With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11

by Dunbar, Debra

  “You’re fucking joking.” All these centuries I’d underestimated the dwarves. Nulls. How useful was that?

  “Nope. Most dwarves have a low-level null ability. About ten percent are powerful enough to go head-to-head with a mid-level demon. One percent can slap down an elven lord, a sorcerer, even an angel. Then there’s the rare dwarf that might even be able to bring your archangel to his knees.”

  I laughed at that. I’d seen Gregory in action. He was the Archangel Michael. Nothing brought him to his knees. “So this null thing works on demons, angels, and elven as well as human magic.”

  “Depends. Like I said, some dwarves are stronger than others. Just like elves. Just like mages. Just like demons. Just like angels.”

  “Just like shifters,” I added.

  She shrugged. “I consider them angels light. Angels super light.”

  “Okay. So what sort of dwarf would you need to do this job? Because, let me tell you, they are not the most cooperative. I had to practically sell my fucking soul to get those weapons enchanted for my household. I can’t even get one of them to come across the gates and nanny Lux. Dwarves have a long history of giving us and elves the middle finger when we need them for something, even if we’re paying out the nose. They’ve got their mountains. They’ve got their society. They don’t give two fucks about anyone else.”

  And that’s the reason I’d always had mad respect for the dwarves. Growing up, the elderly dwarven lady who’d lived nearby had seemed like a goddess. Even nine hundred years later, I still thought she might be a goddess. Oma knew everything. Even the most powerful Ancient treated her with deference.

  “Ideally the most powerful dwarf you can find. I’m not sure exactly what type of spells are on the other company’s security systems, but Gareth has probably got some bad ass shit guarding Blue Fire’s intellectual property. That’s kind of his jam, you know.”

  My thoughts returned to Oma. How the fuck was I going to get the elderly dwarf to leave her home and cross the gates even temporarily? She didn’t give a crap about money. Honestly, I didn’t know of any other dwarves that I’d trust to do something like this. Maybe Dar’s nanny, Andor. He seemed to be handling Karrae with no problem, but there was a big difference between keeping a little angel from killing half of Chicago and overwhelming a series of powerful magical wards.

  I’d try Oma first. And if I couldn’t beg or bribe her to do it, then I’d try Andor and just hope he and Terrelle didn’t end up in some human jail awaiting trial. Or worse, dead.

  “Then there’s the other stuff you asked me to check into.” Terrelle took a drink of beer, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “The Elven Nation stuff? I think a few countries might be interested after all. Humans are started to get paranoid about demons and angels taking over, and the elves are putting it out there that they’re humanity’s only hope.”

  Right. Little did the humans know they’d be better off with the demons. Or even the angels.

  “What countries are sniffing at the bait?” I asked.

  “France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.” She frowned for a second. “And maybe Australia, although I think they’re bluffing. I get the impression they don’t trust elves one bit.”

  I had a meeting with the French Prime Minister tomorrow as well as the Ruling Council meeting. I’d tell whoever was handling those other countries to keep their eyes open. In the meantime, I needed to go to Hel and visit a dwarf.

  I left a note for Gregory to come get me if I wasn’t back from Hel by midnight. One of the uncomfortable realities of my life as an Angel of Chaos was that I could enter Hel through the gates, but only exit by teleporting—which I couldn’t do right now. I was hoping to track down Doriel or one of the other Ancients and convince them to give me a lift home, but that might take a while. I had things to do, and being stuck in Hel for a few days wouldn’t be convenient right now. As much as Gregory hated going there, he’d done it once before and I hoped he’d do it again if I couldn’t find a ride.

  I left Terrelle with the contents of my fridge and drove to Columbia. The contractors had made progress on replacing the destroyed mall. The entire steel structure had been erected and the concrete poured. The huge building was only a hollow shell, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the workers to finish and new shops to move in.

  Today the gate was over by where the parking garage was supposed to be. Beatrice was perched on top of a bulldozer, wearing a hard hat and drinking a giant iced coffee. The gate guardian waved me over and hopped down.

  “Hey! I haven’t seen you in ages. What’s up?”

  “I need to use the gate.” I’d dropped the ball on our weekly lunches since I’d started teleporting everywhere. We’d need to start doing that again. There hadn’t been any place nearby for lunch since the mall had been destroyed, but that was no excuse. I could easily pick something up and we could hang out here and eat carryout until the mall was back in operation once more.

  She pointed toward the shimmering spot ten feet away that only demons, angels, and elves could see. “The guys are making a run to Chipotle for lunch. Want them to pick you up anything? Ricky’s buying today.”

  “Nah, I might be a while. Thanks though.” It was good to know she’d made friends with the construction workers. I knew she and Snip were an item, too. What had been a horribly isolating job guarding the gate to Hel wasn’t quite so lonely anymore.

  “Lunch next Wednesday?” I asked, then I suddenly had a better idea. “What if I get someone to give you the night off and you can come to Amber’s bachelorette party.”

  “Amber’s what party?”

  I wasn’t sure Beatrice even knew Amber, but surely one more person wouldn’t matter, and the gate guardian really needed a night off.

  “It’s a human tradition. Amber’s getting married, so she and a bunch of girls get together and get drunk and watch strippers.”

  She stared at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.

  “Seriously. It’ll be a blast,” I said. “I bought a whole bunch of dildos and vibrators, and squirt guns shaped like penises that we can fill with booze. I haven’t been able to hire the strippers yet, but I’m working on it. Maybe these construction workers would be interested? Amber’s a half-succubus, so there’s a good chance they might get laid.”

  I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Gregory, letting him know someone else needed to guard the gate that night, then texted the date, time, and location to Beatrix.

  Her phone dinged. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked down at my message. “Um, okay. I’ll give it a shot. And I’ll ask if any of the guys want to be entertainment for the evening. I don’t think they’ll go for it, though. They talk like they’re a bunch of wild horny teenagers, but I get the feeling they’d be too scared to actually get up on stage and get naked in front of a bunch of women.”

  Damn. “Ask anyway.” Maybe I’d get lucky and one or two would be interested. I hoped so because time was running out.

  * * *

  Oma tossed her long, gray-silver braid over her shoulder. “You want me to leave my home and my husband, go to the human world, and help a demon steal a sorcerer’s grimoire.”

  Yeah, that was pretty much the gist of it. “We need to figure out a way to reverse the spells so angels and demons are not completely at the mercy of seven billion humans.”

  Her bushy white eyebrows shot up. “It’s about time demons and angels got their comeuppance. Can’t be top of the food chain forever, you know. Personally, I think humans ought to have the final say over their own world.”

  “But what if we’re innocent and they withhold the counter spell? What if some dickwad shoots one of us because he just doesn’t like demons, and we have no way to reverse it?”

  Oma shrugged. “Maybe don’t get shot? Maybe start being polite and not starting things you can’t finish? Say, where is this Gareth anyway? I might want to buy one of these pistol things. Might keep the lot of you from eating all my
food and pestering me all the time.”

  That last bit was said as she pushed a huge bowl of hot spicy stew in front of me. Oma always bitched and moaned about demons, but I got the idea she secretly liked us. She’d often provided me with a safe haven when I was bullied as a young imp. She was skilled in divination, even if her prophecies were couched in confusing symbols and double-talk. And every time I visited her, she fed me.

  “We don’t want to take away the ability for humans to defend themselves, we just want to have a reversal of our own. For rare and extreme cases. It would only be available through appeal to the Ruling Council.”

  She snorted. “Oh, like they’re in a position to judge. They’ve screwed up a lot in their billions of years. They might be angels, but they’re no angels.”

  How old was Oma? And how did she know any angels if she’d never left Hel? I eyed the woman, realizing that the little I knew about her was pretty damn miniscule.

  “Oma, please. We need this information. There are seven billion humans. The angels are locked out of Aaru. There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

  “That is complete and total nonsense and you know it. They can go to Hel. They can go to any number of planets in any number of solar systems, in any number of universes. They’re angels. It’s not like you cut their wings off when you banished them. Don’t fall for their ‘woe is me’ sob stories, Az. Tell them to stop whining, take their lumps, and learn from this opportunity they’ve been given.”

  “I don’t know what I did when I banished them. It just happened. Things were bad. I didn’t want Gregory to get killed. I jumped the gun and tried to do what he was going to do and banish the rebels, and we all fell.”

  Oma reached out and smoothed my hair. “I know. When you are a chaotic instrument of fate, then you need to shoulder the blame and resentment of others. Now finish your stew and I’ll read your future.”

  I did as she said, savoring every bite. It brought me back to my childhood when I’d sat at this very table, eating stew and carving drawings into the table with my claw. It all seemed so long ago, even though I wasn’t even a thousand years old yet. It all seemed so long ago.

  When I was done she took the bowl and hocked up a big loogie. Then she swirled the spit around in the bowl, eyeing it intently. I was not even remotely tempted to peek over her shoulder.

  “Ten.” She stuck the bowl in the sink. “One of the ten.”

  That was it? I’d expected some cryptic shit about triangles and cats, but “ten”?

  “Will you cross the gates and help us break into Blue Fire?” I asked one more time, knowing her answer wouldn’t have changed.

  “No. Angels and demons will need to start treating the humans more as equals. Otherwise many of you will be experiencing the human prison system.”

  Or dead, I thought sourly. I stood and pushed my chair back under the table. Before I could leave, Oma came up to me, reached up for my face, and pulled it down toward hers. I panicked for a second, thinking that maybe she was going to kiss me or something equally horrible. Instead she rested her forehead against mine and breathed out through her mouth.

  Everything felt heavy. My limbs, my eyelids, my hair piled up on top of my head. I could no longer reach my store of energy or even gather it up from the air around me. I knew without trying that I wouldn’t be able to transmute, that I wouldn’t even be able to summon the tiniest of spark. But unlike when I’d been shot, or collared, or netted, I still felt my spirit-self right there. It wasn’t like when Gregory had coated my energy with that slippery stuff either. My wings revealed themselves, making it incredibly crowded in the small cottage. My sword came straight to my hand, although I sensed it could do nothing a plain old sword couldn’t do.

  It was exactly like when I’d been a young imp and I’d been about to do something like set one of my siblings on fire, or send a lightning bolt into a nearby house. I was still an Angel of Chaos, an imp, I just couldn’t do anything either an angel or demon could do at the moment.

  This was Oma’s power. This was the feeling of being in a null zone. It was similar to what my foster parents had been able to do, but this was more.

  Oma let go of my face and stepped back to the sink. “There. Can’t have you going around like that. It isn’t fitting. Now go on back to your angel and your humans, to your Lows and all of those you’ve taken under your wings. Scoot. Get going.”

  I left because that’s when Oma usually got her stick. I might be a grown imp, but I still didn’t want to get whacked with Oma’s stick. It wasn’t until I was halfway to the swamp that I realized what she’d done. All the little jagged remnants of the spell that I’d carried around since that cop in Phoenix had shot me were gone. I was completely free, and I hadn’t had to go through the pain of Gregory trying to smash through the magical barrier. I hadn’t had to drink some potion or be shot again with another bullet. All it had taken was a dwarf—a dwarf who had the power of a null.

  Chapter 17

  I could teleport again. This made my life so much easier. I’d gotten back from Hel with enough time to kill and dispose of the zombie animals around my house and meet with the pool maintenance people.

  They were not happy. It seems when I’d told them I had some dead animals that I needed removed from my pool, they’d thought frogs or a turtle or two. They had not expected a bunch of rats, two badly decomposed dogs, and a cow.

  The nets they’d brought were totally inadequate for the job, so they called in for some sort of heavy equipment, informed me that my pool would be out of service for a few days, then got to work scooping up drowned zombie rats and various body parts that had come loose from the cow and were floating on the surface of the water.

  I went inside and left them to it. Gregory and Lux weren’t back yet, and Nyalla was off doing wedding stuff with Amber and Darcie, so I sat down with my laptop and sent emails to every place I could find within a hundred-mile radius that had anything remotely to do with strippers. Gentlemen’s clubs. Exotic dancers. Escort services. Singing telegram and balloon delivery. Anything. Then I sat back, watched the pool guys try to winch the cow carcass out of my pool, and thought about dwarves.

  It seemed that being a null had a whole lot of advantages I hadn’t even thought of. Oma hadn’t just negated the effects of the paintball bullet while I was in her presence, she’d completely cancelled it out. Could other dwarves do that? If so, then we really didn’t need to steal intellectual property and reverse engineer an antidote. All we needed to do was convince a few dwarves to cross the gates when we needed them, and to nullify a spell or two.

  Although knowing dwarves like I did, reverse engineering an antidote would be easier than getting them to cross the gates. So far, Andor had been the only dwarf I knew that was willing to do so. And even if he was willing to give us a hand every now and then, I wasn’t sure Dar would agree to loan him to us. My brother had become especially greedy and selfish when it came to his childcare.

  But the dwarf didn’t work twenty-four seven. He got regular days and evenings off. Maybe I could get him to consider a side job? I’d have to tell Terrelle that the dwarf thing was a no-go unless I could talk Andor into it. Maybe she could steal the spell book without a dwarf. She was pretty sneaky.

  The cow carcass was half out of the pool when it’s spine broke and the rear half slid back under the water. I heard the guys cursing clear through my triple paned French doors. It made me laugh. I was whole again. I could teleport. I could feel my spirit-being in all its entirety. Suddenly nothing else mattered. The rebel angels, the angel-killing weapons, the Elven Union, the three rings in my pocket that I still needed to help Lux return—none of it mattered. I was whole. My angel and my kid were off having fun on a bunch of asteroids. For the moment there were no zombie animals scratching at my front door, and the guys out back were cleaning out my pool.

  Right now my life was perfect—or it would be if Terrelle hadn’t drunk all the beer in my fridge.

  * * *

>   The French Prime Minister, much like the Canadian one, didn’t seem to have any issue with angels or demons living in his country. They needed to be gainfully employed, paying taxes, and have appropriate identification, but he made it clear that the French welcomed those of other cultures, although they would not make exceptions for angels or demons who broke the law.

  And the elves? Oh, the French loved the elves. They had incredible taste in art, were highly knowledgeable about wine. They prepared the most exquisite meals, grew fruits of the highest quality. They were environmentally conscious, selfless in caring for the sick and the hungry.

  Basically the elves were a combination of Jesus and Doctors Without Borders. The French Prime Minister assured me that there were no elves in governmental office, but of course any public servant with a brain had an elf as an advisor. It would be foolish not to, when they had so much to give the world and were so dedicated to helping the human race.

  Fuck me.

  From there I went to Ireland where I had no official meeting and had to gather all my information by hanging out in pubs—which was going to be the highlight of my day. I encountered only suspicion and denial of any knowledge of elves, angels, or demons in the first two pubs, but by the third I finally found a group of drinkers who’d had enough pints that they were ready to talk.

  Especially once I started buying rounds.

  “I bloody well like those demons,” one woman told me. “They can hold their liquor. They can fight. They’re fun. Angels aren’t fun, but we don’t get many of them around here.”

  “How about elves?” I asked them.

  They exchanged knowing glances. “Gotta be careful with the fae, you know. They act like they’re giving you the sun and the moon, but it all comes with a bloody big price. Don’t accept a gift from a fairy, my gran always said. ’Cause it’s no gift.”