Hawkyn (Demonica Underworld #5)

Chapter One

“Ha! I made you bleed,

you worm.”

Hawkyn glared at his opponent as he dabbed the back of his

hand against his mouth and came away with blood. Yup, Cipher had given him a

split lip all right, and he cursed as Razr, their sparring coach, ticked off a

point for Ciph.

Cursing again, Hawkyn launched at his blond Unfallen angel

buddy, landing a heel-first kick in the guy’s gut. As an Unfallen, an angel who

had been kicked out of Heaven but hadn’t completed his fall, Cipher didn’t have

the powers of either a True Fallen angel or a Heavenly angel, but somehow, he

still managed to be a powerful force.

The bastard.

“Point to Hawk,” Razr called out. “It’s a tie match. Take a

break, you two. We’ll start round three in fifteen minutes.” Razr shot Hawkyn

one of his signature I’m-a-dick smiles. “Maybe you can

finally pull your head out of your ass and win a match.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hawkyn muttered. “I didn’t get enough sleep

last night.”

Cipher reached for his bottle of water on the nearby bench

as Razr headed toward another pair of sparring opponents who, like Hawkyn and

Cipher, were clad in black sweatpants and white tees that showed every drop of

blood and sweat.

“Don’t tell me you finally got laid?”

“Hardly. You know the law.” Hawkyn hadn’t felt the erotic

touch of a female in hundreds of years, and even then, sex had been more of a

momentary escape from a shitty existence than something meaningful or even

nice.

But that had been back before he’d been ripped from the

human world and thrust into the angelic one, the one in which Memitim had to

swear an oath of celibacy. Supposedly, abstinence made warriors more dangerous.

The demon Hawkyn had killed just yesterday would probably agree.

Son of a bitch, he was horny. If he didn’t earn his wings

soon to free himself from the idiotic rules Memitim had to follow—including

celibacy—he was going to explode. Sometimes he thought that the Memitim who had

never had sex had it better, because once you knew what you were missing...

“So what kept you up?” Cipher

poured water on his head and shook it off, his blond hair, longer and two

shades darker than Hawkyn’s, flinging a rain of droplets like a dog after a

bath.

“The newest Star Trek series. Have you seen it?” It was a

lie, but he wasn’t ready to share the truth with Cipher.

The guy was his best friend, but Cipher didn’t fully

understand Memitim business and didn’t seem to want to learn it. What he did

know he seemed to have absorbed via osmosis or some shit.

“Star Trek?” Cipher scoffed. “A new Star Wars series would

be worth losing a sparring match over, but Trek? No way.”

Hawkyn laughed. “Did I tell you I was Nimoy’s Memitim

guardian back in the sixties? And you know my brother Reynaud. He was

Shatner’s. Linsef was Nichelle Nichols’.”

“What? You’re kidding. The actors were Primori? They needed

to be protected? From what? The Gorn?” Cipher laughed.

Hard. He always thought his jokes were funny.

The Gorn were no laughing matter.

Lizard warriors. Hardcore.

“Dude, Star Trek played a role in history,” Hawk shot back.

“The vital people involved, starting at the top with Gene Roddenberry, were all

watched over.”

“Hey, boys. What’s going on?” Suzanne, Hawk’s younger

sister—by a few centuries—stopped near the bench, her wavy brown hair pulled

back in a headband, her arms full of yellow squash from the nearby garden. All

Memitim who lived here had jobs that kept the place running and them out of

trouble, and Suzanne had been assigned as cook. Hell,

she’d begged to take shifts in the kitchen.

Hawkyn gestured to Cipher. “This fool is trying to convince

me that Star Wars is better than Star Trek.”

“It is,” Cipher said. “And not just better. More popular.

I’ll bet Han Solo is more recognized around the world than Spock is.”

Blasphemy. Hawkyn threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re

delusional. Even if you’re right, and you’re not, you can’t argue that

Star Trek didn’t have a much bigger impact on human society than Star Wars. An

interracial kiss seen around the world. Communicators that inspired

cell phone design. Even medical equipment got a boost from Star Trek’s

diagnostic beds and scanners.”

Cipher rolled his eyes. “It’s called technology. Humanity

would have come up with that stuff eventually.”

“Yeah?” Hawk wiped sweat off his brow. “I haven’t seen NASA

name a space shuttle after the Millennium Falcon.”

“Okay, guys.” Suzanne attempted to wave her hands in a

time-out gesture but nearly lost her load of veggies. “Knock it off. I have a

question for you, Hawk.”

“Whatcha got?”

She juggled with her squash as she turned over her right arm

to expose the single, circular Primori mark, a heraldi, on the inside

of her wrist.

“Declan’s mark keeps alerting me to danger,” she said, “but

when I flash to him, there’s nothing happening. I’ve waited for hours for the

alert to shut off, I’ve searched all over his immediate vicinity for any kind

of threat, from human snipers to demon assassins, and there’s been nothing.

I’ve heard that sometimes our very first heraldis can be glitchy. Do

you think that’s what’s happening?”

“My first one was glitchy too,” Hawk said. “My sponsor said

it can take our bodies a while to adjust to being in tune with another person.”

His had taken a couple of years, which was why a Memitim’s

first Primori was often their only Primori for the first five years.

“Do they ever fail to notify us when our Primori is in

trouble?”

“Yup.” He caught a squash that escaped her arms. “Our sister

Nephritt lost her very first Primori when his heraldi didn’t alert her

that he was in danger.”

Suzanne’s brown doe eyes shot wide.

“That’s terrifying. Maybe I should check on Declan more often.”

“I get the feeling you check on him enough,” Hawkyn said as

he placed the gourd on the top of her squash pile.

She blushed, which told him he’d hit the mark. He’d seen the

way she looked at the human she was assigned to watch over. She looked at him

like she’d been trapped in the Inner Sanctum’s 5th Ring’s scorch pit for a week and he was carrying a glass of water. And a

thousand-foot ladder.

“He’s my first,” she said with a stubborn sniff, her nose in

the air. “And I’m going to make sure I do my job right.”

“That’s the problem,” he said, hoping he didn’t come off as

too lecture-happy. Suzanne would tune out faster than

a griminion could reap a soul. “You’re not doing your job

right. We aren’t supposed to interact with our Primori or the people around

them. We’re supposed to watch from a distance or from the invisibility of the khote.

But you’ve been hanging out at the restaurant where he works and chatting up

his friends and co-workers.”

“Declan doesn’t work at Top,” she shot back, getting

prickly. “He works for the restaurant owner’s brother at McKay-Taggart, and

their families and employees are kind of intertwined, so he’s there a lot. And

I just happen to like the food. Plus, there are a surprising number of Primori

associated with both Top and McKay-Taggart, so I’m doing my brothers and

sisters a favor by keeping an eye on their charges. And I’ve gotten some great

contacts that could help me take my cooking show to a whole new level.” She

spun on her tennis shoe-clad foot and started toward the main dormitory

building, which housed Sheoul-gra’s largest of several kitchens. “Now, if

you’ll excuse me,” she called out as she walked, “I have to start on dinner

before I get too annoyed.”

No, no one wanted her to cook while she was annoyed. Her moods infused the food she prepared, so a

happy Suzanne was a recipe for happy diners.

Not to mention the fact that her food was extra delicious when she was enjoying

herself, which was almost always. She took her job as a cook as seriously as

she took her job as a guardian, although she certainly didn’t look at that

squash the way she did the human she was watching over.

“I worry about her,” he said to Cipher after she was out of

earshot. “She’s not ready to have a Primori. Hell, she’s not suited for this

shit at all.”

Cipher snorted. “Dude, I’ve sparred with her. She’s an

awesome fighter. She moves like a damned snake. She’s way faster than I am.”

Cipher must be really impressed, because he never admitted

that anyone was better in any way than he was. And he was usually right. He was

a tough bastard whose fighting skills made him one of the most sought-after

trainers in Sheoul-gra. The challenge was getting him away from his computer.

The guy’s cyber-skills were on par with his fighting skills.

“It’s not her fighting ability that concerns me,” Hawkyn

sighed. “It’s her innocence. She’s so na?ve.”

“She’s had decades of exposure to underworld shit and

demons, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, but it’s humans I worry about.” He watched Suz

disappear into the building.

“Humans?” Cipher barked out a laugh. “Humans are freaking

harmless.”

He glanced over at his buddy. Cipher was a little na?ve,

too. “She didn’t grow up like most Memitim. She had a good life.”

Cipher’s voice was flat. “Oh, the horror.”

“You don’t get it.” Hawk swiped his water bottle from the

bench. “Memitim infants are intentionally put into shitty situations. Bad

parents, war zones, poverty...it’s to challenge us as we grow up.”

“Sounds like it could turn you into a bunch of psychos,”

Cipher mused as he went for his own water. “Explains a lot, actually.”

No argument there. A lot of Hawk’s brothers and sisters had

serious issues, and Suzanne could often be found trying to fix them. Usually

with food.

“Yeah, well, Suz somehow ended up with a near perfect life.

Loving family, popular in school, lots of friends. Chipped nails were the worst

things that ever happened to her. She didn’t really date, didn’t get into a lot

of trouble. She lived in fucking Pleasantville. Then she went straight from an

idyllic human life to the Memitim training center in Hawaii, which is pretty

much a spa.”