Rise of the Fallen
Read Rise of the Fallen Online
Authors: Donya Lynne
All the King's Men
Book 1
Rise of the Fallen
AKM Rise of the Fallen
Published by Phoenix Press
Copyright 2012 by Donya Lynne
For sales information please contact Donya Lynne
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http://www.facebook.com/AuthorDonyaLynne
,
or at
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or author.
Requests for permission to copy part of this work for use in an educational
environment may be directed to the author.
This book is a work of fiction. References to historical
events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names,
characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination,
and any resemblance to actual events or persons or locales, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
Cover Art: Reese Dante
www.reesedante.com
Photo was used with permission from model, Andrei Andrei.
Connect With Donya
Lynne Online
For my mom.
I wish she could have lived long enough
to see my writing career happen.
My special thanks to model and web designer, Andrei
Andrei, for allowing me to use his picture on the cover of this book. Words
cannot express my gratitude. I can't imagine anyone else portraying Micah so
perfectly. You didn't have to help me, but you did, and for that, you have my
humble thanks. For those interested in seeing more of Andrei Andrei's work and
portfolio, his website is
www.andreiandrei.com
,
and if you would like to follow Andrei Andrei on his blog, look him up at
www.versatiletv.blogspot.com
.
This book would not have been possible without the
contributions of so many. A special thank you goes to Em. If your character
hadn't broken up with my character, Micah would never have been created. Your
support has been undying, even through the hard times. Thank you to Laura (aka
"Sam") for being there from the beginning. Thank you both for
"riding the wave" with me while I found myself again and brought this
story to life. And thank you to Toni and Victoria, my two newest beta readers.
Your contributions are invaluable. I can't express that enough. Without you all,
Rise of the Fallen wouldn't be the story it turned into.
Thank you to my husband, who has given up a lot of
time with me and has cooked a lot of dinners without my assistance as I chased
my dream. To him I say, I hope to make it up to you one day by giving you my
first big check to pay off the student loans. I love you, honey.
Lastly, to every single one of my fans on Facebook,
thank you for helping make my vision of Micah jump to the page. There are too
many of you to list, but you all know who you are, and Micah would like me to
let you know he bows in gratitude to each and every one of you.
Glass shattered as the heavy vase flew across the room and
smashed against the wall.
"You can do better than that. Come on, hit me!"
Micah goaded the hefty man, wishing like hell the asshole would strike him for
God's sake. So far, all it felt like the guy was doing was tapping him with his
itsy-bitsy fists. Well, not so itsy-bitsy, but they sure felt like it for all
the good they were doing.
"Mother fucker!" The brute charged him again.
"This is
my
house!"
Yes, it was his house. And that was his mangled wife and kid
cowering in the corner, bruised and broken. Their blood had splattered the
walls even before Micah had shown up.
"Well, by all means, defend it, asshole."
When Micah had heard the beating from two blocks away, he
had been out looking for a fight. This jackass had sounded like he would be
able to give him what he needed: Pain. But all he was getting was a lot of lip
service and pansy-assed sissy taps against his chest, even though it looked
like the wife-beater was giving it all he had.
Another useless punch landed against Micah's stomach.
"You hit like a girl." He laughed. Micah actually
laughed at the guy. What a disappointment this asswipe was turning out to be.
"Oh, yeah, well how does this feel?" The man
grabbed his leather belt from the floor and cracked it like a whip against
Micah's arm.
Micah's pulse quickened at the snap of leather on his skin,
and his eyes twinkled with need. "Now you're talking." He lumbered
forward, all menace, provoking the man. "Come on! Hit me!"
The belt swung through the air, and the woman ducked and
covered her son's head. A satisfying crack rang out as the leather connected
with Micah's torso.
Aaaaahhhh, sweet sting of pain. That's more like it, but
still not enough.
"Is that all you've got!" Micah stalked the man as
he swung again and again, striking him with the belt until Micah grabbed the
guy's arm in mid-air. "You're useless."
"Oh yeah?" the man said through nicotine-stained
teeth. Sweat beaded his oily forehead.
Oh yeah
seemed to be his primary
vocabulary.
A knife appeared in the man's other hand, and even though
the idea was tempting to let the guy stab him, Micah had had enough. He wasn't
getting what he needed here. With an easy swat, he knocked the knife away then
snagged the belt from the man's grip. Locking one hand around the asshole's
throat, he picked him up and slammed him against the wall hard enough to make a
picture fall from its fastening and crash to the floor.
"You're not worth my time." Micah grabbed the
man's balls and twisted, making him scream like the cupcake he was before
casually tossing him aside. The guy landed on the floor and rolled over,
clutching his family jewels.
Sirens rang out in the distance and Micah had half a mind to
stay. Maybe the cops could give him the beating he needed. It sure was
tempting, but then he glanced at the woman and child huddled in the corner and
momentarily remembered what he was. He needed to clean shit up and get out of
there. The woman and boy cringed as he strode toward them and knelt down.
He gripped the woman's mind into compulsion. "You will
pack your bags tonight and take the boy with you and never look back. You are
beautiful, strong, and confident and will go to the woman's shelter and never
regret your decision to leave this man." Micah pointed to the dick holding
his crotch and rolling around on the floor. He wished there was more he could
do for them, but he had his own problems. "When I leave, you won't
remember I was here."
Micah stood up and turned for the door.
The little boy hazarded a terrified glance at him. "Who
are you?"
Micah turned around and leveled his navy blue eyes on the
young human. "Nobody. I'm nobody."
He wiped the boy's memory so he wouldn't remember Micah,
then he wiped the man's and slipped out the back door and into the shadows as
police cars screeched to a halt in front of the house. He was gone before they
even stepped out of their cars.
Thirty minutes later, Micah was perched like a gargoyle on
the banister of his eighteenth floor balcony. He was naked and his skin gleamed
against the lights of Chicago. The cold January wind blew his shoulder-length,
black hair over his narrowed, soulless eyes. The fight had failed to give him
what he needed to control the ache in his chest, which now expanded and played
peek-a-boo with the suicidal thoughts plaguing his mind.
This was how it felt to lose a mate: Like falling off a
cliff into a bottomless pit. But when was losing a mate ever easy for a male
vampire? He felt empty, like a surgeon had cut him open, pulled out a couple of
vital organs then sewn him back up with acid. Something was missing and it left
a raw scratch on the inside of his skin.
The fight with the wife-beater was supposed to have taken
the edge off his suffering, but he felt more in need of a beating now than
before. He was getting worse, and at an accelerated rate.
At this point, dying would be a gift. And maybe he would
die. All it would take was one slip of his foot, and if that happened, Micah
wouldn't try to save himself by dematerializing back to his balcony. A fall
from this high could cause enough damage to kill him, and if it didn't, the
broken bones wouldn't heal in time for him to escape the sun when it rose in a
couple hours. That would finish him. He wasn't a day walker like Traceon or
that new guy, Severin. The sun would fry his ass into dust.
Hooray for the sun.
What had started this decline into darkness? Oh, that's right.
Jackson. Jack had broken up with him. How long had it been since Jackson had
left? A month? No, it had only been a week ago, hadn't it? Shit, only a week.
It felt like longer. He had fallen far in only a short time.
The past week had been a waking nightmare. For the first two
days after Jackson left, Micah had lived on the marble floor of his bathroom,
curled in a shivering ball when he wasn't hunched over the commode. The
vomiting had lasted a day then became dry heaves and gagging on the second day.
Food? No thanks.
He had finally overcome the last of the sickening ache on
the third day, but that had opened the door for a dark, dangerous hunger that
grew deadlier by the hour: A hunger for pain that had deepened in the days
since and sent him in search of a beating every night. But tonight was the
first time a fight had left him still in need, and not because his opponent had
been weak, but because Micah's need had worsened. Probably because Micah had
lost a mate before and the pain was compounded from losing another.
During the Middle Ages, he had lost a wife, Katarina. He had
barely survived Katarina's death, but doing so had come at a heavy price: He
had never fully regained his will to live and had turned into one hell of a
nasty SOB who people instinctively knew not to mess with. Losing her had
changed him and thrust his mind into a world of isolation and rebellion. And
now he had lost Jackson. If he had thought losing Katarina had been rough,
losing his second mate was even rougher, because it opened up all the old
wounds again so they could seep right along with the new ones and compound his
pain into an agony that would kill most mortals.
Jackson had come along nine months ago, right after Easter.
Jackson was a male, but that hadn't mattered to Micah. For the first time since
losing Katarina, his heart had stirred, and within a month, he had mated to
him. Not a full mating, but a bond to Jackson had formed nonetheless. With
Jack, Micah had smiled again. Jack had given him hope and happiness for the first
time in centuries.
Now it was clear that Jackson had never mated to Micah. Not
even a little.
Which brought Micah back to being perched on the banister,
overlooking the city like a sentry.
Closing his eyes now, he moaned from the cold wind's bite, a
kind of pain in and of itself. He wallowed in the hollow place that had once
been his soul, the darkness creeping and spreading like a parasite to eat him
from the inside out as the brittle cold clawed his skin.