by Debra Dunbar
Snip shot me a worried frown. “Did you pay them for the last time? Because they might not—”
“Tell them I’ll pay them.” Later. Much later. But I would eventually pay them. Maybe. “These weapons go to all the Lows. I don’t want you guys going into this at a disadvantage.”
“We appreciate that, Mistress. May I suggest that we keep these interesting items under lock and key until the actual battle?”
Good idea, otherwise I’d find my pasture full of fireball holes and the guest house reduced to rubble. And half my household dead from “hey, watch this” accidents.
“Yes, keep everything in the main house here. Don’t let anyone know I’ve got this stuff either, just in case they’re overcome with curiosity.”
“Will do! But about the monies…the mages are not going to give us their weapons inventories again without some sort of payment. What will we give the mages for their inventories? Future favors? Coin?”
“My eternal gratitude.” Snip gave me a long look, and I grinned. “What? That isn’t enough? Okay, explain to them that if we lose this battle, they might find themselves surrounded by demons and elves once more—really bored and pissed-off demons and elves. There will be no business dealings with Harper. There will be no more Peapod deliveries. This world will be dead. All the humans here will be dead. But if we win, this will open up a huge new world of trade and commerce to them, as well as travel opportunities. Sell it, Snip. Sell it like you’re going door-to-door lugging a bunch of vacuums and replacement windows.”
“Got it.”
Snip left for the gate in Columbia, and I took a few minutes to visit with my kid before I handed him back off to Nyalla and went on my own errand to Hel. While my main-man Low was headed off to gather my allies, I went to a little house in the middle of the Maugan Swamp, where an elderly dwarf woman was sitting on the front porch, peeling vegetables and tossing them into a pot of water.
Oma was ancient, with the oddly powerful magic that made dwarves ideal caregivers for demon and angel young. She’d been that wacky old lady who’d lived near my childhood home and who was just as likely to invite a young demon in for a bowl of soup as she was to chase them off her property with her metal-tipped staff. I’d gone to her for advice many times over the last few centuries. When she deigned to give it, that advice was usually so symbolic and vague as to be practically useless, but still I went to her.
This time I wasn’t here for advice, though.
“He’s inside,” Oma told me, inclining her head toward the door.
I edged past her and found Criam sitting at the wooden table, an empty bowl in front of him. He looked up at me in relief.
“What did she give you?” I nodded toward the bowl.
“Some spicy stuff with fish. My mouth is numb. It may have been poisoned.”
Criam was just as paranoid as he’d always been. I sat down across from him and pushed the bowl aside.
“If it was poisoned, you’d already be dead. You should be flattered. She doesn’t feed anyone she doesn’t like.”
“Well, I’m more scared than flattered, but okay.” Criam shifted in his seat, sending a wary glance toward the door. “I have information to give you.”
Well, duh. That’s why we were here, having this stealthy meeting with Oma attentively standing guard. And peeling garuat roots.
“Doriel says that Samael is livid that he lost LA, but he’s holding back because he doesn’t know how close the alliance is between the angels and the dragons. The fact that the dragons left the area and haven’t pursued Samael and his army northward leads him to believe the alliance was temporary and that the dragons may no longer be a threat.”
Ugh. That meant our brief cease-fire was most definitely going to be brief.
“We’ve got them hemmed in tight,” I told the demon. “They’re not getting out without a fight.” The only problem was that although Samael and his army were contained in a section of the Pacific Northwest, so were a whole lot of humans. In a siege situation, we’d just wait them out, but we’d lose human sympathy if we didn’t make any attempt to rescue those caught in the demon-held areas. And once Samael realized that and started killing humans en masse, our human support would vanish. Long-term, that would hurt us. And if I couldn’t find a way to weaken Samael’s forces, not having humans on our side could hurt us in the short-term as well.
“He plans to push through the Sierra Nevadas in the next few days. The mountainous area will be hard to defend, and once he can get enough demons through, they’re going to launch a two-pronged attack. Two groups will double around and attack the angels from both the front and the back. Others will spread out and perform guerilla-style attacks in heavily populated human areas.”
I grimaced. We’d be called upon to help the humans, who would see us as being unable to keep them safe. We’d lose their confidence and have to choose between defending ourselves from attacking demons, keeping the majority of them contained in the Pacific Northwest, and helping the humans. There just weren’t enough angels to do all that. That fire demon in Seattle had been right. This was all going to come down to a numbers game, and right now, Samael had the numbers.
Gah, I sucked at this. I wasn’t a military strategist. This was the sort of thing that went on during the war, the sort of thing the Ancients who’d been Samael’s generals knew how to do. I had archangels who knew what the fuck they were doing, and I had Doriel, a seasoned leader, on the inside, but would that be enough?
“Tell Doriel to hold her position, and let me know if anything changes,” I told Criam. “We’re going to make sure Samael’s army doesn’t get through the mountains. When I say go, I’ll need her to bring her household up around the back of his forces, basically doing the exact same thing he’s trying to do to us.”
If she could close that gap, we’d have the werewolves reinforce her line and make sure her ass wasn’t hanging out unprotected. There were quite a few shifters that made their home in the Pacific Northwest, and they were just waiting for our call to action. Or rather, waiting for Ahia’s call to action.
Criam nodded and got to his feet, his expression grim. “This might be a long-haul sort of thing, you know. If any of those demons break out, or if any of the other gates fall, or even if Samael decides he’s going to wait it out in a siege, this could drag out for thousands of years.”
Which was why we needed a quick, hard, decisive victory to show the Ancients and the demons following this fake-Samael that he was completely full of shit. I didn’t want his army dead, I wanted them to switch allegiances to me, and proving that I could do this was a big step in gaining the loyalty of those Ancients and demons.
I waited for the other demon to leave, then thanked Oma for her help and flew to Dis on the wing. It would have been quicker to teleport, but at a time where I needed the denizens of Hel to view me as their Iblis, a winged presence sent the right message.
Once there, I went straight to Remiel.
Chapter 20
I’d gotten back from a tense meeting with Remiel and promptly messaged Gregory with my new intel. He was strengthening the forces guarding the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but doing it in a stealthy sort of way so that Samael might think we were a bit short on wings in that spot. Not so obvious that he’d be suspicious, but just lax enough for him to make his move right where we wanted him. All we needed to do now was wait, so I settled in for some much-needed R&R while Lux and Nyalla were visiting Harper and Austin in West Virginia.
And what better rest and relaxation than crunchy snack food eaten in bed with a cold beer in hand?
I was in my bedroom, eating Cheetos and drinking beer when Snip arrived, Gimlet in tow. The pair of Lows waltzed right on in without even knocking, climbing up on the end of the bed and eyeing the Cheetos.
I pulled the bag away from their covetous gaze. “Knock, guys. I could have been in here fucking or something. I’m the Iblis. I at least deserve some privacy in my own damned bedroom.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing you fucking.” Snip craned his neck to better see the bag of snacks. “Last time I checked, you didn’t mind anyone seeing you fucking either. Are those Cheetos?”
“Yes. And no, you can’t have any.”
He was right about me and the fucking, but Gregory tended to be a bit of a prude when it came to doing it in front of an audience. Well, except for baby angels. Evidently it was okay to angel-fuck in front of them, just not demons, and especially not Lows.
“Did you talk to everyone? Are they onboard and ready to go?” I asked Snip.
“Yes, I did, and yes they are.” Snip gestured toward Gimlet with a flourish that would have done Vanna White proud. “And I brought Gimlet, just as you requested.
“Where’s my cookies?” the other Low demanded. “And my milk?”
“Downstairs next to the naughty and nice list, and my giant bag of toys for the stockings.” I rolled my eyes. “I even bought those nasty fucking oatmeal raisin things, just for you. I’ll get them later, when we’re done talking here. There’s more important things than cookies and milk to think about right now.”
Gimlet leveled me with a stern gaze. “There’s nothing more important than cookies and milk. Nothing.”
Actually, I kind of agreed with him, just not oatmeal raisin.
“Later.” I turned back to Snip. “Based on what Doriel tells me, we’re probably going to move in the next day. Two at the max. This guy has no patience, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to settle in for a siege and try to either wait us out or force our hand by killing off humans. He wants a fight, and he’s embarrassed about the thing in LA.”
Gimlet eyed the Cheetos again. “Watch the gates during the attack. I’d make a big deal of marching an army across the pass with a huge show of power, and in the meantime hit those other five gates. Bogota was a disaster, but if he can get a few dozen decent warmongers and their households through the other gates, the angels will be toast. They’ll never be able to defend seven different locations.”
I totally agreed. “And I’d use the big look-at-me, look-at-me battle to get small groups of demons out into the rest of the US. They’re all bunched up from San Francisco to Seattle, hemmed in by the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Get as many demons as he can out of there and spread out, then have them begin small-cell terrorist hits scattershot across the globe.”
Gimlet nodded, his bulbous eyes still on the snack food bag. “Angels can’t defend against that sort of attack. Never could and never will. They want everything all in battle formation. Idiots.”
Snip’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t they understand how demons fight?”
I snorted. “No, they don’t. They seriously think there’s going to be some organized battle with everyone all in nice neat lines by household with matching outfits and syncopated marching rhythms. Idiots.”
Gimlet leaned back against the bedpost and crossed his arms. “Angels. You would have thought after two-and-a-half-million years they would have gotten with the program a bit. They never learn, do they?”
No, they most certainly did not. And that’s probably one of the things I loved about them.
“Can’t we just sit this one out and let the angels take care of it?” Snip pleaded. “I don’t know how to fight this way. Just send us in to stab them in their sleep or something, but don’t make us line up and march and fight that way.”
“Just hide behind the angel with the biggest wingspan,” I advised. “Make sure you don’t whack him with a staff or anything, though. Shoot between his legs or something.”
“An angel shield.” Gimlet laughed. “I like that. You know, this sounds like fun. I might just be interested enough to get off my ass and watch.”
“I expect you to fight.”
A shadow flickered across his face, there one second and gone the next. “I don’t fight. Did it once and didn’t like it at all. I’ll watch instead. Maybe I’ll be the water boy. Or the cleanup crew.”
It was time to end this nonsense. “Can you give us a minute?” I asked Snip. The Low left with a hurt backward glance at me. I didn’t blame him. It was like a slumber party here, Gimlet and me sitting on my bed with a bag of Cheetos and a six pack of beer—none of which I wanted to share.
The other Low watched him leave, then again relaxed against the bedpost, fixing me with a look that was far too intelligent, far too knowing for a Low.
“Time to cut the crap,” I told him.
He regarded me, deadpan. “Gross, but okay. Horse? Human? Or are you expecting me to defecate on your bedspread? Is there a ritual weapon you plan to use for this shit-slicing, or should I run down and get a butter knife from the kitchen drawer?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You know exactly what I mean. When do you plan on telling them?” I asked Gimlet, not sure whether by them I meant the other Lows, the demons of Hel in general, or the archangels.
“I’m not very good at telling. I’m more of a ‘showing’ kind of demon. And I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Can you pass those Cheetos over here?”
I handed him the bag, knowing that I was going to have orange finger-smears all over my comforter. “Samael.”
I let the word hang there between us while Gimlet filled the silence with loud crunching noises. Sure enough, he wiped his fingers along my formerly snow-white comforter.
“Yep. That Samael is a bad dude. He’s going to kill a few million humans and thousands of angels. Then he’ll work his way across the globe like a fucking plague until nothing living is left here. Bad dude.”
“And he’ll do it all without proper immigration documentation either,” I drawled. “No laws, human or angelic are gonna stop a denizen of Hel bent on revenge. We’re gonna have to kill him, that’s all there is to it.” I leaned forward, putting my face on level with the Low’s bulging eyes. “But I’m talking about you, not whoever the fuck that is leading the army.”
Gimlet swallowed then dug his hand back into the bag of Cheetos, his eyes oddly intelligent as they met mine. “Me? I’s just a Low.”
“A two-billion-year-old Low. Show me your true form. Show me what you looked like when you were an archangel in Aaru.”
He grinned, his teeth orange. “Can’t do that, silly imp. Demons gots to have corporeal form here or they die. Angels too.”
I leaned back, growing bored with his dancing around the truth. “You’re old. You avoid the other Ancients and the angels. You’re far more powerful that you let on, and your acting sucks. That ‘I’m just a stupid Low’ shit doesn’t fly. Knock it off and show me your original corporeal form. And tell me who the fuck that pretty boy is mowing down the West Coast with an army of demons.”
Gimlet sighed and morphed before my eyes into an angel—an angel with white-blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and golden-tanned skin. The wings held tight to his back had tattered feathers of silver and black. His energy was cold and clear, a sharp contrast to his oldest brother’s heat. It was complex, the spirit-self that carried it scarred and damaged almost beyond recognition. But in spite of all that, I recognized him. It was there, that unmistakable something that clearly made him an archangel, that made it obvious he was related to the others. He was a little bit of Rafi, a little bit of Uri, a smidgen of Gabe, and a whole lot of my beloved Michael only in reverse. He made that guy in LA look like a cheap knock-off. He was eye-wateringly beautiful—so beautiful that it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room as I looked at him.
Oh, and he was buck naked.
“So… Better looking than my imitator?” He ate another handful of Cheetos, the orange coating marring his gorgeous mouth. No, I lied. Nothing could mar that gorgeous mouth, not even orange Cheeto dust.
“Yes, you are.” I really couldn’t say more. It was difficult to do anything but stare at him and try to keep from drooling all over the mattress.
“The angels loved me like this, you know. They all turn up their noses at sensory intercourse, but get one of them alone
and it’s game on.” He grinned as my gaze took in every inch of him. “Pretty sweet corporeal form, huh?”
I needed to get a grip on myself here. “Must be hard to get anything done with all the staring in the mirror.”
“It’s not all looks, you know. I’ve got the moves to back it all up.” He arched an eyebrow then reached down and gave himself a long stroke. “I’m much better in bed than my brother.”
I tore my eyes away from his lap and snatched the bag of Cheetos out of his hand. “I doubt that. What the fuck have you been doing for the last two-and-a-half-million years? Running around Hel as a Low? Seems hard to believe for the angel who fell because of the sin of pride.”
He shrugged. “Pride is overrated. I ditched that shit a long time ago. Two-and-a-half-million years ago to be precise.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep.” He snatched the Cheetos again, and pulled a bottle of beer from the six-pack with the other hand. “After we fell, I went through those five stages of grief, then I decided I was done. I tossed the sword and walked my ass right out of Hel. I haven’t been Samael, the Iblis, an archangel, since then. I’ve been Apollyon, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Old Scratch, Old Nick, but not Samael.”
“And you’ve never wanted the sword back?” I pressed. “You’ve never wanted to be the Iblis again, to lead the demons in Hel, to serve on the Ruling Council?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He laughed. “Call it retirement. That shit got me nowhere except banished with rotted wings and so many scars my own family probably wouldn’t recognize me. I’m done. And I’m never touching that fucking sword again.”
I didn’t push him anymore because I sensed a really deep wound under his flippant words.
“So without ever touching the sword again, give me a bit of information here. Who is the dickhead running around claiming to be Samael, and why haven’t you smited his ass for daring to impersonate you? Or who you used to be before you retired and decided to be Gimlet the Low.”