Queen of the Damned

by Debra Dunbar

  “Surprise!” everyone shouted.

  Gregory looked around the room, a somewhat perplexed smile on his face. “How is this a surprise? You told me there would be a party in my honor and that I had to attend and arrive by the front door. And I knew everyone was here. Even if I couldn’t sense all the energy signatures, I could hear them clear down the driveway.”

  Infuriating angel. I hoped this wasn’t how the rest of the party was going to go. “Act surprised,” I hissed. “You’re supposed to act surprised.”

  “I do a lot of things for you, Cockroach, but I won’t lie. Well, I won’t lie very often.” He strode into to the room, then stopped abruptly. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

  Nyalla laughed. “Now we eat food and enjoy each other’s company. In a bit you’ll blow the candles out and we’ll all eat some cake. Here.” She handed him a box with a curlicue bow and stood on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek. “Happy Birthday. And may you have six billion more.”

  He opened the box and pulled out a tiny pair of castanets with brightly colored flowers and the word “Aruba” painted on the sides. The angel laughed, holding them up for others to admire. Others pushed gifts into his hands, and he graciously thanked each giver for everything from a backup navy polo shirt, a hat rack with pitchforks as hooks, a box of gourmet chocolates, and a waterproof case for his iPhone. We all ate, guests milling about my great room and table with overfilled paper plates in hand. Everyone had a tiny helping of kale and beet salad, even Nyalla who was looking down at it in despair.

  “You need to eat that,” Gabe urged her. I scowled, ready to intervene. Nyalla didn’t need to do anything that angel said. “That dolphin wouldn’t have been able to push you aside if you were stronger.”

  Dolphin? What? Why would Nyalla have gone with Gabe to his porpoise-and-dolphin meeting?

  “Oh, so kale is the new spinach?” Nyalla teased. “I’m going to get bulging arms and an anchor tattoo if I eat this? Seriously, Gabe, I could eat a whole bag of this stuff and I’m not going to be able to wrestle a three-hundred-pound bottlenose dolphin.”

  She looked up at the archangel. Their eyes met. Then with a smile and an exaggerated sigh, she ate a forkful of the salad. My breath lodged in my chest, the world narrowing to a pinpoint as I stared at the two of them. That bastard. That fucking bastard. Suddenly it all made sense—his vote at the Ruling Council meeting, his uncharacteristic insistence that the angels begin associating with humans, the damned dolphins. And this wasn’t some chaste, pure, platonic shit either—not from the way they looked at each other, the intimacy in their shared smile, the fact that Nyalla ate that nasty salad.

  I launched myself across the table, knocking a bowl of chips and a tray of hot wings to the floor. Then I grabbed Gabriel and punched him in the face as hard as I could. There was a crunch, and blood spurted from his nose as his head rocked to the side.

  “You’re fucking my girl,” I shouted at him. “You hypocritical bastard. You lying, false, deceitful son of a bitch.” It wasn’t just that Gabe was doing the very things he’d looked down his nose at others for doing, it was the fact that he was doing them with my Nyalla.

  “I’m not having unemotional, crass, penetrative intercourse with anyone,” Gabe sneered, instantly healing his nose and picking up a napkin to blot the blood from his face.

  “Oh? Then oral? Heavy petting? Because I know you’re not doing angel sex with a human,” I snapped back.

  “His vibration patterns have been somewhat low the past six months,” Gregory commented as he spooned crab dip onto a plate. “And I caught him sipping a glass of wine a few weeks back.”

  Asshole. He could have mentioned it to me. Maybe I could have gotten Nyalla away from him before it was too late. And I wasn’t believing for one minute that they weren’t screwing like monkeys. Gabe might claim to want abstinence, but there was no way Nyalla would ever go for that in a relationship.

  “I’m not discussing personal matters involving intimacies in a public setting, or with you at all.” The bloodied napkin vanished in a puff of smoke from his hand. “Nyalla and I have a close emotional bond that transcends the flesh.”

  “Making love.” Nyalla smiled serenely. “Because even close emotional bonds that transcend the flesh need to be communicated in a physical fashion when one of the parties involved is a human.”

  How had I not noticed this? She was even beginning to sound like him in how she worded her arguments.

  “Are you ‘making love’ with my Nyalla?” I demanded as all the guests gathered around us to watch. “Are you?”

  Gabriel’s lip curled and he looked down his nose at me. “Nyalla is a grown human woman. She is not ‘yours’, and what she and I do together is none of your business.”

  “Like fuck it’s not.” I went to punch him again, but he grabbed my fist with one hand, redirecting my blow to the side as he smashed his plate of food in my face.

  Coleslaw dribbled down my chin. I head-butted him, then jumped to knock him to the floor with me on top. We rolled, throwing punches, kicking and biting. Okay, it was mostly me kicking and biting. Somehow we ended under the table and I reached for a weapon, only to find a plastic fork in my hand. I tried to jab the angel in the neck with it, but the stupid thing snapped in two.

  Gabe batted the broken fork away, then pushed me forward, slamming the top of my head into one of the table legs. The table shuddered, and the kale and beet salad fell to the floor, the bowl shattering.

  “Fuck you and fuck your salad,” I shouted, grabbing a handful of slimy red beets and shoving them into his nose.

  “They’re healthy,” he shouted in return, bending my wrist so far I heard the bone snap.

  I caught my breath in pain, then as I paused to heal the injury, Gabe threw me forward, out from under the table and against the front door.

  As I rolled to my feet, I saw Gregory and Nyalla off to the side, watching us with interest.

  “My money is on the Cockroach,” the angel said, taking a bite of crab dip.

  “I don’t know,” Nyalla replied. “Gabe is trickier than you might think.”

  My own girl was betting against me. That’s what this dickhead had done. He’d brought a shitty food offering to my party, he’d been hypocritically banging a human, and he made my girl fall in love with him.

  I’d never seen her so happy. She practically glowed. I remembered that look they’d exchanged, and the affection, the tenderness, the love in Gabriel’s eyes. He’d taken her to swim with dolphins. He’d obviously bought her that sea glass bracelet she so treasured. He’d swallowed his pride and voted for her on the Ruling Council because he couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings. He was modifying and changing every idea and position he’d held rigidly for billions of years because Nyalla’s arguments wormed their way into his heart.

  “You hurt her and you are dead,” I told the angel.

  He blew beets out of his nose on a napkin. “I would never hurt her. Never. I have vowed to protect her with my life.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How about that bottlenose dolphin that pushed her.”

  Nyalla laughed. “It was just playing, Sam. Gabe gave them all a stern lecture, and after that they were very gentle with me.” Her eyes grew serious. “I love him.”

  I knew she didn’t mean the dolphin. “Fine. I meant what I said, though. First time he makes you cry, I’m taking his wings off with a rusty pen knife.”

  “If the entertainment is over, can we have cake now?” Rafi drawled. “I’ve been eyeing that red velvet cake since Amber set it on the table.”

  It broke the tension. Gabe and I exchanged a few glares, then I lit candles on the cake and told Gregory that he was to make a wish and blow them out.

  There were no more fights. We ate cake. Candy and Michelle cleaned up the beet salad mess. And as our guests began to gather up their leftovers and leave, I went to find Gregory. I had a special gift for him—one I wanted to present in private.

  I found him ba
ck by the French doors that led to my patio and covered pool. There was my angel, cross-legged on the floor with two young children climbing all over him. One was Austin, Harper’s Nephilim son. He was sometimes a wolf, sometimes a hawk, sometimes a mongoose, but right at this moment he was a human toddler, his thumb in his mouth as he patted Gregory’s knee and babbled about something or another.

  Karrae didn’t look pleased, Asta and Dar’s little girl had her golden wings out, batting them angrily as she hovered behind the other baby like a cross between a hummingbird and a pissed off infant Valkyrie. She scowled, reached out a fat hand to grip a fistful of Austin’s dark hair, and yanked. The older child let out a scream, then sent a surge of electricity into Karrae. Now they were both screaming and crying, making me want to drown them in the toilet or drive over them a few times with my SUV.

  Austin recovered quickly, returning to his babbling and his patting of Gregory’s knee, where Karrae had thrown herself on the ground and was on the edge of a dramatic tantrum. Her, I still wanted to drown.

  “Well, that’s what you get for pulling his hair,” Gregory told her. With a motion of his hand the baby was in his arms, still flailing and screaming. I got the impression this display was more about her expressing her outrage than any real pain she’d suffered at the other child’s hands.

  Gregory seemed to be listening to the baby. I’ve got no idea what she was telling him since all I could hear was crying.

  “Karrae, if I don’t want Austin patting my leg, I’ll be the one to tell him. It’s not your job to ensure everyone stays ten feet from me. Now stop your crying. It’s not seemly for a powerful angel to be throwing a tantrum like this.”

  Her tears halted as if he’d turned a faucet handle. Golden eyes looked up at him, and she raised her hand to touch his mouth. He kissed her palm and set her down, running a firm comforting hand over the back of her wings. “Go and play. Your little cockroach of an aunt has been waiting very patiently to talk to me.”

  No, I hadn’t. I’d been holding off entering because I didn’t want to have to deal with screaming children. Or children at all.

  “Someday I want to create,” Gregory announced before I’d taken two steps into the room.

  “Congratulations. And who will be forming this child with you?”

  He smiled up at me, then with speed that took my breath away he had me down on his lap. I’ll say one thing, the guy knew how to frame a persuasive argument.

  “There is only one being who I’d ever consider creating with, and that’s you, my Cockroach.”

  I squirmed. It wasn’t just that I really didn’t feel any urge to form a child. There were issues when demons, or angels, got their personal energy, their spirit-selves, too close to mine. I devoured. And becoming an Angel of Chaos hadn’t seemed to do much to blunt that rather reprehensible impulse.

  I’d killed the demon who had been sent to tutor me in how to sire and form, devouring his spirit-self right out of his body. My dwarven foster parents had covered up the incident to protect me, as devouring spirits aren’t exactly in high demand in demon society and no one wanted to be labeled as one of those demons. I’d been avoiding breeding contracts for all of my nearly thousand-year existence. The closest I’d come had been Ahriman. I would have been happy to devour him, but he’d been powerful enough to keep me from killing him during that time I’d exchanged genetic material.

  The memory made me shudder. He’d tortured me. He’d forcibly taken me. I was grateful that he hadn’t let any offspring he’d formed with me live because I didn’t want to chance coming into contact with one of them and having to relive that whole nightmare like I was reliving it now.

  Liar. I often wondered about the child I’d sired with him. What had it been like? In the seconds it had it taken him to discover I’d not contributed the devouring ability he wanted had he considered letting it live? What sort of demon would it have been?

  “I’ll devour you. And the one time…” I couldn’t discuss this with him. I’d never been able to share with him the details of what I’d gone through with Ahriman. I took a deep breath. “The one time…wasn’t good. I sired with Ahriman. He killed it as soon as he’d formed it.”

  Gregory placed a kiss on my head and ran a firm hand along my back, soothing me as he’d done to Karrae.

  “I’m sorry, beloved. I hate that he did that to you, that you were forced to do things you didn’t want to do with that monster.”

  His touch was helping, the slow rhythm of his hand on my back, the feel of his spirit-self against mine. “I’m not sure I can ever do that again.”

  “Then we won’t.”

  That was it. No hesitation. No begging or pleading with me to change my mind. No sorrow or longing glances toward the two children that played near us.

  “Maybe. Maybe someday. Right now I don’t want to.” I struggled to find the words to explain how I felt. “I don’t want anything we do to remind me of what I went through with Ahriman. I can have angel sex with you and not have flashbacks of what he did to me. No one else can touch my spirit-self like that without me remembering what the Ancient did, but when you touch me, join with me, all I feel or think of is you. So maybe one day I’ll be able to do a breeding incident with you and not fear I’ll be reliving what happened before.”

  His hand was warm as it continued to stroke my back. “It won’t be like that with me. I won’t be taking from you, I’ll be giving to you. You’ll be the one doing the forming.”

  And it would be him—an angel so powerful, so in love with me that his touch sent memories of Ahriman fleeing. But there was still the hurdle of my devouring.

  “I’ll take too much,” I warned him. “I’ll try to devour you. Remember when you attempted to bind me and I stole a bunch of your spirit-self and you couldn’t get it back? Yeah. Think ten times or more because I’m not very good at self-control when it comes to personal energy.”

  “No?” He brushed himself up against me and I melted against him, feeling the ecstasy of his spirit-self merging with mine. “I don’t feel you trying to tear me apart or devour me right now. I’ve shared myself with you hundreds of times. In Aaru, we’ve completely merged and you haven’t attempted to harm me.”

  As if to prove his point, he pushed more of his spirit-self into my own. I caught my breath and closed my eyes, reveling in the feel of him. I couldn’t continue to argue when we were like this. I couldn’t continue to even think.

  “Please,” I begged. It came out so hushed and breathy that it was barely a sound.

  “In front of the children?”

  Like I gave a flying fuck what the children saw or sensed. “Yes. Now.”

  He pulled away and a low whine escaped me. Tease.

  He chuckled, then merged with me. Every thought in my head scrambled and I fell apart, rushing into one translucent white light with him. As always, he held back to keep our bodies intact, to ensure our spirit-selves didn’t unravel in this world where we needed to maintain a hint of corporeal form or die. And when he pulled away this time, I realized he was right. I’d never devour him. The urge I’d always had whenever anyone got their spirit-self within grabbing distance of mine wasn’t there when we were joining.

  “See? There’s no devouring anyone. You won’t kill me, or take anything that I haven’t given you.” He kissed the top of my head again. “I’m willing to wait millions of years for you to decide if you want to create or not. I accept the fact that you aren’t ready at this time, and that you might never be ready. I want to create, but only with you, and only if you truly want the same. If not, then there will be many, many young angels in the future for me to shower my affections upon.”

  I looked over at Austin and Karrae. The two were ignoring us and fighting over a set of plastic army men. Maybe someday…

  “I got you a gift.” I turned on the angel’s lap to better see him, then opened my hand to show him a figurine I’d crafted from a melted beer bottle. It was an angel with outspread wings, its h
ands raised to the sky. He took it, tracing the tiny feathers, the folds in the angel’s robe, the little nubs of fingers at the end of each hand.

  “I still have the horse you gave me. Remember? When we were up in Pennsylvania at that cabin, chasing down Althean and you were trying to convince me there was beauty in destruction?”

  I smiled. “Every act of creation is an act of destruction.”

  His fingers gently touched the tips of the wings on the glass sculpture. “And you, my Cockroach, are particularly skilled at making beauty from the rubble of that destruction.”

  I hoped with all of my heart that something beautiful could come from the mess I’d made of heaven and Hel. That, like a phoenix, something wonderful would rise from the ashes of the destruction I was so very good at causing.

  Gregory rose, gently setting me down as he got to his feet. The glass angel vanished, no doubt safely tucked away with the horse I’d given him long ago. Hand-in-hand, we walked back to the end of our party, knowing that tomorrow would bring challenges that both of us would need to face—me in particular. But that was tomorrow. Today would be about cake and presents, and getting used to the fact that the archangel I detested was now sort of a son-in-law, and that we were all one happy, dysfunctional family—humans and angels and demons and Nephilim and werewolves and all. Even that vampire girl.

  Today was for joy. Tomorrow I would face the chaos.

  Chapter 22

  I arrived in Hel the next morning to find that Tasma had no problem at all getting me an audience with Remiel—which set my alarm bells off. The guy was an Ancient—a powerful Ancient at that. He’d have no reason to prioritize a meeting with me, or pay me any attention whatsoever, even if he had some business going on with Tasma.

  Also concerning was the fact that Tasma was not accompanying me to this meeting. Instead I arrived alone, carefully avoiding the poisoned spikes on his gate and not quite avoiding a huge panther-thing that bit me on the way to the front door.