Queen of the Damned

by Debra Dunbar

  Gregory drew a ragged breath. “Yes. That is true.”

  “She said that as your brother backed away, his sword lowered, you took advantage and struck, nearly cutting him in two. She said that the only reason Samael was not killed with that blow was that he turned as your blade swung. You intended to kill the brother that held back in mercy from delivering his own killing blow.”

  There was a silence so profound that my ears rang with it. The wind didn’t stir. Neither birds nor insects made the faintest noise.

  “Yes. That is true.”

  He gave no excuse for his actions. He didn’t claim that the mercy that followed somehow lessened the horror of what he’d done. He stood before me, stoic and straight, and admitted what he’d done. That, more than any excuse he could have given, made me forgive him—if it was ever within my right to forgive.

  I reached out with my spirit-self to touch him and felt the pain, the derision, the self-hate. I might forgive Gregory, but he would never forgive himself.

  “Why?”

  His mouth twisted. “Why what? Why did I strike when he didn’t? Why did I not finish him off when I had the advantage? Why did I banish every last one of them?”

  I kept the contact with his spirit-self. “Yes to all those. Why?”

  The angel stepped forward, so close I was almost in his arms. “Arguments had become war, and I’d been filled with rage for so long that in all honesty, his retreat didn’t register at first. By the time it filtered through to my consciousness that Samael had spared me, had lowered his sword, it was too late.”

  I reached out a hand and touched his arm. “But when you realized what he’d done, you stopped.”

  His laugh was bitter. “Yes. The rage was replaced with a feeling of humiliation. I didn’t want anyone to know what I’d done. It was an act completely without honor. I’d struck out at an angel who’d delivered mercy unto me. I’d nearly killed my own brother—an angel that I loved with all my heart. My youngest brother. The only Angel of Chaos among the five of us. And not only had I nearly killed him, but I’d dishonored myself.”

  He fell silent, and I waited because I knew there was more.

  “And in my humiliation, I did far worse than kill him. I banished him. I banished all of them. Anger wasn’t my worst sin, it was pride. The legends always stick that sin on Samael, but truthfully it was my burden to carry that sin.”

  “I banished you and the rest of the angels,” I told him. “I did the same.”

  “No, you didn’t. You banished us because you loved me and were trying to save me, to save us all. I banished my brother and the others because I was angry and ashamed, and it was my way of avoiding that pain, of blaming them and punishing them for my own sin.”

  My hand slid down to hold his, my spirit-self soft against his own. “You can make it right. We can make it right.”

  He gripped my hand tight. “I don’t think there is anything I, or any of us, can do to make this right.”

  “Dar and Asta? Rafi and Ahia? You and me? Slowly the treaty is dissolving, and angels and demons are coming together. I hate that you all are denied access to Aaru, and I don’t want these Ancients in there—not now, not while there is still this animosity and desire for vengeance on both sides. Later. Later we’ll all share Aaru once more. Well, not me because I think that place sucks big giant donkey balls, but everyone else can share it. Later.”

  He sighed and I felt him pull back. “You’ve got a lot to do. Go take care of Hel and your Lows. I’ll deal with the angels and the elves and the rifts. Go be the Queen of Hel.”

  I clung to his hand, refusing to let go. “No. I mean, yeah I need to go to Hel and take care of shit, but the rest of it is us, not just you. You’re not in this alone. You’ve got your brothers. You’ve got me. Don’t walk away here. I need you. I need to know that you forgive me for kicking everyone out of Aaru, that you trust that I’ll figure this out and get you back in. I’ve got a lot of shit going on right now, and you’re the only reason I’m doing any of it.”

  I felt his confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “When we were up in Aaru and I saw you go down under a bunch of rebel angels, when I thought I would lose you forever…nothing mattered anymore. With you gone, I wouldn’t want to be the Iblis, or rule Hel, or live here among the humans. With you gone, I wouldn’t even want to live. I need you, Micha. None of this shit is worth a damn if I can’t have you.”

  His spirit-self caressed mine. His hand, the one I wasn’t crushing in my own, reached out to capture a lock of my hair and rub it between his thumb and forefinger. “Silly Cockroach. I do blame you for kicking us all out of Aaru. I blame you for everything. You came into my life and turned everything over, knocked me on my side, rattled my life and destroyed all the brittle, stiff layers that in my pride and anger and sorrow I’d buried myself in. You yanked me from my shelter and left me naked and exposed in the open, not knowing what to expect next. This is all your fault. Every last bit of this is your fault.”

  I grinned. “Awww. I love you too, big guy.”

  “I need you, Cockroach. I need you, but you pull the breath from my lungs and leave me a disordered mess. And now that I’ve felt the terrifying experience of loving you, I would never have it any other way. I could never go back to my life before you. And none of this is worth anything without you, either. I’d carry on, because I feel like I owe it to the humans and the angels to shoulder my responsibility, but without you I would have no joy in my life. Without you, I would rot. I would decay and die.”

  I launched myself into his arms, felt him crush me against his chest, felt his breath against the top of my head. “What’s going to happen? You’re omni-something. Tell me when you look at the threads of possibilities that stretch before us, what you see, what you believe will happen.”

  “You will happen, Cockroach. That’s all I know. You have increased the number of possibilities a hundredfold, and made them all equally probable. We could regain Aaru. The demons might regain Aaru. Pianos and anvils and locusts could fall from the sky. With you in existence, anything is possible and probable, even the improbable.”

  “Great,” I mumbled against his chest. “Hoping the pianos and anvils and locusts thing doesn’t happen, though. That’s a weird mix of Looney Tunes and Biblical Plague stuff there. Doesn’t sound like fun.”

  I felt the laugh rumble through him, felt him kiss the top of my head. “Come. What I have to do will wait. Let’s go to your bedroom for the night.”

  “Where I’ll sleep in your arms and you’ll stay awake and stare at me like some creeper?”

  His spirit-self brushed against mine. “Later. First I’d like to do some things that have nothing at all to do with sleeping.”

  And suddenly everything was right in the world. Whatever happened, happened. It would all fall into place eventually. I had my angel. Compared to that, nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 15

  I expected Gregory to be gone when I woke up, but he was still there, curled up against me, staring at me like a creeper.

  “Do you realize how disturbing that is?” I mumbled, secretly pleased.

  “What else am I supposed to do for eight hours but watch you snore and drool onto the pillow? Come on. We’ve both got a lot to do and neither of us is going anywhere without some coffee.”

  I smiled and snuggled against him. “Sex first? Angel or human style—you pick.”

  His spirit-self surrounded mine, merging tantalizingly along the edges. “Did we not do quite a lot of that before you fell asleep? Coffee and work first. Sex after you get back from Hel.”

  I sighed, getting out of bed. There was no sense in showering since I had a feeling I was about to get really filthy. And probably bloody. I threw on one of my least-favorite shirts and pair of jeans as a precaution, because they were most likely going to either be sliced up, or destroyed if I had to shift my physical form to something large and fierce. “I might not be back until tomorrow,” I war
ned him. “Even after I deal with Tasma, it might take me a while to find all these Lows. Fuck knows what he’s done with them. Or their bodies.”

  “I’m determining which angels are best suited to assist in monitoring the integrated elves, and assigning them. I’m also interviewing for additional Grigori enforcers.” The angel slid out of bed and was magically clothed in his typical navy polo shirt and jeans. “Gabe is helping me write the procedures for the new elven minders, although he’s got some dolphin swimming thing he says he has to do first.”

  I blinked. “Seriously? Don’t tell Nyalla. She’s been wanting to do one of those dolphin experiences for months now. She’ll spend half the next Ruling Council meeting grilling Gabe about the best locations, and what they’re really like up-close. We’ll never get anything done.”

  Gregory opened the bedroom door for me. I could already hear muted conversation from downstairs.

  “I don’t think it’s that sort of trip. He’s probably scoping them out to receive our gifts if things with the humans don’t work out. They were in our top five, you know.”

  Made sense. There was a fuck-ton of water here and some pretty smart aquatic creatures. We headed down the stairs where two Lows were playing Xbox with the sort of bleary-eyed focus that told me they’d been at it all night. “Why didn’t you guys select two? Or all five?” I asked Gregory.

  He laughed. “It’s difficult enough herding one species to a positive evolution. We angels have our limitations.”

  Boy, did they ever. I headed into the kitchen wondering if the tenth choir would have fallen by fucking a bunch of dolphins only to see that the coffee had already been made, and Cheros was attempting to waterboard a Low with a cup of it.

  “Hey!” I snapped. “No torturing the Lows!”

  Rot looked up at me, his face wet, brown drops rolling down his cheeks. “Oh, this is fun, Mistress! Watch me blow coffee bubbles out of my nose.”

  The Low demonstrated. “Just don’t kill him,” I told Cheros. Then I poured Gregory and myself a cup each, adding the usual five pounds of sugar and gallon of milk to the angel’s. I realized that I didn’t need to worry about Cheros killing Rot, because she had stopped trying to drown my Low and was staring at my beloved, shaking so hard that the coffee was slopping over the edges of her cup.

  “This is Cheros,” I told him. “She’s the one who is going to sneak me into Tasma’s place. Cheros, this is the Archangel Michael, also known as the angel I’m fucking. Don’t piss him off because he’s not been in the best of moods for the last three million years or so, and he can smite the shit out of you without breaking a sweat.”

  Cheros made a squeak noise. Gregory ignored her, taking the outstretched cup of coffee from my hand. His phone beeped and he looked down at it. “There are four sex demons in Hong Kong claiming immunity as part of your household, Cockroach. They say they are unmarked because you granted them an exception so as to not mar their beauty.”

  “Not mine,” I told him cheerfully. “Unless one of them is Leethu because she’s unmarked. Or Irix, because he’s not technically part of my household but is still given immunity. Wait, is it Leethu? I’ve been looking for her. Ask if one of them is Leethu.”

  Gregory downed half the coffee, his thumb typing as he balanced the phone on his palm. “No. They are claiming that they are all named Delilah.”

  I sighed. “What are they doing that they got caught by an angel?”

  The angel raised an eyebrow. “What sex demons normally do. Which isn’t much different from what a great many humans do in Hong Kong, evidently. We wouldn’t have caught them except the human sex workers got angry because they were taking all the customers and complained.”

  I stopped the coffee cup a few inches from my mouth. “They complained? To an angel?”

  “They complained to a human, who knew an elf, who said they should tell the angels and gave him the contact information for one of my enforcers.” Gregory’s mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. “Imagine my enforcer’s surprise when her phone was overwhelmed by texts in Cantonese from human prostitutes complaining about the unfair trade practices of four succubi.”

  That was funny. “Can your enforcer mediate?” There were too many demons coming through to toss them all back, and I was reluctant to deliver too harsh of a sentence to four succubi who were only guilty of lying about their household affiliation and fucking too many horny businessmen.

  Gregory typed in his phone, then chuckled as he read the message. “She thinks she’ll be able to get them all to come to an agreement. Are these four allowed to stay?”

  I sipped my coffee and nodded. “They can’t leave Hong Kong unless they’re returning to Hel, and have them word the mediated agreement as a vow. Let them know if they break their vows, they’ll wish this angel killed them because I’ll have every one of them servicing my Lows in my Patchine house for the next century.”

  He nodded, typing, then put the phone away and finished his coffee. “I need to go, Cockroach. And so do you.”

  His words were warm and affectionate, and so was the reluctant smile that accompanied them. My heart swelled with the whole casual domestic feel of this morning in my kitchen. “Love you,” I told him, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on his lips. “I’ll text you when I’m back.”

  He pulled me close and kissed me much more thoroughly, his spirit-self doing all sorts of naughty things to mine. “Love you too.”

  And then he was gone. I sipped my coffee, looking at his empty cup on the counter with a sappy smile on my face.

  “I think I peed myself,” Cheros said. “He’s fucking terrifying. How do you sleep next to that thing? His power feels like a steamroller, like a burning mountainside crushing me as it melts my skin.”

  “Yes, it does.” I reached out and touched his coffee cup, feeling the residue of his energy on the rim and the handle.

  “I like him,” Rot said, still blowing coffee bubbles from his nose. “And I think it’s sweet how he is with Mistress. Just like those books that Nyalla and the Ahia angel have on the coffee table.”

  Cheros snorted. “Give me a demon any day over an angel. I’d rather fuck a spiny-dicked Low than let one of those angels close enough to touch me. No fucking way.”

  “Hey,” Rot protested. “There’s nothing wrong with fucking a spiny-dicked Low.”

  “No, there’s nothing at all wrong with that,” I told him, running my fingers along my angel’s discarded cup and remembering the night in his arms. “Nothing at all. To each his or her own. And for me, this one is mine. This angel is mine.”

  Chapter 16

  There was no reason to putz around my house any longer, so I finished my coffee and teleported Cheros and myself to Dis. She puked in the street once we arrived, dramatically announcing that from now on she was only going to travel via the gateways, like demons were meant to do.

  “My way is faster.” I handed her a scrap of cloth from a nearby yard to wipe her mouth. “I can enter Hel via the gateways, but I can’t leave here unless I teleport. Basically, my angel had to banish me to save my life. It’s a long story.”

  She looked up at me, took a few deep breaths, then got to her feet. “Fucking angels. You guys can zap yourself around as much as you want. I’m walking. And I’m taking the gates.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself. Now, what’s our plan? You said you had a scheme to sneak me into Tasma’s place. Is there a secret entrance? Did you bribe someone in his household to let us in? Do we slide down the chimney?”

  I couldn’t help the last. I’d been thinking of Gimlet’s Santa story and wondering if there could be any partial truths to it. Maybe Samael was in the north of Hel, in Eresh? Maybe he was a fat dude? Or maybe he was dead and a bunch of toy-making elves guarded his tomb?

  “Nope. Like I said, you need to pretend you’re a Low,” Cheros said, wiping her mouth and tossing the scrap of fabric to the curb.

  “And sneak down the chimney?” I asked. “I want you to get me in to see T
asma without putting him on the defensive. If I need to pretend to be a Low and go down the chimney, then I’ll do it.” I was starting to get an idea here. If no one in Hel took me seriously, if no one gave a shit about my title or sword, I might as well use it to my advantage.

  “No, you pretend to be a Low and we walk in the front door.”

  How humiliating. But if it got the job done… “Then I sneak around the house, find my Lows, and set them free. Then I set all the Lows free.” Then I face down Tasma and hope he didn’t kill me.

  She laughed. “Fuck, you are crazy. You’re not going to find your Lows. You’re not going to find any Lows. They’re dead.”

  That was the whole idea of my going in there—rescuing Booty, Sinew, and Lash. And the others. Dealing with Tasma was more of an unpleasant necessity, so he didn’t continue to take Lows that I had to come back and rescue.

  “If they’re dead, then where are the bodies?” I asked. “He should have dumped them by now.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he ate them.”

  Eww. And demons thought my devouring was unsavory. “Ate them as in ate their flesh? Because I’m a devouring spirit, and even I don’t eat demon bodies.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s an Ancient. They’re weird. Maybe he likes to eat demon bodies. Maybe he keeps the bodies in his dungeon and lets them rot because he likes that kinda smell. I’m just telling you that there’s a good chance they’re already dead. And there’s a good chance you’re going to be dead too if he catches you. I don’t care what kind of luck you have or that you killed Haagenti and Ahriman, Tasma is gonna have your body parts mounted above his fireplace mantel if he catches you.”

  I straightened my shoulders and tried to look Iblis-like. “No, he won’t. I’m going to rescue any Lows who are still alive, then I’m going to beat the ever-loving fuck out of this Ancient and make sure he doesn’t pull this kind of shit again. Then I’m going to walk out of there, take my Lows, and go home to fuck my angel.”