the relationships they’d chosen. Those two women—three now if you included the Halfling—represented something Sebastian had long ago given up on. Hope for a happy ending. Something to strive for, to look forward to.

A future that wasn’t filled with death, blood, destruction, and more death.

If he’d ever been lucky enough to have claimed a mate of his own, Sebastian would have done whatever it took to keep her safe. He’d have protected her from all harm and cherished her as none other ever would. Nothing and no one would have kept them apart.

Probably not even the female herself.

Grim, filled with renewed purpose and knowing time was running out for the Demon of War, Sebastian decided to hell with shocking any nosy neighbors with the blunt reality of their world. He’d been to the professor’s house once before, and he remembered the lay of the land well enough. At least if he shimmered now he wouldn’t risk materializing with a tree limb sticking through his gut, and he wouldn’t land in the middle of the damned lake gulping water with the fishes.