by Debra Dunbar
He leaned back on his butchered sofa-chair and tapped his chin. “Really? If you’re not going to beg, nor surrender the sword to me, then why are you here?”
I took another step forward, keeping the sword casually by my side as if it were a harmless extension of my arm, or some sort of pointy walking stick. As long as I could keep him focused on me and not the weapon, as long as I could get him to concentrate on my words, I might get close enough for one blow. I’d just have to make that one blow count.
“I’m here to make an offer to both you and the demons serving as your army.”
He laughed. “An offer? And what happens if we refuse this offer, imp?”
I immediately thought of the horse head. “Accept the offer, or die.”
“At whose hands?” he sneered. “You came alone. You’re the only angel within a hundred miles of the city.”
“I don’t need any angels to enforce my will as the Iblis upon the demons under my rule.” My voice was calm and self-assured, and I felt the demons in the room shift nervously.
I felt them. All of them. Inside the room, out in the streets, spread across the city. Three thousand, six hundred forty-two demons.
No, three thousand, six hundred forty-one. You go, SWAT team guys.
“I am a member of the Ruling Council,” I said, taking another step forward. “I’m working toward having us granted a section of land here among the humans that will be under demon rule. There will be a common rule of law that will be honored in any area whether angel or demon or human controlled, but beyond that our lands will be our own. We’ll have a place here for those who want it. And we’ll have peace with the angels.”
“I don’t want peace with the angels,” Samael announced. “They’ll all be dead soon anyway.”
“And then what?” I prompted, realizing that every demon in the room was listening intently to our conversation. “When you’re done, all the humans will be dead. All the angels will be dead. This world will be completely destroyed. None of you Ancients can live in Aaru in a spirit-being form, and the demons don’t want to live there. Are we to just go back to Hel and stay there? No more vacations, just putter around messing with whatever elves are left there and the occasional dwarf?”
There was a soft murmur behind me. Demons tended to be rather shortsighted. Mass killing sounded like great fun until you realized there was nothing left to play with when you were done.
“They banished us,” Samael snarled. “We’re not even truly angels anymore because of what my brother did. They took Aaru from us. They deserve to die—all of them and their pet humans as well.”
I shrugged. “Nobody cares about that except you and a handful of Ancients. We go along with your plan, and we’re stuck in Hel, unable to teleport out, with the only gateways being to a dead place. You’ll be doing worse to us than the angels ever did.”
There was a nervous shuffling behind me at my words. Samael’s face twisted in anger. “We can teleport out—”
“Can you?” I smirked. “Because all my nine hundred and some years I’ve not known Ancients to teleport anywhere besides in and around Hel. Maybe a few can manage to come here without using the gates, and now Ancients can go to Aaru. If the gates fall, then we demons would have to rely on Ancients to leave Hel. And our only options would be a dead world and Aaru where our physical selves rot away and there is nothing to experience as far as sensation. What kind of life are you damming us to, Samael?” I took another step forward. “This is why I have the sword and you don’t. This is why I’m the Iblis, and you’re not. I’m the leader. I want what’s in our best interests. You just want to use these demons without a care for what happens to them when you’re done with your petty revenge.”
The demons behind me stirred. Mine. They were mine. I felt them—felt their energies shift and align with my own.
“Liar,” he snarled. “She lies to all of you. I am Samael. I am the most powerful of all the Ancients, the true Iblis. Once we kill the humans and the angels, there is no limit to what we can do.”
I took another step. “The most powerful,” I mocked. “Your own brother nearly killed you. You took the sin of pride too far. You got every one of the Angels of Chaos banished. Everything that happened to them is your fault. It’s all on your head, and now you want demons to pay for your folly.”
“You’re Michael’s fucktoy,” he screamed at me before turning to address the demons. “She’s a traitor to our kind, joining with the enemy. She’s on their side, not ours. Sense her energy? She reeks of Michael.”
“That’s because I seized a portion of his energy and devoured it,” I told him. “That’s how I got these wings. That’s how I turned from an imp to an angel. I ripped away a portion of the spirit-being of the most ancient, powerful archangel alive and devoured it. Think about that when you start boasting that you’re the most powerful being in Hel. Think about why the Iblis sword is in my hand and not another’s.”
There was an instinctive recoil at my mention of devouring. No one liked or trusted a devouring spirit. Demons would happily do all sorts of things most beings would consider revolting, but they drew the line at taking the spirit-self, the personal energy, from another and devouring it.
Some things were disturbing and frightening even to demons, and devouring was it. I might never have the respect of all the demons in Hel, but I’d take this wary unease and I’d go with it.
And it might give me an extra second of hesitation I needed. Realizing I was out of time, I sprang forward, sword upraised, and swung. The Iblis sword came to life with a hum, and as crappy as my swordsmanship skills were, my aim this time was true. The sword caught Samael’s shoulder and sliced through like a hot knife through butter. If he hadn’t instinctively spun to the side, if Doriel hadn’t jumped forward to slam into me, then I would have finished what Gregory had started two-and-a-half-million years ago—I would have sliced the youngest archangel in two and killed him.
Samael screamed and hit me with a blast of energy. I reversed direction with the sword to absorb some of it, but the rest tore through my physical body, slicing through my spirit-self. Struggling to regain my focus, I plowed an elbow into Doriel’s face and blasted enough energy into her to knock her off the stage. Samael shot me again, and this time I managed to block it all with the sword, struggling to keep the thing in my grasp as it vibrated and heated up with the second blow.
I swung the blade and the Ancient ducked. Letting the sword’s momentum carry me around, I dismissed it and reached forward to grab Samael with both hands.
Clothing.
Flesh.
Spirit-being.
I grabbed and pulled, fighting against the pain as Samael frantically hit me again and again with everything he had, burning my spirit-being as I tried to devour him. He struggled and pulled back, and I dug in, beginning to feel my hold slip as I lost focus with the pain. Claws and makeshift weapons tore at my physical body. Other demons pummeled me with energy blasts of their own. Samael began to slide from my grasp and I wondered whether I should change tactics, let go, and summon my sword once more. But I wasn’t sure I would have any better success with a sword against two Ancients and all these demons. No, my best chance was to devour Samael. If I could do that, all the demons would fall in line.
I heard Doriel shout, then felt Samael rip away from me, leaving a chunk of his spirit-self in my grasp. It wasn’t enough. I reached forward to grab him again, only to feel something soft and silky sliver over my head and down my body. It was cold then hot, slimy then prickly, and it coated my energy with a silicon slipperiness. I couldn’t fix my wounds. I couldn’t reach Samael or anyone. I couldn’t access any energy for defensive or offensive use. And although the demons on the outside of the net couldn’t stab me, they sure as fuck could continue to beat the holy shit out of me with their fists, booze bottles, and broken bits of furniture.
“Kill her!” Samael screamed. I could hear the agony in his voice, and in spite of my own pain, I grin
ned to know I’d hurt him. And I had a nice little chunk of his spirit-self squirreled away tight inside me. Fucker. He was never getting that back. Never.
“No!” Doriel’s voice rang out. “You want her alive, Samael, not dead. She’s your eldest brother’s chosen partner. They’re a joined pair. You want him to come here and face you? Now you’ve got the perfect bait. Destroy the city and he’ll just send his enforcers. Take her, offer to let her go, and he’ll kneel before you, his neck bare to you.”
Bitch. And how humiliating would it be for Gregory to have to come rescue me? Fuck that. I went to summon my sword, the weapon that would easily cut through this elven net and set me free, only to hesitate. Bursting out of this net surrounded by demons and two Ancients, and without the time to repair any of my physical wounds would put me at a huge disadvantage. It would be better to wait, to time and plan this escape and hopefully in my second attack, be more like an angel than an imp.
“I’m not letting her go free,” Samael snapped. “She took a part of my spirit-self. The bitch devoured a chunk of me. I’m killing her.”
I could practically hear Doriel’s shrug. “Then kill her. Lie to Michael, and when he’s dead, you can kill this imp as well. Hang her from the ceiling, let the others throw bottles at her, then send Michael a message to come get his bitch or you’ll send chunks of her spirit-self to him in little boxes.”
Samael was silent for a few seconds. “What about the sword? I want the sword. I want it back.”
“Then call it to you.” Was there a note of derision in Doriel’s voice? “Clearly it has abandoned her or she wouldn’t have resorted to trying to devour you. What angel would do such a disgusting thing? Not even a Low would do that? Obviously the sword decided she wasn’t worthy and she had no other choice but to turn to such a repulsive method of attack.”
My breath quickened. Doriel had fought beside Samael in the war. They’d been close. She had to have known the sword and its odd quirks almost as well as Samael himself had.
And she knew that I devoured. It wasn’t a big secret. Was she lying for me? Had this net been less about capturing me and more about saving me? Because in all honesty, I’d been losing that battle. I hadn’t gotten a good grip on Samael, and between his attacks and the demons, it would have been a matter of minutes until they’d gotten the upper hand and killed me.
“Hang her from the ceiling then.”
I felt myself hoisted upward, felt the whack of some rather hefty whisky bottles against my sides, bled all over the net with wounds I couldn’t repair, and suffered the agony of damage to my spirit-self I couldn’t fix even if I’d been out of the net. The whole time I concentrated, trying to make out what Samael, Doriel, and the demons were discussing.
One was sent off to my house in Maryland to deliver a message meant for Gregory. That demon wasn’t expected to return. We didn’t have any problems killing the messenger, but those in my household would hesitate to do so. Amusingly, Nyalla would be this demon’s greatest threat. She’d lock him up in my cellar without breaking a sweat and torture the guy until he was telling her every last one of his secrets. And it’s not like she’d have to physically harm the guy herself. Between Boomer and Diablo, the demon would be begging for mercy before the sun went down.
But still…the thought of how upset she’d be, how worried over me… I didn’t want Nyalla to worry. And there was that chance she’d decide to come out and rescue me herself, hellhound and demon-horse by her side, rather than wait for Gregory to take action. My girl was impulsive, more like a demon than an angel in that regard. Hopefully Gabe would be there when this demon messenger arrived to keep her from catching the next flight to LA.
The messenger demon clearly gone, Samael turned to other business at hand. One by one he sent demons out, supposedly using a map of the city to direct them to their assigned area. Once there, they were to destroy every building, tear up roads, and kill every human they met. After they’d done that, they were to work their way to the city limits. This was the small-scale of what Samael wanted to do.
This guy didn’t realize it yet, but he had clearly bitten off more than he could chew. Even if he emptied Hel of demons, marshalled every last one of them, he’d still only have a hundred thousand or so to kill ten or twenty thousand angels and seven billion humans on a sizable planet.
Seven billion humans. It hit me and I started to laugh. Ever since I’d joined the Ruling Council I’d been warning Gregory about the dangers of discounting how a lesser species could overpower a greater one through sheer numbers. It was my old fire ant analogy. Seven fucking billion humans. These demons would be shot, blown up, run over, and burned, and that would be before they left LA.
Three thousand, six hundred thirty. The SWAT team, an actress-wannabe with a revolver, and a bald guy with a Prius. Yep, it was only a matter of time.
Right now most of the humans were scared, hovering in their homes and waiting for the angels or the militia to save them. In less than twenty-four hours, they’d get sick of hanging out in their basements with bottled water and a crank radio, grab their shotguns, rifles, and oversized SUVs, and take matters into their own hands.
Heaven help these demons. And heaven help the angels if they decided to push these “rules” too far. Right now everyone was awestaruck, but a few thousand disgruntled humans would be all it would take to start a fire. Seven billion of them. We’d kill maybe a billion or two before they decimated us, slowly nibbled us to death like a swarm of fire ants. It wasn’t the humans I needed to protect, it was the demons.
This Samael idiot was going to get them killed. He was going to get my beloved and all the angels I cared about killed. He was even going to get some of the angels I didn’t care about killed. And I needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
Carefully I eased my phone out of my pocket and sent a text, because elven nets might be good at holding in demon and angel energy, but they didn’t do shit about cell phone signals.
Then I slid the phone back into my pocket and waited.
Chapter 18
It took a couple of hours. I listened to the demons brag, grunted as a few of them continued to throw bottles at me. Finally, they left me alone and I sat in the swaying net, cataloging my injuries and examining my newest acquisition.
Samael’s spirit-self was…interesting. What it revealed wasn’t quite unexpected. In fact, it answered a lot of questions I’d had since he’d first surfaced. Over the last two years I’d gotten to know the archangels quite a bit—well except for Uriel who’d been off on her pilgrimage most of the time. They had distinctive personalities, but there was a common thread that made it quite obvious they were brothers. And the few times Gregory had opened up about Samael, I’d formed an impression of the former Iblis.
Yes, falling from grace, having your eldest brother almost kill you, having him banish you and all of your kind to rot in Hel forever, and spending two-and-a-half-million years sulking and stewing in anger and resentment was bound to change someone, but not like this. Physical and personal energy signature aside, this guy didn’t act at all like I’d expected Samael to act. I’d trusted Doriel’s judgement, forgetting for a moment that someone deep in grief would snatch at anything, believe just about anything, to bring a beloved back to life.
But now that I had a portion of his spirit-self to poke and prod…
The building rocked with the explosion. I smelled the glorious aroma of sulfur, burning wood and leather, hot metal, melted plastics. Then I heard the screams.
“Dragons!”
My dragons to be precise. There wasn’t much a dragon wouldn’t do in exchange for the promise of a nice little nest of gold. Little Red probably would have come to my assistance without any sort of bribe, but I hadn’t wanted to ask him to take on a city full of demons solo, so I’d told every dragon I knew of that there was an entire street full of Kay Jewelers here in LA that they could cart off back home, as long as they drove the demons out of the city.
An
other blast rocked the building.
The remaining demons in the room exploded into a flurry of activity. I heard Samael’s voice shouting as he ran down the hallway. For a few moments of silence, I swung from the ceiling, then I called my Iblis sword to me in a much smaller, Swiss Army Knife shape, and cut through the net.
With a flash I managed to repair my physical injuries before I hit the floor. Just in case a few demons had been left to guard me, I rolled and transformed my little pen knife into an actual sword, springing to my feet, ready to defend myself.
As I rose, I came face to face with Doriel and nearly took her head off.
“Damn it all!” She scrambled backwards and nearly fell over a broken table. “Don’t kill me. I’m here to get you out. There’s dragons.”
“I know. They’re my dragons.” The building rocked with another blast. “How many actually showed up? What color are they?” I hadn’t figured the others would come, or that they’d come so quickly.
“The first one was red, but now there are some black ones, and Xyxian came running in saying a big golden with a red snout was snapping up any demons he came across.”
I reached out with my weird new awareness. Three thousand, four hundred ten, and quite a few of those were fleeing the city.
“Samael is out there trying to rally the troops but they’re scattering,” Doriel added.
There was an edge to her voice when she mentioned Samael’s name. “So the honeymoon is over? Your former Iblis isn’t quite what you’d thought he’d be?”
A shadow swept across her eyes. “I thought…I’d hoped… But after I crossed the gates with my army and joined him, I realized he was different.”
“Well, he’s bound to be different after two-and-a-half-million years of exile,” I commented carefully.
Doriel lifted an eyebrow. “Cut the crap. There’s different, and there’s it’s-not-him different. Faking a five-minute meeting in Hel isn’t the same as having to maintain a façade during a joint military campaign.” She shuffled her feet and looked down. “Then when you actually cut him with the sword, when he threw a tantrum about wanting it, I knew for sure. Samael could never be hurt by his own weapon, and if he truly wanted it, he’d have it in hand. It’s not him. And I was a fool to ever think it was.”