Elven Blood (Imp Book 3)

by Dunbar, Debra

  “A rotation cycle in Aaru is about thirty six Earth hours,” he told me, his voice soft and kind. He was scaring the piss out of me. “I’ll oversee your punishment personally, and I’ll let that worthless human toy of yours know, so he can make excuses for your absence at lunch, and any other engagement you have on your schedule.”

  Personally? Oh shit. Naked and restrained with this angel personally “punishing” me was going to be an exercise in self–control. And I’d never had any use for that particular virtue. Or any virtue.

  “This is really a bad time,” I protested. “See this stack of papers? I need to wade through this as soon as possible so I can get that demon, Haagenti off my back. Things got really ugly when I was over in Hel, and he now has a kill order out on me with a huge bounty.”

  “So deal with it,” Gregory ground out. “And I don’t mean with a bunch of papers either. Get yourself through the gate and face him.”

  “Just give me an extension on this nine–four–two form and I’ll hot–foot it right over to Hel and face him.”

  “So you’re saying if I give you an extension, you’ll go right now?”

  “Absolutely,” I lied.

  “Then I will transport us right now to the gate, and throw you through it myself,” he said softly.

  Fuck. Haagenti had demons guarding that gate, and he had a death sentence on my head. Naked and restrained was looking like the better option.

  “Uh, I just have a few quick things to do first. Maybe I’ll meet you there? In an hour or two? You can wait for me.”

  Gregory sighed and shook his head in disappointment. “Then punishment it is, little cockroach.”

  Reaching over, he pulled me to his chest and gated me into the nothingness of Aaru. I’d been there before, sneaking in through the wild gate in Sharpsburg to leave random little gifts for Gregory. I never managed to get used to the feeling though. My whole body itched, like a wool sweater that really needed to come off. None of my human senses worked. Everything was white, silence stretching on forever. Gregory stood before me, the only corporeal thing beside myself in the place.

  “Okay, let’s get this over with,” I said grimly. “Do you want me to strip, or are you supposed to do it?” Part of me hoped it was him. Part of me hoped it wasn’t.

  “I’ll restrain you first,” he told me.

  I wondered for a moment how he was going to manage removing my clothes with me hog–tied on the floor, or whatever passed for a floor in Aaru. Maybe he was going to rip them off. Heat stirred in me at the thought. He’d never indicated any interest in physical sex with me, but I still had my fantasies.

  My fantasies took a detour when he reached into me and coated my stash of raw energy with the slippery, silicone stuff angels used to keep us from using it. He’d done this before when we’d first met and were both trying to kill each other. I’d still been able to grab little bits of energy here and there, and the effect had left when he’d stopped touching me, so I was surprised when he released me and the feeling remained. I prodded the boundaries, but this time they were tight. Evidently ‘restrained’ didn’t involve ropes or chains. I could look forward to the next thirty–six hours having no access to my raw energy. I’d be defenseless, unable to convert my flesh and fix any injuries. The thought made me nervous, but I was in Aaru, and I was the Iblis. I should be safe. Right?

  I looked down at my clothes with a disturbing premonition. If ‘restrained’ hadn’t meant what I thought, I wondered what ‘naked’ meant.

  “Dissolve,” Gregory said.

  My physical form disappeared and I panicked. Complete and total panic. Without a physical form to house ourselves in, we die. We break apart, and drift out into the universe. The instant of our formation, we are gifted a shape from our parent, and we spend our first hundred years there until we develop the skill to Own and convert into other physical beings. This wasn’t just naked; it was death.

  I thrashed about, trying in vain to grab enough of the slippery raw energy to create anything. Anything. An insect, an amoeba, a single–cell bacteria. The slippery coating blocked my every attempt. It was like drowning, like suffocating while frantically trying to take a breath with lungs that no longer worked. I was going to die.

  “Hush. You’re not going to die.” I felt the soothing blue along with his soft words. I wasn’t sure he’d intended to put out the lovely blue that had always calmed us demons as children. I’d always fought against it when he’d done it in the past. I didn’t fight it now.

  “There.” His tone changed and became mocking, challenging. “Take your punishment with some dignity. You are the Iblis, after all.”

  I felt him leave and the panic returned. There was nothing to hold me together. I was defenseless, I couldn’t protect myself or repair myself if I was attacked. I was going to die, dissolve into nothingness. I yanked on the red purple within me and commanded the angel to appear. Summoned him. Begged him. Evidently the binding between us didn’t work in Aaru because I remained alone. Finally the panic overwhelmed me and I just suffered in crippling anxiety and fear. It was like going insane. I couldn’t track the passage of time and when I finally felt his presence again I was confused. He removed the thick wall blocking my raw energy.

  “Form.”

  I waited for something to occur, but nothing did. I still existed as a being of spirit. Was I broken?

  “No, you need to do it. Create your form, so I can take you home. Otherwise you will die.”

  Oh. I popped into the Samantha Martin form that I’d been wearing for so long and again felt that itchy sensation. In a heartbeat we were back in my house, next to the couch. Instead of releasing me, Gregory picked me up and dumped me over the back of the sofa to sprawl naked on the cushions.

  “Here.” He came around the sofa and plopped down a stack of papers on the coffee table in front of me. “Twenty–four hours.”

  “You asshole,” I smacked him with a cushion to emphasize my anger. “You are all assholes. I’ve got all this shit to do. I didn’t want any of this, I didn’t agree to any of this. I was near death. My spirit self–shredding from the edges. I’m permanently damaged, I’ll never recover. It’s a wonder I can still convert.”

  “You’re fine,” he puffed out, exasperated at my drama. “You were never in any danger. You’re supposed to use that time to meditate, to reconnect with the purity of a spirit existence. It should have been relaxing.”

  “You’re fucking joking! I’m a demon. I don’t meditate. And we die without physical form.”

  “No you don’t. You just can’t exist like that outside Aaru, so you’re not used to it.”

  “I was dying. You were torturing me, allowing me to slowly die in your own realm.”

  “You were not dying.”

  “I was. I was dying. You abandoned me, refused to come when I summoned you. I thought you said you were compelled to come, no matter what realm we were in. Clearly you fucked that one up, because you left me there. Left me to die, alone and afraid.”

  “I never left your side,” he shouted at me.

  I stared at him; feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me.

  “I never left you. I sent another angel to relay the message to your stupid human toy, and remained there with you throughout your whole punishment. You were never in danger. You were not dying.”

  He looked at me, fury and something else in his gaze.

  “Twenty–four hours,” he told me, pointing at the stack of papers. Then he was gone.

  I stared at the report. It was huge. Two hundred pages, he’d said. But even the prospect of that daunting task couldn’t erase his words from my mind. He’d never left my side. A full rotation cycle, with me freaking out like a fool, and he’d never left me. I shook my head, too stunned to ponder in depth the implications of his actions. It was evening, and I had a lot to do. Starting with a call to Wyatt.

  My phone was dead, since I’d been rudely yanked out of my living room a day and a half ago and no
t charged it. I put on a pot of coffee while it powered up. It was going to be a really long night and I needed the caffeine. It had just finished brewing when Wyatt called.

  “Sam? I’m glad you’re back. Some angel showed up at my house yesterday and told me you’d been dragged off for punishment. I was worried.”

  There was a strange banging noise in the background as Wyatt spoke.

  “Yeah, I neglected to fill out a report and had to spend a day and a half in the angel pokey. What the hell is that noise? Are you building something?”

  I heard various other noises, then another loud bang.

  “Uh, it’s a demon throwing rocks at my house,” Wyatt said apologetically, like it was his fault. “Uh oh, he’s setting the shrubbery on fire. I better let you go and try and shoot him before the house goes up in flames.”

  “Oh no,” I told him. “I’m pissed off and seriously need to kill something. Let me.”

  It was terribly unsatisfying. One shot and the demon exploded into a shower of blood and guts. Wyatt came out and we stood for a moment, staring at the mess.

  “Trip to Columbia or freezer?” he asked, nudging a largish chunk with his foot.

  “I’ve got too much to do. I’m thinking of just letting Boomer clean up this one.”

  Like magic, the hound was by my side, floppy ears raised forward in anticipation. I scratched along his back, rubbing the velvety brindle fur. His eyes glowed golden as he looked up at me for permission. The hellhound ate anything as long as it was dead. Didn’t matter what. Didn’t matter how decomposed.

  “Wait until after we leave, then you can have him,” I told Boomer. I didn’t want to watch him eat, and I was certain Wyatt wouldn’t want to either.

  “Want me to come over?” Wyatt asked hopefully. “I can cook something. We can drink wine and watch a movie.”

  Oh, it sounded lovely. “I can’t. I’ve got a two hundred page report I need to do by tomorrow, or I’m going to wind up back in Aaru again.”

  “Think you’ll be able to break for lunch tomorrow? I re–scheduled with Amber.”

  Fuck. “Can we do the day after? Just to be on the safe side?”

  Wyatt nodded. “I found out more of Joseph Barakel while you were gone. The guy in Falls Church was definitely around at the time of the baby exchange, and he’s still living there. Same address. The other one was around too, but it looks like he died a few weeks back.”

  I hoped the dead one wasn’t the one I was looking for. With the way things were going lately, I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, that left one Joseph Barakel to check out. I crossed my fingers, hoping that somehow this would be the one.

  “You are the best, Wyatt. I’ll work on this report for the Ruling Council tonight, and maybe tomorrow we’ll go down and interrogate Joseph Barakel.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “You need to do that one alone, Sam. I’m not sure I can watch you interrogate someone. Promise me you won’t kill him? Or torture and maim him?”

  What was with Wyatt and the torture thing lately?

  “Okay, I promise. No killing or torture. No maiming.” I kissed him. “I missed you. I can’t wait for this all to be over, so we can spend some time together, get rid of this demon barrier and Leethu, and get back to our lives.”

  “Me too,” he whispered, kissing me back. I got the feeling he didn’t believe it—that our golden moment had passed and our lives would never be the same again. That our futures wouldn’t be the idyllic ones we hoped for.

  Back at my house, I threw together a stir–fry, sucked down coffee and looked at the volume of paper Gregory had left for me. I’d hoped it would be a series of boxes to check off, but no, it required a bunch of essays on the deceased human, my reasons and methods of extermination, and a lengthy background on him and his immediate family. Then there was an impact analysis with a bunch of numeric algorithms. That was going to be practically impossible to complete since I didn’t have the angels’ omnipotence. I thought about calling Wyatt and asking him to do the research on the guy’s family, but I’d put so much on his shoulders lately that I hated to keep asking him to do things for me.

  I’d just poured myself a fourth cup of coffee, and was walking back to the table when everything went black and tilted away in a wave of vertigo. I felt myself fall, hit something hard and cold with my side, and heard the coffee cup shatter. Warm liquid splashed against my arm, and my vision swam in a sea of grey with pinpoints of light. As my eyes began to focus, I realized the dots of light were candles in a dim, windowless room. Fighting off the dizziness, I pushed myself to hands and knees on a cold, concrete floor and looked up. Looked up into the faces of three shocked teenage boys.

  “Jake, it worked!” One squeaked, rattling a piece of copier paper in his hands.

  16

  “What is going on here?” I demanded.

  The three boys ignored me and scrutinized their papers. The one in the middle, I’m assuming Jake, frowned.

  “She’s a girl,” he said

  “And she doesn’t look like a demon.” The other’s eyes pivoted back and forth between me and his paper.

  “What is going on here?” I repeated with more force. That got the teenagers’ attention, and they backed a few steps away, toward a washing machine with a basket of laundry on top. I looked around and realized I was in someone’s basement. There was a wooden staircase, stacks of boxes, tools neatly arranged on a peg board. Why was I in someone’s basement?

  Jake cleared his throat. “I would like the answers to next Tuesday’s algebra exam. Robbie would like the new Call of Duty game, Riley….”

  “Dude, you’re saying it all wrong,” one of the other boys interrupted. “You’ve got to use the correct words or it won’t work.”

  There was a slight tug of war over Jake’s paper. “I command you as a southern demon to bring me the new Call of Duty game.” Ah, this must be Robbie.

  “It’s not southern, it’s summoned,” Jake corrected, snatching back the paper.

  Okay. I’d had enough. “Do I look like fucking Santa Claus?”

  Jake looked indignant. “We summoned you into a circle. You have to give us what we want.”

  I knew how this worked, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to perform a service for these boys. And I had no fucking idea how I was supposed to get the answers to an algebra exam.

  “Call of Duty?” I asked Robbie. “Seriously? You summon a demon and you want a video game? Why don’t you just walk down to the store and buy the damned thing yourself?”

  Robbie mumbled something and Jake elbowed him. “His mom won’t let him have it. Says it too violent. The store won’t sell it to him unless his mom signs for it.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Teenagers everywhere were scoring booze from an obliging adult, and this poor kid couldn’t even manage to talk someone into getting him a video game.

  “And what is it you want?” I asked Riley, who was staring at me with huge eyes. I felt like I should invite him to sit on my lap. Maybe give him a candy cane when he was done.

  “A blend whot dig its,” he choked out. I looked at the other two for clarification, thinking Riley was a foreign exchange student.

  “He wants a blond with big tits,” Jake helpfully translated.

  Now that was more my style. I wanted a blond with big tits too. Maybe we could share.

  “Look,” I told them. “I really admire your ingenuity here, but I’m busy right now. Just send me back home and I won’t kill you. Deal?”

  “No.” Jake said with surprising firmness for his age. “We summoned you, and you need to give us what we want. No deal.”

  That was something I was curious about. “How did you summon me? You’re young. You’re clearly not sorcerers or even mages. Did you use a scroll or something?”

  Robbie rustled his paper. “We looked it up on the Internet.”

  And how the fuck was a summoning spell on the Internet? One that worked, that is.

  Riley turned his paper toward m
e. “We downloaded this from a museum website,” he said, finally able to speak articulately. “It’s a thirteenth century spell some dude had when they burned him for witchcraft.”

  Oh great. I stepped closer to the edge of the salt circle and peered at the paper. Riley extended his arms helpfully so I could read it. “Summoning a Devouring Spirit.” I recognized that spell. It had been translated from the original Elvish, no doubt to be copied and sold to a human population. There were portions that had blurred and been destroyed over the years, but the basic framework of the scroll was there, along with Riley’s notes about the well–endowed blond he wanted to request.

  “This is for a devouring spirit. It isn’t the right scroll.”

  “We command you to grant us the answers to the algebra exam, the new Call of Duty game, and….” Jake tried again.

  “De–vour–ing spirit, you fucking morons,” I interrupted. “Devouring. Not granting. There are specific demons that do these things. I’m not one of them.”

  “I want a blond with big tits,” Riley chimed in.

  “The only blond with big tits you’re ever going to get is the kind you blow up with an air compressor. Now send me home. Read the part of the scroll that banishes me and I’ll let you all live to fail your tests, and wank off in your bedrooms without video games.”

  Their eyes were blank. I could swear I heard crickets chirping in the background of the silence. “We command you….” Jake began again, no doubt figuring that if he repeated it enough, I’d get bored and just give him what he wanted.

  “Don’t tell me. You don’t have the banishing part of the spell. You morons summoned a devouring spirit, and didn’t think to make sure you had a way to send it away when you were done.”

  I glanced down at the salt circle. It looked funny—kind of chunky and an odd color.

  “Command you to grant us the answers,” Jake continued.

  I reached down with a finger and swiped the salt. It didn’t burn like it should have. Bringing my finger to my mouth I tasted the bluish crystals.