Exodus (Imp Series Book 8)

by Debra Dunbar

  “I agree.” Shit, this was beginning to be a thing. “Identification, backgrounds—all that will need to be coordinated. They’ll need some funding to get them started. Preliminary housing, job training, someone to teach them how to work the toaster.”

  We all silently contemplated the enormity of the task before us. As if we didn’t already have enough shit on our plate.

  “What’s a toaster?” Bob asked.

  Chapter 9

  They’re coming!”

  I practically jumped out of my physical form at Bob’s words. The elf moved silently, and I hadn’t even heard him come into the house.

  Shaking off the sleep and pulling myself upright from the couch where I’d been napping, I noticed that my Fallen, Nils, was right behind the elf. Then I looked frantically around for Nyalla, remembering after a moment that she’d gone out with friends.

  “Where?” Monosyllabic replies were about all I could manage right now. Ugh, I hated being abruptly woken up.

  Bob rattled off a string of numbers that meant nothing to me. I looked from him to Nils helplessly.

  “Coordinates,” the angel announced, heading toward my laptop. With a few taps of a finger, he’d blown through my password and had pulled up something on the browser. “Coordinates to a place in Iceland, to be exact.”

  Damn. Just when I was really enjoying my nap too. I made my way over to where the two were huddled over my computer, wishing that one of them would go make a pot of coffee, or at the very least get me a beer.

  Iceland. First stop in the elven exodus.

  Bob squinted at the map Nils had pulled up on my laptop. “Yep, that’s the spot, although I don’t understand why forest elves would want to go to a place of ice.”

  I shrugged, feeling more awake. Glaciers and volcanic geo-thermal activity in the same place? Sounded pretty awesome to me. “I’m sure there are forests somewhere. Can’t all be ice and naturally created hot-tubs.”

  “It’s not.” Nils pulled up a few pictures, and I leaned close, elbowing Bob out of the way.

  “A mountainous lava desert,” I exclaimed. “Half the island is When Lava and Glaciers Collide. Why am I not living there?”

  Nils scrolled down farther on the page. “Looks like about twenty percent is pasture for grazing. There used to be a lot of forests, and from what this article says they’re trying to reestablish them.”

  I shot Bob a questioning look. “Do you think the elves are working off an old map? Like a twelve hundred year old map, and they think the forests are still there?”

  “Maybe. Although if the climate and terrain is right, we can accelerate growth and reforest within a decade, maybe less. This might be ideal, actually. This way the elves can pick which trees they want without having to take down much of the existing growth.” Bob sighed. “It’s not a simple matter taking down trees. Each one has a soul. Each one is a sacrifice that must be removed with ceremony. It’s important that our sacred forests not be tainted with murder.”

  I snorted. It was still murder, if you considered chopping down a tree to be murder. We demons weren’t overly concerned with killing anything—sentient or not—so I was probably not in a position to be sympathetic to the elves angst over tree removal.

  “Pull up the map again so I can see exactly where I’m supposed to go.”

  Nils complied and I eyed the dot that would put me smack in the middle of a national park. “Satellite image?” I asked. It paid to have an idea of what things looked like, otherwise I tended to be somewhat disoriented upon arrival. Besides, it was nice to know if I was going to materialize in the middle of a busy street or a lake.

  Nope. This should be easy-peasy. With any luck, I’d be back on the couch napping in fifteen, tops.

  “Got it. Now, out of the house in case Nyalla gets back,” I ordered the two. I watched them file out, then transported myself. It was better to do this alone. I didn’t want to blow Bob’s cover, and I’d hardly need Nils or anyone else to round up a handful of elves and send them back to Hel.

  As soon as I arrived, I realized the error of my thinking. There were six elves, all still dressed in their traditional attire. They appeared to be enjoying a noontime meal with a group of tourists who were whispering in hushed tones and taking pictures with their cell phones. The elves were chatting amongst themselves, looking rather smug about the situation.

  “All right. Vacation’s over. Time to go back to Hel,” I announced, clapping my hands.

  They jumped to their feet, bread, cheese and little plastic cups of wine flying. The humans spun about, their comments becoming louder as they began taking pictures of me. Normally I’m not sought after for impromptu photo shoots, but this particular time I had my wings out.

  The elves scattered. I chased them—well tried to chase them. It was hard to get away from the tourist paparazzi who were saying something that sounded like they planned on gargling dogs. One tried to hand me a sandwich—which I took. I might be on a mission to catch these elves, but I wasn’t about to turn down a sweet ham and Swiss on rye.

  After quite a bit of running around, I managed to grab the elves one at a time, locking them in one of the tourist’s cars and watching with amusement as they tried to escape. Idiots. I was about to attempt to teleport the whole lot—car and all—to Hel when the police showed up. Normally I would have ignored them but they were pointing pepper spray at me and I was trying to be a kinder and gentler Angel of Chaos.

  “Elves.” I pointed to the car where several of said beings had their faces smashed against the glass. They were yelling something but the car was remarkably sound proof. Six elves in a car was a lot, especially those tiny European-style cars. The elves began to beat their fists against the dash and windows and the vehicle rocked back and forth. I kind of hoped it would tip over.

  “The Hidden,” one of the officers corrected me in perfect English. “Why are you keeping them in that car?”

  I was pretty sure something about “elf” had gotten lost in translation. “They’ll kill you,” I announced dramatically. “Or at the very least enslave you and eat all of your ham and Swiss on rye.”

  “They’re peaceful unless you’ve disrupted their homes, and even then I’ve never heard of a case where one killed somebody.”

  Huh? There must be a language issue here, or some other sort of misunderstanding. He was acting like elves running around their parkland was a normal occurrence.

  “Elves.” I spelled it out for him just to make sure he got what I was saying. “Elves. They’re not nice. They want to take over and enslave you. I’m just going to take these guys back to Hel. Don’t mace me, okay?”

  He scowled. “No, that’s not ‘okay.’ Why are you harassing them? And what gives you the right to take them away?” He eyed my wings as if he suspected they might be fake.

  I flapped them, extending them so the officers could admire their giant, black-feathered glory. “I’m an angel.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem very angelic.”

  Well, of course not. “I’m an Angel of Chaos. It’s a type of angel, so technically I am an angel.”

  Another car pulled up, skidding to a stop. The officer closest to me narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care what sort of angel you are, you’re not taking our Hidden. They won’t harm us if we respect their land. And a few sandwiches are no real sacrifice when it comes to keeping a good relationship with the Hidden.”

  A man ran toward us, his suit jacket flapping open. “Stop,” he announced breathlessly. “You can’t take them away. London has a dragon, and now we have a community of Hidden willing to live in the open and interact with us. It will be excellent for tourism.”

  “No, it will not. And they’re not Hidden, they’re elves.”

  The man squinted at the closest one. “They’re rather tall for elves. Hidden are human sized. Elves are only about half of a meter.”

  Where the fuck had he seen miniaturized elves? Admittedly they tended to average about six inches
shorter than modern humans, but eighteen inches tall? Had they gotten hit with a shrink ray or something?

  “Well Hidden or elves, they don’t belong here. They need to go back to Hel.”

  Eventually I needed to find a better solution. Throwing these elves back to Hel would only delay the inevitable. And catching six was a whole lot easier than it would be catching thousands at once.

  “Norway has ogres and trolls. It’s not fair that they get these elves too!” the man protested bitterly.

  Oh for fuck’s sake. “We took care of those ogres and trolls in Norway. Besides, they weren’t a tourist attraction. They smelled bad and ate their livestock. Some poor guy still has a Volvo stuck twenty feet up in a tree where one of the trolls threw it. And the damage to the bridges was horrific. You can’t compare elves to trolls.”

  “Well then let Norway have three and we’ll keep the other three.”

  This whole conversation had derailed, and I had no idea how a discussion about me taking elves away and his officers not dousing me with pepper spray had turned to tourism and a completely different country. “What does Norway have to do with any of this?”

  “You said you wanted to return them to Hel. They belong here. They came here and chose us. We have a long history of respect toward the Hidden and all the fae. We’re very careful not to disturb their homes. This is the perfect place for them.”

  “Yeah until they enslave you all and take your houses and property.”

  He made a pfft noise. “They will do no such thing.”

  “Oh yes they will. Seriously. One came over to the U.S., broke into someone’s house and held the family hostage. When the police came he showed them a fake deed and swore the house was his and that the humans had somehow transferred with the property like the lawnmower and dishwasher. That dude is still in jail.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “That’s because Americans don’t know how to treat the Hidden like we do. They probably blasted his rock-home to make way for a highway, then shot at him with all their guns. We wouldn’t do such things. And we would never presume to lock one up in jail.”

  “You would if he started living in your house and told your wife she needed to sleep in the garage from now on.”

  He hesitated at that. “Elves live under rocks, not in houses.”

  I was getting frustrated, arguing with these folks. “These elves live in houses. In forests. They’ll pick out the best spot, super-grow a bunch of trees, bring over all their friends. Next thing you know they’re knocking down your houses to make way for their elven highways and shooting at you with all of their arrows and fireballs. Trust me, these are some arrogant, selfish motherfuckers. You don’t want them here. If you really want a tourist attraction, I’ve got a little red dragon, just like the one in London only smaller. With all the mountains and volcanic shit, this place would be perfect for him. If you want, I’ll bring him right over. He can stay for six months. No charge. Just thank me when the tourist money starts rolling in.”

  “I don’t want a dragon.” He eyed the elves in the car. They didn’t look very noble or tourist-worthy at the moment, twisting their faces into grotesque expressions as they threw themselves about the vehicle.

  “Okay, tell you what. We’ve got some Klee elves that will be coming over in a few months. They’re very nice. Very cooperative. They might even marry some of you. You’ll like them. Let me take these elves back to Hel—the not-Norway Hel— and I’ll send you six Klee elves to replace them. Deal?”

  “Well…” He pursed his lips.

  “Okay a dozen. That’s twelve. My final offer. I take these assholes off your hands and send you twelve well-behaved Klee elves.”

  “Deal.”

  Perfect. Well, perfect except I couldn’t manage to transport the car and the elves all together. I tried three times and nothing happened. Guess it was going to be two trips of three—which meant I’d need to rely on the police to help me hold the group I needed to temporarily leave behind.

  As soon as I opened the car door I realized that this whole plan was doomed. The elves tumbled out, screaming and flailing as they rolled on the ground. Their hands were red and raw. The smell of burned flesh hit my nose.

  “What’s wrong with that car?” I shouted over the noise of screaming elves. “Is it that hot in there? Should I have cracked a window or something?”

  The officer’s eyes widened. “Metal. How could you have done such a thing? You stuffed six fae in a car where they would have no way to avoid contact with metal.”

  “Torture!” one of the elves shouted. The others took up the chant and soon the whole lot were screaming and rolling around as they accused me of the worst crimes against elvendom.

  “Metal my ass,” I countered. “There’s tons of metal in Hel. They’re fine. Nothing a little antibacterial cream won’t take care of.”

  Actually the elves should have been able to take care of this problem on their own. They were second only to the angels when it came to healing ability. I had no idea why they still had burns on their hands. Drama queens. Fakers.

  “Iron. They’re sensitive to iron,” the suited man told me. He didn’t look very happy and I had a feeling the pepper spray might soon be pointed at my face once again. “Steel is iron and carbon, so they’re bound to have a reaction to it too.”

  What the fuck? Did this guy moonlight as a chemist or something? “The frame is steel,” I countered. “Cars are mostly aluminum and fiberglass now. And besides, they were inside. It’s all vinyl and fake-wood trim. Plastic city.”

  Were elves sensitive to plastic? Damn, I had no idea on that one. Maybe they were. And maybe the iron and steel here was different then what we had back in Hel. I’d never thought to scrutinize the sub-atomic particles with that level of detail. Actually, I’d never scrutinized them at all. I was more interested in DNA than metals stuff.

  “There’s metal,” suit-man insisted. “You trapped them in a car full of metal. It’s as if you locked Superman in a crate of Kryptonite.”

  Was not. I didn’t have any further chance to argue though as suit man and the officers were treating the elves like they were survivors of an epic-scale natural disaster. One officer ran to his car and came back with a medical kit. They began to smear gel from a tube on the elves’ hands as suit guy called for an ambulance.

  An ambulance. I kid you not. And the elves were lapping this all up, staring at the humans with big tear-filled eyes. There were expressions of gratitude, laced with horrible accusations of what an elf-torturing monster I was. The only good point to all this was that the humans couldn’t understand them.

  “They need to go back to Hel,” I repeated. Everyone ignored me. “We can treat them in Hel. They’ll be with other elves who have magical medicines to heal them. I’ll just take them back…”

  The suit-man stopped me with an outstretched arm. “No. We don’t want them angry at us. You and I stood here and discussed their deportation while they suffered in that car. We need to show them that we love elves, that we have nothing but respect for them. We’ll give them medical attention, then set them up to live here with us. Keep your dozen Klee elves. We’re going to take care of these ones. They chose to come to us. It’s the least we can do to make sure they realize that they are welcome here among us.”

  Yeah. And the tourism shit too. Fine. I was crossing Iceland off my go-to list as of right now. And once these elves took over and made them sleep in garages, they could cry all they wanted. I wasn’t going to help them.

  “Have fun with your elves,” I told them, hearing the siren of the ambulance in the distance.

  “We will, we will,” he replied, completely missing the sarcasm in my voice.

  I teleported back home, and in the seconds it took me to get there and boot up my laptop they’d already changed their tourism site. Iceland was now home of the elves, and some Photoshop wizard had taken the beautiful photo of the lava fields and superimposed a pointy-eared, eighteen inch tall smiling man on
the landscape.

  Chapter 10

  The next spot was in the north of France. I didn’t get to resume my nap. I didn’t even get time to make that pot of coffee. I felt like I’d barely gotten back from Iceland when Bob was barging through my back door again with the high alert. Nyalla took one look at him and stomped upstairs to lock herself in the bedroom. Maybe it was a good thing this was all occurring in a short time-frame, because the sooner I could get Bob away from my house and my girl the better.

  Remembering the fiasco in Iceland, I decided I needed some backup, so this time I took Little Red thinking that a dragon might be of use. If he couldn’t help me round up the elves and hold them for transport, then maybe I could trade him to the French. If not in exchange for the elves, then for some decent wine and cheese.

  I was dreading the French would have the same weird affinity for the elves as I’d just encountered, but I had obviously underestimated them. They had already done my work for me, hauling the dozen elves away to jail. And unlike the humans in Iceland, these ones seemed absolutely unconcerned that the elves’ wrists were red and blistered from the handcuffs, and that they were now huddled against the far wall of their jail cell, staring in horror at the metal bars.

  As soon as I realized the local police had the elves, I told Little Red to stay put, stashing him behind a dumpster. Hopefully nobody would decide to take out the trash and see a juvenile dragon cowering at the end of the alley. I didn’t want to have to rescue my dragon in addition to bailing out some elves. Although with the French, there was no guarantee how they’d react to Little Red. They might be more likely to shoo him down the street like a stray cat instead of trying to harm him.

  I eyed the terrified group in the jail cell. Huh. Maybe suit-man was right. Maybe elves were allergic to iron and steel. I was still hoping for plastic, though. The modern world was made of plastic. Nothing would send the elves running back to Hel faster than a sensitivity to petroleum products.