by Debra Dunbar
Next in the Imp Series
Satan's Sword
-1-
I stuck my index finger in the pan and watched the oil bubble up around it, searing and cooking the flesh. "It's hot enough," I said, pulling my finger out and dumping in the pancetta. It sizzled, splashing me a bit on my arm.
Candy frowned. "I wish you wouldn't do that. It really freaks me out."
Just to mess with her further, I put my finger in my mouth and pulled off the cooked bit, chewing and swallowing before creating a new fingertip. "I've got to see if the oil is hot enough before I put in the meat or it'll be all greasy." Candy looked revolted.
Wyatt came into my kitchen and planted a kiss on my lips.
Wyatt was my sexy human neighbor, and my boyfriend. We'd flirted and palled around for the two years since he moved in next door, but this summer things had gotten hot and heavy between us. He was my best friend. Everything was better with Wyatt around.
"Ewwww. I can't believe you kissed her on the mouth. She just ate her finger, you know?" Candy choked out.
Wyatt grinned. "Tastes like bacon."
Did I mention how much I liked Wyatt?
"By the way, your red light is on," he added.
Fuck. It was Dar. Again.
Dar was my foster brother. He'd been calling me and leaving messages for months now on the mirror I use as an interrealm communication device. I always deleted them without listening because he was a pest, but the calls were becoming more frequent.
"You really should see what he wants," Wyatt said. "Otherwise he'll never leave you alone."
He was right. And I was beginning to worry a bit about the constant messages. Demons may not have the same kind of relationships as humans, but we do form attachments and care about others in our own way. Dar and I had grown up together. We'd pulled each other out of a lot of jams. Gotten each other into a lot of jams, too, but that's pretty common with demons.
"Can you just erase it?" I asked Wyatt. "I promise I'll call him after dinner."
"Units all full for the winter," Michelle announced as she entered my kitchen, raising her hand for a high five.
Michelle was my property manager, handling all of my slum rental units with great skill. I valued her expertise and made sure she had lots of bonuses under the table to keep her loyalty unswerving.
"You rented the last two then?" I asked. People didn't like to move over the winter, so it was good to have all your rentals full by mid fall. That way they stayed full until spring.
She nodded, snagging a piece of pumpkin bread from the table. Michelle did not come by her svelte figure through starvation.
"Cash, too," she mumbled with her mouth full.
Cash was good. That meant the units remained unrented as far as the IRS was concerned, and all the rental income was taxfree. Nice. Nice for Michelle, too, who got a larger-than-usual cut of cash tenants.
"Speaking of apartments, don't forget the walkthrough on those canal row houses tomorrow morning," Candy interjected.
I'd wanted to buy those dilapidated properties along the canal for years. Foreclosures aren't always a good deal, but Candy was handling the sale for the bank, and I was sure she had greatly influenced them in their agreeableness.
Candy was downright demonic when it came to planning, scheming, and working events to her advantage. She was also a werewolf. She had lied to me, manipulated and blackmailed me into helping her find and take out a rogue angel this past summer. I'd almost died. I liked her. Deviousness was a trait I valued in a friend.
"Why the walkthrough?" I asked, stirring the pancetta. "I already signed off on the inspections." The places really should have been condemned, but I prevailed by generously greasing an inspector's palm.
"Formality," Candy shrugged. "Hey, what do you want to do about the squatters? There is a new member of my pack that has guard training if you're looking for someone to move them out and keep them out. He enjoys that sort of thing, so the fee would be reasonable."
Squatters. Normally I'd handle them myself, but homeless people tended to have mental health problems, and my kind doesn't do well in encounters with the mentally ill. They recognize demons for who we are and refuse to leave us alone. I've had crazies follow me all over downtown, screaming at me, throwing salt on me, entreating every religious deity they know to remove me from this dimension. I can't manage them, can't intimidate them, can't reason with them. They're difficult to kill, they taste bad, and are very unpleasant to Own. I'd gladly pay a werewolf to deal with these nut jobs for me. Of course, even homeless, insane people could be profited from.
"Michelle, how much should I charge squatters to live in an almost-condemned building with no running water or electricity?"
Michelle looked thoughtfully at her slice of pumpkin bread. "A dollar a day? You'd need to collect it every day since they can't save worth a darn, and any money they stockpiled would be stolen by the others."
"There's no way they can come up with a dollar a day," Wyatt chimed in. "They're homeless, Sam. Just let them stay there for free."
I ignored him. I have very strong feelings for Wyatt, but he's too generous sometimes. Which is probably why he's so poor.
"That's seven buck a week," I protested. "I think we can charge more than that. Shit, I gave one of them five bucks to carry an air conditioning unit up three flights of stairs for me this summer."
I could have carried the air conditioning unit up myself, but it had been fun to watch the guy struggle up the stairs with it, sweating gin the whole way.
"I think you could get a buck or two a day," Candy said.
Michelle waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. "I can't handle this one for you. If there are problems, it would open up a whole can of worms with all your other properties. It would be best to do this one separate from your other investments."
I thought for a moment. "Candy, can your guy meet us for the walkthrough tomorrow? Do you think he'd be interested in this kind of thing? I'd need him to collect the rent on a daily basis, take a count of tenants, and keep the peace as a guard for maybe an hour at night, until everyone is settled in."
"Oh yeah. Reed just moved up from Georgia, and he's eager to prove his loyalty. I appreciate you considering him. He hasn't found work yet, and a wolf with idle time on his hands is never a good thing."
This could be a good thing. I hadn't planned on renovating these houses for a few years, and it would be nice to have some income out of them, no matter how small. Plus an occupied property, even by crazy homeless people, wouldn't be as likely to be gutted for copper pipes. They wouldn't sue me if the roof fell in on their heads, and a werewolf rent collector would make everything run smoothly. Wyatt wouldn't be thrilled, but he'd been more accepting of these things since learning I was a demon.
I stuck my hand into the boiling water to swirl it around a bit and pluck out a strand of fettuccini to test. Breaking the noodle in half, I handed part to Candy with my scalded hand.
"I think it's done. What do you think?"
"I think I'm going to check the table setting before I'm totally turned off by my dinner."
It was ready. I fixed my hand and Wyatt helped toss the noodles with the pancetta, roasted garlic, artichoke, and sun dried tomatoes. Michelle pulled the wine out of the fridge and carried it into the dining area while Wyatt took in the pasta and made one last trip to snag the garlic bread out of the oven.
I may be a demon, but I loved these evenings with my friends, sharing food and laughing over stories. We had a lively debate concerning the prospects of favorite football teams this season, made fun of the latest Hollywood scandal, and speculated on whether there would be enough snow to warrant shelling out for season ski passes at the nearby resort. I knew Michelle skied. She'd flown out to Aspen with some friends last year for a week, and I'd bought her an expensive set of goggles she'd been eyeing as a present this past Christmas.
"I'm going to wait," Michelle said in regards to the season pass. "I'd rather go out w
est. The slopes are so icy here, and what little powder there is gets stacked way up on the edges. Too much corn in the middle, too. It's just not fun."
"You need to keep your edges super sharp," Wyatt told her, digging into the pasta bowl for seconds. Wyatt was a snowboarder, of course. We'd gone to the local spots quite a bit last year and I had just as much fun drooling over him at the rails and jumps as I did skiing.
"Fresh wax weekly, too, to keep the slush from sticking," Candy added.
I had all kinds of lewd comments I wanted to make about Candy's need to wax so often, no doubt because of her hairy wolf self, but I kept it clean for once.
"You ski?" I asked Candy.
"Of course."
We all stared. Candy looked midfifties, but I'd learned she was actually sixtytwo. Werewolves lived longer than humans and tended to be fit and active right up to their end, but I just couldn't imagine her skiing. It wasn't just her age, either. Candy was not the hip and trendy type. She was meticulous, shrewd, calculating, and obsessive about control. She could have been an angel she was such a control freak. Maybe she was more of a snow bunny, shushing the slopes in her thousand dollar parka.
"What?" she asked me. "I'll bet I'm better than you."
Wyatt snorted. "Natives from deep in the tropical jungle would ski better than Sam. She just points her tips down the fall line and barrels down the slope at a hundred miles an hour, knocking everyone out of her way. The slope looks like a war zone by the time she reaches the bottom. We almost got kicked out last winter. I had to promise them she'd take lessons. They were ready to pull her lift ticket and ban her."
I ski like I ride horses, unfortunately. "I'm fast. I'd beat everyone in a race."
"That's because unlike you, we need to reach the bottom in one piece." Michelle laughed. "You could snap every bone in your body, still finish, and repair yourself before the paramedics left the station."
"She broke two sets of skis last year," Wyatt continued. "Two! Broke them right in half. And I can't tell you the number of poles she's gone through. Not just bending them either. She throws them from the lift, like a javelin, to see if she can impale random woodland creatures."
"Hey, it's not just me," I protested. "I gave you one of my poles and we sword fought with them going down the slopes. That was your idea. And you were throwing snowballs down on the metal roof of the Jbar lift shack, totally freaking out the attendant."
"You are a bad influence on me," Wyatt scolded.
"That's my job," I told them. "Tempt you all into sin and bad behavior."
"Well, I'm forgoing the local action and heading out west with Michelle this winter where I'm less likely to get killed by a broken ski or a pole to the head." Candy commented.
"Let me know," Michelle told her. "I'm thinking Jackson Hole."
After dinner, everyone pitched in for a quick cleanup while Candy put on coffee and brought out the cheesecake.
"How are things going for you guys?" I asked Candy when we were alone in the kitchen. "Do you have a new angel supervising you yet?"
With their previous supervising angel, Althean, reduced to a pile of sand, the head enforcing angel, Gregory, had been temporarily overseeing the werewolves and their ridiculously strict existence contract.
I'm the only demon ever to have survived an encounter with Gregory. He'd bound me, and now I was living with his brand on the inner part of my right arm. From what I gather, it's a kind of homing beacon. It's also supposed to compel me to obey, but that part doesn't seem to work. Oh, and if I rub it I fall apart into an orgasmic mess. Very inconvenient since it's on my damned arm.
Gregory allowed me to stay alive and remain here as long as I abided by certain rules. Demons are not very good with rules, and I'll admit I've been pushing the limits here and there to see what I could get away with. It had been eight weeks since I saw him last. That should be a good thing, but truth be told, I'm a bit obsessed with him. I've been escalating my energy usage hoping he couldn't resist coming to yell at me. I've even taken to masturbating with the tattoo, knowing that it affects him, too. I know, annoying a powerful being that is going to eventually kill me isn't smart, but I'm a demon. It's what we do.
Candy shook her head. "No, Gregory is still our contact, but we've been told we'll have someone new by next week. He's not so bad actually. Strict. Scary beyond belief. You can't read him at all. It's difficult to know how he feels about us as a species."
Many angels thought the werewolves were Nephilim, the result of fallen angels who bred with humans thousands of years ago. Recently, some of these angels had been taking matters into their own hands and were trying to exterminate the werewolves.
"Althean said there was a group that felt the way he did and the killings would continue," I told her, reluctant to add to her paranoia. "Plus, Gregory indicated that all is not peachy in Aaru, either, so you all may not want to relax yet."
"Aaru is their home?"
"Yeah. I've never been there since we're forbidden under the treaty between our races. I have no idea what it's like. Probably sucks. From what Gregory told me in August, they have some political unrest. I'm thinking they always have political unrest though. Can you imagine? Hundreds of thousands of those assholes in one place? Sheesh."
Candy shuddered. "Just between us, I fight the urge to expose my belly and pee every time I'm in the same room as one."
I snorted. The image of Candy sprawled naked on her back leaking urine was just hysterical.
"Yeah. I fight the urge to hump their legs every time I'm in the same room as them." Not that I was particularly attracted to angels. I'd fuck pretty much anything.
Candy rolled her eyes and headed in with the cheesecake. The others helped themselves to a sliver of the dessert and a cup of coffee while I showed everyone how I'd mastered the sin of gluttony by scarfing down three big pieces. It had caramel and pecan bits swirled through it in a gooey mess. I wanted to eat more, but I was worried I might explode.
It was nearing midnight when Candy and Michelle headed home. Candy had left the remaining half of the cheesecake for me to eat. Curse her. I'd need to run a fucking marathon to burn the calories off. Wyatt helped with the last of the dishes and took the opportunity to grab me and plant seductive kisses down my neck as I washed out the coffee pot.
"Mmmm, that's nice," I told him leaning back against his chest. "But I think I'm going to puke."
I felt him laugh, which didn't do much for my overfull stomach.
"That sexy talk turns me on so," he said. "You shouldn't have gorged yourself on all the cheesecake. If you're going to eat like that, you'll need to install a Romanstyle vomitorium."
"And eat in a reclining position," I agreed. "Go put in a movie and I'll be right in."
I finished the coffee pot and looked at the drops of water in the sink. They were like tears on the sides of the stainless steel.
I'd been working on things. Back home, for the first nine hundred some years of my life, I had great joy throwing about blasts of destruction. Now I found myself on a strange course of continuing education. Trying to learn things that my kind would scoff at. Things like manipulation of elements. Tight, controlled, almost elegant displays of power.
Concentrating, I drew the drops of water down into the basin and together. This wasn't easy for me. I'd been trying to do this for eight weeks. I never worked so hard on something in my life. It looked so easy when he did it. That angel made everything look easy.
I had to focus all my attention on pulling the water drops and holding them into a ball in the sink basin. I held the ball there for a moment to ensure that it was perfectly round and that the hydrostatic pressure and surface tension were equalized. Then I lifted, suspending gravity in a narrow rim around the edge. The ball quivered, becoming wobbly like gelatin, before it stabilized and rose to hover above the rim of the sink. Joy flooded me at the success after so many failures and I squealed, dropping my concentration and letting the globe splashed back into the sink. I did it! Fin
ally some progress. Nowhere near what he'd done, but progress still.
Wyatt ran in to see what the commotion was about.
"Watch this, watch."
I pulled the water together again and held the ball suspended above the sink.
"Cool." Wyatt was clearly unimpressed. "What are you supposed to do with it? Drown your enemies? Launch it at people like a water balloon?"
That was a good idea. I'd have to remember that one.
"No, it's just practice. I'm trying to get better at my control over water. Maybe then I'll move on to air or fire."
"Well, that's very nice. Let's go watch the movie," Wyatt urged.
Humph. The angel would have been impressed. Or maybe not. He might have just made fun of me for my crappy imitation of him.
Wyatt and I spent the evening curled up on the couch watching whatever struck our fancy. I loved cuddling up with Wyatt this way. This summer, I'd nearly Owned him, come close to ripping the life right out of him to possess him forever within myself. It had shaken him badly and almost ruined our fledgling relationship. Since then I'd been careful to not show Wyatt too much of the darkness that filled me. Still, I worried. What if I lost control and killed him? What if Wyatt saw me in my terrifying, unfeeling glory? He seemed to accept the fact that I was a demon, but I lived with the nagging worry that one day it would prove too much for him. One day, he'd decide it was all too weird and walk out of my life forever.
Around two in the morning, we dozed off sprawled all over each other, only to wake up around five. Wyatt threw an afghan over me and headed back to his house while I snuggled into my couch pillows and went back to sleep. I'd forgotten to call Dar.
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About the Author
Debra Dunbar primarily writes dark fantasy, but has been known to put her pen to paranormal romance, young adult fiction, and urban fantasy on occasion. She lives on a farm in the northeast section of the United States with her husband, three boys, and a Noah's ark of four legged family members. When she can sneak out, she likes to jog and ride her horse, Treasure. Treasure, on the other hand, would prefer Debra stay on the ground and feed him apples.
Connect with Debra Dunbar on Facebook at DebraDunbarAuthor, on Twitter @Debra_Dunbar, or at her website.
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Other Books By Debra Dunbar
The Imp Series
A DEMON BOUND (Book 1)
SATAN'S SWORD (Book 2)
ELVEN BLOOD (Book 3)
DEVIL'S PAW (Book 4)
IMP FORSAKEN (Book 5)
ANGEL OF CHAOS (Book 6)
IMP (Imp Series, prequel novella)
KINGDOM OF LIES (Book 7) Fall, 2015 Release
Books in the Imp World
NO MAN'S LAND
STOLEN SOULS
THREE WISHES
Half-Breed Series.
DEMONS OF DESIRE (Book 1)
SINS OF THE FLESH (Book 2) Summer, 2015 Release
UNHOLY PLEASURES (Book 3) Spring 2016 Release
