Down the Chimney

by Debra Dunbar

  I was getting my kid this toy. I don’t care what I had to do or who I had to kill, I was getting him this toy.

  Chapter 2

  “This one!” Lux pointed to a monstrosity of a tree that would probably take a fucking crane to get in my house. It would have put the gilt-covered White House tree to shame. My kid was amazingly selective when it came to trees. The first ten or so I’d suggested hadn’t been symmetrical enough, or were flat on the top, or skinny on the bottom, or weren’t exactly perfect by some fucking weird angel standard. I was starting to regret I’d promised Nyalla I’d get a tree. Actually I was starting to regret taking Lux with me. Why couldn’t my kid be a demon? Or at the very least an Angel of Chaos?

  “How about this one instead?” I suggested. The one I was trying to encourage the angel to get wasn’t quite a Charlie Brown tree, but it was a bit sparse on the needles and not exactly the traditional pyramid shape. The one thing going for it was that I could manage to drag it in the house solo, and it was marked down to a bargain ten dollars.

  Normally I’m not quite this cheap, but after having spent nearly a thousand dollars on tree decorations, and light-up plastic lawn ornaments, my wallet was about tapped out of Christmas spirit.

  Something else caught Lux’s eye. He squealed and took off down one of the rows while I followed at a more sedate pace, hoping he hadn’t spotted a bigger and even more expensive tree.

  “Keep an eye on him,” a woman juggling a Starbucks cup and a cell phone advised me. “You never know what weirdos are in this place just waiting to snatch up a cute kid like that and sell him on the internet.”

  Ah, just like Hel. Only with internet, cell service, and fancy coffee shops.

  “He’ll be okay,” I told the woman. Woe to any human who tried to abduct Lux. The kid was perfectly capable of turning an entire human trafficking operation into a smoking ruin with little piles of sand where the humans had once stood. I wasn’t even worried about angels messing with him. He was an Angel of Order, and although he was the product of unlawful contact between an angel and a demon, even the strictest angels seemed to be willing to overlook that infraction if the product of the union was of Order. It seemed getting banished from Aaru had changed a few angels’ minds especially when it came to increasing their ranks.

  I rounded a corner and found that Lux had found yet another tree that was his favorite. This one thankfully wasn’t so tall that I’d need to cut a hole in my roof, but it was so thick and dense with boughs that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to wedge the ornaments in there.

  Lux was pretty stubborn when it came to what he wanted, but out of everyone, I seemed best able to sway him, mostly because if he didn’t get swayed I wasn’t afraid of hauling a screaming, laser-shooting, wing flapping child home and locking him in his bedroom with an elven-net across the door for a few hours. Yeah, he could teleport, but he knew that if he escaped, he’d soon find himself inside that elven net.

  In reality I gave in as often as he did, mainly because I was lazy and lacked patience. I think Lux had learned to pick his battles and that weighed into his decisions more than the threat of having an angelic time-out.

  This was one of those times—when I gave in, I mean. The pine I cut down and dragged across the snow to haul to the top of my new Suburban wasn’t as super-sized as the other one, and after a whole day of insipid holiday shopping I was done. I’d put the tree up and sit back with a beer and let Lux decorate it. The kid had wings. There was no excuse for him not to get the decorations on the upper part.

  “Hey, that’s not one of our trees!” I turned to see a teenager behind me wearing one of those blue smocks from a home improvement store over his parka. “Ours are over there. Pre-cut. Those ones belong to the farmer. We’re not supposed to sell those.”

  Well shit. I’d already gotten the thing on the top of my SUV, and I wasn’t about to drag it down and go through another hour of Lux inspecting every fucking tree in the place.

  “Here.” I shoved a twenty at the teen. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  He looked at the money and raised his eyebrows.

  I dug out two more twenties. When had it gotten this expensive to bribe teenage kids? It used to be a twenty would buy anyone’s silence.

  He grinned, snatching the bills from my hand. “Thanks, Ma’am. Merry Christmas. Enjoy your tree.”

  Lux and I got into the truck, and I proceeded to drive slightly under the speed limit on the way home because Lux had a fit when I speeded. Add to that the tree on top of our truck that had the potential to go flying across Route 26 and I was driving like an old lady.

  Who’s coming Christmas Day? Are we having a party?

  Lux’s telepathic speech was usually too fast for me to decipher, although Gregory seemed to have no problem understanding the little angel. As a result, he usually spoke to me verbally, in English—in English that was a lot like the age of the form he was in at the time. I’m not sure if that was an actual limitation on his part, or his way of lodging a protest at my shitty telepathy skills, but when he needed to convey something more complex than simple, three-word sentences, he made an effort to slow the telepathy down to my level.

  “Yes, we’re having a party. Aunt Nyalla gave me a guest list. Basically it’s all your aunts and uncles, a bunch of Lows, and some humans.” I turned to give him a quick smile. “Karrae will be there. Austin too.”

  He grinned at the mention of his playmates. And Uncle Gimlet, too?

  Shit. He hadn’t been on Nyalla’s list, no doubt because she hadn’t had any way of actually inviting the youngest archangel. I guess I’d need to handle that, although finding Samael wasn’t always an easy thing. I checked to make sure there were no oncoming cars, then closed my eyes, trying to sense where he was. The dude was Fallen. Technically he was one of my choir, and I sometimes got a brief sense of him here and there. This wasn’t one of those times. Samael could be on the fucking moon for all I knew right now.

  I opened my eyes, got the Suburban back in the proper lane, and shook my head. “Probably not. Don’t get your hopes up, buddy.”

  Ask him, Lux insisted. Nyalla said you have to invite people to parties, otherwise they don’t think they are welcome.

  He had a point, although I didn’t know if Samael had a cell phone or an e-mail addy, or even a physical address to mail an invitation to. The best I could do was spread the word around Hel that I was having a shindig Christmas Day and I’d like him to be there. I’d even promise him those disgusting oatmeal raisin cookies and milk if he showed up.

  Turning down the lane to my house, I bounced past Wyatt’s place and pulled around to the front of my driveway. Then I wrestled the tree inside, got it set up, lit a fire in the fireplace, and settled in for some booze and a nap while Lux decorated.

  Half an hour later I woke up to find Lux patting my face, peering down at me. “Pretty tree,” he informed me followed by a stream of incomprehensible, telepathic angel speak.

  “Yep. Pretty tree.” I closed my eyes again.

  “Tree sings,” he added.

  Angels and their metaphors. “Yep. Sounds great.”

  I rolled over hoping he’d go off and play while I got some more napping done. It was toasty warm in my house. The fire crackled. There was a buzzing sound.

  Buzzing?

  I sat up, removing Lux from my lap and staring at the tree, which was in fact buzzing. “Lux, that’s an ornament, right? One of the ornaments is supposed to be playing ‘Away In A Manger’ or ‘Joy To The World’, but the batteries have run down so it’s just buzzing, right?”

  “No, the tree sings.” That statement was followed by a string of lightning-fast telepathic angel-speak, out of which I understood one word—bees.

  “Fuck!”

  I tossed Lux to the side and ran halfway to the tree before deciding to run back and open my front door first. Then I ran back to the tree, reaching into the dense web of boughs to grab the trunk and drag the damned thing outside before thes
e warmed-up, non-hibernating bees decided to swarm my house. The moment my hands vanished into the sea of green, I felt as if three dozen pissed off insects with box-cutters had descended upon them.

  Shrieking, I pulled my hands free and tried to shake the bees off them. Lux laughed and clapped his hands in joy, but made no effort whatsoever to help me.

  A couple of options ran through my head, one of which involved setting the tree on fire. I’d had a burning tree in my house before, and I think there was still a fire extinguisher somewhere around. The only thing stopping me was that I’d have to go back out and spend another four hours re-buying a tree and decorations, and try to find someone who could do home repair the week before Christmas.

  Don’t kill the bees, Lux told me, slowing his telepathic speech down to a rate I could understand. I like their pretty song. And they tickle.

  I looked over to see several of the bees light on the angel’s arm, crawling their way up toward his elbow. My hand froze mid-smack, and I grimaced as the ones on me continued to sting. Weren’t bees only supposed to sting once then fucking die? Were these things wasps or hornets or fucking mutant bees? Because they were definitely not just stinging once, and not dying.

  “Lux,” I ground out. “We cannot have bees, or wasps or hornets or whatever the fuck these things are, in the house. I know how you feel about them, but I’m going to kill them. And I’m probably going to burn our tree to the ground too. Don’t worry, we’ll get a new one.”

  “No!” Lux howled, jumping to his feet. His wings came out and he morphed from a toddler into a Kindergarten-aged human child. “No! Tree song. Tickle. Nice. No killing.”

  For fuck’s sake, the kid liked wasps? What angel liked wasps?

  “Not in my house,” I snapped at him. “And not stinging my fucking arms. Damn it, Lux. I’ll buy you another motherfucking tree. I’m burning this one.”

  Before I could turn our Christmas tree into a blazing inferno, I heard Lux begin to sing. It was something odd, not possible from human vocal cords. I might have been biased, but it was truly one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. Then I saw the bees surge from the tree like creatures out of a horror movie. I ducked and dove to the ground, trying to find the fire extinguisher because setting the tree on fire wasn’t going to do shit for a swarm of insects flying around my living room, but blasting them with foaming stuff might. Just as I’d found the fire extinguisher over behind the DVD rack, I saw that the swarm had coalesced into a shape that resembled an insect army formation. They were in a nice neat phalanx, each one in their place as they followed Lux across the room toward the open door.

  The kid was like the damned Pied Piper of wasps.

  Every one of those things left the tree and followed the angel outside. I was left in the house with an icy breezy chill counteracting the warmth from the fireplace. The only sound was the crackling of logs. About ten minutes later Lux returned, a huge grin on his face.

  “What did you do with the bees?” I asked him.

  Their home is now in the bushes in the field. I made them a nest. He announced the last with considerable pride, as if he were telling me about his artwork from school or something.

  Guess I didn’t need to burn down the tree and half my house after all. Wide awake and still aching from a few dozen bee stings on my arms, I turned to the tree and admired Lux’s handiwork. The ornaments were evenly spaced, each type in a repeating pattern. Six strands of tinsel hung from every third bough. The lights twinkled in a carefully choreographed rhythm.

  It was nicely done, and it hit me like a punch in the gut. Lately I felt like a stranger in my house, as if I were so alone. Lux was an Angel of Order. My kid wasn’t like me. My kid would never be like me. What the fuck qualified me to raise a damned angel, of all things? We demons didn’t even raise our own offspring, and here I was without the benefit of a dwarven nanny, trying to teach a young Angel of Order how to get along in a human world.

  Gregory helped, but even ten thousand years among the humans hadn’t given him much of a clue in how to live here as a corporeal being. Nyalla was probably more of a positive influence on Lux than any of us, but she was human. The kid needed an angel to parent him, an Angel of Order who actually knew what the fuck was going on in this world, who would help him be the best angel he could be outside of Aaru.

  There was no one I could think of that could fit that bill. Lux was my responsibility. I’d vowed to watch over him and in my mind that meant doing the best I could to raise him properly. I probably knew more about the human world than every angel or demon here. I’d do the best job I could at letting Lux know the ins and outs of living as a being of spirit in corporeal form among the humans, but I only knew how to do that as a demon, as an imp. Not as an angel.

  I looked over at his beautifully decorated tree, so symmetrical and orderly, and suddenly felt as if I had the weight of the world upon my shoulders. If I was going to raise Lux, I’d need to be less demonic around him. I’d need to put aside all the crazy impish things I loved to do, stop and think what might be best for Lux. I’d need to try to support his need for rules and patterns, and organization and all that holy angel shit. I’d need to be less chaos and more order.

  What a fucking depressing thought.

  Chapter 3

  I fidgeted in my chair at the Marriott conference room, picking at my bacon and obsessively checking my phone. I normally didn’t pay much attention at these Ruling Council meetings, but this time I was blatantly ignoring the discussion.

  “Fuck you, Momofone1245!”

  Everyone turned to stare at me, but I was too busy typing on my phone. There was no way I was going to lose out on the only Super Action Godzilla Droid in the country to some soccer mom in Iowa. No fucking way.

  “Cockroach, we need your vote,” Gregory scolded.

  I waved him off and growled at my phone. Momofone1245 had upped the bid. Who the fuck pays six hundred dollars for a kid’s toy? Probably the same idiot that pays six hundred dollars for a scarf.

  “Cockroach.”

  “Fine. Yes. Whatever,” I shouted, not even looking up.

  “You’re voting ‘yes’?”

  There was an amused incredulity to his voice that made me realize I was about to make a big mistake—almost as big of a mistake as paying a thousand dollars for a toy.

  An Outback gift card was sounding better and better right now.

  “Okay, the Iblis is now the Christmas Ambassador of the Ruling Council.” Gabe shoved a paper in front of me. “Here’s your schedule, starting with the Lisbon Christmas Parade.”

  “Lisbon, Portugal?” I asked, wondering if anyone there had a Super Action Godzilla Droid. Fifteen hundred dollars. Sheesh. Someone kill me, please.

  “Lisbon, Maryland. After that is the White House Tree Lighting Ceremony along with a photo op with the president and first lady to follow. And then a Toys For Tots event.”

  The last two sounded like they might be decent opportunities for me to score a Super Action Godzilla Droid—which I really should start abbreviating as SAGD. I’d bet the White House tree had presents under it. And Toys For Tots certainly had presents. Just in case this eBay auction didn’t work out, it was good to have a back-up plan.

  Christmas Ambassador. I took a calming breath and tried to see the positive side of this scenario. Yeah. No. There was no positive side beyond me possibly getting Lux’s toy. I tried to pay a bit more attention throughout the rest of the meeting, just to ensure that I didn’t get roped into any other shit, then Gregory and I headed out afterward for what he’d come to refer to as “date night”.

  Nyalla still attended the occasional Ruling Council meeting as a liaison on human affairs, but for this one she’d been absent because it was damned near impossible to get a babysitter a week before Christmas, especially for an angel. Asta was on the Ruling Council, and Dar refused to watch my kid during meetings. That left Nyalla, that Nephilim werewolf Jaq and her vampire main squeeze, and Harper. If I were real
ly in a pinch, I could usually convince Candy to watch Lux. And desperate times occasionally meant I had to leave him in the care of my Lows. Once I’d had to run out and made Boomer and Little Red keep an eye on him. The whole time I’d worried there was some equivalent of child protective services for angels that was going to come down on me for leaving Lux with a hellhound and a juvenile dragon. Was that considered neglect? Probably not, but ever since that incident with the chipper shredder, I’d been more than a bit paranoid about leaving Lux with anyone not well versed in the care of young beings of spirit.

  Nyalla had been happy to miss the meeting and watch Lux today, though, especially when I’d told her that Gregory and I had hoped to have a “date night” afterward. According to Nyalla, regular “date nights” were crucial to keeping a relationship sound, especially when there was a child in the mix.

  What she didn’t know was that our “date night” this time wasn’t a romantic dinner and a movie. Oh no. Gregory had a very specific idea about what he wanted to do when he got me alone tonight, and that idea didn’t involve food or something like putt-putt. Or even angel sex, although I hadn’t given out hope that might be on our agenda later.

  “Try again,” he commanded.

  I waved my sword around then walked through the wild gate in Sharpsburg, only to find myself bounced right back out and onto the snowy ground. “You know this is the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same shit over and over and expecting different results?”

  “You banished the angelic host, but it shouldn’t have included you. Try again, but announce your intention, and do it with more feeling.”

  I glared at him and folded my arms across my chest. “I’ve tried gating in. I’ve tried going in with the Ancients. I’ve tried this wild gate. Even with the sword, even as the Iblis, I can’t get in. Let’s just give up and give it a shot in a few thousand years or so. There’s a great tavern near here. Hot wings. Draft beer. A deer head on the wall that you can throw darts at.”