The Uprising: A Companion Novel (The Hunt Book 5) Read online

  The Uprising

  A Companion Novel

  Liz Meldon

  Copyright 2019 Liz Meldon

  Published by Liz Meldon, Amazon Edition. All rights reserved.

  License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Any unauthorized copies or distributions can be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons or situations is unintentional and coincidental. References or mention of trademarks are not intended to infringe on trademark status. Any trademarks referenced or used is done so with full acknowledgement of trademarked status and their respective owners. The use of any mentioned trademarks is not sponsored or authorized by the trademark owner.

  Thank you to JK Rowling for creating the fantastical world of Harry Potter. This author and her main character are super huge fans of it, and all references made in this book acknowledge that the characters are fictional and belong in Rowling’s fictional world.

  If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  Cover Art: Daqri @ Covers by Combs

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989261-04-0

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  The Hunt

  The Uprising

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Stay in touch with Liz!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  For all the readers who fell in love with Farrow’s Hollow, this is for you.

  The Hunt

  A paranormal romance serial.

  Predator

  Prey

  Stalker

  Killer

  The Uprising: A Companion Novel

  The Uprising

  A Companion Novel

  From the ashes, a predator rises.

  After stumbling into the supernatural world with her angel-hybrid bestie, Ella Thomas is doing just fine, thank you very much.

  As the only human in her new social circle, Ella refuses to let the weirdness of living with angels, demons, and witches affect her. Not only did she conquer her master’s degree, but the fall term makes teachers’ college a reality, bringing her one step closer to her dream job.

  If only her love life was shaping up as smoothly. Lately, every first date has been a dud, every guy Mr. Wrong, and she knows precisely who to blame…

  A six-foot-seven hunk of chaos demon who disappeared months ago without a word. Try as she might, Ella can’t get snarky, seductive Malachi out of her head—and it’s driving her freakin’ nuts.

  Lurking in shadows, he stalks his prey.

  Sensing an opportunity to seize a valuable hell-gate, Malachi Saevitia descends into the pit, butchering and bribing and schmoozing until his name is on the deed to Farrow’s Hollow. No more useless demon mobs wasting a city primed for damnation. No more thuggish brutes making life difficult for his little brother. Under Malachi’s control, the darkness can—and will—flourish.

  Before he can choose his faithful lieutenants, however, a summons sent by the Farrow’s Hollow angel garrison reaches him in Hell. Curious, Malachi goes topside, eager to see what the winged bastards want.

  Only to once again find himself face-to-face with Ella Thomas. Breathtaking, mouthy, bold, she is the one and only human Malachi cannot seem to forget—a human who makes him fight his instincts and play the hero.

  And for a chaos demon, there is no greater sin.

  After the raid on Seraphim Securities, a power vacuum splinters the Farrow’s Hollow demon community, and from the pit, a monster stakes his claim—on the city, on the humans within it…

  And most of all, on her.

  Chapter One

  “I have made a few inquiries regarding your concerns…”

  Moira dragged her sweater back over her head, then carefully rolled it down her torso. Her wings, the stubborn things, refused to be caged, stabbing at the soft wool, feathers awry under the material. But none of that mattered. Not her staticky, bright white flyaways. Not her ridiculous silhouette. Not the fact that she still blushed every time she removed a layer of clothing in front of her angel mentor so that he could examine her wings, gently picking through the plumage, measuring its growth.

  All that mattered in the entire world were his next few words.

  Zachariah appraised her from his spot at the empty classroom’s whiteboard, his great burly arms crossed, the setting sun glinting off his bald head. She smoothed her hair down, throat like sandpaper, heart beating wildly.

  “And?”

  “And…” He offered a kind smile. “Your mother is in Heaven, as I suspected.”

  A whoosh of relieved air ripped out of her, and she slumped in her chair, wings squished, as tears swelled and blurred her vision. In the four months since she had first met Zachariah, Moira had been dying to ask what had happened to her mom after she’d suffered that horrible death at Aeneas’s hands. Well, technically at Diriel’s hands, but her recently deceased dad had been the one pulling the strings, the cruel puppet master lording over the Aurelia women until his end. With him out of the picture, his demon lackey too, Moira’s mind had drifted to her mom—to the afterlife, to her everlasting soul.

  Because apparently all humans had them.

  The supernatural—not so much. Demons, vampires, witches, angels, elves: they all had the ability to live on the spiritual plane anyway, able to travel between realms in a way that was impossible for humanity. Souls could make the trek, but only after their bodies had died.

  Zachariah had spent the last four months teaching her a great deal about her angelic ancestry, about the creature she was still growing into, even now. Ever since he had lectured her about the human soul, standing at the front of the unused classroom Moira scheduled every Friday evening at Farrow’s Hollow University, a second-floor, south-facing room in the theology building, she had given the human soul a great deal of thought.

  And worried a lot about her mom’s.

  In life, Lara Aurelia had been a nurse, a single mom, and a surrogate caregiver to Moira’s childhood best friend. A good woman through and through, she had fallen in love with the wrong man, with a vengeful, fucked-up angel who had ultimately destroyed her. Her soul hadn’t deserved to go to Hell, but—what if Aeneas had pulled a few strings and sent it there anyway? What if she had been burning in the pit all these years, tortured by Lucifer’s army of fallen angels and hell-born demons?

  Moira hadn’t been able to sleep properly in weeks, not since she’d implored Zachariah to pinpoint exactly where her mom’s soul had gone—Heaven or Hell. Paradise or torment.

  And now she knew.

  Sniffling, she brushed away the tears streaking down her cheeks, and when she lifted her watery gaze to the towering angel before her, she found him studying her with a frown.

  “Does this upset you?”

  “No,” she said, her breath catching. Moira straightened with a gleaming smile, her h
ands trembling as she fixed her sweater, stuffing her wings into place. “No, it makes me very happy. Thank you.”

  Zachariah nodded, his expression shifting back to the same robotic neutral she had come to expect from angels. “I am pleased, then. Her, well, file was not sealed. No secrets for Lara Juliana Aurelia. She relives the summer between your tenth and eleventh year of secondary school.”

  Moira’s lips wobbled. That was the summer Ella had moved into their two-bedroom bungalow in the suburbs, unable to stomach living with the chaos of her own family anymore. There had been movie nights and mini-golf tournaments, salon days and camping in the backyard. It had been the best summer of her life, although this past one spent with her human best friend and the incubus love of her life, after the dust had finally settled, came in at a close second.

  “Human souls who come to rest in Heaven choose their own paradise.”

  Moira bowed her head, smile softening. Apparently her mom had loved that summer too.

  “Thank you, Zachariah.” She met his pale blue eyes, an ethereal stare to match her own. “I really appreciate you looking into it for me. It means a lot.”

  Given all the bullshit she had gone through with the Farrow’s Hollow angel garrison, it might have been reasonable to assume Zachariah had just lied to her. But Moira didn’t have to assume. That day in the bowels of Seraphim Securities, with Severus rescued and Aeneas dewinged, Zachariah had vowed to help her. He had given her his word, and since then had met with her every Friday to teach her, mentor her, guide her.

  He had even plucked one of his own feathers for her, harnessing its power into an oval golden locket, which she wore on a necklace everywhere except this classroom. Its magic, the strongest in the supernatural universe, hid her wings from the world. Sure, she could always feel them, but Zachariah’s gift made them vanish, just as he and all the other angels did with their huge white wings beneath their men-in-black suits. Moira still lacked the ability to do it herself—for now—and so the enormous angel had pulled a feather and fashioned her a shield.

  He never hesitated to answer a question, never abruptly changed the subject, never averted his gaze. Sometimes it took him a while to respond, but Moira never saw those long, thoughtful pauses as deceptive; he had an enormous mental vault of knowledge in that brain of his, and occasionally it took time to sift through.

  Aeneas had been a liar, a murderer.

  Not once had she detected deception from the angel before her. Not once had her internal alarm bells set off screeching at something he’d said. Sure, he could sometimes be a big, emotionless robot, the rich timbre of his deep, booming voice flat as a board, but that seemed to be the angel way.

  So, when Zachariah said that her mom was in Heaven, she believed him. Period.

  “Do you have any further inquiries?” Zachariah tipped his head to the side, appraising her with his bright yet distant stare. “Anything about today’s content, perhaps?”

  “Uh…” Moira tucked her hair behind her ears. Ella had recently taken a pair of scissors to the forever-growing white mane, chopping it into a stylish bob that cut off at her chin and layered around all the sharp angles of her face. Her mentor had no hair, and she wondered how he managed that. Was it a daily shaving regime? Twice daily, given the rate her hair grew at? His white eyebrows, forever stark against his black skin, suggested he’d have a full head of white as well, just like all the rest of them.

  As to his question—Moira had a thousand inquiries about today’s content. Zachariah had spent the last two hours explaining the various courts of Heaven in mind-numbing detail. Given angels had a million rules that they rigidly followed, it didn’t surprise her that the legal system upstairs was complex to a fault. None of the names translated cleanly from Enochian, a language she still only grasped the bare basics of after four months of tutelage, which meant Zachariah had taken a lot of time contemplating the meaning behind the courts so that she could better understand everything.

  Two hours and a wing inspection later, Moira was no closer to comprehending the intricate and headache-inducing legal system of Heaven.

  All she knew was that she was a part of it.

  At their first meet-up in July, Zachariah had told her that she would one day face judgement: not for any particular crime, but because she was a Nephilim, a hybrid creature between human and angel. Over the centuries, many like her had been condemned to death simply for existing—because their father or mother had decided, hey, let’s fuck a human. Naturally, the angels responsible for a Nephilim offspring were also punished; she could still see the feathers flying, smell the blood in the air, as the Farrow’s Hollow angel squad had torn her dad from grace, literally ripping the wings from his back.

  No word yet on judgement day, but the fact that Zachariah thought it necessary to familiarize her with all the heavenly courts couldn’t bode well. Fear churned her gut, burned up her throat, at the thought of that fateful day.

  But it wasn’t happening today.

  Or tomorrow.

  Or anytime soon.

  Zachariah would have told her. She trusted him with that too.

  “I mean, I think you’ll need to teach everything to me again next time,” she admitted hesitantly. “It was… a lot.”

  Given she had a degree in art history, content-dense learning wasn’t new, but the courts of Heaven were content-dense to the tenth degree—multiplied by a million.

  “Consider today an overview,” Zachariah said as she slipped her necklace back on, wings invisible, her silhouette deflated and normal. “We will analyze the more relevant courts in further detail—”

  “So I know what to expect?” She grabbed her coat and slid an arm into each sleeve, her movements stiff. Zachariah paused for a tense beat, the classroom around them silent save for the constant tick, tick, tick of the clock over the door. Then, with a sigh, he nodded grimly.

  “Yes. Precisely that.”

  “Cool.” Moira speared her hands through her hair, that little knot in her stomach, usually so easy to ignore, twisting just a bit tighter. “Can’t wait.”

  “It is better to be prepared, Moira Aurelia, than to walk in blind.”

  At no point had Zachariah let his feelings slip about the issue. A part of her liked to think that he opposed her judgement, that he knew she was a good person worthy of life. Why spend all this time teaching her about this world, about her wings and their power, about the role angels were expected to play in the universe, if he thought she should be condemned to death by a tribunal of his superiors?

  Why indeed.

  Angels. Impossible to read. And given she looked more angelic today than she had four months ago, that must have driven Severus batshit crazy.

  “Right, so…” She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, the dead weight of her laptop and textbooks for the social worker program she had started last month nothing to her now. “Same time next week?”

  A small smile tugged at the edges of Zachariah’s mouth, and as he went for his own jacket, the beige trench hanging over the empty desk at the front of the room, he said, “Five o’clock sharp, as always, Moira Aurelia.”

  He never called her by her first name. Always Moira Aurelia.

  It ought to sound clinical, but rumbled in that rich, full baritone, it always made her feel… safe. After all the shit she had been through this year, from going full hybrid to her jaunt into Hell to being tortured by a demon and watching her dad die… Moira could do with a little safety in her life.

  “Have a good weekend, Zachariah.” With Halloween right on their doorstep, the angel would probably have his hands full. Severus had told her topside demons went a little wild on October 31st, mostly because they could, but given there were still no mob bosses lording over the Farrow’s Hollow demon community, tomorrow could go either way. Peace and quiet, like they’d experienced since June, or chaos—because no one would hold them accountable.

  Well, no one but the angels.

  And Verrier. She
wouldn’t want to piss off a prince of Hell, retired or not, but there were many demons, like humans, who had a fucked-up screw loose.

  “You as well, Moira Aurelia. May your Hallows Eve be a safe one.”

  She paused in the doorway, her black knee-high boots pinching her toes, and met his eye with a grin.

  “Yours too, Zachariah. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  And despite the tension with her angelic counterparts at Seraphim Securities, the disdain they felt for her, the contempt they harbored for her very existence, Moira meant every word. The angel paused, arms limp at his side, trench coat open and checkered tie loose. He blinked at her, once, twice, then vanished into thin air without a word, his disappearing act paired with the faint flutter of wings. The sound always made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Moira tapped her knuckles against the doorframe, her grin blossoming into something warm and affectionate as she gave the empty classroom a quick once-over, and then left.

  Chapter Two

  No matter how many times he had seen her descend the steps outside the FHU theology building, Severus would never grow tired of watching his beloved little hybrid. Her coarse white hair, her porcelain skin, her hauntingly pale blue eyes. The seven months he had known and loved her felt more like seven years, and yet each time she reappeared before him, his heart soared. His inner demon rejoiced. All was right in the world so long as Moira Aurelia was with him.