by Debra Dunbar
“I’ve got an archangel in my pocket,” I countered.
Gregory wasn’t exactly in my pocket, but he was one of the few angels who knew the elves were up to no good, and that they wouldn’t be contributing to the positive evolution of the humans, or anyone else for that matter. And he’d offered to help. That was worth a thousand demons assisting me.
Leethu sighed. “Yes, but he is one and the elves are many. Maybe not as many as the humans, but still many. Remember the fire ant. A colony of them can overpower a creature much larger and more powerful. They keep coming, and eventually they succeed in taking down and devouring any prey.”
Fire ants. I loved those things. Enough of them and a human would need a flame thrower to take them down. Maybe I needed to throw fire ants at the elves.
“What do you suggest?” I asked Leethu.
She smiled that enigmatic smile that made me want to drop my panties and jump her. “You need a spy, someone who can let you know exactly what the elves are up to. That way you can slam the door on their initial few groups and make them rethink the wisdom of this whole migration.”
“A spy? Isn’t that you?” Leethu was my spy. She was tight with the Klee elves. They adored her. They adored her so much that I was surprised they were even contemplating a journey across the gates. Shouldn’t they be happy here in their mountain homes, with their succubus friend and the humans they were forward-thinking enough to free and partner with long before I forced the other kingdoms to do so?
Well, kind of forced. I’d made them close the elven traps, cut off their supply of human slaves. And I’d made them free the humans they currently had in their kingdoms.
“No elves outside of Klee will speak to me.” Leethu pouted. “You need an elf. And I have just the one.”
I watched with narrowed eyes as an elf with a long white-gold braid and midnight skin approached. As he neared I realized he had one blue eye and one brown one, and that the silver of his hair held a thick streak of gold.
“This…” Leethu waved dramatically. “Is Alueathillian Pfthelleal Sdellreaf.”
I blinked. “I’m gonna call you Bob. You good with that?”
He nodded, transfixed by the sight of my wings, black feathers stirring in the breeze. “If we have a deal, you can call me whatever you like.”
Damn. If I had known that I would have picked a much more creative nickname for him. Something like Fuckwad, or Buttlick, or Smells-Like-Dog-Shit. Wait—deal?
“What deal?”
Bob glared over at Leethu, whose golden-scaled cheeks flushed a delicate pink. “I was getting to that part. Just hold on here.”
“What deal?” I demanded of her.
She waved away the question. “The Klee elves truly want to live among the humans. They actually like humans and feel there is a lot to learn from them. They will provide a spy, cooperate with any plan you and your angel have for the rest of the elves as long as those punitive measures don’t include them.”
Sounded easy, but it wasn’t. Yes, many of the Klee elves had dark complexions compared to the other Southern elves, but not all of them. Plus several of the Northern kingdoms were genetically pre-disposed to be “dark elves.” Basically I couldn’t tell a Klee elf from the rest. In the heat of battle, or whatever, I couldn’t guarantee that none of them would get caught in the crossfire, or accidently chopped in half with my Iblis sword.
“Got a few problems with that, Bob. One of which is logistics. If we’re killing elves left and right, I don’t want your buddies in the crossfire. Will Klee elves migrate through a specific gate, all together, with no one else mixed in?”
Actually I wasn’t sure that would be the only problem. In order to hide the elven migration from the angels, we needed to ensure none of them stayed outside of Hel in the human world. Well, beyond one or two maybe. Gregory had made that very clear. Any deal I made with Bob would need to be given the angel’s stamp of approval or I’d be running the risk that he’d veto and the Klee elves would wind up back in Hel, one more group that I could count as enemies.
“If we use only one gate, the others will know something is up. We’re supposedly the Alliance of Elven Kingdoms right now. They’re suspicious enough of Klee without us insisting we need to have our own personal migration wave and exclusive gateway.”
He had a point. I wracked my brain and thought of something from a Chinese movie. “What if the Klee elves wear an orange chrysanthemum on their tunics? Or maybe an orange scarf. I’ve got to have some way of differentiating you all.”
It hadn’t worked out well for the Chinese, but perhaps history wouldn’t repeat itself and the Klee elves with their jaunty orange scarves would escape death or deportation.
Assuming there was deportation in the other elves’ future. I only had Gregory, a few angels and my household. It would be easy enough to lose track of a dozen elves here and there if they were popping in all over the place. Plus Leethu had made that excellent fire ant analogy. If the humans were enchanted and fascinated by the arrival of the pointy-eared dudes, then there was only so much we could do. An angel and an imp shouting that the sky was falling would be ignored, even if the angel in question was an archangel and the unofficial leader of both Aaru and the Ruling Council.
“We can do that.” Bob held out a hand.
“One more thing,” I cautioned. “I can’t guarantee that you and all of Klee can stay. I don’t run things with the humans, that’s the responsibility of the Grigori. If the big guy says no, then the answer is no.”
He kept his hand extended. “An angel? No problem. Angels love us.”
I shook his hand, pretty sure that he was about to meet the one angel who didn’t blindly love elves. “Okay. So what do you know?”
The elf unfolded a map with a crude drawing of the U.S. on one side and Europe on the other. “Initial groups will be sent in here, here and here.”
I did say “crude,” didn’t I? Squinting at the drawing I estimated the one spot to be somewhere in Iowa, one in northern France, and another in Iceland. The last wouldn’t be too difficult given the size of the country and the topography. What would make it difficult was the absolute fascination the humans there had for all things fae. With the way my luck had been going lately, they’d be defending the elves against us, welcoming them with open arms. The French would either ignore them or make fun of them. The Americans…who knew. Yeah, my buddies stateside loved their firearms, but most of them were a worse shot than I was. If I was to guess, I’d assume they’d ignore the weirdly dressed foreigners until one of them did something offensive, then the elves would either wind up in jail or in the hospital emergency room. I thought of the one elf from months ago still languishing in prison. It would have been a good solution had the penal system not already been overloaded with human offenders and not sufficient to handle three hundred thousand elves.
“Here’s my plan,” I told him. “My angel can create a gate and we can send them back to Hel. We’ll round them up, deliver a stern angelic-warning, then send them home.”
Bob laughed. He laughed so hard he almost lost consciousness. “And five minutes later they’re back across the gates in a different location. Seriously? That’s your solution?” He turned to Leethu. “I thought you said she was smart.”
Before I could protest Leethu replied, “I said lucky. I never said smart.”
Great. Et tu Brute?
“Feel free to propose something else.” Yeah, I was grumpy. I had no idea what to do with these fucking elves. Actually my solution had been to kill them all, but I hadn’t even bothered to propose that, knowing Bob would be aghast. And Gregory would frown—which meant he’d drag me off by my hair and warn me against harming so much as the cartilage on one of their pointy ears. Killing a human bought me a two hundred page four-nine-five report and potential time in the angelic pokey. Fuck knows what elven genocide would cost me.
Bob shrugged, the movement looking a lot like Leethu’s. “The Klee elves want to stay with the h
umans. We don’t care where you send the other ones. I’m just pointing out the improbability of success in your current plan.”
Damn it all. Can’t kill them. Can’t make them stay in Hel. The only place they seemed to be unable to escape from was the human jail cell. Hmm, maybe I could convince Gregory to put together a giant prison to house the elves. Imagine the human jobs it would create and the benefit to the economy. A privatized incarceration system, run by humans with angelic oversight, specifically to house elves. Why the fuck not? They were ten times worse than any current illegal immigrant problem. What about The Donald’s wall solution? I’d build a wall around Hel to keep them in, and perhaps I could make the elves pay for it.
Nah. That would never work. Elves were very good at climbing—trees as well as walls.
“Fine. Is there a way you can narrow down the landing site as well as the date and time of these events? Give me even as little as five minutes notice, and we’ll be there.”
The elf’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I can give you a heads-up after the fact, but that’s it. The powers-that-be are hiding the exact time, date and location from us. That first wave is critical, and they’re being very secretive about it. I know some who have been chosen for that migration. I’ve got a communication device so they can tell me as soon as they get the go-ahead. But by the time I get the info to you, they’ll be there.”
How could that be? “They need to meet at a central spot to use the gateway. There should be enough time from when they get their orders to move until they actually arrive to let me know. I want to be there with a six-winged angel by my side when they come through the gateway.”
“Nope. Elf buttons are pre-programmed to the Hel-side gate location, and the coding is shielded. I managed to nab one and even our best sorcerer couldn’t decipher the spot. They get the word. They hit the button. They walk through an activated gate. I swear on the Goddess, by the time I get the information to give you, they’ll be among the humans.”
Fuck. Giant, sucking donkey-balls fuck. And if all four groups went at once, we’d be doubly screwed. Gregory and I could only be one place at a time—well he could be more than one, but I lacked his ability to create aspects of myself, and this was a task that really needed the pair of us. Damn.
“Thanks. Just let me know as soon as you can.” I got up to leave and saw the elf fall in beside me.
“I’m coming with you.”
“He’s coming with you,” Leethu repeated, as if that was going to make any of this more acceptable.
“Like fuck he is.” I had Nyalla, Nils, Dalmai, and a rotation of Lows in and out of my house. The guest wing wasn’t much more than framed in at this point. I had no room for an elf. And given Nyalla’s past, I wasn’t about to put one of them, Klee or not, in the same house with her.
“I can help,” he protested.
I spun around. “I’ve got a human girl who is pretty much my adopted daughter at this point. She was a changeling who spent most of her life as a slave to the elves in Cyelle. I’m not gonna be to blame if she runs you though with a fork or bludgeons you to death with the television remote.”
He blinked. “I doubt a human could kill me.”
I snorted. “You haven’t met Nyalla.”
“Oh let him come, NiNi,” Leethu cajoled in her most seductive voice. “He can run fast enough to get away from Nyalla, and if he intends to stay the rest of his life among the humans, he needs to know what he’s in for.”
She giggled, covering her beautiful mouth with a scaled hand. It was then I understood. Leethu loved her Klee elves, but such affection for demons was of the tough-love variety. We believed in survival of the fittest, and although we mourned the loss of those we cared about, we felt the world was better off without incompetent fools. If Bob was an incompetent fool, then I’d get a new spy. If not, well then he’d prove his ability to be of service to me.
“You’ll need to join my household.”
That brought the elf up short. “Huh?”
“Household. Otherwise you’re toast. They’ll still beat the shit out of you, but the only way I can keep the rest of my household, which includes demons, a Fallen Angel, humans and an elf-demon hybrid, from slicing you to tiny little bits is if you’re one of us. Join me, or prepare to have a very short existence on the other side of the gates.”
Bob swallowed hard a few times and glanced at Leethu, who nodded encouragingly. “Okay. I’m yours.”
Which is why I gated back to my house in Maryland with an elf in tow, and no fucking plan how I was going to handle the worst illegal immigration scenario the human world had ever seen.
Chapter 6
Bob and I appeared at the end of my driveway, nearly causing a jacked-up F250 to run off the road. My skills in teleportation had vastly improved over the last few months. I’d purposely put us a short walk from the house so as to not alarm any of my residents with Bob’s sudden appearance, and to give me a few moments to brief him on the state of affairs in Chez Sam.
“Have you been this side of the gates before?”
The elf’s wide mismatched eyes gave me my answer.
“Here’s the deal. No one speaks Elvish beyond demons, angels and Nyalla. And Nyalla might not speak to you at all. She’s my girl—mine. You so much as say one mean word to her and I will rip your fucking balls off.”
Bob gulped and looked around, no doubt planning an escape route.
“There’s another girl who’s half-elf/half-demon. She’s mine too. Same testicular removal if you say anything mean to her. Got it?”
He nodded. “She’s not really half-elf/half-demon? That doesn’t happen. Elves don’t…well, sometimes with humans, but not with demons.”
“Half-elf/half-demon. And whatever I do to you will be nothing compared to what Leethu does to you if you lay a hand on her.”
He raised said hands upward. “I understand. I promise I won’t touch her or your human girl.”
“Good. The guy that lives in this falling-down house beside the road used to be mine. He’s not mine-mine anymore, but he’s still mine. Be nice to him or—”
“I get it. I get it,” he interrupted. “Is everyone here yours? Just asking so I know who I’m free to insult.”
I thought about that. “Yeah. Pretty much everyone here is mine. Low FICO score, mine. Fallen Angel, mine. Humans I’ve slept with or wanted to sleep with or had business dealings with or shared a latte with twenty years ago, mine.”
“How about I just don’t talk to anyone.”
I think Bob meant that sarcastically, but the idea was sound. “Good plan. The other thing you need to know is that humans generally don’t believe in magic here. I’m not even sure most of what you do in Hel is going to work.”
“How do they get far distances? Walk? I thought that metal thing that nearly hit us was some kind of magical horse. It’s not magic? And how do they communicate if they’re not close to each other? How do they prepare foods and control their weather and plant growth and manage waste? That house we just passed seems like a hovel. I had assumed humans had evolved a bit further than living like animals.”
Oh how to explain this in the fifty feet we had left before reaching my house? “Humans have their own sort of magic. If migrating elves don’t recognize it or learn to use it, they’ll never be able to survive here. You’re not just my spy, you’re the Klee test subject. If you can’t deal with human ‘magic,’ then you need to let the others know not to come.”
He scowled. “I’ve seen humans do magic. Yes, a well-trained sorcerer is a force to be respected, but only one in a few thousand is truly capable of that level of craft. I can’t imagine them having any sort of skills that would be beyond our ability to easily master.”
I pulled out my cell phone and showed it to him. “I can communicate with anyone on the planet with this. The humans have put satellites in orbit that transmit signals across the globe. I can write someone and they see it instantly. I can speak with them. I also have ac
cess to an enormous library of information through this device—all at the touch of a finger. And if I wanted to, I could kill someone with it. Just one button.”
Okay, that was an exaggeration, but he didn’t need to know that.
Bob took the device from my hands, cradling it as if it were the Holy Grail. “This is the mighty cell phone that the demons have talked about. I thought that surely they must be lying. The amount of energy required…how does it work? Is it like our mirrors?”
I had no fucking idea how it worked. Like ninety percent of the humans, I just bought it, charged it, and hit a bunch of buttons until it did what I wanted. I don’t even think I’d ever read the directions. Come to think of it, I don’t even think it came with directions.
“Magic.” It was the best explanation I could come up with. “The special human magic I told you about. You’ll be able to use these devices, just as we demons do, but only the humans can create them and provide them.”
Just then we walked around the corner in the road and saw my house. Bob stopped dead and gaped. “That doesn’t look like the house we just passed.”
“That’s mine. It’s really not all that big of a deal. I’ve seen humans with far more impressive houses. I’ll warn you I’m not sure where you’re going to sleep. I’m pretty much full up and as you can see, that structure off to the side isn’t completely done yet. That’s the guest house I’m building. Being the Iblis means I wind up with all sorts of guests who come and never leave.”
“I’ll sleep anywhere.” His voice sounded distracted as he slowly continued forward, still staring at the house. “I’ve slept in the woods before, or in the stables. I can see you have stables.”
“Three horses, one of them a hybrid. I’ve also got a hellhound, but lately he sleeps in the house.” I wasn’t happy about that, but Nyalla insisted that Boomer was part of the family and needed to be inside. I relented, hoping the extra air fresheners covered up the smell of dog and dead stuff.