Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (8 page)

Before I could protest Leethu replied, “I said lucky. I never said smart.”

Great. Et tu Brute?

“Feel free to propose something else.” Yeah, I was grumpy. I had no idea what to do with these fucking elves. Actually my solution had been to kill them all, but I hadn’t even bothered to propose that, knowing Bob would be aghast. And Gregory would frown—which meant he’d drag me off by my hair and warn me against harming so much as the cartilage on one of their pointy ears. Killing a human bought me a two hundred page four-nine-five report and potential time in the angelic pokey. Fuck knows what elven genocide would cost me.

Bob shrugged, the movement looking a lot like Leethu’s. “The Klee elves want to stay with the humans. We don’t care where you send the other ones. I’m just pointing out the improbability of success in your current plan.”

Damn it all. Can’t kill them. Can’t make them stay in Hel. The only place they seemed to be unable to escape from was the human jail cell. Hmm, maybe I could convince Gregory to put together a giant prison to house the elves. Imagine the human jobs it would create and the benefit to the economy. A privatized incarceration system, run by humans with angelic oversight, specifically to house elves. Why the fuck not? They were ten times worse than any current illegal immigrant problem. What about The Donald’s wall solution? I’d build a wall around Hel to keep them in, and perhaps I could make the elves pay for it.

Nah. That would never work. Elves were very good at climbing—trees as well as walls.

“Fine. Is there a way you can narrow down the landing site as well as the date and time of these events? Give me even as little as five minutes notice, and we’ll be there.”

The elf’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I can give you a heads-up after the fact, but that’s it. The powers-that-be are hiding the exact time, date and location from us. That first wave is critical, and they’re being very secretive about it. I know some who have been chosen for that migration. I’ve got a communication device so they can tell me as soon as they get the go-ahead. But by the time I get the info to you, they’ll be there.”

How could that be? “They need to meet at a central spot to use the gateway. There should be enough time from when they get their orders to move until they actually arrive to let me know. I want to be there with a six-winged angel by my side when they come through the gateway.”

“Nope. Elf buttons are pre-programmed to the Hel-side gate location, and the coding is shielded. I managed to nab one and even our best sorcerer couldn’t decipher the spot. They get the word. They hit the button. They walk through an activated gate. I swear on the Goddess, by the time I get the information to give you, they’ll be among the humans.”

Fuck. Giant, sucking donkey-balls fuck. And if all four groups went at once, we’d be doubly screwed. Gregory and I could only be one place at a time—well he could be more than one, but I lacked his ability to create aspects of myself, and this was a task that really needed the pair of us. Damn.

“Thanks. Just let me know as soon as you can.” I got up to leave and saw the elf fall in beside me.

“I’m coming with you.”

“He’s coming with you,” Leethu repeated, as if that was going to make any of this more acceptable.

“Like fuck he is.” I had Nyalla, Nils, Dalmai, and a rotation of Lows in and out of my house. The guest wing wasn’t much more than framed in at this point. I had no room for an elf. And given Nyalla’s past, I wasn’t about to put one of them, Klee or not, in the same house with her.

“I can help,” he protested.

I spun around. “I’ve got a human girl who is pretty much my adopted daughter at this point. She was a changeling who spent most of her life as a slave to the elves in Cyelle. I’m not gonna be to blame if she runs you though with a fork or bludgeons you to death with the television remote.”

He blinked. “I doubt a human could kill me.”

I snorted. “You haven’t met Nyalla.”

“Oh let him come, NiNi,” Leethu cajoled in her most seductive voice. “He can run fast enough to get away from Nyalla, and if he intends to stay the rest of his life among the humans, he needs to know what he’s in for.”

She giggled, covering her beautiful mouth with a scaled hand. It was then I understood. Leethu loved her Klee elves, but such affection for demons was of the tough-love variety. We believed in survival of the fittest, and although we mourned the loss of those we cared about, we felt the world was better off without incompetent fools. If Bob was an incompetent fool, then I’d get a new spy. If not, well then he’d prove his ability to be of service to me.

“You’ll need to join my household.”

That brought the elf up short. “Huh?”

“Household. Otherwise you’re toast. They’ll still beat the shit out of you, but the only way I can keep the rest of my household, which includes demons, a Fallen Angel, humans and an elf-demon hybrid, from slicing you to tiny little bits is if you’re one of us. Join me, or prepare to have a very short existence on the other side of the gates.”

Bob swallowed hard a few times and glanced at Leethu, who nodded encouragingly. “Okay. I’m yours.”

Which is why I gated back to my house in Maryland with an elf in tow, and no fucking plan how I was going to handle the worst illegal immigration scenario the human world had ever seen.

B
ob and I appeared at the end of my driveway, nearly causing a jacked-up F250 to run off the road. My skills in teleportation had vastly improved over the last few months. I’d purposely put us a short walk from the house so as to not alarm any of my residents with Bob’s sudden appearance, and to give me a few moments to brief him on the state of affairs in Chez Sam.

“Have you been this side of the gates before?”

The elf’s wide mismatched eyes gave me my answer.

“Here’s the deal. No one speaks Elvish beyond demons, angels and Nyalla. And Nyalla might not speak to you at all. She’s my girl—mine. You so much as say one mean word to her and I will rip your fucking balls off.”

Bob gulped and looked around, no doubt planning an escape route.

“There’s another girl who’s half-elf/half-demon. She’s mine too. Same testicular removal if you say anything mean to her. Got it?”

He nodded. “She’s not
really
half-elf/half-demon? That doesn’t happen. Elves don’t…well, sometimes with humans, but not with demons.”

“Half-elf/half-demon. And whatever I do to you will be nothing compared to what Leethu does to you if you lay a hand on her.”

He raised said hands upward. “I understand. I promise I won’t touch her or your human girl.”

“Good. The guy that lives in this falling-down house beside the road used to be mine. He’s not mine-mine anymore, but he’s still mine. Be nice to him or—”

“I get it. I get it,” he interrupted. “Is everyone here yours? Just asking so I know who I’m free to insult.”

I thought about that. “Yeah. Pretty much everyone here is mine. Low FICO score, mine. Fallen Angel, mine. Humans I’ve slept with or wanted to sleep with or had business dealings with or shared a latte with twenty years ago, mine.”

“How about I just don’t talk to anyone.”

I think Bob meant that sarcastically, but the idea was sound. “Good plan. The other thing you need to know is that humans generally don’t believe in magic here. I’m not even sure most of what you do in Hel is going to work.”

“How do they get far distances? Walk? I thought that metal thing that nearly hit us was some kind of magical horse. It’s not magic? And how do they communicate if they’re not close to each other? How do they prepare foods and control their weather and plant growth and manage waste? That house we just passed seems like a hovel. I had assumed humans had evolved a bit further than living like animals.”

Oh how to explain this in the fifty feet we had left before reaching my house? “Humans have their own sort of magic. If migrating elves don’t recognize it or learn to use it, they’ll never be able to survive here. You’re not just my spy, you’re the Klee test subject. If you can’t deal with human ‘magic,’ then you need to let the others know not to come.”

He scowled. “I’ve seen humans do magic. Yes, a well-trained sorcerer is a force to be respected, but only one in a few thousand is truly capable of that level of craft. I can’t imagine them having any sort of skills that would be beyond our ability to easily master.”

I pulled out my cell phone and showed it to him. “I can communicate with anyone on the planet with this. The humans have put satellites in orbit that transmit signals across the globe. I can write someone and they see it instantly. I can speak with them. I also have access to an enormous library of information through this device—all at the touch of a finger. And if I wanted to, I could kill someone with it. Just one button.”

Okay,
that
was an exaggeration, but he didn’t need to know that.

Bob took the device from my hands, cradling it as if it were the Holy Grail. “This is the mighty cell phone that the demons have talked about. I thought that surely they must be lying. The amount of energy required…how does it work? Is it like our mirrors?”

I had no fucking idea how it worked. Like ninety percent of the humans, I just bought it, charged it, and hit a bunch of buttons until it did what I wanted. I don’t even think I’d ever read the directions. Come to think of it, I don’t even think it came with directions.

“Magic.” It was the best explanation I could come up with. “The special human magic I told you about. You’ll be able to use these devices, just as we demons do, but only the humans can create them and provide them.”

Just then we walked around the corner in the road and saw my house. Bob stopped dead and gaped. “That doesn’t look like the house we just passed.”

“That’s mine. It’s really not all that big of a deal. I’ve seen humans with far more impressive houses. I’ll warn you I’m not sure where you’re going to sleep. I’m pretty much full up and as you can see, that structure off to the side isn’t completely done yet. That’s the guest house I’m building. Being the Iblis means I wind up with all sorts of guests who come and never leave.”

“I’ll sleep anywhere.” His voice sounded distracted as he slowly continued forward, still staring at the house. “I’ve slept in the woods before, or in the stables. I can see you have stables.”

“Three horses, one of them a hybrid. I’ve also got a hellhound, but lately he sleeps in the house.” I wasn’t happy about that, but Nyalla insisted that Boomer was part of the family and needed to be inside. I relented, hoping the extra air fresheners covered up the smell of dog and dead stuff.

“Honestly, I’m good anywhere,” Bob assured me. “I’ll even sleep in that unfinished structure over there.” He pointed to the framed out guest house—the guest house that suddenly burst into flames.

We both stared wordlessly at the inferno, then Bob brought his index finger close to his nose, paling slightly. At least I think he paled. It was hard to tell with his dark complexion.

“Was it supposed to do that?” he whispered.

No, it wasn’t supposed to do that. I leaned closer inspecting Bob’s index finger with the same care that he was doing. Had I been wrong about elven magic in this world? Was it possible that the elves were even more powerful here, able to set buildings on fire by accident, without even muttering an incantation?

Just before I began to rethink my entire elven migration strategy, I heard a roar. It was a huge, earth shattering roar and it was followed up by an ear piercing scream that could only be delivered by young children or angry human women.

Nyalla. I ran, putting on a burst of speed far faster than my human form should have been able to manage. Bob kept pace, and I was impressed that he was by my side and not running in the opposite direction. I might not have much respect for elves, but this one at least was brave. We rounded the corner to see a red dragon tearing up my landscaping as he frantically tried to escape the garden hose Nyalla was spraying him with.

She was in a bikini, her nose white with sunscreen and her sunglasses askew. Her waist-length, dark-blond hair flew around her, wet strands clumped together like dreads, or Medusa’s famous locks. She was yelling something about stupid dragons and had the hose turned on full blast. Normally that wouldn’t do much to a dragon, but this guy was young—about half the size of the one who’d claimed the British Museum last year—and I’d modified my garden hose.

It seemed like a good idea at the time to have it at twice the force of a fireman’s hose. And it was funny to prank my demon household with it, sending them flying over hedges and into the horse pasture with one blast. It wasn’t so amusing when I tried to water plants or clean off the pool patio and wound up with a mini-demolition instead. The landscapers had just finished repairs two days ago but I hadn’t gotten around to returning the hose to normal. Thankfully.

I gave Nyalla a few moments of glory while I watched her in action. Yeah, it terrified me when she put herself at risk like this, but she was a grown woman and if she wanted to be Satan’s right-hand girl, then she needed to know how to take down demons, elves, and evidently the occasional dragon.

Moving closer, Nyalla sprayed the dragon into a prone position, then turned off the hose, bopping it on the head with the nozzle. “Stupid thing. You made me spill my drink.”

I tensed, but this dragon was even younger than I’d thought and had obviously never seen a human before. He cowered like a half-drowned, six foot tall iguana with wings. Then he flinched as Nyalla turned the hose on the guest house, putting out the burning bits that the water bouncing off the dragon’s hide hadn’t hit. The structure was a mess, smoking and dripping, blackened two-by-fours still remaining impossibly upright.

“Who is that?” Bob breathed. I narrowed my eyes at his worshipful tone.

“I hope you mean the dragon.”

“No.
That
. That amazing human woman who battles dragons half-naked because they spilled her drink. ”

I was predisposed to hate any man interested in Nyalla. I couldn’t do much about it though. There were tons of men interested in Nyalla—humans, werewolves, Fallen Angels and now an elf. I couldn’t keep track of them all, and my girl seemed to have a bit of a promiscuous bent. Which meant they came and went much faster than I’d normally expect with a human female. Nyalla was fully capable to taking care of herself—lovers
and
dragons, evidently. Still, I hated it when things didn’t work out romantically for her. Nils was in an emo funk over their breakup. It was the Fallen Angel I should be upset for, not my strong and capable human girl, but I’d seen the sadness in her eyes. Humans needed partners. Until a few years ago I’d not understood such things, but with Gregory…well, I knew how wonderful it was to have someone there by your side, someone who had your back, someone to love. I wanted that for Nyalla too, but not with Bob.