by Debra Dunbar
Gareth’s eyes almost left his head. “Are you joking? You’re trying to take back Aaru? With only two hundred or so demons?”
“We’re not trying to take it back. No demon in their right mind would want to live in Aaru. Well, except for the Ancients and I doubt they’re in full possession of their brain matter. We just want to pop in there, fight a bunch of angels, then come back to Hel.”
He shook his head. “Imps.”
“Well, I’m hoping to get more than imps. Some war demons would be ideal, but I’ll take what I can get. So…weaponry?”
“I’ve got some here and there,” he hedged. “What do you need to fight an angel?”
Damn. “Uhhh, the same thing you’d need to fight a demon?”
Gareth sighed. “Fire weapons? Incendiary devices? Nets? Acid vials? What are the environmental conditions in Aaru? It wouldn’t do you any good to be launching fireballs in a windstorm, or a place with no oxygen.”
Oh holy crap. I’d completely forgotten one very vital fact about Aaru. Material goods didn’t last long there. I wasn’t sure we could get in and out fast enough. Disintegrating weapons wouldn’t be a good thing. And no, I had no idea if there was oxygen there or not. I tried to remember the times I’d been there in physical form and didn’t recall gasping for air like a beached fish. Of course, that didn’t mean there was enough to support a fireball.
“Maybe nix the fire weapons and go with bladed ones. Knives and swords. Axes and hammers. Staff and wand. Although I’m not sure magic is going to work there either. Maybe we can just bash the angels over the head with them.”
“You’re not bashing angels over the head with a wand I slaved for months over,” Gareth argued. “I don’t care if you paid for it or not, that’s just wrong. If you aren’t sure if magic works there, then I’m probably not the one you should be speaking with. As much as I hate to turn business away, you need to go talk to a dwarf. Someone like Stengal Clawhammer.”
Stengal. Yeah. Dwarven weapons were well crafted, sturdy and balanced. Their knives could cut through dragon scales—I knew this personally. I’d accidently stabbed myself with one while in my first form and bled like a stuck wistral all over the place.
“Thanks,” I told Gareth. “So while I’m here, can I buy a couple chicken wands?”
***
STENGAL CLAWHAMMER WAS old, even for a dwarf. He looked like someone had stuck an apple in a dehydrator then jammed it on top of a beheaded garden gnome. I could barely make out his eyes in the midst of all the wrinkles. The only hair on his head was a sparse ring of white that wrapped around the back. He made up for the lack with an enormous bush of facial hair that practically dragged on the ground. Behind him in the forge another dwarf worked, this one much younger with a full head of blond hair and a more modest beard. Apprentice? Or perhaps some great, great, great, great grandson?
“What do you need, Imp?” Stengal had that clipped, direct way of speaking that I’d become accustom to from dwarves.
“Weapons.”
Stengal wiggled his sparse eyebrows. “It’s about time you did something about those hooligans, although I think you’d be better off with magical weaponry. You’ve already got a fine sword from what I’ve heard. Can’t imagine you’d need a backup.”
I wasn’t sure which hooligans he’d been anxiously awaiting me to take down. The elves? Or had a demon household gotten on his bad side? Or maybe he wanted me to clean house and kill them all.
“I need to outfit an army of several hundred demons so we can go to Aaru and kill some angels.”
The assistant dropped something which clattered loudly on the floor. Stengal spun around to scold him before he turned back to me. “Didn’t you all try that a few million years back? If it didn’t work then, what makes you think it will work now?”
“Well this time we’re fighting with a bunch of angels to kill other angels. And we don’t want to stay there. We just want to get in, slice and dice some wings, then come back here.”
Stengal nodded and hummed. “What type of weapons are your demons proficient in? Dagger? Short sword? Axe? Andor makes a darned fine axe, if I do say so myself.”
The blond apprentice grunted his acknowledgment of the compliment.
“Ummm, sword? I really don’t know. And honestly I’m not sure which weapon will work best in Aaru. Physical stuff falls apart there.”
He pursed his lips, exaggerating the dried-up old apple look. “Can I see your sword? I’m assuming since it was made to work in Aaru, anything your army uses will need to be similar in construction.”
I bit my lip and summoned my weapon, hoping that it complied. Sometimes the thing didn’t come to me when I wanted it to. Sometimes it vanished from my hands in the middle of a fight. Sometimes I wound up bringing a rolled-up newspaper to a sword fight.
This time it appeared, and as a sword too. I handed it over to Stengal, not sure how the crazy thing was going to feel about me letting a dwarf paw it.
And paw it he did. Oooing and ahhing the whole time. The sword probably liked that sort of thing. I’d need to remember to pet it and praise it more often. Maybe then it would actually show up when I needed it.
“Nice.” The dwarf handed the sword back. I told it that it was beautiful and smelled nice before sending it away, just in case flattery did have positive results.
Stengal trotted into the back of the shop where the younger dwarf was working on something. They conferred. Try as I might to listen in, I couldn’t hear a thing. I wasn’t sure the dwarves would be able to replicate it since the Iblis weapon was sentient and able to transform into a variety of shapes—some more useful than others. Maybe if he made the swords and I took them to Gareth for enhancement…
Who was I kidding? We had no time for that. I probably didn’t have time for Stengal to make special swords either. If things kept going downhill as fast as they were, I’d be dragging my demon army up to Aaru armed with pitchforks and tree-limbs.
When the dwarf came back he had his helper with him. “Andor thinks he can modify some of our existing weaponry so it doesn’t fall apart in Aaru. That’s about the best we can do. Like all dwarven weapons, it will be resistant to demon magic. I’m assuming it will likewise be resistant to angelic magic.”
Holy crap. I’d never used dwarven weapons, so I’d never thought them any more than normal steel. I should have known. Dwarves had some innate ability to deaden our abilities, our “magic,” at will. That’s why they made such good foster parents for demon young. If a warmonger infant started to form a blast of energy, they dissipated it. Lightning bolt? Diffused and grounded. If an imp tried to change into a cockroach and sneak away, they’d block the form change. If their weaponry could do the same, well that was pretty stinking amazing.
“How much?”
Stengal quoted a price that had me nearly passed out on the floor. Then he smiled and gestured to his apprentice. “I’ll drop that in half if you take Andor across the gates and allow him to live among the humans for a century or two. He’s made some friends in Libertytown and has been longing to see some of the human metalworking techniques himself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d never contemplated taking a dwarf across the gates. Honestly, they’d never seemed interested. Yes, they were grumpy about demons, grumpy about elves, probably just as grumpy about humans, but in spite of that they seemed to love living in the mountains of Hel. I’d overheard many of them say it was better than Fuera where the majority of the trolls, dwarves, and orcs lived.
“Seriously?” I asked the blond dwarf. “You really want to live among the humans for a few centuries?”
He nodded. A man of few words. I liked that.
This could work. The humans didn’t have dwarves living among them, but they did have Little People, some of whom looked an awful lot like dwarfs. And hadn’t Leethu been telling me she’d had a hard time finding childcare for Dar?
“All right,” I told him. “I’ll need to make you part of my household
—”
“No.” Andor shook his head. “I’m a dwarf, not a demon. I won’t be in a demon’s household.”
I didn’t bother arguing that I had werewolves, humans and Nephilim in my household. I was pretty sure I could sneak him in. What happened to him after that was his own problem. Well, Dar and Asta’s problem.
“Fine, but you’ll need to have employment in order to survive in the human world. You’ll need to learn their language, their customs, their currency.”
He nodded. “I will do that. I’m willing to perform whatever job I need to in order to fit in among the humans.”
Perfect. “We’ve got a deal. I’ll be back in a couple days to collect the weapons and escort Andor to his home for the next few centuries.”
Stengal smacked me on the shoulder to seal the deal. I smacked his shoulder back, then grinned at Andor. “Hope you like kids, because your job is to take care of the first Angel of Order born in the last two and a half million years.”
Chapter 15
I hated Aaru with all the fury of a dragon whose treasure had been stolen. The bland landscape—actually the nonexistent landscape—the feel of a hundred thousand or so angelic eyes upon me, the way my skin itched like a wool sweater on an August day in the rainforest. It sucked. And being the only attendee in corporeal form at a Ruling Council meeting sucked too. At least at the Marriott conference room they’d all needed to manifest a physical appearance. And there the hotel staff had provided bacon, Danishes and coffee. Here there was nothing. And I mean nothing.
I was late to the meeting, and I was sure I saw disappointment on the faces of several angels when I arrived. This time it wasn’t my fault I was late. I’d returned from Hel to find my neighbors banging on my door, angrily demanding to know why I was now running a campground in my back field. The zoning was Ag, not Commercial Rec, and they’d not seen any postings for zoning change. I was pretty sure come Monday I’d have the county inquiring as to why I was hosting a renaissance fair in my pasture. I’d need to see if there was a capacity limit or time limit for personal parties so I could assert that forty-four elves were my friends and we were all having one big Tolkien-themed celebration. I doubted that required a permit or a zoning change. People had parties all the time, this one just included camping and stretched on for a few days. A week tops. Stupid neighbors. I should have let Little Red fly over and burn their house down.
The dragon was another pain in my ass. He hadn’t set anything else on fire aside from the elven cook stoves. The elves were oddly enchanted with him, treating him like a cross between an honored guest and an exotic pet. When I left I’d caught them playing “fetch” with the dragon by shooting arrows into the air and having him fly up to catch them.
And then I arrive here in Aaru, where the air was decidedly chilly when it came to my presence. Fuck them. If they were going to hold the Ruling Council meetings at Aaru, then I was going to be there, like it or not. And I wasn’t going to give in and float around without a body like the rest of these assholes.
I felt Gregory notice my stubborn resistance to the incorporeal existence. There was a flash of light, then he manifested his usual polo-shirted form.
“In light of the events at the end of the last meeting, I agreed that we should hold this session here, in Aaru. A change with such short notice is unusual, but in keeping with millions of years of Council meetings all held in Aaru. That said, with the obvious discomfort the Iblis’s presence causes, I recommend we alternate meeting locations.”
“She won’t be on the council for long,” New Guy snapped. “We’re voting on that during this session.”
“We’re discussing that this session,” Gabriel corrected. “Action in haste has dire consequences.”
New Guy gave the incorporeal equivalent of a bowing his head. “Of course.”
“I suggest we all create physical forms for this meeting,” Gregory continued. “If we’re to drag the Iblis here into what is truly a hostile territory for her, then we at least owe her the courtesy of a physical appearance.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but the angels complied. Gregory, Raphael and Gabriel were present along with New Guy, Sleazy and a stranger. A smug blond angel had taken Uriel’s spot. I was wishing the red-haired angel would burst on the scene and smack the smirk off the pale face of her usurper, but the archangel remained absent.
“This is the first and last time I’m doing this,” Usurper announced. “Ruling Council meetings should be held in Aaru, and we shouldn’t be required to sully our vibration patterns so that thing feels like she fits in. If we’re going to tolerate her presence here, she needs to respect our rules.”
“I don’t want to tolerate her presence here,” Sleazy added. “It will take me a century of effort to wash away the stink of being in her presence this past year. She shouldn’t be in Aaru at all.”
Whoa. I knew Sleazy didn’t like me, but he’d never been so vocal about it before. I wondered if he wasn’t playing to an audience, making sure he didn’t wind up ousted with another taking his Council seat. And for the record, I did not stink. Although I took a quick armpit sniff just to make sure.
“Well, she is here,” Gregory snapped back. “And if you want to hold meetings in Aaru, then you’re going to need to tolerate her as well as accommodate the philosophical differences of an Angel of Chaos.”
Sleazy glared. Gregory glared. I got the feeling a brawl might be in the near future.
“Like you’ve accommodated her?” Usurper sneered. The way he said accommodated made it sound as if Gregory and I were fucking every hour on the hour, in every possible position and location. In reality our angel-sex happened far less frequently than I wanted, and although we’d gotten kinky in Aaru and off-planet, nothing had happened that I considered particularly scandalous. I did have a rather high bar for scandalous, though. Could be these were the sort of angels who thought holding hands was going too far into the territory of sin.
Instead of being angry as I’d expected, Gregory smirked. “I’d prefer I be the only angel ‘accommodating’ our Iblis, but that’s entirely up to her. Cockroach? Do you favor a quick go-round with any of these angels? We could delay the meeting while you dash off with one or two. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long.”
I nearly choked at his words. What was he doing, stirring the pot like this? I thought he was trying to smooth things over at Aaru, putting a more moderate Gabe in place, and trying to diffuse the situation with the rebels. Rubbing our relationship in everyone’s faces was a complete change in direction.
Either way, I was happy to play along if this was what he wanted. I pursed my lips and looked around as though I was considering it. “Nah. Not my type.”
Rafi was the only one who looked disappointed.
“Well, if there aren’t going to be any further accommodations, then I suggest we get to our agenda,” Gabriel announced drily.
I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked at the fact that the staid archangel actually had a sense of humor or at the first item on our agenda.
Renegotiations of the treaty between the Angels of Order and the beings formerly known as the Angels of Chaos.
I should have known this was coming. I don’t know why I thought all the venom would be directed solely at me and my spot on the Ruling Council. Of course they’d go after the lot of us, and the treaty was the only way to do so.
But what was with the new title? Was that like Prince? Was I to be now referred to as the Being Formerly Known As An Angel of Chaos? I always did like the color purple.
I heard Gregory snarl, and I put a hand on his arm. Yes, we both knew where the angels were going with this, but in all honesty I too felt it was time to renegotiate the treaty. And renegotiate was the key word in all this. That deal struck millions of years ago had been signed by both sides after the war. It was binding and while the occasional violation on the demons side really did nothing but put us at risk of losing our lives, the angels were held to a different standard.
We demons hadn’t signed; the Ancients had but few of them were still alive. We were all many, many generations removed from the original warring parties, hence the “beings formerly known as” title. It was about damned time we stopped being held to a document our ancestors had agreed to. About damned time we renegotiate the whole fucking thing. Actually, it was about damned time we threw it all in the trash and got back to living as one angelic host. But that was probably not something I’d see in my lifetime.
“The first part of the treaty grants Hel to the Angels of Chaos, hereinafter known as the ‘Demons’ for their exclusive use. No angel is allowed to cross into Hel,” Gabriel read.
“I’m in agreement with that section,” Usurper said.
“Well, I’m not,” I jumped in. “We haven’t had ‘exclusive use’ of Hel since day one, we’ve had to share it with those fucking elves as well as a ton of other beings.”
“It’s not like you tried to kick them out,” New Guy protested.
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously? You ever tried to get elves to do something they didn’t want to do? Oh, that’s right. You’ve been trying to get them to come home to your open arms for millions of years. How well has that worked out?”
“That won’t be a problem for long,” Sleazy said. “According to you the elves are migrating here, returning to help with the humans. You’ll soon have Hel all to yourselves.”
“Nope.” I waited a second to let that sink in. “Dwarves. Humans. And a handful of elves who will refuse to migrate. Did I mention humans? The elves were bringing them over through traps and imprisoning, and now there’s a group of freed humans who want to stay. We don’t have exclusive use of Hel and never did. I’m claiming a party-foul going back nearly three million years. You angels owe us reparations.”