Page 59 of The Morning Star
Heaven help these demons. And heaven help the angels if they decided to push these “rules” too far. Right now everyone was awestaruck, but a few thousand disgruntled humans would be all it would take to start a fire. Seven billion of them. We’d kill maybe a billion or two before they decimated us, slowly nibbled us to death like a swarm of fire ants. It wasn’t the humans I needed to protect, it was the demons.
This Samael idiot was going to get them killed. He was going to get my beloved and all the angels I cared about killed. He was even going to get some of the angels I didn’t care about killed. And I needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
Carefully I eased my phone out of my pocket and sent a text, because elven nets might be good at holding in demon and angel energy, but they didn’t do shit about cell phone signals.
Then I slid the phone back into my pocket and waited.
Chapter 18
It took a couple of hours. I listened to the demons brag, grunted as a few of them continued to throw bottles at me. Finally, they left me alone and I sat in the swaying net, cataloging my injuries and examining my newest acquisition.
Samael’s spirit-self was…interesting. What it revealed wasn’t quite unexpected. In fact, it answered a lot of questions I’d had since he’d first surfaced. Over the last two years I’d gotten to know the archangels quite a bit—well except for Uriel who’d been off on her pilgrimage most of the time. They had distinctive personalities, but there was a common thread that made it quite obvious they were brothers. And the few times Gregory had opened up about Samael, I’d formed an impression of the former Iblis.
Yes, falling from grace, having your eldest brother almost kill you, having him banish you and all of your kind to rot in Hel forever, and spending two-and-a-half-million years sulking and stewing in anger and resentment was bound to change someone, but not like this. Physical and personal energy signature aside, this guy didn’t act at all like I’d expected Samael to act. I’d trusted Doriel’s judgement, forgetting for a moment that someone deep in grief would snatch at anything, believe just about anything, to bring a beloved back to life.
But now that I had a portion of his spirit-self to poke and prod…
The building rocked with the explosion. I smelled the glorious aroma of sulfur, burning wood and leather, hot metal, melted plastics. Then I heard the screams.
“Dragons!”
My dragons to be precise. There wasn’t much a dragon wouldn’t do in exchange for the promise of a nice little nest of gold. Little Red probably would have come to my assistance without any sort of bribe, but I hadn’t wanted to ask him to take on a city full of demons solo, so I’d told every dragon I knew of that there was an entire street full of Kay Jewelers here in LA that they could cart off back home, as long as they drove the demons out of the city.
Another blast rocked the building.
The remaining demons in the room exploded into a flurry of activity. I heard Samael’s voice shouting as he ran down the hallway. For a few moments of silence, I swung from the ceiling, then I called my Iblis sword to me in a much smaller, Swiss Army Knife shape, and cut through the net.
With a flash I managed to repair my physical injuries before I hit the floor. Just in case a few demons had been left to guard me, I rolled and transformed my little pen knife into an actual sword, springing to my feet, ready to defend myself.
As I rose, I came face to face with Doriel and nearly took her head off.
“Damn it all!” She scrambled backwards and nearly fell over a broken table. “Don’t kill me. I’m here to get you out. There’s dragons.”
“I know. They’re my dragons.” The building rocked with another blast. “How many actually showed up? What color are they?” I hadn’t figured the others would come, or that they’d come so quickly.
“The first one was red, but now there are some black ones, and Xyxian came running in saying a big golden with a red snout was snapping up any demons he came across.”
I reached out with my weird new awareness. Three thousand, four hundred ten, and quite a few of those were fleeing the city.
“Samael is out there trying to rally the troops but they’re scattering,” Doriel added.
There was an edge to her voice when she mentioned Samael’s name. “So the honeymoon is over? Your former Iblis isn’t quite what you’d thought he’d be?”
A shadow swept across her eyes. “I thought…I’d hoped… But after I crossed the gates with my army and joined him, I realized he was different.”
“Well, he’s bound to be different after two-and-a-half-million years of exile,” I commented carefully.
Doriel lifted an eyebrow. “Cut the crap. There’s different, and there’s it’s-not-him different. Faking a five-minute meeting in Hel isn’t the same as having to maintain a façade during a joint military campaign.” She shuffled her feet and looked down. “Then when you actually cut him with the sword, when he threw a tantrum about wanting it, I knew for sure. Samael could never be hurt by his own weapon, and if he truly wanted it, he’d have it in hand. It’s not him. And I was a fool to ever think it was.”
“Who is it then? You know the Ancients who fellFell. Who could pull this kind of thing off?”
She shook her head. “No one that lived, that much I know. Unless some Ancient acquired some astonishing skills in Hel the last two million years.”
“So you’re on my side now?”
A faint smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve got the sword. You’ve got dragons at your beck and call. You devour without any sense of shame whatsoever. You’re banging an archangel—the archangel.” Suddenly the smile was gone. “Did you meant it when you offered me some demon lands here? I might be interested if that offer is still on the table.”
“It is, although I can’t tell you whether it would happen in the next year or the next three thousand years.” I nodded. “But the deal is still on the table. Would you be interested in perhaps a top political appointment overseeing California? Or a chunk of western Canada?”
