Kingdom of Lies
Page 26
Gregory stared at me and made a choking noise.
“What?” I asked. “You don’t seriously think we only have one big-ass alexandrite in all of Hel, do you? That one’s a little more purple than the power-level one, but most demons wouldn’t notice.”
The angel grabbed me and kissed me. “You, Cockroach, are a genius.”
“Yeah, except Avarnak didn’t go through the gate as planned, or he managed to come back before you closed it. Either way, he’s over there smashing up a pub. We better go kill him.”
“No,” the angel moved me behind one of the few remaining trees and pushed me to the ground. “You stay here while we handle this.”
There was that fucking ‘we’ again. I didn’t argue, since I really didn’t want to be impaled to the ground by my wings or skewered with dragonglass again. Gregory revealed his wings, all six of them in their cream and grey glory, and brought forth his sword. He shimmered, glowing with light that nearly blinded me as he took to the sky. Suddenly popping sounded in the air, and angels appeared, wings outstretched as they flew toward the demon.
This fucking rocked. The war happened over two-and-a-half-million years ago, and most of the ancients didn’t go into poetic detail about the battles. True, this was just one demon against a dozen Grigori, but it was as close as I’d ever get to a reenactment.
I moved away from the tree to a better vantage point and regretted that I didn’t have any popcorn handy. This was going to be epic. And short. Twelve highly skilled enforcer angels who had been killing demons for their century of service against one powerful, yet incredibly stupid, greed demon. Five seconds. I was willing to lay a bet on it.
I would have lost that bet. Avarnak heard the beat of wings and spun about, his laser eyes working overtime. The angels dodged the shots, twisting acrobatically in the air. Fireballs flew from his hands, singing the tips of a few Grigoris’ wings. Still they advanced, Gregory at the forefront.
The angel’s sword was like a lance as he dove toward the demon. Avarnak raised a hand, and the sword glanced off an invisible wall. Gregory spun midair, barely missing a collision. Other angels weren’t so lucky. Five smashed into the barrier, bouncing off and skidding across the ground. Avarnak took advantage of their position to slice them with lasers, tearing through flesh and delicate wings with the beams.
Not good. Gregory was down to seven angels, none of whom could get through the barrier. I wasn’t sure how the demon was managing to launch an attack through a wall that the angels couldn’t penetrate, but it was clear I had to do something.
Actually, under normal circumstances, I probably would have sat back and waited until Gregory was down to one or two helpers, but I’d noticed one of the angels left standing, or flying, was Eloa. There was no way I was letting her fight beside my man while I hid behind a tree, so I decided to be brave and risk impalement.
I clearly couldn’t go through a barrier that repelled Gregory’s sword, so I did the imp thing and went around to the back door. Of the pub.
The demon had done some serious damage to the establishment. Not that I blamed him. It was a pub, the first place to look when you were trying to track down a lying imp that had nearly gotten you trapped in another land with a bunch of dragons over a gem that was just a gem. Still, I mourned a bit for the back door barely hanging on by one hinge, the oak bar stools that now resembled kindling, the dented kegs leaking ale all over the floor.
I had to climb over the remains of several tables and half the bar, then pick my way through broken bottles of liquor on my way to the front. Huge glass windows had been blown to pieces, some of them fused together from the heat. Out front stood the demon, his scaled tail twitching as he pivoted to launch another attack.
The battle was even more dramatic from this perspective. All I needed was 3D glasses, and it would have seemed like those angels were coming right for me. I watched for a few seconds, rather pleased when a fireball knocked Eloa out of the sky and into the side of an abandoned police car.
Time to be a hero. I resisted the urge to whistle, walked up to Avarnak, and grabbed his tail. “Hey, dickhead, looking for me?”
The demon whirled about and another barrier went up behind me, sealing me in with him and keeping the angels from following my lead. Avarnak twisted his lion ass, knocking me against the wall in a crack-the-whip motion of his tail. My head spun, and unfortunately neither barrier came down with his focus on me instead of the angels. None of it mattered, because I had what I wanted. Avarnak had been careless in his surprise, and his spirit-self was within my grasp. I snatched hold of him and pulled.
And he pulled back.
Devouring wasn’t an admirable trait. If a demon was born with that inclination, they did their best to hide it. I’d managed to do just that until I killed Haagenti in front of an audience. Evidently Avarnak hadn’t been outed the way I had. And now I was in a struggle for my life against another devouring demon—one that outclassed me tenfold. He gained ground, spooling my spirit-self towards his as Gregory and the other angels pounded against his barrier.
“Kill me and you’ll never get the gem,” I told him. “Without it, Aaru will continue to belong to the angels. You need it, and you need me.”
He screamed in frustration, slamming me to the ground and against the broken glass. “I don’t care. I’ll find it somewhere at your house in Hel, or here among the humans. I’ll find it, then Aaru will be mine. Mine.”
Lasers shot from his eyes, carving me in half across the waist. I gasped, feeling the blood gush from my body as the world dimmed.
Pull back. Pull back and consolidate . I’d done it before—more than I cared to remember. Existing inside a dead body was about as much fun as existing as inanimate pond scum, but it was better than dead-dead.
The angels hammered at the barrier. Gregory chipped away at it with his sword. I needed to break Avarnak’s concentration so they could get through, because it was pretty evident that I lacked the power to kill this demon. Luckily he lacked the knowledge of how to kill me. He could keep slicing me in half and I could keep recreating my physical form all day, but I had something else in mind.
“Brains, brains,” I chanted in my best B-horror-movie voice, and I crawled with my arms toward him, dragging my bloody stump of a torso behind me. I’d been dead enough times that I was beginning to get the hang of moving around zombie-style. I’d never win any races, but I could shamble along with the best of them, and scare the piss out of anyone—demon or angel.
The demon caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye then did a double take. With a scream that would have done a five-year-old girl proud, he danced to the side. The barrier cracked. I saw Gregory wedge his sword in it and push.
Avarnak sliced me into smaller bits with his laser eyes. “Die. Why won’t you fucking die?”
I condensed, holding my spirit-self into less and less physical space until I got tired of the whole thing and reconstructed my entire being as a flame, a la Gregory. The pop of my physical form conversion shattered the barrier, but Avarnak didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy swatting at me with his tail and trying to keep me from setting him on fire.
There was a rush of wind that nearly sent my flame-being into the pub. An angel appeared before me—an angel with chestnut curls and armor that covered his chest and arms. His right hand held a sword that hummed with power. Cream wings scarred with lines of gray unfurled as he slammed into Avarnak, knocking the demon to the ground. The impact rocked the earth, a spray of dust circling outward around our foe. Before that dust had settled, Gregory exploded into a blaze of light and swung his sword.
Avarnak exploded in a spray of sand, raw energy flickering as it spiraled into the glowing sword.
I hid a smile, basking in the show of my angel’s muscle. I’d seen him angry, but never like this—never with his power fully revealed. No, my angel would never relinquish Aaru, the humans he’d vowed to shepherd through positive evolution, or stand by while harm came to me.
There was a wealth of love and grace in this angel, but also the heart of a warrior.
Damn, I loved him.
The white light faltered. Dimmed. Gregory stood, a shimmering bipedal form with huge wings. His eyes were holes of black, his teeth jagged white. “I will not yield Aaru, and no one will chop my Cockroach into little pieces and live.”
I recreated my human form lest I inadvertently burn anything down. We’d done enough damage here—the angels, me, the dragon, Avarnak. No sense in adding to the destruction.
“You did it.” I kicked the sand that used to be a demon, just to commit one final act of violence toward Avarnak.
“We did it, although I’m not sure I want to take credit given the cost.” Gregory dismissed his sword and wings, his form becoming more human.
“Hey, could be worse. We could have had a bunch of four-nine-five reports to do.”
Gregory pulled me close. “No humans died, but we lost twenty angels in Aaru, and my Grigori are wounded.”
His angels did resemble a band of homeless drug addicts instead of their shining, pristine selves. With little pops of light, their physical forms returned to an unharmed state, but I could see the newly accrued wounds that covered their spirit-beings. “Vacations for everyone?”
The angel smiled. “Yes, but us first. I seem to recall we promised a weekend alone, undisturbed on a comet. Assuming Gabriel and my remaining angels can keep heaven and earth from imploding for two days.”
They damn well better. I looked up at the setting sun, realizing that if we went by Eastern Standard Time, we’d still have several hours to take care of one last important task.
“Take care of your angels, tie up any loose ends you may have, and meet me at my house in an hour,” I told Gregory. “By nightfall in Maryland, I’ll be all yours.”
The angel kissed the top of my head. “And I will be all yours.”
Chapter 33
When I got home, I hugged Nyalla so tightly I thought she’d burst at the seams. Then I had to convince her I didn’t need to pack a weekend bag for a mini-vacation on a comet.
“I won’t be in human form,” I repeated for the millionth time. “No phone, no flip-flops, definitely not the Amazing Ultra-Length Mascara that you got at the mall yesterday.”
She pouted, but I saw the laughter in her eyes. “Do I get another assignment when you get back? That last one was easy. Maybe this next time I can actually kill something.”
I was a terrible influence on this girl.
And I’d lied. There was one thing of this physical world I was taking with me. The moment Gregory popped into my kitchen, I shoved it in his hands. “One quick thing, then we’re off to comet fun-land.”
“So this is what has caused so much trouble. Very pretty, and very dangerous.”
“I’m assuming it still has charges,” I warned him.
He turned the gem over in his hand, the greenish purple reflecting a prism of light. “We’ll need to destroy it, but not here.”
“Where the explosion won’t have any impact,” I added. Destruction of magical devices were like colliding particles. Bad shit.
“There’s always an impact, Cockroach. No matter how far I take it, there will still be a ripple effect.”
I grinned. “Actually I had an idea. I think you should stick the gem up Uranus.”
He grinned back. “I’ve always wanted a magical gem in Uranus.”
“No, Uranus. Not my anus.”
“Worst pun ever, Cockroach.” He looked down at the gem, his smile fading. “Something like this should never have been. The elves have much to answer for.”
More than he realized. “They’re coming, you know. They ripped the Traveler’s Veil, causing all the wild gates to tear open. They orchestrated this entire thing with Avarnak.”
Gregory frowned. “Why? The gates are open for them to return whenever they want. Why do all of this when all they had to do was cross?”
I shrugged. “Think of what happened to the Angels of Chaos in nearly three-million years. Do you think the elves are the same beings they were back then? They’ve changed, and they no longer want angels sitting on their shoulders telling them right from wrong. With you busy in Aaru and here, they would have free rein to do as they please.”
The angel shook his head. “Before I met you I never would have believed it, but what I’ve seen in the last few years, what I’ve seen in the last few days, has convinced me you are right.”
Damned straight I was. And it was about time the angels caught a glimpse of the elves’ new true nature. “Does this mean you intend to close the gates and trap them in Hel?”
His smile held more than a note of self-mockery. “You’ve told me they can create their own gates, so I don’t see what good that will do. No, let them come. I think they’ll not find the Nirvana they were hoping for.”
Let them come, indeed.
** Don’t miss Book 8 in the Imp Series—Exodus. Sign up for New Release Alerts at : http://debradunbar.com/subscribe-to-release-announcements/ **
About the Author
After majoring in English with a concentration in Medieval Literature and Folklore studies, Debra promptly sold out to the corporate world. By day, she designs compensation programs, after dark she feverishly writes her novels.
Debra lives in a little house in the woods of Maryland with her sons and a slobbery bloodhound. On a good day, she jogs and horseback rides, hopefully managing to keep the horse between herself and the ground. Her only known super power is 'Identify Roadkill'.
Connect with Debra Dunbar on Facebook , on Twitter @Debra_Dunbar, or at her website.
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Other Books By Debra Dunbar
The Imp Series
A DEMON BOUND (Book 1)
SATAN'S SWORD (Book 2)
ELVEN BLOOD (Book 3)
DEVIL’S PAW (Book 4)
IMP FORSAKEN (Book 5)
ANGEL OF CHAOS (Book 6)
IMP (Imp Series, prequel novella)
KINGDOM OF LIES (Book 7) Fall, 2015 Release
Books in the Imp World
NO MAN’S LAND
STOLEN SOULS
THREE WISHES
Half-Breed Series.
DEMONS OF DESIRE (Book 1)
SINS OF THE FLESH (Book 2) Summer, 2015 Release
UNHOLY PLEASURES (Book 3) Spring 2016 Release
Table of Contents
Kingdom of Lies
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Other Books By Debra Dunbar
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