With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11

by Dunbar, Debra

  “First, I seem to have a roofing contractor doing repairs on my house. You know you don’t have to keep doing this stuff, Sam.”

  Crap. I’d hoped he wouldn’t notice, but I guess it was hard not to notice people banging away on top of your house.

  “If I have to stare at your house every time I go up and down the lane I prefer it not be such a hideous eyesore. That roof is about to fall down on you. I don’t want to have to come dig you out of the rubble in the middle of the night.”

  He shook his head but was smiling, so I knew we weren’t about to have an argument. Good. I had weirdly complicated emotions regarding this guy and wanted us to be on friendly terms.

  “Secondly, Darcie called and asked me to check with you about the bachelorette party. She said you’re not answering your texts.”

  Shit. I’d been kinda busy, but I really needed to get going on this party. “Um Wyatt, can you do me a solid?”

  He rolled his eyes. “What this time, Sam?”

  “I need a venue to host the party with food and drinks. Oh, and I need a few strippers, and a ton of sex toys for party favors.”

  Wyatt tried to look pissed off. Tried. I counted the seconds as he contorted his face, finally giving up and laughing at the twenty second mark. A new record.

  “Tell you what. I’ll give you the phone number for Amber’s favorite local bar. They’ll organize everything for you. Just make one phone call and give them the date.”

  He was the best. “And you’ll handle the strippers and the sex toys, too?”

  “No. The rest is up to you.”

  Okay, maybe not the best. I sighed, thinking I might at least be able to order some shit before I headed to Florida.

  Wyatt moved in as if he were about to hug me, then took a look at the bite marks and animal goo all over me and decided against it.

  “Fist bump?” I extended my knuckles.

  “Fist bump.” Wyatt did the same, smacking mine. “Check yourself for rabies or zombie virus, and always go for the brains.”

  “Thanks, Wyatt. Love ’ya.”

  He grinned. “Love ’ya too, Sam. And thanks for the roof.”

  I watched him leave, making sure he got home without any zombie rats attacking him. Then I went inside, washed up, changed clothes, ordered a whole bunch of sex shit off the internet, and went to Florida.

  Actually, Gregory teleported me to Florida because I still couldn’t do it myself. I thought about having Lux do it, but I didn’t want to bring him along on the meeting, and I wasn’t sure the legalities of having a winged toddler wandering around a major city alone. I already had one court date. I didn’t want child protective services all up in my ass.

  Gregory dropped me off a few blocks away so I could hide the fact that I was running on less than eight cylinders. I told him I’d text him when my meeting was done, and that if I didn’t contact him by nightfall, he should look for me at the city jail.

  Walking up to Blue Fire, I knew right away that this was a big money operation. Dar, Gareth, and Kirby’s headquarters was in Miami. It was a huge gleaming white building with the name emblazoned across the top story in bright blue. Everything was white. The floor. The receptionist’s desk. The walls. The only color at all was the company logo which was splashed here and there in strategic places. I decided given their contracts, I shouldn’t go in with my wings out and sword in hand, but clearly I must not have hidden my identity well enough because alarms went off when I was ten feet from the receptionist’s desk.

  Silly me. I’d thought the alarms were to warn of an approaching hurricane or earthquake or something until two men shot me with a pair of white-muzzled guns—these a more compact pistol model then the one shown in the catalogue.

  That left me on the floor, feeling like I wanted to curl up for a nap.

  “What the fuck? I’ve got an appointment.” I glared at the men who stood over me with their guns. They looked exactly the same from their SWAT team outfits, to their sunglasses, to their short, nondescript-colored hair. “At least post a ‘No Demons or Angels’ sign outside before you go unloading on visitors.”

  “This is a secure building,” one of the men barked at me. “What’s your purpose here?”

  “As I said, I’ve got an appointment. I’m here to see Gareth. I’m a friend of his…well, sort of a friend of his. And Kirby.”

  The guards exchanged glances. “Iblis?” Guard One asked me.

  “Yep. I’d show you my wings and my sword, but you fucking shot me so I can’t.”

  Guard Two lifted his chin at the receptionist who dialed a number. She and another woman spoke, then I remained on the floor with weapons pointed at my head until she got a call back.

  “Send her on up,” Gareth told the receptionist through the speaker phone.

  I’d expected better treatment after that, but I was wrong. The identical twin guards escorted me up to the top floor in the elevator, guns at the ready. Then they perp marched me through an office full of gawking humans to a big corner executive suite. They even went inside, prepared to blast me as I crossed the room and greeted Gareth. It was as if they’d expected me to attack him or something. I’ll admit Gareth and I had disagreed on occasion, but it’s not like I’d ever tried to Own him, or eat his heart or anything.

  “This better wear off within the next ten minutes or I’m going to be pissed,” I told Gareth as I shook his hand.

  He gestured for me to sit, then waved the guards away. “The effect lasts an hour. Sorry for the inconvenience. Next time make an appointment and we won’t have to shoot you.”

  Asshole. “I did make an appointment. Go shoot your assistant or whoever handles your schedule, because I’m supposed to be on there.”

  “Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. I got the impression he’d known about this meeting and had just taken advantage of the opportunity for a little passive-aggressive payback for all the trouble I’d caused him over the years. That, or he thought a demonstration of their new products was in order.

  “Quite the business you’ve got going on here,” I commented as I sat. “You. Kirby. Dar.”

  He shrugged at the mention of my brother and switched to Elvish. “We needed an investor who had funds this side of the gates as well as connections. Your brother has both. His cash meant we could expand fast enough to meet demand and get the jump on any competition. His government and other connections meant we had customers lining up to order the moment we were introduced. It’s going to be a struggle to keep up with demand, but we’re the only company with the knowledge and technology to produce this sort of security.”

  I picked up a paperweight and tossed it from hand to hand. “I get that the humans might be feeling helpless, what with New Hell, demons and angels coming and going as they please, werewolves and other shifters who they’d thought were just regular human neighbors and coworkers last year.”

  Gareth nodded. “There are a few humans who are freaked about the shifters. We’re expanding our line of home defense weaponry to sell to them. Unlike those idiots in Alaska, our weapons and ammunition won’t be lethal though. The citizens asking for these won’t be thrilled about that, but lethal bullets are difficult to create and insanely expensive. And our weaponry is legal where theirs isn’t. Although, these people aren’t particularly worried about the legality of their weapons.”

  I was relieved to hear that the Blue Fire weaponry wasn’t going to kill anyone. Not that humans couldn’t do that on their own, but nuking the West Coast would also destroy land that they clearly needed and valued as well as kill a whole lot of demons.

  “As for New Hell and the demons,” Gareth continued, “the federal government didn’t like the idea of having to protect against demons spilling over into neighboring states. We’ve got a contract to provide a magical barrier instead. The only thing delaying installation of that is a modification that will restrict humans from leaving New Hell as well as demons. Unless, of course, those humans have appropriate perm
its.”

  Of course. Not that any of this bothered me. I didn’t really want some of those demons running around all over the place either. Plus I’d made a deal for the US to stuff their criminals into New Hell. I could see where they might not want them walking right out the moment they got in.

  “So that’s project Woo-woo,” I mused thinking the wall must be the top-secret shit Dar had been talking about.

  “Actually, it’s not.” Gareth looked down at his hands. “Unfortunately due to some clauses in our contracts, I’m not allowed to go into details about that project.”

  I read between the lines. Normally that was a skill that completely escaped me, but I seemed to be getting better at all of this political mumbo jumbo. I blame all the endless Ruling Council meetings for that.

  Blue Fire had a branch that specialized in retail sales for individual defense and home protection—as well as to corporations and law enforcement, no doubt. They had a branch that was dealing with the border between New Hell and adjoining countries. What the fuck did that leave? The president didn’t think shifters were that much of a problem, and he was cozied up to Dar, planning to issue citizenship to demons in return for votes. That left angels.

  “What’s happening with the angels?”

  I’d thought they were still stumbling around, getting used to life in a corporeal form, and occasionally meeting an unfortunate death until I’d had that talk with Gregory the other night about what the rebels were planning. Had the humans gotten wind of it? Was Project Woo-woo their way of preparing to defend against an angelic attempt to wipe them out?

  Gareth eyed the closed door to his office, and continued to speak in Elvish. “Some angels believe that their mission is to stamp out sin and bring humans to what they consider a righteous path. Understandably, the humans don’t want their interference, but these angels are insistent and they are powerful and invulnerable to traditional human means of defense.”

  “And you’re providing the human governments with an equalizer,” I mused.

  “Reversible methods of long-term incapacitation, mostly. The majority of the governments want to make angels human so they can be subject to human laws and imprisonment.”

  I felt a bit sick at the idea of an angel—or demon—being permanently deprived of their abilities. To never fly again. To not be able to instantly fix physical injury. To not be able to change form, to cloak ourselves in ether or liquid or fire to suit any environment.

  I’d cut them off from Aaru, and now Gareth wanted to take their wings.

  “I don’t like that.” I added, “How reversible is reversible? What if the human with the antidote dies? Or it doesn’t work? Will the effect eventually wear off?”

  “We guarantee it for five hundred years, but I’m not really sure how long the effects truly last.” Gareth shrugged as if the whole thing were of no real consequence. “It might be permanent without the antidote.”

  “And just how effective is this antidote? Because it better be one hundred percent, or project Woo-woo is a no-go.”

  “It works every time.”

  I squinted at Gareth, but couldn’t tell if he were lying or not. He believed it to be true, but whether it had been tested enough was my worry. And how could he test it? It wasn’t like he had a bunch of angels he was shooting then injecting. Was he running a clinical trial of this?

  Wait. I’d completely forgotten that he’d said “mostly” earlier.

  “So that’s the majority of the anti-angel products. What’s the rest?”

  Gareth shifted in his chair, messing with a few of the papers on his desk. “A few countries want a weapon that will completely destroy an angel’s corporeal form and prevent them from reforming.”

  I stared at him. “Kill them, you mean.”

  “Well…yes. It’s not like they haven’t killed humans since they’ve been here,” he quickly added.

  “Twenty.” I glared at him. “Twenty people out of seven billion.”

  “Those twenty people had families,” he argued. “Their lives mattered.”

  “Yes, and there was a two-hundred-page impact analysis on each one. Any angel found at fault was punished.” It wasn’t the same punishment as they’d had when they still had access to Aaru, but it was a punishment nonetheless.

  “And how many angels were found at fault in those deaths,” he shot back.

  It was my turn to squirm in my chair. “None.”

  They’d truly been accidents. Aside from a few thousand of them, most angels had never been out of Aaru, never been in a physical form and had to deal with things like hunger, pain, or humans who tried to pick their pockets. There was a learning curve, and I thought only twenty deaths was pretty damned admirable, especially considering the number of people demons killed each year.

  Not that I was going to share that with Gareth and his terminator machine, or whatever it was.

  He settled back in his chair, hands folded across his stomach. “Humans are scared. This is their home, and suddenly it’s overrun with powerful beings that want to take charge and control their lives. They want to fight back. Surely you understand that.”

  I did understand, but I also wanted to give Gregory and his brothers a chance to right this whole thing, to get control of the rebels, to get all the angels to back off and leave the humans the fuck alone.

  “And you’re shipping these lethal weapons now?” I asked.

  “No. We’re still testing and tweaking designs. The wall will be ready to install in the next few weeks, and the long-term effect weaponry should be in production by then as well.”

  I stared at him, trying to tell if he was lying or not. I wasn’t nearly as good as Gregory at that sort of thing, but I got the impression Gareth was telling the truth. He’d always been careful and exact about his magical items. Dar was bitching and moaning about how long it was taking.

  He was telling the truth. Of course, if other companies were making the magical paintball weapons, they could just as easily be making the lethal ones. And if some other company was making this shit, that other company might not be as carful as Gareth concerning whose hands they wound up in.

  “Can you tell me when the lethal weapons will be ready?”

  “Those are in the final design stages and should be ready for testing this week. We hope to be shipping within the month.”

  Damn. “Can you stall on those and give me a chance to prevent this?” I begged him. It might not do any good if the other company had their own angel-killers, but if I could convince Gareth to hold back on his, it would at least limit the number in the hands of the humans.

  He shook his head. “The contracts are signed. We’ve already received deposits. We’ve invested significant sums of money and mage-time in creating these items. We’re not going to delay.”

  I held up both hands. “I know you’ve got a lot of money riding on this, but maybe I can work it so the humans will accept the incapacitation ones in place of the lethal ones. And maybe I can get them to agree on a reduction in the time before the effects wear off. I’ve got meetings with a bunch of presidents and prime ministers this week as well as a Ruling Council meeting. I’ll get the archangels to tell the other angels to fucking knock it off. I’ll get the humans to agree to a cease fire. We can all talk about this. Negotiate.”

  Fuck, I sounded so much like an angel right now.

  Gareth shook his head. “I can’t be in violation of my contracts as far as delivery dates and the product.”

  “Please Gareth,” I pleaded. “Just let me see what I can do.

  He sighed. “Fine. But you need to make this happen within the next week—preferably within the next few days—or it’s going to be too late.”

  There would be no putting the genie back in the bottle, as the humans said, if Blue Fire started shipping the lethal weapons. Once these products were out the door and in human hands, they’d be in use. And even if we managed to stop production, there would be prototypes in circulation that other mages c
ould use to make their own black market products.

  I had a week. Actually I had days. Otherwise losing Aaru would be the least of the angelic host’s worries.

  * * *

  Gregory picked me up a few blocks away and teleported me back home. I had a shit-ton of stuff to tell him, so I grabbed us a couple of beers and pulled him down on the sofa beside me.

  “We’ve got a problem,” I said as soon as I popped the cap off my beverage. “There is probably more than one company creating magical weapons to sell to human governments and individuals.”

  “So, this Blue Fire and whoever sold those guns to the police in Phoenix?” the angel asked. “I’ve seen what that weapon in Phoenix did. Tell me about the ones this sorcerer’s company is creating.”

  “The majority of them can strip an angel, or demon, of their powers for a set period of time. The purpose of this is so the humans can incarcerate them for violating their laws. Gareth claims there’s an antidote to negate the effect. Depending on the weapon, it should eventually wear off. The one they nailed me with in the lobby of their building only lasted an hour, but some are designed to keep going for a few hundred years. I get the feeling none of the antidotes have been tested and that Gareth has no idea how long the effects might really last.”

  “That’s not so bad,” Gregory mused. “I know the humans are very concerned about having no ability to defend themselves against angels. This might put them at ease, and convince some of our more intractable angels to follow human law.”

  That was not what I’d expected him to say.

  “Here’s the worse part,” I continued. “Blue Fire is finalizing a weapon that can kill angels. And demons, but there are already human weapons that can kill us if we can’t reform our physical bodies fast enough. This…I’m worried this might be a weapon that could even kill an archangel.”

  He chuckled, leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Nothing kills an archangel.”