With This Ring
Imp Series, Book 11
Debra Dunbar
Copyright © 2020 by Debra Dunbar
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Debra Dunbar
Chapter 1
I loaded more pancakes onto my plate, layered the top with some gloriously crispy bacon, then drenched the whole thing in syrup. One of the advantages of having Nyalla and Ahia on the Ruling Council was that we actually had decent food now. We’d gone from stale Danishes and the occasional tray of bacon to this lovely buffet of goodies.
Now if only they could provide a better quality of coffee than this watery crap. Hmm, I’d need Ahia to get on that. Once we were to the point of assigning duties in the meeting, I was totally adding that one to her list.
“Are you ready?” Gabriel glared at me. “Maybe we should just drag the buffet over here so you can eat directly from the trays.”
The suggestion did have merit, but I wasn’t sure about the physical logistics. Should the buffet be between me and the conference table? Beside me? Was my chair high enough to see over the trays? Or even reach them?
I threw a few more pieces of bacon on top of my syrup and headed back to my seat. As usual, I was the only angel with food. Well, aside from Ahia although I still had trouble thinking of her as an angel. She’d been raised among the humans and werewolves and was the most unangelic angel I’d ever met—besides me, that is. I sat and saw Rafael sneak a sausage patty off Ahia’s plate, winking at me as he shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
Okay, Raphael was pretty unangelic too, come to think of it.
Gabriel’s glare was now alternating between me and his younger brother. “The first agenda item concerns developing a purpose and long-term plan for angels living in this plane of existence since it seems highly unlikely that we will be able to return to Aaru in the next few million years or so.”
Which was my fault. Normally I’d make some attempt to look ashamed, but I was done being dragged across the carpet for this one so I shrugged and dug into my breakfast. If I finished my food and they were still on this agenda item, I might get in a little Twitter trolling. It wasn’t like I needed to have input on an project concerning angels and whatever goodly purpose the others on the Ruling Council came up with for them.
Uriel spoke up. “Those angels who fought by our side in Aaru are demanding to know when we are to return. Some wonder why they’re receiving the same punishment as the rebels. Others are unsure of their purpose here and they have questions. Are they to bring the fight from Aaru to here and eradicate the rebels while they’re in corporeal form? Are they to drive the rebels into Hel, and then be allowed to return to Aaru? They are also concerned as to as why we have allowed the demons to seize a portion of this continent.”
Raphael sighed. “We need to put together some sort of official communication.”
“To do that, we need to decide what we’re supposedly doing here, and whether to tell them the truth about the circumstances of our expulsion or not,” Gabriel added.
“That’s the primary issue to address,” Gregory said. “I think it’s time to tell them that there was an unfortunate event during the last battle that has made it so we are unable to return to Aaru.”
I winced, knowing exactly how that was going to be received.
“Perhaps we should phrase it as if we are temporarily unable to return to Aaru,” Asta said.
“They’ll want to know how temporary,” Uriel warned.
“They’ll want to know how it happened,” Gabriel drawled with a glance my way.
“I’d rather we not tell,” Raphael said. “We’ll just end up with our few allies deserting us for our adversaries. I think it’s better to keep quiet about that and instead come up with some reason we’re all still here—some holy mission regarding the humans.”
“In other words, lie.” Gabriel sneered.
Uriel sighed. “It is the lesser of the evils.”
“We can’t keep it from them forever,” Gregory said. “I think it’s best that we tell the other angels that they will not be returning to Aaru, and that we are putting programs in place to allow them to exist peacefully here among the humans.”
Asta grimaced. “Some of us are perfectly happy here among the humans, and the rebels must know that they will not be returning to Aaru, but the others? I fear their reaction if they are told they will never go home.”
“They’ll feel as if they’ve been unjustly punished,” Rafi agreed. “They’ll be angry and hurt. They’ll want to blame someone.”
“And that someone will be me,” I said.
“Us as well,” Gregory informed me. “They fought by our sides. We are the heads of their choirs. They will blame us for this as well.”
“Not when you’re banished too,” I pointed out.
“We should put this to a vote.” Gabriel shuffled his papers and looked around at each of us in turn.
Ahia lifted her hands. “I know I’m an angel, but I feel unqualified to vote on matters concerning your people. As an outsider though, I agree with Rafi. Let’s give everyone some busy work to keep them occupied until you all can find a way to get back into Aaru.”
“Busy work that potentially lasts millions of years?” Gabriel scoffed.
“We’re angels,” Uri said. “Millions of years isn’t a terribly long time. And we have screwed things up concerning the evolution of the humans. We’ve got a responsibility to fix that, and, no offense to my older brother, how we’ve been handling it in the last ten thousand years since the fiasco with the tenth choir hasn’t exactly produce the results we wanted.”
Rafi nodded. “It’s not a good time to have angels fretting over never being able to see Aaru again. Although I agree with Micha that we do eventually need to tell them, now is not that time.”
“All those in favor of not telling the angelic host about our expulsion?” Gabriel asked.
My hand shot up, because I really didn’t want to deal with having every fucking angel on this planet gunning for me. So did Rafi, Uri, and Asta’s.
“And for informing them?”
Gabriel and Gregory raised their hands.
Gregory glanced at the two who had not weighed in. “Nyalla and Ahia. Are you abstaining from this vote?”
Ahia squirmed. “As I said, I really don’t feel qualified to vote on this matter.”
The archangel turned to Nyalla.
“As I’m not truly a member of the Council and only here to represent human interests, I’m abstaining,” she told him. “Humans have other concerns right now, and I don’t see this as having a major impact on them.”
; Gregory nodded. “Then let the record reflect the vote. We will not tell the angelic host about the expulsion at this time. At our next meeting, I expect everyone to have at least two ideas as to what holy purpose the angels are here to accomplish. Nyalla, as our representative for the humans, your opinions on these ideas will be especially important. We’ll spend the majority of that meeting going over these ideas and in a mind-tsunami session.”
“Brainstorming,” I corrected, pushing my empty plate away and pulling Twitter up on my phone. Gregory turned his attention to Asta and Nyalla and their state-of-the-human-union reports while I started a rumor about the elves being carriers of an insidious virus that was the root cause of erectile disfunction among Caucasian males ages thirty to sixty. Then I went to various political hashtags and wrote a few incendiary comments. I was just creating a new username to announce the resurrection of Hitler when I heard Gregory assigning some shit to me.
“Can’t. Too busy,” I told him.
“We are all busy,” Gregory snapped.
That got my attention. He might lose his temper with me in private, but in Ruling Council meetings, he usually treated me with the respect due my position. I wondered what was going on for him to lose control in a meeting like this. What hadn’t he told us? What hadn’t he told me?
“Okay, okay. Settle down, asshole. Whatever it is you just told me to do, I’ll put it somewhere on my agenda.” Which might be in a century or so, but he didn’t need to know that.
Gabriel smirked and handed me a paper with a bunch of names and dates and times on it. “These are the meetings. Make sure you’re on time, because I’ve learned that humans despise tardiness.”
He’d probably learned that from Nyalla, because in my experience most humans didn’t give two shits about being on time to anything.
The others went on to discuss elves and their complaints about the jobs they were being assigned, the never ending issue with the wild gates, and something about an upcoming human holiday while I continued to spread chaos on the internet. I was in the middle of an incredible argument concerning alleged bigfoot sightings in Upper Manhattan when I realized everyone was staring at me expectantly.
“Huh?”
“You’re on a committee with me to negotiate a universal labor agreement between the elves and the humans,” Asta informed me.
I laughed. “A labor agreement? Me? You’re fucking joking. The elves can work at the jobs they’re assigned, and get paid whatever the humans want to pay them, or they can go back to Hel. There. No negotiation necessary.”
“This will be the template for labor law between human businesses and non-human employees,” Asta explained. I got the impression she’d explained this before, when I’d been busy on Twitter.
“There’s nothing to negotiate,” I insisted.
Asta began to check items off on her fingers. “Minimum wage. Minimum employment age. Mandatory benefits. Working hours. Breaks. Overtime pay eligibility. Workplace safety. Humans feel they should have a separate set of laws for non-humans. We need to make sure these laws are fair for the companies as well as for elves, goblins, trolls, dwarves, and demons who are employed there.”
“Who the fuck would hire a troll?”
Asta ground her teeth. “That’s not the point.”
“The point is that you are on this committee with Asta,” Gregory informed me in a voice that made it clear I wasn’t getting out of that one.
“Fine.” I picked up my phone again, only to realize that everyone was still staring at me. “What now?”
Gabriel let out a dramatic sigh. “We need your report on matters in Hel and New Hell, as well as any issues regarding the demons that are now residing here.”
Shit. Was I supposed to prepare something for this meeting? I hoped they weren’t expecting handouts or a PowerPoint presentation. Actually, I hoped they weren’t expecting much in the way of a report because…well, because I wasn’t prepared at all.
“Um…things in Hel are fine,” I scrambled for something to announce. “The human settlement there is now receiving regular deliveries of groceries and Amazon Prime. They’ve put up solar panels.”
Amber had relayed all that. She’d made quite a few friends in Hel during the last year and had worked hard with Kirby to make sure they had more than just the bare necessities.
“And?” Gregory prompted.
“Demons are doing good?” I didn’t know what else to say. Hel was hell. Over half the Ancients were summering in Aaru, even though they still couldn’t find a way to shed their corporeal forms there. The rest of the demons had either decided to remain in Hel, or had crossed the gates to try their luck living among the humans.
“What about the situation in New Hell?” Gabriel demanded.
New Hell was what the humans had called the area we’d designated as belonging to the demons after the Infernal War—which was another title bestowed by the humans. The area encompassed the coastal states in the western part of the United States as well as about half of the western edge of both Mexico and Canada. It wasn’t totally run by demons. The humans still had some sort of government there. I remember someone saying it was similar to the wild west of lore. Basically outside of some overworked law enforcement professionals, any human with money and a weapon ruled, as well as any demon.
Although given the general affection for sloth, the demons did very little ruling unless they felt particularly motivated to do so. We were all about sensation, pleasure and pain, interesting experiences. Budgets for street repairs and police departments? That wasn’t our jam.
“Things in New Hell are fine,” I announced.
“The human government is unhappy with the situation,” Nyalla told me.
I frowned, vaguely remembering that she’d told me this before. Last week, maybe?
“The US has lost states that contributed significantly toward their economy,” she continued. “Also, many of them fled those states during the war, and it was difficult for them to absorb the refugees. They’re asking for policy regarding immigration from the area, as well as compensation for the loss of revenue.”
Ugh. “Fine. On it.”
I so wasn’t on it.
“And demons living outside of Hel and New Hell?” Gregory prompted.
How the fuck was I supposed to know what they were doing? If someone brought an infraction to my attention, I teleported there, smacked the demon around, then returned him to Hel with a stern warning. Other than that, I tried to ignore anything my brethren might be doing this side of the gates.
“Good?”
“Your brother has taken over the city of Chicago,” Gabriel snapped. “How could you possibly consider that ‘good’?”
Dar had taken over Chicago? That fucking rocked. I glanced over at Asta and saw she was studying her manicure. Why was I getting yelled at for Dar’s political ambitions when his angel was sitting right here at the table with us?
“I’ll go talk to him.” That I might actually do. I liked Chicago and Lux enjoyed playing with Karrae. Dar and I could go out for some beer and pit beef while Asta, or their dwarven nanny, hung out with the little angels.
“The humans are worried about demons in their nations,” Nyalla said.
She was so not helping here. I sighed and put my phone down. That bigfoot discussion was going to have to go on without me.
“All the demons have been told what they can and can’t do while here. They know if they break the rules, then an angel can dust them, or worse I’ll come and beat the everloving shit out of them and make them clean toilets in Hel or something.”
“Humans have to have passports and even visas to travel between countries,” Nyalla countered. “They’re not comfortable that demons can come and go without any approval. They want a way to control what demons are allowed into their countries.”
“Are the angels going to be held to these same standards?” I argued. “Because this is total bullshit. Angels get to go anywhere they want, but demons have to fi
ll out papers and wait for approval?”
I knew how well that was going to go over with the denizens of Hel. No one was going to abide by geographic limits on where they could and couldn’t go. And paperwork? Right.
“Actually, the humans feel the same way about the angels,” Nyalla said with an apologetic glance toward the others.
Gabriel puffed up in indignation. “We’re angels. We gave the gifts of Aaru to the humans. We’re helping them achieve positive evolution. We’re exempt from these travel restrictions.”
“The humans don’t see it that way,” Nyalla replied. “They have sovereignty over their nations. Either the angels abide by their travel policies and procedures, or they’ll be seen as hostile invaders.”
Now this was a much better topic than the earlier ones. I leaned back in my chair and watched as Gabriel turned various shades of purple. He wouldn’t dare get nasty with Nyalla like he would if anyone else delivered that message
“It’s going to be rather hard to enforce that when angels can teleport,” Rafi pointed out.
Ancients could teleport as well, and so could a few of the higher-level demons. I wasn’t about to bring that up though.
Nyalla sighed. “I know. The humans still say they want an approval process and passports for any angel or demon entering their countries. The ones who currently reside there also need to have identification, and they would apply for residency following the same process humans do.”
“Everyone should address these matters when they meet with the leaders of the countries on their lists. We’ll discuss this in our next meeting as well.” Gregory shrugged. “If it makes the humans feel better, we can come up with some identification paperwork, but in reality it won’t actually restrict angels, or demons, from coming and going as they please.”
With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11 Page 1