Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) (17 page)

“What does it do? I know what it was intended to do, but what does it really do?”

The only answer was snoring. She’d passed out face down with empty containers of sweet and sour sauce scattered around her. Crap. Should I just leave her here?

I went up to the Chinese food guy. “What do you guys do with her when she does this?” I handed him another fifty.

He sighed pocketing the money. “I’ll let her sleep it off and get her a few liters of Mountain Dew for when she wakes up. That’s why we don’t let her have extra sauce. This happens every time.”

I thought it was funny that he recognized her no matter what form she took, and that her changing appearance didn’t seem to bother him. I guess the long-term workers here at the mall had just learned to accept these things. I thanked the guy, apologized for the inconvenience, then walked back to the gate at Nordstrom’s.

“What took you so long?” Dar snarled. He looked rather out of place milling about the women’s shoe section. I totally understood what the gate guardian had been saying about males in the mall.

“I was having lunch with the gate guardian. It would have been very rude to run out in the middle of our conversation.”

Dar stared. “I
knew
it. “

He thrust a small flat box at me. “Use this in exchange for the artifact. Only give it to the master vampire. Don’t waste it on some flunky, or sell it on e-bay.”

Dar was getting a bit bossy. He must be stressed, even with the umbrella of my protection. I opened the box. Little vials of blood nestled in silk were neatly lined up in a row.

“Where the fuck did you get elf blood?” I looked closely at one of the vials. “No, forget I asked. I don’t want to know.”

I couldn’t see any elf volunteering to be a blood donor, and I really didn’t want to know if he or Haagenti had assaulted or killed one. They didn’t take that kind of thing lightly and I didn’t want to be in a position where I’d need to choose between my relationship with a high lord and Dar. He might be a shit, but he was my foster brother and we’d been through a lot together.

“Try to stay out of Haagenti’s way. I’ll contact you when I get back from Atlantic City – which is not this weekend.” I emphasized the timeline so he didn’t bug the crap out of me when I hadn’t even left yet.

Dar turned to go and paused for a second. “I don’t know what is going on with you, Mal, with this sorcerer, and the gate guardian, and your unbelievably ballsy taunting of Haagenti. I hope you know what you’re doing. I hope when all the shit you’ve thrown up in the air lands, it lands in some beneficial fashion.”

“Thanks Dar,” I said as he popped through the gate.

I glanced longingly at the blue platform pumps, but I had a box of elf blood in my purse, and I really wanted to get in a jog and think about what the gate guardian had told me before Michelle came over tonight for our pre-Halloween girls’ night in. The pumps would have to wait.

Chapter 14

I
was about three miles into my jog when out of nowhere I was slammed against a tree by my shoulders and held there. I had no idea what hit me, so I instinctively shot a bolt of lightning into the thing grabbing me. The only reaction I got was to be banged against the tree trunk a few times.

“There is a dead bird in the fourth circle.” Gregory’s voice was ominous.

I didn’t have to feign surprise. What the hell was he talking about? Was this some secret agent code? Should I respond cryptically that the brown bull tap dances in May? Instead I just looked at him blankly and wondered why he was so angry?

He banged me against the tree a few more times, as if he was trying to smack the answer out of me.

“So we’re back to violence now, are we?” I asked him. “What happened to Make-Me-A-Sandwich Angel? I liked him better.”

That bought me a whack against the tree that practically knocked me unconscious. For a moment, there were two of him in my vision. Not a reassuring sight.

“Why a dead bird? What does it mean and how did you get it there?”

I still had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. And I told him so.

More bouncing me off the tree ensued. This was getting annoying so I zapped him hard.

“Will you stop for a second and just tell me what the fuck you are talking about?”

He did stop. And he did take a deep breath.

“There is a dead canary in the fourth circle of Aaru. How did you manage to get a dead bird there? And why? Is that supposed to mean something; is it symbolic of something? Is it a personal message? Are you threatening me?”

A canary. Well, now I knew where the wild gate in Sharpsburg went. Which was an exciting bit of knowledge I wasn’t going to share with the angels. Why was the canary dead though? It should have been flying around, pooping on their heads. Although a dead bird was kind of cool. What a great idea to sneak into one of the circles of heaven and leave a dead bird on their doorstep. Wish I’d thought of it.

“Are you prophesying the broken link of the divine? The de-evolution of angels as symbolized by a dead bird? Or perhaps because the bird is yellow, you’re implying that the mightiest of the angels will fall? Are you? The yellow canary is often a metaphor for a spy. Is there an informer in Aaru that will be discovered and die?”

Holy crap, he was seriously over-thinking this whole thing. Were all angels this crazy? It was just a damned bird. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

“It wasn’t me,” I lied. “Sometimes starlings fly down my chimney and get in the house. One broke its neck trying to fly out through the French doors last winter. I’ll bet that’s what happened.”

He stared at me with those black filled eyes as though he was thinking of doing far more than smacking me against the tree.

“We don’t have chimneys. Only angels can gate there. So how did you manage to get a dead bird there? And why? Why did you come there? How did you know to come to the forth circle? What is the bird supposed to signify?”

“Maybe one of your angel friends brought it there? As a snack maybe?”

His fingers dug into my shoulders, as he held me firmly against the tree. Then he leaned down with his mouth right in front of my ear. I clenched my teeth together, fighting conflicting emotions of fear and anticipation, and fighting my eager personal energy that didn’t seem to recognize the seriousness of the situation at hand.

“I know your energy signature as if it were my own. Your presence there lingered behind and I could feel you on the dead bird, too. I will only ask you one more time. How did you get that bird there, and what is its purpose?”

I held there a few moments, savoring the threat in his voice, enjoying the fissure of fear shivering through me. Because that’s how we roll.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.

He actually put his mouth against my skin. On my neck right under my ear. I could feel his breath against my skin. My own breath came in fast, shallow little bits and I waited to feel those pointed teeth. Or the hot needles in the tip of his tongue. I was terrified. And I was so turned on. One scrape of those teeth and I’d be in ecstasy. And then I’d probably be dead. The fact that he was willing to risk his own life and a chunk of the county in killing me and releasing the huge amount of raw energy I held indicated how enraged he really was. Oddly enough, I hoped he survived the explosion.

Instead, he pulled away from me and let go of my shoulders, obviously struggling for control.

“I’m busy.” He backed away to a respectable distance. “I don’t have time for your childish antics. I cannot concentrate on what I need to do with you pulling impish pranks and throwing your energy around. I thought this would end when I fixed the brand, but it didn’t. I should just take you back to Aaru and put you in a cage.”

“I’ve been good. I haven’t broken any of your rules. I haven’t Owned anything, I haven’t killed any human, haven’t started any plagues or global weather events. I’m not even masturbating with the brand anymore. What am I doing that is so annoying?”

He glared at me. “I told you no conversion. There is a green cat with six legs walking around downtown.”

I couldn’t resist the cat. The whole story had been so intriguing. “That was just a little tiny conversion, nothing big. Nothing that should bother you. It shouldn’t count.”

“Flying down the Potomac River? That’s not a little conversion. I’m going to drag you to Aaru and put you on a leash as punishment.” He sounded as if the prospect of me leashed in Aaru held great appeal for him.

I looked at him with big, sad eyes. “You’d forbid me my wings? Deny me flight?”

He winced. It was a low blow. Angels were particularly fond of their wings.

“I don’t have time for this. Who knows what you’ll do next?”

“Fair warning, I think the gate guardians are going to unionize. You didn’t forbid me from encouraging fair labor practices, so you should overlook that one.”

He motioned with his hands, as if he were trying to restrain himself from tearing me limb from limb.

“You are driving me insane. What am I supposed to do with you? You have got to be the worst, most disruptive thing that has ever happened to me in all my life.”

“Just ignore me,” I told him. “I was here more than forty years before you recognized me; it’s not going to be the end of the world if you just let me do my thing.”

“I can’t ignore you. You have a part of me lodged inside yourself. I honestly think you’re doing this stuff on purpose to irritate me. It’s like having someone constantly pestering you, poking you, yanking on your hair for attention.”

“Well you’re the stupid idiot who put a chunk of yourself inside a demon. I know you were angry, blah, blah, blah, but you’re smart enough to know that you were giving me a portion of your spirit. This whole thing is your fault, not mine.”

He stared at me in disbelief. “I didn’t
give
a part of myself to you, you took it. I blaze a trail into your spirit to create the bind, and then pull back. I’ve done it thousands of times without ever having this happen. I didn’t think it was even possible. You seized hold and kept that portion. There was no way I could remove it.”

He had to be lying. I’ll admit I’ve grabbed some demons before, when they’ve gotten their personal energy too close. I devoured them, killed them. I didn’t break off a piece and embed it in an awkward network throughout myself. He fucked up, and he was blaming it on me.

“I’ve been trying ever since to take it back, but you won’t let it go. I’m older than you by billions of years, I’m infinitely more powerful, but I can’t seem to break myself free from you. A lowly, inept, baby demon. Nothing but a dirty, nasty, foul, despised cockroach.”

I knew he didn’t exactly have a high opinion of my status and power, but this was really insulting and it stung. I didn’t want this shit inside me. He was welcome to it. If he was going to be mean, he could just fuck off. Let him pretend I was some greedy bitch, snatching his spirit and hogging it to myself. Whatever. Asshole.

I shrugged my shoulders. “So sorry
your
ineptitude in binding me caused all this trouble. If I’m so lowly and foul, then how could I possibly seize a portion of a majestic, god-like creature such as yourself?”

He inhaled sharply, but I wasn’t done yet. “Know what? I don’t want your shit. It’s a stupid color, it doesn’t compliment my own hue one bit, and I hate lugging it around. It stinks, too. Now fuck off and let me finish my run.”

I pushed away from the tree to move past him only to be slammed against it again as his mouth covered mine. Normally, I’d be all up for a little nookie against a tree, but it was clear right away that this was not a kiss of passion. I felt a sharp painful ripping inside me, more agonizing than anything I’d felt before. The fucker was trying to kill me.

I blasted him as hard as I could. Threw a stream of raw energy at him that should have burned him all the way through. It didn’t disintegrate him, but it did knock him backward a few feet, safely away from me.

“I’ll fight you with every last thing I’ve got if you try that again,” I told him. “Even if you succeed in killing me, the amount of raw energy I have will explode out of me with a vengeance. I hope it fucking kills you, too, you asshole.”

He glared at me in silence.

“Let me know if you think up anything to get this shit out of me. Anything that doesn’t involve killing me, that is. I want it out of me worse than you do. I want it out and gone. In the meantime, just go the fuck away.”

I jogged past him and down the road which was getting blurry before my eyes. He’d tried to kill me. Really kill me. After that morning in my house, after the tucking into bed and the sandwich, I thought. . . Ah, it didn’t matter what I’d thought. Candy was right, I needed to stop this now and stay away from him.

Chapter 15

>M
ichelle came over late that evening to help me figure out an appropriate Halloween costume for Wyatt’s and my big night at Bang. I wasn’t into it, but didn’t have the heart to cancel on her. She was so psyched and had brought over Chinese takeout.

Hunan bean curd usually brightened any mood, but I kept mulling over my day, mulling over all the shit I’d thrown up in the air, as Dar had said. Dar’s dilemma, Haagenti’s inevitable punishment, the damned sword I was supposed to retrieve. Spending a fortune on a money-pit shopping center. The humans insisting that I needed to save them from a killer. A little boy’s dark eyes popped up from my memory and I quickly banished the image. Stupid humans.

Then there was the conversation with the gate guardian, the vials of elf blood on my bedroom dresser, Gregory trying to kill me. Was he really bound to me? Between that and the part of him permanently lodged inside me, no wonder he was homicidal. Not that I had any idea how to utilize a bound angel. We didn’t bind other beings, we Owned them. Angels bound.

“Are you okay?” Michelle asked as I displayed various skin colors and horn types for her critique. “You seem distracted. Did you and Wyatt have a fight?”

“No, for once Wyatt and I are fine. My brother from back home is in a bit of trouble and I’m trying to bail him out.”