With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11

by Dunbar, Debra

  Lux nodded. “Some easy. Some scary. Some very scary.”

  Got it. Maybe I could just help with the scary and very scary and leave the rest to Lux.

  “How many are easy?”

  Lux motioned for me to sit down beside him, and I watched as he separated the rings into appropriate piles. The first were probably rings stolen from the bottom of dresser drawers, and safety deposit boxes—those that were seldom, if ever, worn and that probably hadn’t even been missed. The second, scary pile included rings that most likely came from museums and those people who had definitely noticed the theft. The third, very scary pile, probably belonged to those who were liable to try to shoot us.

  Thankfully the majority of the rings were in the easy pile. Still, I worried. He was young. It wasn’t just that Lux was learning to be an angel, he was learning to live among humans with their rules, their laws, and their culture. He’d misunderstood his role as ringbearer. What he if he misunderstood something else and ended up shot, or stabbed, or hauled off to a juvenile detention facility or worse, child protective services.

  Could I lose custody of an angel because I let him break into people’s houses and return stolen goods? I mean, I could easily break him out of the pokey and give the human government the middle finger, but after today’s Ruling Council meeting, I got the feeling now wasn’t the time to be making waves among the humans.

  “Let’s take one or two back and see how it goes,” I told Lux. “Pick two from the easy pile that you felt might have been borderline scary, and we’ll do those together.”

  Lux pawed through the pile and picked out a pretty white gold band with an emerald cut ruby, and a fat platinum band with round flush-set diamonds. Whatever Gregory was busy with, it clearly was taking a while. Just in case he got back before we did, I left him a quick note and took Lux’s hand and told him to take us there.

  Having a young angel teleport me was a lot like being stuffed into an industrial sized dryer and being tumbled at top heat and speed for thirty seconds. Normally the process was instantaneous and free of any side-effects beyond some vertigo and nausea. Unlike when I was first learning to teleport, Lux got us where he intended. It just took him an uncomfortably long time to get there.

  We arrived in a dark room. I staggered backward, crashing into a piece of furniture that tipped over and landed me on my back staring up at a popcorn ceiling covered with yellow and brown water stains.

  “Shhh!” Lux demanded.

  I bit back a reply and got to my feet, righting the chair I’d knocked over. My eyes had adjusted and I saw that we were in a cluttered bedroom full of boxes and randomly stacked furniture. Even the bed was loaded with garbage bags and plastic bins.

  Footsteps. Mumbled conversation. Light suddenly illuminating around the door.

  I grabbed Lux and dragged him behind a bunch of cardboard boxes, squishing him against a bookshelf. The door opened. Light flooded the room with the click of a switch.

  “One of the boxes probably fell over,” a woman said. “We stacked them higher than we should.”

  “Beats paying a hundred a month for a storage unit,” another woman replied. “Maybe we’ll actually start going through her things this way.”

  “Did you ever find that ring?” the first woman asked. “The one Dad gave her on their thirtieth anniversary? The one with the ruby?”

  Lux held the ring out and I clapped a hand over his mouth, holding him in place before he did something like jump out from behind these boxes to give them the ring.

  “No, but it’s got to be here somewhere. We’ll find it eventually.”

  The light went off. I kept a tight grip on Lux. It wasn’t until I’d heard the door close and the sound of footsteps receding down the hall that I let him go.

  “Mom-ring,” he whispered to me.

  “Yeah, I heard.” I stood, carefully making my way out from behind the boxes. Where was a good place to put this ring? I wanted it somewhere the women could easily find, but not in a place that might arouse suspicion.

  “This?” Lux pointed to a plain white coffee mug that had half a dozen pens and pencils in it.

  “Perfect.” I took the ring from his hand, slipping it around one of the pens and angling the cup so it would be visible from the door. “Now let’s get out of here before I knock something else over.”

  The second spot was another home and another bedroom. Thankfully it was daytime in this location, and I managed to steady myself against the doorway before I could stumble into any of the furniture.

  The bedroom was decorated like it was photo-ready for a spread in Architectural Digest. Waking over to the window, I looked out at a beautiful view of an infinity pool and the ocean far below.

  “Let me see that ring,” I said to Lux. He put the platinum band with the flush-set diamonds into my hand. I peered inside and saw engraving that said Cartier.

  Too bad I couldn’t keep this one. I handed the ring back to Lux and followed him into a walk-in closet that was the size of my living room. Moving a rack of ties aside, he dialed the combination to the safe, swung open the door, and placed the ring inside a little black velvet box.

  In seconds we were done and back home in my living room.

  It had been easy. And even if we’d gotten caught at the first house, I didn’t believe Lux would have been in any danger. The two women probably would have been the ones needing an ambulance after seeing a winged, naked, golden-haired toddler in their spare bedroom.

  “Do you think you can do this easy pile on your own?” I asked, still feeling guilty for letting my kid do this solo.

  He sighed and looked at the huge pile. “Lots of rings.”

  I could have been snarky and informed him that he’d managed to steal those “lots” of rings on his own, but instead I decided to offer my help a compromise.

  “Why don’t we divide and conquer? You do the rings you feel are the easiest and have the less risk of being caught. I’ll do some of them on my own if you let me know where they need to go. And if you’re worried about returning any of them on your own, I’ll go with you.”

  He smiled up at me. “Deal.”

  I tucked a much less stressed angel into bed that night. Then I went downstairs, poured myself a glass of wine, and figured it was time to look at the list Gabriel had given me at the Ruling Council meeting.

  I had a meeting tomorrow with the President of the United States along with a bunch of people I assumed were his advisors. The rest of my schedule for the week included France, Canada, Australia, and Iceland. I winced at the latter, remembering that the elves had been welcomed there with open arms and were actually occupying key governmental positions. Not that I should point fingers since Dar was evidently now Mayor of Chicago.

  I grabbed a pen and added Dar’s name to my list. I did need to go see him, if only to warn him that his power grab had come to the attention of the Ruling Council and that not all were in favor of it.

  Tossing the list aside I looked once more over at the piles of rings, not sure why I was having a weird sense of dread over the whole thing.

  Getting up, I sifted through the third pile. Six rings. And only a dozen in the second pile. Between the two of us, we’d get through the first pile in the next week or so, then I’d go with Lux to return these—the scary pile, and the very scary pile.

  Just touching a few of the third pile made my skin crawl. Something about these rings scared me as well as Lux. I could take a beating, but Lux was so young and he’d not come into his full powers for thousands of years at least. I didn’t want him to be with me when I took this third pile back. I didn’t want him to have anything to do with those rings. Hell, I didn’t want anything to do with them.

  But I wasn’t going to worry about rings tonight. Tossing an afghan over the piles, I dug through my movie collection, deciding what I wanted to watch. I’d just settled onto my couch with a well-used copy of Jedi Orgy in the DVD player, when Gregory returned.

  “Hey, babe. Grab some
wine and come join me for some lightsaber-in-the-butt action,” I said to the archangel. “Lux is asleep. It’s time for porn.”

  “Are there chips?”

  “Yep.” Gregory had totally become addicted to chips, especially the ones with Old Bay seasoning on them.

  The angel headed upstairs to see Lux while I grabbed the chips from the kitchen and poured him a glass of wine that I would most likely be drinking myself. Then I started the movie. Gregory came down before any serious boinking started, sitting beside me and putting his arm around my shoulder. I leaned against him, loving how his energy felt like the blast from an oven set on broil. His spirit-self reached out to caress mine, and I felt myself fall into him.

  This was perfection. This was my idea of heaven. I loved when we angel fucked, when we joined our spirit-selves as one, but I also loved these moments when we were just together, touching physically as well as with our spirit beings.

  “When are you scheduled to meet with the human leaders?” Gregory asked, totally disrupting my mood.

  I handed him the schedule from off the coffee table. “First meeting is tomorrow.”

  He looked over the itinerary. “We need to obtain the humans’ cooperation, Cockroach.”

  I turned on the sofa to face him. “And? Are you suggesting that I can’t play nice in these meetings and come to a mutually beneficial agreement?” One of his eyebrows went up and I snickered. “Maybe you should give these to one of your siblings instead.”

  “It’s true that the humans don’t need any more chaos in their lives.” He smiled and smoothed my hair back. “But there is a reason you’ve been assigned these particular meetings. The US President asked for you in particular as part of the negotiations include New Hell. The government in Iceland is run by elves, and they would rather meet with you than an angel. France preferred to meet with you. And Australia has become unwelcoming to angels in the last few weeks.”

  “And Canada?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Out of all the other countries, they’re less likely to be offended with impish behavior.”

  “I still think you should let Gabe do these, just to be on the safe side,” I teased.

  “We’re already doing the majority of the meetings. To ensure each human leader feels valued and important, we are personally soliciting input from every one of them. No country is too small for a member of the Ruling Council to visit.”

  Yikes. I guess I did get off light after all.

  Gregory tossed the list on the coffee table, and pulled me closer. “That dead rat is still on your front porch.”

  Oh for fuck’s sake. “I tossed it in the woods as well as the other one I found in the driveway. That one wasn’t quite dead yet, so I had to smack it with my shovel a few times first.”

  “So this is a third rat?” Gregory’s chest rumbled with a laugh. “All the rats are coming to die in front of your house?”

  “It’s my fucking neighbor,” I huffed. “They’re probably poisoning them and sending them over here to croak just to piss me off. They’ve hated me since I let those elves camp in my field.”

  “They hated you before that. And exactly how are they directing dying rats to your porch? I don’t know much about human pest control products, but I assume they’d take effect quickly and the animal would die fairly close to the source of the poison.”

  “Some of those poisons take forever to kill.” I went on to describe in detail all the gruesome particulars of what happened to the animal’s body as well as how long it took until they breathed their last for the top four types of poison. It was just as exciting as the porno—well, except for the part where Leia was giving it to Han with the light-saber strap-on. That was pretty epic.

  “I still don’t understand how they could direct the animals to your house,” Gregory replied. “Perhaps it isn’t your neighbors.”

  “Oh, it is. If they’re not sending them this way, then they’re sneaking over and depositing the half-dead things on my porch. Tomorrow I’m going to head over there and have a little chat with them—right after I meet with the president. If they want to poison rats, then they should have to clean the carcasses up, not dump them in front of my door.”

  I was all fired up about this now, which Gregory seemed to find terribly amusing. He scooted me onto his lap, holding me tight in his arms. I teased him with the edges of my spirit-self, resting my head against his uncomfortably hard chest. It was like leaning against superheated granite and I loved it.

  “Cockroach?”

  His breath stirred across my hair and I smiled. “Hmm?”

  “Why is that woman penetrating that man with her weapon?”

  “Because swords are a symbol for dicks. Just about everything is a symbol for dicks. Humans are obsessed with sexual activity.”

  “Just like demons,” he mused.

  I squirmed on his lap, realizing that he was suddenly packing. Gregory didn’t often manifest sexual organs. We didn’t often have physical sex, since he preferred to fuck angel-style. I kinda preferred it too, but sometimes nothing beat a good banging in the sheets. Or on the couch. Hopefully that’s where this was heading.

  “Yes, just like demons.” I kissed him, digging my hands into his chestnut curls. His hands caressed my back, his spirit-self teasing mine, but in spite of all that, something felt off.

  I pulled back and looked into his dark eyes. “What’s wrong.”

  He sighed, leaning his forehead against mine. “That phone call? Ten angels are dead about twenty miles outside of Dublin.”

  There had been a few angel deaths here and there since I’d banished them all from Aaru. Some angels hadn’t been all that skilled in maintaining a corporeal form. Some had gotten flattened by trucks, or blown up, or stabbed in back alleyways and been too confused to form a new body in time. Quite a few had been slaughtered when fake-Samael had tried to take over the world. But lately the angel-deaths seemed to have lessened. Ten at one time seemed excessive.

  “What happened?” I spun my new engagement ring around on my finger, dreading the answer.

  “I’m not sure.”

  That hadn’t been what I’d expected. “It’s not demons?”

  There wasn’t any organized attempt at genocide, but there were plenty of Ancients as well as high-level demons who had a grudge against particular angels, or against them as a whole. I felt each and every one of my demons like they were stars at the end of gossamer threads, linked to my spirit-self, but that didn’t mean I knew what each and every one of them was doing at a particular time. Keeping track of nearly a hundred thousand beings was way beyond my abilities.

  “I honestly don’t know, Cockroach.” Gregory reached up to touch my cheek. “I want tonight to be free from these worries, to be only us celebrating our love.”

  I smiled. “But you have duties. I understand. So do I. Do you want to take me to where these angels died? Maybe together we can figure out what happened.”

  “No. I would rather experience carnal physical relations with you, then join our spirit-selves.”

  Me too, but I knew damned well that Gregory’s focus would be elsewhere, and if he was going to be slamming into me, then I didn’t want his attentions divided.

  “Let’s go.” I kissed him. “We can fuck when we get back.”

  Suddenly I was no longer sitting on his lap on my couch in my living room. My ass was in a puddle of mud in the middle of a field with cold rain pouring out of a black sky. I assumed this was Ireland, about twenty miles outside of Dublin.

  Gregory had created some sort of illusion to hide the dead, but with a flick of his hand the bodies appeared. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I got to my feet, trying not to slip in the mud as I made my way to the nearest corpse.

  I’d seen angels reduced to a pile of sand. I’d seen angels who’d had their spirit-selves ripped from their corporeal forms and devoured. I’d seen angels whose bodies had perished and whose spirit-selves had died along with their corporeal form. But I’d ne
ver seen a dead angel who looked like these ten.

  They were chewed up, as if some animal had attacked them. And I didn’t just mean their physical bodies either.

  “Hellhounds?” Gregory asked.

  “No fucking way.” I knelt down beside one of the corpses. “Hellhounds prefer to feast on those who are already dead. They’re definitely capable of attacking the living if they feel threatened, but I’ve never seen one go after an angel.”

  “But would they?” Gregory knelt down beside me. “Ten angels congregated here for a reason. Let’s assume they knew of a hellhound nearby and had taken exception to its being here. If the hellhound was defending itself…”

  “Then we’d be looking at a dead hellhound and a few injured angels.”

  I frowned, looking at the wounds that had clearly been inflicted by something with very large, very powerful fangs. Beyond the physical damage, hellhounds could kill a being of spirit. I’d had Boomer for a very long time, and I knew more about him and his kind than probably anyone. Hellhounds were psychopomps. They had the ability to release the souls of the dead and send them to their afterlife. Releasing the souls of the dead was pretty much the same thing as separating a spirit-being from its corporeal form—basically killing it. In theory, a hellhound could kill an angel. In theory. In reality, it would take a fucking monster of a hellhound to take down an angel. Boomer might be able to do it if he were sufficiently enraged.

  But ten angels at one time? Even Boomer couldn’t do that. I didn’t know any hybrid that could do that. Fuck, I didn’t know many demons that could do that.

  “Maybe it was a pack of hellhounds?” Gregory asked, as if reading my mind.

  I didn’t want to voice that this was more likely to be a group of demons targeting a group of angels. As for the bite wounds…well, some demons liked to fight with their teeth as well as their more traditional energy weapons.

  Damn it. I didn’t want demons attacking angels, or angels attacking demons. I wanted us to be in one giant lovefest. I wanted to get Infernal Mates going again with Rafi, to pair off demons and angels, to get everyone laid. I didn’t want ten dead, chewed-up angel corpses out in a cold, soggy night in Ireland.