Satan's Sword

by Debra Dunbar

  “Vampires?” he asked.

  I shooed him away. “The door is welded shut. I really want to finish up here, so if you could just go somewhere and hide, I’ll allow my creative genius reign. I’ll be sure to open the door for you when I leave. Feel free to watch if you want.”

  He clearly didn’t want. He took off into the recesses of the warehouse where I’m sure he was hiding behind a box or under a desk in an office. I wondered how he’d feel when he saw his new tattoo. He’d probably be wearing a Band-Aid over his cheek for the rest of his life.

  I’d just completed my work of art and un-welded the door when I felt a blast knock me to the ground, burning a hole through my hip. It couldn’t be Gregory, he would have had much better aim, I thought as I scrambled on my back to face the angel.

  He was slim and androgynous as they all seemed to be. All except mine anyway. I rolled to avoid a second blast and scooted on the floor, dragging a leg slightly from the damage to my hip, narrowly missing a third blast. Didn’t the fucker know I was off limits? Or maybe my special status had been revoked since I’d last seen Gregory. Just in case, I threw a huge wave of energy at him, knocking him through the wooden side of a crate.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I shouted and set the box on fire. It was pretty impressive to see the angel burst from the burning crate, wreathed in fire but undamaged, like a legendary phoenix.

  He smiled. “The vampires cannot protect you now. They’ll probably be grateful to have such a troublesome guest exterminated.”

  I dodged another blast and launched myself at the angel, knocking him back across the floor with me on top of him. Before he could react, I drove a burst of energy into him and enhanced it with a sonic boom, like the one that had so injured Althean this summer. His eyes grew big.

  “Wait, wait. I didn’t realize you were Tsith’s bound demon. Hold off your attack. I’m in his choir, I can’t battle you, it is forbidden. Hold off.”

  I stood and let him get up. Tsith? He’d called Gregory Tsith? Tsith wasn’t a name, or even a title, it was a term of endearment. A rather embarrassing term of endearment, in my opinion. It was like calling him sweetie pie, or lovey muffin. Ick.

  The angel stood and looked me over, then, with a shimmer of light, transformed into a decidedly female form. A very beautiful female form with white hair cascading in a fine sheet to her shoulders, and bright blue eyes framed with long, gold-tipped lashes. Her pale pink lips puckered with consideration as she continued to assess me. I wondered what she was thinking.

  “I’m Samantha Martin.” I put out my hand. Might as well introduce myself. I wasn’t sure which of my names Gregory knew, what he called me. Besides cockroach, that was. I felt a fierceness inside me at the thought of this angel calling me cockroach. I’d kill her if she called me that name. Only my angel could call me that.

  “I’m Eloa.” She refused my outstretched fingers.

  Eloa meant pity, mercy. It was an odd choice of angels to be a liaison to the vampires. Although I was sure the angel’s idea of mercy and pity wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. There wasn’t a lot of pity in her eyes as she examined every inch of me. Curiosity, excitement, uneasy wonder, and faint disgust was written clear as could be on her face.

  “Um. You don’t think we could possibly keep this thing between you and me, do you?” I asked, gesturing at the stack of body parts. “There’s no need to tell your boss that I’ve been a bad girl. I can make it worth your while.”

  She gave me a rather nasty smile, and continued to look me over. Gregory was going to fucking kill me over this weekend’s events.

  “I guess that’s a yes? A maybe?”

  She examined me further, ignoring my question.

  “Why are you staring at me? Do I have bits of human in my teeth or something?” I was feeling like a zoo animal about to be poked, prodded, and catalogued. Plus, I was getting the odd notion that she was assessing me as a rival.

  That perfect bow of a mouth turned up in an innocent smile. “You have no idea the uproar you’ve caused among the angelic host. Tsith binding you is pretty notable since he hasn’t bound a demon in thousands of years. He always just kills them.”

  She said the last bit with pride, and let her eyes once again wander over me, this time in open scorn. I wished she’d stop calling him that name. It was creeping me out.

  “Some theorized that Tsith was planning to infiltrate your realm and use you to destroy the demons once and for all, but when you managed to gate into Aaru and drop a dead bird there, a virtual panic ensued. No demon can get into Aaru, none. Scholars will debate for tens of thousands of years on how you managed that one. Then you sneak in again, and leave a pile of smoldering excrement.”

  I felt a little guilty at that one. I’d been so furious at Gregory, and a flaming bag of dog poop seemed like the perfect gift.

  “No one is sure what Tsith’s intentions are, what he plans to do with you, but a few have dared question his ability to keep you under control.”

  She said this as though she personally wanted to do away with these doubters.

  “What do you think?” I asked, curious of her reaction as well as her answer. I wasn’t let down.

  “It is not my place to wonder about my Tsith’s intentions. He is old, powerful. His knowledge and purity allow him an omnipotence others can only dream of. I live only to serve him.”

  Yikes. She was really on a roll here. And now she was referring to him as “my Tsith.” As if he would be remotely interested in a boring sycophant like her. I frowned at the angel, but she was oblivious to my irritation.

  “Every time someone mentions ending your existence, Tsith gets furious and commands that no one is allowed to harm or kill you. That only he has that privilege.”

  How nice that he was saving me for himself. I wondered how much time I had left. I was hoping that I could somehow manage to kill this nauseating angel before he did me in. I was beginning to hate her.

  “And it is his privilege.” Clearly the humans weren’t the only ones who worshiped my angel. “You are bound to him, you are his property, and no one should presume to touch what he claims.”

  Fuck her. I might be bound, but it wasn’t as if I were an inanimate possession, a rug or a chair. I realized she’d be happy if I were a trophy on his wall though. Gritting my teeth, I pushed down my detest for her, with her floaty white hair and pouty little mouth. I needed information, and she was hardly going to give it to me if she thought I was a threat, or if she thought I was a rival for her Tsith’s affections. Blech.

  “Don’t get your halo in a knot or anything,” I reassured her. “I think whatever usefulness I pose is coming to an end, and it’s clear, based on our last encounter, that he won’t hesitate to kill me when he’s ready.”

  She looked at me, no doubt trying to decide if I was the equivalent of a chair or not.

  “Seriously,” I insisted. “I’m nothing but an annoyance to him.”

  I saw her relax slightly.

  “Let’s go get a drink, or maybe some nachos, and chat,” I suggested casually. Then I sealed the deal.

  “He talks about you all the time, you know,” I said with a tinge of sad regret, as if I longed for him to speak that way about me. “It’s always Eloa this, Eloa that. The only one he can trust to really get the job done, his right hand.”

  I saw her glow and nod in agreement.

  Chapter 24

  The bar was a bit of an issue. It seems humans don’t want to serve drinks to someone covered in blood and gore with bullet holes riddling their clothing. Eloa had to wave her delicate little hands around and pout a bit to get them to ignore my existence. Of course, that now meant she had to order the drinks.

  “Get me a vodka,” I ordered. “Tell them I want it cold. And not the cheap shit, either.”

  I was beginning to wish she’d go back to her androgynous male form. The Marilyn Monroe thing was grating on me big-time.

  Eloa ordered two vodkas, and with a littl
e smirk pulled something out of her pocket. I couldn’t believe it. A joint. The angel seriously had a joint of marijuana on her. Completely ignoring human, and probably angelic, laws, she lit it up and offered it to me after taking a puff. I didn’t hesitate. After all, I am a demon.

  “Hot damn, this is nice,” I said passing the joint back to her. Maybe Marilyn Monroe wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Yes, it’s one of the more palatable things of this world.” She took a puff, her pink lips framing the joint in languid seduction.

  “Try the vodka. That stuff rocks, too. It’s so much better than that crappy wine the elves are always foisting on us.”

  She threw down the shot and held up the empty glass, raising an eyebrow in speculation. “It goes well with this burning weed wrapped in paper.”

  Okay, this angel was growing on me. I’ll admit I liked the gate guardian with her snarky humor and her gluttonous cravings for sweet and sour sauce, but an angel that liked pot and vodka was like a kindred spirit. Why couldn’t Gregory be more like this? We’d have a total blast together if I could get him to enjoy alcohol and drugs.

  “You seem pretty cool, the gate guardian seems pretty cool. Why does your Tsith have such a massive stick up his ass?”

  The word stuck a bit in my mouth. I can’t believe I actually called Gregory “Tsith.” Eloa stiffened, no doubt offended that I’d think an angel had a stick up his ass. Still, I was curious why he wasn’t like the other angels I’d met to date.

  “You can’t really expect him to be friendly and loving after what went down during the war.”

  They’d all been through the war. They were all really stinking old. That couldn’t be the reason, unless there was something specific that happened during the war that I was unaware of. I expected that they’d all be less than friendly and loving after the war, not hanging out with me in a bar drinking vodka and getting high.

  “I don’t really know what happened,” I confessed. “I’m not even a thousand years old, and we don’t really talk about it. I would have thought all you guys would have been thrilled to be done with us though.”

  “The war took a toll on us.” Eloa paused to take a drag on the joint and pass it back. “Our two races may have differences, but a total split like this was painful. Friends, families broken apart, entire choirs fractured. We don’t even know what happened to those we knew before the war. There has been no communication since that point. Are they dead? Do they care anymore? Have they descended so far into evil that we wouldn’t recognize them if we saw them?”

  The bartender sat two more vodkas in front of her. She pushed one over to me with a slightly distracted look on her face.

  “Some wonder if the things that broke us apart were worth it. You all got exile, but I think we probably got the worse end of the stick. Aaru is not the same. It’s stagnant there. Our evolution has dropped to a crawl.”

  “Do you think your Tsith regrets the war, wishes things had gone down differently?” I held my breath. Her answer meant a lot to me.

  “Tsith led the charge into battle. He commanded the army, was one of those who advocated holding firm on our morals and values, who insisted that the demons either repent or die. He lost his youngest brother in the war, his favorite.”

  Fuck. I remembered him telling me about his youngest brother. The one he’d played in the lightning with, the one he loved the most. Dead. Something tightened up inside me at the thought.

  “He was in hand-to-hand combat with the Iblis that final battle of the war. They nearly killed each other. He sliced the Iblis practically in half but not before he’d had his wings torn to shreds, almost cut off.”

  I winced. Wings for us are just an appendage. For angels, they are their most vulnerable spot. They seldom display them in corporeal form if they can avoid it.

  Eloa shuddered. “You don’t normally survive losing your wings. He still has terrible scars.”

  I wasn’t sure if she meant scars on his wings, or other scars. Probably both. My heart sank further. He wouldn’t regret what happened between our races. Not if he was one of the main drivers of the war. He’d lost his brother in the war, had his wings nearly severed. He’d never feel anything but hate for me. He’d never see me as anything more than an abomination, never anything more than a lowly cockroach.

  “It’s been two and a half million years and there hasn’t been any attempt at reconciliation?” Gregory might never forgive or forget, but surely the other angels wouldn’t have such wounds.

  “There is no Iblis. Right after the exile, the title was lost and no one bears it. Who would we contact? The Iblis is the sole demon who is allowed access into Aaru. The Iblis has a seat on the Ruling Council. The entire treaty was set up to allow some form of contact and mutual cooperation in matters concerning us both, but instead there has been a total split. The seat on the council remains empty, and increasingly there are those that think total separation is best and the seat for the Iblis should be wiped from the treaty.”

  I drank the vodka and stared at the bar. I thought of Gregory, his dead brother at his feet, his wings in tatters, meting out fury upon a horned, scaled Iblis. Images of war were normally pleasant, but this one churned my stomach. The whole conversation was making me depressed. And I’d had such a good evening, too. Stupid fucking angel with her stories of the war.

  “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you.” I abruptly rose and threw a twenty on the bar. I needed to get away from here, away from her, away from the sick feeling in my middle. She looked at me in surprise. I could feel her eyes on me as I left the bar.

  Kelly was waiting for me at the hotel lobby. The polite mask was on her face, but she was clearly furious. The sight cheered me up considerably.

  “Baal, we are so glad you are safe.” Her tone didn’t sound glad. “When you did not return after your hunt, we tracked you and were quite concerned when we saw the carnage in the warehouse.”

  “I’m good,” I assured her. “Hey do you guys have any Nacho Cheese Doritos? I seriously need some Nacho Cheese Doritos right now.”

  The muscle in her jaw twitched. In fact, even her eye twitched a bit at the edge.

  “We had an understanding,” she hissed. “One kill. One. You’ve destabilized the power structure of a major drug operation, one that makes us a lot of money. It will be neigh impossible to prop them up before a rival group jumps in. We had control, we had cooperation, and you’ve destroyed all that. One night, and you’ve destroyed a decade’s worth of work.”

  Yeah, and I knew her secret, too. Little traitor. Little snake in the grass. Embezzler, siphoning funds from her family’s interests. I admired her, but she was reaching too far, too fast.

  “How about Cool Ranch? If you don’t have Nacho Cheese Doritos, then maybe Cool Ranch will do.”

  “And that freakish, sick thing you did with the bodies? I had to send in vampires to deal with it. It was too much for my humans to handle. Now other vampires know. They know that I allowed you to get out of control. I’ll be blamed for this whole fiasco.” Her smile was downright frightening at this point. An insane looking grimace on her heart-shaped face.

  “It was a work of art,” I said, with a flourish of my hand. “I hope they enjoyed it, appreciated how much of myself I put into it.”

  “An angel was there. Eloa probably. I have never lost a guest to an angel. The only saving event this evening is that he didn’t catch up with you or you’d be dead and my reputation would be in even greater shambles.”

  “Oh, but he did. Or she did,” I corrected myself. “He looked like a pouty Marilyn Monroe. We went out to a bar, drank vodka, and smoked pot.”

  Kelly audibly ground her teeth. At least that macabre smile was gone from her face.

  “Are you sure you don’t have any Nacho Cheese Doritos?” I asked again. “I think I saw some in one of the vending machines if you don’t.”

  Kelly snapped. Fangs shot down so fast that they actually cut her lip.

  “I am going
to shove Doritos so far up your rear that you’ll be coughing them up for a week,” she shouted, punctuating her words with a finger on my chest. Vampires were strong; I could feel her finger actually bruising me.

  “I am going to cram Doritos in every hole. I’ll jam them clean up through your sinuses and into your brain. I’ll make new holes in your body to stuff them. You screwed me. You totally screwed me.”

  At this point, every two-legged being in the lobby had stopped and was staring at Kelly. I noticed Stephen with a smug look on his face. Guess that promotion was looking better for him.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “Just send the Doritos up to my room and meet me up there. Wyatt might be interested in some Doritos-in-the-ass action, too. I don’t want to leave him out.”

  I walked out of the silent lobby and headed straight to my room. Things were probably going to go down real fast from this point forward, and I needed to find Wyatt and tell him the score.

  Wyatt was a big lump of covers in the bed as I walked in. I seriously needed to talk to him about his sleeping habits. He slept so soundly that an explosion wasn’t likely to wake him. He was going to get himself killed if he didn’t alter that habit. To help make my point, I ran across the room and launched myself on top of him, finding only a pile of pillows and blankets. Maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed after all. I swung my head upside down over the edge of the bed to look under it, suspecting he might be sleeping there. Thankfully he wasn’t. It looked like no one had cleaned under the bed in months. I’d need to talk to Kelly about this. If Kelly was still alive, that is.

  “Sam? It’s about time you got back,” Wyatt’s groggy voice said from the closet. “I got bumped out of the tournament fairly early on. Looks like you had a good night,” he added seeing my blood and gore stained clothing.

  “I had such a good night that we are going to need to put our sneak-out plan into action.” I walked over to kiss him.

  “Whoa, you really did have a good night. You reek of pot. Was that part of the spoils of war?”