Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (7 page)

“Ooo, egg salad! Dwarven bread too. You always had the dwarven friends, NiNi. They don’t like me and I can never manage to purchase things like these sandwiches from them.”

Leethu pouted, which made me want to fall into the softness of her embrace even more. I’d wanted her since I was a little imp in our dwarven foster home, and centuries had done nothing to dull that desire. What the centuries had done was give me a healthy sense of caution when it came to sex demons. I’d run headlong into an inferno, piss off an ancient angel, back talk a powerful demon, but I wasn’t about to give in to the siren-song of a succubus. I might be a reckless imp, an Angel of Chaos, but I still had my limits.

It seems dwarves had them too. “Here. Although I shouldn’t give it to you. What the fuck is up with you keeping Dar’s kid a secret from me? If she hadn’t tried to launch herself out of a laundry basket, I still would be in the dark.” I handed her a sandwich and watched as she began to nibble it, somehow managing to make gluttony look sexy.

“He made me promise,” she told me in between bites. “I’m supposed to be finding him and Asta a dwarf to help with childcare, but none of them want to leave Hel. Plus every time I get a lead on one, I get summoned.”

I blinked in surprise. “More than once?” Sex demons were favorites for humans to summon, but it was usually a one-time occurrence. No one liked being a sex slave on auto-dial, and sex demons liked it even less. They granted their summoner’s wish, giving them the ride of their life. Then they either killed them or engineered some way to ensure there would not be a repeat occurrence. I once came across a man who’d been institutionalized, drooling and babbling mindlessly as he masturbated nonstop throughout the day. They had to sedate him or he wouldn’t sleep. Steep price to pay for one night of mind-blowing pleasure.

Leethu sighed. “Sadly yes. He’s tricky, and I can’t get him to have sex with me. Third time’s a charm they say, though. The next time it happens I vow his brains will paint the pavement.”

Pretty harsh words for a succubus. Leethu must be at the end of her rope to threaten something so vulgar and messy. I nodded in sympathy.

“I hate to add one more thing to your list, but I need you to do something beyond screening for nannies and murdering your summoner.”

Leethu rolled her eyes. “Sure. Why not. What do you need, NiNi?”

“I need you to find an angel.” I let that sink in a moment. “It’s Uriel. She’s ditched the Ruling Council to slap on a hair-shirt and go on pilgrimage among the humans.”

“Got it,” Leethu said. “An angel. Female form. Wearing a shirt made of hair. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“
Maybe
female. And the hair-shirt thing was a metaphor. I’ve got no idea what she, or he, might be wearing or how old he or she might appear. And she’s grieving or some shit like that, so she is going to be blending in among the humans.”

“One angel among seven billion humans. No problem. I’ll see you in a few thousand years or so.”

Leethu could be such a smart ass sometimes.

“It won’t be that hard,” I lied. “She’s an angel. They suck at trying to blend in with the humans. They always fuck up their human form somehow. You’ll be able to spot her a mile away. I promise you.”

“I’ll give it my best shot,” Leethu said. And yes, she was lying. I didn’t know how else to convince her, so instead I just watched her finish her sandwich before I got to the other business at hand.

“So, what’s your intel say?” I asked.

Leethu licked each golden-scaled finger, eyeing me seductively from beneath heavy lids. “News is that the elves are planning to send some test groups now, to gauge the lay of the land and determine the best location for their base. After they have a good idea where they plan to settle, they’ll start the big migrations.”

Elves. We’d send Low in first as spear fodder, kind of like tossing our hat in the door and listening for gunshots. They were doing the same with whatever citizens they’d deemed least important. “Any idea where the test groups are planning to appear? I’m assuming they’ve got a few places in mind.”

Leethu nodded. “They’ve slipped one or two elves across the gates to gather intel, but so far I only know they are looking at a place in the central U.S., one in France, and one more somewhere north of the equator.”

I looked down the rocky cliff and across the verdant valley. Klee elves aside, most of them preferred a cooler environment with seasons. And from what Leethu had said, they were inexplicably shunning the southern hemisphere. Odd, but it made my job a little easier. Central US, no doubt because it was appealing agricultural-wise. They could create their own forests, so miles of farmland wouldn’t be a detriment. France. Yeah, wine. The other one could be anywhere in Europe, north Asia, or Canada. We’d just have to keep our ears open. With seven billion humans, a group of elves wouldn’t be hard to spot. And they were so fucking arrogant that they’d probably not bother to learn the language or dress like the locals. I chuckled thinking of the humans’ response. They’d be lucky if they didn’t get their heads shot off.

“Is every elf in Hel migrating, or just certain groups?”

“I think a few dozen may be staying behind, human sympathizers mostly who have been assisting in Libertytown. Plan for the fact that you’ve getting three hundred thousand elves on your doorstep.”

That was still a lot less than seven billion humans. I wondered if they realized how outnumbered they’d be, or how demonic humans had become? I’m sure the bewildered and isolated slaves they’ve brought to Hel via their elf traps through the millennia gave them false confidence in their own superiority. There
were
things that the elves were superior in skill-wise. I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out, though. Elven magic didn’t always work as expected in the human world. At least the humans who’d returned after decades of servitude as mages to the elves had told me so. It might be a human glitch and elven magic would work just fine across the gates. If so, we were in for a world of trouble. Literally.

“They’ll need a distraction,” I mused. “And that little trick with the traveler’s cloak and the gem isn’t going to be enough. The gem is gone and although all those wild gates are a royal pain in the ass, they won’t keep anyone from noticing an influx of pointy-eared motherfuckers on the commuter bus.

Leethu shrugged. “Do they? The humans will be fascinated, at least until one of the elves tries to enslave them. We might have been able to bring the hammer down on the elves when they were a bunch of fractured kingdoms fighting amongst themselves. Now they’re united, where the demons are not. Few care that you’ve the Sword of the Iblis, or about your feathered wings. The elves are well aware of this. And they know an imp and a household full of Lows, give or take a few of us, isn’t going to be able to stop them. I’m not sure the humans are organized enough to do so either.”

“I’ve got an archangel in my pocket,” I countered.

Gregory wasn’t exactly in my pocket, but he
was
one of the few angels who knew the elves were up to no good, and that they wouldn’t be contributing to the positive evolution of the humans, or anyone else for that matter. And he’d offered to help. That was worth a thousand demons assisting me.

Leethu sighed. “Yes, but he is one and the elves are many. Maybe not as many as the humans, but still many. Remember the fire ant. A colony of them can overpower a creature much larger and more powerful. They keep coming, and eventually they succeed in taking down and devouring any prey.”

Fire ants. I loved those things. Enough of them and a human would need a flame thrower to take them down. Maybe I needed to throw fire ants at the elves.

“What do you suggest?” I asked Leethu.

She smiled that enigmatic smile that made me want to drop my panties and jump her. “You need a spy, someone who can let you know exactly what the elves are up to. That way you can slam the door on their initial few groups and make them rethink the wisdom of this whole migration.”

“A spy? Isn’t that you?” Leethu was my spy. She was tight with the Klee elves. They adored her. They adored her so much that I was surprised they were even contemplating a journey across the gates. Shouldn’t they be happy here in their mountain homes, with their succubus friend and the humans they were forward-thinking enough to free and partner with long before I forced the other kingdoms to do so?

Well, kind of forced. I’d made them close the elven traps, cut off their supply of human slaves. And I’d made them free the humans they currently had in their kingdoms.

“No elves outside of Klee will speak to me.” Leethu pouted. “You need an elf. And I have just the one.”

I watched with narrowed eyes as an elf with a long white-gold braid and midnight skin approached. As he neared I realized he had one blue eye and one brown one, and that the silver of his hair held a thick streak of gold.

“This…” Leethu waved dramatically. “Is Alueathillian Pfthelleal Sdellreaf.”

I blinked. “I’m gonna call you Bob. You good with that?”

He nodded, transfixed by the sight of my wings, black feathers stirring in the breeze. “If we have a deal, you can call me whatever you like.”

Damn. If I had known that I would have picked a much more creative nickname for him. Something like Fuckwad, or Buttlick, or Smells-Like-Dog-Shit. Wait—deal?

“What deal?”

Bob glared over at Leethu, whose golden-scaled cheeks flushed a delicate pink. “I was getting to that part. Just hold on here.”

“What deal?” I demanded of her.

She waved away the question. “The Klee elves truly want to live among the humans. They actually like humans and feel there is a lot to learn from them. They will provide a spy, cooperate with any plan you and your angel have for the rest of the elves as long as those punitive measures don’t include them.”

Sounded easy, but it wasn’t. Yes, many of the Klee elves had dark complexions compared to the other Southern elves, but not all of them. Plus several of the Northern kingdoms were genetically pre-disposed to be “dark elves.” Basically I couldn’t tell a Klee elf from the rest. In the heat of battle, or whatever, I couldn’t guarantee that none of them would get caught in the crossfire, or accidently chopped in half with my Iblis sword.

“Got a few problems with that, Bob. One of which is logistics. If we’re killing elves left and right, I don’t want your buddies in the crossfire. Will Klee elves migrate through a specific gate, all together, with no one else mixed in?”

Actually I wasn’t sure that would be the only problem. In order to hide the elven migration from the angels, we needed to ensure none of them stayed outside of Hel in the human world. Well, beyond one or two maybe. Gregory had made that very clear. Any deal I made with Bob would need to be given the angel’s stamp of approval or I’d be running the risk that he’d veto and the Klee elves would wind up back in Hel, one more group that I could count as enemies.

“If we use only one gate, the others will know something is up. We’re supposedly the Alliance of Elven Kingdoms right now. They’re suspicious enough of Klee without us insisting we need to have our own personal migration wave and exclusive gateway.”

He had a point. I wracked my brain and thought of something from a Chinese movie. “What if the Klee elves wear an orange chrysanthemum on their tunics? Or maybe an orange scarf. I’ve got to have some way of differentiating you all.”

It hadn’t worked out well for the Chinese, but perhaps history wouldn’t repeat itself and the Klee elves with their jaunty orange scarves would escape death or deportation.

Assuming there
was
deportation in the other elves’ future. I only had Gregory, a few angels and my household. It would be easy enough to lose track of a dozen elves here and there if they were popping in all over the place. Plus Leethu had made that excellent fire ant analogy. If the humans were enchanted and fascinated by the arrival of the pointy-eared dudes, then there was only so much we could do. An angel and an imp shouting that the sky was falling would be ignored, even if the angel in question was an archangel and the unofficial leader of both Aaru and the Ruling Council.

“We can do that.” Bob held out a hand.

“One more thing,” I cautioned. “I can’t guarantee that you and all of Klee can stay. I don’t run things with the humans, that’s the responsibility of the Grigori. If the big guy says no, then the answer is no.”

He kept his hand extended. “An angel? No problem. Angels love us.”

I shook his hand, pretty sure that he was about to meet the one angel who didn’t blindly love elves. “Okay. So what do you know?”

The elf unfolded a map with a crude drawing of the U.S. on one side and Europe on the other. “Initial groups will be sent in here, here and here.”

I did say “crude,” didn’t I? Squinting at the drawing I estimated the one spot to be somewhere in Iowa, one in northern France, and another in Iceland. The last wouldn’t be too difficult given the size of the country and the topography. What would make it difficult was the absolute fascination the humans there had for all things fae. With the way my luck had been going lately, they’d be defending the elves against us, welcoming them with open arms. The French would either ignore them or make fun of them. The Americans…who knew. Yeah, my buddies stateside loved their firearms, but most of them were a worse shot than I was. If I was to guess, I’d assume they’d ignore the weirdly dressed foreigners until one of them did something offensive, then the elves would either wind up in jail or in the hospital emergency room. I thought of the one elf from months ago still languishing in prison. It would have been a good solution had the penal system not already been overloaded with human offenders and not sufficient to handle three hundred thousand elves.

“Here’s my plan,” I told him. “My angel can create a gate and we can send them back to Hel. We’ll round them up, deliver a stern angelic-warning, then send them home.”

Bob laughed. He laughed so hard he almost lost consciousness. “And five minutes later they’re back across the gates in a different location. Seriously? That’s your solution?” He turned to Leethu. “I thought you said she was smart.”