Imp Forsaken (Imp Book 5) (7 page)

Gabriel watched his sister closely to see her reaction.

“The Grigori are investigating this death. I believe they suspected a devouring spirit, which is in keeping with the manner of death.”

“And the thought of a devouring spirit loose doesn’t bother you? I find it hard to believe you could be so casual about the prospect.” He shook his head. First his brother’s odd behavior, and now Uriel’s indifference. What was going on?

“Of course I’m concerned. I have great faith in our brother and his Grigori to contain the matter. If he is unconcerned, then there is no cause for worry.”

Gabriel frowned—was she aware that the monster had been slain or was she just oddly unaffected by the thought of an imminent apocalypse?

“The timing of the two deaths would lead me to believe they were connected, and the fact that the deceased’s choir is not cooperating requires added scrutiny in the investigation.”

Uriel waved a hand in irritation. “You see conspiracy where this is none. Their deaths were not at all similar. How could there be a connection between an angel delivering a message and one whose life was taken by an abomination?”

Gabriel winced. A devouring spirit was something they all feared. Eventually, one day, one would escape them and all life as they knew it would cease. The end would be upon them.

“But why was he with the humans? Raphael claims in the report that he has no knowledge of the angel’s purpose, and his choir refuses to cooperate.”

Uriel closed her eyes and shook her head. “Maybe he was tempted to sin. Maybe even tempted to find a loving connection with a human woman and produce Nephilim. Maybe he just wanted to catch the last episode of Mad Men. Our rules are inflexible and many of the lesser angels chafe under the restrictions.”

Gabriel stiffened. He understood temptation better than most angels. That Uriel was so casual about the shortcomings of others never failed to irk him.

“But he’s dead. Why cover it up unless whatever he was doing is still ongoing and something that is forbidden? There is no shame in having a fallen angel in your choir, unless the entire choir knew of and supported his actions.”

He watched her closely, but she just appeared… tired.

“I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore. Is that wrong? I see how happy our eldest brother is with his little imp and I find myself wanting to throw away all I’ve held dear for the past two and a half million years and find one of my own.” She rubbed a hand over her brow. “Maybe I’m just weary. I’m old, and things are not like they used to be. There’s too much chaos in the universe to hold fast to a philosophy of strict order.”

“Now who is it that voices treasonous thoughts?” Gabriel said softly.

“If over half of Aaru thinks the same, than how is that treason?” she replied. “Perhaps it is a natural turn of events. A return to equilibrium.”

“We have equilibrium,” Gabriel snapped. “And I, for one, will not sully myself with humans or demons. Until someone can present me with a viable alternative, a way to combine myself with the necessary portion of spirit to produce offspring without actually having to join with one, then I will hold fast to my principals.”

Uriel shook her head, once again gazing down at the human children at play. “Then pray mightily, my brother. Pray mightily.”

7

I
spent the next twenty-four hours trying to ignore my pain and force myself to convert energy into matter. Even though I couldn’t manage to change my form, if I could turn raw energy to fire or lightning, or produce an explosion, at least I’d have an offensive ability. I may be pond scum, but I’d be bad-ass pond scum. The biggest problem I seemed to be having was holding onto enough energy to produce a decent-sized result. I could spark and shock, rumble the floor below me, but nothing bigger. Raim had been able to directly convert large chunks of matter into energy and produce a lethal burst, although he couldn’t hold or store the energy. I couldn’t manage even that.

I heard the dungeon doors open with a sense of dread. Whatever was coming my way was going to be painful, and there was nothing I could do about it. The large group of feet approached my cell and stopped. I envisioned them staring at me, as if I were an animal at the zoo and they a bunch of second graders on a field trip.

“She needs to be moved to a different cell,” I heard the sorcerer say. “The floor here has been compromised—it won’t properly hold the magical enchantments to perform the rite.”

There was a series of mumbling, and a voice finally spoke. “How are we supposed to move her? I mean… look at her. She’s not exactly solid.”

“Well, how did you get her here? I’m sure she didn’t appear from nowhere into your dungeon.” Feille’s voice was impatient and sarcastic.

“A bucket. And a shovel.” I recognized the scout who’d brought me in.

“Then why are you standing here, staring at her? Get to it.”

There was a flurry of activity, and a few minutes later, my cell door opened. I heard the scrape of the shovel, and felt myself dumped into a bucket. It was all very undignified. From the confines of my container, I felt the vertigo of being lifted, then a rocking motion as whoever carried me swung the bucket to and fro. Another cell door clanged open, and I was deposited onto a cold, hard floor, just as dirty as the one I’d been in for the last few months.

It took a few seconds for whatever sense I was using to visualize my surroundings to stabilize. When the world righted, I saw all the shoes a healthy distance away on the other side of the cell bars. They’d left the door open, but retreated in case I decided to attack.

“She seems determined to ride this out,” one of the guards commented. I’d landed at a slightly different angle and could actually see more than their feet this time. At the distance they all stood, I could make out their faces, although I calculated that within three or four feet, I’d be unable to see anything above their hips.

“Yeah, I thought for sure you were going to get electrocuted, the way you tossed her in that bucket,” one laughed. I really wanted to. If only I could.

Feille gave them a fierce glance and the laughter abruptly stopped. “Is there enough room surrounding her for your circles and runes? I have a feeling she’s waiting to pounce, and I want to make sure you’re safe.”

I knew his concern was strictly because this man was his only sorcerer, and he couldn’t afford to lose him. I’d need to watch carefully for any opportunity to make my move. Not that I might be able to take advantage of it. My only hope was that this insane spell actually worked, and didn’t kill me in the process. If he managed to turn me into a human, I’d be more vulnerable physically, but better able to grab whatever I could reach and beat the shit out of everyone. I loved a good melee, and I was hoping one was in my near future.

The sorcerer stepped forward, once again surrounding me with a serious amount of salt—two circles and an inner triangle, as before. With a grunt of pain and an awkward movement, he knelt down and began his circle of chalk runes. I felt a twinge of guilt. This guy wasn’t young, and he was crawling around a cold stone floor on his knees twice in two days. He was a slave, a man who had no option but to follow Feille’s orders. I felt terrible for what I needed to do.

Done with his runes, the sorcerer stood stiffly and motioned to one of the guards, who brought a box over. The sorcerer pulled a variety of stones from the box and placed them at the four directional corners outside the rune circle, chanting as he went. Granite for north, turquoise for east, red jasper for south, and jade at the west. With both hands massaging his back, he retreated to survey his work. I tensed, waiting for the ritual to begin, and was surprised when he dropped to the ground and began another round of runes outside the stones. This guy wasn’t fucking around. Whatever he planned to do, it was going to be big—big enough to require six layers of defense.

That done, he stood and mumbled an incantation, too soft for me to hear. The air crackled and I felt walls of power encase me in a sphere that went through the dungeon floor to whatever was below and up past the roof. Worry pushed at the edge of my mind. I began to doubt I’d live to see daylight.

The sorcerer motioned, and a guard came forward, carefully placing a glass vial into his hand. The contents swirled and churned, a pearl-white with streaks of gray. The sorcerer muttered a few words under his breath, and I wasn’t sure if they were part of the spell, or an entreaty to his deity to protect him from the contents.

“
Lethafa wurthan
.” As he spoke, sorcerer threw the vial onto the ground, smashing it just outside the last rune circle. The pearly-white and gray vanished in a puff of sparks that melted the shards of glass onto the stone floor.

Assent to it
. I had a fraction of a second to ponder the words. Was it a command for me to bow down to the spell? If Gregory hadn’t been able to compel me, I doubted elven magic could. Then I realized as a stream of cold seeped into me, like an icy drug through veins, that it was the spell itself commanded to ride on the back of the demon energy, to act as a harmonious pair. The cold was unpleasant, but not painful, and I felt a sensation I hadn’t in so long. The energy stayed within me, held inside my spirit being by the sorcerer’s magic instead of passing through my frantically grasping fingers as it had since my near death experience. It was a tiny amount compared to what I was used to holding over the last forty years, and it felt odd. Normally, I stored raw energy as a compressed mass near my core, but this was spread out all through me. It reminded me of when I’d battled Raim and had exceeded my storage capacity, raw energy flooding along every part of my spirit being. Was that what had triggered the incredible need to devour everything? If the sorcerer’s spell made me repeat that experience, I wasn’t sure I could return from it like I’d done before. Especially without Gregory here to center me and pull me from the brink.

The sorcerer motioned again and another vial was pressed into his hand. “
Lethafa wurthan
.” Once again I felt the icy magic and the energy pour through me.

This continued for four more vials before Feille spoke.

“How much are you going to use? I thought just one vial would do the job.” His voice sounded uneasy, probably calculating what his remaining stock was and if it would be enough to complete his goals of world domination. I knew what he was thinking—if it took this much to force one little imp to change forms, how much would he need to bring the entire demon race under his thumb? I hoped it was more than he had.

The sorcerer hesitated. “My Lord, the collected energy was from Low demons, and although she is an imp, she has a huge capacity. If we don’t use an adequate amount, we risk wasting it all for no results.”

Feille scowled. “How much? How much do you need?”

The human wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Umm, two, possibly four more.”

The elven lord narrowed his eyes, shifting his gaze from the nervous sorcerer to me. “Do it.”

The sorcerer broke four more vials before he finally backed away. Backed far away. They all did. A few of them edged sideways out of my view. Feille usually was a coward, hiding behind magical protection to do his bullying, but this time he stood just a few feet behind the sorcerer, arms crossed as he watched intently.

“
Neadian lil-hamma
.”

Same words, different result. This time I felt something ignite inside me, moving along the icy cold magic and pearl-colored energy. There was a burst of color, a flash of creation as atoms formed and molecules came together. I was vaguely aware of the energy I held pulling together in a knot, then rolling like molten lava in an underground fissure. I felt pressure build, passing the limits of comfort and crossing into agony. Something was going to give, and I had a feeling it would be me. Cell reproduction went into overdrive. I felt like a sausage on the grill about to explode its casing. Just as I thought I could take no more, the energy exploded as a fireball into the dungeon.

Oddly, my spirit-self, and whatever physical form currently held me, were unaffected. I watched in interest as the triangle, two circles, runes, stones, and outer circle of runes were swept away. Iron bars melted, the floor and walls blackened, huge cracks appeared every ten inches, like a pattern. Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling, smoking as they hit the floor. Figures vanished in the flame. I saw Feille, protected from the heat somehow, thrown against the back wall, bouncing hard and landing on the floor in a heap. The sorcerer, equally protected, slid along the floor to crash beside him. Damn. If I was going to explode and die in a fiery blast, I’d hoped to at least take the pair of them with me. But they appeared only stunned, and I felt… fine.

I looked down and saw hands. Two hands attached to arms, breasts, belly, legs, and feet, all familiar. It had worked, and as happy as I was to be mobile, I was just as unhappy to realize whatever Feille had planned for the demons would probably work too. I grabbed at the energy in the air around me, thrilled that I could grasp and hold a modest amount. I still had no demon offensive skills, but was confident they would be possible in my near future. Right now I was a human, fragile and without the ability to fix any wounds, but mobile. And I didn’t need demon abilities to fight and kill. Forty years among the humans had taught me I could be just as lethal with my own bare hands.

It might not be much, but I’d take it. Jumping to my feet, I sprinted across the hot dungeon floor, feeling blisters form on the bottom of my feet. Seeing the sorcerer defenseless, an old man in a crumpled heap of embroidered robes, I had a second of doubt. I didn’t want to kill this man, but I desperately needed the time his death would buy me. Jumping on him, I pressed a shin across his neck, my full weight on his windpipe. He came to with a start, and struggled. I pressed down harder, hearing the thud of hurried footsteps on the stairs beyond the blasted dungeon doors, seeing Feille stir just a few feet away. Killing him this way wouldn’t work. Elves have healing abilities second only to angels, and Feille, or even one of the approaching guards, could resurrect the sorcerer with a flick of a wrist. I planned to do something drastic. Something to make sure there wasn’t enough of a body to resurrect. I just didn’t want the sorcerer to be conscious for it.