Elven Blood (Imp Book 3) (22 page)

“Think you’ll be able to break for lunch tomorrow? I re–scheduled with Amber.”

Fuck. “Can we do the day after? Just to be on the safe side?”

Wyatt nodded. “I found out more of Joseph Barakel while you were gone. The guy in Falls Church was definitely around at the time of the baby exchange, and he’s still living there. Same address. The other one was around too, but it looks like he died a few weeks back.”

I hoped the dead one wasn’t the one I was looking for. With the way things were going lately, I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, that left one Joseph Barakel to check out. I crossed my fingers, hoping that somehow this would be the one.

“You are the best, Wyatt. I’ll work on this report for the Ruling Council tonight, and maybe tomorrow we’ll go down and interrogate Joseph Barakel.”

Wyatt shook his head. “You need to do that one alone, Sam. I’m not sure I can watch you interrogate someone. Promise me you won’t kill him? Or torture and maim him?”

What was with Wyatt and the torture thing lately?

“Okay, I promise. No killing or torture. No maiming.” I kissed him. “I missed you. I can’t wait for this all to be over, so we can spend some time together, get rid of this demon barrier and Leethu, and get back to our lives.”

“Me too,” he whispered, kissing me back. I got the feeling he didn’t believe it—that our golden moment had passed and our lives would never be the same again. That our futures wouldn’t be the idyllic ones we hoped for.

Back at my house, I threw together a stir–fry, sucked down coffee and looked at the volume of paper Gregory had left for me. I’d hoped it would be a series of boxes to check off, but no, it required a bunch of essays on the deceased human, my reasons and methods of extermination, and a lengthy background on him and his immediate family. Then there was an impact analysis with a bunch of numeric algorithms. That was going to be practically impossible to complete since I didn’t have the angels’ omnipotence. I thought about calling Wyatt and asking him to do the research on the guy’s family, but I’d put so much on his shoulders lately that I hated to keep asking him to do things for me.

I’d just poured myself a fourth cup of coffee, and was walking back to the table when everything went black and tilted away in a wave of vertigo. I felt myself fall, hit something hard and cold with my side, and heard the coffee cup shatter. Warm liquid splashed against my arm, and my vision swam in a sea of grey with pinpoints of light. As my eyes began to focus, I realized the dots of light were candles in a dim, windowless room. Fighting off the dizziness, I pushed myself to hands and knees on a cold, concrete floor and looked up. Looked up into the faces of three shocked teenage boys.

“Jake, it worked!” One squeaked, rattling a piece of copier paper in his hands.

16

“W
hat is going on here?” I demanded.

The three boys ignored me and scrutinized their papers. The one in the middle, I’m assuming Jake, frowned.

“She’s a
girl
,” he said

“And she doesn’t look like a demon.” The other’s eyes pivoted back and forth between me and his paper.

“What is going on here?” I repeated with more force. That got the teenagers’ attention, and they backed a few steps away, toward a washing machine with a basket of laundry on top. I looked around and realized I was in someone’s basement. There was a wooden staircase, stacks of boxes, tools neatly arranged on a peg board. Why was I in someone’s basement?

Jake cleared his throat. “I would like the answers to next Tuesday’s algebra exam. Robbie would like the new Call of Duty game, Riley….”

“Dude, you’re saying it all wrong,” one of the other boys interrupted. “You’ve got to use the correct words or it won’t work.”

There was a slight tug of war over Jake’s paper. “I command you as a southern demon to bring me the new Call of Duty game.” Ah, this must be Robbie.

“It’s not southern, it’s summoned,” Jake corrected, snatching back the paper.

Okay. I’d had enough. “Do I look like fucking Santa Claus?”

Jake looked indignant. “We summoned you into a circle. You have to give us what we want.”

I knew how this worked, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to perform a service for these boys. And I had no fucking idea how I was supposed to get the answers to an algebra exam.

“Call of Duty?” I asked Robbie. “Seriously? You summon a demon and you want a video game? Why don’t you just walk down to the store and buy the damned thing yourself?”

Robbie mumbled something and Jake elbowed him. “His mom won’t let him have it. Says it too violent. The store won’t sell it to him unless his mom signs for it.”

I couldn’t believe it. Teenagers everywhere were scoring booze from an obliging adult, and this poor kid couldn’t even manage to talk someone into getting him a video game.

“And what is it you want?” I asked Riley, who was staring at me with huge eyes. I felt like I should invite him to sit on my lap. Maybe give him a candy cane when he was done.

“A blend whot dig its,” he choked out. I looked at the other two for clarification, thinking Riley was a foreign exchange student.

“He wants a blond with big tits,” Jake helpfully translated.

Now that was more my style. I wanted a blond with big tits too. Maybe we could share.

“Look,” I told them. “I really admire your ingenuity here, but I’m busy right now. Just send me back home and I won’t kill you. Deal?”

“No.” Jake said with surprising firmness for his age. “We summoned you, and you need to give us what we want. No deal.”

That was something I was curious about. “How did you summon me? You’re young. You’re clearly not sorcerers or even mages. Did you use a scroll or something?”

Robbie rustled his paper. “We looked it up on the Internet.”

And how the fuck was a summoning spell on the Internet? One that worked, that is.

Riley turned his paper toward me. “We downloaded this from a museum website,” he said, finally able to speak articulately. “It’s a thirteenth century spell some dude had when they burned him for witchcraft.”

Oh great. I stepped closer to the edge of the salt circle and peered at the paper. Riley extended his arms helpfully so I could read it. “Summoning a Devouring Spirit.” I recognized that spell. It had been translated from the original Elvish, no doubt to be copied and sold to a human population. There were portions that had blurred and been destroyed over the years, but the basic framework of the scroll was there, along with Riley’s notes about the well–endowed blond he wanted to request.

“This is for a devouring spirit. It isn’t the right scroll.”

“We command you to grant us the answers to the algebra exam, the new Call of Duty game, and….” Jake tried again.

“De–vour–ing spirit, you fucking morons,” I interrupted. “Devouring. Not granting. There are specific demons that do these things. I’m not one of them.”

“I want a blond with big tits,” Riley chimed in.

“The only blond with big tits you’re
ever
going to get is the kind you blow up with an air compressor. Now send me home. Read the part of the scroll that banishes me and I’ll let you all live to fail your tests, and wank off in your bedrooms without video games.”

Their eyes were blank. I could swear I heard crickets chirping in the background of the silence. “We command you….” Jake began again, no doubt figuring that if he repeated it enough, I’d get bored and just give him what he wanted.

“Don’t tell me. You don’t have the banishing part of the spell. You morons summoned a devouring spirit, and didn’t think to make sure you had a way to send it away when you were done.”

I glanced down at the salt circle. It looked funny—kind of chunky and an odd color.

“Command you to grant us the answers,” Jake continued.

I reached down with a finger and swiped the salt. It didn’t burn like it should have. Bringing my finger to my mouth I tasted the bluish crystals.

“Ice melt? You summoned me into a circle of ice melt?”

“We didn’t have enough table salt,” Riley explained.

“The new Call of Duty game and a blond,” Jake went on.

I stepped out of the circle. Jake’s voice tapered off into a squeak and he held his paper up in front of him like a shield.

“One circle? Of ice melt? Next time use two circles, of the purest salt, with a triangle inside. Summon the demon into the triangle, with the two circles to reinforce the parameter, and wear amulets of protection. Make sure you have the banish incantation ready to go, and an incantation of no–harm to the spellcaster.”

I moved a few steps closer. “There won’t be a next time, though. You will all die by my hands tonight.”

“Does this mean I don’t get my blond?” Riley asked.

I changed direction and walked over toward him. “Oh you’ll get your blond. She’ll tease you and tempt you. Then as you penetrate her, the teeth in her vagina will tear and shred your cock to a useless, bloody nub. You’ll scream in pain, but you won’t be able to help yourself from doing it over and over again. For all eternity.”

I ripped the paper from his hands, grabbing his shoulders and sent tendrils of myself into him to Own. Then pain exploded in my head and everything went black again.

17

I
woke in a garbage bag, tied up with electrical extension cords. I probably would have suffocated, but during transport, holes had formed in the cheap bag. Someone’s parents bought the generic, bulk stuff, and for that I was eternally grateful. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to consolidate and pull back my spirit self to live inside a corpse while I was unconscious. Tearing my way out of the bag, I shrugged off the electrical cords. I had no idea where I was or how long I’d been out. I was under a bush, surrounded by woods with a steep slope in front of me. I could only assume I’d been driven somewhere in the country, then thrown down an embankment to decompose.

It was a tough climb to the top of the slope where I saw a two–lane road. Which way? And would there be enough traffic for me to hitch a ride, or would I be forced to walk miles before I found someone? I’d been summoned out of my home without a cell phone, without any identification, or money. I had no way to call Wyatt to come get me, and I wasn’t even sure I was within driving distance. For all I knew, I was on the other coast of the country.

I walked for about thirty minutes before I gave up and called the only being I didn’t need a cell phone to reach. It took a few seconds before Gregory appeared. He took in our surroundings in disbelief.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was summoned,” I told him sullenly. “By three teenage boys who got a hold of some scroll out of a museum. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

“And where are these teenage boys?” Gregory sounded amused. “Am I to be reading three more four–nine–five reports?”

“I don’t know where they are.” I kicked some gravel off the road and down the steep embankment. “They knocked me unconscious and dumped my body down a ravine a few miles back. Trust me, if I could get my hands on them, you would definitely be reading a stack of four–nine–five reports.”

It had to have been evening. Yes, the sun was definitely lower in the sky then when I’d first crawled out of my garbage bag. I started walking, and Gregory fell in beside me.

“They thought I was going to give them stuff, like some kind of demonic Father Christmas. Me! One kid wanted a stupid video game. The other wanted answers to a school test. Because evidently it’s easier to summon a demon than to actually study.”

We walked along the deserted road. A cliff rose up on one side, and the ravine deepened on the other. Scrub poked out of the gaps in the guardrails along the ravine side, waving bare thorny branches in the chill breeze.

“What did the other human adolescent want?” Gregory asked.

“A blond with big tits. Now
that
I can actually understand. I mean, you should have seen this kid. No way was he ever going to get laid in his lifetime without otherworldly intervention. That dude had a legitimate reason to summon a demon.”

Gregory made a sympathetic noise.

“Is this what it’s come to?” I asked philosophically. “Satan? Demons? What happened to the terror, the screaming in the night? Young humans are now asking us to be personal shoppers and pimps. Adults ignore us, or emulate us. I’ve seen humans do things that would make the oldest demon cringe.”

“I know. Terrible, aren’t they?” Gregory had a note of fondness in his voice. I halted and faced him.

“Wait. I thought you hated humans—that you were just doing this Gregori thing out of duty, because you angels fucked things up so badly.”

He looked at me for a long moment then turned his eyes west, toward the golden sun snared in the tree limbs. “I changed my mind. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things.”

Without further clarification, he continued walking. I scampered to catch up, and we walked, side by side, in a companionable silence. The sun sank lower into the tree line, sending out rays of orange that faded into pink and violet in the darkening sky. Long shadows spread across the empty road. I hadn’t seen a car the entire time I’d been walking. Those teenagers had done a good job; this road was perfect for dumping bodies.

I glanced over at the angel beside me. He seemed peacefully lost in thought. I wondered why he hadn’t asked me what I’d wanted when I summoned him. He was always harping on about how busy he was, how I was distracting him from important duties, yet here he was, just out for a stroll as if there was nothing more important than enjoying the evening sunset with me.

“What angel did you send to Wyatt the other day?” I asked, making small talk.

“Eloa. He’s always happy to do stuff like that, and he gets along well with the humans.”

“That ass–kisser.” Eloa had appeared female last time I’d seen him, like a pouty Marilyn Monroe. “Of course he’d do anything for his
Tsith,
” I added, uttering the disgustingly mushy term Eloa used to refer to Gregory.

Gregory shot me a look. “That’s disturbing.”