by Debra Dunbar
Fifteen percent. And as I’d said, those were the ones most likely to comply. Grigori were now in charge of issuing visas and stamping passports. Leave it to the angels to come up with more bureaucracy. Registering and tracking the somewhat law-abiding would do no good if the ones more likely and able to break the rules were easily slipping through.
But I couldn’t really blame Gregory or this gate guardian for that. It was my fault that I couldn’t enforce some basic rule of law among my own people. This should have been my responsibility to control who was coming through the gates from Hel, not the angels’.
But that problem was more than I could solve at the moment. Right now I needed to focus my efforts on who killed these enforcers.
“Is this what happened with the demon that Humiel went after?” I asked the girl. “The demon came through and took off, and you called an enforcer?”
She shuffled her feet, staring down at them. “I’m not allowed to leave my post any longer, not after the other gate guardian got jumped. He wasn’t anything special, this demon. I didn’t think he’d be too much of a problem, but after he got through he turned around and attacked me. Then he blew up three cars and a café. It was during the lunchtime rush. Twenty people were killed and fifty were injured.”
“And while all this was going on you were…” I raised my eyebrows.
She glared at me. “Mostly hiding behind that wall over there. I’m a gate guardian. I’ve got limited fighting skills. And this demon was very, very motivated. I’ve never had one come out swinging like that and I’ve been guarding gates for the last eighty years.”
We came out swinging lots of times. Well, others had. I’d always preferred the sneaky approach because in a one-on-one fight with a gate guardian, I’d never been a hundred percent confident that I would prevail. Other demons came through the gates planning to throw off the guardian with an attack, but usually used the surprise of that attack to then get the hell away. No one really wanted a battle on their hands, because enforcers were one quick cry for help away, and outside of a few high-level demons and Ancients, no one wanted to face an enforcer.
And no one wanted to come out of a gate and kill a bunch of humans. Humans were often used for support in sneaking through. If a demon had a cute, helpless physical form, then the humans would often gang up on the gate guardian and provide an opportunity for the demon to escape. Some homeless guy picking on a yelping puppy? Instant mob mentality. There was no reason to kill a bunch of humans. All that would do was bring the enforcers down quick.
Gregory turned to me. “Killing humans is the one of the few things that unties an enforcer’s hands. If a demon kills humans or an angel, the enforcers are allowed to respond with whatever force they deem necessary.”
Before he’d changed things, that force had always been allowed. And I worried that that’s what we were heading back to.
“I’m guessing they’re happy for any reason to dial that force up to eleven?” There were some angels who were eager to patch things up between us and them. Enforcers were not those angels. They’d seen the worst of demons over the millennia, and I didn’t imagine they were willing to give any of us the benefit of the doubt. Gregory’s newly implemented restrictions had probably chafed mightily.
“You are correct. I know they all hope for the chance, any chance, to catch a demon doing something that would spell his death sentence.”
“So this was a trap, just like with the previous gate guardian, only this trap was meant for one of your enforcers. And whoever did it, did it seven times.”
Gregory’s expression turned grim. “Yes, and whoever killed the enforcers, it wasn’t the one who they were chasing. You saw what happened to Humiel. There’s no way a mid-level demon could have done that to an enforcer.”
“So instead of leading the angel into a crowd of demons to take him out, he led him into a crowd of demons and an Ancient.”
The gate guardian shivered and wrapped her arms around her chest. “If the Fallen are going to start coming through the gates, if I have to deal with a battle-hardened former angel that we fought nearly three million years ago, I’ll be killed.”
“You’ll call for enforcers, and get out of the way,” Gregory told her. “I’ll have one right here with you, on high-alert and ready to immediately answer the call.”
“But the humans,” she looked around at the people strolling by, avoiding the sections with the police tape and blocked-off areas from the explosions. Even the recent violent events hadn’t kept the humans more than a hundred or so feet from the area.
“We can’t move the gate,” Gregory told her. “It would require too much power and the archangels cannot be weak right now. Is there something we can do to move the humans? To keep the humans at a greater distance?”
She shot him a disbelieving look. “Uh, no? They work here. They live here. You can’t just close down a city, saying it’s a quarantine or something.”
“What are they calling this?” I gestured toward the burned-out building and the blackened spots of pavement where the cars had exploded. “Terrorism, probably. Humans are twitchy right now. They’ve got bad guys of their own to deal with, and now they also have elves and dragons and angels and demons and harpies and shit. All you have to do is yell ‘bomb’ and these people are all going to instantly become Olympic sprinters.” It might not save them all, but I was willing to bet it would be hard for a demon to do some sort of mass murder with people scurrying away in panic.
“Then I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.”
Gregory and the gate guardian began discussing logistics, a bunch of protocols and how to discourage humans from being in the area. I looked around, feeling a twinge of nostalgia. I’d come through this gate so many times. That other gate guardian…I didn’t even remember his name. Did I even know his name? Dead. Seven enforcers dead. Thousands of angels dead—although I wasn’t quite ready to admit it was murder by demon.
Walking over to one of the blackened spots in the road, I knelt down and touched the scorched mark, feeling the faint trace of residual energy from the demon’s attack. It wasn’t much, but if I ever ran across this guy, maybe I’d recognize him. As I touched the spot, I felt as if all the air were sucked out of the street, felt as if the buildings were bowing down to close in on me. I swayed, nearly toppling over.
The energy. The demon. A tiny thread that extended from deep within my spirit-self outward, connecting us. In an instant I felt him, saw him—a demon in the form of a teenage punk, sprawled on a bench with his feet stretched out in front of him. There was a ratty black feather in his hand, and he stared at it intently, his eyes flaring orange behind the brown irises.
Then nothing. Just me squatting down in the middle of a blocked-off street, my hand on a greasy, oily smear of black. I looked up and around at the passing humans, at the police tape, the parking meters, the little grassy park down the street with a fountain. There was nothing here that looked at all like what I’d seen in that weird vision, but I’d felt him. I’d seen him. And there was a lingering intuition that he was close.
Although close could be halfway across the state, or right in front of me. Just in case, I continued to look around, but there was no young punk on a bench holding a feather, only two middle-aged blonde women sitting by the fountain, a businessman talking on his phone as he walked by, a harried teacher herding six preschoolers, and a really ugly guy half-hidden by an awning, watching Gregory and the gate guardian. I frowned, feeling that strange connected sensation again—there for a split second, then gone.
Hey. I knew that guy.
I stood and walked around some singed, parked cars, but by the time I got to the other side of the street he’d gone. Weird. What was he doing here?
“Cockroach? Are you ready?”
I turned to find Gregory crossing the street toward me. The gate guardian had returned to her post, and was texting on her phone and drinking a soda. I looked back to the awning. Gone.
Or
maybe not.
“Yeah, I’m done.” I headed over to Gregory feeling that creepy feeling you get when someone’s watching you. I concentrated, trying to see if I could recapture that connected sense again, but it slipped away.
Gregory went down some steps toward the waterfront. A few blocks away was the market, and a sweet coffee shop I’d always loved to frequent. At least, I hoped it was still there. It had been a while since I’d hung out in Seattle.
“Let’s not tell the others about the energy signature on the remains,” I spoke up. “Not until we’re sure it’s him. No sense in getting everyone worked up.”
“I was thinking the same,” he agreed.
We headed down another set of steps, then the angel stopped at the edge of the market and stared out into the Sound. “This all falls on your shoulders, Cockroach.”
“Find the Ancient responsible for these murders and neutralize him,” I said, knowing exactly what he meant.
The archangel hesitated. “Let’s begin with finding out exactly what’s going on, then discussing a plan to handle it once we have the facts.”
“Because you don’t think I can handle this without backup?”
“No. There are other, more personal, reasons I need to be involved in this.”
Ah. Because he feared that the energy signature on that dead enforcer was what he thought it was. He feared that Samael was alive, and that his brother was systematically killing angels.
I felt the caress of his spirit-self. “If it’s him…I don’t want him to kill you, Cockroach. You’ve integrated a portion of my spirit-self. Our joining means that I carry your energy signature just as you carry mine. I worry that if you confront him, he’ll best you and kill you because what you mean to me is obvious to anyone with wings and he will want me to suffer.”
I winced, hating that Gregory was imagining his brother this way. And I knew although he had faith in my ability to handle myself in a tough situation, he feared my sword might abandon me for its original owner, and that I might hesitate to kill the brother of my beloved.
I feared the same.
Chapter 5
I made some excuse to Gregory why I couldn’t return with him—something about wanting to buy fresh salmon and TP the Space Needle—then I headed down the side street where I’d seen the Low, hoping I could still find him.
Lows don’t leave much of an energy signature because they don’t really have much of one to begin with, so this was a bit like a bloodhound trying to trail with a plastic bag over his nose. I took to walking the few blocks around the gateway, checking out stores and eateries in hopes of spotting the guy. He had to be here for a reason. He’d been clearly watching us and the gate guardian. He didn’t realize I’d seen him, so there was a good chance he’d still be hanging around. Unless he’d gotten whatever he’d come for and moved on.
So I didn’t look completely suspicious, I did buy a few pounds of salmon.
After a few hours of wandering around I finally spotted him in a souvenir shop down by the waterfront, putting pennies into one of those machines that squashes it flat and imprints some touristy crap on either side. I walked up behind him and slapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Gimlet!”
The Low jumped about a foot in the air, whirling around so fast he practically knocked the coin machine over. Mangled pennies spilled from his hand. How many had the demon been shoving through that machine? Such a weird obsession didn’t mesh well with the thought that he had been spying on us. Although right now, with his bulging eyes, crooked teeth, and fists full of pennies, the Low didn’t look like he was capable of spying, or anything more nefarious than robbing a piggy bank.
“Iblis!” For a second I thought he was about to hit me, then he jerked out from under my arm and squatted down to pick up the fallen pennies. “Why are you in Seattle?”
I knelt down to chase one of the coins that had bounced under a display table. “Buying salmon for dinner. Why are you in Seattle?”
He held up a penny. “I’m collecting these. So far I have Bogota, Juneau, Copenhagen, Baltimore, because Columbia, Maryland didn’t have any tourist penny machines, Dakar, Bangkok, and now Seattle.”
Wait. There were tourist penny machines in Dakar? Fuck me.
“The cities closest to the seven gateways from Hel,” I commented, handing him the squashed penny.
He shrugged. “Pop through a gate. Get my souvenir pennies. Walk back into Hel. It’s quicker than taking a bus.”
I eyed him. “Not really. The gateways are spread all over Hel. You’re a Low. You can’t teleport. It’s probably quicker to take a bus, or plane, this side of the gates than hiking it all around Hel.”
“Elf buttons.” He stood and turned his back to me, sticking another penny in the machine.
“You’re wasting elf buttons to transport yourself all over Hel so you can go through the seven major gates and have tourist pennies made?”
He pushed the coin into the machine and it began to make a horrible grinding noise. “Everyone has to have a hobby. This is mine. For now, anyway.”
“And once you get this one, are you going to put them all in a shadow box or something?”
“I’ll probably continue to get ones from the minor gates, although some of those are in areas without these machines. Then maybe I’ll hop on a human bus and collect additional ones. Starting with Asheville, or maybe Los Angeles. Yeah, think I’m going to start with Los Angeles.”
This was a strangely inane, boring conversation about a stupid hobby, but my skin prickled with that weird connected sensation and more. Something wasn’t right about Gimlet, and I got the impression that whatever he said was important. I just had to figure out what was important about little stamped pennies.
“The gate guardian didn’t see you cross,” I mentioned, watching his reaction.
He shot me a quick grin. “I’m sneaky. I can’t just stroll through like Snip because…well, first of all I’m not banging the gate guardian, second I’m not a member of your household.”
He wasn’t but he sure hung around my house a lot. For a Low I’d never even met until a few months ago, he seemed to be everywhere lately—at least everywhere I was.
“See anything when you came through? Like maybe a demon causing a big ruckus, blowing up cars and stuff?”
He took the penny from the machine and blew on it before shoving the whole lot of them into his pockets. “The one that spit fire? Oh yeah. That’s the perfect time to cross, when the gate guardians are distracted by someone else. Snuck right through. She didn’t even notice me. Although she doesn’t notice much. Not very alert, that one. Not as bad as the last guy the angels had there, but still not the brightest bulb in the pack.”
None of them really were, but that wasn’t my problem. “Do you know the fire-spitting demon? Did you recognize him?”
Gimlet looked me square in the eye and lied. “Nope. No idea who he is. Never seen him before. Just some random demon, blowing shit up and killing humans. I got the fuck out of there because I knew that gate guardian had called for an enforcer. Didn’t want to be hanging around when one of those showed up.”
“So you’ve been here in Seattle ever since? You ducked down a side street, and just hung around for twelve hours or so, then came back to peek around the corner of a building and watch the gate guardian speaking with us, then came down here to have pennies made?”
“Yep.”
Another lie. He shoved his hands in his pockets and I heard the pennies jingle.
“Why did you come back to check on the gate guardian?” I asked.
“Huh?” He gave me a puzzled look that was laughably contrived.
“Why didn’t you just come straight down here to have your pennies made? Why hang around for half the day, then go back to the gate? Weren’t you afraid that she’d see you?”
He snorted. “Uh, no. She’s not very observant as I said. I had brunch, then did some window shopping. I was passing by and I sensed you and some
powerful angel down by the gate. Figured you were getting the crap beat out of you and went to watch. Once I saw all you were doing was some boring old talking, I left.” He jingled the coins again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get some commemorative pennies made in Los Angeles.”
“That’s going to have to wait,” I told him. “I need you to come with me. I’ve got an assignment for you.”
I didn’t, but I got the feeling that I should be keeping an eye on this strange Low. His eyes narrowed at my words and then he quickly took in the exits, obviously calculating the distance and the chances of his making it out the door before I grabbed him. If he was doing the same math I was, the odds weren’t in his favor.
His shoulders slumped as he came to the same conclusion that I did. “I’m not a member of your household.” His voice was defiant.
“I’m the Iblis. Don’t be a jackass. I don’t particularly want to get into a fight with you in the middle of a souvenir shop. Come on. I’ll let you have some of my salmon and get you a beer. I’ll even let you play Call of Duty until midnight.”
He eyed the package in my hand. “Okay, but just for tonight. I’ve got other things to do. I’m busy, you know. I don’t have time to be running around doing shit for some imp with a sword who isn’t even the head of my household.”
That made me wonder. “So who is the head of your household, Gimlet?”
“No one.” There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “I’m a Low. No one wants a Low in their household, unless it’s to torture and torment. So it’s just me. I’m on my own. I’ve always been on my own.”
Huh. “Well, you’re in my household whether you like it or not.” I reached out to grab hold of his shoulder.
He scowled. “Only for tonight. And only if there’s salmon and beer in it for me. And cookies. I like cookies.”
“Deal.” Cookies. That shouldn’t be a problem.
