Page 13 of The Morning Star
“It happens, Cockroach,” Gregory assured me. “It’s a dangerous assignment. Occasionally one of them encounters a demon they can’t handle and doesn’t have time to call for backup.”
“Not this guy,” I insisted. “I mean, I don’t think he could handle much more than a rogue butterfly, but we wouldn’t have killed him. It was pretty widely accepted that this was one of the easiest gates to sneak through. No one wanted to fuck that up.”
“One did.”
There was something weird about this, something weird about Gregory’s casual acceptance of the loss of his Seattle gate guardian. I knew he was an asshole to work for, and wasn’t particularly good at expressing appreciation or affection toward his Grigori staff, but this seemed cold even for him. Aside from a few brief temporary reassignments, this gate guardian had been here for the last sixty years. He’d never been a threat serious enough to warrant killing. Had he pissed off the wrong demon? I just couldn’t see it. And something else about this situation bothered me as well.
“Wait. If a demon killed him, why didn’t that land on my desk for some kind of report or something? Why didn’t you come yelling to me about a demon killing an angel? Because that’s serious shit. This happened a few days ago, yet you didn’t tell me, or bring it up in the Ruling Council meeting yesterday? What gives?”
Gregory sighed. “It wasn’t just one demon that killed him, it was an ambush. A demon led him away from the gate, then a whole host of demons came through and they all cornered him and killed him. I have no idea how many demons were able to come through the gate during that time when it was unattended. It could be as few as five or six. It could be an entire army.”
I stared at him openmouthed. An army. Bad enough that I had a group of demons on the loose here that had ganged up and killed a harmless gate guardian, but I potentially had an army here as well. The gate guardians had been carefully keeping track of what demons they allowed through and which ones they turned back. I got that motherfucking report in my hands from Gregory weekly. As much as I joked that for every demon they recorded, three probably slipped through unnoticed, it had been good to know what demons were this side of the gates with a sizeable margin of error. Now I had no fucking idea.
“You should have brought it up.” As I said the words, I felt a hard cold lump settle in my stomach. A band of demons ambushed and killed a gate guardian. And now with that and the enforcer murders, demons were being suspected of all angel deaths since the fall. Stupid fuckers. We were heading toward war again because some dumb ass demons couldn’t follow a few basic rules.
No, we were heading toward war because I was a shitty leader and the majority of Hel didn’t give a crap about what I said or wanted.
“You should have brought it up,” I repeated.
“I thought it was a random occurrence, just a few bad eggs acting out. I was going to discuss it with you when the moment was right. You were negotiating to allow demons unhindered travel here through the gates and were about to propose the world-share idea. The timing would have been bad to bring this up.”
My eyes narrowed. “You opposed my proposal,” I countered. “If you had brought this up, it would have quashed the matter. Why didn’t you?”
“It wouldn’t have quashed the matter, just complicated it. And I wanted your proposal heard and discussed. I do believe that that’s the future for all of us, Cockroach. Just not now.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t bring it up because you didn’t think I could take care of it, did you? You figured I’d waste time running around after five or ten demons, and not find them, or not be able to either kill them or bring them into line? That’s it, isn’t it? Why would you bother to tell me something like this when you feel that I can’t fix the problem?”
“That’s not true. I thought it was a minor matter that I could handle myself.”
I clenched my teeth, trying to keep control of my temper. “It’s not your matter to handle. Demons killed a gate guardian. Demons are my responsibility. You kept me in the dark on something that falls under my purview.”
He thought about that while I glared at him. The gate guardian watched, fascinated, as if she were seeing a particularly dramatic soap opera scene being acted out right in front of her.
“You’re right, Cockroach. I should have immediately come to you with this. I promise I will in the future.”
That helped, but it still didn’t touch that he didn’t think I was capable of the task at hand, of truly being the Iblis. I wasn’t capable, but I still wanted Gregory to believe in me. He used to believe in me, but that was before I dumped all the angels out of Aaru. Now…I knew he loved me, but the world had just gotten very complicated and he felt I wasn’t up to the task.
Sadly, I didn’t think the world was going to hit pause until I grew older and better able to handle ruling Hel and its residents. It was our discussion from last night all over again, and rehashing it wasn’t making me feel any better.
I sighed and turned to the gate guardian. Step one, find these motherfuckers who killed the previous gate guardian and lay down a serious amount of asskicking. No, step one was find who was killing the enforcers and lay down some asskicking. Or basically just kick everyone’s ass preemptively. That might be a better plan.
“So what exactly happened with this demon and Humiel?” I asked her.
“Well, with the enforcement of the treaty in question, we’ve had to change how we handle demons coming through the gates. I have a list of questions for the demons wanting to enter. I note down who they are, how long they intend to stay, and where. Then I sample their personal energy for our records, and stamp them with my own to make tracking and enforcement of the rules easier.”
What the fuck? “You take a sample of their personal energy? You mark them?” My eyes narrowed and I shot another glare at Gregory. Since when? Clearly this was another thing I’d been kept out of the loop on.
“We have to,” Gregory informed me. “It ensures we can quickly locate offending demons and allows us to know if they are living where they are supposed to.”
“I thought you were going to trust us? Was everything you said about putting aside old prejudice a load of crap? Because I’m beginning to think so.”
“It’s strictly administrative, Cockroach. This has nothing to do with trust, it has to do with being able to keep track of who is here and if they’re following the rules they agreed to.”
I was about to ask him who the fuck gave him the authority to do that, but decided not to. Up until recently the angels had ruled everything with a heavy hand. There had been a loosening of the rules and concessions, but clearly I’d been a fool to completely trust that things had changed, to think the angels wouldn’t be trying to control every demon that came through.
“You do realize that you’re only tracking and enforcing the demons who are most likely to comply, where others, the more dangerous ones, are sneaking through without this tracking shit? Something bad goes down in Cleveland, you’ll be all over the poor Low minding his own business, because according to your records he’s the only demon there, meanwhile some untracked higher-level demon has gotten away with killing half of City Hall.”
“It’s an imperfect system,” Gregory admitted.
