Page 60 of The Morning Star
“Put me in charge of it all, and both I and my household will be at your disposal, Iblis.”
I frowned. “As the Iblis, you and your household are already at my disposal, but consider it a deal.” I had enough on my plate without adding the governance of demon-lands-in-human-territory to it. What should we call this place? New Hel, or something like that?
Two thousand, one hundred three, of those only five hundred eighty were still in the city. Damn. Remind me never to mess with a horde of treasure-hungry dragons.
“Hang on a second,” I told Doriel as I pulled out my phone and sent another text. “Okay, here’s the deal. The dragons have either killed or chased most of the demons out of the city. The angels are moving in to secure it and begin to push the demons northward toward Seattle. My goal is to leave access to the gateway open so that any demons who wish to leave Samael and return home may do so. Any demon who returns to Hel will not face my wrath for this little adventure. Those who stay and fight are fucked.”
“You do realize he has thirty thousand demons here,” Doriel commented. “All seven gates were taken and we…I mean they now hold the areas surrounding them.”
“Nope. Only two gates fell—Seattle and Bogota.”
She caught her breath. “So either Samael lied, or he doesn’t know.”
“How many demons are here if they were only able to use those two gates?” I tried to sense the number, but only got a vague idea. Ten thousand? Maybe?
“Those were the biggest armies, so I’d say roughly seven thousand, most of them through Seattle. Although if the armies couldn’t get through the other gates, they’d just move to the ones we secured and come through them. By the end of the day, you’ll still have about thirty thousand demons to deal with.” She hesitated a second, her eyes searching mine. “What do you want me to do? Should I call my household back across the gates in a retreat to Hel? They account for approximately two thousand of the demons on this continent.”
“No, I want you to stay here. Be ready to fight on my side, both you and all of your household, upon my command, but in the meantime stay close to Samael. Head out of the city and rejoin him. Figure out what his plans are and let me know what’s going on.”
She nodded. “Whoever this is, he’s smart and powerful. I won’t be able to just pop over to your house and give you an update, but I’ll figure out a way to contact you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get a fucking cell phone.” I looked around the room and grabbed an old band flyer off the floor, ripping a piece off of it and scribbling my number on it with a pencil I found on the bar. “Here. If you can’t figure out how to use the phone, then have one of the Lows show you. If you guys are going to live here, you’ll need to learn this stuff.”
Doriel left and I headed outside the club, wings outstretched and sword in hand to wait. I could see smoke in the distance and counted at least ten dragons on the wing above the city—one of them stinking huge. I had no fucking idea what Sparky or the Italian dragons would want in exchange for their assistance beyond looting the jewelry stores, but whatever it was, was totally worth it. The demons still alive had left the city. I could see by the roads and interstates that the humans were taking this opportunity to flee. With any luck, most of them would be clear of the state before the demons regrouped. And when this was all over, we’d need to find a way to rebuild. Between the demons, and now the dragons, the city and its infrastructure had suffered considerable damage. I had no doubt Doriel could handle it. She was the right Ancient to put in charge of this whole thing. It would give her purpose and I could tell she had enough organizational skill and common sense to keep the demons under control and create a decent place for humans to live in relative safety and freedom.
It was getting close to dusk when Gregory appeared. Actually, he’d shown up a bit earlier than I’d expected.
“City secure?” I asked. There hadn’t been a demon in the city for the last hour, and the dragons were long gone.
“Yes, it’s secure.” He walked toward me, shaking his head with a short laugh. “I should have known better than to doubt you. Nyalla called me a few hours ago telling me that some demon messenger had shown up at the house with a story of how you were captured and being held hostage in return for my surrender. I’ll admit that I had a moment of fear, especially after she told me who had allegedly sent him. Was that demon completely lying?”
With rare exceptions, demons couldn’t teleport, so the messenger Samael had sent had needed to take a plane. The surprising part was that he’d managed to find one flying out of LA to Baltimore, and board it. Or maybe he’d snatched up some pilot and hijacked one of his own. Or maybe the guy Owned a soul who knew how to fly. Either way, it was a six-hour nonstop to Baltimore, then at least thirty minutes to my house. I’d figured this would all be over by the time he arrived, but I guess not.
I patted the space beside me on the curb. “No, he wasn’t lying. I tried reason, then I tried an assassination attempt. Did some damage. Got a fuckton more scars to my spirit-self. Ended up in a net suspended from the ceiling for a bit. Luckily these idiots didn’t think to search me for a cell phone. Or realize that the Iblis sword can cut through an elven net.”
He sighed and sat beside me. “And Samael? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because no one’s heard a peep out of the guy since the fall. Suddenly he shows up out of nowhere and starts talking revenge and promising complete annihilation of all life like some comic book villain? The guy looked like Samael. His spirit-self had the same scars. His energy signature was the same. An Ancient knew him felt confident it was him, but I just wasn’t sure.” I shifted sideways to face Gregory. “If it wasn’t him, I wanted to find out before you and your siblings heard Samael was alive and went all weird and emotional and did something stupid. And if it was him…well, I wanted to kill him before you had to hear him rant about how much he hated you and how you ruined his life.”
“Maybe I deserve to hear that.”
“Maybe you do, but I still wanted to kill him and spare you that pain. It’s what angels in love do for each other—protect and shove a sword through our lover’s enemies.”
That didn’t even get a smile out of him. “So is it? Him?”
I could tell him about the sword, and what Doriel said, but instead I reached out with my spirit-self to caress him, easing myself into him along the edges. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
Now that got a smile out of him. “Sometimes your timing is far off the mark, Cockroach. Unless you’re trying to distract me from the topic at hand?”
“No, I’m trying to show you something, and you can only do that while I’m holding it.” I let that sink in a moment. “You need to join enough with me to see it.”
“You tried to devour my brother.” He pulled his spirit-self away and glared down at me. “Attempting to run him through with his own sword is bad enough, but you tried to devour him?”
“Technically it’s not his sword anymore,” I waved a dismissive hand. “And yes, I tried to devour him. Samael is supposedly your equal, if not your better, when it comes to power and fighting ability. I had to pull out all my tricks. I devour. It’s what I do. It’s my icky demon superpower.”
“Samael is not my equal.” He said it with a fond edge to his voice that told me this was a longstanding, friendly argument between the two.
“Babe, no one is your equal.” I scooched my spirit-self over against him once more. “Now come here so I can show this to you.”
