Fallen Read online

  FALLEN

  by

  P.J. FOX

  Published by Evil Toad Press

  ISBN 978-1-942365-62-4

  Copyright © Evil Toad Press, 2017

  Cover design by Evil Toad Press

  Ebook Formatting by Guido Henkel

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed herein are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or events is purely coincidental.

  For my husband, my Prince Charming, the man who rescued me

  BY P.J. FOX

  The Black Prince Trilogy:

  The Demon of Darkling Reach

  The White Queen

  The Black Prince: Part I

  The Black Prince: Part II

  The House of Light and Shadow:

  The Price of Desire

  A Dictionary of Fools

  The Assassin

  The Book of Shadows Trilogy:

  Book of Shadows

  Prince of Darkness

  Blood to Drink

  Stand-Alone Novels:

  The Prince’s Slave

  Dark Obsession

  Fallen

  Short Story Compilations:

  I, Demon

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book, like every book, was a team effort. First and foremost, I couldn’t do anything without my husband. His love and support make everything possible. He’s my coach, my teammate, and my muse; the person who taught me that Prince Charming is, in fact, real. I’d also like to thank my beta readers on Wattpad and Radish for their loyalty and patience. And, of course, for their feedback! And last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank everyone at Smith Publicity for believing in me and for believing in this book.

  — P.J. Fox

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Belly of the Beast

  “Okay, but how many times has he asked you out now?”

  Lisa couldn’t keep a smile off her face. She found the whole thing hilariously funny. Well, she could. She was on the outside, looking in, completely unaffected and so free to think whatever she wanted. Maybe in her friend’s position Ani would’ve laughed, too.

  Although she doubted it.

  Even more hilariously funny, undoubtedly, was the fact that they were literally in the belly of the beast: at the house of the man Ani kept rejecting. Which probably made this conversation unwise, but she and Lisa had holed up in a forgotten corner of the sprawling mansion miles away from where everyone else was congregating. Or what seemed like miles; Ani had never been in a house this big.

  Ani shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t completely hate him. You’re here.”

  Ani had slipped off her shoes, not because they hurt but because she preferred to be barefoot, and had tucked her feet up under her. She felt dwarfed by the chair she was sitting in, an ornately carved thing upholstered in gold brocade that had to be at least a few hundred years old. There was really no comfortable spot in it, either; it wasn’t meant to be lounged in but to be perched on. The width of the seat was to accommodate the yards wide skirts that had once been so fashionable.

  Everything in the room was shades of brown and gold: the walls were paneled in mahogany and what furniture wasn’t gilded also appeared to be mahogany. Even the marble fireplace was a deep, golden cream. An ormolu clock rested above. There was more wealth displayed in this room than most men earned in a lifetime and whoever had decorated it wanted you to know.

  Lisa, unlike Ani, thought the room was wonderful.

  “I’m here,” Ani explained patiently, and not for the first time, “because my aunt and uncle are here. Because they’re desperate to impress our host.”

  “God, I’m desperate to impress our host. He’s so hot.”

  Their host was her would-be boyfriend’s uncle, who was not hot. At least, not according to Ani’s definition of the term. Dane Edward Asquith-Long had grown up as the ward of his uncle, Jasper Grant Asquith-Long. Ani, for all that she’d known Dane for some years now, at least casually, had no idea what had happened to his parents. Or when, indeed, he’d come to live with Jasper. It might have been as a child, or as a teenager; by the time Ani and Dane had met, he was out of school.

  Dane wasn’t the kind of person who lent himself easily to being known but even if he had been, Ani wanted to avoid him—not learn his innermost secrets. She supposed, in fairness to Lisa, that he was handsome. And that Jasper was, too. They looked quite a lot alike. They were both pale, with dark hair and dark eyes and aquiline noses. Lisa had quipped once that Jasper would stand out in a room full of supermodels at a supermodel convention. There was some merit, Ani had to admit, to that claim. If, of course, you completely ignored his personality.

  She couldn’t decide who was worse: Dane or his uncle.

  “He’s too old for you,” Ani said, meaning Jasper.

  “No, he’s not! He’s only in his forties.”

  And Ani thought Dane, at twenty-seven, was too old for her.

  The most perplexing thing about Lisa, she decided, was that Lisa was aware of Jasper’s flaws. And of Dane’s. And of everyone’s in the Asquith-Long family’s execrable social group. Ani couldn’t have been friends with her if she’d been the kind of person who never noticed anything. She simply didn’t care. Because she was a pragmatist, she claimed. But Ani wondered if it was more. Was she…was she excited by it? All the detachment, all the cruelty, all the license?

  “Jasper is single.” Lisa sipped her drink. She wasn’t old enough to drink, but she’d cadged the martini somewhere.

  Ani considered this—even for Lisa—surprising statement. “Is Jasper looking to…not be single?” As far as she was aware, Lisa had never even talked to Jasper. Certainly not one on one. Ani might be twenty-one but Lisa was nineteen. Ani couldn’t think of a single situation in which she and Jasper might even so much as exchange pleasantries. He was old enough, more than old enough, to be her father! Then again, she realized, they were both here….

  “I don’t know. But he might be looking to have a fling.”

  “Lisa!”

  “What?”

  “You can’t—”

  “Just because you don’t,” Lisa said judiciously, “doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  Ani felt herself redden.

  “You’re saving yourself for someone wonderful, who doesn’t exist. And I find that admirable. Really. But for the rest of us, sex really isn’t that big of a deal. And he might give me presents.” Lisa’s eyes flashed with anticipation.

  She was right, Jasper wouldn’t be her first fling. Although, as far as Ani knew, he’d be her friend’s oldest fling. And she certainly seemed contented enough. But Ani had to wonder: didn’t Lisa, in some secret recess of her heart, wish for more? To be loved, cherished? To be with men who minded when she left the room?

  Lisa had parents, unlike Ani, who only had her aunt and uncle. But, like Ani’s aunt and uncle, Lisa’s parents rarely seemed to notice where she was—or care—unless and until they wanted something from her. Which usually consisted of her getting gussied up and smiling. Both of which she was good at. Lisa, unlike Ani, was a real part of this social circle. Her parents had been to dozens of these parties, with and without her. Whereas this had been Ani’s family’s first invitation.

  Her uncle had spent his life on the fringes, desperate to gain access through some gate in the invisible wall that was class. For some reason, probably money related, Jasper and his ilk were c
onsidered to have it. That, and they could each of them trace their lineages back to before the Third World War. Some of them, even to the ancient times that they so loved to ape. William Winn Rice was unmannerly and sometimes just plain unfortunate, but no more unfortunate than Jasper and his sex parties. Yes, her uncle burped and scratched and was occasionally too enthusiastic about the idea of other peoples’ accomplishments but…what? Jasper very politely pranced around naked?

  “What are you thinking?” Lisa challenged.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “I am not.”

  “So back to Dane.” Lisa finished her drink. It probably hadn’t been her first. “You think you’re going to put me off, but you’re not.” Her smile deepened. She had Ani pinned and she knew it. “So how many times has he asked you out, once again, and why won’t you date him?”

  “He hasn’t asked me out, as such.” Ani, for some reason, was feeling defensive. “He’s more, um. Suggested.” And in ways that had made Ani’s skin crawl. “And as for how many times, I honestly don’t know. I try not to keep track. And…as for the last part…isn’t it obvious?”

  “You’re here!”

  “Like I said!” God, this again! She was here, because her uncle was desperate to sell Jasper his next anti-Purge security system. Although that would never happen. There was nothing, nothing at all, that her uncle could ever hope to sell that Jasper would ever want. It only embarrassed him that he didn’t know that. He was probably salivating over Jasper right at this very minute.

  He should just cut the bull, drop down to his knees, and start begging to suck Jasper’s cock.

  “And I do completely hate him,” Ani insisted, referring to Dane. She sighed. “I’d be home, doing something useful, if I could.” Because as much fun as Lisa’s company was—mostly—she was hiding.

  “You mean painting.”

  “Yes, I mean painting. Or writing, or reading.” Or banging her head against the wall.

  “He’s rich, he’s powerful, he’s unbearably gorgeous and he’s obsessed with you. What’s not to like?”

  “His personality?”

  “He just took over one of his uncle’s companies.”

  “So?” That didn’t make him any more likeable.

  “He’s not just rich, he’s successful! He’s earning his own millions, now.”

  “But he’s a horrible person.”

  Ani wondered, briefly, if anyone was listening in on them. Alone, these days, tended to be an illusion more often than not. But the party proper was taking place on the other side of the house; those who weren’t lounging around the indoor pool were playing tennis. The last time she’d checked, a few brave souls had tried the outdoor pool. Even though, this late into fall, they hardly had the right weather. The water itself, though, was heated.

  These parties were famous, even though they didn’t—to the best of Ani’s knowledge, at least—involve sex. Because everyone loved the mansion so much, and all of its amenities. Ani thought they were stupid and hoped, rather uncharitably, that her uncle never got invited to another one.

  “The hundreds of people here don’t think so.”

  Not that they’d admit it, if they did. “This is adult summer camp.”

  Lisa laughed, and Ani’s frown deepened.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” Lisa promised. “I’m laughing with you.”

  “Hah.”

  “And besides, he’s not a horrible person. He makes huge donations to all the right charities.”

  “Have you slept with him?”

  “No, but I would!”

  Him and his uncle together, that was a vision. “Listen,” Ani said forging on, “he may look good on paper—”

  “And in person.”

  “And in person, but he’s everything you don’t want in a man.” Yes, the idea that someone might be listening in was paranoid, but Ani also didn’t care. Let them listen, she’d made no secret of her feelings—about Dane, or about anything else. “He’s self-satisfied and self-absorbed. I’d call him thoughtless, too—but Lisa, he’s not. He knows exactly the effect he has on other people and he, he enjoys it. I bet that, years ago, he was one of those children who burned beetles alive with a magnifying glass. Or who stuck them with pins, to watch them squirm. He’s—cruel isn’t the right word.” Cruel implied at least the possibility of some secondary motive. “He’s a sadist.”

  “We live in a world that rewards sadists.”

  And there, in that single sentence, was the intelligence Lisa usually worked so hard to keep hidden. The intelligence she masked with pragmatism, but that in truth was the cause of her pragmatism. Lisa was, and always had been, a keen student of human nature. Which was what made her enthusiasm for Dane so confusing. Or maybe not.

  “I don’t like this world,” Ani said quietly.

  The world of New Victoria, she meant, and the world beyond its borders. The only world she’d ever known. New Victoria, a kingdom that had once been called something else, but that now stood as a shining example of all that man could achieve. After the Third World War, what had come to be known as the Great War, and the series of cataclysms that followed, those remaining had collectively decided that too much freedom—and too much mobility—had been the cause of everything. Travel became regulated, and walls were built. The rigid social stratifications that had ruled life so long ago were reintroduced; everyone knew their place. Or, at least, they were supposed to.

  There were camps of rebels, and underground networks too of different kinds, Ani knew because she’d seen pictures. But she’d never encountered them more directly. She wondered if the world of the average citizen had always been this sheltered. There was rage, and confusion, but it was all mediated through a tablet; rare was the man, or woman, who decamped from his couch to actually do anything. There were jobs, and bills, and the ever present threat of the Purge and, on every other day of the year, the perils of navigating the society that had created it.

  “You don’t like it,” Lisa said, “because you’re not meant for it.”

  Ani sighed again.

  Sometimes, she felt so lost.

  “The right man—”

  “The right man,” Ani cut in, some of her spirit returning, “is going to be generous and kind and funny and like—love, but also like—me for me. He’s going to appreciate my independent streak instead of trying to crush it out, thereby molding me into some ridiculous notion of the perfect, submissive woman. He’s going to be my friend, my equal. He’s not going to be someone who scares me.”

  “The right man sounds really boring in the bedroom.”

  “Maybe to you.”

  “Dane would keep you safe, you know. In the Purge.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Lisa raised her empty glass in a toast. “To New Victoria.”

  Ani didn’t know this, as the conversation turned to other and safer matters, but she did have an audience. An audience of one, to be exact. She’d had it for some time, too. Since long before she’d started talking about Dane; since shortly after she and Lisa had discovered the inviting little study in a part of the mansion they’d assumed to be deserted. Because who, after all, would leave a party?

  Who indeed?

  Adult summer camp. His lips quirked into a small, unpleasant smile. That had been quite an apt observation. Particularly as her uncle acted like nothing so much as a toddler. Only, unfortunately for him, he lacked a toddler’s sole redeeming grace: innocence. William Winn Rice had all the innocence of a dockside whore, with none of the humility. That he could be related to Ani was, quite frankly, astonishing. Especially since his wife, Grace, was equally charmless.

  And equally loud.

  And equally, entirely unlike Ani, dishonest.

  Still, she’d be horrified to learn that the very same Dane Edward Asquith-Long whom she so reviled had heard her every word. On the subject of him, at least. H
e pictured the delicate blush creeping up her chest, to her neck, and finally suffusing her cheeks, as her eyes widened, and felt himself stir.

  Then, feeling decidedly confined in his trousers but quite pleasant elsewhere, he turned and left.

  He did, after all, have other guests.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Curious

  Ani wandered around the mansion, alone, tablet in hand. She thought she might sit down to sketch. Hopefully in a more comfortable chair. She was also curious about what this huge old place looked like. It couldn’t be called a mansion, not really; it was more of a palace. What must it be like, to live here? She was glad she didn’t know. Too much space was intimidating and galleries like the one she was in, where dozens of oil painted eyes stared down at her but there was no sound save that of her own footfalls on the marble, could never feel like home.

  Lisa had abandoned her, some time ago, for the tennis courts; she wanted to be on hand in case any of the men playing took their shirts off. What was she planning on doing, if they did? Ani had to admit that she was more than a little curious about that, too. Well, she supposed, as long as Lisa didn’t take her shirt off.

  She wondered who the men and women in gilt frames were. Her aunt said she had too many questions, had often accused her of being one big question. But what was so bad about questions?

  She felt an—almost an itch growing between her shoulder blades, a sort of awareness. Like she was being watched. She spun around, convinced that she’d see some gross old man leering at her, but there was nothing. She was still alone. The sense of being watched had come entirely from the paintings. There were plenty of gross old men there. Most of them were swathed in velvets and silks and satins. Only a few wore suits.

  She turned, and kept walking.

  This—hall, gallery, whatever it was—was the length of a football field. There were two fireplaces, one near either end. They matched. And, this time, they were gray. Like the floor. How much marble was in this place? To her left, windows looked out on rolling hills. They were massive things, rising from floor to ceiling. How—her thousandth question of the day, probably—did Jasper protect those during the Purge? So much glass seemed like an open invitation to mayhem.