Elven Blood (Imp Book 3)

by Dunbar, Debra

The day wore on this way until a little after lunch. I was the only one who ate, of course. The other angels disappeared. If they’d been human, I would have thought they all ran out to check their e–mail, or smoke cigarettes outside the front door. Maybe they couldn’t stand to watch me eat? Too tempting?

  They were only gone for a half an hour and popped back in altogether. It was really weird.

  “Wasn’t sure how long you all were going to be,” I told them. “I was getting ready to run out and pick up some beer.”

  “We used the time to return to Aaru and give us a much needed break from this physical form,” Happy told me. “It is very uncomfortable for us to be like this.”

  “Well, you could have had me up to Aaru for the meeting,” I complained, hoping to embarrass them. It didn’t work.

  They sat down and Dopey rifled through the stack of papers before him. Pausing, he shot a quick smirk at me. “Item two–hundred–and–four. Annual kill summaries to date and impact analysis.”

  Everyone turned to that page. I did too because kill summaries sounded a lot more interesting than anything else we’d discussed so far.

  I looked at the sheet, perplexed. I’d expected a list of names and a bunch of inexplicable codes on who was killed and the justifications; instead there was a lengthy analysis on each individual as to the possible impact their death would make on the evolution of humanity.

  “Wait. Is this just angel and demon kills of humans? What’s with the impact analysis?”

  The conversation halted, and the silence made it clear I was a total idiot, not deserving a second of their attention.

  “Angel, Demon, or an inter–dimensional creature who have killed a human,” Bashful explained. “When humans kill humans, or other indigenous earth creatures, such as vampires, kill humans, it is considered to be part of their destiny and not worthy of our concern.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. So what’s the impact thing? How do you measure that?”

  “Each of us has some level of omnipotence,” Gregory interjected. He had hardly spoken to me since we arrived, and I was surprised to hear his voice. “We evaluate the probability of our projections, compare them and compile an impact analysis based on our joint input.”

  “Omnipotence? You’re fucking joking me. You guys really can see the future?”

  Gregory locked his black eyes with my brown ones, and suddenly he was the only one in the room. Everything else receded into a rush of static. “ We see lines of possibilities into the future. Some are more statistically probable than others. What we predict doesn’t always happen, but we evaluate the impact as best we can.”

  “Not really,” Happy told me. “They’re just estimates based on our experience and projections.”

  I focused my thoughts on Gregory. “ What’s your success percentage? ”

  Every now and then I saw these spider webs of interconnection. Ever since Gregory had bound me, the visions clicked in unexpectedly, but I never knew how to interpret them. There were too many lines, too many possibilities.

  “Thirty percent,” he thought. He seemed proud of this number. “ Humans are increasingly unpredictable, and their actions don’t follow typical models. I have amended a higher prediction ratio, but the others refuse to use the algorithm.”

  A surge of admiration, almost adoration went through me. He was so fucking impressive.

  “So if a demon kills Joe Schmoe, you guys not only look at his direct actions and effect, but the cascading effect on potentially thousands of other people? How many levels of relationship do you go to? And for how far into the future?”

  “Direct effect for a normal lifespan,” Dopey said with a snap of impatience in his voice. “Three levels indirectly for a decade.”

  “Modeling shows that after a decade, impact predictions degrade,” Sneezy spoke up.

  I shook my head in amazement. Three levels of relationship, and ten years … fuck, I couldn’t even fathom how huge that number would be. And then deciding the probability? Yeah, I juggled over two hundred Owned humans, but this was far beyond my abilities. I glanced over at Gregory, feeling hopelessly outclassed. What was I doing here? Why, of all the demons, had this stupid sword picked me? I was an imp, almost a Low. Why me?

  “You’re just a baby. You’ll be able to do this too in a million years or so. Crawl first, little cockroach, run later.”

  It helped.

  “So why bother? I thought you guys didn’t interfere. If you decide there was a good chance that the dead guy was going to solve world hunger, do you jump in and pick up the slack or something?”

  “We monitor closely. Sometimes the desired result is delayed a few generations. Sometimes another human takes the deceased one’s place and performs the action,” Bashful said.

  “Because of … past events, human evolution is occurring too fast, and it’s erratic. There is a good chance they will de–evolve, or destroy themselves. They are also liable to interfere with other species’ evolution. We won’t take direct action unless a series of events occur that leads us to believe positive evolutionary outcome is improbable.” Happy had a grim look on his face. I had no doubt what their direct action would be, and there probably wouldn’t be an ark offered for a lucky few.

  “As independent and individualized as humans believe themselves to be, they actually behave in ways similar to a giant organism,” Gregory said. “An imbalance in Peru is rectified within a few generations by balancing actions somewhere else. So far, this has allowed the human race to move forward more often than backward.”

  “Why don’t you just leave them alone?” I asked. “It’s really arrogant to presume to know what’s good and bad for an entire race of beings.”

  They all exchanged looks and Bashful finally spoke. “We mostly leave them to their own devices in their interactions with each other, or among other indigenous species, but many of their difficulties are due to issues that occurred with the transfer of our gifts to them.”

  “We do know what’s good and bad for an entire race of beings.” Dopey made a slashing motion with his hand. “They bumble around like fools. The whole lot of them would have killed themselves off thousands of years ago if we hadn’t been helping them along.”

  “This wouldn’t be an issue if you guys would have kept your pants on. Sheesh, you can’t even hand over a few gifts without fucking everything in sight.”

  Dopey slammed his fists on the table and jumped up, leaning forward as if he planned to lunge across the table at me. Power snapped from him with a sharp bite of cold. I leaned back, balancing my chair on the rear two legs, and smiled while he struggled for control. He’d pummel me to bits, but it would be worth it. He’d never live down the embarrassment of losing control and beating up an imp in the middle of a Ruling Council meeting.

  “Bring it on, Gramps,” I said softly, trying to push him over the edge. “You’re just pissed because you missed out on the chance to shove your cock into some soft, warm, human pussy. You’ll just have to imagine what it feels like while you whack one off in Aaru.”

  That did it. He leapt across the table toward me, too fast for the others to stop. I pushed, toppling my chair backward to the floor, and he sailed over, missing me by less than an inch to crash into the wall behind me. Damn, these guys were fast. He’d scraped himself off the wall and was halfway to me before Sneezy and Sleepy grabbed him, the blue stuff flowing thick as they tried to calm him. Feeling confident they had the situation under control, I got up and turned my back on him to grab my stale danish off the table. Whipping around, I pitched the pastry at him and was thrilled to see it smack him right on the forehead.

  Baked goods in the face trumps calming blue stuff. Dopey roared, throwing Sneezy and Sleepy to the side like rag dolls before diving into me. I wasn’t able to avoid him this time. He hit me hard, cracking my back against the conference table and bending me from the waist to lie on the table. Icy cold white crashed into me, through my flesh and into my personal energy. He hadn’t com
pletely lost control. He was careful to avoid the red purple branching throughout me, and clearly was going for pain and damage, not my death. I whacked him with my cup, breaking the mug on his head and drenching his black, spiky locks with coffee. It didn’t have any effect, so I pivoted my hips to the side, grabbing his thigh and swinging my opposite leg around to wrap around his neck. I twisted, and we rolled. I was only briefly on top before he reached up and crossed his arms, grabbing my shirt collar to choke me as he kicked his legs and rolled me again. Hot damn! Finally, an angel who knew how to fight!

  We kept rolling past the edge of the table and crashed to the floor along with a heap of papers. He kept hitting me with the icy blasts, but this was primarily a physical fight. Not what I expected from an angel. I actually got the feeling that this was rather cathartic for him. He got in a few solid punches to my face before the others managed to drag him off of me.

  I propped myself up on my elbows, sniffing as blood poured from my nose and a split lip. Dopey wasn’t as damaged, although some of the wet on his hair was blood and not just coffee. Four angels held him back as he struggled. Four? Staggering to my feet, I saw Gregory, still sitting at the end of the table looking at his papers as though nothing untoward had occurred.

  “I think human ninety two might warrant some further attention,” he said, frowning at the paper.

  I grinned at Dopey. “Should we call the meeting? Give the old man a day or two to lick his wounds?”

  “I’m fine,” he muttered, shrugging off the four angels and resuming his seat.

  The rest of us walked to our chairs, and the papers scattered on the floor flew back in neat piles on the table. Cool trick. Everything else was trashed though—smashed drywall where Dopey had hit, coffee and broken crockery all over the table, a danish upside down on the floor. I wondered briefly why the humans hadn’t come running when they heard the mayhem.

  “I sealed the door and blurred their minds,” Gregory thought. He sounded … amused? “ Didn’t want them to barge in and interrupt your fun, little cockroach.” Yes, he was definitely amused. “ I haven’t seen Gabe that angry in….” I felt a wave of pain and sadness. “In a long time.”

  So there was a Gabriel. And I’d just whacked him in the face with a pastry. I wondered who was pregnant.

  “Ninety two seems fine to me,” Dopey said, still breathing heavy.

  They discussed, and I looked down the list of humans killed—mostly by demons. The next page was an equally large list of demons who’d met their end. I was proud to see my designation on quite a few. Haagenti, kiss my ass.

  “Why are there no elf kills on this list?” I pondered out loud. The angels fell silent and looked at me in surprise. “True, they don’t pop over here and kill humans like we do, but they’re always yanking humans to their lands. That’s got to have an impact. I mean, what if they grab the next Gandhi or something?”

  The angels stared.

  “Plus that one asshole is always losing his sorcerers. What if one makes it across the gates? What would that do to your impact report to have a sorcerer running amok?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Sleepy sputtered. “Elves don’t do such things.”

  I glanced over at Gregory. I was sure he knew about these doings. He was busy looking through his papers and ignoring the conversation.

  “Our gates all require activation.” Happy explained. “There is no way humans are falling through by accident to Hel. The only way a human could get there is if a demon activated the gate and took them over. To our knowledge, that has never occurred.”

  “Yours aren’t the only gates,” I insisted. “The elf ones aren’t as complicated as yours, but they do have them. One is fairly close to my house.”

  Gregory continued to ignore me.

  “The only beings that can create gates are angels,” Happy said.

  Gregory glanced up at that, meeting my eyes. “And demons,” he said.

  “They’ve lost that ability,” Sleepy said. “They’ve lost almost all their abilities by this point. Demons have devolved significantly since their exile.”

  I continued to look at Gregory. I knew he thought I’d made that crazy, suicidal gate in Waynesboro, that I also made the one I used to sneak into Aaru and leave little “gifts”. I shook my head.

  “I didn’t make either of those gates. They are wild, naturally occurring. The one I use to get in to Aaru is a fluke.”

  “There are no wild gates.” He thought at me. “Before the wars, we all worked together to seal them off. There hasn’t been a wild gate for three million years.”

  They didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me about the elves, and they didn’t believe me about the wild gates. Idiots.

  “Do we get in on this private conversation?” Sneezy asked Gregory. He seemed rather miffed to have caught us in a sidebar. “Does it pertain to the business at hand, or is it a matter between a bound demon and her master?”

  “Or between a bound angel and his mistress,” Dopey muttered, loud enough for everyone within a three block radius to hear. Gregory’s eyes narrowed and the air crackled with heat and ice. Sleepy moved his chair back slightly and looked at the table, no doubt appraising its possible effectiveness as a shield. The others were on high alert, ready to break up yet another fight. I wondered if all the Ruling Council meetings were this contentious.

  “Are you picking a fight with me? ” Gregory asked softly. “Because you’ll end up with far worse than a cut on your head, brother.”

  These Ruling Council meetings were more interesting than I thought. Yes, there were hours of boring agenda items, but all that would be worth it if I got to see two angels having a brawl in a Marriott. Tension hung in the air. Dopey was clearly spoiling for a fight, and didn’t look likely to back down. Gregory was just waiting for the other angel to make a move before he launched into what I’m sure would be a vicious counter attack. My money was on Gregory. Dopey was a lot of fun, and was in a close race for my most–favorite–angel title, but Gregory had no qualms about fighting dirty when he needed to. Yeah. I think I was Team Gregory.

  The angel in question shot me an irritated look, and relaxed. “In the interests of finishing the meeting, I suggest we continue. I’ll deal with you later,” he told Dopey.

  His tone scared the crap out of me, but Dopey just shrugged. “Whatever,” he replied, like a sullen teenager.

  The others shifted in discomfort, paging through the kill report and making random comments about it to ease the tension. I looked down at the paperwork. I really didn’t want to spend all afternoon talking about whether some dead doctor in Cleveland was going to herald in the end of the human race. Maybe if I picked another fight they’d kick me out. I looked around for a likely candidate and met Gregory’s frown. I think his patience with my “fun” had come to an end.

  “Shall we move on?” Bashful asked. “I don’t see anything in these kill reports that warrants further discussion.”

  “Where’s the four–nine–five report for that human a few months back?” Dopey suddenly asked, the fake surprise in his voice fooling no one, let alone me.

  As one, they all turned and looked at me. I had no idea what they were talking about. I glanced at Gregory, but there was no guidance in his stern face.

  “What?”

  There was no reply. Just expectant looks.

  “Seriously. I have no idea what the fuck a four nine five is. Was that something on my to–do list?”

  Silence.

  “Can’t help you if I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  Dopey sighed, as if the whole scenario pained him beyond belief. “You instructed your hellhound to kill a human a few months back. Normally, you wouldn’t get to live after such an act, but since you are the Iblis, you are given an opportunity to justify the murder using a four–nine–five report.”

  Shit. Gregory had told me there was a report, but I’d forgotten. It was his fault for not reminding me, or doing it for me. I
’m a demon, I can’t be expected to remember these things.

  “The report is due within forty–eight hours after the kill,” the angel continued. “And reviewed at the next council meeting. You’ve had ample time. I don’t see the report.”

  “Can I get an extension?”

  The silence was uncomfortable, and all those eyes stared at me. I got a feeling the answer was “no”.

  “Why didn’t you remind me?” I accused Gregory. He didn’t respond. I tried to recall what he said the ramifications would be.

  “Punishment,” Dopey said. I hoped that was a spontaneous word on his part and he wasn’t reading my mind or anything.

  “Oh no, oh no,” I interjected, suddenly remembering. “It’s ‘censure’ or ‘reprimand’, or something like that. So just shake your fingers at me and look disappointed and we’ll all continue with this ridiculously long agenda.”

  “Twenty–four hours. Or punishment.”

  Okay. I could do that. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s keep moving forward here. I’d like to be done before all my human friends are dead and buried.”

  “Punishment for noncompliance will be ‘naked and restrained for one rotation cycle,’” he said, that smirk back on his face. One by one the other angels nodded, mine included.

  Naked and restrained? That was supposed to have me shaking in my boots? Stupid repressed angels. That punishment sounded like my idea of some really fun foreplay. In the interests of wrapping this council meeting up though, I thought it was best to play along.

  “Oh please! Not that! ” I said dramatically. “I’ll have it to you by the deadline, I promise.”

  The angels nodded as one and proceeded on to the rest of the agenda item.

  It was moving on toward happy hour, when I remembered something. Leafing back through the pages, I looked over the demon kill report. There were a few marked as “unidentified”.

  “Hey, which one of these is the head?”

  Confused eyes turned toward me.

  “That head you brought over the other day,” I prompted Gregory. “The one you said was a demon, but we couldn’t identify it. Where is it on the report?”