With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11

by Dunbar, Debra

  Lux had teleported us back home after my meeting had ended and he and Karrae had finished their puzzle. We’d come home to an empty house and immediately snuggled up on the sofa to look through the Blue Fire catalogue.

  I’d discovered that white-muzzled pistols and rifles were spelled to fire magical bullets. Some of those bullets negated magical barriers and could eventually break through all but the strongest wards. Some acted much like the elven nets had in taking away a demon’s, and I assumed angel’s, abilities. They wouldn’t be physically restrained and the bullet’s effects lasted between an hour to several days depending on the level of the demon.

  This catalogue was absolutely out of date if the weapon I’d been shot with in Phoenix had been one of these. An hour to several days my ass. If Gregory hadn’t forced his way through the effect, I’d still be wingless and drunk on my couch.

  Turning the pages, I continued to read. Some amulets gave the wearer protection against physical projectiles, others against spells, others against the persuasive abilities of angels. The products went on and on, the language carefully worded to convince the reader that there was an imminent threat right outside their doorway—one that only Blue Fire could protect them against.

  One thing I did notice that none of the magical weapons and devices did lasting damage or killed. It made me feel a bit better about what Kirby and Gareth were doing. I was all for leveling the playing field, but with seven billion humans in this world, I didn’t want to see the outnumbered demons, angels, and shifters slaughtered. As for the elves…well, I might want to see them slaughtered—aside for a few I’d kinda befriended.

  Handing Lux the catalogue, I opened up my laptop and started going through the files Dar had sent me on all their customers and what they’d ordered. There was a lot to wade through, but one thing stood out—Blue Fire had not sold any products to the Phoenix Police Department.

  Which meant there were at least two companies producing these sorts of weapons.

  I closed the laptop and set it aside thinking that any further research into this would need to wait until my meeting with Gareth, and until Terrelle dug more info up.

  “How did you and Uncle Samael do with the rings the other day?” I asked Lux, thinking about my ever-expanding to-do list.

  Lux grinned. “Pile one all gone!”

  Wow, that had been a huge undertaking. Of course with Samael helping, half those rings probably ended up with the wrong people, or stuck in someone’s breakfast cereal box.

  “Do you want to return a few more before bed?” I asked Lux.

  He looked over at the lumps in my rug with a worried frown. “Scared.”

  I didn’t blame him. I was scared too. The first pile had been the easy ones, and I’d still ended up shot and in jail. Who knew what the fuck would happen with this second pile.

  “How about we do just one? I’ll go with you, and if it gets too scary then you zap back home and let me take care of it.”

  He frowned. “Then how do you get back?”

  Fuck. This not being able to teleport sucked giant donkey balls. “Okay, then how about this—if it gets too scary, you zap back, then find your father and he can come get me.”

  Lux took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “It won’t be too scary. I can stay and help, Ma.”

  I walked over to the rug and pulled back the corner, revealing two piles. “Where does this one belong?” I picked up one of the rings, not wanting to go into this blind.

  “Store,” he told me.

  That shouldn’t be a big deal. We’d probably set off a few security alarms, but hopefully we would be in and out before the police got there.

  My gaze drifted to the Blue Fire catalogue, and I remembered the splat of blue on my shirt in Phoenix, of being hauled off to jail. Suddenly I envisioned my little angel shot with one of those disabling bullets, unable to teleport home, terrified and without his powers while the human police decided what to do with him. Hopefully they’d be lenient toward someone who appeared to be a toddler, but from everything I’d learned in the last two days, I wasn’t willing to bet Lux’s life on that.

  I put the ring back in the pile and scooted the whole thing over toward him.

  “I’ll be with you,” I said, reassuring myself more than him. “Pick one out that you really want my help with, and we’ll take care of it together.”

  He pawed through the jewelry. “This one,” he announced, holding up a particularly large diamond solitaire.

  I got up and stood next to him, reaching down to take his hand. “Okay, you get us there, and I’ll make sure you’re okay while you replace it. But if I say go, you need to go, okay? Get your little ass back here and go find your father. No arguments.”

  “No arguments.”

  Lux looked up at me, his eyes a clear aqua, then in a flash we were no longer in my living room, but in a huge area, dim aside from some emergency lighting along the floor. Display cases lined the wall to our right and were in rows down the middle. On the opposite wall was a large tapestry. To our left was a display of sofas and chairs with worn upholstery. The place smelled cool, but faintly musty in spite of the careful temperature and humidity controls. Lux gripped my hand tight and led me forward.

  I took this opportunity to check out all the bracelets, necklaces, rings, and bejeweled combs in the display cases as we walked by. So far so good. I hadn’t even heard an alarm go off, which was a bit odd given my estimated value of all the jewelry we were walking past.

  I heard a low growl and the click of something large and hard on the glossy floors. Every hair on my body stood out. That sound…this place…suddenly I remembered I’d been here before. In fact, I’d been here quite a few times before.

  “Hurry,” I hissed to Lux. Did he have to put the ring back in the case? Could he just chuck it in the general direction of the display? Because we needed to get out of here right now.

  He pointed ahead of us. “Two rooms. I think.”

  We ran to the end of the room then Lux stopped, glancing left, then right, then straight ahead, a frown of confusion on his face. The growl was closer. I saw the floor lights glint off something red and gold.

  “Just pitch it,” I whispered.

  “No,” he told me solemnly. “Return to the rightful place.”

  Fuck that. I went to grab the ring, but he had a death grip on it. The growl behind us turned into a low rumble noise. An enormous clawed foot appeared in the doorway. Snatching Lux off his feet, I tossed the kid onto my shoulder and ran. My sneakers squeaked and slapped against the floor. I heard a roar, and ducked as flames licked the wall beside me. Thankfully the curators at the British Museum had done quite a bit of fireproofing over the last few years and nothing caught fire.

  Tightening my hold on Lux, I raced through the museum, making a turn at every intersection, hoping to lose the pissed off dragon that was after us. I’d been on good terms with Sparky, but I got the feeling my kid stealing a ring from what he considered to be his hoard might be a deal breaker in our tentative friendship.

  We were completely out of the jewelry area and weaving our way through historical clothing displayed through fire-proof glass when I realized the dragon knew the layout of the museum far better than I did. I tossed Lux behind a display case of leather armor and ducked, taking the blast of dragon fire across my back.

  “Throw me the ring and get out of here,” I yelled. Lux stared at me wide-eyed as I shucked my burning clothes.

  The dragon drew a breath in preparation, and Lux finally did as I said. I caught the ring he threw before teleporting away, and dove behind a case full of swords just as a wall of fire came my direction. I was trapped with the only way out being blocked by a huge angry dragon. The fireproof cases had proved to be indeed fireproof, but I wasn’t sure how many blasts they’d stand before starting to melt. Then I’d not only have a dragon pissed off at me, but the museum curators as well. And I really didn’t want the museum curators angry.

  “Thief! Th
ief!” the dragon roared, stomping his feet.

  “I’m not the thief. I’m the one trying to return the ring,” I shouted back. “The thief is a baby. He didn’t understand what he was doing. Haven’t your baby dragons ever done something wrong before?”

  He paused for a second, but I’d discovered that dragons weren’t very logical when it came to their hoard, and Sparky was no exception. He let loose another blast of fire and I felt the case tremble.

  This had to end. Now.

  While Sparky sucked in another gulp of air, I stepped out from behind the display case and threw the ring at him as hard as I could, figuring I’d stand here and let him burn me into a blackened crisp a few times, just to get some of the anger out of his system. Maybe he’d be satisfied. He’d have his ring back. He’d have punished me for the theft. Then we could go back to being friends. Or at least frenemies.

  Shutting my eyes tight, I waited for a wave of excruciating heat. Instead I heard a strange sound. Ack? Ook? Something like that?

  Opening my eyes I saw Sparky stumble to the side, colliding with the wall and knocking several paintings off their mountings as he slid to ground. His mouth was wide open, giving me a lovely view of all his sharp white teeth. I could see the whites of his eyes as he stared at me in panic, his claws gouging the marble floor.

  I frowned, wondering if dragons had heart attacks. Or strokes. Or epilepsy. Then I realized he couldn’t breathe and the weird noise was him choking.

  Fuck. I must have thrown the ring straight down his throat where it got stuck. I wasted precious moments in amazement at how such a large creature could have a windpipe so narrow that a ring could jam it up. Then I wasted more precious moments pondering how I might perform the Heimlich maneuver on a dragon.

  Sparky’s eyes rolled backward and the claws were slowing down. Guessing I better do something or deal with the repercussions of killing a dragon and leaving its giant carcass in the British Museum, I summoned my sword and walked forward.

  I’d intended to slice the ring out of Sparky’s throat and hope for the best, but instead of a sword, my sentient weapon managed to appear as a giant hammer—like the kind the carnivals use in those ring-the-bell-and-win-a-prize games. Changing course from Sparky’s neck to his belly, I cocked the hammer back and let it fly.

  I’m not all that good at judging dragon anatomy, so it took five or six hits before the ring came flying out and Sparky took a deep breath. I braced for a blast of fire, but he stayed down, his body relaxing as the ring bounced off the back wall and rolled across the floor, coming to rest next to his nose.

  It was a good time to make myself scarce, but Lux was gone and I wasn’t sure how long it would take Gregory to come get me. I pulled out my cell phone and began to type him a message, letting him know that it wasn’t an emergency, but that I needed a lift home and I’d be at the closest pub to the British Museum.

  “Ma?” I turned at Lux’s whisper to see him hiding behind a suit of armor. “Came back to get you.”

  He was holding one of the steak knives from my kitchen in his hand. It was absolutely adorable that my kid was ready to defend me against a dragon with a piece of cutlery.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back. I took his hand and we were back in my living room. Lux was getting much better at this teleportation thing, but before I could praise him he wrapped his arms around my legs and held on tight. I removed the steak knife from his hand so he wouldn’t accidently skewer me.

  “Scary!” Lux announced with a shudder.

  “Nah, it was just Sparky.” I ran a hand through his golden curls, leaving a streak of soot. It made him look like a reverse skunk. “He’s a real bastard sometimes, but he’s not scary. I’ll take you back in a few months when he’s calmed down and you can give him a present to make up for stealing his ring.”

  Lux buried his face in my legs. I continued to stroke his hair, looking over at the two remaining piles of rings, wondering what the fuck the ones in the third pile belonged to.

  “I’ll help you with the rest of them,” I assured the angel. “Don’t be worried. If Sparky was the worst of that second pile, then we’ll be fine. Let’s do a couple more tonight, just to get some out of the way. If we can do a few each day, we’ll have these done by the end of the week. There aren’t that many left. Most of them were in the first pile and Uncle Samael helped with almost all of those.”

  He nodded, then sniffed, letting go of my legs to wander over to the rings. Looking down, he selected four and held them out to me. “These ones next.”

  These ones ended up being at the bottom of the ocean. Oceans. Plural. Lux had found rings from various shipwrecks, and as much as I tried to convince him that we didn’t need to return these particular finds, he insisted. I ended up in scuba gear, fending off sharks and eels and other pissed off sea creatures while he took his own sweet time replacing the rings in the exact same spot he’d found them. We continued until there were only two rings left in the second pile, then decided to call it a day.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning there were more almost-dead things in front of my house. Six rats, four groundhogs, two opossums, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  I was joking about the last one, but dead serious about the others. How these things managed mobility was completely beyond my comprehension. Most looked as if they’d played chicken with an oncoming tractor trailer and lost. I threw the poison theory right out the window and tried to think about who might have the skill and the motivation to curse me. Were they trying to send a bunch of live animals to harass me, and they suffered horrible injuries along the way, dragging themselves to my doorstep to carry out whatever my adversary’s magic sent them to do?

  As I was whacking one of the rats with my shovel, the rest of the menagerie attacked me. It was no fucking fun being bitten by a bunch of smelly half-dead animals. Groundhogs have always been my nemesis, and these were no exception. While I kicked, swatted, stomped, and tried to keep the rats from climbing up my legs, the groundhogs went on the attack. I’d just sent one of them flying into a tree trunk when the possum got into the game and sunk his sharp little teeth into my foot. Fucker bit clean through my sneaker. Grabbing him by the neck, I tried to pull him off me only to have a hank of hair and skin come off in my hand.

  For a second I ignored the rats and groundhog still trying to get a piece of me, and instead stared down at the possum. I swear I saw its spine as well as the shiny strands of tendon holding what was left of rotted muscles together.

  Ew.

  Shaking off a rat that was climbing up my other leg, I took aim with the edge of the shovel and brought it down on the possum, cutting halfway through the animal. Smashing them wasn’t killing them, maybe slicing would.

  Nope. The back end of the possum still twitched. The front end still continued to gnaw on my foot. I hit it again, slicing it completely in half, and even that didn’t kill it.

  “Sam? What in the world are you doing?”

  I looked up to see Wyatt standing beside my SUV, watching me do battle.

  “Stay back. There’s an undead rodent army trying to kill me. I don’t know if they’re infected with something like rabies, so don’t let them bite you.”

  Wyatt took a few steps back. “Aim for the head,” he told me helpfully.

  “I cut one in half and it didn’t do shit.” This wasn’t one of his video games, but just to test the theory, I squashed one of the rats with my shovel, then lopped it’s head off.

  “You’ve got to destroy the brain,” Wyatt instructed. “Just cutting the head off won’t kill them.”

  Right. I whaled away at the rat with the sharp end of the shovel until its head looked like hamburger on the pavement. It did seem to be working, so I continued that method with the rest of the animals. The possum head gnawing on my shoe was a total pain in my ass. I saved it for last since I had to nearly chop my big toe to bits to destroy its brain. Finally I killed the damned thing. And killed my favorite pair of sneakers as we
ll.

  As soon as all the brains were crushed, Wyatt approached, nudging one of the twitching bodies with a stick he’d picked up off the driveway.

  “How long before the bodies die?” I figured he was the expert, so maybe he’d know when these things would finally be dead-dead.

  “No idea. In the video games I usually don’t stick around long enough to see when the bodies stop moving.” Wyatt took the stick and nudged the rat body over to the edge of the driveway. “Can I ask why you’ve got zombie rodents attacking you?”

  That was one of the nice things about having an ex-boyfriend-still-kinda-friend as a neighbor. Wyatt was completely unfazed by all the supernatural shit that happened in and around my house. If things got too weird, he just packed up his computers and went on vacation until they were a little less weird.

  “I think someone cursed me.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Any idea who might be pissed enough at me to do this?”

  He laughed. “Everyone you’ve ever met?”

  Very funny. I began to scoop up the body parts with the shovel and toss them into the woods.

  “Seriously. None of the sorcerers I know can animate the dead. It’s totally not an elven magic thing. I was thinking that with all your zombie video games, you might actually know someone in the necromancy community who could help me figure out who’s doing this.” I looked up at him. “Please tell me there’s a necromancy community, and that you personally know one or two.”

  Wyatt gave me some major side-eye. “I don’t know any necromancers and I can’t really help you with your real-life zombie problem.”

  “Well the brains suggestion totally worked.” I kicked the last rat body into the woods. “So what’s up?”

  Wyatt didn’t come around that much anymore. It sucked because I missed him, but I understood. We were no longer dating. Outside of riding horses and our both caring about Amber and Nyalla, we didn’t really have much in common.