by Debra Dunbar
“And they got the other two?” I asked.
Great. Now I needed to scour Baltimore for injured elves. I wondered if I should check the hospital first.
“One.” He swallowed. “He got Swyllia and Lysile stayed to help him. I ran. I’m not a warrior elf. I’m not even a hunter. I carve wooden bowls and platters for everyday use. This…this isn’t the sort of thing I’ve been trained to deal with.”
“Yes, I know.” I closed my eyes and thought for a moment, trying to make a decision. “You go home with Telly here. Well, back to my field home—don’t start thinking of it as your real home because you’re going to be moved in the next day or two. Anyway, go back with Telly, and I’ll look for the other two.”
“I need to find my mother,” Telly protested. “She might be hurt. She might be…dead.”
Oh for fuck sake. He was going to cry. I so didn’t need that. “I’ll find her. Go on back, and tell the others about this so they realize how important it is not to leave the field. I’ll make sure you have food and other supplies. You have to stay put until my Asshole Angel can get Elf Island together for your orientation. That’s what happens when you all don’t know the human world. You have bad run-ins with drug dealers, and almost get eaten by lions.”
Not to mention run over by cars and shot at by farmers.
“I can draw it,” Cliey announced.
I just stared at him, confused. Was he about to do a sketch-artist rendering of their assailants? How the fuck would that help me? I’d be better off posting “have you seen these elves” photos on light poles across the city.
“The sign on the building. I don’t understand this human language, but if I draw the symbols on the sign, then maybe you’ll be able to find it.”
Shit on a stick, this elf was fucking brilliant. I marched the pair back to the eatery area and bought a drawing pad and set of penguin-themed pencils from a souvenir shop, handing them to Cliey. The elf spent a few moments intrigued by how the humans managed to get the pencil lead inside a twig, then began to draw.
It was heavily embellished but when Cliey was finished I could easily make out the letters that made up the establishment’s name.
Bang. “Are you sure?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“Yes. Well aside from these little curlicues I added on the edges. That’s what the sign looked like.”
Great. Because I was pretty sure that drug dealers didn’t hang out in front of this particular establishment. And it wasn’t humans who’d chased down these elves. It was vampires. This was a club owned by vampires, and there was nothing vampires hated in the world more than elves. Nearly three million years of separation hadn’t dulled their distaste.
Vampires. I’d just promised Telly I’d find his mother. There was a good chance I would, but right now I doubted that either one of those two elves was still alive.
Chapter 18
There was a doorman in front of Bang. Actually a door-vampire. He had no energy signature as far as I could tell, so I was assuming he was a fairly recent turn. Either way he was big, and he eyed me with a sort of nervous animosity.
“We’re closed.”
“I see that.” I pointed at the door, which in fact was closed. “Hear you all had an exciting afternoon. Very exciting. No doubt the other vampires are inside resting because it was so exciting.”
He shifted his weight. “What do you want?”
I walked up to the door and poked at it. He made as though he was about to block me, then thought better of the idea and just stood beside the entrance.
“What a rude way to speak to the Iblis, the leader of the demons.” I poked at the door again. “I think I’d like to go in and talk to your boss. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to open the door.”
“We’re closed.” This time there was a bit of a tremor to his voice.
I felt a twinge of guilt. This poor dude was going to get his ass kicked for allowing me to enter. Not that it was his fault. When a demon wanted in, a demon got in. And that went for an Angel of Chaos too. Well, maybe I didn’t feel too bad for the guy. He did alert the other vampires to the presence of three elves, after all. If he’d kept his big-ass mouth shut, nobody would have gotten hurt. Now I was facing the probable death of two elves, which would likely result in me filling out a bunch of reports and having to deal with a sobbing, motherless Telly. Hell, if I was going to suffer, I might as well kill a bunch of vampires and go for broke. In for a penny…you know.
“Open the door.” What can I say? I was a nice imp to give the guy one more warning.
He hesitated a second too long. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” And I did, blowing the door inward. Splintered wood and metal flew everywhere, and the occupants of the nightclub froze in place.
Six vampires. The sign on the door indicated that they should have been open for several hours, but there were no humans or customers in the bar. Just vampires. And a head.
“Private party,” one snarled at me. I recognized him. Julio, or Jose, or something. He was the second in charge behind the Master’s son. I didn’t see that gray-eyed vampire in the room this time. No doubt he had better things to do than hang around a Baltimore bar all night.
“And now it’s not a private party.” I stalked over and grabbed Jose by the shirt. “I need to talk to your boss. Now.”
“The Master is in Atlantic City,” he replied, a bit more politely this time. “I can set up an appointment—”
“No. The other dude. The Master’s son. Kyle or something.”
The vampires all exchanged glances. One tried to scoot the head behind the table with his foot.
“Unfortunately the Master’s son is in Europe visiting family and won’t be returning for the next century or so. Is there something I can help you with?”
Century? I wondered what the fuck he’d done to get shipped off to family in Europe for a century. Well, if Kyle wasn’t around, I needed to find out who replaced him.
“Okay. So who holds down the fort here in Baltimore while he’s gone? I doubt the Master pops down from Atlantic City to bother with you all, so who? Who is running the show here?”
“Me. Juan.” The vampire didn’t look so happy at that fact. Once he’d realized I was a demon and not just a stupid human who blew up his front door, he’d become remarkably polite. They were uneasy, not knowing why I was here. And I was pretty sure they weren’t connecting my presence with the head oozing on their floor.
“Good. I need to discuss that.” I pointed at the head.
“It’s an elf head.” Juan’s voice had a note of defiance in it.
“Yes, I know it’s an elf head. It’s my elf head. I mean, that elf belongs to me, and so did his companions.”
A few of the vampires muttered excuses and vanished, leaving me with a somewhat pale Juan and a few curious onlookers. And an elf head.
“I’m sorry Iblis, but this elf did not have your mark on him. We wouldn’t have taken a human or any other being if you’d clearly marked it as yours.”
Reasonable. I couldn’t expect them to psychically know who and what were off limits. Honestly the vampires weren’t to blame in all this. It was the stupid elves’ fault for leaving my field, Gregory’s for not having Elf Island ready fast enough. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I didn’t want to fill out any more reports than I had to. And there was Telly. Yep, that was it. No other reason for me standing here, ready to go nuclear on a group of vampires.
“I didn’t have time to mark them. They’ve just arrived from Hel, and I was at a Ruling Council meeting.” I looked down at the head. Damn. Guess there was no fixing this one.
“There’s some left. We’d be happy to share,” Juan offered.
“I didn’t intend to eat him. I needed him alive. You wouldn’t still have the other one, would you?”
Juan’s eyes darted nervously around the room. “One got away.”
“Yes, I have the one that got away, that’s how I managed to find you. Where’s the other one? There were thr
ee.”
“There are a lot more than three,” one of the female vampires added. “According to the dead elf, you’ve got about fifty of them holed up at your house. Now that’s selfish, in my opinion. Demon or not, Iblis or not, you can’t keep fifty elves all to yourself and not share a few.”
“Isobel,” Juan warned.
“No.” She glared at him. “This is our territory. We’ve been here longer than this demon. We’ve fought for it, we’ve built businesses and kept out of the public eye. She’s over there in Frederick County screwing things up for us, screwing things up for the Master. And now she’s hoarding elves.”
Hoarding elves? That should totally be a reality television show.
“I won’t be hoarding them for long. The angels are fixing a decent spot for them. I just am putting them up at my house for a few days. And no, I’m not sharing. You should have known by now that demons don’t share. I especially don’t share. These elves are mine. You’ve killed two of them. You owe me reparations. And you need to vow to stay away from the others or I’ll be the least of your worries. You know how angels feel about elves.”
Juan winced. I hoped reparations could include them doing my reports for me. And maybe giving me some passes to the nightclub. I’d had a blast last time I’d come with Wyatt, but hadn’t been invited back. It all made me feel slighted. As if the vampires didn’t like me or something.
“We didn’t actually kill two,” Juan said. “This one is obviously dead, although as I mentioned before we have some of him left if you’d like to take that. The other one is…still alive. Sort of.”
Sort of alive. I’d take that.
“So? Let me see her. If she’s sort-of enough alive, then I’ll take her and your promise not to harm the other elves and we’ll call it even.”
Juan thought for a second, then nodded. The female vampire grumbled under her breath and went to a back room. When she returned, she was dragging a bloody hunk of flesh across the floor. It had long blond hair that had been undone from its intricate braids and was matted with dirt and blood. The vampire tossed the elf body down in front of me. I was completely shocked when she looked up at me, her eyes wild with fear.
“What did you do to her?” I could see what they’d done, but I wanted to hear them say it.
“Drank. All of us. At once.” The female vampire smirked. “We wanted to save her for later, kind of like an endless buffet. I wonder how long she would have lasted?”
No long by my reckoning. The elf was covered with bites, a few of them partially healed. Evidently the mass vampire attack had overcome her ability to heal her wounds fully. What did elves do to spur their healing? Eat? Sleep? Probably get the fuck away from vampires.
“So fifty elves at your house are off limits,” Juan mused. “What about other elves. There have been rumors…and you can’t very well claim them all. If there’s an elf roaming by our club and there’s no demon mark on him or her, then we’re saying that’s our elf.”
Fair enough. The elves who planned on migrating here and enslaving humans better know that there was another race of beings they needed to watch out for.
“Next time we’ll be prepared,” Lysile spat out. “Next time we’ll have weapons and spells ready. Next time it will be your decapitated heads on our floor.”
The vampires snarled and I stepped between them, my arms outstretched. “Whoa, whoa. You all can reenact the Hatfields and the McCoys later. Right now I’m taking this elf with me, and I have your word the elves on my property will be safe.”
Juan nodded and after a few moments the female vampire did also. “Mark them,” he warned. “Otherwise I can’t guarantee my vampires will hold back.”
I wasn’t marking forty four—now forty three—elves, but I agreed. It would be just one more incentive for the elves to stay put. Metal boxes of death, and now fast, fanged vampires. I walked forward and helped Lysile up.
“Swyllia. Bring him too.” She gasped.
No fucking way. I was not teleporting a head, with or without the body, home. Yuck. And even if I did, Boomer would just eat it.
“He’s dead. The same with the four hit by trucks on the highway and the two who died from the shotgun wounds. This isn’t Hel. Stop thinking you know what the fuck you’re doing and listen. Otherwise the rest of you are going to wind up dead as well
Not necessarily a bad thing. I gripped her arm, wincing at the torn clothing and bloody bite marks all over her. And then I teleported us home.
Chapter 19
I overshot the kitchen by a few feet and wound up just inside the dining area, which pissed me off. I didn’t want Telly’s mom bleeding on my hardwood floors. Tile was so much easier to clean up, although blood in the grout was a pain in the ass.
Lysile groaned and slid from my hand to the floor. I grabbed a knife out of the block and started to cut her clothing off her, appalled at the number and depth of bites.
“Sam? Oh Lady above, what happened to her?”
It was Nyalla. I spun around, torn between my need to keep this elf woman alive and my excitement at seeing my girl again.
“You’re back!” Excitement won over. What can I say? I’m an imp. “I thought you were mad at me.”
I wasn’t sure how long she’d be gone. I wasn’t sure even after the elves left if she’d return. I didn’t fully understand it, but evidently my being forced into having the elves here was seen as a betrayal of her.
“No I’m not mad.” She smiled sheepishly. “I’m scared. The elves…I keep thinking they’re going to grab me and take me back to Hel, that I’ll never see you again, that this life was just a short reprieve from an eternity as a slave. Having them here scares me. Bob was bad enough, but forty-four others? I…I just can’t.”
I grabbed her and hugged her, ignoring the bloody elf on the floor as well as the huge butcher knife in my hand. “Oh, Nyalla. They will never take you back. I swear on all the souls I used to Own that the elves will never have you again. You’re mine, and I protect what’s mine. Any elf that lays a hand on you will die. That I guarantee.”
I felt her nod against my shoulder then pull away. “I’m going to try to stay here. I’ve faced a lot of fears in the last few years. This is just one more fear that I need to face.”
Wonderful. “How about facing them now.” I gestured to the elf on the floor. “The vampires got her. They killed one of her companions, and I think damn near drained her dry. She’s not healing.”
Nyalla took the knife from my hand and walked over, kneeling down next to the woman. I wasn’t positive of her intentions at first and got worried that I might have to explain to Telly how his mom survived a vampire attack only to be killed by a human with a knife. Then she started to cut the shreds of clothing from Lysile, gently tugging at strips where the dried blood had glued them to the wounds.
“Some water, Sam?”
I poured water in a jug and grabbed a roll of paper towels, and went to work. The woman moaned and her eyes flickered, but she stayed unconscious as we cleaned her up.
Lysile was a mess. I’d seen pit-fighting dogs that looked better. Each bite had a huge swollen bruised area around it, as if the vampires hadn’t been particularly careful when feeding from her. She was pale—too pale.
“I think the shows on television would be recommending an IV with a few pints of blood and some antibiotics,” Nyalla commented.
I didn’t have an IV or blood, or antibiotics. “She needs an angel.”
I was an angel. Correction, I was a fairly shitty angel. But along with the black feathery wings came the ability to heal. Not as well as Gregory, but probably better than the human doctors. It’s not like we could take her to the hospital. As much as the elves might hate the thought of me healing them, I was probably Lysile’s only choice besides death at this point.
The times Gregory had healed me, he’d kissed me, so that was my procedure. Whatever. It worked, and it freaked out my patients—especially when I added some tongue into the mix.
>
It didn’t freak out this elf. She was so far gone that the experience was like kissing a cold, long-dead corpse. I poured my energy into her, feeling her body shift and her skin warm. By the time I was done, I was exhausted, and the elf was still unconscious.
“Sam, we can’t have her sleep outside like this.” Nyalla’s voice had a hint of a tremble to it, and I knew how difficult it had been for her to say such a thing.
“Where do you want to put her?” I wasn’t about to propose somewhere. It was better to let Nyalla decide what level of elf-contact she was comfortable with.
She bit her lip, wiping her hands on her pants. “My room. I’ll take the couch until she’s better.”
She’d better be fully healed in the next few days, because I wanted this elf on the speed train to Elf Island with the rest of them. No way was I putting up with yet another long-term guest. Bob was enough of a bother, and he was sleeping in the stables right now.
“My room,” I told Nyalla. “I’ll be the one taking the couch. Do you think you can help me get her up there?”
She bobbed her head and between us we managed to carry Lysile up the stairs and into my bed. Once downstairs, I realized our dilemma. “You know her son is out there camping, worried sick that she’s dead. He’ll want to see her. It’s possible that the other elves will want to see her too.”
Nyalla took a deep breath. “One at a time. Only one in the house at a time.”
I hugged her. Because that was one more elf than she’d been able to tolerate a few days ago.
Chapter 20
What do you mean it’s not ready yet?” I was at the end of my rope with these elves. It’s not like I could put together a shielded island with Grigori tutors and the means for sustaining life on my own, let alone in a few days. But Gregory…I’d expected him to pull this rabbit out of a hat with no effort at all, and I was frustrated that it wasn’t happening as fast as I’d wanted.