Angel of Chaos (Imp Book 6) (17 page)

“I’ll take the basement.”

I snatched a spare blanket off the floor and thrust it at him.

“I don’t need sleep, or a piece of fabric to keep me warm. I only need a place of solitude to meditate. One untainted by the stench of the Fallen.”

Okay, this had to stop right now. “Listen up, Dalmai. You’re sharing a house with Satan, two humans — one of whom is pregnant with a Nephilim — and this angel. He’s probably the most un–stinky of all of us. I’ve changed my mind. You’re staying here, and I don’t want to hear any more shit out of you.”

The angel snarled — the angel that wasn’t on the floor meditating, that is. “The Ancient One said I needed to serve you. That doesn’t include me having to put up with Fallen scum, or keep silent about my distaste of my situation.”

“Watch it, buster. That collar is one room away, and I’ve got loads of duct tape handy. Could be a very uncomfortable twenty years.”

Dalmai glared at me, then at Nils. “We’ll do six–hour shifts. That way, I don’t need to spend any more time in the presence of your wretched vibration pattern than necessary.”

Nils’s eyes popped open. He stretched his legs before hopping to his feet with an agile spring. “I’ve completed my contemplations, and judging by your descent into the sin of anger, you seem in desperate need of centering. The room is yours, brother, for the next six hours.”

“I’m not your brother,” Dalmai snapped as Nils walked past him.

“Well, if you serve the Iblis, you’re no longer an angel.”

I closed the door behind me, cutting off any potentially inflammatory replies by Dalmai. As much as I longed to see the two angels duke it out, while they were naked in a pit of melted chocolate, I had other things to get done first — like ensuring Harper didn’t get caught outside of Hel.

I was lost in thought and nearly trampled Nils, who had halted at the bottom of the steps.

“What the fuck?” I couldn’t walk from one room to the next without running into someone. I longed for the days when it was just me, and occasionally Wyatt, inside my house.

“I need to go outside.” Nils’s voice sounded odd, and instead of heading to the front door, he turned abruptly and jogged back up the stairs. Whatever. If the guy wanted to exit the house by jumping out a second–story window, it wasn’t my problem. Angels. They were so fucking weird.

Harper was in the living room, flipping through a parenting magazine with unseeing eyes. I sat next to her, noting she didn’t grab a knife from her belt or move away.

“We’ve got a problem.”

“Tell me about it.” She hesitated at a full–page advertisement showing a joyful infant with pureed food smeared all over his face. “I wonder if Nephilim eat baby food. What if they need to feed on the souls of innocents or eat baby kittens or something?”

Shit. Was this normal for pregnant humans, or did I need to force–feed her some Prozac? “Harper, you’re not giving birth to a demon. I’m sure this baby is going to eat the same strained peas as every other infant.”

“How do you know? Maybe Ben was right. Maybe I’m not fit to raise this child. What if it’s a monster? What if it kills someone?”

“Your baby is
not
a demon. Even our demon–spawn hybrids aren’t like that. It’s going to be okay.” I had no guarantee it would be okay, and I had no idea how to move the conversation back to Harper’s need to stay hidden in my house for the rest of her natural life. Given her despondent tone, perhaps I should delay that conversation until some other time.

Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes. “Angels have been sent to kill my baby twice so far. What chance do I have of bringing this pregnancy to term? I’m terrified that even if I make it nine months, an angel will snatch my baby from the hospital nursery before I even get to hold him.”

I had nothing. For fuck sake, I was a demon. I wasn’t skilled in consoling distraught, pregnant women. If only I was still bound to Gregory, I could summon him here to help. He’d quieted Nyalla’s fears. I was sure he could do the same for Harper.

I opened my mouth to attempt some kind of generic platitude, when the front door opened, slamming against the wall. Harper jumped to her feet, the parenting magazine sliding from her fingers as she reached for a knife. I spun around, putting myself in front of her and summoning my shotgun. Before my mind even registered who had entered my house, the gun was in my hands and against my shoulder.

It was an angel, but thankfully one who had permission to be in my house. Nils, back from his fresh–air jaunt, strode across my threshold dragging something. Flexing the impressive muscles in his arms, he threw the item forward. It hit the floor with a heavy thump and rolled to the side. That’s when I realized the ‘something’ was an angel, duct taped into a ball and sporting a silver collar around his neck.

I leveled the shotgun at him only to have Harper knock the barrel aside as she raced forward, knife at the ready.

“That’s Ben,” she shrieked.

I’d already fired, and my angel–seeking bullet looped around her toward the duct–taped angel, not heeding my mental attempt to retract it. It hit with a splatter of iridescent white. The angel’s muffled ‘umpf’ was immediately drowned out by Harper’s scream of rage. The pregnant woman vaulted a stray chair with surprising agility and dove on the angel, stabbing him repeatedly with the knife.

“You’re not taking my baby, you worthless piece of crap.”

“Whoa!” I dismissed the shotgun and jumped on Harper’s back, struggling to pull her away without hurting her. I didn’t give a shit about this Ben, but he was spurting gallons of angel blood all over my maple floors.

Nils stood unhelpfully to the side, watching in amusement while Ben groaned and thrashed on my floor. His blood was going to eat a ten–foot hole in my hardwood if I couldn’t get him to heal himself. I looked around for the one human who wouldn’t slice this angel to ribbons given half a chance.

Nyalla. She stood beside Nils, her eyes wide.

“Take off the collar,” I told her, finally relieving Harper of her knife and trapping her hands in mine.

“No. Don’t.” Nils grabbed Nyalla, holding her back from Ben. The taped angel continued to bleed onto the floor, turning even paler than he had been when he’d been flung onto the ground. “He was sneaking around the house. I don’t trust him.”

I didn’t either, but I needed answers, and for that I needed this angel alive and able to speak.

“You okay?” I asked Harper. “If I let you go, can you hold off stabbing him to death until we find out what he’s doing sneaking around the house?”

She nodded, glaring mutely at the angel.

Summoning the shotgun back into my hands, I told Nils to let Nyalla free and aimed the weapon at Ben while she struggled to undo the band of silver around his neck.

The collar clattered to the floor, and the angel healed himself. His hands, no longer duct taped, were raised as he eyed me suspiciously.

“Hello,
Ben
.” I smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “So angelic of you to visit your pregnant girlfriend. Time for you to explain yourself before I haul you before the Ruling Council for violating eight twenty–two forty–nine o–five.”

Nils frowned. “He brought an amphibious life–form into Aaru?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Ben interjected, shooting a quick glance toward my front door. “They’re coming. She’s not safe here.”

He’d voiced that comment before.

“Who’s coming?”

As if I didn’t know. The Ruling Council had given me a pass, although none of them probably believed I’d really sent Harper to Hel. In time, I’m sure there would be a rogue band of angels attacking my house, but this was too soon for mob activity.

“Hunters.”

Bull … shit. Nils and I exchanged glances. “How many?”

“Five or more.”

Hunters work alone, and there were no lynch mobs. Ben’s next words only served to confirm my suspicions. “We have to get her out of here and to safety. Now.”

The angel’s announcement was echoed by a blast that rocked my house. The window to the left of my front door shattered, and I cursed. I’d just paid to have that fucking thing replaced after Nyalla’s ghoul encounter, and now a bunch of angels had taken it out. I needed to seriously consider bullet–proof glass in next year’s budget.

The house shook again, and I saw bits of drywall dust float down from the ceiling. “Get Harper and Nyalla into the cellar,” I told Nils. “I’m gonna make these motherfuckers regret the day they stepped foot out of Aaru.”

I didn’t look back, trusting they’d follow my orders. Racing toward the door, I flung it open and unloaded the shotgun on whatever happened to be on my front lawn. The sentient weapon didn’t let me down. With a spray of bullets that seemed to unerringly find their target, I ran down the crushed–shell pathway with the adrenaline of a pissed–off Rambo. Screams echoed from either side of me, making me wonder exactly how many angels had mustered up the set of balls it took to attack Satan in her earthly home.

“Fuckers! Come and get me, you worthless pansies.”

One did, nailing me right in the shoulder with a stream of white. It wasn’t as restrained as Dalmai’s attack had been. This one burned through flesh and bone, leaving me to operate the shotgun one–handed. Gritting my teeth, I shook off the pain. I’d suffered worse at the hands of Ahriman. Diving behind a woodpile for cover, I kept firing into the shrubberies. The way my bullets looped around, I hoped the angels would be unable to figure out my location. I wasn’t good at this sort of fighting unless it was one on one.

“There’s five,” Nils whispered in my ear.

I nearly shot him in surprise. Fuck, the guy moved as silently as a drop of rain.

“Where’s Dalmai? Ben? I could use a few more angels on my side.” Not that I expected Ben to help, especially if what I suspected was true.

“Well, you’ve got me.” Nils edged forward to look through a gap in the stacked logs. “Dalmai will conveniently meditate through the whole conflict, and Bencul is busy guarding Harper.”

Bencul. Figures Nils would know his real name. That tidbit of information would come in handy later.

“We need to sneak up on them. What can we use as a distraction? Besides Harper, that is.”

“Me.” Nils didn’t sound particularly thrilled at his answer. “Dalmai’s reaction to me was actually pretty tame. They’ll come after me with a vengeance.”

“And kill you. That would suck on so many levels.” I should welcome getting rid of my Fallen–angel albatross, but the guy was beginning to grow on me.

Nils gave me an odd look. “Only you can kill me. Don’t you know that? The Fallen are immortal; their existence is at the whim of the Iblis.”

I remember hearing the whim thing, but didn’t really ponder the significance at the time. “All right then. Go get ‘em.”

He vanished — not like Gregory, or my horse Diablo. Nils seemed to blur into the air, and, with no more than a stirring of grass and leaves, he was gone. I ducked to avoid a blast of white, which exploded the layer of logs just above my head, and began crawling along the ground toward where Nils had said the angels were. It wasn’t easy scooting through brush with a shotgun in tow, but I felt better with the weapon at the ready.

The woods erupted into shouts and explosions. I jumped to my feet and ran, trusting in my shotgun to aim true. I hesitated, taking careful aim at the angel in front me. Then I shot him in the back. He jerked and turned around, shocked eyes meeting mine as his torso disintegrated into a pile of sand. Slowly, his form granulized until nothing remained.

He wasn’t the only one shocked. I had no idea how to calibrate this weapon. In the past, it had always injured. Why not this time? I didn’t have much of a chance to contemplate the ramifications of what I’d done before another angel appeared, staring at the sand in confusion.

I shot him too, with the same results. I was really screwed now. I’d killed two angels, so I might as well kill the other three — in for a penny, in for a pound. Ducking behind trees, I followed the sound of rhythmic thuds to see the other three angels taking turns as they pounded Nils to a bloody pulp.

Down they went, spraying sand all over Nils, who was a convulsing heap of raw flesh on the moss–covered ground. I strode over to him, kicking sand out of the way.

“So, you gonna let me kiss you now?”

He glared at me, one blue iris in a red background, the other eye swollen closed. “No.” The word was mangled with saliva and blood.

I watched as he thrashed around, gaining enough control to slowly heal his broken and torn body. As much as I wanted to leave him in peace as he struggled, I worried that more angels would come and find him in this vulnerable position.

“You good?”

He nodded, finally repaired sufficiently to stagger his way to the house. I dismissed my shotgun at the door and walked in to see Nyalla clutching the wand in one hand, and the silver collar in the other. Harper, by her side, had a net at the ready. Bencul was hiding in the kitchen, visible over the granite–topped bar. So much for staying in the basement.

Nils walked in behind me, and Nyalla’s eyes grew huge as she saw him.

“He’ll be okay. He took one for the team and is having a hard time healing.”

Bencul came out of the kitchen. “Are they gone? They’ll be back, you know. This isn’t a safe place for the baby anymore. I need to move Harper elsewhere.”

“You’re not moving me anywhere.” Harper snarled. “When will you get it through your thick head that I don’t want you anymore?”

“That’s my child. I’ll do what I need to in order to protect him. What you want is of no matter.”

Shit. I needed to intervene before Harper started stabbing again.

“Those angels won’t be back. Ever. They’re dead.”

Ben stopped, his face registering disbelief. “You killed them? You weren’t … they can’t.”

“Should have thought of that before you sicced your friends on my house with license to kill. They were your friends, right?” The look on his face was all the confirmation I needed. “Well, they’re piles of sand now, all five of them.”

Nyalla edged toward the kitchen, putting herself between the angel and Harper, who was looking at me in confusion.