With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11

by Dunbar, Debra

  There was a rumbling noise in his chest. I wasn’t sure if it was anger, disbelief, laughter, or a combination of the three. “Cockroach, your senseless disregard for your own safety will surely be the death of me one day—most likely after it has been the death of you.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “Since it does no good to chastise you, go ahead and tell me what was on the other side of the gate.”

  “Cold.” I shivered at the memory. “Like a carnival funhouse. It was all ice and glass and mirrors and lower spectrum colors. Everything was in constant, disorienting motion, but I sensed nothing alive—and definitely nothing sentient.”

  “Some gates are long,” he reminded me. “The other side could be quite a journey away.”

  “If so, then I can’t imagine how anyone could get through to either side. It was a maze. I got the impression that if I walked through, I’d never be able to find either exit.”

  “That changes things a bit,” Gregory mused. “I had been envisioning a pack of powerful, unknown beings accidently falling through the wild gate on their side, and attacking the angels out of fear and confusion, then running back. But with the long gate you describe, I can’t see how that would be possible. How did they manage to find their way through? And back again?”

  Something clicked in my mind. “Perhaps the gate has always been there on their side. Maybe they travel by these long gateways and know how to navigate them. They thought they were going somewhere, and were alarmed to find themselves in a strange world with a bunch of angels attacking them.”

  “If that is true, then they are sentient as well as powerful,” Gregory said.

  Sentient. Powerful. And now they had an opening into our world that even the most powerful of the archangels could not close.

  * * *

  I warmed up some leftover pizza for Lux to have for breakfast and he wandered off to the guest house to play with the Lows. The house was empty. Gregory had left after our conversation. Nyalla had either stayed with friends or was off with Gabe somewhere. My horses and the goat were grazing in the pasture. Boomer was sprawled out in the sun next to the pool, snoozing away.

  I was fucking bored. A few years ago, this would have been an ideal day. I would have sunned by the pool and drunk beer, taking the occasional dip to cool off. I would have checked in with Michelle on my properties, pestered Wyatt into riding with me, and planned something impish. Now I was fretting over my hindered abilities, wondering how I was going to get to all these meetings without asking Gregory to zip me around. Yes I could fly, but taking five or six hours to get somewhere was a pain in the ass. I’d gotten used to teleportation, and I was damned pissed I no longer had that convenience.

  And those fucking rings… I was tempted to throw them all in the trash and lie to Lux about returning them. The only thing stopping me was the worry that somehow the owners would find out and either Lux or I would have to face the human justice system. I already had one court date in my future—that was one court date too many. Plus some of those rings were really expensive. The sin of greed was an old friend of mine. If I wasn’t forced to take those rings back, I’d keep them. No way would I be tossing them in the trash.

  There was no sense in sitting around moping about things I couldn’t change, so I went upstairs, put on my swimsuit, and decided I was going to make the best of the day old-Sam-style.

  There was a little chill in the air still, but the sun was toasty warm. I filled a cooler with ice and beer, put on some music, and plopped myself down on a chaise lounge. Boomer came over to greet me, so I scratched his smelly head and got up to pour a bottle of beer in with his morning kibble.

  I must have fallen asleep because suddenly the speakers were blaring out Ariana Grande and there was someone on the lounge next to me, singing along to “Be My Baby.” I opened my eyes when my visitor hit a wrong note and turned to glare at Terrelle. The Noodle was wearing one of my favorite bikinis, oiled up like she was in an eighties porno. Her brown curls were pulled into a messy bun, her dark blue eyes hidden by a pair of Ray-Bans—my Ray-Bans.

  “Want a beer?” She turned to pull two Bud Lights out of the cooler, popping the cap off one and handing it to me before I could answer. “I forgot what a sweet setup you’ve got here. Your kitchen completely rocks. And you must have twenty swimsuits in your room. Lots of other things in your room, too.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I eyed the bikini, wondering what else she’d pilfered. Terrelle might be an information demon, but she was still a demon and evidently had some sticky fingers.

  “I’ll admit I was kind of worried when Snip told me I was supposed to come see you. I mean, you’re scary for an imp, what with that sword and everything. The whole trip here I kept thinking about all the shit I’d done and wondering if you were going to dust me for something or another. But when I got here and saw there was leftover pizza, and beer, and catching rays …” She leaned forward to clink her bottle against mine. “Girlfriend time. Besties in the sun. Pals by the pool. Where am I going to sleep? With the kid? With the human woman? With you?”

  “In the guest house with the Lows,” I told her the moment I could get a word in edgewise. “I need your help with something—actually I need information.”

  “Well, you have come to the right demon. I am the girl who delivers. I know everything, and if I don’t know it, I can find it out. I’ve got books. I’ve got the internet. And I listen.” She reached up to touch her hair. “Big ears. I hear everything. No one pays any attention to the nerdy girl at the bar, so I know who is sleeping with whom, who is padding their expense account, who ate that pasta salad at lunch that was so not Keto.”

  “Project Woo-woo. It’s—”

  “A government contract awarded to a company called Blue Fire which is co-owned by a sorcerer named Gareth, a mage named Kirby, and a demon named Dar.” She shot me a sympathetic glance. “Who is your foster brother.”

  I resisted the urge to strangle her. “Yes, I know all that. Let me finish and I’ll tell you exactly what I need you to find out.”

  Terrelle made a zipping-her-lips motion with her fingers and stared intently at me. Noodles were so fucking weird.

  “I’m meeting with Dar and Gareth in a day or two. They’re probably going to give me a bunch of bullshit half-truths. I need to know who their customers are and what they’ve bought. Receipts, girl. I need receipts. I also want to know what exactly is the spell, or amulet, or whatever to reverse what these weapons do, and who has that antidote. And—” I held up a finger to keep her from interrupting. “I also need to know if there is any way to reverse the weapon effects besides what Blue Fire is selling.”

  She frowned. “The last one is going to be hard. If the company isn’t aware of an alternate antidote, then there might not be one. Or it might be something no one has discovered yet. Or I might need to talk to a whole lot of mages and elves, and that would take time.”

  “You can start with the Phoenix Police Department,” I told her. “They shot me yesterday with something that stained my shirt blue and felt as if I’d had an elven collar slapped around my neck.”

  She lowered the sunglasses. Her eyes widened, then she looked at my neck. “They shot then collared you? How did you get it off? Did your human friend remove it?”

  “It’s not an actual collar. It’s not a physical device with a spell attached. That’s the problem. Whatever is in that bullet, it covers a demon’s, or angel’s, entire spirit being. It makes us human.”

  “That’s…that’s horrible,” she whispered.

  “Damn straight.” I settled back in my lounge chair and took a sip of my beer. “I’m not going to go into how I managed to break it. Let’s just say it was painful, and I don’t think that’s a method that’s going to work reliably on others.”

  Terrelle let out a breath and shook her head. “Fuck. I knew about the weapons, but my information said they weren’t supposed to be available for another week or two. And I’d heard from several so
urces that the effects wore off in anywhere from five minutes to a few hours based on how powerful the demon, or angel, was. I didn’t hear anything about needing an antidote, or the effect being permanent.”

  “I can promise you this didn’t wear off in a few hours. This is going to be an ongoing project, so I’ll need you to stick around for the foreseeable future. Stay here in the guest house with the Lows until I no longer need your services,” I ordered. “Call me, or come find me once you have any information at all.”

  She looked around. “Can I use the pool?”

  “Sure.” I let the Lows use it, as long as they cleaned up afterward.

  “Food? Your kitchen?”

  I scowled. “The guest house has a kitchen and food. Snip makes sure there are plenty of groceries, and there’s pizza delivery every Tuesday and Thursday.”

  She looked down at the bathing suit. “And clothing?”

  For fuck’s sake. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for clothing. There’s a Walmart ten miles west off Route 26.”

  “Travel and expenses?”

  Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all. “I’ll give you a credit card, but if there is so much as ten cents unaccounted for, I’m going to shoot you with one of those Blue Fire weapons myself.”

  “Deal.” She stuck out her hand. “Oh, and there’s a bunch of dying rats on your front porch. Thought you should know.”

  Fucking rats. I left Terrelle by the pool with my cooler full of beer and went around to the front of the house. Sure enough, there were over a dozen rats shambling around my porch and driveway. I dodged them, kicking a few to the side before they could bite me, and grabbed the shovel from its spot beside the door. This was getting old. This was getting real old. Who the fuck decided it would be fun to send a bunch of half-dead rodents to my house? Normally I’d think this sort of prank was hysterical, but I didn’t want Nyalla or Lux getting bit.

  I chopped the rats up with the shovel then threw them into the woods, then inspired by Nyalla’s cooking the other night, I went inside and made pasta with a roasted garlic sauce for dinner. It was ready just as Gregory came through the door.

  It was like a fifties television show. All I needed was a dress and a bouffant hairdo instead of my bikini and ponytail.

  “Dinner smells wonderful.” Gregory walked by the dining room table where I was setting out the plates.

  “Please tell me there aren’t any more half-dead rats out front. I just got done putting a bunch of them out of their misery. Who the fuck is doing this?”

  “The Pied Piper of dead rats?” Gregory took the plates from my hand and began to put them on the table. “Maybe it’s a necromancer. If it is, you should ask them if they can resurrect Elvis for our wedding.”

  Haha. “I haven’t pissed off any necromancers.”

  “That you know of.” He frowned down at the plates. “Four for dinner?”

  “Terrelle is here. I’m sending her off to hang with the Lows, and felt I could at least give her a decent meal first. After tonight it’s roast beaks and pizza delivery.”

  Gregory nodded. “I like Terrelle. She’s helping you with the Blue Fire weaponry?”

  “Yeah.” I stopped putting the silverware down and faced him. “I spent the day hanging by the pool, disposing of the dying rats in front of my house, and having one of my bathing suits and a pair of sunglasses stolen by Terrelle. How was your day?”

  He sighed. “Like a giant pile of fresh excrement. The rebels have quickly become accustom to being corporeal, and they do not take their expulsion from Aaru as losing the war. I’ve been dispatching my choir to locate and track them as they’re coming together. I fear they are planning an attack.”

  I hesitated, a fork still in my hand. “Attacking who? The Ruling Council? You and your supporters?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, but not just us. Like the Angels of Chaos were before the first war, these rebels are unhappy with the human evolutionary project. They originally were in favor, but over the last hundreds of thousands of years they’ve begun to feel that we made an error in granting the gifts of Aaru to the humans. They feel that contact with humans is detrimental to angels. The fall of the tenth choir ten thousand years ago reinforced this. And now after being among the humans, they are convinced the whole thing was a terrible mistake on our part. They also strongly disagree with any angels resuming relations with the Fallen, which we’ve been supporting lately.”

  I winced. “Relations such as what you and I have.”

  A tired smile twisted his mouth. “Yes. You and I. Others as well. They are absolutely opposed to any demon/angel relations.”

  “I’m sure the existence of New Hell isn’t helping, or that I got everyone banished from Aaru.” I sighed.

  “Only the Ruling Council knows about the extent of the banishment,” he reminded me.

  “But the rebels must know they’re barred from Aaru permanently.”

  He nodded. “They do. And that means their choices for the future are either living in Hel, or living here.”

  “Or somewhere else.” I lifted my hands. “You’ve been to how many solar systems? Planets? Universes? Angels can live in any form. Matter. Energy. Just because they’re barred from Aaru doesn’t mean they have to stay here or go hang with the demons in Hel.”

  “Not all demons have the ability to activate the gates, and many demons cannot survive outside the form of a higher being. Angels are the same. Few angels can travel to or live in the wide range of environments that the universe has to offer.”

  I stared at him. “Seriously?”

  “I know prior to the past few years you haven’t had contact with angels beyond escaping the occasional gate guardian. Angels are not the all-powerful beings you believe them to be, Cockroach. Even my siblings would struggle to survive more than a few centuries in the form of energy. Angels were meant to live as beings of spirit. Aaru is the only place that is possible. Life in corporeal form for any amount of time causes the degradation of our spirit-selves. Life in other forms will do the same—sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly.”

  And now I felt like even more of an asshole for the banishment. It was wrong two and a half million years ago when the Angels of Chaos had been banished, and it was wrong now. I’d do anything to reverse it, even if it meant the rebels still had access to Aaru.

  But that was a problem for another time. Right now there were more urgent things for us to deal with.

  “So the rebel angels feel they only have two choices left to them—here and Hel,” Gregory added. “Hel belongs to the Fallen. There is no way they will ever go there. So that leaves here.”

  “With humans who cause angels to sin,” I said. “So first they plan to kill the angels who fought against them and banished them from Aaru, then they kill all the humans?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. At a bare minimum they’ll be unconcerned about humans who die as they are fighting us.”

  Gregory had said we needed the good will of the humans to live in peace here among them. I agreed, and still agreed but for different reasons. With weapons like the one that had been used on me, the humans could be valuable allies. The rebel angels would discount them, would be vulnerable to attack from beings they felt nothing but disdain for. I knew what an advantage it was to be discounted. Partnering with humans would give us the element of surprise—at least for a very short time.

  But weapons that could be used by humans against angels could also be used by angels against angels. Blue Fire and the weapons they were developing needed to be kept out of the hands of the rebels. And the humans needed to know about this division among the angelic host. They needed to know what was coming.

  But first, I needed to know exactly what was coming.

  Chapter 10

  Lux had to give me a lift to Chicago because I still couldn’t teleport. He promised not to tell anyone, but I felt completely embarrassed. It was one thing when Gregory hauled me around all ov
er the place, but an infant angel? Ever since I’d acquired this skill, I’d gotten used to instantly appearing anywhere I needed to be, and I felt the loss acutely.

  Karrae and Lux had been thrilled to see each other. They were both Angels of Order, and watching them together I realized how nice it was for Lux to have another young angel as a friend. He and Austin were close, but the other boy was a Nephilim living among a pack of shifters and one vampire. Karrae was facing the same challenges and experiences as Lux, living with an angel and a demon parent in a world filled with humans.

  I wondered if Karrae ever misunderstood something and brought home a few hundred stolen rings. Probably not.

  The pair grabbed juice boxes and a handful of fruit bars then went up to the rooftop to play while Dar and I stayed inside his and Asta’s penthouse apartment.

  “Where’s Andor? Your dwarven nanny?”

  “Day off.” Dar rolled his eyes. “It’s annoying that he can’t work twenty-four/seven. Dwarven foster parents don’t take time off in Hel.”

  Because shit would get real. You couldn’t exactly leave a few hundred newly-created and juvenile demons unattended and expect any of them to be alive when you returned—or anything to be alive. There would be a big smoking crater and charred bodies everywhere. But Chicago wasn’t Hel, and Dar was lucky to have a nanny at all.

  “You don’t like it, then you and Asta can move to Hel where you can get twenty-four/seven dwarven care,” I pointed out.

  “Right. Like Karrae would be happy in Hel surrounded by demons. Or Asta. And that’s assuming I could get either of them across the gates. Have you ever tried to get an Angel of Order to do something they don’t want to do? It’s damned near impossible. Sometimes bribery works. Or sometimes if I look at Asta with big sappy eyes, I get my way. Like this.” Dar’s gaze softened, his brown eyes large and dewy as he looked at me with exaggerated adoration.