Demon's Fall Read Online Free Page A

took out a coin— Calla Moon Shion , a woman of quiet, mysterious smiles and few words, only a quiet gasp just at that moment—and balanced it on its edge with one finger. He flicked it, sending it spinning into Adino’s reach. “So if you want it phrased in a more familiar way: if I were avoiding hellhounds, where shouldn’t I go?”
    Adino snorted and plucked the coin from the bar. “Try asking Edom.”
    “At the stable?”
    “Hellhounds aren’t the sort to stay in inns,” Adino pointed out.
    Kenan lifted the ale in a conceding gesture and drank from it again. Then he carried it over to a table of regulars.
    “Kenan! How many conquests since the last time we’ve seen you?” a man asked. Humans were always impressed by incubi’s powers, for all that they were considered weak among other demons.
    “A few.” He smiled and patted his belt pouch, although those women had given him little pleasure past the moment. Mortals were too easy—thus his interest in Jahel, who would understand the full import of what he asked for. “What’s happened here?” It was a game they played where each had to offer a piece of news.
    “An ifrit nearly burned down one of the Hellside quadrants,” the man said.
    “All the princes of Hell are on the other side of the gate,” an imp offered.
    That was good news. All demons moved warily in the presence of the great infernal ones. Hellsgate was a place for demons on the mortal plane, where they could indulge in the pleasures of the physical world without worrying about hierarchy. It worked, surprisingly, and the city ran as well as any mortal town. But the demon princes considered it an extension of their domain, and whenever they were here they interfered with unspoken understandings already established.
    The black cat sitting on the table lifted her head from grooming. “A scroll was nearly stolen from Heaven,” she said in her sand-dry voice.
    Kenan’s eyes widened. “What?” The angels kept some holy texts in their realm, and it was astonishing that someone had tried to take one. “How did you hear this?” There were other shocked murmurs around the table.
    The cat studied her paw, then gave it a few careful licks. “An archangel came storming down to Hellsgate to protest it. He didn’t know I was listening. He thought I was asleep—as though I could sleep through his thundering.”
    “Why would he come here?” Kenan asked. “No demon could have entered Heaven.”
    “He thought the scheme might have been born here, or that the would-be thief might have fled here for sanctuary. He threatened war if we didn’t turn the miscreant over.”
    Those at the table shifted, suddenly on edge. Kenan felt a chill. “War between Heaven and Hell?” The first such war had preceded the creation of the mortal planes and the next, it was said, would herald its end. He couldn’t see how anything could survive if angels and demons threw their might against each other. Conquest and war, famine and death would blight the world.
    “There are rumors of an angel raising havoc in Hellsgate,” the man mused. “Causing some trouble, then flying off, only to come back elsewhere.”
    “That doesn’t seem like someone seeking safe harbor here,” the imp interjected.
    “Perhaps it was the same archangel,” the cat said.
    Kenan kept his thoughts about this rampant angel to himself. His guess was that it was someone trying to find and free Jahel. He had hoped to be done with her quickly, before any outcry was raised, but if he were honest with himself, he wanted her seduction to be a drawn out pleasure, long and lingering. She had probably been in that cage for awhile, long enough for her to be missed.
    Before she’d been captured, had she fled from Heaven and a theft gone awry?
    The suspicion made him uneasy. Angels weren’t supposed to lie, not according to the philosophy they lived by, but they also weren’t supposed to try and snatch holy scrolls or even be in Hellsgate. Or tempt