Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) (7 page)

Wyatt was also curious about the stack of papers on my dining room table written in bizarre script. I told him they were business stuff from back home. No way was I going to get into a detailed conversation with him concerning my breeding prospects.

Saturday came and I hoped the latest canary didn’t arrive while I was running Dar’s errand. It would suck to come home and find Boomer had eaten it, or it had been frightened to death by a falling leaf or something. It was a beautiful fall day for a beer and seafood festival though. I was lamenting that they hadn’t held it in Baltimore. Beautiful harbor? Chesapeake Bay? What were they thinking? Still, although parking was a bitch in that area of DC, the venue was close to the museum action and not terribly far from Chinatown. I didn’t want to fill up on dumplings when there were crab cakes in my future, so I headed over to the National Crime and Punishment museum to kill some time.

I’m not normally a museum person. Crime and punishment did sound interesting, although humans think of punishment in terms of being sent to your room without pudding, so I didn’t have high hopes. It was awesome. I was tempted to blow off the vampire appointment and spend the whole day at the place. Yes, there was some boring shit about legislation, and I didn’t see the fuss about whether death row inmates got a last meal or not, but wow, what a testimony to the sick, twisted, and creative minds these little humans had. Once again I realized how easy it was to underestimate them and how much we truly had in common.

I fell in love with Ted Bundy. Here was guy who totally flew under the radar, appearing harmless and even injured to his potential victims. He’d whack them repeatedly over the head with a crowbar when they tried to help him load stuff into his car. Then he would rape them, sometimes adding their lopped off heads to his collection. Occasionally, he’d continue to sleep with their decomposing body. That was dedication to your art. Too bad the humans had killed Ted Bundy. I would have been honored to Own this guy in a terrible and painful way that he surely would have appreciated.

Reluctantly, I made my way back to the Verizon Center and hit up the closest booths for spicy crab balls and beer before winding my way through the crowd to the Jolly Molly Crab Shack. Jolly Molly must indeed be jolly if she eats her own food, because it was incredible. The crab cakes had barely enough breading to hold them together. They fell apart in my mouth with a bite of Old Bay seasoning and hot mustard.

I’d forgotten my original errand when an attractive man in jeans and a t-shirt walked up to me and handed me an envelope. It looked like an embossed wedding invitation and I wondered what kind of artifact this was. I could see the humans going crazy over an ancient Roman party invite, but demons wouldn’t really care about that sort of thing. I opened it up and saw that the card inside had a date, time, and meeting place. Fuck. This whole thing was supposed to be easy and now I was going to be running around on a stupid hunt. According to the lovely embossed card, I was to go to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore on Monday at noon and meet someone by the aquarium. I swore under my breath, thinking that meeting would probably leave me with a treasure map and instructions to dig at an X on Assateague Island.

I bought a box of crab cakes to take back to Wyatt, figuring he probably hadn’t eaten much beyond chips and salsa during his tournament, and headed home. No surprise, there were three messages on my mirror from Dar with increasingly insulting demands that I call him and let him know where to meet me to pick up the artifact.

“The vampires are leading me on a merry chase,” I told him. “All the guy gave me were directions to meet someone Monday afternoon in Baltimore. That’s two days from now, Dar,” I told him, trying to impress on him a sense of time.

Dar swore up a blue streak, threatening the entire vampire race with a bloody and short future. “They don’t want the damned thing. They’ve been trying to get rid of it forever. What did the guy say to you? Why didn’t he just hand it over?”

“I don’t know, Dar. I’m just a fucking courier here. The guy didn’t say one word to me, just handed me the envelope and vanished into the crowd like a ghost. I’ll go to this meeting on Monday just because I like hanging out at the Inner Harbor, but you and Haagenti better get your fucking ducks in a row on this deal. I’m not haring all over the country playing cloak and dagger for some piece-of-crap antique.”

“I’ll get with Haagenti,” he assured me. “I’ll make sure the vampires give it to you on Monday. And Haagenti will be
very
grateful, Mal; he’ll be very grateful.”

My skin crawled at the idea of Haagenti’s gratitude. I wasn’t sure it would be the kind of “gratitude” I wanted. Besides, even if there were any status or money, Dar would find a way to screw me out of it. I don’t know why I put up with his crap. He was not worth risking Haagenti’s notice or anger. This one last time was it. No more.

Once again, I assured him that I would contact him as soon as I had the item, right after the meeting on Monday, and impressed on him that he was not to be driving me insane with calls before then.

Wyatt was grateful for the crab cakes, and
his
gratitude did matter to me. As I thought, he’d been so engrossed in his tournament that he’d barely eaten. I heard an exhausting amount of detail about the various competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and how Wyatt used strategy and superior skill to make it to the top five. Evidently there was some woman in Cleveland who took the top prize, beating Wyatt with ease and humiliating him with her victory. I offered to kill her for him.

“Why am I thinking you don’t mean ‘kill her’ as in beat her at checkers?” Wyatt asked.

“No, kill her,” I told him cheerfully.

I was sort of teasing. I knew humans didn’t do this sort of thing. Well, maybe that Bundy guy did, but he was special. Still, I really did want to do this. It would be a wonderful gift to him. It would show him the depth of my affection, how much I appreciated him. Demons did it all the time back home. Wyatt was pretty accepting of my non-human urges, maybe I could talk him into it.

“You can easily find out her real name and address with your hacker skills, and I’ll just pop out to Cleveland or wherever and kill her. That way she won’t beat you anymore at your game. I’ll let you choose whether I Own her or not, and how slowly and painfully you want her to die. I’ll bring home a trophy for you to display so everyone will see how much I care for you.” I looked around his place. “A garland with her teeth maybe, or her scalp if she has nice hair.”

Wyatt made a kind of gurgling sound. “Sam. You’re joking aren’t you? In that weird way you do sometimes? You can’t just kill her. I want to beat her at the game, not physically harm her person. I’ll work on my technique and I’ll win eventually.”

Why would he want to do that? This idea was growing on me. What boyfriend wouldn’t want a garland of teeth?

“But this is much more effective,” I explained. “I don’t want you losing games and being humiliated by these other humans.”

“It’s okay if I lose. I’ll learn more that way, and eventually I’ll be good enough to beat her myself. I won’t get better if you just kill everyone who opposes me. Plus I won’t have any fun.” His voice was becoming stern. He clearly didn’t understand the situation and what I was proposing.

“Everyone will wonder how I can allow my human to suffer such humiliation,” I explained patiently. “Wyatt, you’re my most favored human. I can’t allow other humans to think they are above you. Plus, this is the sort of thing we do to show affection. I kill your enemy and bring you a trophy to display, and then everyone will know that you share a special bond with me.”

“I’m
not
wearing a garland of human teeth as a sign of your affection.” Wyatt was starting to sound pissed off. “If you do care about me, you’ll humor me and let me handle this in my own way. The way humans do.”

He had an overly optimistic idea of how humans handle things. “Ted Bundy didn’t do things this way. He would have been on board with this. He wouldn’t have insisted I stand idly by like some Low and watch my human get shown up and humiliated.”

“I’m not Ted Bundy. Normal humans don’t resolve conflict that way. This is a game. It’s supposed to be challenging and difficult. It won’t be if you just take out all my competition. I don’t get this side of you. You don’t massacre everyone who beats you at the dressage tests.”

“Those things don’t matter to me. This game matters to you. I can tell it reflects your status among the humans you respect; it provides you with a sense of where you stand in their hierarchy. I want to make it clear that you are favored, under the protection of a higher life form and that they should acknowledge your level.” Besides, I could hardly slaughter a field full of eight year old girls in their dressage outfits and possibly hope to get away with it.

“No Sam. You are not to interfere with my work. You will not kill my opponents. I know you don’t understand it, I know it goes against how you handle things back home, but you need to restrain yourself in these things.”

Whatever. I would indulge him. Everyone would think I’d gone soft allowing a human to demand this of me. I was hardly a demon anymore, doting over someone so much weaker than me in this fashion. I
was
soft on Wyatt though. I would suffer so much if he weren’t with me. I’d try to play by his rules to keep him happy. But if that woman in Cleveland got too far out of line, she was going to meet with an unfortunate accident.

Chapter 7

I
was in a tank top and flannel PJs early Sunday, listening to light jazz, and getting my morning coffee. Wyatt had managed to get past his anger over my offer to kill his gaming opponent, and we’d eaten crab cakes, drank beer, and had sex for the rest of the evening. I felt all warm and happy. I was contemplating going to the gym after my coffee, to work off all the crab cakes and beer, when the doorbell rang.

There was an angel at my door.

My heart leapt. He was here. I had missed him. I envisioned showing him what I could do with the water globes and him showing me other amazing things. One look at his face and I realized he was not equally happy to see me. My joy vanished and fear replaced it. I’d pushed him too far with my crazy displays of energy and my sexual taunting, masturbating with the tattoo. This was it. I was dead. He had finally come to finish me off and he’d had the courtesy to ring my doorbell first.

“Show me your arm, cockroach” Gregory snarled.

Anger replaced the fear. How dare he show up out of the blue, after eight weeks of nothing, and demand to see the stupid, botched-up brand he’d put on my arm. Arrogant asshole. I’d be damned if I let him order me around like this.

“No fucking way,” I told him and tried to shut the door in his face. He’s six and a half feet tall and built like a wrestler on steroids. He put an arm in the doorway and it just bounced back off him to slam open into the wall. As he strode in, I made a mad dash for the kitchen, vaulting over the counter top that divided it from the great room. Maybe I wouldn’t need to go to the gym after all.

He walked purposely across the room and stood a few feet away from the counter, watching me like a cat stalking a mouse. “Come here, cockroach” he ordered. “I’m going to fix that cursed thing or kill you. I haven’t decided which option appeals the most to me right now. Either way, you’ve tortured me with it for the last time.”

Yeah, like that was really going to make me comply. Did he seriously think I was going to actually come to him?

Instead I grabbed some knives and various kitchen utensils and threw them at him. He easily snatched the knives out of the air and plunged them into the fabric cushions of my bar stools. The spatulas and spoons he just batted away. I could have thrown a far more lethal burst of raw energy or lightning at him, but I didn’t want to damage my house.

Every knife I owned was stuck in my upholstery at this point, and I was looking quickly around for pots and pans to throw next when I saw him lunge at me over the counter. I ducked down so he would go over me, and scrambled around the island. He sailed right into the cabinetry with all the force of his weight, cracking one of the doors in half.

“Damnit, you broke my cabinet!” I shouted. “They’re solid hickory, a custom design. It took me months to get them special ordered. Try not to destroy my house, you asshole!”

He looked at me with interest and then put his fist through another of my cabinet doors. “Come here,” he commanded. “Or I will break every last one of them into splinters.”

Fucking jerk. I ran for the open door and sensed him throwing a burst of white as he raced to beat me there. I changed course and put the huge sectional sofa between us, surprised to see how bad his aim was. That white stuff didn’t come anywhere near me, and was barely strong enough to singe the door.

Gregory glanced over at me and carefully closed the big steel door, locking it, and setting the deadbolt and the chain. There was no way I could get all that crap undone and out the door before he caught me. Keeping his eyes on me, he walked through the great room to the huge glass French door sets at the rear of the house that opened up to the pool and gardens. He thoroughly locked and bolted each one. I kept the sofa between us at all times.

The angel walked over to the edge of the sofa and faced me. “Come here,” he said again, this time in that soft, deep, persuasive rumble. It rolled over me in dark blue, like velvet and thunder, and I really wanted to do what that voice said.

“Come here willingly, little cockroach. Come to me and I won’t hurt you. Your obedience is all I ask.”

I can’t begin to describe the feeling that blue put out into the room, into me. It was rich and sweet, and pulled at me deep inside. I wanted to walk over to him, to drown myself in those black eyes, to be as physically close to him as possible. If I did what he said, he’d be so pleased with me. Pleasing him, obeying him, would bring me such satisfaction and joy.

Instead I shook my head to clear the fog of blue from it, then picked up a decorative wooden candle stick and waved it at him menacingly. It wouldn’t do any good in a fight against an angel, but I felt like I had to make a statement of my free will. I had to stand firm against the blue shit and its siren song.