by Debra Dunbar
“A group of elves came and took them all. Some were crying. None of them wanted to go, but they forced them. They even came to the house to get Lysile and Ptellia and the one in chains in the basement, but Boomer scared them off.”
Shit. As much as I wanted to get rid of my unwanted guests, I wasn’t happy that some group of assholes forced them to go against their will. They’d been eager to go to Elf Island, eager to start their new lives here.
“How did they manage to force forty elves to go with them? Why didn’t Little Red stop them? Or Nils? Or Diablo?”
Well, I knew why Diablo didn’t stop them. That horse hated elves. He was probably celebrating right now.
“Nils went to search for the High Lords, like you said. Little Red went off to hunt for food. He’s a growing dragon, you know. A side of beef from the freezer is only going to last so long.”
Damn. I’d been so worried about feeding the elves so they didn’t head out and get picked off by the vampires who still hovered close by my property that I’d forgotten about Little Red. Hadn’t the neighbor’s cow been enough? Boomer took care of his own needs, supplementing doggie kibble with roadkill and the occasional corpse. Diablo just ate grass like a regular horse. But Little Red…yes, he was a growing dragon. And I’m sure that frozen side of beef had only lasted one day at the most, and the neighbors were probably getting rather savvy about locking up their livestock. Why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t anyone reminded me to feed my dragon?
“Shit. Did you know the elves? What did they look like?”
“Wythyn, mostly. Bob tried to help, but they beat him and took him too.” Nyalla’s voice wavered. I knew she wasn’t fond of Bob, but this whole thing must have brought home lots of bad memories, as well as the fear that elves would take her away once again. I grabbed her and hugged her tight.
“I’ll talk to Telly and Lysile. They have to know these people and have an idea of where they would have gone.”
She nodded. “Okay. You’ll go get them, right? It’s wrong for these elves to force the others away. They were just starting to have hope that their lives would be different, that they could make something of themselves here among the humans.”
Oh, poor thing. Now she was identifying with the elves from my field, seeing them as refugees of a harsh elven kingdom system. Their experiences here would be similar—unfamiliar with the languages, customs and lifestyle. I guess she could sympathize, even though those campers were of the same race as the ones who’d enslaved her.
“I’ll get them, just not right now. This is my army, and we’re preparing to fight in Aaru any time now. I can’t leave and chase down elves when Gregory might call on me at any moment.”
Nyalla pulled from me and eyed the demons with a skeptical eye. “This is your army?”
Yeah. I know. “Well, they’re more of a distraction to jump in and turn the tide of the battle at a strategic point. I’ve got five warmongers, and those should cause some damage, but the rest…um, distraction.”
My explanation didn’t exactly carry a lot of authority. Luckily most of the forty-one demons seemed to not be listening to me, busy as they were trying out their swords on my sofa cushions. I watched a Low impale another straight through the cushion. Okay, so now I had forty demons.
“Don’t kill each other,” I shouted over the din of laughter as the Low bled out on the floor. “I need each and every one of you.”
Nyalla backed up. “Okay. I’m going to take Boomer and search for Little Red.”
“Let’s talk to Lysile first.” Nyalla had been a bit more comfortable around the elven woman and her son lately.
We climbed the stairs and knocked before entering. I was glad we erred on the side of politeness and announced ourselves because Telly and Lysile were armed with the lamp from my bedside table and my DVD player.
“They’re gone,” Nyalla told them. “You can thank Boomer. He turned into a two-headed gigantic hellhound and they ran away.”
No doubt thinking two elves that were the elven equivalent of Lows were not worth becoming a chew toy.
Lysile put down the lamp and took a deep breath. “We were told a group of elves would meet us and take us to where we were to settle, but after they didn’t show, and after hearing what you and the angel had to say, we all felt we’d be better served to accompany him to the Island and follow your plan for integration. With the High Lords, we’d just be lowly crafts people again, nothing would change except the scenery. With you…with you we decided we had a chance of real life—a life that included us and the humans as equals. A life where we could work hard and achieve whatever our skills and effort brought to us.”
The American dream. House, picket fence, the right to vote.
“Do you know where they went?” Nyalla asked.
Lysile shook her head. “They wouldn’t tell us. It’s not like it mattered if we knew or not. We don’t know anything about this human land, the continents or the city names, or even the language.”
They wouldn’t tell them, but I’ll bet they told Twyn. “I’ve still got our traitor in chains down in the basement. Let’s see what he has to say about this.”
They all followed me down stairs, past the demons that were making free with the contents of my refrigerator and pawing through my DVDs. I saw one of the greed demons put two of them into a plastic grocery store bag. Once this was all over, I’d need to do an inventory and replace everything that they’d stolen.
T was still in my basement, blisters covering his skin wherever the chain had touched. The handcuffs didn’t seem to be having quite the same effect, no doubt due to the thick layer of rabbit fur around the metal. Nyalla had wanted to net him, afraid that he’d manage to escape, but the chains seemed to be not only holding him in place, but keeping him from employing any elven magic beyond trying to keep the metal burns to a non-lethal level.
“Your buddies left you behind,” I told him. The elf glared at me from his seated position on the floor. “Seems the High Lords sent a group here to collect everyone from the pasture, but they didn’t care enough about you to risk trying to get past my Hellhound.”
“They’ll be back.” He spat the words at me, then his gaze traveled to my companions. “They’ll come back for me and for them, and especially for her.” He nodded at Nyalla. “You’ll be serving the elves soon enough, girl. Maybe I’ll ask them to let me have you as my personal servant.”
I didn’t wait to see Nyalla’s reaction. I back-handed him so hard across the face that he fell sideways onto the ground. The elf screamed as the chains shifted and touched new skin. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
“They’re not coming back for you. You’ve served your purpose and have no further value to them. The High Lords don’t care if you rot here in my basement. They’re busy with world domination. Why would they bother to come back and rescue scum like you?”
His jaw set and he glared at me, but I could see a flash of fear in his eyes. I was right. He wasn’t all that important, and not worth any kind of rescue attempt. I edged closer, bending down so I was eye level with him.
“You don’t mean that much to me either, Twyn. Better come up with something to bargain with fast.”
“Go ahead and kill me.” He sneered, but his voice wavered.
“I thought about it. Little Red is hungry. I could let him kill you, or let the demons upstairs practice on you, but I’ve got a better idea. I think I’ll keep you in chains and let you be a slave to a human for once. Nyalla did shit jobs for elves for eighteen years of her life. You can serve her for the next twenty. How about that?”
I saw Nyalla open her mouth to protest and shot her a warning glance. I know she didn’t want an elf following her around for two decades, doing her laundry and cleaning her room. It was a good threat, though. It would be the ultimate in humiliation for an elf to act as a housemaid to a human.
Twyn paled. “I’ll tell you what I know if you let me go free. You don’t send anyone after me,
or force me to be a slave. Just let me go and I’ll tell you where they took the elves from the field.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “I can’t just turn you loose, but if what you tell us is true and we recover the elves that were taken, I’ll allow you to go to Elf Island with them.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to go to Elf Island.”
“Well too fucking bad. I’m not letting you run straight to the High Lords. Your deal is either Elf Island, or clean Nyalla’s toilets for the next two decades. I’ll make sure she eats lots of beans too.”
“Sam!”
I shushed her.
Twyn looked at the human girl, then back at me. “Okay, deal. The elves were taken to a place in Northern Virginia. It’s a place by the water and close to the main city of this country. There are magical gemstones there. I think it’s called Diamond Town or something.”
Crystal City. That had to be it.
“Any idea where in the town they would be keeping the elves?” There was a lot going on in that area of Virginia, and it was right across the Potomac from Washington DC. They could have stashed my elves in any number of hotels, office buildings, or apartment complexes. Or in that gigantic mall with the underground tunnels. Or the fucking Pentagon, for all I knew.
He shook his head. “They were supposed to have accommodations for them. I don’t think they’d risk splitting them up, so probably somewhere that could hold forty elves all in one place. That way they’d be easier to monitor, and less likely to go running around the streets.”
Great. I’d need to drag Boomer and possibly Little Red to Crystal City and try to find my elves, but not now. I had no time to do that now.
I walked back upstairs. Everyone followed me except for T, who I left chained to my water heater.
“Do you think they’re okay?” Lysile fretted. “What if they get hit by the moving death-boxes, or the High Lords find out about Elf Island and kill them. I hope that they’re safe.”
“I’m sure they’re okay. And I’ll find them,” I promised her. “I just have something else I need to do first.”
The battle. But what if I didn’t survive? What if I was imprisoned somewhere and unable to get back? Yes, there would be far more at stake than just a group of elves forced to serve their High Lords, the humans would suffer. I needed to survive. I needed to come back. And I needed to make sure Gregory and his brothers won so they could back me up when it came time to kick some elven ass.
“I’ll go,” Nyalla volunteered. I was so proud of her. My strong girl, overcoming her fears and marching forward. She really was my sidekick, my right-hand woman. Scared as I was for her safety, she was invaluable to me. She knew the human world, knew Hel, knew demons, spoke Elvish and knew their culture. She’d earned Boomer’s trust, Diablo’s trust, the trust of humans, werewolves and Nephilim. And she was strong—far stronger than her slight frame led one to believe.
“You go find Little Red and let him know what happened, then sit tight and wait for me to return. I won’t be long,” I told her. With any luck the dragon would take this as a personal attack. He seemed to like the elves, and when a dragon claimed treasure, made it part of his hoard, woe to anyone who stole it. If he saw the elves as part of his hoard, then I might not have to do anything at all. I might return from Aaru to find my forty elves back in the field and a host of crispy-charred elven foes stacked in my front yard.
It would be the ideal solution. Well, except for the county and the neighbors.
Chapter 27
The call to action came at dusk, and I was never so grateful to see one of those androgynous, blond angels in my life. Another hour and my imps would have left to go cause trouble in town, scattering who-knows-where. Another hour and my warmongers would have wrecked my house with their competitive feats of strength and skill. Another hour and I wouldn’t have had a piece of jewelry left in the house to steal.
The arrival of the angel set off a reaction that made me doubt the effectiveness of this whole campaign. The Lows screamed and hid. The warmongers tried to charge him. The Imps launched my DVD collection like they were ninja throwing stars.
The angel batted them away and I held back the warmongers.
“It’s time.”
That made me want to hide too. The only thing keeping me together was the thought that Gregory was at this moment battling an overwhelming number of angels, and that he needed me.
I grabbed the angel’s arm to use him as a directional beacon least we all wind up in some remote part of Aaru far away from the fighting. Then I closed my eyes, mentally reaching out to my army. And we went.
We arrived into chaos. The white nothingness of Aaru was embellished by a misty gray fog which made me feel like we really were up in a cloud. The angel had brought us in right at the edge of the fighting. Blasts of energy lit up the mist like lightning. I could feel the angels all around me, see them with senses that had nothing to do with my eyes. There were thousands—tens of thousands.
The warmongers looked around in confusion, but quickly got with the program, running straight toward the flashes of light. As they engaged with the opponents, they looked to my physical eyes as if they were playacting—sparring in front of an invisible foe. The only difference was that the dwarven weapons were clearly impacting something, and when they did, the angels became semi-corporeal wisps of light and smoke, barely discernable from the mist around us.
The Lows and imps followed the warmongers’ lead. It was then that I realized I had given them no battle instructions, no plan of attack beyond “go kill a bunch of angels.” I was the worst General ever. This is what happened when I didn’t have Dar to help me. He was my strategist. I was the “go kill a bunch of angels” demon.
“Clear a path,” I shouted, not certain if any of my army even heard me amid the thunder and their own battle cries. Still, I forced my way forward, squeezing between the demons and making my way to what I assumed was the front of the line.
Leave it to a fucking angel to pop us in directly behind enemy lines. This totally sucked. Yes, we had the element of surprise with an unguarded rear attack, but we also had no fucking backup. And we were forty mostly Low demons against tens of thousands of angels.
Quickly realizing they had more going on than what was in front of them, the angels turned, more and more of them targeting us. I’d envisioned a weakening in the middle of their force, a splitting into two groups, but instead the rebels balled together, squishing in from the sides and dividing us even farther from the angels I wanted to reach.
Where were they? I was starting to worry about being stuck out here on our own without a friendly angel in sight. We wouldn’t hold out for long against such odds without help.
But we were doing a decent job of more than holding out. The warmongers were fierce, and the angels struggled to defend themselves against a foe they hadn’t faced off against in millions of years. The Lows and greed demons darted around the bigger demons, stabbing their opponents in the feet and legs then dashing back behind the warmongers for protection. It was working. The Lows gave enough distraction to give my War-demons the upper hand, and angels fell before them.
Fuck if I knew what the imps were doing. They’d run screaming into the fight soon after we arrived, and although I could hear their whoops and laughter, I could no longer see them in the gray mist that was thickening around us.
I needed to move us forward, but the warmongers seemed to be pushing laterally through the rebel army. “No, this way. This way.”
The ignored me. The flash of lights was growing closer, a sure indication that the heavy-hitters were headed our way—and headed right where I wanted to go. I could stay here surrounded by my demons, with my five warmongers taking the brunt of the action, or I could split from my own army and try to join with Gregory’s angels.
Never leave your army. Gregory had to know we were here. They had to have known where pasty-face angel planned on bringing us. I was sure this was part of Gregory’s dis
ruption plan, and that he was even better than Dar when it came to battle strategy. So for once in my life I did something very un imp-like. I stayed put.
Well, sort of. Hammer had seen the approaching flashes as I had and shifted his stance, slashing his way through angels as he made his way toward the angels he, no doubt, felt were more worthy opponents.
“Fill the gap,” I shouted, jumping forward. Stupid fucking idiot. War demons were supposed to be smarter than this, but it seems Hammer was more of a lone-wolf fighter. His move to a different direction had left a weak spot in our line. If the greed demons and I couldn’t manage to fill this growing weak spot, the angels would break through and surround us.
Which they might do anyway. The warmongers had pushed too far forward into the angels’ rear line, and they were already beginning to flank us. Fuck, we’d soon be surrounded.
“Form a circle,” I commanded, feeling completely out of my league. I should be running around out there with the imps, not trying to recall every war movie I’d ever watched. What had the Spartans done in 300? Hell if I knew, I’d been too busy watching half-naked buff guys trying to kill each other to think about how they managed an army.
I filled as much of the growing gap between warmongers and Lows as I could, drawing the sword of the Iblis and brandishing it with what I hoped was a somewhat convincing display of prowess.
The rebels shrieked at the sight of my sword and I was relieved to see several of them abandoning the field. The mind-speak was deafening, but I could make out enough snippets to glean that these angels believed that the bowels of Hel had opened and the Angels of Chaos had returned to take back their home.
Good. Let them think that. I plunged forward, feeling confident that everyone would scatter at the sight of my sword. Nope. It seems some angels were less afraid than others, or they had realized my motley crew of forty demons was hardly the entirety of Hel—and that I had only five competent fighters among us. I saw the Low next to me go down and booted him backward behind me with my foot, cutting at stabbing every wispy angel that came near me. The gaps between us opened. More and more angels came through until we were basically fighting them solo.