Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (31 page)

Dirt. I was face-down on hard rocky dirt. And I had a physical body. But no sword. Panicked, I scrambled to my feet. Where was Aaru? Where were the angels and my demons? Most importantly, where was Gregory?

I
spun about, blowing the dirt out of my nose and trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. Where was my army? Where
were
they? Panic turned to relief and I saw bodies scattered around me—not dead bodies but stunned bodies with the breath knocked out of them. I counted twenty-five Lows, the three greed demons, three warmongers. I’d seen Scream’s dead body in Aaru, but even accounting for him, I was missing Hammer, five Lows and all three of my imps. Were they dead? Or…somewhere else?

Angels—at least a dozen of them in the near vicinity of where I stood flopped around like their limbs and spine had turned into overcooked pasta. And in the middle of them sprawled my very own asshole—my big, burly angel with his dark-red curls and somewhat torn clothing. Gregory shook his head and sat up, looking around him in shock.

Gabriel rose to his knees a few feet away, spitting and mending what were clearly broken bones and dislocated joints. If they were here, Rafi and my other demons had to be nearby. And if the rebels were as incapacitated as these other angels, at least they’d be easy to kill.

Gabriel was apparently not as stunned as the rest because I saw him jump to his feet, and in the midst of fixing his own injuries, slug Gregory in the face.

Fight! Fight! I was so excited that I momentarily forgot about the battle, my army, my missing Iblis sword and watched as Gabriel punched his brother once more, this time square in the nose.

Huh. It was usually me hitting Gregory, not his restrained younger brother. I stood up and watched with interest as the elder angel returned the blow and the pair began to wrestle in the muck.

“This would be a whole lot more titillating if you two were naked,” I called out.

They ignored me and continued to beat the crap out of each other. I was surprised to see that they were well matched, even though I’d always thought of Gabriel as the weakling of the siblings. Maybe Gregory was too exhausted from battling the pile-up of angels on top of him to take his brother down with one blow. Or maybe he was too angry to focus properly. He did have some serious anger management issues, although in the past it was usually me on the other end of his temper. Or it could be that he was out of practice. I couldn’t recall the last time he’d tried to rip my head off or shake me to bits. Yeah. That was probably it. I’d need to remember to irritate him more often. Couldn’t have my sweetie getting soft and flabby.

“Left and low, Asshole! He’s wide open.”

Both angels swung left and low, obviously not sure which asshole I was referring to. Only one of them was open, though, and Gabriel flew backward to skid across a particularly smelly patch of mud. Or not mud. Yeah, I was pretty sure it was cow shit the angel had just landed in.

“What have you done?” Gabriel thundered, flinging brown goo from his hands. “You acted too early. You stupid, overgrown, pompous, buffoon. Why didn’t you wait?”

Gregory halted, a puzzled look on his face. “I didn’t… I didn’t do it. I
was
waiting. It wasn’t me.”

Slowly the pair turned to look my way.

“What?”

“Not her,” Gabriel sputtered, standing up from the cow shit and wiping his hands on his pants. “She might be the Iblis but she’s just an imp and she’s not even a thousand years old. She doesn’t have the power to do that.”

Gregory’s expression was a weird combination of shock and anger. “Oak Island? Remember Oak Island? She certainly does have the power to do that, regardless of her age. I’ve seen how much energy she can hold. That along with the Iblis weapon…”

“What?” I repeated.

What did I do now? I’d planned to blow up as many of the angels on top of Gregory as possible, taking myself out in the process. Perhaps these things worked differently in Aaru than they did in Hel. Wasn’t my fault. It’s not like I grew up there, or had been there more than a few times for incarceration. How the fuck was I supposed to know that blowing myself up would do…whatever it was I’d done.

“You were the one,” Gabriel snarled, taking a step toward me. “You did the exile.”

“Uh, no I didn’t.” How the fuck could
I
do the exile? “I thought only Gregory’s sword did that sort of thing.”

“The sword of the Iblis is the mirror image to mine,” Gregory explained. He too took a step toward me, just as menacing as the one Gabriel had taken. “One for Order, one for Chaos.”

I tried to look as innocent and helpless as was possible for an imp who’d just done…I don’t know, something horrible probably. “Well the fucking thing didn’t come with instructions. How am I supposed to know that? And I’m sorry, but if exiling angels from Aaru is as simple as shoving your sword in the ground and blowing yourself up, then you all have a serious design flaw going on here. There needed to be some kind of magical incantation or something. That way nobody could push the red-distructo button by accident. Not my fault. Totally not my fault.”

“Two swords.” Gregory took another step toward me. “Two in all of creation. It takes one of those two swords. It takes sufficient power level. And it takes intent.”

I seriously doubted the intent thing. I mean, I didn’t…oh, I did. I was screaming for Gregory to do the thing, wishing with all my might that the rebel angels would just fall from the sky. Maybe it kinda-sorta was my fault, just a little bit.

“Um, so exactly what did I do? Because I wanted to blow up the angels attacking you. I wanted all the rebels to leave. That’s what I wanted. Good intentions, and all that.”

“You exiled us all from Aaru,” Gabe snarled. “
All
. Not just the rebels, all of us. Every single angel is now locked out of Aaru. Forever.”

I gasped. That wasn’t what I wanted. I’d wanted Gregory to reclaim his home, not lose it forever.

“You stupid, ignorant, worthless cockroach,” Gabriel shouted, inches from my face.

No one called me Cockroach but Gregory. No one. “It was the only thing I
could
do,” I snapped back. “The rebels had us. We were
losing
. The way I see it, if my beloved angel can’t have Aaru, then no one can.”

Gabriel punched me, the blow hitting my jaw and rocking my face to the side. “We weren’t losing. That setback was temporary. There was no way I would lose Aaru to a bunch of whiny, unbalanced purists.”

I’d always considered Gabriel to be a whiny, unbalanced purist. I wondered how despicable these other angels were to be more uptight than this one. Honestly I couldn’t differentiate the minute differences in their philosophies, and I really didn’t give a fuck what happened to Aaru. I was only fighting because Gregory needed me. This was important to him, and I’d support him no matter what.

Well, and I
did
like to fight. Any excuse to slice up some angels with my sword—that was me.

“We’re locked out.” Gregory took a menacing step toward me. I was beginning to feel the error of my actions, no matter how good my intentions had been. “We’re
all
locked out. Forever.”

Now that seemed rather dramatic. I blocked another swing from Gabriel and hooked my leg around his ankle, pushing him to the ground. “You exiled the original Angels of Chaos, but I got in. I got my demons in. Clearly it’s not forever.”

Gregory stood between us, but instead of protecting me from Gabriel, he grabbed the front of my shirt and shook me like he hadn’t done in ages. “The Iblis is allowed into Aaru. Demons are so far removed from Angels of Chaos at this point that if they can manage to get there, they can get in.”

I slapped his hands away and stood back. “That’s a crock of shit. You
banished
me to send me to Hel when I was hurt. Yeah, I can’t use the angel gates anymore, but I’m perfectly able to transport myself here or anywhere else, including Aaru. And I’m willing to bet any of the Ancients who were originally exiled can also. They just don’t have an army, and one-against-thousands is a bad set of odds, so they stay in Hel. Plus I think they’re depressed or something.”

I wondered if I brought back a supply of Prozac and spiked their wine they’d be bad-ass again? Although the idea of non-depressed, awake and alert, vengeful Ancients in Hel scared the fuck out of me.

Gregory frowned. “An Ancient has never tried to enter Aaru, so I can’t say for certain. Besides, Aaru was open at that time, and now it’s closed. Empty. No one there.”

Holy shit what had I done? “There has to be a way back in. A key under the porch mat? A secret passage? I wave my sword around and say the magic words?”

“It’s not my sword,” Gregory said. His anger was abating, a sorrow replacing it. I think I preferred the anger. “I don’t know if your sword works the same as mine.”

“But your sword does have some kind of reversal? An ‘oops, my bad’ way to let the exiled back into Aaru? We just voted on a reinstatement plan for banished and Fallen Angels. There
has
to be a way back.”

“Yes, and there
has
to be someone in Aaru to let them return.”

That was seriously fucked up. “You were all about demons and Angels of Chaos being reunited in Aaru, so there must be a way. If your sword is the mirror image of mine, then mine would have a way too.”

He shook his head. “With the entirety of the angelic host exiled, there is no one in Aaru to open the gates.”

“Can’t you force your way in?”

He lifted his hands upward. “All I know is Aaru is empty and locked down, and as hard as I beat against the perimeter, I can’t get in. If
I
can’t force my way in, no one can.”

I’d done a lot of bad things in my life, but this was the worst. I’d taken away Gregory’s home, deprived him and his family of the place they built and lived in for billions of years. I’d forced every angel to live a corporeal existence here among the humans forever, with no hope of ever going back.

“I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.”

Gabriel shook his head. The normally fastidious angel seemed unbothered by the mud and shit that caked his clothing. “Who in this great big universe decided she was fit to wield the sword of the Iblis? Huh? She’s chaos incarnate. Every time she says or does anything, the world just crashes down around us.”

He had a point. Luck hadn’t seemed to be on my side lately, which meant my crazy antics didn’t always turn out well.

“The sword chose her. And I’m the one who asked her to bring the demons up to Aaru.” Gregory ran a hand through his hair. “It’s my fault. I’d hoped the demons would prove enough distraction that we’d get the upper hand and I could manage an exile of the rebels.”

“We
were
getting the upper hand,” Gabriel argued. “If she’d just waited—”

“No, we weren’t.” Gregory turned a stern glare toward Gabriel. “We were losing. And as horrible as this is, I’m not sure it’s worse than having the rebels take charge of Aaru. If that had happened, we’d either be dead or in Hel. And I’d rather be dead.”

“Hey,” I protested. He might hate the place, but it
was
my home.

“At least now the rebels don’t have Aaru,” he continued. “They can’t banish us to Hel, and they can’t put the elves in charge. In fact, I doubt they can do much more than flop around and try to figure out how to use arms and legs.”

“Hey, angel-dudes!”

The three of us spun around to see Hammer with his sword over top of one of the aforementioned flopping angels.

“Is this guy on our side? Can I kill him? I swear whoever yanked us all out of that Aaru place was fucking brilliant. All I have to do is walk around and stab angels lying on the ground. How easy is that?”

Sheesh. “We’re done, Hammer,” I called. “Battle over. Time to go home.”

Well, it would be once I found the rest of my demons.

“I had a blast. Next time you’ve got something like this planned, count me in. I don’t care whether you’re a damned imp or not, you clearly know where the best battles are.” He dug in the back of his waistband and pulled out a huge string of feathers. Angel feathers. I shuddered.

“Go back to Hel with your demons, Cockroach,” Gregory told me, his voice weary. “We’ll take it from here.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Was he going to go around like Hammer suggested and skewer angels where they lay, taking out the rebels? Or was that a completely moot point now that Aaru was out of reach for us all? Rebels here…what would they fight for?

The battle was over. The war was clearly over. And as unsatisfactory as the resolution was, I for one, was glad my beloved hadn’t been killed.

And with the angels here among the humans, I wasn’t even sure the elves would be much of a problem anymore. Or would they? With the angels out of Aaru, the elves might decide they were on a level playing field and that they didn’t need the angels anymore. They might figure this was the perfect time to just do whatever they wanted, openly and without the need to deceive a powerful bunch of winged beings. Did the angels even have their wings anymore? Shit. Oh,
no
fucking way.

“Do you guys still have your wings?”

The pair before me exchanged puzzled glances and revealed the appendages—Gabriel’s snow-white, Gregory’s cream with a lacy gray pattern throughout.

Whew. But they were locked out of Aaru, cut off from the source, and forced to be in physical form. “These exiled angels are not now considered Fallen, are they?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Both Gregory and Gabriel looked horrified. “Technically I guess they are, Cockroach.”

That just exponentially increased my workload. Or not. It’s not like I bothered much with the Ancients in Hel, or even the demons in Hel. Although these angels were here, among the humans where I also had responsibilities.

“She’s not in charge of us,” Gabriel argued. “I refuse to take instruction from an imp, even if she is the Iblis.”

“Get in line buddy.” It’s not like anyone else took instructions from me. This would be business as usual, only instead of demons ignoring me in Hel, I now had angels and elves ignoring me here among the humans.