Shadow Born: A Joseph Hunter Novel: Book 1 (Joseph Hunter Series)

by Alex Gates

  “Most women use the word ‘rugged.’”

  She reached to her waist and gripped the belt holding her kimono together.

  I tensed. My stomach knotted. My lips needed excessive licking. My hands felt way too cold.

  She pulled the rope and the kimono fell open. She shimmied out of it, and the fabric dropped to the hardwood floor like a puddle of blood. Medea stood pale and naked before me. My grip tightened on the tumbler as my eyes surveyed the hills and valleys of her exquisite body.

  My breath hitched, and I had to set the glass back on the table, planting a hand on the surface for support. I couldn’t look away from her. Believe you me, I wanted to. But her enthrallment had wrapped around my mind and senses like a vice.

  “It’s a cold night,” she said, her voice soft.

  “I noticed that.” I nodded at her breasts and glanced at my crotch, hoping she hadn’t made a joke at my expense.

  Medea stepped toward me, placing her left hand on the back of my neck and her right on the inside of my upper thigh. When she spoke, her lips brushed against mine, and I stiffened like a board.

  “Your daughter doesn’t belong to this world anymore.” As she finished the declaration, her right hand found my zipper and undid my pants. Xander hadn’t offered me any of his boxers, so… well, there was that. The motion froze me solid, not just physically, but mentally. Her enthrallment ensnared me like a fly in a web.

  I lost my breath as her hand worked. She slid down my body and dropped to her knees.

  “She…” I stuttered, using all the effort in the world to push sound through my lips. “She… left…” Tears filled my eyes as I panted with pleasure. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t make what Medea had said real. Mel didn’t belong to this world. What did that mean?

  What did she mean by that? Why had she said it? The question rested in my mind like an anchor, sat on my tongue, but her enthrallment had weakened me to silence. It was a boast on her part. She told me what I came to find out, knowing I could do nothing about it.

  I hadn’t been with a woman in seven years, and Medea played on that intense hunger and need. She had shown me her true form for a second, probably to start the enthrallment, and she had jabbed at my vulnerability from the moment I stepped onto her driveway. If she succeeded in pleasing me, I would know nothing more for the rest of my life but pleasing her.

  I had to fight against her power. I pictured Callie and me standing in the desert and smiling. I pictured Mel pointing at a box of Cheerios. I focused on those images, shoving any lust and desire from my mind.

  “She doesn’t… belong …to this world?” I asked. A string of control fluttered through my will. I grasped for it, hoping to latch onto it for some kind of support. “Where is she?” That time, the question came with solidity and force. The string turned into a rope, and I managed to climb back to solid ground.

  I shoved Medea over.

  My groin ached for her to return, but, as a rule of thumb, I ignored my groin area. Zipping up my pants, I backed away from her.

  She stood, revealing her true self again—that leathery hag with shadowed hair and jagged teeth. A rattling laugh clattered from her throat. “Oh, Joseph,” she hissed. “You could have lived an eternity in ecstasy with me. Instead, you choose a girl who doesn’t even belong to you. How naive are you?”

  “Where is she?” I growled.

  Medea covered herself with her kimono again and sauntered away from me, moving through the doorway beside the fireplace. “You coming?” she called from the other room.

  I followed her around the labyrinthine—it was somehow a castle on the interior, though the exterior blended in with the neighborhood—mansion and into a reading area. A long sofa with no arms or a headrest stretched across the wall to my right. On the opposite side of the sofa, a bookshelf covered the wall from floor to ceiling, stuffed with so many books that Medea had started stacking the overflow literature into columns on the hardwood.

  Currently, she stood before an expanse of wood-planked wall. She pressed on it, and a door—once flush with the wall and invisible to the naked eye—popped free. Medea pulled it open to reveal a stairwell that descended deep into the bowels of the house.

  I still stood in the doorway that lead into the reading area. I had a sick feeling that my daughter was stowed down those stairs and in that darkness. I swallowed back that fear. Would she have led Xander down there, too? Had she incapacitated him and carried him down the steps, or had he willingly followed her? I couldn’t think of a reason why he would have voluntarily descended those stairs unless he had confirmation that Melanie was down there, or Medea had enthralled him—but with his holy pact, he would have proven even harder to enthrall than me.

  “Thought California didn’t have basements,” I said, trying to buy time. What if Xander wasn’t down there? What if she had disposed of him some other way?

  “I remember you having a bunker of sorts.” She moved around the hidden door and down onto a stone step. “If you wish to save your daughter and your friend, you should consider following me.”

  Well, I guess that half-answered my question. I pattered after her, thoughts of Mel and Xander propelling me deeper into danger. “Does everyone know where I lived?” I asked, stepping into the secret corridor. My voice echoed in the tight confines of the area. “I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well, yet Xander found me. Dakota, who I don’t even know, found me. Hecate and her goons found me. Was I that obvious?”

  We spiraled down the circling stairs, further and further into the abyss. Medea guided our descent with a glowing orb of light that burned from the palm of her hand. After a few minutes, when my lungs began to sear with fatigue—yes, we’ve established that I’m out of shape—we stepped off the last stair and into a dark hallway lit by torches planted into the wall.

  “Holy Hades. Did we just walk back in time? That’s a pretty neat trick.”

  Medea ignored me. She trekked across the stone floor to a large door that looked like something straight from a medieval castle—complete with steel bracings and a ringed knocker-handle thing. “It’s unlocked,” she said, stepping aside to allow me passage by her. “Go ahead.”

  I cleared my throat, swallowing back a little fear that had built up over the past few minutes. Where had she led me? What answers awaited behind the door? Sighing, I stepped forward and placed my hand on a horizontal bar fashioned across it. I pushed with all my strength—that thing was heavy and impractical—and it creaked open, revealing a circular, shadowed room about the size of a basketball court lit only by candles and torches. The air smelled of burning incense and cold stone. Someone had used sidewalk chalk to trace a large wheel around the candle lighting.

  Around the perimeter of the wheel, a small army of Empousa stood in a circle. Four Anemoi—ethereal wind spirits that can only be summoned and controlled through powerful magic—floated in a line behind Xander, who stood sandwiched between the two types of enemies. His shirt was shredded to ribbons, revealing a photoshopped body. The Anemoi backed him into the dozens of Empousa, who waited patiently by not breaking their line to attack him.

  I would have asked how he had wound up surrounded by spirits and vampires on the outskirts of a ritualistic summoning circle, deep in the bowels of a castle disguised as a suburban house—but before the tangle of words could blunder off my lips, something else caught my eye.

  The Empousa stood perimeter around the summoning ring to guard a little girl who lay on her side in the center of the wheel. The wall of Cursed blocked most of the details, but I saw her slight shoulders trembling. Without a second thought, I sprinted to her, unconcerned about the Empousa or the Anemoi or Medea or the fact that I was powerless in this room of monsters. Medea didn’t stop me, and the Empousa moved aside and allowed me to enter the circle.

  I fell to my knees and grabbed Mel. I lifted her onto my lap and moved her dark hair from her face. Her lips were partly open. I put my cheek to her mouth and felt the labored release of war
m air.

  “Mel,” I said, holding her wet, cold face. “Mel.”

  Her dark eyes—shit, they looked so much like Callie’s eyes—fluttered open. “You’re too late,” she said in a tiny voice. “You couldn’t save us.”

  I gritted my teeth and released breath that I had been holding through my nostrils. “No,” I said, my voice quivering. “I’m here. I’m right here. I made it.” I glanced up. The Anemoi had surrounded Xander, allowing for a few of the Empousa to turn around and face me and my daughter.

  How had Medea summoned those spirits? If she had that kind of power, I didn’t stand chance against her. And Xander, though powerful in his own right, was grossly outnumber by Empousa.

  Medea stood amongst the enemy ranks, her red kimono standing out like blood in the snow. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that Melanie is right. You’re too late.” She raised her right hand. Two Empousa broke away from the circle and came straight toward me. One of them, still not fully shifted to a Raven, looked a lot like Mason the Bouncer.

  I set Mel back on the ground and stood, ready to fight and kill those fuckers—magic or not. I went for Mason, the one to my right, skipping to the side and stomping him in the knee, hoping to incapacitate him. Before I reached him, though, he shifted to a full Raven and my strike did about as much damage as kicking a hundred-year-old tree trunk. The Empousa to my left wrapped its bony arms around my body and restrained me with strength beyond a normal human. It hissed. Drool spilled onto my head, plastering my hair to my face. I writhed and bit at it and kicked like a pissed mule, but the Empousa didn’t budge.

  Mason went for Mel—now an eight-foot tall monster reaching down for a defenseless, little girl.

  I screamed and struggled, but to no avail. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Xander engaged with the Anemoi and a few Empousa that had decided to fight. He held his own, for now—but one man against a team of monsters wouldn’t bode well for him.

  Medea sauntered up to Mason and Mel, as if she had not a single worry in the fucking world. She grabbed my daughter and placed a jagged dagger with a black stone molded into the hilt to her throat.

  I couldn’t help but wail and thrash in my captor’s grip. “Fuck you!” I screamed. “She’s just a kid. What are you doing?”

  Medea showed her teeth with a predatory smile. “Joseph, if you want your daughter to live, I need you to calm down and listen to every single word I say to you. Understood?”

  I labored for breath. My vision went out of focus for a second, and all the shadows scattered around the room seemed to deepen. “Anything,” I said after a second.

  “I’m glad that you’re choosing to be cooperative. It will make this entire affair a lot easier for everyone involved.” Medea clicked her tongue and the Anemoi halted in their attacks on Xander. He still stood surrounded by the spirits and some Empousa, but they no longer pushed him toward death. Medea stared at me with narrowed eyes. “You see, we all might walk out of here alive if you continue to behave.”

  “Just tell me what the fuck you want.”

  “Release him,” she said, and the Empousa released me from its vice grip.

  I had a moment where I thought I felt that my magic had returned, and I meant to use it on Medea, but I restrained, knowing that any threat toward her would result in Mel’s expedient death.

  “You see that table behind you?” Medea asked.

  I looked back. Against the nearest wall was table about three-feet high and a foot wide, adorned in Nephilim sigils and lit by a melting candle at each corner. A golden chalice stood at the center of it. Beside the chalice was another dagger and a pile of coins.

  “What about it?” I asked, returning my attention to Medea and Mel. My daughter had her eyes closed, and her dark hair dangled over her face. Still, the candlelight that lit the room illuminated tears running down her soft cheeks.

  “Go to it,” Medea instructed. “Use the dagger to draw blood and fill the chalice.”

  I cocked my head. “What’re you talking about?”

  To answer my question, Medea pressed her blade tighter against Mel’s throat, depressing the skin. “Be a good boy and don’t question Mommy.”

  I had never experienced such helpless rage in my life. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to that crazy bitch holding a dagger to my daughter’s throat. But I didn’t have any other choice. I swallowed my pride and staggered to the table—half drunk on adrenaline and fear.

  “Joey,” Xander interjected from the crowd of Anemoi and Empousa, “don’t.” His voice was rigid and commanding—the one he used when he spoke the confidence of his pact behind him. Had Gabriel spoken to and advised him on this situation?

  Fuck it, I thought, not giving a shit if even an archangel stood in my way. I was saving Mel no matter what.

  I picked up the dagger and, without hesitation, dragged it across my left forearm. Blood immediately streamed from the wound and spilled down my arm. I held it over the chalice and squeezed, filling the cup. I don’t know how long it took, but it felt like an eternity. And not once did I take my eyes off Medea. With my glare, I swore to every god in existence that I would kill her—and I made sure she understood that silent promise.

  “Wow,” she said, “you didn’t even ask for an explanation. You just blindly offered your blood to save your daughter?”

  “It’s full,” I said, removing my shirt and tying it around my wrist to slow the bleeding.

  “No,” Medea said, “not it. The Holy Chalice that Christ drank from during the last supper. It is made from heavenly gold—the same material they say lines the streets in paradise. By filling it with your blood, it has drawn out your celestial power.”

  I blinked, having no idea what the raving lunatic meant. Maybe Xander had some inclination, but he stood across the room and I’m not sure he had caught much of what Medea said. “Just tell me what to do, then give me back my daughter.”

  “You see those silver coins?” Medea asked. “Pour your awakened blood from the Holy Chalice over them.”

  “Joey!” Xander screamed. He must have heard something—or at least felt something from Gabriel—because his voice worked on the edges of hysteria.

  I whipped my focus to my old friend and shouted across the basement. “Don’t you dare tell me what not to do! If it means saving her,” I said, pointing at Mel with a weak left arm, “I’ll slit your fucking throat right now.” I don’t know if I really meant those words, but in the moment, I felt that truth.

  I lifted the Holy Chalice. Before tipping it over the pile of coins, Medea interrupted me, “Wait!” My hands quivered in midair, waiting for her command. “Just so you understand the weight of your decisions. Those are the thirty coins Judas accepted to betray Christ. They are the thirty seals that hold back the demon lords from this world. As soon as you pour your holy blood onto them, and they react to your demonic nature, the imprisoned Fallen will be free from their prison. They will rule this world once more.”

  My body trembled. I had no idea what Medea spoke of. How could my blood be both celestial and demonic? That was impossible. And how would it free the demon lords who have been locked away for over two thousand years? My thoughts jumped to Hephaestus. He had mentioned something about me destroying the world if I left his shop, and that’s why he would have to report me to the Nephilim Council and kill me. He had said I would contribute to the destruction of Earth. Was this what he meant? Had he known that my blood could somehow free the demon lords and their legions from Sheol?

  “Pour your blood over the coins,” Medea repeated, “or Melanie dies here and now.”

  I chuckled, unable to believe that I faced a decision that meant the world or my daughter. It was the most outrageous thing imaginable.

  “Joseph,” Xander’s voice boomed, “don’t do it!”

  Medea whistled sharply, and her Anemoi resumed their assault on Xander, distraction him from offering me any further advice. “Your blood has to be willingly given,” Medea said to me, smiling like
a wolf. “So, will you spread it over the coins, or will you allow your daughter’s blood to stain my floor?”

  My eyes stung and a heavy, sour taste filled my throat as I lifted the Holy Chalice and poured my blood over the coins. The silver reacted, burning a brilliant white and causing me to lean back to avoid the heat.

  When the last drops fell over the pile, Medea said, “Thank you, Joey. There is one more thing you should know. Though the fallen angels and demon lords belong to this world once more, Melanie does not.”

  With a simple stroke—like moving a paint brush over a canvas or sliding a bow over a violin to create something beautiful—Medea created something abhorrent. Death. The lifeblood poured from Mel’s throat and splashed onto the traced wheel. Still frozen in shock and without the chance to react, a form appeared in the circle beside Melanie and Medea. A woman surrounded in a dense mist and wearing a red sword on each of her hips.

  Hecate.

  The Nephil reached for Mel, placing her hand on the gashing wound across my daughter’s neck, and she muttered incomprehensible words. After an eternal second, she pulled her hand away, dragging a duplicate of Melanie from her human body—a fuzzy, distorted rendering of my daughter now stood beside the Nephil.

  I screamed and sprinted into the circle, but Hecate and Melanie had vanished in the fog. All that remained was my daughter’s body, now lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. I fell beside it at Medea’s feet. Everything else in the room fell to shadows. I placed a hand around her neck to stop the bleeding, and blood seeped through my fingers as I could do nothing to stop her death. It sent me into a frenzy.

  “Melanie. Mel. It’s me.” I sobbed. My attempt to save her weakened and died after a moment. Lifting her into my lap, I held my daughter and rocked her for the first time since she was an infant. I don’t know how long we remained like that—long enough, though, for her blood to stop pooling on my lap. I had failed to save Callie seven years ago, and had failed to find those responsible for her murder. I had failed to save my daughter now, but her killer stood in the same room as me.