The Morning Star

by Debra Dunbar

  “Bad man,” Lux insisted.

  “Yes. Very bad man,” I agreed.

  Thirty Lows were ready and able in my guest house, but since none of them could teleport, I’d need to transport my entire army myself. I could do that. And then I’d end up with an army of puking, dizzy Lows. Not exactly an impressive statement for the Iblis to make. Doriel had made her allegiances clear. Tasma? Eek. He’d have the same issue, appearing with a puking Low army of his own, only his would be dressed in onesies and clutching teddy bears. I could get Nils, but I needed more than one Fallen to help me. Harkel? I could leverage his relationship with Amber and Irix, but there was no guarantee he’d be willing to face down Samael and his army.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I could call on Dar, but if something happened to him, Asta would flay me alive. I got the feeling the same fate would be in my future if I asked Leethu to fight by my side.

  And in reality, what were the chances of me showing up and fighting through an army of demons, with or without the Iblis sword, then facing Samael one-on-one and actually winning against him? Slim to motherfucking none, that’s what.

  Sword. I summoned it and it appeared beside me on the couch, strangely obedient. Lux cooed and stroked the surface as I frowned at the weapon. It was a sword, not a pool noodle, not a barrette, not a stick covered in poison ivy. And lately, every time I’d wanted it there, it was snug in my hand practically before the thought formed in my head.

  Maybe I was the Iblis. Maybe I could do this. I never thought I’d be actively plotting the murder of my beloved’s brother, but I’d do anything to keep him from the pain of seeing what Samael had become. I’d do anything to pull Hel together under my control, to make the future I’d envisioned a reality for the angels and the demons, for Gregory and his siblings, for me. For Lux.

  “Toy. Play.” Lux told me, trying to haul the sword closer. I was a bit amazed that the weapon immediately transformed into a foam sword, covered in glitter and dancing lights. The angel oohed and aahed as he gripped it tight in his fist and swung it around, whacking me in the head on the reverse.

  “That’s not an appropriate toy for a young Angel of Order,” a deep voice scolded. I’d felt the burn of his energy the moment he’d arrived, felt the thrum of my spirit-self responding to his. Resisting the urge to toss the kid to the floor and jump into his arms, I instead glanced at the television, ensuring he wouldn’t see his brother ripping vital organs out of humans on-screen.

  “Then give him yours to play with,” I told Gregory, dismissing my sword and holding Lux up to him. He took the kid, an absolutely sappy expression coming over his face.

  “Someday you’ll have my sword. You’ll lead the angels back into Aaru—both Angels of Order and of Chaos—and restore the rightful balance of our kind.”

  His words sent a chill through me. It was as if he’d seen his death in the near future and was preparing for a transition of power. Although with angels, “near future” could be another billion years. Besides, Lux was too young and inexperienced to lead anyone, let alone several choirs of angels. And although Gregory claimed the little angel was brilliant and powerful, he wasn’t created from an archangel, just a mid-level angel and a somewhat psychotic powerful Ancient. I didn’t know what Lux would grow to be, but part of me hoped it wasn’t the leader Gregory wanted him to be. That was my beloved’s job. And it was a job I wouldn’t wish on anyone, not even this pain-in-the-ass infant angel I’d been saddled with.

  “The kid’s not Moses,” I told him. “He’s not leading the angels back into the promised land.”

  “No, he’s not Moses.” Gregory bounced Lux in his arms. “Moses lost his temper and as punishment had to remain behind while everyone else got to enter the holy land. Lux is an Angel of Order. He’ll remain centered and balanced in his energy and resist sin. He’ll lead the angels in to Aaru.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Have you met this kid? Because he’s not as sin-free as you seem to think he is.”

  Lux turned his head and blew some particularly wet raspberries at me. I eyed the television, noting that the screen was now filled with a bunch of muted talking heads and no footage of Samael threatening all life on the planet.

  “We’ll handle it.” Gregory’s arm came around my shoulders.

  “You can’t leave the other gates unattended. There’s no saying those Ancients who failed won’t try again.”

  “We need to engage these demons immediately, to keep them contained while we formulate a larger plan to go in and clear the area. The other gates will hold. I’ve got enforcers dealing with the situation in Bogota. This is a spillover from Seattle. I hadn’t realized they’d gotten this far south, though. Or that there were so many demons that came through.”

  “What happened?” I kept an eye on the television, wanting to see what was going on, but paranoid about them showing Samael.

  “The Ancients who came through those two gates were stronger and had a larger force behind them.” Gregory’s arm tightened around me. “The gate guardians and two enforcers were killed at those two gates. We regained control of Bogota early on and managed to kill the Ancient. Two hundred demons managed to get through and scatter into the town, but my choir are hunting them down right now.”

  “And Seattle?” I snuck a peek at the TV, imagining the worst.

  “All my Grigori there died.” His voice was low and harsh. “I’m estimating ten thousand demons came through there, and immediately started seizing lands. Both north and south. I’ve let Rafi and Ahia know. The pair of them have mobilized the shifters and are planning to head south to block the demons’ northern advance. I’m sending Grigori to try to hold the demons advancing to the south, but I’m afraid they’ve taken most of the West Coast.”

  All this had gone down as I’d been making breakfast and drinking coffee? I turned to Gregory, feeling somewhat hurt. “Why didn’t you let me know? I found this out on the TV, but you’ve known about it for how long? Hours?”

  His hand caressed my shoulder. “Less than an hour, Cockroach. It happened so fast, that all I could do was react and try to handle the situation. I would have told you as soon as I could.”

  He’d told Rafi and Ahia. He’d mobilized his Grigori. Heck, Uri was probably hemming the demons in from moving east. But not me. The only sop to my pride was that Gabe was still upstairs with Nyalla.

  “There wasn’t much you could do anyway,” he said, totally rubbing salt into the wound.

  “I’m going to handle this,” I told him. “You and the others make sure these guys don’t expand any farther than they already have, while I go in and talk to the Ancient in charge of this whole thing.”

  “With an army of Lows?”

  Yeah, that incredulous tone wasn’t helping either.

  “No. I’ve got an idea for a backup plan, but I’m basically just going to teleport in there and handle it solo.”

  He turned to face me, setting Lux down to put both hands on my shoulders this time. “Let’s wait until any advance is halted, and we have them in place, then we can go in as a unified force.”

  A unified force of angels, bailing my sorry ass out once more.

  “No. I’m the Iblis. I’m going in and I’m going to handle this myself. This is my responsibility. Let me do my job.” I looked past Gregory and up the stairs. “Where the fuck is Gabe? I texted him twenty minutes ago.”

  “He’s with his choir, keeping the demons from sweeping into Arizona.”

  Oh, fuck me. Was Nyalla out there too? Asta? Was I really the only fucking member of the Ruling Council that was left out of the loop here? It made me even more determined to handle this situation on my own, to prove to them all, and especially Gregory that I was really the Iblis.

  “Go on then,” I told him. “Get out of here. I’ve got to put my contingency plan in place, then I’m going in. Go lead your Grigori and your siblings. I’ve got this. I’ll be back by dinner.”

  His spirit-self caressed mine, brief, but full of affection, full
of love. “Cockroach, I know you don’t believe this right now, but my faith in you is absolute. It’s my trust in your chaos that allows me to loosen my hold, to let a little bit of control slip, to know that with you the journey may be excruciatingly painful, but the end result will be worth every bit of pain. It is through my trust and faith in you that I am the angel you know now and not the angel you first met in Pennsylvania in the werewolf’s house.”

  “The one that was on fire?” I teased, unable to stay mad at him for long.

  “Because you set it on fire,” he countered.

  “No, it was that fuckhead rogue angel of yours, not me. He was the one blasting holes in walls and setting fire to the kitchen.” One of the archangel’s eyebrows went up and I couldn’t help a grin. “Okay, so maybe some of the fire was my fault.”

  “You’d ripped the dead werewolf’s arm off and were smashing it against the wall, screaming curses at the top of your lungs.” He smiled as if this were one of his fondest memories.

  “And you scared the fucking shit out of me, throwing me against the wall and poking around my spirit-being without even buying me dinner first.”

  “Your human toy shot me in the head with his little cannon.”

  “And you didn’t even flinch.” Good times. Now I was smiling as well.

  “I loved you then,” he told me. “From the moment I saw you smashing that bloody arm against the wall, I loved you.”

  “Liar. You wanted to kill me. You beat the crap out of me, called me a cockroach, and branded me, binding me to you.”

  “Yes, well love at first sight to an imp not even a thousand years old was a bit of a blow to my pride.” His dark eyes warmed as they met mine. “And as I recall, that binding went both ways.”

  “Surprised you with that one, huh?” I’d been terrified of him, turned on by him, awestruck and fascinated by him. Love? Love had come soon after that. Maybe love had been there all along and pride, that always-elusive sin as far as I was concerned, had hidden it from me.

  Lux made a gagging noise from the sofa behind us, and Gregory and I laughed. I reached out to touch his arm, my spirit-self joining just along the edges of his own.

  He leaned forward and kissed me. By the time he pulled away, I was wishing I could just blow up the entire West Coast and be done with these demons.

  Samael. The thought of him was the equivalent of a very cold shower.

  I leaned forward against him and felt his arms surround me. Lux appeared in the middle between us and made a happy little squeal at the double-hug. “Soon. Until then, go manage the perimeter, and I’ll go deal with the demons. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “I love you.” And then he was gone. I shivered, suddenly cold with the absence of his heat against me. Lux snuggled closer, as if he too felt the loss.

  Samael. I’d need to hurry up and get a move on, to find some way to kill him before Gregory and his brothers found out. If the Ancient was as powerful as Doriel said he was, if he’d truly brought an army to destroy the world as he’d said, then I’d need to use more than brute force, I’d need to use all the sneakiness and trickery of an imp.

  And I’d need to call in a few favors too.

  Chapter 17

  It had been a while since I’d been to LA. Back when I’d first started this crazy extended vacation away from Hel, I’d begun in Vegas, then had to leave due to some unfortunate trouble with Dar and his side business involving stolen Betamax VCRs. Strange that LA and strong-arming drug dealers had been less dangerous than hijacking trucks of electronics. LA was where I’d discovered a love of cocaine and high-priced hookers. It’s where I’d become one of the most feared beings in the barrio.

  It’s where I’d Owned the soul of Samantha Martin. I’d found her at the home of a dickhead drug dealer who owed me money and product. He and his cronies were out, but sprawled across the floor, bleeding and dying I’d seen a girl of no more than eighteen. She’d been repeatedly raped, and injected with something far from pure. It was clear that dickhead and his buddies expected her to be dead when they returned, and if she wasn’t dead they’d probably take another go with her and continue on until she breathed her last.

  She’d looked up at me, her face bruised and battered, the pupils of her eyes blown out with the drugs. “Take me,” she’d said. And I’d known exactly what she’d meant.

  “What do you want in return?” I didn’t have to offer a deal. I could take any offered soul without even a thank-you. I could take even a non-offered soul, although those were sometimes troublesome to Own. But this woman…I felt like I was on the edge of something momentous, something life-changing.

  “Revenge,” she whispered, but I knew she wanted far more than that.

  “What do you want?” I pressed again, having to know the answer.

  “I want the life I should have had,” she told me.

  I took her. And when dickhead and his cronies had returned, I’d killed every last one of them. Then I went and killed the boyfriend who’d traded her to his dealer to pay off his debt. Then I went on to live a life as a human with her right beside me all the way. Say what you will, but it changes a demon to walk side-by-side with a human soul for nearly four decades. I’d released her soul along with the others when I thought I was going to die in Ahriman’s dungeon, but in a way, Samantha Martin still walked with me. I continued to bear her name here among the humans, and I still used her appearance as my primary form both in and out of Hel.

  I hoped I’d given her the life she’d wanted—the kickass, empowered life she’d been cheated of.

  The television footage had been from central LA, so I’d teleported and walked in along I-10. The highway was empty aside from some abandoned cars along the shoulder, and a handful fleeing outbound as fast as they could. Seems everyone had decided to hunker down and ride it out, praying the angels would come to their rescue.

  Smoke spiraled up Chinatown, or possibly Dodger Stadium. I hopped off the highway near City Hall and prowled around the streets of downtown, eyeing smashed buildings and upside-down cars. LA was a huge city. To cause this kind of widespread damage, Samael had to have brought thousands of demons. Possibly more.

  A few figures darted among the alleyways and pre-dawn shadows, scurrying over walls and into doorways.

  “Hey,” I shouted, knowing a hoard of Low demons when I saw them. Lows. I doubted Samael would have bothered with them in his illustrious army, so these were probably the tagalongs that followed any group of demons, trying to stay out of the way and grab a few interesting items in the leavings of the higher-level demons.

  Normally I’d identify myself as the Iblis, because no matter if a Low was in my household or not, they tended to flock to me as their leader, but I didn’t want to announce my presence quite yet—not until I’d gotten in to see Samael. But as a human, I’d only be a target, and anyone who really tried would catch a hint of my spirit-self. It was harder to completely lock my energy down ever since I’d acquired the wings and become an Angel of Chaos.

  So instead I tried to appear a low-level imp, the sort who might have reluctantly been included in an army of invaders but just as easily left behind once the action got going.

  “Hey, where’s the party? I got stuck in an elevator and everyone was gone by the time I got out. Hellooooo?”

  A few shadows moved in an alleyway, and I suddenly saw a pair of heads with huge pointed leathery ears and whiskery noses. Scaled and clawed hands clacked along the corner of the building, a furry tail with spiked end flicked into view.

  “Do you have a weapon?”

  Only the sword, and I wasn’t about to summon it and give myself away. “I’m a demon. Why would I be carrying a weapon?”

  The Low’s nose twitched. “Show me your demon form.”

  Crap. I’d been so used to walking around in a human form, that I’d forgotten how unusual that was among demons—especially demons attacking a human city and wanting to intimidate the locals with their strange appearance. But my
primary form was just as distinctive, and quite possibly recognizable. Instead I grew a set of horns from my head and a long forked tail from my ass, turning my lower half furry and brown with cloven hooves for feet and an upper half with red scales. My eyes glowed gold with reptilian pupils, and I shot a long barbed tongue out of my mouth to taste the air.

  “Better?”

  The Low eased his way out of the alley, his long body twice the size it should have been given his two tiny heads. He took a tentative step toward me then froze, his noses quivering. Faster than I could blink he was back into the alleyway and out of sight.

  “Halt. Put your…paws in the air and turn slowly around.”

  I put my “paws” above my head and turned to see a line of guys armed in SWAT apparel behind me, all six of them pointing some rather serious-looking weaponry at my body. Damn. I eyed the alley, stretching my awareness as far as it would go to try to sense any hint of demon energy. Gone. Unless they were better than me at hiding their spirit-selves, the Lows had fled far away. It was just me and these humans with their fingers on the triggers.

  “I’m one of the good guys.” I never in my life thought I’d be saying that, but compared to everyone else in this town, I was relatively good.

  “On your knees,” one of them commanded. It was hard to know which one since they all had on helmets and were speaking with some sort of amplification system.

  “Seriously. Watch.” I transformed back into my human form, naked of course. They shot me. I shouldn’t have been surprised given how twitchy these guys probably were.

  Getting shot by six guys with automatic weapons thankfully wouldn’t kill me, but it was enough to knock me down and fill me with enough bloody holes that I was pretty sure every organ in my body had been perforated. I waited until they were done, waited until I heard some panicked discussion about whether I was dead or not, then I simultaneously got up, repaired my physical form, and revealed my wings.